How many ways are there of saying NO?

Can we renegotiate the Irish backstop, please? Here's the EU’s reply in full.

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ní féidir leibh
no
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Both Jean Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier have now officially responded to the UK’s demand for a reopening of negotiations and the removal of the backstop to ensure that the Irish border remains open. They said no. They said that vague aspirations for an unspecified alternative do not make a plan. They said in the clearest possible language that they are not going to renegotiate. They said that those who are now demanding a reopening of negotiations are those who themselves negotiated this deal. So why should anyone believe that the UK will adhere to any future deal that can be agreed too? They said that they did not understand the blame game that the UK is now trying to play. It was the closest thing possible that you can get while using measured and polite diplomatic language to saying “up yours.”

On Tuesday, the House of Commons voted for unicorns and for pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. The EU is not going to accept it. But far more importantly, this was a vote by the Tories and for the Tories to keep the Tory party together. A vote which, unbelievably, 14 Labour MPs supported. To their eternal shame, the House of Commons decided that it was far more important to achieve a temporary truce within the Conservative party than it was to respect the Good Friday Agreement and ensure peace in Northern Ireland.

The EU, unsurprisingly, is less than impressed. Theresa May now wants to renegotiate the deal with the EU that she herself had already agreed to, and replace it with some vague alternative that she either cannot or will not define. The position of the UK is that it’s now up to the Irish and the EU to come up with a solution.  Seriously.  No wonder no one trusts the British government. The negotiating position of the UK is now that a no deal Brexit would damage the EU and therefore the EU will fold. But that’s not how the EU sees it. As far as the EU is concerned Brexit will be a one off event from which it can recover, but the destruction of the single market and customs union which the UK is demanding will last forever. For Britain, the effects of a no deal Brexit will be far more severe, and will last forever. It’s like basing your negotiating strategy on putting a gun to your own head and insisting that you should be stopped from pulling the trigger because someone else will have to clean up the blood spatters.

The House of Commons is a pathetic sham. The two main British political parties are obsessed with scoring short term political points against one another, and incapable of seeing any larger picture. Both of them are blind to the reality of a medium sized European country that cannot, will not, face up to the truth that it lost its empire generations ago. They court cataclysm because they believe that Britain is too big to fail. It cannot enter their tiny narrow little minds that the political and economic disasters which have befallen other states can befall the UK too, because in their imaginings this is an island nation protected by the unassailable moat of the English Channel.

So they lash out, blaming everyone else for their own failures and shortcomings. It’s never the fault of Blighty. It’s never the fault of Brexit. It’s the fault of the Irish for insisting that they are an independent sovereign state and acting accordingly to protect their own interests. It’s the fault of the French and the Germans for always resenting the British. It’s the fault of the Italians and the Spanish for being jealous. It’s the fault of the Scots for not believing in Britain.
What we are witnessing in the House of Commons this week is the historic betrayal of the UK by Britain’s political parties. The British political class has trashed any residual belief that our European allies might have had in the UK’s good faith. And all in pursuit of solving the internal political disagreements of the Conservative party.

Labour is no better. Even now, even at this late stage, even with so little time left to go, Labour is still pursuing unicorns with equal fervour as the Tories. The party’s leadership still talks of the fantasy of a jobs first Brexit, as though there were two years left to negotiate it and not two months. The death of a second EU referendum lies at Labour’s door. The failure to wrest back control of Commons business from an overweening and arrogant minority government with dictatorial tendencies is the fault of Labour.

Common sense is often defined as something that’s self evident and therefore does not need to be proven. Remaining in the EU is common sense.

Meanwhile, north of the border.

 We lived just outside of Edinburgh for a couple of years from 1974 to 1976 and, back then, the SNP was more an object of ridicule than a political force. How things have changed since those days. I'm all for self-determination and am a staunch nationalist (Scottish, Welsh, Irish etc etc) at heart. Because of my early baptism in SNP politics (thank you, Jim and Joy Deacon), I've always tried to keep abreast of what's going on north of the border and it will be interesting to see how things develop after the recent arrest of Alex Salmond.

