Christmas Newsletter: We're Only Passing Through

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:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zypu7ud3hqpcole/Rinaldo%20Da%20Monteverde%20%28V.2%29.mp4?dl=0

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:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4nOl_3PlE8&t=115s

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.

Notes from the asylum

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. 

The List of Shame

Oh sovra tutte mal creata plebe

che stai nel loco onde parlare è duro, 

mei foste state qui pecore o zebe!

Inferno XXXII, 13-15

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.

The British Loony-Bin?

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?