The joy of the self-deprecating smile

There’s something exceptionally attractive about self-deprecating humour.

That’s true even if we sense that behind it is something of a disguised boast – you know, “look at how self-deprecating I can be”. Did you see the pictures of Boris Johnson hanging from a zip wire? What might have been seen as a PR disaster was something he worked for all it was worth. “Look what fun I am,” he seemed to be saying, “happy even if I look the buffoon. I’m obviously the kind of fine fellow you want running the country, because someone you can share a laugh with is bound to be on your side.”

Look what fun!

Despite such self-serving examples, self-deprecation remains welcome. That’s particularly so in a world dominated by figures that take themselves far too damned seriously and who are far too damned inclined, with little justification, to think themselves good at what they do.

Did that immediately bring to your mind an image of the present tenant of the White House? It should have.

A few weeks ago, Trump was swift to claim success for a visit he made to the Centers for Disease Control, as part of his then non-campaign against Coronavirus:

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said: ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

Trump fascinating his hosts at the CDC with his scientific insights

While I think it would have been great if he’d done pretty well anything rather than run for President, I’m far from convinced that medical or scientific research would have suited him. Let’s not forget that this was the man who thought that Coronavirus was like the flu, and now thinks he’d be doing well if he kept US deaths to within 100,000.

As for his ‘natural ability’, it clearly doesn’t extend to being able to laugh at himself. He leaves it to the rest of us to laugh at him, although our laughter’s never wholehearted – we laugh more at how bad the joke is than at the joke itself.

Fortunately, there are examples of Americans who are, or were, much better able to laugh at themselves.

William Seward

William Henry Seward was a remarkable American politician from the nineteenth century, a rival for the presidency to Abraham Lincoln though he ended up serving him, with outstanding loyalty and ability, as Secretary of State. As a young man, he was less than effective as a public speaker, something he needed to correct, not only for his later career in politics but even for his first choice of profession, as a lawyer.

This was brought home to him painfully when he joined a group of trainee lawyers in New York that would conduct mock trials in front an audience who would evaluate their performances. Time and again, despite all the effort he put into writing his quite brilliant briefs, he would find himself winning less applause than one of his friends who seemed able to outperform him with ease.

The friend pointed out that it was nothing to do with what Seward said, and all about how he said it. He suggested they swap briefs for the next competition, which they duly did.

Seward delivered his friend’s argument with all the skill he could muster, to only mediocre results. Then his friend delivered Seward’s own argument, and according to Seward himself, the applause could have been heard all the way down Broadway.

A useful lesson. And a pleasure to me that it was Seward himself who later had fun retelling the story.

It reminded me of an anecdote of my mother’s.

She found the atmosphere in Britain in 1940 deeply depressing. Life was becoming highly restricted, a little like today with Coronavirus. After the surrender of France and with Hitler apparently unstoppable on the Continent, the future looked bleak for the country. It was badly in need of something to raise its spirits.

In these circumstances, the writer, singer and actor Noel Coward stepped forward. He persuaded a group of friends to come together to put on a variety show at ‘Underneath the Arches’, a club that was, indeed, underneath the arches behind Charing Cross Station. I went there myself a few years back and, for all I know, it’s still there today.

Noel Coward.
Not always the best at delivering the great songs he wrote

For that show, Coward wrote all the songs but had them all performed by his friends, except or one, which he did himself. To his disappointment, while all the others were well received by audiences, his and only his song flopped night after night. Until he developed a cough and sore throat and had to ask someone else to step in for him.

Yes, you guessed it. His replacement sang the same song to huge success.

Noel Coward decided that his rather special style of singing wasn’t as widely appreciated as he had hoped. It was better for him to write the songs than perform them. A bitter lesson but a useful one, and a story he retold in his autobiography.

Self-deprecation at its best. The genuine kind. Such a refreshing change.

Great way to binge through the lockdown

Unorthodox. Shira Haas in Berlin’s Wannsee lake

Even at the best of times, Danielle and I enjoy binging on TV series.

Obviously, it helps if they’re good. Or at least that we like them. But I have to admit that there have been occasions when, watching episode four of the third season of a series, one of us will turn to the other and point out:

“This really isn’t very good, is it?”

“No,” replies the other, “I can’t relate to any of the characters and I don’t care what happens to them next.”

Quite a discovery after 28 episodes.

This isn’t the best of times. During a Coronavirus lockdown, binge watching isn’t just an indulgence (OK, OK, if you prefer, an over-indulgence), it’s also an excellent way of spending evenings when you’re obliged to stay in.

For the moment, we’re still being fairly discriminating. If the lockdown goes on long enough, we may well be forced, as we start season 3 of something mediocre, to say, “well, we may not relate to any of the characters or care what happens next but, hey, there’s nothing else on that we haven’t already seen”. But recently, we’ve seen some pretty great things.

Billions was gripping, even if at times I couldn’t bear any of the characters. That, actually, was something the writers pulled off pretty cleverly, making one character or another off-putting for a while, and then making him or her sympathetic again. A smart trick if you can make it work. Which they did.

Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis in Billions
A near-deadly rivalry. Except when it isn’t

For those who don’t know the series, it’s about a successful hedge fund manager (Damian Lewis) whose activities sail close to the illegal, if not right over the edge into the downright criminal, as claimed by a US attorney (Paul Giamatti) intent on bringing him down.