His arrest on fourteen separate charges including breach of the peace, sexual assault, indecent assault, and attempted rape is going to cause a storm in more ways than one. There is going to be a howling gale of British(English?) nationalist gloating, of finger pointing, and taunting on social media and in the pages of the anti-independence press. These are serious and shocking charges and this is a very big story. However it must never be forgotten that Alex Salmond deserves due process and so do those who made the allegations which led to his arrest. He is innocent until proven guilty and he deserves a fair trial, if, indeed, this matter goes to a trial. Those who made the allegations against him deserve a fair hearing. That needs to be said, because it is a point that is likely to be lost amidst the rush to judgement in a hostile press and the insults and slurs that have already started to fly on social media. Salmond deserves to make his case, and the case of those who made the allegations against him must be heard equally as well. The Scottish legal process must be respected: justice demands it.

Opponents of independence have always been keen to personalise the independence cause. They have consistently sought to portray the desire for independence as the personal construct of, first, Alex Salmond, and more latterly of Nicola Sturgeon. As sure as night follows day, they are going to seize with unseemly glee on the arrest of Salmond and the court case which will follow should the Procurator Fiscal’s office decide to proceed with a trial. It’s all their anti-SNP Christmasses come at once. Salmond is a giant of the Scottish independence movement, but he is not the movement. He has had and continues to have a huge, albeit diminishing, influence on the independence movement, but he is not the reason for independence. The movement is bigger than any individual. The reasons for independence are not embodied in any one person no matter who they are, despite what some in the media are already hinting as they try to make political capital out of the situation.

Let's not forget that, above all, the reasons for independence are to do with the consistent and continual failures of the British state and the British political establishment to respond to and to act on the democratic desires of the people of Scotland. The story of independence is the story of the systemic failure of the British state, that remains unchanged no matter what personal failures are alleged about any individual. Making the case for Scottish independence means making the case for a nation in which the government is democratically accountable to the people of Scotland, elected by the people of Scotland, and which works in the interests of the people of Scotland. That case remains the exact same today as it did yesterday. That is why no matter what happens with respect to Alex Salmond’s legal issues, the reasons for independence will remain unchanged.  And, why, if I had the vote in Scotland, I'd still be supporting the SNP.

It's all Posh Dave's fault

Like me, perhaps you've wondered how David Cameron could have been stupid enough, what with Eton and all that expensive education, to think that a referendum on the EU would somehow pour oil on the troubled waters of  the civil war in the Tory party between the people like Ken Clarke, Anna Soubry on the one hand, and the-former-disgraced-minister Liam Fox, the-yet-to-be disgraced-former-minister Boris Johnson, Jacob 18th Century and Michael Gobby Gove, on the other. The most rudimentary intelligence would have concluded that bringing the argument, kept bubbling under for 40+ years, to the forefront of political life, was only likely to add oxygen to the fires of discontentment in his party. Now it seems that Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, has released information about conversations they had which may throw some light on his motivations.

It appears that our esteemed ex-prime minister failed to realise how being associated with his toxic party had damaged the Liberal Democrats and that, as a result, their seats in parliament were so diminished that there was no coalition. In fact, a small majority for the Conservative party, and thus no coalition partner was available to stop the folly and take the blame. Just in case you've forgotten, a small majority which his successor would manage, unbelievably, in an even more incompetent style, to lose. Remember the mantra 'strong and stable'?

He did all this, not because of any consideration of national interest but because he worried about splitting the party and imagined that was the likelier hazard than Britain actually leaving the European Union. When it turned out he was wrong, he shrugged and left the stage, humming a little tune (clink the link to watch) with the jaunty gait of a man who has never had to clear up his own mess; whose tables have always been laid before he arrives and cleared by the staff after he leaves.

And now, nearly two years later, he tells us he thinks he made the right choices. Now we know that former prime ministers aren’t generally in the business of trashing their own legacies and, since the Brexit plebiscite is certain to be Cameron’s biggest contribution to the history books, he doesn’t have much incentive to think of it as a monumental blunder. Just as Blair presumed his silver tongue would seduce the UN into backing that legality-conferring second resolution, Cameron blithely expected to charm fellow European leaders into doing his will. He had the public-school arrogance to believe that he could negotiate a deal with his EU partners so good that he would win a subsequent referendum… a huge miscalculation.

And as a result of his misjudgement, the Tory party, which he thought he could bring together with the referendum plan (and then blame the Liberal Democrats when it all fell apart) is now engaged in what seems to some may be a terminal civil war. Oh well, if nothing else good comes out of Brexit, the damage that it will have done to the toxic Tories is a small chink of light in the darkness.

Nice one, Dave. Be careful what you wish for. It may come back and bite you on the bum.

