Into every life a lot of rain must fall

It seems I’m having bad luck with water at the moment. Apparently it’s a matter of water, water, everywhere, enough to make me think.

First, as you may remember, there was all that rain falling on my head in Yorkshire at the beginning of the week. Because I had a little free time before my meeting next day, I’d carefully chosen myself a hotel out in the country where I could have a restful and yet bracing walk.

Had I done so, I would have left with a suitcase full of soaking clothes. The rain was drenching down.

Fortunately, I was about to head for somewhere far warmer and, or so I hoped, far dryer: the banks of Lake Como in Northern Italy. This had all occurred by happy chance: a colleague from New Zealand had left the UK when her visa ran out and was having to leave the country before her replacement could start. She agreed that a brief handover between the two of them would be useful, but knew she was unlikely to be allowed back into Britain so soon after her visa’s validity ended.

On the other hand, she was happy to meet our new colleague in one of the countries which she was visiting as part of a sort of grand tour before heading back to the antipodes. Italy fitted the bill. At first, our intention was to meet in Milan, but then we discovered that hotel costs had risen to obscene levels in that fine city. But in Como, on the lake to which it gives its name, prices were about a third as much.

A cheaper alternative to go to a place many would give their eye teeth to visit? Well, we didn’t hesitate.

And indeed it’s beautiful, warm and dry. At least, dry overhead. But it seems I’ve hit more problems with rain all the same. The only difference is that, this time, it’s not falling on me but some distance away: in Switzerland. Where it’s mixing in the rivers with snow melt and forcing the lake’s water level up.

So that we couldn’t actually drive to the hotel where we’re staying. The road was awash. It made me feel like a variant on the Mohammed and the mountain saying: if I couldn’t go to the lake, the lake would come to me.

That's my hotel down at the bottom.
The other side of the floodwater

It is now lapping at the walls of the hotel, making me glad that my room’s on the fourth floor. Still, it’s not terribly menacing at the moment, and most people seem to be enjoying the experience far more than they’re getting worried by it. Especially the kids: there’s something particularly appealing to a child, it seems, to be able to ride a bike straight through a long and deep puddle covering a city street.

Kids enjoying the floods

You’re on the road but in the water. On your bike. What’s not to like?

Still, it feels to me that there’s a lesson for me to learn here. It seems I’m fated to be followed around by rain, in some form or another. And like anyone that tries to outrun his fate, I am only in fact running towards it.

Still. If it gives the kids some fun on their bikes, who am I to complain?

Basel: enjoying the present and remembering the past

What a joy it was, to be back in the grand old Swiss city of Basel, built around the elbow of the Rhine when that majestic river turns from its early westward course, to run straight up the map to the North Sea at Rotterdam.

It’s an enchanting and exciting city. That may be a surprise, given the Swiss reputation for stolid respectability. The qualities the nation seem to prefer are hard work and honesty, you might think, not the pursuit of the unorthodox and original.

Well, you’d be mistaken.

The honesty bit is perhaps not quite as obvious as one might imagine, in a country that is home to Nestlé. And Basel itself is a major centre of the pharmaceutical industry, not a sector that has won itself many plaudits for its probity and commitment to equitable behaviour.

Still, on the other side of the coin, I love the fact that Basel can give you sudden and surprising glimpses of a different Switzerland with an attractive sense of humour.

Helvetia on the 2-franc coin, and on her holidays in Basel

In this instance, the other side is that of the 2-franc coin. It shows Helvetia (Switzerland) wearing a cloak and carrying a spear and a shield. One of my favourite spots in Basel has a statue of Helvetia when she decided to take a holiday from the coin. She’s sitting on a low wall with a glorious view of the river below. She has flung her cloak over the wall, and her spear and shield are propped up behind her, next to the suitcase she’s travelling with.

Also on this visit, I went out for dinner with three colleagues. It was warm enough to eat out of doors, in a lovely courtyard off one of the main squares. And what a delight it was to suddenly find an entire choir from the Music Academy assemble practically next to our table and entertain us for half an hour of a cappella singing. What greater pleasure is there than an unexpected one?