Just like our sympathies for the characters, the show’s writers keep changing the direction of the two men’s antipathies. Now they’re intent on destroying each other, then they turn their animosity onto someone else. Around them, in a first-class cast, stand some extraordinary characters, including an outstanding non-binary figure (“my pronouns are 'they, theirs, and them’”) played by a non-binary actor, Asia Kate Dillon. Just as good is Maggie Siff as the psychiatrist and wife of the US Attorney. All in all, it’s pretty enthralling.

Equally worth seeing is For All Mankind. This is an alternative-reality story, where the space race between the US and the Soviet Union goes on far longer, and extends far further, than actually happened. Again, there are plenty of excellent performances, as well as plenty of fine shots of rockets taking off or of explorers working on the moon, alongside plenty of tense sequences, mostly in space but sometimes also in the homes of the astronauts and other NASA staff we follow.

It’s gripping with its tension, and all the more watchable for the sense of plausibility it manages to create.

Working on the Moon, in For All Mankind

Far better than anything else, however, is Unorthdox. Based in part on Debora Feldman’s autobiography Unorthodox, the Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots, it’s a four-episode mini-series, about a young woman, Esty, brilliantly played by Israeli actor Shira Haas, from an ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.

The central concern is whether she’ll be able to get away.

This is the first Netlfix series filmed predominantly in Yiddish, the language spoken by that community rather than Hebrew. Haas had to come over a month early to Berlin, where the series was filmed, to learn the language.

The series shows both the community, with its everyday existence and its rituals back in Brooklyn, in the form of flashbacks to Esty’s life there, spliced into scenes of the life she is now working to build for herself in Berlin. The flashbacks include her marriage and, in some poignant but intensely comic moments, the difficulties she has consummating it, difficulties considerably worsened by the fact that her husband tells his mother everything, and she insists on tutoring Esty on how to steel herself to have sex.

Sex is key because her fundamental obligation is to produce children. To her too, this is a sacred duty. “We’re rebuilding the six million lost,” she declares, “Jews killed in the Holocaust.” But that doesn’t make sex with the husband she married by arrangement any less painful.

Esty (Shira Haas) at the Wannsee, still dressed as a Hasid (left)
and as she begins to forge a new life for herself

In a key scene from the first episode, a group of student friends she has just made takes Esty down to the beautiful Berlin lake, the Wannsee. It’s a place where people go to walk or relax or swim. But in 1942, it was the venue for the Wannsee Conference which took the decision to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe.

When Esty first sees the lake, she’s left speechless. But then Robert, one of the students, says:

“It’s nice, right? But you see that villa? The conference where the Nazis decided to kill the Jews in the concentration camps took place in 1942. In that villa.”

She looks at the villa.

“And you swim in this lake?” she replies.

He laughs. “The lake is just a lake,” he says.

Esty water into the water, still wearing her skirt and one of her two long-sleeved shirts. She takes off the wig that orthodox Jewish women wear after marriage. Under the wig, her head is practically shaved. She drops the wig in the water.

That gesture reminds me of a Jewish friend of ours who told us of a moment when her children were playing with others in a local park. Another Jewish woman came over to remonstrate with her for letting them play with non-Jewish kids.

Infuriated, she went straight over to a bridge across a stream at the edge of the park and threw her wig in it. She never wore one again.

Throwing a wig into water speaks to me powerfully about bids for freedom.

Haas says that the story is “about the right to have your voice”. It certainly is. Indeed, if you watch it to the end, you’ll discover why that’s a particularly apt summing up.

Unorthodox is an excellent way of spending an evening. A great break from the lockdown. You might even manage to spread it to two, though we went through all four episodes in just one sitting.

It was that compelling.

A smile in the pandemic

An implacable disease has broken out. A silent enemy, its stealthy advance appears inexorable, as it leaves a trail of victims behind it. At first, many sicken, and then with terrible finality, they begin to die.

Italy is one of the first places struck. In Florence, where the ravages are just starting, a group of young people decide they will be safer outside the city than inside. They make for a villa at Fiesole, in the hills nearby.

Fiesole. Not a bad place to be locked down

A breach of the lockdown rules? Perhaps there were none at that time. But in any case, they are in that place alone, and they have to find a way to pass the time.

Seven young women and three young men. They decide that each day they will elect one of their number to be King or Queen. The monarch for the day will choose a theme. Then everyone has to tell a story on that topic.

The themes range widely. Some are noble and elevating, like those of the day devoted to acts of great generosity. Some can be fearsome, such as Isabella and the Pot of Basil, one of the fiercest revenge stories written. The majority, however, are funny, concerned with the clever way people get out of scrapes, or trick each other to achieve their aims. Often, at the core is love, in the widest possible sense, from the purest of loves to something, shall we say, far earthier.

And what could be more appropriate? Love and laughter. What better way to tackle the fear and depression that accompany a terrible illness?

Some of you reading this post, especially if you’re Italian, may be saying “I recognise this story”. You’d be right. This isn’t a tale of Coronavirus in 2019. It’s a story set against the background of a far worse affliction, the Black Death, in 1348.