Sun, stiles and snowdrops.

This was a good walk. Not too far to drive and with sun (blue skies most of the way), stiles (lots of them! Must have been 20+ but who was counting?), snowdrops (not quite at their best but giving a good show) and spires (at Linkinhorne and South Hill). And the next day, it poured down so we were lucky to fit it in.

We started and ended at the South Hill Parish Hall in Golberdon, which is about 2 miles from where we live. The 7.6 mile route took us north-ish along the Lynher Valley to Linkinhorne and then back to Golberdon via South Hill and Morniick. A delightful combination of farmland and quiet country lanes - and stiles.

Looking towards Bodmin Moor, with - left to right - Caradon Hill, Cheesewring and Sharpitor. Done 'em all.

Snowdrops in sunlight. Give it another week or so and the displays will be amazing. They'll be followed by hosts of daffodils and drifts of bluebells. Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) are one of the first bulbs to flower and are a signal of the start of spring - a little premature, methinks. The flower is a symbol of hope - hope for a good year to come. And I'm not thinking of Brexit. Galanthus, by the way, means 'milk flower'.

Crossing the Lynher via a narrow clapper bridge. At this time of year, it's not the width that is the problem, rather the generous covering of very slippery moss and lichen. We've yet to lose someone but I always have my camera primed for an action shot of someone getting wet.

Just an old oak tree. Is this what a blasted oak looks like?

Our group of intrepid walks negotiating yet another stile. At least this one had a handrail to aid climbing the vertical stome wall. Look at the blue sky.

According to legend, the snowdrop became the symbol of hope when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. When Eve was about to give up hope that the cold winters would never end, an angel appeared. She transformed some of the snowflakes into snowdrop flowers, proving that the winters do eventually give way to the spring.

The interior of St Melor's church in Linkinhorne. Its services are probably the most traditional locally and they even hold a regular choral evensong. The patron saint of St Melor's is St Melorus, a saint with a fascinating backstory. He was the son of Melianus, the Duke of Cornouaille, in Brittany, France.  When he was seven years old, his uncle, Rivoldus, killed Melianus, so that he could become the Duke. To make matters worse, he cut off one hand and one foot of his nephew Melorus, and forced him to go to a monastery.  Somebody gave the poor boy a silver hand and a brass foot.  God worked a miracle, and soon Melorus could use his silver hand and brass foot, just like his real hand and foot. These prosthetics also grew in size as the boy grew. Melorus advanced in virtue and holiness and by the time he was fourteen years old, he was working miracles.  Rivoldus then became afraid of his holy nephew and asked the boy's guardian, Cerialtanus, to get rid of his nephew, Melorus.  Cerialtanus then cut off the boy's head.  The dead body of Melorus was the cause of many miracles, and God saw to it that his murderers all died.  Then Melorus was buried with great honour and respect. 

A stained glass depiction of St Melorus. There was no sign of either a silver hand or a brass foot. Given their scope for artistic licence, I was surprised not to see them feature prominently in this window. An opportunity missed, in my opinion.

Looking back across the fields to St Melor's. I like the ethereal appearance of the leafless trees.

Some house signs that caught my fancy on our way round. Wagmuggle? No idea what this means and no-one else, including Mr Google, seems to know either. Pennti Myghal? The owner of the house told me it was Cornish for 'Michael's Cottage' but he wasn't the eponymous Michael. 1817 JP? Yet another house owner told us that his great grandfather, James Pearce, had built the house in, you've guessed already, 1817.

The tower of St Sampson's church in South Hill. A story for another time but, compared with that for St Melorus, a very tame tale. But it is a very interesting church - the oldest around these parts.

The last of my interesting facts about snowdrops - the name does not mean 'drop' of snow, it means drop as in eardrop - the old word for earring. Fancy that.

Heading back to our starting point with Kit Hill and its stack as a landmark. We live half way up it - Kit Hill, not the stack.

Great Mis Tour Walk: January 20th 2019

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than on Dartmoor with my IWC? A walk sandwiched between visits to two teashops and a walk with some very nice weather. The storm clouds may be gathering over Westminster but getting out onto the moor restores the perspective.

We began and ended our walk (almost bang-on 4 miles) in the Four Winds car park on the Tavistock to Mortonhamstead road. Our aim was to 'bag' a couple more tors - Great Mis Tor and Little Mis Tor. An ascent of around 500 feet got us to the top of Great Mis Tor, with an easy descent back to the car. Views all the way.

