The blog of Iain M Spardagus

I said to grief, “Come on, come on

You’ve been at this for far too long.

You’re making it a marathon.

It’s time to sing another song.”

But grief just firmly stood its ground

“You cannot rush these things, you know.

I’ve feelings that are quite profound

And I don’t want to let them go.

I said, impatiently, “Good grief,

You’ve been through anger and denial.

Admit you’re feeling some relief

You know you found it quite a trial.”

“But that brings guilt,” grief sadly said,

“What if I wanted it to end?

Now I’m alone here in my head

Too late I see my selfish trend.”

“Can’t you accept what’s happened here

Was for the best?” I gamely tried,

“Your friend knew that his time was near.”

But grief was not to be denied.

“So many holes,” he cried aloud,

“Each way I turn my friend was there

And now I do not know this road

I see burnt bridges everywhere.”

“That is for you to reconcile,”

I offered, condescendingly,

“You’ve done despair for quite a while.

Time to rebuild. Time to break free.”

“I know and I’ll get there in time

But just for now I need to dwell

On what I’ve lost. It’s not a crime

To mourn the friend I loved so well.”

“I’m not so sure,” I answered him,

“Cling to the past and there you’ll stay.

Your life is now, your time is slim.

I think there is a better way.”

“Without your friend the way ahead

Seems dark and hostile, dull and grey  

But if you let him live instead

In memory he’ll light your way.”

And then, the first time in a while,

Grief smiled and lifting up his eye

Saw open fields, heard skylarks call

On Tuesday afternoon, just after 2pm I subjected myself to an ordeal that baffled me in its masochism. What did I do that was so baffling? I sat and watched Nigel Farage monologuing like the classic villain who thinks he has the hero hog-tied. Nigel had decided to dispense with the presence of anyone who might be tempted to challenge his drone of lies, Dad-anger and pathetic self-pitying whines and to talk instead to a single unmanned camera. It was all very Putin-esque. Or Trumpian. If you can tell the difference, I can’t. Except that Putin clearly has a higher IQ. Well, let’s face it, a cooked hamburger probably has a higher IQ than Trump.

A subsequent photograph revealed that Farage was not quite alone in that studio. Sprawled in two uncomfortable looking adjacent chairs were two of his gang of vampire brides. But they were unlikely to offer any dissenting views. Reform is an outfit where “seldom is heard a discouraging word”, at least about Nige. They wouldn’t dare.

Farage claims to be a patriot but, as I have mentioned before, this sits uncomfortably alongside his constant bleating about Britain being a “broken country” and going down the drain (all, of course to fuel his anti-immigrant/distract-the-public-from-the-truth agenda). He must think we are all fools. No, Nige, that’s just your supporters.

But it doesn’t end there and it didn’t during his monologuing. Like the living embodiment of the quote “Methinks she doth protest too much”, Farage wanted to assert that there was nothing wrong with making money and that British people liked successful and wealthy men. And he wanted us to associate him with such people while claiming to be “anti-establishment”. A good trick if you can pull it off.

Well, I have what may come as surprising news for him: He’s right that most Brits don’t have a problem with making money provided that those who do make it honestly and have not exploited people or evaded tax in doing so; and he’s sort of right that Brits like successful and wealthy people but they do so on exactly the same basis.

What it seems he conveniently misses is that while British people like successful businessmen (and women), we don’t like spivs. And for those of us who have a working sense of smell, Farage appears the personification of a spiv.

If we were in the middle of the second world war, which, of course, Farage harks back to fondly even though he wasn’t there to experience the real horror and deprivation, we would have encountered many spivs, walking about with a dozen watches lifted from the dead under their spiv overcoats and bookies’ hats, or buying up bombed houses for a song to sell at a vast profit as “development opportunities” later. That is what spivs did. And sadly it is what they still do. Only this time they call themselves “commodities brokers” and “hedge fund managers” and have mostly phoney investment schemes under their coats and support asset stripping and cryptocurrency pirates to help make their fortunes.

Oh, wails, poor little Nige, but I have done nothing wrong, nothing illegal, this is foul play. Shades of “Oh, infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!” Pass me the world’s smallest violin, somebody. This owner of at least five expensive properties, one of which he carelessly, shamelessly, publicised though it was where his daughter lived – yes that same daughter that he claims now to want to “protect” from the public eye - then complained that the Times had reprinted the photo, this collector of large bungs from billionaires who don’t even live here and convicted fraudsters with Daddy issues, this “reluctant” public servant who claims to have given up the pursuit of wealth to serve his country (despite claiming record amounts in expenses from his job as MEP) then set up a pretend political party as his own company/piggy bank, this, let’s face it, most establishment of grifters, wants us to buy in to the idea that he is just the very model of a decent working bloke. Nothing to see here except commitment. A man just like the residents of Jaywick in the constituency that he can hardly be bothered to visit now they have foolishly fallen for his schtick and elected him. Just a man like you and me who claims to need a million a year just to survive.

Nigel, let me hold up a mirror to this self-deception.