What’s more, the story’s a fiction. The seven women and three men, noble and virtuous even when they’re telling stories bordering on the erotic, emerged from the imagination of one of the world’s greatest storytellers, Giovanni Boccaccio.

Boccaccio's statue in the
Uffizi gallery in Florence

The book, the Decameron, is a monument to his skill. He had never previously published a short story. There was no tradition of writing such pieces anywhere in Europe. And here he produced a hundred of them.

Most of the stories were not invented by him. Indeed, many were old folk tales, or traditional stories from different countries. But he had to collect them and write them up himself.

What’s more, he wrote them in a strange language. In the fourteenth century, there was no such nation as Italy. The name applied only to a geographic entity, the peninsula where people spoke a variety of languages, related though often very different from each other, and none of them called ‘Italian’.

However, half a century earlier, the great poet Dante had written his extraordinary three-volume poem, The Divine Comedy, in his native language, Tuscan. Another great poet, Petrarch, a contemporary and friend of Boccaccio’s, had also written poems in that language.

Boccaccio, as a Florentine, was also a Tuscan speaker. The huge influence of these three writers, using that language, is one of the major influences that led to Tuscan becoming the basis of today’s Italian, when Italy appeared as a nation at last, over five centuries later. That’s why anyone who knows modern Italian reasonably well can still read Boccaccio with no great difficulty.

But writing prose fiction in Tuscan? In his day, this wasn’t viewed as an appropriate activity for a learned man. When his friend Petrarch called on him, he made that point forcefully. Only women read prose fiction in the vernacular language, the poet admonished him. Tuscan was a ‘vulgar’ language. Women were uneducated. Writing in that language for such an audience was simply undignified.

Men like them, when writing prose, wrote the great noble language of all the best thinkers. They wrote Latin.

That’s all very ironic, today. The Decameron is still read widely, and enjoyed by anyone who likes hilarious, serious, sad, noble, raunchy, astonishing stories. Boccaccio’s Latin works are read by a handful of Academics and no one else.

Amusingly, I think Boccaccio knew that might be the case. The best manuscript of the Decameron – and this was still before the start of printing in Europe, so all books were handwritten – is held in a Berlin museum and it’s in Boccaccio’s own hand.

He produced that copy just two years before his death. So clearly, despite Petrarch’s reproaches, Boccaccio loved this peculiar work of his enough to go to the extraordinary length of writing it all out once more, by hand, even as he approached the end of his life.

He loved his work, as his readers today still do. And the work is a wonderful roller coaster ride through love and fun and laughter and astonishment. It amazes and amuses us. Above all, it raises our spirits.

What better antidote to the pain that comes in the wake of an affliction?

Even if we can’t retreat to the hills above Florence to enjoy his stories.



Just for fun, here’s a retelling, rather than simply a translation, of one of my favourite stories in the collection.

Chichibio and the Crane, from the Decameron

Currado Gianfigliazzi was a nobleman of Florence, a man known for his generosity and style. He led the life of a knight, often taking time away from his duties to go hunting with hawk or hound.

One day, he brought down a fat young crane, and sent it to a good cook he had, a Venetian called Chichibio, to dress it and roast it well for dinner that evening.

Chichibio, who looked as naïve as he was, trussed and dressed the crane and started roasting it over ther, with all the skill he had. When it was nearly done and giving out a wonderful odour, Brunetta, a young woman of the neighbourhood who Chichibio longed to make his own, came into the kitchen and when she saw and smelled the crane, begged him to give her one of the thighs.

He replied emphatically, “you won’t be getting any part of that bird from me, Brunetta, not from me you won’t”.

Irritated, she answered, “Well, too bad for you, if you feel that way. Just remember that if you don’t give me a thigh, you’ll be getting nothing to satisfy your desires from me either.”

They argued heatedly but, in the end, to avoid falling out with her, Chichibio cut off a thigh from the crane and gave it to her.

That evening when the bird was served up to Messer Currado and some guests of his, Currado was astonished to see a leg missing. So he had Chichbio called from the kitchen and asked him what had happened to the missing thigh.

The Venetian, an expert liar, replied without hesitation, “Sir, cranes only have one thigh and one leg.”

“What on earth?” stormed Currado, furious. “Only one thigh and leg? Do you think I’ve never seen a crane before?”

“Sir,” replied Chichibio, “that’s just how it is, and I’ll show you as much whenever you have the time.”

Currado, out of respect for his guests, chose not to pursue the matter just then, but simply said, “If you claim you can show me that they only have one leg, something I’ve never seen or heard before, I want to see it tomorrow. And if it’s like you say, I’ll be fine. But if not, I give you my word that I’ll give you something to remember me by, with regret, till the day you die.”

That was as much as they said to each other that night. But at first light the next day, Currado whose anger had not dissipated at all while he slept, got up and called for horses. Then mounting Chichibio on a nag, he rode off to a river where cranes could often be seen at dawn.

“We’ll soon see whether it was you or I who lied last night.”

Chichibio, seeing that his master was as angry as ever, and that he had to find a way to make good his lie, which he had no idea how to do, rode along behind him. He was terrified and would have made off if he could see any way of getting away with it. But, seeing no way of escaping, all he could do was keep going, haunted by images of cranes on two legs, in front, behind or on either side of him.