Looking due east with, from the left, Middle Staple Tor, Great Staple Tor and Roos Tor. We've already 'done' these.

Looking back down the track with Kings Tor to the right.

Our destinations: Little Mis Tor to the left and Great Mis Tor in the background.

If we keep looking at the camera, do you think it will 'click'?

A boundary stone, delineating something or other. Could be a parish boundary or, perhaps, marking the extent of granite working? 

The rocks at the top of Great Mis Tor.

You come across all sorts on the moor. Brucie lives.

Looking west from the top of Great Mis Tor towards the Walkham Valley.

Clouds gathering over Plymouth Sound.

This shot was taken about 5 minutes after the previous one. Conditions were good but a little changeable.

That shimmer in the distance is the sea beyond the breakwater in Plymouth Sound. Maybe 25 miles away?

We passed a number of these boundary stones incised with D.C.P. These initials stood for Directors of Convict Prisons and delineated the lands belonging to the nearby Dartmoor Prison.

An Indiana Jones morment?

Steve Bell: Guardian: 16th January 2019

It is being reported today (Sunday 20th January 2019) that the British Government finds it “extremely concerning” that MPs are trying to delay Article 50 in order to avoid a No Deal. It strikes me that this is a bit like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when our hero and his chums are in a river and about to go over a waterfall. Mrs May would say that it’s extremely concerning that people in the boat are looking to see what they can use as an anchor. By this time Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (the third in the series?), it was a tired and rather hackneyed effort containing nothing much that was new or original, one which kept repeating old tropes from earlier on in the franchise which had long since worn out their welcome. In fact, very much like Theresa May’s government.

It’s such a mess that we’d be in far safer and more competent hands if the Brexit process was being driven by Prince Philip. He seems oblivious to the dangers he causes as well. What’s driving Mrs May's ire is that tomorrow the Commons is due to debate an amendment which seeks to wrest control over Commons business out of the hands of her Government and give it to MPs. It’s an attempt to limit the overweening power of the executive branch of the government and restore it to the legislature of a state which infamously lacks a written constitution and which over the past few decades has slowly turned into what has been described as an elective dictatorship.

The phrase 'elective dictatorship' was first used by the Conservative politician and intellectual Quentin Hogg (aka Lord Hailsham of reviled memory), back when the Tories actually had intellectuals. He used it to describe the UK of the late 1960s when, in his opinion, the British Parliament had become dominated by the government. As a Tory, Hogg was, of course, using it to describe the Labour government of Harold Wilson. However back in those days the cabinet, of governments of either party, was far more an exercise in collective responsibility. Cabinets contained big beasts, who were more than capable of standing up to a Prime Minister who was very much regarded as the first amongst equals. It took the long dark decade and a half of Thatcher to transform the cabinet and the government into a tool and instrument of the Prime Minister. Yet another thing to blame the Tories for!

The theory of our government is that sovereignty rests with a Parliament which is elected by the people. But the reality is that when there is a majority government, absolute power rests with the Prime Minister, who is able to impose her or his will. Theresa May is the head of a minority government, but one which is acting as though it had a majority. Moreover she is a Prime Minister whose personal authority is tattered and discredited. She has done nothing to endear herself to her own backbenchers, never mind the other parties.

The amendment to be debated tomorrow takes advantage of the historic weakness of the Prime Minister. Put forward jointly by Labour’s Yvette Cooper and the Conservative Nick Boles, the amendment seeks to change the timetabling rules of the House of Commons. It all sounds a bit abstract and arcane, but what MPs are trying to do is to remove control of Commons business from the hands of the government and give it to MPs. That will allow MPs to bring forward bills and amendments and ensure that there is time for them to be debated and voted on, instead of hoping that the government will do so. We’ve already seen how this government is hell bent on trying to avoid being held to account by the very Parliament whose sovereignty it claims to be seeking to restore. No wonder Theresa finds the amendment “extremely concerning”.

The reason all this is becoming an issue just now is that by taking control of parliamentary business back from the government, MPs will then be able to change the existing provision in the EU Withdrawal Act which the government rammed through in order to placate extreme Brexists, the clause which states that the UK will leave the EU on 29th March with or without a deal being reached. If they can do that, they remove Theresa May’s big stick, the big stick which remains her only means of exerting any authority. It’s only the threat of falling out of the EU on 29th March without any deal that allows her to continue to insist, despite the historic defeat last week, that it’s her deal or no deal.

