Many thanks to all my friends who've sent a newsletter letting me know how they fared in 2019. I'm afraid in comparison mine is very dull - no holidays to exotic locations, and only two trips abroad, both to the UK. One in March to my audiologist, the other to pick up my grandson, Quinn, in August.
Some good news: in October, in collaboration with his Danish partner, Nana, my younger son, James, presented me with a new grandson, William. I now have five grandchildren ranging in age from 34 (Matthew's son, Josh) to 2 month old William.
And speaking of Josh, and continuing the good news, he and his father came over to Montefalcone in July to help with an English course we ex-pats were running for the village children. The course was centred on a play I'd written, based on a nineteenth century historical novel, Rinaldo da Monteverde, I'd translated a couple of years previously. Matt and Josh made the props staying up late every night to do so - on one occasion until 5 o'clock the following morning. The play was filmed on location around the village and screened in the village theatre at the end of the week. If you're unable to wait until next year's Venice Film Festival, you can view the film here:
If you do view it, you may notice that a couple of the children seem rather mature! Two of them dropped out after the first day so Josh took over the part of Rinaldo and an ex-pat, Ian, the part of Friar Bartolomeo. He appears in the brief snippet below.
In early August Quinn came over to stay. In 2017 he'd started secondary school in Downham Market. Both our daughters had attended the school in the eighties and nineties and had received a decent education. Since then the school has opted out of local authority control, becoming an academy and receiving abysmal ratings from Ofsted. Quinn was unhappy there, the school claiming he was unintelligent and predicting he would end uo with few if any GCSE passes. Like the rest of us, Quinn has his faults; but after spending forty years teaching I've developed a nose for spotting whether someone has academic potential. And Quinn has - even if, like his grandfather, he's a bit of an idle chap. His mother arranged for him to sit the entrance exam to a state grammar school in Spalding in the next county After a week's preparation, he took the exam and passed.
At the end of August his mother, Candy, and her friend David joined us for a few days. There's a video of our time together on You Tube:
And now to the bad news.
First, our older dog, Eva, who will be fifteen on Christmas Eve has become a momento mori. Just as the skull on a mediaeval scholar's desk was a continual reminder of the transience of life, so Eva's decline and fall over the last twelve months is like watching a speeded up version of the fate awaiting me in my remaining decade(s). She was always extremely elegant, fastidious about her appearance, very intelligent, and scrupulous about her personal hygiene. Now she is almost blind, has dementia, and is frequently incontinent. Rather than taking her for long walks in the woods I take her about a 100 metres up the street very slowly three times a day, gathering her excrement with a poop scoop. Her younger half-sister, Meg still has all her marbles, her eyesight and bowel-control. However, since she reached 13, the woods are a step too far. She has one walk off the lead down the mediaeval pathway and two much shorter walks to wasteland to relieve herself.
Second, in late September Pat was hit by a drunken motorcyclist while taking Meg for a walk fracturing her right knee and ankle. After a week in Fermo Hospital she came home but was wheelchair bound until last week when she was able to graduate to crutches. Here she is acting as the model for Whistler's Mother:
Understandably she is rather fed up with life.
Third, we learned today that our elder daughter, Sophy, and her husband have separated after ten years of marriage.
But our misfortunes pale into insignificance when compared to the life-threatening illnesses which have affected several of our friends this year, Vivid reminders that, in Dick Blakeslee's words, we're only Passing Through.
Yesterday Brexiteers demonstrated outside a Parliament busy ‘betraying’ them by rejecting Theresa May’s deal for the third time. A journalist asked people what motivated them to attend. ‘“I am here fighting for freedom,” said one man from Hampshire. A no-deal Brexit might well lead to economic hardship but “freedom is more important than economics” ’ Freedom to do what, one might ask.
While the demonstration was taking place, ‘thousands of passengers had their travel plans thrown into chaos after Eurostar cancelled all services to and from St Pancras when a trespasser was caught brandishing a St George’s flag. The 44-year-old spent the night on the roof of a tunnel leading away from the central London station, bringing Eurostar services to a halt before he was arrested by police on Saturday morning. One of those affected described to a journalist how she was left hundreds of pounds out of pocket by the cancellations. She’d organised a weekend break for her mother in Lille, France, but the pair were eventually forced to scrap their plans. They spent four hours waiting in a lounge at St Pancras on Friday evening before finding out their train had been cancelled.She and her mother had to spend £125 for a hotel in the capital before rising with just three hours’ sleep for a rebooked train, only to find out they could not travel on Saturday morning either because of further cancellations. Although she had already spent £450 for accommodation in Lille, she and her mother were forced to scrap their plans to go to the continent and are going to spend the weekend in Brighton instead.’ So one man demonstrates his support for ‘freedom’by causing thousands of others to lose a great deal of time and money and their freedom to travel to their chosen destinations. Replace the man on the roof exercising his freedom to behave like a moron with David Cameron, and thousands of people with sixty million, and you’ve got our present situation in a nutshell.