A Choral surprise

Still, it isn’t just for the beauty and charm that I like returning to Basel. It’s also the city closest to the French village where Danielle, later to be my wife, was living when I first met her. At that time, she was at the centre of a group of young people who were open, warm-hearted and fun. Where by ‘fun’ I really mean ‘party animals’.

One of my most vivid memories of that time was driving a Range Rover belonging to people I barely knew, down a woodland lane at night with branches whipping its sides, as I tried to keep up with the far smaller car which Danielle was driving at speed towards a clearing where we could light a fire, cook sausages, drink too much and while away the night listening to young people (well, we were all young, but they were younger) strumming guitars and singing songs about such respectable subjects as the consumption of cocaine (not that they actually took any).

Now, I was in Basel for the most sensible, you could almost say Swiss, of motives. A gentleman called Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis had spent time studying in the city and then kept up a long and voluminous correspondence with his former professor and one of his sons.

I can say without boasting that I was at one time the world’s leading authority on Maupertuis. That really is no boast, because I revelled in that rank simply by virtue of being the world’s only authority on him. Obscure? The term could have been invented for people who suffered his fate: he enjoys the somewhat paradoxical claim to fame that his reputation was destroyed by someone far more talented and celebrated. In Maupertuis’ case, that was Voltaire and let me tell you, when Voltaire destroyed your reputation, it stayed destroyed.

To give you an idea of how Voltaire dealt with his adversaries, let me pass on an anecdote which I’ve never been able to verify but I feel ought to be true: Voltaire is said to have replied to correspondence from a critic, “Sir: I am sitting in the smallest room in the house. Your letter is before me. Soon it will be behind me.”

Back then, I was in Basel to consult the large collection of manuscript letters in the University Library. Now libraries tend to be warm, quiet, tranquil places. Eighteenth-century paper has a peculiar, not unpleasant smell, which has nothing of the stimulant and it. And reading handwriting two and a half centuries old requires a lot of concentration.

If you’ve spent the whole of the previous evening with a bunch of party-goers, and the evening tended to be loosely interpreted so that it extended into the small hours – sometimes the big hours (to give you an idea, this was the only time in my life that I missed seeing the dawn because we were simply too late for it) – then sitting in a library poring over manuscripts is a difficult thing to do without your eyes beginning to close.

There were occasions that I just had to get out, breathe some air and even take a brief nap. The closest place I could go to fulfil both aims was the botanical garden behind the library. An enchanting place. And it had benches.

Sadly, even though I’m far from tall (my father used to tell me I suffered from ‘duck’s disease’ – arse too close to the ground), the benches were too short even for me to be comfortable. I suppose the advantage is that it kept my naps short so that I got back to my manuscripts quickly: it’s hard to sleep much with the edge of a bench digging either into the back of your neck or into your ankles.

In the evening, of course, the partying started all over again.

I made a point of getting back to the Botanical Gardens on this visit. A happy trip up Memory Lane. The memory of discomfort, you see, is far more pleasant than the experience of it…

Bench in the Botanical Garden
Not ideal for sleeping

Atlantis in the City of Serendipity

Alone in the fine old Swiss city of Basel, I felt I needed to find somewhere a bit different, perhaps even a bit special, to spend my evening.

As it happens, Basel’s a city I know well. It’s because I needed to consult documents in the university library here that I came to stay for a weeks in Hegenheim, just across the border in the French province of Alsace, way back in 1981. It was because I was in Hegenheim, that I met a pleasant nine-year-old who wanted to talk about the planets, and ended up spending the evening with him drawing a map of the solar system. It was because of that boy and that map that I met his mother. And, 37 years and two sons on, that boy’s my stepson and that mother’s my wife.

There was a place that did rather wonderful open sandwiches I knew, but it’s shut up shop and been replaced by a slightly garish bar. There was a sushi restaurant that tempted me but, hey, they’re two a penny around Europe now. Nothing special there, certainly. But then I saw a sign, on the door of a restaurant that looked definitely closed (lights off, chairs piled on tables): ‘roof terrace this way’.

Door to the sun terrace

I walked ‘this way’, following several more signs. Eventually I reached a door marked ‘Sun Terrace’. Now, that sounded special. Particularly to an Englishman, in other words someone from a country where, as a general rule, there’s far too little sun to encourage anyone to build a terrace.

