• Happiness is Our Birthright

    I was sitting in my favourite coffee place perversely enjoying a cup of hot chocolate when a young man walked in, carrying his year old baby girl.

    As he waited in the queue I saw him drop a kiss on the baby’s head, and I thought to myself, she’s going to be alright. I’d just finished writing a story for a parenting magazine, about bringing up emotionally stable children. I’d turned it round to write a headline, happy children become stable and intelligent people.

    Because it’s easy for parents to think they have to be perfect, I made the point that it’s loving parents who take the time to listen and to remember the golden rule about doing to others as you wish to be done to you, who make the difference…

    We all want to be comforted when we’re miserable, to be heard when we say something, to enjoy the company of those we love, to have enough to eat and drink and get enough sleep – which is exactly what babies need – they are people too!

    But the really important thing for people to know is that cuddling is the answer to all the ills of mankind! Modern research has shown that when babies are happy, talked, too, sung too, cuddled, included, have lots of eye contact, what are known in neuropsychology as the “ the hormones of loving connection” nourish the brain and stimulate the growth of connections in the regions of the brain concerned with regulating emotions. The simple things that loving parents do with their babies, help them to become a considerate, loving and confident people from the very beginning.

    This nourishment for the emotional centres of the growing brains makes children feel secure and happy, and means they tend to be more independent, confident, more resilient, empathetic and caring. Children who are comforted when they’re upset, grow up knowing that nothing is really a disaster, so they are the ones who don’t panic or go into despair when things go wrong. Because they learned when they were little that everything passes, they can cope. Adults who didn’t get this sort of supportive parenting tend to re-act to stress with in-appropriate behaviours like flying off the handle, losing their temper, blaming other people, or going into despair and depression -because they grew up with a lot of fear and no faith that life would support them.

    This is other side of the coin – the research which has shown what most mothers instinctively know, that it’s bad for babies to be left to cry. Imagine being tiny and helpless, unable to move or speak, with crying our only way to get attention when we’re hungry, frightened, lonely or whatever, and we can begin to imagine the panic and powerlessness of a baby left to cry. And if we knew that the person we relied on was there, but ignoring us, we’d feel even more abandoned and hopeless. We’d learn that we can’t trust the people we love and need.

    Researchers now know that when a baby is left to cry, cortisol levels rise in the brain. If the baby is lovingly comforted after a stressful incident, the body absorbs the excess cortisol. But if the stress happens regularly the cortisol levels remain high and become toxic to the brain cells. Cortisol can cause damage to the emotional centres of the brain, and if this happens regularly children grow up prone to anxiety, anger and depression. The old advice to leave a baby to cry has meant many insecure and sad children.

    Psychologists now feel that this deprivation of loving attention, comfort and understanding of a baby is responsible for many problems in older children – problems ranging from ADHD, depression, panic attacks, phobias, eating disorders, anxiety and substance abuse. So children and young adults with these problems are not innately troublesome or born with a pre-disposition to these problems. They simply didn’t get enough emotional food for the brain- those hormones of loving connection.

    All of which means: cuddling is good for babes, crying is bad for them – and the same applies to us all. If you’ve ever cried yourself to sleep from misery, and felt that awful depression when you wake up un-refreshed, you’ll know how it is for far too many babies – simply because their mothers don’t know.

    If we saw a ten year old sitting and crying while we were chatting and having coffee, we’d ask her what the matter was. But if it’s a baby crying, too often we simply ignore him. So I make it my life’s work to admire people’s babies in the supermarket or elsewhere, and then say, you know the more you cuddle him, the happier and the cleverer he’ll be, and if they’re interested, explain. Often young mothers react with huge relief, as though they’ve been given permission to cuddle as much as they want. (They may also say what a boring old bat, when I’ve gone!)

    Maybe we could change the world if we all cuddled our babies, and rushed to comfort a crying one. No more sad and miserable children getting punished for behaviour they don’t understand and then growing into depressed or angry adults, taking it out on the world which felt so harsh to them when they were babies. And we could probably all do with lots more hormones of loving connection ourselves, too.

    And then maybe when we all have enough of them, Love will at last prevail.

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    Out for lunch today, so we just needed a light supper. Leeks are still cheap and plentiful, so leeks it was tonight. Take enough leeks for two – they vary in size so much, that it’s easier to estimate your own. Butter an ovenproof dish, split the leeks lengthways and lay them in the dish. Stir 300 grammes of freshly grated Parmesan cheese into 400 mls of thick cream. Pour this over the leeks and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for twenty minutes until the leeks are cooked and the cream is bubbling.

    Meanwhile hard- boil an egg per person and chop them up. Scatter the eggs over the leeks, and cover with more grated parmesan. Put the dish back in the oven for about five minutes until the cheese has melted, and then give it a quick grill to brown the top.

    Serve with crusty bread and some salad.

    Food for Thought

    I am as young as the most beautiful wish in my heart, and as old as the unfulfilled longings in my life. Saying of the pygmy Kalahari Desert Bushmen

  • Books That Taught Us The Secrets of Life

    As I listened to the Whiffenpoof Yale Choir singing ” As I was young and foolish”, at their concert last night, I thought I know all about that… I was twelve in 1950 when we were given a lecture during science on human reproduction. It was very boring, nine tenths of it was a film about rabbits , and the last tenth was a diagram of stick figures with arrows demonstrating that the sperm passed from the man to the woman.

    “Any questions?” said the science mistress at the end of this, in a very repressive voice, to which I was totally insensitive. I pressed brashly on. “Yes, how did it get from the man to the woman”, I asked? “You should have watched the film.” she snapped, as the whole class took a deep collective in-breath. “But I did”, I protested. End of lesson. It didn’t really matter, I was more pre- occupied with Baroness Orxy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel at that stage… “they seek him here, they seek him there….”

    A year later I got the lowdown on the rudiments of human reproduction in the school train. Rude was what it seemed to me, and I looked with utter distaste at the forty year old English master whose wife was having a baby. How could an elderly man like him – I thought to myself – how could he?

    The next step in my education was the publication of Nevil Shute’s “A Town Like Alice”, which was the subject of hushed talk in the Lower Fourth. Most people think it’s about a couple who fall in love during their brutal imprisonment by the Japanese. But we were n’t interested in that. There were two sentences in the whole book which riveted us. The couple found each other after the war, and went off on holiday to try to re-capture their original feelings. One night she wore a sarong like the one she’d worn in Malaya, and this did the trick apparently. We read with bated breath the words “Did what I think happened last night really happen?” and read with some horror, her strange reply: “Well, I’m covered in bruises.” This was puzzling on several counts. What on earth goes on, we pondered.

    Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the Durbervilles” was the next heroine who furthered my general knowledge on this rather arcane subject back then. I discovered from this book that human reproduction was a very risky business, which in Tess’s case, led from seduction to unwanted pregnancy, a husband who abandoned her on their honeymoon when she told him, and then the seducer rescuing Tess from poverty and despair, until the husband pops up again. In her rage she stabs the wretched seducer, and ends up being hanged. Not a good look for ignorant teenagers searching for information.

    But it came in a much more attractive package when I was at boarding school. This blue book was wrapped in brown paper so that none of the teachers knew we had it. It was furtively passed around the senior girls’ dormitory, and I was at the end of the line, being the most recent arrival. Finally I got to the pages of Frank Yerby’s “The Foxes of Harrow”, which were causing all the excitement. I discovered from this sex manual that women could be frigid – what on earth was that? And the hero of this tale – if hero he could be called – got so fed-up with his frigid wife that he packed her off to town to be de-fridged by a sort of white witch, who was actually a Black American.

    When she returned to her home, and expectant husband, they both couldn’t wait to get up to the bedroom, where the husband stripped off her clothes as fast as he could. But his patience gave out when he fumbled with her pearl necklace, and to our collective relish, he ripped it apart, and priceless pearls cascaded unheeded around the bedroom. Wow, we all thought! You don’t wear jewellery in bed! This couple too, seemed to have had a rough ride, because in the morning, one or other of them had a back which had, in the words of the story, been “raked” by fingernails. Hell’s teeth! as my father would have said.

    Finally Gone with The Wind fell into my eager hands. Not much sex here, but a manual on childbirth for me. Melanie Wilkes giving birth while Atlanta burned around her, and stifling her groans of agony by wringing her hands on a knotted towel stood me in good stead.

    When I gave birth to my first child, having moved house as an army wife, and having slipped too through the cracks of any ante- natal classes – if indeed they existed then – I only had Melanie’s example to guide me. I lay on my bed of pain, sunk into the deepest, blackest pit, suppressing my groans like Melanie had done. Somewhere high up above me I heard the midwife say to my husband you might as well go home, she’s asleep.

    So off he went, and I didn’t see him for another six months. When I was wheeled back to my room in the morning, there was a brief telegram:” Gone to Cyprus”. The unspoken other half of this communication was: “to be shot at by Greeks and Turks.” His regiment had been bundled off to Cyprus to quell another insurrection.

    We were too young to qualify for army allowances, so back home, sans money, family, neighbours, phone and car – since I couldn’t drive the one holed up in the garage, I needed help. I turned to Dr Spock.

    Pregnant again as soon as the husband returned unharmed by Greeks or Turks, for the next few years the only book I read was Dr Benjamin Spock’s child rearing manual, as I wrestled with colic and constipation, solids and sleep deprivation. And since those desperate days, the raunchy reading of my youth hasn’t had the same allure. We called them Blue books back then, though they probably weren’t, and I can’t see me thumbing through Fifty Shades of Grey now… especially since a survey has shown that a surprisingly large number of readers never bother to read to the end!

    Dr Spock, on the other hand, I read from cover to cover. Not once but many times, hoping to enlighten my ignorance on how to cope with babies. But really, I needed more than Dr Spock, just as I needed more than Melanie.

    Recipe for Threadbare Gourmets

    Yesterday I ran out of time and ingredients, and was feeling guilty that I’d been out two nights running leaving the old chap with a cold meal. One night at a concert listening to The Whiffenpoofs, the Yale Choir, and last night, Tai Chi. So I felt I had to cook, and an omelette didn’t seem good enough. Though this is a real threadbare meal, it’s one we love. You need a cup of long grain rice, well washed, and put on to boil with two scant cups of water, salt, three cloves and quarter to half a teaspoon of cinnamon.

    Clamp the lid on tightly and boil on as low as possible for twenty minutes. Then pull off the heat and leave covered for another ten minutes. Meanwhile gently fry one or two onions, and two cups of chopped celery, adding several cloves of chopped garlic towards the end. At this stage I either chop up some cooked chicken, open a tin of shrimps, or fish out some frozen prawns, and stir whatever it is into the onion mixture. Allow two eggs for two people, but three eggs for four – and this amount of rice is probably enough for four reasonable people – beat the eggs lightly and stir into the pan for fifty seconds. Then add the rice, gently stirring to mix it all up. If I have spring onions to hand, I chop them in. Eat immediately with some green salad. (Just don’t try to eat the cloves.) It’s a very delicately flavoured meal.

    Food for Thought

    The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself. Lao-Tse Ancient Chinese philosopher, author of the Tao Te Ching, and considered to be the founder of Taoism

  • Bloggers Complexes

    Do you have Bloggers License, a friend asked, querying something I’d written.

    No, that was exactly how it happened I answered. I thought about this. As I complete three months worth of Blogging, I can see some patterns. As far as I can see, Bloggers write the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not necessarily the whole truth, in the interests of good taste, and other people’s feelings.

    So for me, Bloggers License is being able to choose to write what we want and when we want- unlike the grindstone of journalism.

    Bloggers Temptation is to write too much and too often for followers to keep up.

    Bloggers Fatigue is to get behind with reading other people’s Blogs, and failing therefore to keep the other half of the Bloggers Contract – I engage to encourage you in the same way that you never fail to encourage me.

    Bloggers Heaven is to open the computer and find Likes and Comments and Followings sprinkled like confetti all over the Inbox, and winking through all those other Blogs waiting to be read and enjoyed. Bloggers Heaven is also looking at Stats and seeing not just a high spike, but a lofty plateau of readers every day. If only.

    Bloggers Hell is to open the computer and find nothing but other Blogs, and then open Stats and find only a dribble of readers. Hell, indeed.

    Bloggers Hell leads to Bloggers Despair. Feeling that I am a failure. Feeling that I have nothing of value to say to the world. The world does not want to hear what I have to say. The world is passing me by. I write because I love it, but this is like starving in a garret with no-one to appreciate my literary gems…

    Bloggers Delight is finding a Comment from a particularly admired Blogger, or an intelligent and perceptive Comment, or a Comment of such sincerity and goodness that you feel grateful for being in the same world.

    Bloggers World is a place where everyone writes grammatical, entertaining, interesting, inspiring prose or poetry. Subjects may cover personal highs and lows, current affairs, beauty, politics, history, spirituality or any other topics which intrigue, amuse, or engage the Blogger. Many Bloggers have a passion which they communicate, or a long running project, like the Camino Trail, getting a book or a play published, running a farm, or reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Most people (except me) have a theme which people know to expect when they visit a Blogger’s web-site. And there are also Bloggers who share their wonderful photography, the sort of artistry that I drag into the To Keep box.