But when they reached the river bank, he happened to catch sight, before Currado, of a dozen or more cranes all standing on one leg, as they do when sleeping. Immediately, he pointed them out to Currado.

“Now, sir, look at those cranes standing over there. You can see that I was telling you the truth last night – they each have just one thigh and one leg.”

Currado saw them and replied, “wait. I’ll show you that they have two.”

Moving closer, he shouted “Hey! Hey!” at the cranes. They immediately put their other legs down, took a few steps and flew off.

Currado turned to Chichibio, and said, “so what do you say now, you miserable liar? Do you see that they all have two legs?”

Chichibio, frightened and not knowing where to look, answered, “Yes, sir. But last night you didn’t shout ‘hey, hey’ at the crane. Had you shouted, it would have put down the other thigh and leg, just like these ones did.”

Currado found that answer so funny that his anger simply evaporated and he burst out laughing.

“Chichibio, you’re right. That’s what I should have done.”

So, thanks to his quick and clever answer, Chichibio dodged his bad luck and made his peace with his master.

The Walking Dead, or has Sanders done a Corbyn?

‘Dead man walking’ is an overused expression. But I can’t help feeling it fits Bernie Sanders perfectly. Barring some kind of miracle, the only thing that stops his campaign for the presidency being over, is that he won’t admit it.

An analysis in the New York Times rang a bell with me:

While Mr. Sanders has not ended his bid, he has fallen far behind Mr. Biden in the delegate count and has taken to trumpeting his success in the battle of ideas rather than arguing that he still has a path to the nomination.

Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, soon to be ex-Leader of the Labour Party, led us into two general election defeats. The second, in December, was crushing. His supporters now claim that he ‘won the debate but lost the election’.

How much worse would the defeat have been had we lost the debate too?

Lost causes both. However well read the campaigns may have been

All this reminded me of a note a friend of mine posted online some weeks ago.

I had been wondering how Momentum had been able to do so many things in the General Election that the Labour Party could not or did not do.

A friend in Momentum told me to read "Rules For Revolutionaries" by Bond and Exley.

My first reaction was, “if it’s an idea from Momentum, it’s probably best to stay well away from it”. Momentum is a faction inside the Labour Party that was set up specifically to back Jeremy Corbyn. So it shares responsibility for his failure.

When I expressed my scepticism, however, my friend responded that I should perhaps read the book. That was a reasonable reply, so I did – or rather, I listened to it, my preferred way of getting to know books these days (haven’t tried it? I suggest you do. You can listen while doing something else, which is particularly welcome if the something else is housework).

The book’s by Becky Bond and Zack Exley and it’s a fascinating read (or listen). It’s an American study, so it’s hardly about anything anyone in Europe would recognise as revolutionary. It’s about basic reforms, radical only for the States, such as healthcare free at the point of care or university education without fees.

Many intriguing ideas

It focuses above all on organisation and tactics, drawing heavily on the authors’ experience of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign. 

They have some excellent ideas. The biggest is the extensive use of volunteers, rather than paid staff. Volunteers can recruit others who can recruit still more, creating a spreading network of supporters actively working for your candidate.

The other, related to it, is to raise your money from huge numbers of small donations. That’s been very much a keynote of both of Bernie’s presidential campaigns, and it’s impressive: it leaves him beholden only to ordinary voters and not to the huge corporations or lobbying organisations that have been toxifying Washington politics for at least a century and a half.

Not all of this is directly transferable to the UK. For instance, a curse and an advantage of US politics is the primary election.

It’s a curse, as the Democrats are discovering now, because it leaves a party squabbling with itself as candidates vie for the nomination, while Trump sits in the White House trying to look presidential.

The advantage is that it gives candidates a long time to connect with voters to listen to their concerns and to communicate a response.

We have no such institution in Britain. Arguably, we should. I think it most unlikely that Corbyn would have led Labour into the last election if Labour voters, and not just members, had been consulted. But for the moment, we don’t.

However, it is perfectly imaginable that we organise discussions with voters about principles. For instance, in Corbyn Labour has had a leader who was a Brexiter without the guts to admit it. Without that handicap, the Party could have spent the time after the referendum explaining to its supporters that Brexit would harm their lives, even if they had voted for it. That might have kept enough voters on side to win an election, and even have built support to reverse the Brexit result.

So some of Bond’s and Exley’s proposals could certainly be applied in Britain. But surely not by Momentum. Bond and Exley are all about recruiting huge networks of volunteers and empowering them to campaign as they see fit. That means delegating authority, and accepting the small number of inevitable failures for the sake of the far greater overall gain.

Momentum, to give you an idea of how the faction operates, sent out a ballot to its members over the Labour leadership election. Did it delegate the choice to its members? Did it heck. It called on them to either accept or reject only one option, the politburo’s.

Sorry. Momentum has a National Coordinating Group. However it behaves, it’s not actually called a politburo.

None of this, though, is the biggest problem with the book. The real problem is that it was written by people associated with a losing campaign. The book drops a hint as to why Sanders lost.

Becky Bond wrote Rule 4 of the Rules for Revolutionaries. That’s ‘Fighting Racism must be at the core of the message to everyone’.