I climbed a flight of stairs, then another, then a third. The encouraging signs kept urging me upwards. I emerged on a kind of high courtyard that would have been completely open to the sky had a large portion of it not been covered by canvas awnings. Another set of steps took me to the very top, close enough to the canvas to touch it, and where I could see out to a narrow vista of three or four roof tops and typical Basel house walls, plastered and moulded and painted attractive colours.

Hardly had I placed my order and wondered whether the awnings would actually hold out the rain, when the elements provided me with a conclusive answer. 

They wouldn’t.

The sun terrace turning into a rain terrace

Not much makes me proud of being British these days, since a small majority of my compatriots decided that what the world most needed was a country that turned its back on its neighbours. But I have sufficient pride in my British stoicism, and the resistance it gives me to the weather, to want to stay put despite the downpour that gradually developed above – a few drops, a shower or two, then rain, then a true summer storm, lightning and all.

The waiter was good enough to rub down my table from time to time, even wiping the surface of my increasingly moist Kindle – if I have to eat alone I do find being able to read while I do it is the only way to make the experience pleasurable. But I ate my way stoically through my excellent first course despite the increasing evidence that the position was becoming untenable.

Excellent first course.
Note the raindrops in the background

“It won’t last long,” a waitress told me, expressing what was – as I told her – my firm conviction too. Though I suspect conviction didn’t really come into it, so much as a willingness to encourage each other’s denial of the evidence.

Things finally came to a head when that same waitress wondered whether I really needed another bottle of water, but couldn’t instead just leave my glass on the table a while to see it fill up all by itself.

I retreated, Brit or no, to the slightly better shelter offered by the roof courtyard below. And there enjoyed my equally excellent second course.

It was over the chocolate mousse that I heard the waitress explaining to another client that the lease on the building was being terminated and within a few weeks the restaurant would close. She seemed unfazed by the knowledge – ‘it was very badly run,’ she announced – but to me it seemed sad that a place I’d discovered after 37 years was only going to last a short time longer. It was called Atlantis, oddly enough, and it seems I’ve merely caught a glimpse of it before it’s swallowed up by the waves.

Pity after serendipity, I suppose. But at least Basel gave me my wife and she’ll still be there when I head home the day after tomorrow. With a story about a certainly rather different – perhaps, indeed, special – dinner experience to tell her.

Privatise the railways? Nationalise the railways? Non, merci.

The most convenient airport for our recent holiday in France was Geneva. Which, it probably hasn’t escaped your notice, is actually in Switzerland.

However, the Swiss and French have come to an excellent arrangement, by which a part of the station in Geneva is made available to the French railways (the SNCF). So we bought our tickets on-line in England, and travelled out bearing the SNCF’s e-mail instructions about printing out our tickets at the machine in the station.

Only to discover that the station boasted no such machine.

“But it says here…,” we protested.

“Ah, yes,” we were told by a Swiss railway official, “but this is Switzerland. The SNCF doesn’t have one of those machines on Swiss territory.”

“So – what do we do?”

“You could go to the SNCF ticket office around the corner.”

“But it’s Saturday. That office isn’t open on a Saturday.”

“Ah,” said the lady, trying to look helpful. And then shook her head. “I shouldn’t like to be in your position,” she commiserated. Which, when it comes to helpfulness, fell rather short of the mark.

So we decided to get on the train anyway. I’ve had experience dealing with French ticket collectors in the past, and it’s always proved a great deal more satisfactory than dealing with machines. And, indeed, we saw two collectors on the platform, even before the train had left the station.

“No problem,” they told us, “get on the train and we’ll come and see you once we’re on our way.”

And one of them did. In fact, he sorted out our tickets in about two minutes, and then sat down to chat with us for a further twenty or so.

He had plenty to chat about.

“It was such a pleasure,” I told him, “to find a human being to sort out the problem with our tickets.”

“Well, yes. Enjoy it while you can. It’s not going to last.”

It seems that SNCF staff numbers have been falling for years. In 2003, there were 178,260 employees; by last year numbers were down to 149,500. The French newspaper Le Figaro claims another 1400 jobs are due to go this year.

