How to Create A Panic

You couldn’t make it up. The unions threaten to go on strike in a week or two, although nothing is yet decided. The country is quietly going about its business. Then a Cabinet Minister goes on the radio and insists that NOBODY MUST PANIC. No, we must not panic, but we should keep our petrol tanks full, fill up at every opportunity, and possibly keep jerry cans of petrol at our homes – ‘just in case’. But we MUST NOT PANIC.

We listen to this important man, and the great British public, phlegmatic to a fault, thinks to itself that there might be more to this than they are being told. So, maybe, it would be sensible to pootle down to the petrol station and fill up. ‘Just in case’. Unfortunately, lots of us think this. So when we get down to the petrol station there is a queue. Quite a long queue. And one of the pumps has no petrol left.

Suddenly, we are not so sure. Maybe the nice man was right. Maybe he knows something we don’t and was trying to warn us in a quiet, un-melodramatic, way. So we start talking to each other, suggesting to friends that keeping the petrol tank full might be a good idea. And those queues at the pumps grow longer, and more pumps run dry, and suddenly, the Government has a mini-panic on its hands. So the nice man comes back on the radio and tells us that WE REALLY MUST NOT PANIC. But that jerry cans are a really good idea.

Unfortunately, jerry cans are not at all a good idea. And very soon another nice Government man, who actually knows what he is talking about because he has been a fireman, comes on the radio and tells us that the first nice man got it wrong and that we should NOT keep jerry cans because they are dangerous.

Until today, this was a funny, ridiculous, story, which left me wondering whether to laugh or to cry. Today, all the laughter went out of it. One poor lady was decanting petrol in her kitchen, when it caught fire. As I write this, she is critically ill in hospital. Now, nobody knows for certain if the two things are connected, but it is an inescapable fact that, despite appeals from the fire service, the Government has not issued an official warning about the dangers of keeping petrol.

Some things are too important to be played with: people’s lives are certainly in that category. No Government Minister, or Government, should allow itself to put amour proper before the safety of its citizens. I am not suggesting that anybody did that here – there is insufficient evidence – but I am suggesting that some people believe that the facts could bear that interpretation and, therefore, that there should be an investigation. Also, that the advice given was plainly both wrong and dangerous. I can remember a time when honour would have dictated a resignation for that. 

Today was Crap

I woke this morning with a sore throat, a headache and full sinuses. Oh dear. But the radio was telling me that it was going to be a lovely day, and the clock told me that it was still 0545, so I could go back to bed. Those who know me will be aware that my idea of rising early is 10a.m.

Half an hour later (i.e., in case you have missed the point, at 06.15) my alarm went off. I had, of course, fallen deeply asleep again, so it jerked me rudely to life. I hate it. However, remembering that I had to be on a train, I crawled from my bed to the bathroom. I thought it felt a little chilly, but the towel rail was hot enough so I ran the bath and pottered about while it filled. When I got in, it was, at best, tepid. I muttered unprintable things, turned on the hot tap and only succeeded in making it colder. Clearly, the old problem of ‘locking out’ the boiler had returned. My ablutions were, at best, cursory.

I was going to an important meeting in London. Make-up was indicated. And relatively smart clothes. I find choosing clothes in this weather really difficult. It is cold in the morning, hot in the afternoon and I end up looking like a Michelin bag lady – not an attractive sight. However, I did the best I could and headed for the station.

The train was due to leave at 07.50. I settled into my seat, plugged in my laptop, rearranged the cups so as to have maximum space, and settled down to read the papers for the meeting. Two minutes later, I was told that the train was not going to London: there was a problem at Bedford – I would have to find an alternative.

I was re-routed through Birmingham. We drew in to Birmingham New Street at almost exactly the time I should have been drawing in to London. I arrived in London almost 90 minutes late. This was a really important meeting, and I am one of the least important players. When I arrived, it took all the courage I had to contribute, not to disappear into a little hole. I am not sure I was of any use.

The meeting ended. I tried to ‘network’ – I am so bad at it! Thankfully, I could leave soon. I headed for St Pancras: the train to Nottingham was boarding. I ran. I missed it.

I’m home now – but it really was a crap day. 

Pilgramage

Pilgrimage

Having returned home from eight days in the Holy Land, I am trying to make sense of the experience, to analyse my responses and to assess what impact, if any, it had.

First of all, I must state what it most definitely is NOT. It is not an emotional roller coaster, designed to bring tears to the eyes and a sentimental surge to the heart. Nor is it a slow walk through a few sights and a lot of sermonising. At least, it wasn’t for us.

We were a group of fifteen, including a friar, a deacon and a retired professor of Eastern history who had forgotten more about the Crusades than anybody else on the planet knows. The deacon, it transpired, was also a history professor. Oh, and they all came from Cambridge, so they really did know their stuff.

The trip had been designed with two aims: a typical pilgrimage (i.e. the traditional holy sites) and a trip through Crusader history. For me, it was an unmissable combination. The group gelled very quickly and there was much laughter and camaraderie.