We’re in a mess and there's no clear route out of it. And let's not forget who caused it and who seems to make it worse with her every utterance. If only the opposition had an electable leader, eh? Or even one who's prepared to roll up his sleeves and get stuck in. What is he playing at?

And so it continues.............

Steve Bell. The Guardian 10th January 2019

Typical! You go on holiday to relax and spend some time recharging your batteries and, while you’re doing so, there’s an actual constitutional crisis. That’s the safety and stability of the UK for you, you can’t even take a break without British democracy receding faster than Iain Duncan Smith’s hairline.

Suspicion has been growing amongst MPs (and me) that Theresa May isn’t perhaps quite as deluded as she would like the rest of us to believe and that, despite her repeated assertions to the contrary, she knows full well that she’s got as much chance of her Brexit deal winning a majority in the Commons as there is of the DUP regaling her with a resounding chorus of Ave Maria (or is that a sectarianist comment?). Mother Theresa is many things. She’s obdurate, stubborn, pig-headed and a party tribalist who puts the interests of the Tories above all other considerations, but she’s not actually stupid. She can count. She can see the numbers. And she knows that she doesn’t have the votes. She’s just not prepared to admit it in public.

The Prime Minister knows that she’s not going to get her deal through the Commons when it’s put to a vote next week, and so what she’s really doing is playing a game of chicken with Parliament. She's trying to use up as much time as possible so that MPs will panic and vote for her deal at the very last minute before Brexit Day in order to avoid the no-deal Brexit that’s only wanted by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg. She’s risking the disaster of a no-deal in order that there will be no time for any other of the possible options to be voted on, no chance to delay or derail Brexit and no chance for one of the much softer Brexit options which would preserve freedom of movement. Brinkmanship or what?

Since the main selling point of Brexit was that the British Parliament could take back control, MPs are less than impressed that the Prime Minister is trying to impose a false choice on the Commons and is doing all she can to reduce their opportunities to make an informed and meaningful decision. Admittedly we’re talking here of an institution that has Chris Grayling, Boris Johnson and David Davies in it, so it could be argued that reducing the opportunity of the Commons to make a meaningful choice is an act of prudence similar to removing a box of matches from a toddler. Unfortunately in this instance the person taking the matches off the toddler is an arsonist with a crateful of petrol filled bottles stopped with greasy rags.

Faced with a Government which is threatening arson if it doesn’t get its way, MPs have been taking steps to reduce the ability of the Government to lob Molotov's at the British economy and body politic. A couple of days ago, Tory MPs voted with the opposition parties to support an amendment tabled by Labour’s Yvette Cooper to put the brakes on some of the government’s tax powers in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Yes, I know that the amendment was largely symbolic, but it was yet another defeat for the Government and clearly demonstrated that there is no majority in Parliament for a no-deal Brexit.

Then yesterday, the Government faced an even more serious defeat when Tory MP Dominic Grieve tabled an amendment to the Government’s business motion for the Brexit debate. The amendment compels Mrs May to come back to the Commons within three days if, as is likely, her deal fails in the vote due next week. A previous amendment introduced by Dominic Grieve and passed by MPs means that any alternative plan which the Prime Minister comes back with will itself be subject to amendments by MPs, meaning that the Commons will be able to debate and vote upon alternatives. It had been thought that Grieve’s amendment would not be accepted by the Speaker, as traditionally government business motions are not allowed to be altered. However, the Speaker ruled otherwise, much to the anger of the Government and its supporters. Over the catcalls and jeers of over-excited Tories, he insisted that his job was not to make life easier for the Executive, but to protect and defend the rights of Parliament. Sounds good to me.

How dare the Parliament, that the Brexists say they’re determined to restore sovereignty to, act as though it was sovereign. We've just seen what happens when your self-serving rhetoric jumps up and bites you on the bum. They scream that it's undemocratic for Parliament to take back control from a government. But it's a government that won’t listen but which still says it’s working to restore control to parliament. And this is the same government which claims that having another referendum would be undemocratic, because apparently more democracy means less democracy. The only meaningful vote that Mrs May wants is her own.