The worst of it is that salary costs haven’t even fallen. Apparently, they went up by 1.289 billion euros between 2003 and 2013. Wage increases have contributed to the rise, but the other factor has been the decision to increase the proportion of managers – where there were 6.8 employees per manager in 2003, ten years on there were only 4.2.

“Too many managers,” our ticket collector complained, “we’re the most managed industry in France. And all they demand of us is – profits. Forget the service.”

He was pretty bitter. And I have to say, I was a little annoyed with managers who couldn’t manage to provide a ticket machine at Geneva, even though their own instructions told us to use one.

The message, as we sat on our slightly threadbare seats, or used the less than appealing toilets (still providing a hole onto the track…) seemed clear. Even the SNCF, the much-vaunted, nationalised French railway service, has fallen on hard times. Its service to passengers is declining and, more spectacularly still, it’s failing its staff. While it’s as obsessed with generating a profit as any private organisation might be.

Ticket Collector on a French regional train
Not quite the same service as the TGV. And the staff are under threat

Now I’m back in Britain, with our privatised services. So privatised that even after two companies failed on the East Coast service, and a nationalised organisation succeeded spectacularly, the government re-privatised the lines. It seems ideology demands private ownership, for Tories, just as it demands nationalisation for certain areas of the left.

Whereas to me, looking at what’s happening in France, I’d have to say it’s the great non-issue.

What matters is how you treat your customers. How you treat your staff. How you invest for the future. Whether it’s a privatised service or a public one is insignificant in comparison. Treat people decently and provide a good service and the rest doesn’t matter. Britain and France demonstrate that you can do just as badly on those truly important issues, whether you have a private or nationalised system.

Still, all that being said, the SNCF has the edge on the railways in Britain in one crucial area. I told our friendly ticket collector how much I pay for my season ticket into London. He whistled.

“That’s four times as much, per kilometre, as it would cost over here,” he told me, astonished.

Ah, yes. Now that is an area where Britain could try to compete a little more seriously with France. Fares closer to the French level? Why, yes please. That would do very nicely, thanks. In a privatised or nationalised service.

Money moving among the wealthy: a neat arrangement

In Britain, we’re being regaled by the tale of an Osborne and an Oborne.

The Osborne is George, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the present British government. In the midst of the current scandal about tax avoidance schemes being peddled by the Swiss subsidiary of HSBC, one of the major pillars of our fine banking industry, it has emerged that back in 2003 he was offering public advice to invest in some such tool.

“I probably shouldn’t be advocating this on television,” he added. I’d say, George, I’d say.

Peter Oborne: left the Telegraph and rather slammed the door

The Oborne is Peter, a journalist who has just resigned from the leading organ of respectable Conservatism, the Daily Telegraph. He felt the paper was a quality publication, dedicated to informing its readership of what was happening in the world, and doing so honestly, albeit from a specific point of view.

To live that way, a paper must maintain a strict separation between its editorial and its advertising departments. Unfortunately, Oborne feels that such a separation has gone at the Telegraph, one of whose major advertisers is, precisely, HSBC. As a result, he feels, the paper has given the scandal minimal coverage.

“You needed a microscope,” he writes, “to find the Telegraph coverage: nothing on Monday, six slim paragraphs at the bottom left of page two on Tuesday, seven paragraphs deep in the business pages on Wednesday.”

On the other hand, HSBC has maintained its advertising with the paper.

This, Oborne feels, is nothing short of deception: “The Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers. It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers.”

Certainly, it’s fascinating to have the workings of the HSBC-Telegraph nexus exposed in this way. Because, actually, it’s three-way nexus.

George Osborne:
much to be gleeful about, as the cash registers keep clinging

On the one hand, we have a government that seems at best relaxed about the kind of activity HSBC undertook. Challenged on the subject four times by Ed Miliband, leader of the Opposition, David Cameron evaded the issue four times in Parliament. That contrasts with his much more severe attitude towards other kinds of financial fraud, such as illegal benefits claims, or even legal claims he feels are without moral justification: he’s just announced new plans to force young people to work for benefits if they don’t find work, in a market where there simply aren’t enough jobs to go round.

Next we have the people who were benefitting from the kind of clever financial products HSBC was offering. Rather a large number of them seem to have been donors to the Conservative Party. They figure, in other words, among David Cameron’s and George Osborne’s paymasters.

