Unreliable Histories

          When friends who are unfamiliar with Plymouth come to stay here, I pin an imaginary Blue Badge to my lapel and conduct them on personalised if sketchily informed tours of the city’s history and culture, with a particular bias towards aspects that are of interest to me. This usually goes down well enough, as our friends either share my interest or pretend politely that they do. In any case, I try to gauge their mood and call it a day if I sense their enthusiasm for history waning and their appetite for refreshments waxing.

          Our last visitor was intrigued by the Elizabethan remnants that are evident in the original port of Plymouth, the Barbican quarter. It was from here that the Mayflower set sail in 1620, carrying emigrants determined to establish a colony in America. They boarded their ship by descending a set of stone steps that were subsequently named after the vessel. I was once there, reading the memorial plaques, when a bewildered looking American couple asked me where the steps were. “These are they!” I answered. “Oh”, they said, looking embarrassed and underwhelmed at the same time. I guessed they were expecting something grander than the modest, stone portico built in the Greek classical style over the top step – something more ‘American’ in scale, perhaps, complete with ticketed admission and a visitor centre? I didn’t have the heart to explain that these were probably not the original steps anyway, but a best guess as to where they might have been. Anyway, we had a brief chat about their return to their ethnic origins and he told me his surname was Pound. “You can’t get more English than that!” he quipped.

          Fortunately, the Barbican survived the total demolition once proposed by the city council and, twenty years later, the more direct attempt made by the Luftwaffe. Nowadays, it’s a picturesque fishing port that attracts tourists to its once under-appreciated olde worlde atmosphere, not unlike many other settlements along the southwest coast of England. Last Sunday, I took the train to one of the most renowned of them, Penzance, stopping along the way at a series of devoutly-named places – St. Germans, St. Austell and St. Erth – and the rather forlorn-sounding Lostwithiel, before arriving at the end of the line. There’s something that excites me about small towns where railways terminate and ferries stand by ready to take you further – in this instance to the Scilly Isles. (Other favourites are Mallaig and Oban on the west coast of Scotland, where ferries sail to the Western Isles.) I don’t feel it at big ports like Dover, Hull or Southampton, where the scale is bigger, less personal and lacks the romantic promise of isolated islands.

          Otherwise, I found Penzance to be a bit of a let-down: there really is nothing ‘piratey’ about it and the buildings that stretch along the seafront are a hotch-potch of style, function and scale. I suppose all towns have bland, utilitarian aspects to them, apparently built without reference to visual aesthetics. Walking the mile or so along the seafront, I came to Newlyn, a seriously workaday fishing port that is associated with a famous school of late 19^th century painters, which is hard to credit on a grey Sunday in March, with a light drizzle borne in on a south-westerly lending it all the attraction of an industrial estate.

          It all might have looked better the following day, when the sun shone down and I took my bike for a spin closer to home to check out a splendid Georgian villa that has survived – just – the era of suburban expansion. The owners, the city council, have yet to fulfil a promise to turn it into a museum and it’s all fenced off. I hadn’t realised it’s called Pound House, in recognition of its original owner, but I can now augment my blue badge tour with the information that some of his descendants live across the Atlantic. Massachusetts, as I recall.

What Do You Think?

          Radio phone-ins wind me up: not the sports-commentary programmes – since there is no way I would ever be exposed to one, except by unfortunate accident – but the ones on which people express their opinions on current affairs. Is it because I’m intolerant of other people’s views? Is it because I disapprove of the way they express them? Am I critical of how ill-informed they are? Do I judge them on the way they speak? Though I like to think otherwise, I’m sure I’m guilty on all counts listed above. Of course, I could try to raise the tone by phoning up and joining in myself, but I reckon that by the time I’ve been connected, I will have lost my thread, or my rag, or both. So, I just switch off and leave them to it. Perhaps, If I were to listen for more than thirty seconds, I might learn something or hear some succinctly expressed, well-informed, duly considered opinion. But my prejudice prevails. I just can’t stand phone-ins. I prefer arguments face-to-face, preferably around a comfortable, well-provendered dinner table.

          When my friend John suggested that I might like to join him at a newly established, informal discussion group under the auspices of U3A (the University of the Third Age), my instinct was to find reasons not to, my stock ones being that I’m averse to the commitment of membership (of anything at all) and I like to keep the diary free for spontaneous, weather-dependent outings. I also expressed concern that, unless a format based on formal debating was adopted, the proceedings would inevitably settle into squabbling. This latter point, John assured me, was something he also supported so, with a little more arm-twisting, such as outing me on the fact that my next Tuesday was free, he got me to sign-up. I am now committed to fortnightly sessions designed to give older people the opportunity to make new acquaintances and keep their wits honed on the cut and thrust of civilised debate.  