When the amendment came to the vote, the Government lost. Mrs May will now be obliged to return to the Commons with an alternative plan within three days of her Brexit deal failing to pass, instead of the 21 days that she previously had. With the Brexit clock ticking, and Brexit Day looming on March 29th, every day is precious. Allowing Mrs May three weeks following the defeat of her deal would have meant she could return to the Commons with substantially the same deal as before, but with time having run out on any alternatives. That’s now become far harder for her to do. And that's a good thing. Maybe that's why we are starting to hear talk of more cooperation across party lines? But let's not hold our breath.

The next few weeks are likely to be every bit as febrile and rancorous as those just gone. A chaotic no-deal Brexit remains a very real possibility. But so does an early General Election, another EU referendum or some version of a Brexit deal. How’s that for the safety, security, and stability that Mrs May and her legions are oft to quote. I'm not sure where it will all end but, for now, it means not being able to have a break without being a passive and helpless witness to a constitutional crisis that threatens to blight livelihoods, opportunities and lives. A pox on all of those who brought us to this point. And a plague of boils for intruding on my break. But a bouquet for giving me lots to rant about. Pity Mrs P living through it.

And here's a couple of holiday snaps to show that life goes on.

Robin

Grey Wagtail. I know it looks yellow but it's not a Yellow Wagtail. Wrong colour and wrong time of year for that.

Rock Pipit

Young Buzzard

Enter, Jezza, stage left.

Remember the heady days of Jezza's election and his big promise that he’d be different? He’d be special. He wasn’t a money grasping Tory in Labour drag like the previous New Labour leadership. He even had an allotment shed and not a tax shelter. Jeremy was going to do all these things that the rank and file of the Labour Party had always wanted. You know, all those things like the abolition of the House of Lords, renationalisation of the railways, taxing the rich to pay to the poor. You know, those things that Labour promised its members and the voters when it was in opposition but which always seem to slip its mind as soon as it got a snifter of power. Finally, after years of broken promises, the glorious new dawn of British socialism was going to be delivered. It would come with a new leader riding on the back of his left wing credentials.

Back in 2015, during the leadership campaign for the Labour party, Jezza made the promise that party policy would be made by the membership and not by him. He forgot to add the caveat, except when the party membership disagreed with him. It’s very easy to pose as a leader who listens to the common folk when the common folk agree with you. It’s not so easy when the membership want something that doesn’t accord with Jezza's plan for the British Parliamentary road to socialism. The majority of the party, or so it seems, does not agree with his strategy for Brexit, but he’s pressing on with it anyway. The Labour party leadership hasn’t changed its ways after all. It’s simply found a new way to dissemble.

To repeat, right now, the membership of the Labour party, and indeed many of the party’s MPs, disagree with Jezza about Brexit. A large majority of Labour voters and Labour members want another EU referendum, but the Labour leader is not for budging in his determination to find yet another obstacle to put in the way of allowing Labour members to determine his Brexit policy. He’s behaving exactly like all those Labour party hacks of previous political generations that he’d sworn to be different from. If the Labour leader has a spirit animal, it would be one of those old stuffed dinosaurs in a museum. It hasn’t displayed any movement or flexibility since the Bolshevik revolution. It’s not that Jeremy is stubborn, it’s just that he thinks his way is the only way. And, in this important respect, he is exactly like Mrs May. What a pair to be at the top of the dung heap that passes for British politics at the moment.

Memories of Lewis the Milk

I've just finished reading an autobiography written by someone who was born in the village, Bedwas, I lived in for 7 years in the 1950's. The author, Roger Lewis, was not an exact contemporary of mine and he comes across as something of a misanthrope. And in those areas with which I am familiar, he is also an unreliable rapporteur of the ways things were.

I actually knew his family much better than I knew him as I helped on his Great Uncle Kenvyn Lewis's milk round for a number of years. It sounds positively Victorian now to say that I started doing this when I was around 10 and finished when I was around 15. At the beginning, it involved collecting eggs, milking cows by hand at his farm (the wonderfully named Llywynllynffa half way up Bedwas Mountain) filling and capping the bottles and going out on the van delivering all around Bedwas and Trethomas. Ada the Milk joined us for the deliveries and their's was the original hate/hate relationship. They couldn't stand each other and rubbed along, just short of braining each other with a pint of steri every day. Initially I just worked weekends but it soon included all of the school holidays. Things changed significantly when a semi-automatic milking system was installed on the farm and all the milk went off to Cambrian Dairies for processing, coming back ready bottled for us to deliver. I can't remember how much I was paid but two old shillings for a weekend (6am - 2pm each day) springs to mind. Child labour? It didn't seem like it at the time. It was something I always enjoyed and, for a while, I had the accolade of being known as Deri the Milk.