    Bloggers seem to have common characteristics. They seem to be intelligent, often committed to preserving the environment, devoted to animals and concerned with social justice. They are sincere and witty and have a sense of fun. Bloggers notice and enjoy the small things in life. Many enjoy the good things in life, like food, beauty, flowers, music, gardens, architecture and antiques. They are uniformly courteous, kind, committed to high ideals, and often to spiritual growth. If anyone asks for help, they are swamped with responses from Bloggers who really care. Bloggers are good people.

    I wonder if Bloggers are the cutting edge of the wave of the new consciousness that the world needs to move to another level of thought and awareness. It’s awareness and commitment that we need as we step up to the next stage of our civilisation and growth. It’s only by thought that we’ll solve the problems that challenge us to take that next step into the unknown; and it seems to me that Bloggers are the sort of thoughtful people who each take individual responsibility for their corner of the world – themselves. So the Bloggers World is a sort of alternative new world that we inhabit.

    Bloggers End: this is a situation that few of us know anything about – much the same as we know little about our passing into the next world. There is little research into the demise of the Blogger. Do she just fade out, obliterate the Blog (how?), just stop clicking on Like, or stop writing the Blog? These are all huge questions that every Blogger will one day face. But until this great unknown state of unconsciousness overtakes us, we don’t know the answers. And will we ever? If Bloggers stop communicating how will we ever know? Will some brave soul send back messages from that other world, that cruel world where people scoff at Bloggers? There are still unsolved riddles even in the great enlightenedWorld of Blogging.

    ( Bloggers Nightmare – a private one, that only unskilled Bloggers would know about. It’s given this Blogger a few nights broken sleep: the fear that she’s letting all the other Bloggers down who’ve nominated her for Awards. Until she masters the medium she’s lagging behind in acknowledging the Awards, fulfilling the conditions, passing on the accolades to other Bloggers, and posting the Awards that demonstrate the encouragement, acceptance and approval of her peers. She’s presumptuously banking on the generosity of Bloggers to bear with her till she gets the hang of it all. She’s also longing to be able to dangle these accolades alongside her Blog)

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    There were two bananas sitting in the fruit bowl in a state of perfect ripeness – just a few brown spots on their golden curves, indicating that they were ready to eat. It seemed a shame not to enjoy them at this peak moment of their prime, so though we rarely have a pudding in the interests of our weight, I couldn’t resist these perfect specimens. It only takes a few minutes to create a delectable banana pudding. I offered my husband a banana split, the banana sliced down the middle, spread with raspberry jam, cream poured over, and a dollop of ice-cream if he wished.

    The alternative was my choice, the banana sliced down the middle and then cut in two, gently fried in butter, brown sugar and cream and a tot of Jamaica rum poured into it. This hot concoction served with good quality ice-cream is this blogger’s heaven. My husband went for the first option. I pitied him.

    If I was serving this to guests, I would also give them a little crisp biscuit to eat with it, for the sake of texture.

    Food for Thought

    Sometimes I don’t want to think. I want to laugh. I love this foodie joke from my childhood. It’s anonymous.

    I always eat my peas with honey

    I’ve done it all my life.

    They do taste kind of funny,

    But it keeps them on the knife.

  • I’m Crazy for Power

    Yesterday afternoon I was thrown out of the cinema. Friend and I had gone to see our favourite film before it went off. Quarter of an hour into the familiar dialogue, chuckling at the jokes we’d laughed at before, the film disappeared and a weak little light appeared at the top of the stairs. We waited for them to fix the tape, but instead a girl appeared and said it was a power cut. Great gnashing of teeth. I was thankful for the feeble light by the stairs, imagining what it would have been like to have been plunged into total darkness, and a stampede for the only exit at the bottom of the stairs.

    Sitting around outside, they finally told us to go home. Couldn’t give us a refund, because the till wouldn’t open without electricity. So they gave us another ticket.

    Before going home, I said I’d just get some tomatoes for my husband’s supper – cold – since I was going to Tai Chi. The grocery was in flat panic. Dark, with no lights, blinds down over the open chilled shelves. I asked to give them some money for the tomatoes, but they had to go to the back and find the key to manually open the till. Then they didn’t know how much they were, because the price would have come up on the till… so off they went to the office to find the list of stock prices, and finally I managed to buy the tomatoes. Thank heavens I didn’t need any petrol. The whole little town was buzzing in despair and panic, no-one could even go to the loo.

    Back home, I thought about The Great Storm of four years ago. Most of the country had been blacked out, but power was restored over a few days. In our neck of the woods however, where concrete power poles had been crumbled all over the road like biscuit crumbs, and a tree had come down over the generator across the road from us, we were powerless for five days.

    A different world opens up. We catch rainwater on the roof, store it in a huge tank, and pump it into the house. But no electricity equals no pump, equals no water. No water for drinking, washing, washing clothes, washing dishes, flushing the loo. No power meant no cooking, no lighting, and no TV or stereo. Luckily we could open our garage manually, but some friends had no other way of getting into their garages, and were marooned with their car behind the immoveable garage door.

    So I boiled water on a camp fire and on the wood burning heater, fried eggs and bacon, and boiled soup. Didn’t dare open the deep freeze for fear of losing the still frozen contents, and resented opening the fridge for butter, milk and the like. The village store was in darkness, their fridges going on a generator, the garage was closed. No help at the fish and chip shop. Unwashed dishes piled up. Unwashed clothes accumulated. We had to get used to unwashed bodies. Some people cooked on their barbecues, some people had no form of heating except electricity, and froze.

    After a couple of days we began to gingerly adjust. I drove to a nearby town which had the power on, and bought water and lots of extra pairs of underpants and panties. My husband thought of using buckets of water from the swimming pool next door – my daughter’s holiday home – to flush the loo. I never got used to not having my electric blanket, but at least we had a hot water bottle. Candles made the house look and feel beautiful, but the light wasn’t good enough to read by at night. Some neighbours used miners’ lamps, clipping them round their heads to go to bed and read. It worked apart from the large circle in the middle of their foreheads from the pressure.

    I read today that the Blessed Bill Gates has offered a prize for a loo that works without water, electricity or a septic tank – all components of our system here – a loo that costs only five cents a day to run, preferably captures energy, and discharges no pollutants. A number of brilliant solutions have been invented. And the idea is to provide safe sanitation for the 2.5 billion people around the world who don’t have it.

    I think we should all be able to buy these loos. Our over-crowded world desperately needs sustainable solutions like these for everything. We need alternatives to electricity, oil and coal … we need a dozen more Bill Gates’s to find solutions that involve the sun’s sustainable energy, the wind, the waves. For a few days, we in our village experienced a few temporary discomforts when power was unavailable, but were able to get outside help from places that did have power.

    But there will surely come a time when there won’t be enough of anything. The world’s population is estimated to grow to between nine and ten billion within forty years – the lifetime of our grand-children. Two hundred years ago the population of England and Wales was eight million, compared with 56 million now, and it’s the same sort of increase all over the world. So we urgently need more solutions like Bill Gates’s loos.