An article in today’s Guardian contains a list of how MPs voted in yesterday’s indicative vote. None of the measures passed. However, while the proposal to revoke Article 50 was heavily defeated by a margin of 109, the motion in favour of confirming any Brexit deal with a public vote was lost by only 27. Forty-eight Labour MPs failed to support the measure: twenty-four women and twenty-four men. Of these, twelve women and five men abstained, the others voted against. While the overwhelming majority represented constituencies which had voted to leave the European Union, two members from Remain constituencies - Kate Hoey and Jim Fitzpatrick - voted against the measure, and one - Mike Kane - abstained.
So a chance for people to reconsider their options, in the light of reality rather than the fanciful promises made in 2016, was blocked by forty-eight Labour MPs. If they had voted in accordance with party policy the motion would have passed.
Last Thursday, Sette - one of the Corriere della Sera’s weekly supplements - published an article by Beppe Severgnini, a journalist who lived in London in the nineties working for the Economist. Having spent the previous weekend in the UK visiting friends and former colleagues he came to the conclusion that ‘Brexit è uno psicodramma. È piombato sulla nazione più stabile d’Europa e l’ha trasformata in un manicomio democratico’ [Brexit is a psychodrama. It pounced on Europe’s most stable country and turned it into a democratic loony-bin].
The Brexit mindset was exemplified last Friday: Brexit Direct Action planned major disruptions to the nation’s road network as a protest against the March 29th leaving date's being postponed. The Mirror reported that ‘One driver taking part said: “We can and will bring the country to its knees”. ’ In other words, I don’t care how much inconvenience I cause to others, because all that matters is what I want. Few people took part and the effect on traffic was negligible.
In contrast, around a million people took part in the People’s Vote march in London the following day, my younger daughter, Candida, and her son, Quinn - 0n the right of the photo - amongst them.
Rather than seeking to inconvenience others, or force their opinions on them, they simply asked that the country should be given the opportunity to accept or reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal or, alternatively, rescind article 50. When the Commons rejected her deal by a crushing majority in January the Prime Minister brought it back for another vote on the 13th March. Once again it failed to pass. However, rather than accepting defeat she was planning to bring it before the House a third time if the proposal hadn’t been ruled unconstitutional by the Speaker. Despite this, she has rejected suggestions that the UK should vote in a second referendum, saying that the public has already made its decision. One rule for you, another for me.
Most political commentators consider the majority of MPs voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum. The same commentators believe it highly unlikely that a motion to rescind article 50 would command a majority in Parliament. MPs of leave-voting constituencies, frightened that they would lose their seats if they supported revoking Brexit, put their own interests in front of their country's. Brexit is also supported by the USA, Russia and China. Any measures that weaken the EU are in their economic interest: it would be much easier to impose advantageous trading conditions on individual European states than it is on a trading bloc of over 512 million people. And, finally, Brexit is in the interests of the very wealthy, opening the possibility of deregulating financial institutions and watering down the employment rights enjoyed by workers under current European legislation. For everyone else Brexit is a disaster inflicted by a misinformed 27.55 percentage of the British population* not only on their fellow countrymen but on themselves as well. So it's easy to see why Beppe Severgnini thinks the inmates are running the asylum. In reality, of course, they are simply being manipulated by their warders: foreign governments promoting their countries' economic interests, and rational but utterly immoral British plutocrats.
**Although 52% of those who voted in the referendum opted to leave the European Union, only 37% of the total electorate did so. Minors, who are going to have to live with the consequences long after the majority of those who voted Leave are dead, had no say in the decision. Assuming they like their elders are 'people', the Will of the People was decided by just 27.55% of the UK's total population. In the Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda in 1979 as well as a majority 'yes' vote, a 40% majority of the electorate was needed for parliament to implement the devolution legislation. In Scotland, on a 64% turnout, 33% of the electorate voted for devolution while 31% voted against. The government did not proceed with devolution even though a majority had voted for it. In Italy the result of a legislative referendum is only valid if at least a majority of all eligible voters go to the polling station and cast their ballot. If this quorum is not met, the referendum is invalid. A case can be made for saying that an Italian referendum does express the will of its people, to a lesser extent the same holds true of the 1979 devolution referenda. But, not I think, for the Uk wide one held in June 216.