Finally, there’s the Telegraph, speaking for those same Conservative interests represented by Cameron and Osborne and by the donors who took advantage of HSBC’s sleight of hand. The Telegraph that breaks its own editorial principles so as not to offend HSBC. And by doing so benefits financially from it.

It is also one of the major figures in the overwhelmingly right-wing media environment in Britain, that contributes to keeping the Conservatives in government.

Countdown to War, Day 37. 3 August: Germany fighting Russia, Luxembourg, maybe France – and Switzerland?

One hundred years ago today, on Monday 3 August 1914, Martin and the other railwaymen in his crew would have found little to raise their spirits in the Manchester Guardian.

“German invasion of Switzerland reported”, they read.

The German army has invaded Switzerland and has occupied the Swiss station of Bale. As every tourist knows, Bale contains two stations, one German and one Swiss. Bale is now entirely in the hands of the Germany army.

“Every tourist knows?” scoffed Martin.

“Come, come, young man,” said the Cynic in a passable Southern accent, “surely you went through Bale when you did your grand tour?”

“Inexplicably,” replied Martin, “my Mum omitted to include Bale on my itinerary.”

Swiss and German border guards pose together in 1915
on the border between Basel, Switzerland and Lörrach, Germany
Switzerland was never invaded, contrary to the Guardian report

“Russians on German Soil” proclaimed an article on early clashes in the East.

Last night Russian patrols made an attack on the railway bridge over the Marthe... The attack was repulsed. Two Germans were slightly wounded. The Russian losses are not known.

In a leader entitled “On the Brink”, the paper again made the case for neutrality.

Saturday and Sunday were the fateful days of a century. On Saturday Germany declared war on Russia. Early the next morning, her troops invaded Luxemburg...

“Luxembourg?” a voice interrupted, “they declared war on Russia so they invaded Luxembourg?”

“Let him read,” came a chorus in reply.

...and in the course of the day they are alleged to have crossed the French frontier at two points not specified. The war party in England will use these facts to work up feeling against Germany as the aggressor and the violator of international law...

A lot of heads nodded. The fact of German aggression was indeed hard to deny.

... but sober Englishmen, while grieving that Germany should have thought fit to take this frightful responsibility, will not let German military opinion of what is best for Germany affect their own judgement of what is best for England. Germany was not free to choose; whether war was to come depended not so much on what she did as on what Russia meant to do.

There was some sense in that. Germany faced specific threats.

With the genius and the brilliancy of France on the one flank and the overwhelming numbers of Russia of the other she felt herself fighting against odds for her very existence...

“There’s an assessment of French strength,” said the man with the paper.

The French army, taken as a whole, has two great assets – it has a great tradition to re-establish...

“Damn right,” a voice interrupted, “after getting the stuffing kicked out of them by the Germans last time.”

...and it has had some experience in its colonial wars. The military system of the French army disposes of twenty-one army corps and a large surplus of colonial troops...

The belief of the French General Staff is that its material both in men and equipment is slightly superior to that of the German army... The French General Staff... maintain that it is the duty of the army to find and definitely establish the path which the enemy proposes to follow, and then adjust your own strategic movement so that you turn your enemy’s momentum to your advantage by refusing him in front and turning his flanks.

“It sounds hopeless for the Germans,” agreed Martin, “their Austrian allies aren’t making much headway against Serbia. The Russians have massive numbers. And the French, on their own, are stronger than the Germans. It’ll all be manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, turning the enemy’s flank and all that, and Germany won’t last long. So why do the French need us?”

“It won’t be that easy,” said the man with the paper. “The French have one big flaw: they’re French.”

He read on.

France, as a nation, is subject to hysterics. It is only Latin after all.

German troops on patrol on French territory
in the early days of the war

“I keep saying,” came a voice from the back, “we may be joining the wrong side.”

“The paper still reckons neither side’s right for us.” 

He read on from the editorial.

The British Cabinet sat almost all day on Sunday discussing what the policy of this country ought to be. As we write we do not know what decision has been reached. But we are, if possible, more convinced than ever that duty and interest alike demand that this country should not make itself an accessory to the crime against reason and human happiness that is now beginning.