She describes a public meeting at which candidates were asked to react to the call ‘Black Lives Matter’. My transcription of the audio is:

… his [Bernie’s] response to protestors was to declare, “black lives of course matter. I spent fifty years of my life fighting for civil rights and for dignity.” Then he continued, “but if you don’t want me to be here, that’s OK. I don’t want to outscream people.”

It was in this way that Bernie missed a crucial, early opportunity to put race at the centre of the message to everyone.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Bernie Sanders’ campaign, particularly the current one, is his inability to gain traction amongst black voters. Like Bernie, Corbyn’s response to accusations of anti-Semitism, was to point at decades of campaigning against racism.

More fundamentally, however, Bond’s account of this moment provides a glancing reference to a much more serious problem that the book fails to address: it doesn’t matter how well you organise if the candidate’s no good. And he’s no good if he can’t put together a winning coalition of voters.

That’s Corbyn, but it’s also Sanders. Not only can Bernie not mobilise black voters, he can’t break out of the narrow circle of those who share his views. Here’s the New York Times again, with comments that apply as strongly to Corbyn:

Mr. Sanders proved unable to expand his base well beyond the left or to win over African-Americans in meaningful numbers. He failed to heed warnings from traditional party leaders, and even from within his campaign, about the need to modulate his message and unify Democrats.

Sanders rejects what he sneeringly refers to as the Democrat ‘establishment’, which makes it surprising that he’s angered by the failure of the centre and right of the Democratic Party to rally behind him. In the same way, Corbynists in Labour denounce anyone else as ‘Blairites’ or ‘Red Tories’. 

That doesn’t matter too much if the objects of their contempt are fellow Labour members. We voted for the Party anyway, despite Corbyn. But outside the Party, there was nothing like Party loyalty to oblige the huge numbers who mistrusted Corbyn to stick with him in spite of their aversion. So they voted against.

It can be invaluable to have clever organisational methods. Great campaigning tools are even more valuable. But if your candidate isn’t prepared to reach out to voters who don’t already share his views, well, he’s doomed before he starts.

Bernie. Jeremy. Walking dead both.

Coronavirus: fighting the war and facing an enemy together

So it’s going to be war.

Soldiers from the Spanish 'Military Emergency Unit' (UME)
deploy outside the main station in Valencia

The leaders of nation after nation have assured us that what we’re going into now is war against Coronavirus. Which neatly covers two of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, War and Pestilence. Coronavirus itself provides us with Death, but since shops are still being restocked at the moment, Famine hasn’t put in an appearance yet. Long may it stay that way.

Curiously, that was a remark made by one of Danielle’s aunts, who lived through the Second World War. 

“We have enough food, but otherwise, it’s just like back then,” she told Danielle.

War. Both my grandfathers had their lives profoundly affected by World War One. Both served, in different ways: my paternal grandfather in the artillery, my maternal grandfather in gaol, as a conscientious objector. Both displayed admirable courage and both paid a high price – my paternal grandfather carried shrapnel in his hand until the day he died.

My mother Leatrice, my grandfather Nat and, well, me (a while back)
Nat served two years in Dartmoor Prison as a pacifist

Leaders have taken to using the vocabulary of war too. Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of our adopted nation, Spain, declared the other day that “we shall leave no one behind”. It’s an encouraging thought, especially in the light of the idea that Boris Johnson was toying with in the UK, of letting people become infected to build ‘herd immunity’, though his experts calculated this might leave up to 500,000 dead.

Rather a lot not merely left behind, but left in the ground.

It’s ironic, too, that the US is dragging its feet over combating the epidemic. The notion of ‘leaving no one behind’ is one I associate with the US marines. Odd to see that nation having to be dragged into awareness of the threat, against a spirit of denial to which Trump clung as long as he could.

The Spanish Prime Minister’s commitment to leave no one behind reminded me of my parents’ description of life during World War 2. My father served in the air force, my mother was secretary to a Labour MP. She told me how moved, and how strengthened, she was, by a speech of Winston Churchill’s. It included the words:

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

He made the speech in May 1940 at a time when the possibility of surrender was very much in the air. Hearing the Prime Minister declare that “we shall never surrender”, she said, stiffened her resolve and that of most of her compatriots. There were, of course, the profiteers and the black marketers, but overall the nation pulled together. A sense of solidarity for a time overcame extreme individualism.

My father Leonard, with his mother and his father, also Leonard
My father is in his RAF uniform for service in World War 2.
My grandfather served and was injured in World War 1.

The spirit of war. With grandparents who experienced World War One and parents who lived through World War Two, I had always expected as a child that I would, on reaching adulthood, have to face it myself. It’s been not just a pleasure but a relief that I never have.

Until now, at any rate. It’s a bit of a surprise, and not without a grain of excitement, to be facing my own war this late in my life. And, at least, it isn’t one in which man is being called on to kill man.

Which doesn’t mean it isn’t lethal. As with any war, we go in not knowing how many will die. We don’t even know whether we ourselves will make it through – any more than my father did. It took him a long time to understand how he survived when so many of his friends didn’t. 

This war, like any war, is a harrowing experience.