Notwithstanding Roger's suspect memory, his book did send me down memory lane about those times, particularly about Mr Lewis - I never called him by his Christian name as it wasn't the done thing at the time. He had a rather irascible manner but I always got on well with him and he was easy to work for. He was a born gossip and I learnt more about some of the people we delivered milk to than I should have and probably more than someone of my tender years should have been aware of! He was also a fount of knowledge about the history of Bedwas and I was a willing audience for his tales. He had lead a colourful life and he told me bits and pieces when he was in the mood. It's worth recounting what I can remember and what I've been able to piece together over the years.

The Lewis Family showing the patriarch, Wyndham Garnett, in the centre. Kenvyn Lewis is on the right of the back row. I have a feeling that this photograph was taken near the abattoir at the back of W.G's butchers' shop in Church Street, Bedwas.

Francis John Kenvyn Lewis, to give Mr Lewis his full name, became a second-lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, being commissioned in August 1914. He was ordered to France and fought on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where he stayed for six months. He did tell me that he took part in a cavalry charge there but, at the time, I had no idea of the significance of this. He came though all that, plus Ypres and Passchendaele, and was finally invalided out with typhoid and put in hospital in Wandsworth. He next went with his regiment to Ireland. On 10th October 1918, intending to travel home from Ireland on leave, he boarded the RMS Leinster, which was sailing to Holyhead at 9 am. He went to his cabin, began to get sorted out, when the purser appeared with a telegram from the CO in Limerick, telling him to get back to base. So he disembarked. Sixteen miles out of Dublin, 43 miles west of Anglesey, the German submarine UB-123, which had sneaked around the Irish coast from Scotland, fired two torpedoes at the Leinster, which in a rough sea sank with the loss of 529 lives – most of them officers and other ranks from the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Mr Lewis often mentioned his good luck.

 After all these adventures and near misses, he was demobilised with the rank of captain, which he never seemed to refer to, at least to me. He became a JP and, as such, he had the dubious honour of being reputedly the last person to read the Riot Act - to striking miners in the early 1930s (my grandmother never forgave him for this). During WW2 he commanded the Bedwas Home Guard, which meant patrolling the railway bridges at the top of the village and taking up prime position in the saloon bar of The Church House Inn (the first place I ever had an underage pint). When Dad’s Army was first broadcast in the Sixties, someone (Garfield Williams was it?) told me that Arthur Lowe was Mr Lewis to a tee. On the milk round we used to stop for breakfast in Lui Rabiotti's Café in Trethomas and, every now and again, Mr Lewis, Mervyn the Butcher and Lui would exchange tales of their time in the Home Guard. And, yes, it did sound exactly like Dad's Army. Thank goodness the Rhymney Valley was not on Hitler's target list.

Mr Lewis's base was a small dairy farm on Bedwas Mountain called Llywynllynffa (I've always liked that name and we used it for our house in Westerham in Kent. We never did get our postman to pronounce it). As well as the normal outbuildings associated with agriculture, I remember the outside lavatory that had two wooden seats, side by side. I could never understand how or why two people would ever want to go and have a cosy defaecate like that, though it is true that even now ladies vanish into the toilets together and spend ages there. Doing what? No man knows. No man wants to know. No man needs to know.

Mr Lewis was married to the lovely Mrs Violet Lewis. She was a Woodruff from Machen, a family of iron foundry owners who had a mansion called The Vedw, which was already in a ruinous state by the 1960s. when I used to roam around it with friends. Mrs Lewis - never Violet or Vi - used to help us wash, fill and cap the milk bottles at Llywynllynffa but never came out delivering. The only other help on the farm was the very shy, almost invisible, farm labourer called John Burt, who lived in ramshackle corrugated tin shack at the top of the farm drive. He was very difficult to engage in any conversation and was always described as being "a bit twp". I don't know whether he was or just preferred to keep himself to himself.

Mr and Mrs Lewis had a tragic family life. Their first child, Richard, tipped a kettle over himself and died of burns after a pioneering skin graft treatment went wrong - or so my mother said (and she had a good memory for this sort of thing). Their other child, Rodney, had muscular dystrophy and died in his teens. I can just about remember him and the fact that Mr Lewis used to take Rodney upstairs to bed by carrying him on his back - again told to me by my mother. So that’s the First World War, reading the Riot Act, two children dead and then death by lung cancer. Not so lucky after all.