    This is not cause for despair, for all is not lost. Mankind is brilliant at creating marvellous inventions, and resolving problems when it wants to. I’m reading a book called ‘The Great Disruption’ by Paul Gilding about how you and I can do something to help resolve these problems. Watch this space – I’ll let you know!

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    Having had lunch with a friend in her bay window overlooking a long, white, empty beach nearby, and then afternoon tea with a couple of friends to swap books, I hadn’t really thought about what to feed us in the evening. Something quick was wanted, so I fell back on my old standby, my un-orthodox version of kedgeree, made with a tin of salmon – cheap too.

    A cup of long grain rice on the boil, two eggs on the boil, half a cup each of sultanas and frozen peas soaking in boiling water, and I was ready to begin. After gently frying a chopped onion in oil until soft, I added a couple of cloves of garlic and a chopped up knob of fresh ginger (you can always use powdered, but fresh is nicer).

    When the garlic is soft, sprinkle a teaspoon of powdered cumin, turmeric and a bit less of coriander into the pan, and let them cook gently. I sometimes also use some made up curry powder as well, and vary the amounts of the spices depending on how hot I want it. Better to start with less, and increase it, than find it’s burning the roof off your mouth (I have been known to add some brown sugar to take the edge off a too hot curry).

    Now open the tin of salmon and drain, and add it to the mix in the frying pan. Drain the peas and sultanas and stir them in. Add a knob of butter if it needs lubricating. Drain the rice, and add this, gently stirring with lots of chopped parsley. I always find that adding another generous knob of butter improves the taste. Pile onto the plates and chop a hardboiled egg over each helping. Usual caveat – serves two greedy people generously, and three to four well-behaved people – add an egg for each person.

    Food for Thought

    Lead me from death to life, from falsehood to truth.

    Lead me from despair to hope, from fear to trust.

    Lead me from hate to love, from war to peace.

    Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.

    No, not the prayer of St Francis of Assisi, but a translation from the Upanishads by Satish Kumar Born 1937. Jain monk, nuclear disarmament campaigner, founder of Schumacher College, in Devon, England which teaches green values and sustainability, and present editor of Resurgence magazine

  • Culture, History, Glamour and Beauty

    There’s a mysterious magic in some names and places, names like The Akhond of Swat, places like The Forbidden City, Venice, Timbuctoo or Mandalay. Sadly as the world has shrunk, and tourism has tainted so many remote places, some of the magic has melted away. It’s as though the less we know, the more romantic a place is.

    Aleppo is one of those romantic places, but we’ve always known plenty about it, and it’s still a magic place. It’s so old that people were living there over seven thousand years ago. It’s seen every conqueror in history, from Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Mongols, Mamluks and Ottomans, and now the Assads. It’s architecture is older than the Greeks, legend has it that Abraham lived nearby with his flocks, Alexander was here in AD 333, and Saladin made it here too, among many others.

    Since the sixteen century many Europeans lived here too, as Aleppo was the first city to have its own consuls, the first being the Venetian consul who built his house here in 1599. The same family have occupied it for centuries, like many other Europeans who came from places like Italy and Austria and stayed, building handsome homes, collecting exquisite works of art and historic libraries. The famous Baron’s Hotel which rivalled all the great hotels of the world hosted royalties from all over the world – mostly Europe! – travellers like Freya Stark and Patrick Leigh Fermor, statesmen like Theodore Roosevelt and Earl Mountbatten, the rich and famous like the Rockefellers and Charles Lindbergh, Agatha Christie and many more. The great Citadel has stood defiant for centuries, the Souk is the longest in the world at nearly 13 kilometers, while all around are ancient ruins, Roman and Greek, Crusader, and Assyrian.

    And now – like Babylon, where US troops dug tank trenches, and wiped out ancient Sumerian cities; like Kabul, where the museum with relics from Alexander’s visit was obliterated by Russian and Taliban fighters; like the Bamiyan Buddhas, bombed by the Taliban; like Bayreuth, once called the most beautiful city in the world, destroyed in civil war – this treasure, which is not just part of the heritage of the Middle East, but is the heritage of humanity, is also being destroyed. Both people and history are being shown no mercy.

    The famous Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers has been shelled by the troops of Assad, an Assyrian temple has been destroyed, and battles have been fought among the famed “dead cities,” the Graeco-Roman cities long abandoned, but preserved in the dry heat of the desert. When the rebels take refuge behind the thick walls of ancient castles, Syrian troops haven’t hesitated to destroy these historic monuments in order to kill their countrymen hiding behind them.

    Queen Zenobia’s legendary city of Palmyra is surrounded by Syrian troops, camped in the castle above the city, and there’s a tank park in the Valley of Tombs. It’s even rumoured that trenches have been dug in the Roman city. All these places, like the places devastated in Iraq, have nurtured many cultures for millenniums, from Sumerian and Byzantine to Christian and Moslem. And desperate men are destroying this heritage. Places of beauty, symbolism and significance for mankind are once again being devastated, as was much of Europe in World War Two, and the previously untouched historic cities like Sarajevo and Dubrovnik in later conflicts.

    Africa is also our heritage, the cradle of the human race, that mysterious continent which hosts so many magnificent creatures seen nowhere else on the planet. And the native people who live there today are part of the delicate balance between man and nature, that unlike westerners, they have managed to preserve where they are left in peace. But here too, the ancient, misty culture of mankind, and the existence of the unique creatures who share this world with us, is threatened. Not by war here, but by heartless pleasure seeking. The Masai who inhabit the Serengeti in Tanzania, are facing eviction so that rich oil millionaires, kings and princes from the Gulf can hunt and shoot the wild life there.

    The Arctic and Antarctic are also the common heritage of us all. And they too are being despoiled by the oil rush, by tourism, by global warming and power struggles. Our planet is so small now that we are all affected by whatever happens. Recently on TV, Professor Brian Cox, the famous physicist, picked up a huge diamond, and told his astonished audience that we are all so connected that when he rubs the diamond, it affects the stars in space. So we are certainly all affected by all these events happening in our small world. We Are all one, as the mystics have always asserted.

    What can we do to make a difference? Thanks to souldipper.wordpress.com pointing me to Scilla Elworthy’s video on TED, I know that there are many people working to end conflict in all its forms. And the best way? Start with ourselves… which means that though we may hate what’s happening, we can’t hate the people involved – because they all think they’re doing the right thing just like you and me!

    And you can help the Masai by Googling Avaaz.org Stop the Serengeti Sell-off.