A final reflection: enacting 'the will of the people' is not a moral imperative: in the 1933 general election in Germany the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote and with their coalition partner, the German National People's Party obtained a working majority in the Reichstag. One assumes the 'will of the people' didn't include demanding the deaths of fifteen million armed servicemen and women and forty-five million civilians. Ordinary people suffered; big business made a fortune. Does something ring a bell?
If the M5S and the Lega embody two different faces of Italian populism, their choice of Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, the self-dubbed People’s Advocate, represents their common denominator: the apotheosis of the common man.
Grillo’s movement articulated Italy’s widespread disenchantment with the traditional parties of left and right, seen as self-serving oligarchies. If they were swept away and ‘the people’ could express their ‘will’ online all would be well. For the past two years the patent absurdity of this ingenuous belief has been conclusively demonstrated by the ever-increasing mounds of refuse, potholed streets and self-combusting buses presided over by Rome’s inept M5S administration. Like Trump’s electoral base, though, the Five Star Movement’s supporters remain unmoved by their idol’s incompetence. Their commitment is based on faith not reason.
While the M5S reflects a naive optimism- if only the corrupt politicians are swept way, all will be well, no need for experience, expertise or competence - Salvini’s Lega represents the darker face of populism: the belief that ordinary Italians have two concrete enemies seeking to destroy their identity: the European Union undermining their ability to decide their own destiny, and non-Caucasians polluting their ethnic identity. Although a moment’s reflection reveals the inherent absurdity of believing an ordinary Italian’s economic woes will trouble an Italian billionaire simply because they share a passport and skin colour, the misconception serves to deflect people’s attention from the real cause of their distress: the increasing weakness of Europe’s individual national governments in relation to global companies. The European Union, on the other hand, has had some success in calling them to heel. It also attempted to mitigate Italy’s immigration crisis by seeking to distribute the newcomers across the Union rather than leaving Italy to fend for itself. It was the other member states who opposed the move. A cynic might wonder whether, rather than the product of naivety, Salvini’s policies are actually aimed at promoting the interests of the one percent by targeting the institution capable of championing the common man against international finance and globalised companies, and reducing the profitable pool of immigrant workers available for gangmasters to exploit in southern Italy. The far right’s love affair with Putin - a strong EU would limit Russia’s political influence in the continent, used to promote the European financial operations of Russian oligarchs - gives the theory additional weight.
And then there’s Conte. Unlike Mario Monti, for example, he’s clearly been plucked from the second division of technical experts, and as such we common folk recognise one of our own. A Monti or a Prodi has no need to primp his cv - we do. When I was applying to university in the early sixties I numbered my membership of the school athletics team amongst my achievements. I didn’t feel it necessary to add that I owed my place to a flu epidemic which laid low all the school’s decent athletes, that it had happened five years previously, and that my place lasted for just one match. If I were suddenly plucked from obscurity to be offered the post of Prime Minister I would probably refer to my experience teaching undergraduates - and feel it unnecessary to mention I did so at an FE college, rather than at Oxford or Harvard. I might allude to my managerial role as Head of Humanities and Course Director of the BA degree, without revealing that the Humanities section consisted of fewer than a dozen staff, and the undergraduate degree had only twenty students. However, I hope I would have the good sense to reject the offer and suggest they seek someone with outstanding achievements and proven competence.
I’m not suggesting that I’m in the same league as Conte: if he’s in the Championship, I belong in the second division of the Southern League. He may prove to have exceptional political skills but someone from the Premiership would be a safer bet. But, if his role is merely to provide a mask for Salvini and Di Maio, who better than someone whose very mediocrity embodies populism’s rejection of ‘elites’ and ‘experts’?
I've just re-read last year's cheery newsletter, and was interested to see how my gloomy predictions for 2017 compared with the way things actually turned out. As is customary for soothsayers with cloudy balls, some things went better than I'd foreseen, others worse.
To begin with the upside: neither Fillon nor Marie Le Pen won the French election. Although I'm not an admirer of his economic policies, I am heartened by Macron's commitment to greater European political unity. Admittedly his refusal to accept France's due quota of refugees raises some questions about his willingness to subordinate perceived national interests to the greater European good; however, it was very refreshing to hear a charismatic leader clearly identify the steps necessary to provide a secure future for Europe's citizens. Are you listening, Jeremy? More good news came from Holland with Wilders' defeat. And that's about it.
The AfD's support grew at the German elections and that of the two mainstream parties declined. At the time of posting, the attempt to form a "Jamaican coalition" having failed, Germany is still lacking a stable government. The only glimmer of hope is the rumour that Schulz may make a firm commitment by Merkel to greater European integration a necessary condition for the SPD's participation in a coalition government. Brexit staggers on and, despite Juncker offering to allow the UK to rescind clause 50, Sergio Romano's view that an EU without the English offers a real opportunity to move the European project forward is widely shared in continental Europe.