 

Mr Lewis was a chain smoker, a real chain smoker. His brand of choice was Kensitas and one of my regular chores as we went around was to buy his cigarettes for him. No proof of age necessary in those days. All I had to do was to say that "they are for Mr Lewis" and they went down his account. This was the time when cigarettes came with coupons and he was always saving up for something. The cabin of the milk van was always festooned with coupons and redemption books. To be fair, he always warned me of the evils of smoking and never offered me any. His illness meant that he had to sell the business (and he made sure that I was taken on by Dai Davies who took it over ....but that's a story for another time) and eventually killed him. I visited him once when he was on his deathbed, his chest wheezing and heaving and the oxygen tanks lying about the floor. I went to his funeral but only at the graveside in St Barrwg's in Bedwas. His family grave is not too far from where some of my forebears lie.
 Mrs Lewis lived on her own at Llywynllynffa for another twenty years or so. I say she lived on her own but she did have the shy cowherd to look after her. John Burt, or so my mother said (again), did all her shopping, tended to the garden and did all the odd jobs on the farm. In effect, he was her manservant. She died in Caerphilly Miners' Hospital. Thinking about it, it was a miracle that she wasn't more affected by depression after all she had been through during her married life (and the death of her beloved niece, Linda Woodruff, in a horse riding accident, in 1961 when she was only 12. I was in Bedwas Junior Mixed School with her). But she was always cheerful and lively. It was as if, blessedly not of a fractious disposition anyway, she'd deliberately cut herself off from her woes, which were never mentioned. But that's what people did back then, just got on with it. She deserves to be remembered.

In praise of the Goblin Teasmade

A little piece of whimsy for those of a certain age and to mark nine years of blogging as my first post was written on January 6th 2010. I pointed out this milestone to Mrs P earlier on and she expressed surprise. She thought I had been blogging "forever". No, dear, only nine years of drivel: it just seems like forever. But let's move on...……..

It wasn't something that Mrs P and I ever aspired to but suddenly there it was. A gift from Doris and Harry Laws: a Goblin Teasmade. I think there’s something very Terry and June (RIP, June Whitfield) about a Teasmade and it didn't take us very long to see why they went out of fashion.

It’s not the fact that it is just as easy to nip down to the kitchen and boil a kettle or the fact that it is a pain bringing the cups and saucers and milk jug upstairs and then having to take the cups and saucers and milk jug back downstairs for the washing-up. It’s the fact that when the device is starting to get going – gurgling, spitting steam, whistling, clearing its throat as heartedly as a miner coming off shift – you might as well have The Flying Scotsman in the bedroom with you. The first morning we were wide awake ages before the off, watching it warily and suspiciously. That’s right. Warily and suspiciously. The second morning we were woken up by the noise of a foghorn and then blinded by a bright light that flashed on. The third morning I forgot to set the timer. The fourth morning it was back in its box. I can't remember how we got rid of it. Probably to a charity shop. Or maybe as a gift to some unsuspecting friend. I do hope it wasn't you.

And for those of you who have no idea of what I am talking about, take a look at this and be amazed. Just imagine one of these on your bedside table.

Predictions for 2019

 

My first post of 2019 and I'll repeat my best wishes for all my readers. As is customary, it's time for me to make some predictions for how I see the year turning out. Someone, and I can't remember who, said that his new year resolution was to remember at all times “that I don’t know what is about to happen”. Bearing this is mind, I'm using an extensive database and a unique algorithm as the basis for my predictions and these allow me to include a percentage probability to each of them.

 

 Armed with this information, I can make the following predictions for 2019. * A version of Mrs May’s Brexit deal will, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, make it through the House of Commons. Probability: 90%. 
* She will still be PM and Tory leader this time next year. Probability: 85%. * John McDonnell will be Labour leader by the end of October. Probability: 50%. * Donald Trump will be impeached. Probability: 25%. * England will fail to win the World Cup in either cricket or rugby union. Probability: 100% * Newport County will gain promotion to Division 1. Probability: 120%.

  And the numbers? Products of an algorithm and a database? No, of course not. They are total rubbish. I just invented them. But at least I look authoritative and nobody can accuse me of being wrong.