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    An inpromptu little gathering for drinks with a few friends meant rustling up something to soak up the wine, so they would n’t, in the words of a funny article I read, have to drive drunkenly home through country lanes. A dish of olives, and some chicken pate and crackers were the usual nibbles, but I decided instead of doing something with salmon that I’d make a sardine pate. Quick and easy. Two tins of sardines, four tablespoons of cream cheese, some squeezed lemon, salt and pepper, and lots of finely chopped parsley. No need to bother with a mixer – which I don’t have – it mashes into a lovely smooth spread/dip- call it what you will. With thin slices of artisan olive bread left over from lunch, it was a hit, and cheap withal.

    Food for Thought

    Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is only of interest to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees. E.F. Schumacher. 1911 – 1977 Economist and writer of ‘Small is Beautiful ‘.

  • No Gold Medal for This Driver

    That old saying – when you let something go, something new comes into your life may be true – but they never said how traumatic the new could be.

    So there was the dinky little new car waiting at my daughter’s house. They were all away, so I locked up the old car, patted it, said goodbye with tears in my eyes and climbed into the new. When you’ve been driving for fifty years, it’s a piece of cake isn’t it!

    But as I pulled away to join the rush hour and looked at the gears, I realised that I had no idea what I was looking at. I assumed D/ S was the gear to drive in, but was ‘ L’ a top gear, since it was the last in line? The nearest petrol station was marooned in heavy traffic, so I went back to the friendly car wash, where the attendant had been so helpful. He put me right on ‘ L,’ so I sailed onto the motorway and into the going- home rush hour traffic.

    Not being used to the sound of small cars, I wondered if the noise I could hear was mine or outside. I pressed the side window button, and got the left back window. Pressed the front, and it worked, and I listened and found I was making the sounds I could hear, so went to put the window up. It wouldn’t go. Neither would the back window. Bowling along in heavy traffic, I sat in the cross draught with an icy gale blowing, getting soaked as the rain flew in. I tried every button, and the car began to behave like a Mr Bean nightmare, push this, and the side mirrors curled in, push that and the wind screen wipers swirled, push another and a blast of hot air told me I’d got the heater. That was good, it slightly balanced out the bitter wind and rain.

    Three-quarters of an hour later, frozen, I pulled off at the first petrol pump on the left and asked a man getting his petrol how to get the windows up. I didn’t have to put on a pathetic little old lady act – I was one!

    It was quite simple, I just pulled the tabs up. As I backed away to resume the journey, the car started shouting at me. I jumped and nerves completely shattered by now, crawled to another pump occupied by a man and six sheep. He suggested maybe it was the seat-belt. It might have been. So I carried on home, and deposited it in the garage after various other tribulations.

    Come the morning I had to drive over an hour and a half to get my frail husband to the airport to see his even frailer older sister, pushing ninety. Problem number one, we couldn’t unlock the doors. The driver’s seat was still unlocked from the night before, so in the end- quite desperate – I stuffed my bulky husband into the driver’s seat and pushed and shoved him and his unyielding stiff legs into the other seat. Feeling slightly unhinged by this, and with all the mud coming off the soles of his shoes into the pristine car, that he didn’t know where it had come from, I got in front of the wheel. The gears wouldn’t budge. Some time later, I unlocked the house, went back inside and rang the garage. Saturday morning and just a stand-in selling petrol. So I rang the boss at home and got his wife. “Try putting your foot on the brake,” she suggested.

    Locked up the house, back to the garage, and trapped husband. Foot on the brake and I could move the gear stick. Hooray. Off we go. But we don’t. I can’t start the wretched thing (and by this time four letter words were being used quite freely). Try taking your foot off the accelerator said my husband, whose advice had not, frankly, been too good up till now. This time he’d hit the spot. The car started, and as we backed out of the garage, I discovered why it had been making frantic noises the day before at the petrol pump. It does make these noises when I back. It’s the nature of the beast.

    And so off to the airport, still not knowing how to unlock the doors, work the wind-screen wipers with any accuracy, or the heater with any certainty, and the inside light and the head-lights a complete enigma. Reader, (to quote Charlotte Bronte) we got there! A stop for petrol and a helpful attendant meant I discovered central locking and some of the other baffling refinements.

    On the way back, travelling at my normal speed – which has earned me in the past the epithet of ‘racing grannie” – a number of large cars of the Chelsea tractor variety, passed me quite dangerously, and cut in on me. I was puzzled at first, and then it began to feel familiar. Yes, it was ‘the- little- old- lady- in- a- little- car- must- be- driving- too- slowly’ syndrome. I’d experienced it years before when I used to drive a little Ford laser. Back home I mentioned it to a friend. “Oh yes”, she said, “in Mike’s big car, I get around no trouble. In my little car, I get hassled, and bullied, especially at roundabouts and junctions.”

    I felt quite indignant. It’s bad enough being introduced to the same man over and over again, because men never recognise or remember women with grey hair, but to be hassled and despised in my car because I have grey (to white) hair as well is the pits! The family were mortified when I described my ordeals because they had actually thought I had understood their briefing on the car. But I am someone whose only kitchen gadget was a pop-up toaster for most of my life (made mayonnaise with a wooden spoon), and who has never learned to thread a sewing machine, so made all my curtains by hand. No wonder I struggle with my computer! As for the car manual – that’s another story, but I’ll spare you the details.

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    The winter weather seems to get colder with every day that passes, my huge pile of firewood is dwindling, and our need for comfort food increases. So today I did my chicken stew special. Searching the deep freeze for something edible that would de- freeze quickly (no, I don’t use a microwave) I came on something I recognised – a couple of chicken thighs. I try to label, but usually decide I’ll recognise it when I want it. This means that the day I defrosted some lentil soup for supper, we ended up having Christmas pudding instead.

    So I got out the big saucepan and sauted a couple of onions and celery sticks, added a couple of chopped leeks and browned the still frozen chicken pieces. Then I added two chopped carrots, one grated carrot, a big cup of mashed pumpkin from the day before, and another quarter of chopped pumpkin, a parsnip, a few chopped garlic cloves, and some chicken bouillon cubes, a squeeze of tomato puree, Worcester sauce, salt and pepper, and let it all simmer till soft.

    Meanwhile I put four tablespoons of self raising flour in a bowl with two tablespoons of grated suet, salt and pepper, and a teaspoon or more of mixed herbs.

    Mix this with enough water to make a soft dough, and leave to stand in the fridge for half an hour. Ten minutes or so before serving, drop large tablespoons of the dumpling mixture into the simmering stew, and cook for about ten minutes or until a needle comes out clean. On other days I would use whatever other vegetables I had in the house, or even add some washed lentils, but always onion, celery and carrots. If I put potatoes in I wouldn’t make dumplings, but would add the mixed herbs to the stew. I usually throw in a handful of frozen peas at the end, for the colour. There’s always plenty to have the next day as soup, and for added nourishment I add plenty of chopped parsley and grated cheese on top.