“What, with Germany on the rampage,” someone protested, “they still want us to stay out?”

The Guardian did.

The tide of public indignation against the suggestion that this country should take part in a general European war is rising fast.

The need for giving expression to that feeling is increasingly recognised, and an organisation has been set on foot to co-ordinate and strengthen the demands that Great Britain shall take no part in such a war unless she’s directly attacked.

“That’s right, isn’t it?” said Martin, “we’re facing ‘a crime against reason and human happiness’. Why do we have to get involved?”

“We don’t,” said the Cynic, “but you watch us. We will. We’ll all be accomplices of that crime. And people like us lot will also be the victims.”

Another article carried the headline “England’s Duty”:

It is felt that it is urgent to bring home to the public the importance of showing the strength of the feeling in favour of neutrality. In the absence of such expression the agitation now being maintained in powerful quarters in favour of England’s joining the war may be accepted by the Government and by foreign nations as the general view of the country.

“Exactly,” said Martin, “lots of people want to stay out. That counts.”

“Don’t talk soft,” scoffed the Cynic, “the decision’s been taken already. We’re going in. We’ll know in a day or two.”

“What do you mean? It would be a sad day for this country when a government can take us to war against the will of the majority.”

“Then get ready for sad days.”

There was a sudden burst of laughter from the man with the paper.

“Listen to this,” he called out.

Parliament reduced to plain English Food

The French cooks employed at the House of Commons have all responded to the call to arms. There will be “only plain English fare” on the menu in the dining-room till the end of this session.

“The suffering’s already started...” said Martin.

“Yes,” said the Cynic, “and MPs are going to be taking decisions in a bad mood on unsatisfied stomachs. That’s only going to make things worse.”

Countdown to War, Day 23. 20 July 1914: the US State Department learns some geography

One hundred days ago today, on Monday 20 July 1914, the Manchester Guardian confirmed the bad news Martin had read the day before: “Big Score by Surrey”.

What the heck. The Guardian was the local paper. They could at least show some pain. He’d expected no sympathy from the Observer, southern-based as it was, but the Guardian? Surely it would have a few tears for the woes of Lancashire? Instead they wrote of “Hobb’s brilliant century”. What’s brilliant about a century scored for the other side?

Still, things could be worse. Look at Mexico. He thought the departure of the ex-Dictator, Huerta, might mean the end of the troubles there, but it seemed everything was just starting up all over again.

Already the next revolution has begun. Pablo Orozco, who has been a Rebel at intervals for years past and was lately in Huerta’s service, has declared war on the new Government, whatever it may be.

It seemed a bit harsh, not to give the new lot even the slightest chance to prove what its worth. It made you thankful not to be living in such a place. Must be pretty awful to have all that fighting going on: how could you begin to make a living? Besides, it was a lot too hot, by all accounts.

That wasn’t the only story from America to catch his eye. It seemed that the canal that first the French, and then the Americans, had been building through Panama, to link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, was due to open in a few weeks. Arranging the official ceremony had provided an opportunity for some in the US administration to improve their education. 

Panama Canal
Switzerland snubs the official opening

An important piece of knowledge has just been assimilated by the State Department at Washington. It is that the sister Republic of Switzerland, though equipped with the full paraphernalia of a State in other respects, has no navy. The fact is due not to any parsimony on the part of the Administration, but to the regrettable absence of a coastline.

A somewhat acrimonious dispute is at the moment raging in Washington as to the precise person on whom the responsibility should fall for not being acquainted with this interesting geographical particular before the invitation was sent to Switzerland to send a number of warships to take part in the opening of the Panama Canal.

The Swiss Government, it appears, has just replied regretting in the blandest diplomatic terms that it is unable to accept the invitation owing to the fact mentioned above that there are no warships belonging to the Alpine Republic.

The story of four sisters in the East End of London also provoked a smile:

Four sisters were married at St. Barnabas Church, Bethnal Green, on Saturday. Hundreds of people turned out to catch a glimpse of the brides, and the church filled so quickly that the doors had to be closed to prevent overcrowding... The sisters are orphans, and lived ... with another sister who kept house for them. They had been engaged for some time, and they realised that if one of them decided to leave and get married the financial loss ... might lead to the break-up of the home. Accordingly they agreed that the best way out of the difficulty was to go to the altar together. The other sister, it is understood, will live with one of the couples.