On the other hand, if we can recapture the spirit of solidarity, it won’t be entirely bleak. If we all pull together, if we show we can serve a common goal with at least patience and some courage, what a welcome change that will be in societies more divided than they have been for decades.

It strikes me that Italy, Spain, France and a number of other countries are beginning to get things right. Social distancing, unnatural and painful though it may seem for a species that thrives on social contact, is probably the best way to beat the epidemic.

We’re going into battle with an intelligent strategy. We’re going in together. We’re going to suffer losses, but may be uplifted by our sense of common purpose.

Because that too is part of war, probably the best part, as well as an essential ingredient of our top shared objective.

Beating this damn thing.

Coronavirus lockdown and last time enjoyments

Our local sports club, usually a centre for people and pleasure
Now abandoned for the duration

The streets are emptying here in Spain.

We had two friends from France staying with us last week and took them to Valencia’s main station on Sunday, for the first leg of their trip home. That was the day before the start of the full Coronavirus lockdown across the country, but already the streets were deserted.

Valencia, capital of the fiesta, now nearly a ghost tow

Particularly striking was the five-mile long park that runs along the old riverbed. It is one of the city’s most impressive resources, with its football pitches, its rugby ground, its baseball diamond, its running tracks, its cycling paths, its athletics stadium and, above all, its green spaces where people meet to dance or to chat, to party or to sunbathe.

This time there was no one.

That was the culmination of a strange week. Circumstances changed gradually, day by day, but anything but slowly. And we had to adapt to stay in step.

On Monday, we were still expecting the great Fallas fiesta to start on the following Sunday, though anxiety and anger was climbing against the authorities for not cancelling it. Hundreds of thousands thronging the streets? It seemed irresponsible at best.

On Tuesday, the fiesta was cancelled.

Then we had a whole string of ‘last time’ moments. Obviously, we hope they won’t be truly last times, that the epidemic will end and we’ll get through it, so that we can start doing all these things again. But these were the last times before the lockdown.

At that time, Danielle was in the Madrid region. She’s been travelling there weekly for some time now, to look after our new granddaughter Matilda so that her parents could go back to work. What we didn’t know was that last week would be the last time she’d do that until the end of pandemic.

She came home on Wednesday with our French friends. Her last railway trip for the foreseeable future.

On Thursday, we took our friends around Valencia, wandering the streets and popping into various places we felt they ought to see. That might mean somewhere cultural or just pleasurable, such as the Museum of Modern Art, or a restaurant we’ve come to know and love, or the main square with its masked Fallas sculpture, or our final port of call, the glorious Café de la Horas which serves the best Agua de Valencia in the city.

Fallas sculpture dedicated to women
now with an anti-virus mask

Danielle disagrees that it’s the best, but she admits it’s pretty close to the top. And, for those who may not know this fine beverage, let me say that the word ‘agua’ (water) is misleading, as is the fact that it’s made mostly of orange juice. It isn’t the orange juice that provides the kick.

The Cafe de las Horas
Not just splendid for its kitsch but for its outstanding Agua de Valencia

All these visits were last times.

On Friday, we took our friends on a walk with the Community Walks group we belong to, partly for the exercise though mostly for the company. We even began planning another walk for the following Friday, not realising that this too had been a last-time occurrence.

On the way back, we decided to have lunch in a local restaurant. I phoned ahead to book a table. “For now?” they asked and when I confirmed that it was, “oh, then, no problem,” they replied. I realised later why they’d hesitated. The local government authorities had closed all bars, cafes and restaurants throughout the region, from that evening. Lunch had been our last chance to eat out.

And finally, on Saturday we took our friends to one of the local beaches. That was something I didn’t expect to be forbidden any time soon. I was so wrong. The axe of the nationwide lockdown fell the following day, so our walk along the beach – which I’m delighted we enjoyed – turned out to be the last of our last time pleasures.

Last beach walk.
We even had a pair of acrobats to admire

Our friends are back home in France, just in time to beat the lockdown. We took advantage of taking them to the station to pause a moment in the old city. For the last time.

We’re now adapting to an indefinite period of confinement. Apart from work, medical needs or basic shopping including food, the only reason we’re allowed out at all is to walk the dogs, and we’ve even had a loudspeaker van touring the area to warn us that it’s one person with dogs, and it’s take them out, take them back, no more.

It looks like we’ll be catching up on a lot of reading over the next few weeks, and binge-watching a few series. We just have to hope we don’t go stir crazy.

Still, if it minimises the impact of the pandemic and helps us through it, that’ll be a price worth paying. 

Even though it’s a pretty high price.

Tackling the epidemic

My good friend Fabio is Milanese. As a native of the great city of Rome, I tend to think of Milan as South Austrian. You know, things happen on time, the streets are clean, and where there is bustle there is also a sense of purpose. None of these charges can be levelled against Rome.

Rome to me is the essence of Italy. Milan is northern Europe.

Still, I suppose technically Fabio is, nonetheless, Italian. And as a resident of the region of Lombardy, he was already subject to the coronavirus lockdown even before the Italian government extended it to the entire country. The “situation,” he wrote to me, “is surreal. Unimaginable.”