    Food for Thought

    Few have heard of Fra Luca Pacioli, the inventor of double-entry book-keeping; but he has probably had more influence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo.

    Herbert J Muller, 1905 – 1980 American philosopher

  • Buying a New Car

    My daughter has finally winkled me out of my ancient and large white car with the bribe of going halves on a new one. An irresistible offer! A nippy little silver job, easy to park, and flies like the swift it’s named after.

    But first, there was the old car to dispose of. Cleaning it out was a bit like moving house. The glove box obviously, was a mess – old sunglasses, handbook, old warrant of fitness bills, old maps – out of date – and a heavy choke chain and lead for a big dog. The middle shelves gave up a hoard of tooth picks- the wooden sort and the plastic brushes with a plastic lid – peppermints, a box of matches, a pen, some packets of almonds for hungry emergencies, loose change for wind-screen washers at traffic lights, a couple of elastoplasts, a defunct key-ring and a lipstick. The compartment in the door had to be cleared of tissues – clean- a bottle of Yardley’s lavender water, peppermint wrappers and a small choke chain and small dog lead.

    The back seat was divested of rug, a basket containing a bottle of water, a pair of gloves, a nearly empty bottle of Chanel No 5, and some empty egg boxes for re-cycling. The pocket in the back seat had another out- of- date book of maps and some dog biscuits. On the floor were a couple of shopping bags, and a large Tupperware box to be returned to a friend in the city when I was going her way. In the back window, two purple umbrellas, purple because they had a loop handle to go over the arm, and also dozens of spines instead of the usual five or six, to stop them blowing inside out. Purple because that was the only colour they had!

    In the boot, a big towel for wiping wet rescued dogs, a child’s plastic beach bucket and a big bottle of water for thirsty dogs, a walking stick in case my husband forgets his, a picture and frame to be taken to have the glass repaired when I find a good picture framer, a bag of books to take to a hospice shop, and another bag with some of my own books as – just occasionally – people I meet ask to buy one.

    I’ve got so much gear for dogs because if there is a lost dog within a hundred miles of me, it will eventually cross my path. In the past I’ve had a springer spaniel found in a forest, two over-sized muddy mongrels escaped from home, a lost retriever found on the road late at night, and stowed in the garage with a message left on the draining board for my husband – ‘Warning. Large dog in garage’. I’ve found a labrador puppy, whose teeth marks still deface the arm-rest in the front, and a Staffordshire bull terrier who leant gratefully against the back seat, knowing he was now safe; there was a huge shaggy German shepherd, and a little dog who I lured into the car by giving him my husband’s steak for dinner, and throwing a blanket over him as he ate. He turned out to be a well known local tramp, accurately named Scruffy. Then there were the sealyham and the scottie wandering down a country road late at night, two retriever puppies stranded on a busy city roundabout… and a litter of sheepdog puppies gambolling down another country road on a summer’s night on our way out to dinner…and these are just the ones I remember!

    The now empty car needed a good vacuuming, getting pine cone crumbs off the back seat, when I couldn’t get mesh bags of them into the boot because I’d forgotten to empty it of some boxes my daughter had asked me to put in her garage, the odd mouldy chicken nugget retrieved from under the seat, the fossilised relic of a grandchild’s snack, and the general mess from carting bags of compost, potting mix, bark, plants and the rest.

    I took the old car to a car wash and gave it the works, and then drove it to my daughter’s where the new car awaited me. By now I was beginning to feel a bit weepy, as though I was abandoning a beloved friend. It had carried me faithfully for over eleven years, done thousands of miles especially when I was doing a six hundred mile round trip once a week to see my grand-children. It had never let me down, and in turn I faithfully oiled and watered and serviced it. I thanked it each time it passed its six months warrant check, and felt grateful for its loyalty, reliability and dogged service.

    I’ve laughed in it, and prayed in it, sung in it, meditated in it, cried in it, enjoyed friends in it, and carried my grandchildren in it- even my grand-daughter’s dollies propped up in the back seat when she wanted them to have some fresh air. I look back on moments like the one when the fourteen year old was asleep on the back seat, after we’d had a long adventurous day out together. As we returned to civilisation and approached the harbour bridge, I called out to him to sit up and put his seat belt on. “I’m too tired, Grannie”, he murmured from the depths of the seat. ” Well, I could be caught and fined by the traffic police you know”, I replied. “No, you won’t Grannie,” he answered, “they’ll just think you’re a dear old grannie, and let you off!”

    And another child at four years old, sitting in the front seat going home after the weekend, looking wizened and sad in the middle of an asthma attack. He asked a question, and after I’d given him the answer, he looked grumpily at me with his big brown eyes, and said; “How come you know everything Grannie?” I gulped, and then came up with the answer: “Because I’m so old”. This seemed to satisfy him!

    So this car, a heap of metal, was much more than that to me. I loved it and it held so many memories. Martin Buber, the great Jewish teacher once wrote that: ’no encounter with a being or a thing lacks a hidden significance’. He said that: ’the people we live with or meet with, the animals that help us with our farmwork, the soil we till, the material we shape, the tools we use, they all contain a mysterious spiritual substance which depends on us for helping it towards its pure form, its perfection’. Recognising the part that this big heap of metal had played in my life – this old car which seemed to have its own personality – and remembering Martin Buber’s words, made me feel less foolish at being so upset at saying goodbye to it.

    I just hope its next owner loves it too.

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    The lemon chutney I made the other day is wonderful with cheese or cold meat, and also makes a lovely gift. At this time of year in New Zealand the trees are laden with citrus fruits, and it’s a particularly good year for lemons.

    You need seven or eight lemons – the thin skinned sort. Cut them in eight wedges and pick out the pips. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle the lemon flesh with one and a half tablespoons of salt, and leave for two days. Put it all in a blender with 500grammes of raisins and four cloves of garlic, and blitz. Tip the mixture into a large saucepan with two teaspoons of horseradish sauce, one teaspoon chilli powder, a tablespoon of freshly grated ginger, a cup and a half of cider, and 500grammes of brown sugar. Bring to the boil and simmer gently without a lid until thick. Pour into clean hot jars and seal. Yum!

    Food for Thought

    If it is to be, it is up to me. Advice for life to his boys, by an anonymous English headmaster.

  • Atomic Terror Started in a Tent

    On July 16 in 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated near Alamogordo, and a few weeks later was dropped on Japan on August 6 The bomb that blasted Hiroshima and Nagasaki And scarred the whole world Exploded unbeknown to me

    No adult thought to tell a child That we could all now Be destroyed In the twinkling of an eye No-one mentioned That man had become The shatterer of worlds.

    The savants of the western world Toiled in the dusty desert To create fission They even feared Would conflagrate our world.