So, what are my general impressions? Well, first of all, a Pilgrimage is no holiday! Forgive me if that sounds trite, but it is true. I have never been so exhausted. We stayed first in Jerusalem, starting far earlier every morning than I ever get up for work. We were cold, wet and tired for the first three days, and I never want to see another staircase or very steep hill again as long as I live. I was actually frightened going down some of those hills; I am more than grateful for the others who literally took my hand.

I had heard, of course, about the dirt and the noise and the crowds and the queues and all the other adverse things. They are all true. Yet, within our little group, cocooned in some way by the information we were being given and the impressive organisation that produced such security, it did not matter. We were all impressed, amazed, to some extent moved at being so close to the actual places. Bethlehem was calm and relatively quiet. Jerusalem was madness, especially the Holy Sepulchre. We queued for hours, were unimpressed by the bad tempered guardians of the holy places, yet could not be immune to what we were seeing.

However, when I return it will not be to Jerusalem, but to Galilee. There, the crowds were smaller, and you could imagine that the little band of Christ and the Apostles had only just moved away. As we sailed on the Sea of Galilee, we did not need any formal words – the atmosphere was all around us. And as we celebrated our last Mass, on the shore where Jesus awaited his disciples after his Resurrection, with the birds singing their dawn chorus and the light playing on the fishermen on the lake, there was a peace and tranquillity that I have rarely known. That is what pilgrimage is about.

The day we arrived in Jerusalem

When I was a little girl, people talked in slightly hushed tones of ‘going on Pilgrimage to the Holy Land’. We Catholics do not, any longer, have the same imperative to go on pilgrimage as, say, the Muslims with the Haj. It was not always so. In the Middle Ages, and beyond, the idea of Pilgrimage, of travelling to the holy sites to atone for sin and to reawaken faith, was encouraged, endorsed and, sometimes, imposed. Over the centuries, we have become more relaxed, possibly more decadent, certainly less imbued with a sense of sin and the need for repentance.

Yet still there remains an idea of Pilgrimage. People continue to head to the Holy Land in little bands, part holiday, part prayer, sometimes slightly uncomfortable, a little prone to make light of it. It is the ‘well, I might as well go and see’ attitude that we bring to so much else today.

I must admit that I have always wanted to make this trip. For as long as I can remember it has been one of my top five. I always knew that someday I would do it. But I never thought the opportunity would arrive when I had booked another holiday, was in the middle of fighting for the NHS and had a million other things I needed to do. Perhaps this is always the way: this is not meant to be a comfort break.

Anyway, the opportunity was too good too pass up: the Cambridge Chaplaincy, the Chaplain (a highly intelligent and amusing man), a recently retired Professor of Eastern History, another historian, and a group of intelligent and interesting people. I rearranged my diary, collected my pennies from every possible source, and said I would go.

I have to admit that I was less sure yesterday evening as I set my alarm for 0500 this morning, having only landed back in England at 2030. However, when the alarm went I was already wide-awake, excited beyond measure. The flight was fine, the airport impressive. And now we are here. As we drove from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, you could feel the coach getting quieter. When we stopped to view the old city of Jerusalem from a hill above it, we were all awed.

Of course, it didn’t last. An hour in the bar and we were back to our normal selves! Or were we? The conversation at dinner was erudite and instructive. It made me realise how much I miss Cambridge (no offence Nottingham). But also, how much I miss the Chaplaincy there, with its extraordinary scholarship, friendliness, openness to all comers. Fisher House is a great place. It has contributed much to the University of Cambridge and to the life and health of Catholicism in England. I am privileged to have been a small cog in that wheel for a tiny space of time. I shall pray on this trip for many things, but Fisher House will certainly be one of them. It is a great institution. Long may it continue.

How Bad Can it Get? Lib Dems Await 

Last night I wrote about the storm that was lashing Malta. I described it as elemental and powerful. I said it was the worst I could remember. I imagined at the time that it would gradually die down through the night and that, by this morning, we would only have the remnants of the storm.

How wrong I was. As the night progressed I was repeatedly awakened by the ever-strengthening wind, the sound of trees being blown over, the waves crashing against the rocks some 100 yards away. As morning broke, the sea was a roiling, terrifying mass of water, throwing spume high into the air. The palm trees were bending to almost 90 degrees. A lone Hoopoo tried to land, without success. There was a large tree branch in the swimming pool and most of the guests at he hotel gathered in the lounge, not prepared to brave these elements. Throughout the day, we have waited for the wind and the storm to abate, but in vain. As I write, the skies are darkening again, the wind and the rain still lash the island, and we still cannot go out.

So it will be for the Tories and, especially, for the Liberal Democrats. They have convinced themselves that the storm over the NHS will abate; that by the time of the next general election they will be back in calm waters. They delude themselves. This storm will go on and on. Every time the winds start to subside in one area, a new gust will blow from somewhere else. Fairly or not, every ill that befalls the NHS will be blamed on them. And ills will befall the NHS, because they always do and because this Bill makes it more, not less, likely, with its many tiers of management, its wholesale destruction of public health and its disruption of the service. Their failure today at the Lib Dem Conference in Gateshead to show some courage and to show us, the electorate, that the NHS means more to them than staying in power will not be forgotten. I have voted for them in the past. I shall never do so again.