Top left: deserted arcade in Milan. Bottom left: Fallas crowd in Valencia
Right: two women fighting over toilet rolls in an Australian supermarket

Certainly, if Milan maintains its sense of purpose – as I’m sure it does – the bustle is gone. Places usually thonged by crowds of both locals and tourists are now deserted. The atmosphere must be eerie, to say the least.

Most recently, Fabio has gone still further, calling for the deployment of the army. Why? People have been breaking curfew rules, kids have been getting together out of doors to have drunken parties, the lockdown isn’t being respected.

I have to say that this doesn’t entirely surprise me, and it may strengthen the sense that the Milanese are, after all, truly Italians. One of my college lecturers was Catholic and she told me of a conversation she once had with an Italian bishop.

“Why,” she asked him, “does the Pope issue instructions that are so strict it’s almost impossible for English Catholics to follow them?”

“Ah,” he replied, “The Pope is Italian.”

This was the time before we started to get Popes from other parts of the world.

“The problem with England,” the bishop went on, “is that its culture is Puritan. This even affects the Catholic community. They try to follow Papal instructions to the letter. But the Pope’s Italian, and he knows Italians will ignore 90% of what he says. So he deliberately makes his decrees particularly strict. I can see how this makes for problems in England.”

As with spiritual instructions, so it seems with government ones: total compliance isn’t the first reaction of all Italians.

Still, it seems Fabio’s plea didn’t fall on deaf ears. He tells me the army is indeed being deployed. Maybe, with bad grace, and under the baleful stare of men with guns, more Italians will now begin to take the lockdown seriously.

Meanwhile, where we’re living, near Valencia in Spain, we’re in the runup to the great fiesta of the Fallas. Celebrations are already under way, with thousands of people thronging the streets. Rather like the marches for International Women’s Day at the weekend. It’s hard not to admire such a tenacious attachment to traditions, particularly to joyous ones. On the other hand, we’re now up to 1600 infections across the country, 10% of the total in Europe. That’s still far behind Italy, with over 9000, but we’re catching up…

Some are beginning to question just how responsible our devil-may-care attitude may be.

Interestingly, it was announced only today that the Fallas would, even at this late stage, be cancelled. Or at least postponed. I haven’t asked Fabio, but I suspect I know what his reaction would be… For my own part, I wasn’t going to be going to any of the major events.

It strikes me that we need to take the epidemic seriously. Which isn’t the same as panicking about it. The women fighting over toilet rolls in an Australian supermarket strikes me as at best an over-reaction. At worst, it’s a reversion to the worst instincts of man.

But claiming that nothing much is happening, as Donald Trump has? Or not cancelling major public events? Or simply not keeping contact between people to the minimum absolutely necessary? That doesn’t strike me as healthy either.

The Italian government’s action may, as Fabio says, create a surreal atmosphere. But I really can’t see how else you limit the spread of a virus.

The saddest aspect of all this? It’s the lack of an internationally coordinated response. In a time of nationalism, individual countries seem to have decided that they must simply do their own thing.

That’s a pity. Although I was encouraged to see a suggestion that the virus itself might provide a solution to the problem. Will Hutton, in the Observer, the sister paper of the British Guardian, argued that the infection might drive us to improve what globalisation means.

Meanwhile, Fabio, hang on in there! This won’t go on for ever. And, unimaginable though the short term results are, the actions of the Italian government may well turn out to be the most effective response to the problem.

I certainly hope so.

Labouring to get to the concert

Some young people in a small country town heard of a concert in the rather bigger town next door. They decided to go on the following Friday and borrowed a camper for the purpose.

One of them announced that he would drive. Several were a bit concerned: he was a bit of a know-it-all and his ideas weren’t always good. In particular, he was known to get lost and they were afraid he might not get them there in time.

However, most of them felt he’d be fine and it was agreed he’d drive.

As they set out, he announced that he wasn’t going to take the usual main roads to get to the next town.

“There’s a small road after the next village not many people know about and it’ll take ten minutes off the trip.”

One of the people who’d been concerned about him driving was unenthusiastic about the suggestion.

“I know that road,” he said, “and it’s only made up for the first mile or so. After that it’s a mess, with huge potholes and mud everywhere.”

Several others shared his concerns, but most of them agreed with the driver and so they took the minor road.

As they’d been warned, the tarmac ran out after a few minutes and they were forced to drive round huge potholes and avoid patches of mud and loose gravel. Eventually, the inevitable happened and they ended up in a colossal hole, and there was an ominous cracking sound as the front of the camper went in. And there was no way of getting back out.

They had to wait several hours for a tow truck to arrive and get them to a garage. They missed the concert and also had to fork out for the significant cost not only of the tow but of the extensive repairs the camper needed.

The aftermath of a shortcut that went wrong

A few weeks later, another concert was announced, and the group decided to try again. This time, the previous driver agreed to let someone else drive. In fact, he even chose someone, a young girl, to take over the steering wheel from him.

Some of the others were sceptical.

“You won’t go down that minor road again, will you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, smiling brightly, “it’s much the best way to go.”

“But look what happened last time!”

“That wasn’t because of the road we chose. It was because you guys dug an especially big pothole in the way. And because you wouldn’t give your full support to the route we’d suggested. But I know how to avoid the potholes, because I’m particularly gifted that way. And if you get behind me instead of trying to sabotaging me like you did the last driver, we’ll be fine.”