Not a bad day. All in all. Unfortunate news about the cricket, and even worse from Mexico, but that was a long way away. And then two stories to get cheerful about and nothing really disturbing from closer to home.

Yes, really not a bad day at all, 20 July 1914.

“Dont count your chickens,” said the Cynic.

The bells, the bells. Oh, and the Swiss

Well, that’s a turn-up for the books: the Swiss have banned minarets. And by a big majority, too. More of a turn-down, really: don’t think this has anything to do with protecting Swiss culture or values – it’s a reversal of both. There was a time when Switzerland was the most generous nation of Europe, taking more refugees per head of its own population than any other. But the trouble is that the generous, liberal majority woke resentment in a xenophobic minority that’s now kicking back, as it has in Denmark and Holland.

There was a time when I used to be amazed by how the Swiss welcomed the unfortunate of the world. There was a civil war in Sri Lanka: the streets of Geneva, Basel and Zurich filled with Tamils. There was genocide in Rwanda: they filled with Tutsis. It was a wonder to behold. Today the same streets sport posters of minarets drawn to look like missiles, to make absolute certain of the desired Islamophobic reaction.

What I particularly like about this ban is, of course, the effrontery of its double standards. Switzerland is a country of glorious countryside and charming cities. Both are dominated by the delicate churches with their graceful spires. You can have spires but you can’t have minarets? I’d have thought they would have blended right in. Of course, the other side said that minarets smacked of a striving for political dominance.

You think the people who built the spires were democrats?

The parties who tried to prevent the minaret ban sold the pass anyway. They said that the call of the muezzin would never be accepted but the minaret should be tolerated. So they weren’t really arguing for tolerance – just for a slightly less pronounced discrimination against Moslems. You don’t like the cry of the Muezzin? Nor do I. But it’s hardly the only disturbance of the peace we have to suffer in the name of religious fervour.

I used to live in Croydon, oh, donkey’s years ago. I don’t want to offend anyone living in today’s Croydon, which is a large town in Surrey or possibly a suburb in South East London, depending on your point of view. For all I know, it may today be a thriving, exciting centre of all that is excellent. When I knew it, it wasn’t so much a place as a misfortune. Drab, dull, soulless. But I lived well away from the centre, in South Croydon. That was leafy and pretty and though it wasn’t exactly animated, that very fact meant it was at least quiet.

Except on Sunday mornings. At the time I was in my early twenties and like most young men of that age, I regarded Sunday mornings as a time to sleep until recovered from the excesses of the week. It wasn’t so much a question of what time I got up on a Sunday morning, more of whether I got up in the morning at all. Normally. Except that in South Croydon I was a street or two away from the local church, and on a Sunday at some ghastly hour – 11:00, if you’d credit it – the bells started to ring.

The worst of it is that they rang not only loudly, but badly. People tell me there’s music in church bells. Yeah, right. Four notes played on a descending scale. And even though anyone who has read about my attempts to learn Salsa knows I have no sense of rhythm, I know how to space four notes evenly. But when it’s church bells, it’s inevitably ‘dong, dong,…,do-dong.’

The worst of it? I said this disturbance was limited to Sundays and I thought that was true until I got home early one Thursday evening which, I discovered, was bell ringers’ rehearsal night. Can you believe it? They had to practice to produce that incompetent cacophony.

You don’t like the muezzin’s cry? OK, why should you? But don’t come to me and tell me you like church bells. It’s just another way of making a lot of noise to tell people who don’t share your views that you’re keen on your beliefs. You think it’s musical? You’re just giving way to that oldest of prejudices, acceptance of what is familiar and rejection of what is strange.

Just like the Swiss and the minarets. Tall graceful church spires? Fine of course, because we’ve had them for centuries. Tall elegant minarets? We don’t know them, so we’ll ban them, and take xenophobic pleasure from the offence that causes.

It’s like a kid who refuses to try some new food, on the grounds that he doesn’t like what he hasn't tasted. But much more dangerous.

Oh, and I moved away from South Croydon within three months. Liked the place. Couldn’t stand the racket.