    Playing at being gods Not in white coats and sterile labs But in dust and heat Stripped to the waist In a home-made tent Rigged up at the foot of a puerile tower Invented to try to reduce Unknown quantities of fall-out In the first attempt To detonate an atom bomb.

    The core was carried in a valise In the back seat of a car And driven over a bumpy road To where eight scientists Waited at base camp To assemble the plutonium pieces In silence with their own lives in the balance Eight men worked in deepest concentration.

    The murderous device now ready It was carried on a stretcher To the car And continued its journey To the tent in the desert Beneath the searing sun Where the final team of scientists Waited in the dim cool shelter.

    The core was hoisted manually Before being lowered into the waiting bomb The only sound The ticking Geiger counters Occasionally an instruction And then the monster Was winched by hand To the top of the shoddy tower And a pile of mattresses Twenty feet high Placed beneath In case it fell!

    A hundred feet above the desert In a strong wind The brutish metal sphere Covered with leads Connecting sixty-four detonators Swung in the rain and thunder Waiting for zero hour.

    And when it came In the blackness of night The darkness turned to light A blazing sun glared on the horizon Lighting up the desert And a slow roar of sound Rolled across the land.

    As the fireball Raced into the sky They watched from a bunker And some wept Some laughed Some were silent One had goose pimples As the world changed forever.

    In this cumbersome And homely way Using mattresses and suitcases The sweat of their brows A temporary tent and teamwork The greatest terror The world had known Came into being.

    And this gives me heart.

    Mere men, in their own Unskilled and make-shift way Can re-create with gentleness and patience The new world That we all ache for. Our puny efforts are worthwhile For God wastes nothing.

    More Food for Thought If it is to be, it is up to me. Advice for life for his boys, from an anonymous English schoolmaster

  • More about Books

    Between six and a half and nearly nine, I lived with my grandmother. My mother had disappeared, not to be found until fifty years later, and my father was at the war from when I was a year old until nearly nine. Those two and a half years I spent with my grandmother were the happiest years of my childhood, and one of the reasons, apart from the fact that she loved and spoiled me, was that she brought loads of book into the house when she came to look after us,

    I was allowed to read everything, and my range was a wide one, from Enid Blyton’s fairy story The Faraway Tree, published by instalments in a magazine called Sunny Stories, which I collected from the grocer every week, to Foxe’s Martyrs, a huge leather bound book with engraved illustrations with a piece of flimsy paper covering each one. It was a ghoulish record of the three hundred Englishmen and women who Bloody Mary had had burned at the stake for being Protestants. Foxe’s Martyrs wasn’t one of my favourite books, but it was there.

    Also there, were bound copies of Victorian ladies journals, with stories about beautiful orphans, though of noble birth, and young men with crisp, fair curls, sporting striped blazers, straw boaters and high moral character, who rescued these pure young maidens from lives of poverty and humiliation.

    Little Lord Fauntleroy was also pressed on me by my grandmother, as was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold even more copies in England than in the US, was one of my grandmother’s favourites, and after reading it at eight, I became a fervent abolitionist. Which no doubt would have warmed Harriet Beecher Stowe’s warm heart.

    I never had any trouble with poor old Uncle Tom, in spite of today’s politically correct connotations. I loved him for his moral courage and kindness, which I could understand even at eight. He died for his principles, refusing to inflict on other slaves the same cruel beatings that killed him. Eliza and her child fleeing over the frozen river haunted my nightmares.

    The other book on my grandmother’s shelves which shaped my life even more than Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was John Halifax, Gentleman, written by Mrs Craik. Published in 1865, the year of the ending of the American Civil War, it was about an orphaned boy who found a home in a Quaker household, and through espousing Quaker virtues became a successful and prosperous pillar of the community. Sounds pretty boring, but even as a child, I loved him for his dignity, integrity, moral courage and loving heart. Like Uncle Tom, he never sacrificed his principles for the sake either of safety or material gain.

    When my father returned from overseas, I went to live with him and our new stepmother. I never mentioned these two books, after they had laughed themselves silly when I disclosed to them in an unguarded moment that I had read Little Lord Fauntleroy. I thought maybe these two books might also be material for grownup mockery, and it wasn’t until my late teens that I discovered that they were both well regarded classics. When I re-read John Halifax in my twenties, I realised that the principles that he had lived his life by had been the unconscious grounding of my own philosophy.

    My first Christmas with them, my new parents gave me a copy of Louisa M Alcott’s Little Women. Like most children of my generation and previous ones, I read it again and again, and the principles of integrity, kindness and concern for others influenced me deeply, as I’m sure it influenced so many other girls back then. Thanks to Jo March, I also began writing, and produced my own newspaper, somewhat plagiarised, until it was discovered by the adults and became a great joke.

    The last book which influenced me all my life was Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, a birthday present. Black Beauty, the story of a horse and his friend Ginger, and how they were exploited by human beings they trusted, until these two fine thoroughbreds had been worn down to become half-starved, broken down cab horses, entered my soul. I’ve always been thankful that we use the motor car now, instead of horses, no matter how much pollution cars cause. Black Beauty taught me to love and respect all animals and all life, including the birds of the air and the creatures in the sea.

    Louisa Alcott was brought up and taught by Transcendentalists, including Emerson and Thoreau, while Anna Sewell’s parents were Quakers. So when I look back at the four books that in many ways have shaped my character, I see that they were all written by women in the middle of the nineteenth century, all of whom lived in families and communities with the highest ideals and with a commitment to actually practising what they preached (Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband used to hide escaped slaves). I feel I was so lucky that these four books came my way at the age that I was so that their philosophies became an integral part of my values and thinking.

    As the years have gone by, and I’ve explored different creeds and religions, in the end, the core of them seemed to be the principles that the American Transcendentalists and the English Quakers lived by. So there’s never been any conflict between other creeds and the old beliefs that I picked up from these old books. I often wonder which are the books today that do this same job of inspiring and grounding children in the ideals and values of our civilisation.

    I’ve watched the Harry Potter films with my grandchildren, and can see that it’s a struggle between good and evil. But the books that taught me, were about the immediate, down to earth, everyday situations, in which truthfulness, and kindness, moral courage and selflessness were the standards by which the heroes and heroines lived and died in these old books. And these Victorian books were lovely – gold embossed covers, thick paper and beautiful type-faces.

    There are so many well written and inspiring books for children and young adults these days, and the nature of our civilisation is such that there are actually hundreds. So instead of a handful of classics uniting people, so that they knew the same stories and shared the same experiences, today there are so many stories that people don’t have a background in common.

    I remember the true story of British writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who kidnapped a German general in Crete in 1944. They smuggled him up into the mountains. In the morning as the shocked and despondent general was looking over the mountains in the dawn, he quoted some lines to himself in Latin from the Roman poet Horace. Leigh Fermor recited the rest of the ode with him, and in his words:’…for a long moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.”