So what would they do?

Were they dumb enough to try again what had failed the last time?

Or would they learn from experience and demand that the driver chosen should be someone who could be trusted to take the main road?

After all, as one of them pointed out, it was better to take longer driving there but actually get to concert, than to take a shortcut and not get there at all.

Well, the camper, as you’ve guessed, is the Labour Party.

The first driver, with the shortcut, is Brother Jeremy. And his chosen successor is Rebecca Long-Bailey, who wants to have another go at doing just what he did last time. Which ended up in the pothole of the 12 December election, for which her supporters advance any excuse to avoid blaming the man at the wheel.

The sensible one suggesting that the longer but safer route is Keir Starmer.

So the question for us is the same as for the young people.

Are we dumb enough to learn nothing from experience and try again, with exactly the same attitudes that worked so badly last time?

We’ll find out on 4 April whether we’re that dumb or not.

Fiesta in the time of coronavirus

Here in Valencia, we’re taking the Coronavirus threat seriously.

It may not be a lot of use, but maybe a mask says you're taking it seriously

OK, so we weren’t too pleased when the ruling came down from Madrid that the much-anticipated Champions League match between Valencia and Atalanta had to be played behind closed doors.

Bad news. Valencia has a 4-1 deficit to make up from the first leg and needs its fans to support the team at the home game. But, hey, we understand the precautionary principle. Atalanta’s stadium isn’t far from Milan, and it was a journalist attending the away match there that brought Coronavirus back to us in the first place.

Valencia-Atalanta will be behind closed doors

Can’t be too careful.

In the same way, we’ve no objection to the cancellation of major medical events and conferences. Well, we’re terribly sorry for the people involved, since doctors are pretty smart about where they organise their conferences. I mean, they don’t tend to be in Birmingham or Düsseldorf, do they? More like Sicily or the Canaries.

Seems a pity to deprive them of their trips, but I guess we do need them around. Again, being careful. Just in case.

Besides, not many of us are medics, so we’re only moderately bothered about the measures. I mean, the rest of us wouldn’t have been going to that major cardiology conference in Lisbon or that research meeting in Dubrovnik, would we, so how much are we really supposed to care?

All in all, then, we’ve no real complaints. So far. Good to see the government taking an interest. Putting appropriate measures in place and all that.

Just as long as they don’t go over the top. There are limits, aren’t there? There has to be moderation in all things, including public health precautions.

So – don’t touch our fiesta.

Our fiesta? You don’t know what our fiesta is? The Fallas? Why, it’s only the biggest in Spain.

Honestly, you should get up to speed.

Four days – and nights – of firecrackers in the streets. Some of them capable of making the noise of heavy artillery pieces. The mascletas – when we let off hundreds of these damn things in various designated spots around the city (or sometimes outside them) – can make the bombing of Baghdad sound like a kid’s birthday party.

Really, if you want to know what it sounds like to live in a war zone, there’s nothing better than to be near a mascleta when it goes off.

Then we parade around the streets in traditional costumes and take a look at the hundreds of fantastic sculptures set up at street corners all over the city.

What am I saying? All over the city? All over the all the little towns around the city too. Thousands of people. Getting their costumes ready and then parading in them. Collecting their crackers and their fireworks, and then letting them off. Building their sculptures, and then burning them on the last night (all but one which gets a prize).

Men and women in the traditional costume
And this group had travelled up from Murcia (over 200 km away)

No one’s going to cancel that. I realise that Venice cancelled its carnival, but that’s small beer compared to the Fallas. I mean, think of all those people. Think of the dozens of hours they’ve put in to preparing for this grand party. And you want to cancel it? Think again, pal.

OK. I get it. It means huge crowds surging through the streets. Cheek by jowl. Cough by face. Not perhaps the most sanitary conditions. Maybe not exactly the precautionary principle sagaciously applied.

But, hey. Surviving’s important, I know. But isn’t living even more important? And a fiesta’s all about living, which is what surviving is for.

Besides, if things are so miserable, don’t we need a party all the more, just to console ourselves?

So a Valencian might reason. These thoughts were going through my mind as I walked across the Town Hall Square (or Plaza del Ayuntamiento) the other day, and saw the crowds gathering for a pre-mascleta of the Fallas. The Fallas proper don’t start until the 15th, which you might think apt: it’s the Ides of March. But some events happen beforehand.

Crowd gathering for an early mascleta
In the background, the cage where the pyrotechnics would happen

I looked at the crowd. I looked at the cage where the colossal firecrackers were hanging, ready to be set off. And I thought, “congratulations, Valencians, on your courage in the face of adversity, and on your determination to have a good time whatever the threat bearing down on you”.

Courageous they certainly seem to be. But only time will show whether that was wise or not.

For my part, I hurried on home. Partly because I really don’t think hanging around in crowds is all that wise these days. But mostly because, while I wouldn’t question anybody else’s taste, the experience of being in a war zone certainly isn’t mine.

But, if Madrid doesn’t step in to cancel them at the last moment, I wish Valencia a happy and virus-free Fallas, all the same.

A Mascleta going off
Creating the true party feeling. At least, if your idea of a party is a civil war