Last year I lamented the fact that our income had fallen by 13% owing to the fall in value of sterling thanks to Brexit. Now, because of the British negotiators' comical incompetence, and the consequent declining confidence in the pound, it's down by 20%.
To turn from misery caused by human folly to that bestowed by indifferent Nature: heavy snow falling continuously from January 15th to the 19th resulted in the deepest snow we have ever experienced. In our courtyard it almost reached the first floor windows of out neighbour Polonio's house, a drift around three metres deep:
The snow was too deep in the centro storico for the village snowplough to cope so all the residents had to dig a trench along the street:
Our car transformed itself into an igloo:
On the 22nd the Civil Defence arrived with heavy snowploughs and cleared the main roads whilst armies of young volunteers dug out the cars and cleared the snow from the centro storico by hand.
The snow was accompanied by a power cut which lasted for eighteen and a half hours, and 144 shocks above 2.0 on the Richter scale in one day, four of which were over 5 in the space of an hour causing the house to shake once again. We also had a day without running water: not a major problem as one only needed to go into the courtyard to scoop up a bucket of snow! Finally, a tornado blew the church clock from the tower.
Fortunately our friends Tony and Shona, who had come over to help us celebrate Pat's se***tieth birthday on the 30th December, left for England on the 5th of January the day the preceding snow fall arrived and so escaped being trapped. The birthday itself was very enjoyable. Together with Sophy and Adam, Candy and Quinn, Pat's sister, Deborah, and friends Tony and Shona and John and Jean we had an excellent meal at the Villa Funari in Servigliano:
As well as monthly get-to-gethers with local ex-pats in the village restaurant our lives have been brightened by vists from friends. My former colleague, Chris Bell stayed with us in May. We had an abortive trip together to Osimo to see an art exhibition: I'd managed to pick the gallery's closing day!
Our trip to Urbino three days later was more successful.
In October my old schoolfellow, Stephen Burrough and his charming French partner, Maryvonne., came to stay. I last saw Steve in 1961 when we studied A Level English together and were joint editors of the school magazine. Their visit coincided with the annual chestnut festival at a neighbouring village, Smerillo. I'd heard that one of its attractions, the Fesso - a dramatic cleft in a rock face dating back several million years - had been closed to the public since last year's earthquakes. However, I took Maryvonne down to see it on the off-chance it might be open. It was:
As we returned, making our way past the throng of people walking down the cliff towards the cleft, I noticed a placard lying on its side just before the footpath reached the Fesso. It read, 'By order of the mayor, it is strictly forbidden to proceed beyond this point.'
Their visit was immediately followed by one from our old friends Phil and Maggie who used to live in Smerillo before moving first to the Dordogne and then Nottinghamshire, before finally settling in Spain. Finally, Jane Fineren stayed with us for a few days in late November. Her holiday home had been declared unsafe after the earthquake and she came over to discuss its renovation with her architect and the local council.
I went over to the UK at the beginning of August to bring our grandson, Quinn, back for a holiday. His mother, Candy, joined us for the final week of the month accompanied by a friend, David. Contrary to our hopes - and James Duffy's maxim in Dubliners - their friendship is purely platonic. We had an excellent time including several trips to the seaside:
and events in the village:
But for Quinn the undoubted highlights were a trip to the tree-top walk at Ripatransone - he produced this film from the footage I shot -
and a visit to MotorPark at Campofilone where he and David went kart racing:
In July, Sophy very generously paid for our holiday in Matera to celebrate our Ruby Wedding. The trip was made possible by Tony and Shona very kindly offering to look after our dogs while we were in Basilicata. Matera will be European City of Culture in 2019 and deservedly so. We stayed in the district known as the Sassi which consists of gentrified cave-dwellings. In 1952, horrified by the inhabitants' living conditions - he declared the whole country should be ashamed - the then prime minister, De Gasperi, took steps to move them from their squalid homes into newly built council flats. Today, the caves have been rehabilitated and, furnished with mains drainage, running water and electricity have become extremely desirable residences. They give Matera a unique character. Le Marche, where we live, is full of beautiful towns and villages but they are all fairly similar to one another. To visit Matera is to experience something utterly different; paradoxically, the same effect that Dubai had on us on when we first visited the city.
A few weeks ago the clock was replaced in the San Pietro's church tower and its half hourly chimes ring out across the village once again. Repair work has begun on San Michele, the parish church damaged in last year's earthquake; Westminster has belatedly begun to exercise its sovereignty regarding Brexit's terms; and Sophy and Adam are spending Christmas with us this year. At last I begin to feel some glimmers of the hope traditionally associated with the season of goodwill. I hope you do too!