    Stories like this remind us of the power of books and words and art.

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    I’ve been so busy with blogging and making lemon chutney with our surfeit of lemons at this time of year, that I haven’t had time to prepare a sustaining lunch for my hungry 82 year old husband. Quick onion soup will have to do, with hot rolls.

    I have some lovely stock from the potatoes, carrots and Brussels sprouts all cooked in the same water yesterday, so that also makes me feel virtuously frugal. The soup takes four large onions sliced thinly and stewed in butter. When they’re soft, stir in a tablespoon of sugar. Stir until the sugar browns – don’t let it turn black. Then pour in a pint and a half of stock, with either half a glass of wine, or a dash of wine vinegar. Simmer for about 15 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste, and a sprinkling of parsley. Caramelising the onions with the sugar gives the soup colour, a rich delicate flavour and thickens it up. Recipe for the lemon chutney in the next post!

    Food for Thought

    Whatever the world may say or do, my part is to keep myself good; just as a gold piece, or an emerald, or a purple robe insists perpetually, ‘whatever the world may say or do, my part is to remain an emerald and keep my colour true.’

    Marcus Aurelius, born in AD 121, Philosopher, Stoic and Emperor of Rome from AD 161 to his death in AD 180

  • Real Olympics

    The Olympic Games of 1948 were the last games I got really interested in. Fanny Blankers- Koen, the heroic Dutch woman runner captured my imagination, and with a few girl friends we organised our own local Olympic games. The lucky girls who had bikes had a bike race. The rest of us made do with running in our cotton summer dresses. We tucked them into our knickers for the high jump – better named the middling to low jump.

    We had a highly competitive three- legged race, and a wheelbarrow race. This is a real team event, with one person holding the legs of the front runner who is moving forward on her two hands. When the Olympics were first revived in the 1850’s by Dr William Penny Brookes at Much Wenlock, a small Shropshire town in England, the wheelbarrow race had an extra degree of difficulty in that the wheelbarrows were blindfold. This refinement was dropped for our less arduous sports event.

    In spite of Dr Penny Brookes having often met and greatly influenced Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Baron neither gave him the credit for his influence, or included the blindfolded wheelbarrow race in his first modern Olympics held first in Greece in 1896 and then in Paris in 1904. In spite of this reckless omission, the Olympics flourished amid the normal squabbles and rivalries we’ve all come to expect, as everyone jockeys for influence, success and medals.

    I find it quite ironic that the French baron was so impressed by the English physical education at Rugby School and by its famous headmaster Dr Arnold, that he tried to get the French interested in physical education in all French schools. The patriotic baron put down Britain’s success in winning an empire to their emphasis on sports at school. He must have believed in the Duke of Wellington’s slightly misquoted remark about Waterloo having been won on the playing fields of Eton.

    Wellington actually said, as he walked past boys playing on an Eton cricket pitch, ‘there grows the stuff that won Waterloo!’ But since his French compatriots could not be interested in winning their battles on the playing fields of St Cyr or anywhere else at the time, de Coubertin put his efforts into reviving the ancient Greek Olympics.

    Myself, I prefer the idea of the modern Olympics, revived in 1996 and held every four years at Nemea in Greece, the site of ancient Greek games. Anyone can enter, and athletes run in white tunics, rather than stark naked like the original Greek athletes. The opening ceremony is held in the magnificent ruins of the temple of Zeus near the stadium. In the golden Mediterranean twilight, families gather and spread themselves under the pine trees, and perch on ruined columns. After a speech by the Mayor of Nemea, Greek warriors in full regalia appear and are met by two women, one in white, personifying Ekecheiria – Peace – the other in black- Nemea, carrying the sacred flame. Choirs sing and the warriors lay down their weapons and a sacred truce is declared.

    The gathering then meanders through the vineyards to the nearby stadium where a pyre is lit, a song is sung, and the games declared open. The next day the competitors, not necessarily athletes, go through their paces, all barefoot. (Remember the fuss when the South African, woman runner Zola Budd sprinted down the track barefoot?)

    Men, women and children, old and young, compete in their classes down the 90 foot stadium – the other 100 metres hasn’t been excavated yet. Everyone is cheered down the track, and the winner is awarded a crown woven from wild celery. At the end of the day a marathon is held, raced over country where Hercules would have run, and ending in the stadium which Hercules had measured out. The runners emerge from a tunnel at the end of the track, with ancient Greek graffiti carved in it, and run onto the track to be cheered to the race’s end.

    Now that sounds like fun. No wheelbarrow race alas, but they can say, as I will say on my deathbed: ‘cursum perficio’ – which can be translated as: ‘I have run the course’, or ‘my journey ends here’. For life is our Olympics, and like the Nemean Olympics, it isn’t so much about winning, but about being there, doing it, loving it, daring it, and making the most of it with laughter and determination. Maybe that’s how it feels for you too…

    Food for Threadbare Gourmets

    Those who’ve read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell will know what I mean when I say that our social life is rather like the ladies of Cranford’s. So we were due for dinner with friends, where I knew we would be joining two other sets of friends. I promised my hostess to bring a starter for her, so that we could nibble on them before dinner, and she only had to worry about two courses.

    That morning, after a long session of Tai Chi, I dashed off to the supermarket to get blinis, which I’d always been able to buy in frozen packets. They’ve stopped stocking them. Gnashing my teeth, I tried to think of something else on the spot, and settled for crostinis. But back home, it felt like too much trouble, as you can only do the crostinis an hour or so before eating. Back to blinis. I made my own, and smothered in cream cheese, a generous bite of smoked salmon, and a sprinkling of chopped parsley they were as good as the professional ones – and at least I knew what was in them! I forgot to look up Google for a recipe, and Mrs Beeton, who never lets me down on the bread and butter stuff, didn’t have anything on blinis. So I used her pikelet recipe without the sugar, and it was perfect.

    It’s just six ounces, or six heaped tablespoons of self raising flour, two eggs, enough milk to make a thick batter, and salt. Whisk everything together, and using a dessertspoon, dribble each little blini into a non-stick frying pan or griddle. Cook one side until bubbles start to rise through the batter, and then turn. They cook very quickly. Put them to cool on a clean cloth.

    Using half the amount I made thirty little blinis, and then added some sugar to the rest of the mix and cooked a small pile of pikelets for an indulgent afternoon tea, eaten hot with butter and homemade (not by me) fig and ginger jam.

    Food for Thought

    Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all Helen Keller 1880 – 1968

    Feminist, suffragist, pacifist, socialist, campaigner for the blind, first deaf- blind person to achieve a Bachelor of Arts, writer of 12 books. Beloved by many.