          Although the first meeting was merely procedural, I was disappointed by the low turnout. We had chosen a central venue next to all the bus stops yet, out of a population of a quarter of a million, only six people turned up – and one of them had come all the way from Cornwall, on the ferry. Even allowing for the fact that most of the population is young enough to think U3A is an eighties rock band, shifting demographics mean there are more older, retired folk than ever before and that they are in better health and more mobile than they have ever been. So, where were they all? At home, engaging with phone-ins? Still, I supposed, six is more than enough for a manageable discussion group and, since assemblies of two or more citizens who might at some point express criticism of government policies is not yet illegal, I shouldn’t carp.

          I was unable to attend the next two meetings, so I don’t know how they went, but I did make it this week, when the subject was the benefits of private health insurance compared with those of the NHS. It was a subject that invited – and duly received – a deluge of personal stories of medical intervention, such that I spent the first thirty minutes regretting that I had come along. This was worse than a radio phone-in, as there was no way to turn it off. I briefly considered a rude, abrupt intervention before John came to the rescue with some deft steering and we managed to establish the principle that anecdotes alone do not serve as evidence for or against an argument. The next session will discuss the carefully worded question, “Is immigration beneficial to host nations?” I shall be brushing up on stats and academic studies so I can brush off the rumours, misinformation and anecdotal ‘proofs’ that I’m sure will be forthcoming.

Heavy Weather?

          February has been cold, dry, often sunny but, above all, calm. It’s felt like a prolonged period of stasis that’s left me with the uneasy sensation that something is about to happen. Spring, perhaps? Well, yes, but that’s already stirring. Underground and in the limbs of trees the juices are flowing and soon we’ll be seeing primary colours dotting the landscape again. So, what is it I’m expecting?

          On Wednesday I did something which, for me, is unusual: I read a novel in the afternoon. And why shouldn’t I? I am in a position to choose what to do and when to do it – a privilege of which I am both aware and appreciative – especially given the setting of the novel*, medieval England, where very few people had the luxury of choice in anything at all and most were illiterate to boot. So, why am I not in the habit of spending afternoons on the sofa with a book? The answer might be in that word “habit”.

          It wasn’t easy for me to pick up that book and sit on that sofa. First, I had to make sure there was nothing else that needed to be done: I took my bike to get the brakes fixed, calling at the shop for some groceries en route; when I got home, I checked my emails and put some laundry on; then I cleaned the cutlery drawer; then I checked my emails again and, finding nothing of importance, reorganised some files in My Documents; I phoned a couple of pals but without success – these days you have to pre-book call times; then I made a pot of tea and, finding at last nothing else pressing to delay the event, sat down, reluctantly, with the book. Of course, most of what I had ‘needed’ to do was merely ‘displacement activity’, busyness that is contrived to postpone doing that which is daunting in some way or other. And, sure, on the face of it, there’s nothing daunting about reading novels in the afternoon, except that it involves a break with a lifetime’s conditioning. Ever since I was taught to read, the focus has been on textbooks, novels being allocated to leisure time, aka those brief moments left after work and duty have taken their toll of mental energy.

          That afternoon I finished a book that would otherwise have taken a couple of weeks of bedtime reading. Perhaps there’s a lesson there in how to diminish that guilt-inducing pile on the nightstand. Well, I might try to tweak my routine to incorporate the post meridian indulgence of novel-reading but, deep down, I fear it would be the first step to the kind of moral ruination that would eventually see me slumped in front of daytime telly. In any case, all my previous attempts at introducing routines for self-improvement have fallen foul of my tendency to find reasons not to adhere to them. The slightest excuse will suffice, such as fine weather beckoning me outside for a bimble on my bike, with my intention of catching up afterwards being more a hope than a promise.

           Judged by this behavioural pattern, it might be fair to conclude that I am easily diverted from purposeful activity and that I am inclined to be opportunistic when it comes to obtaining satisfaction. Dig deeper, however, and you will find that, by its very consistency, this pattern denotes a long-term strategy for success. Whilst my life might look like that of an addict who looks no further than the next fix, I maintain it is more akin to that of the fisherman who casts a wide net rather than a single, patient line.

           Seen from this perspective, I think the settled weather is unsettling to me because it’s about time it moved on.

* The Spire by William Golding. Published 1964.