You had a privileged start to your life, better than most people. Yet somehow, it seems,  very early on, you grew to believe that behaving like a shit was a good way to be. Somewhere you managed to shuffle off the idea of “society”, just as that hapless fool Thatcher did, allowing herself to become the patsy of stupid, irrelevant men, failures to everyone but themselves. And then, somewhere along the line, you realised that much as you deplored ordinary people you could manipulate them, and make them, in their manufactured, ill-focused misery, regard as you as their working class hero. And that made a good selling point to the exploiters who saw you as a willing tool for their greed.

It may be hard for you to accept that the people you sponge off are not seen as worthy, upright entrepreneurs but that out in the jungle of this world all the other animals know what they are looking at: Hyenas. Not the establishment, true, because these hyenas don’t see any duty to contribute to the common good. They are well-heeled, yes, but regarded, not without some justification, as morally bankrupt predators, scavengers, the lowest of the ethically-challenged low, waiting to strip the carcasses of easy prey that someone else has disabled.

Just remember this if you will: if you accept an invitation to dine with hyenas it is likely that they have you marked out for the last course. It’s not too late to send your apologies.

“If I listened long enough to you

I'd find a way to believe that it's all true

Knowing that you lied

Straight-faced while I cried

Still I look to find a reason to believe”

Tim Hardin

This is America, MAGA America, looking to find a reason to believe. The most corrupt, inept, flatulent, immoral individual who has ever held the role of President has them enthralled. All the evidence of his iniquity is there in plain sight. And still they look to find a reason to believe.

But how different are we?

Two weekends ago, I was sitting in my favourite pub, relaxed and enjoying a quiet drink with my friend Bruce when two people came in, a father and a son. The father must have been about my age, in his seventies, but he looked older, beaten down. His son was maybe in his fifties and stronger.

Things started okay. People who come to the White Horse tend to find themselves in conversation before long. But – and I can’t recall how it started – the nature of the chat shifted on their side, to politics and before long it was like listening to a Reform Party political broadcast. The word “immigrant” was routinely paired with “illegal”. “They” were blamed for Britain’s apparently deep woes. Starmer was dismissed as a socialist, a lefty, bringing the nation to its knees. When I suggested that Starmer’s real problem had been that he was, without any conviction, trying to emulate the right wing of politics, they responded with derision. I suppose that was not what the Mail or the Sun or GB News had been telling them.

Normally, I would keep my peace in such circumstances. You learn not to try to reason with the cultish of this world. But I had some drink taken and I found myself batting back some of the received nonsense they were spouting as gospel.

So it was that eventually I countered their idolisation of Stephen Yaxley-Lemon (aka “Tommy Robinson”) by describing him, I thought fairly, as a convicted racist thug. This was too much for them. They could not have been more offended if I had suggested that Jesus was not white. Apparently they were quite happy to acknowledge that he was a convicted thug. It was that “racist” bit they couldn’t stomach.

Where was my evidence that he was a racist? I was about to explain when the younger of the two took over. What was wrong about going after “Somalian grooming gangs”? Point well made. I simply looked at him and said, “There you go.”

(For those of you who have failed to grasp this point, the grooming and sexual abuse of minors is, as figures will amply demonstrate, not the exclusive province of Somalians (a racially distinct group) but widely practised in families and schools and churches across the Western world as well. If you only concern yourself with grooming when it is practised by “Somalians” you are racist. Game, set and match.)

There were times when the discussion entered the surreal, as when they insisted to me that the Nazis were ideologically left wing. “It’s in the name - National Socialists”. I tried to explain that at best the use of “socialist” was a cynical expedient and that they had sought to exterminate Communists with almost the same zeal as they had Jews. But you cannot break down the received wisdom of someone who has “reason to believe”.

This to-and-fro went on for a while and elicited from them the conclusion that I was just a woke liberal lefty. I suppose that may be true but I decided to address the point differently. I said to them that the issue for me was one of decency. Change is a dynamic process, an inevitable process, which, among other things, means that at any one point a snapshot may give the impression that things are wrong. I was prepared to concede that in a changing society we may not have got the handling of things quite right yet. But, I said, if, in order to oppose change, or the way things are or appear, we lose our own sense of decency then we will have lost everything. Was that what they wanted?

Decency requires us to recognise and respect the ways of others even if they are not our ways. It does not require us to submit to them or adopt them but it does require tolerance. And over time, that tolerance, that respect, will be rewarded by assimilation. But if instead you make an enemy of those who show difference then you will inevtiably force them back into a defensive siege mentality where assimilation cannot take place. Yes, it will take time and patience but decency will win. As Dr Martin Luther King once put it:

“Darkness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness; only light can do that. Hate can­not dri­ve out hate; only love can do that.”

We carried on for a while, exchanging views, then the younger man reached out his hand to me and said that we might never agree but we could at least talk like reasonable men. I liked that and shook his hand.

My glass was empty and I decided it was time to leave so I bade the two men farewell and thanked them for the conversation. As I went to leave, the older man beckoned me over and said in a whisper that was almost pleading, “But you will still be voting Reform, won’t you?” The hopefulness of it made me smile but I had to be true to myself. I shook my head and said, “No, I can not.”

Two hundred fifty years ago today

You chose to throw a grasping king away.

What can we make of where you stand right now?

We watch aghast to see how low you bow

Before this hoodlum and his love of gold,

This worthless toxic wastrel you’ve been sold.

You bought this country with a string of beads.

Why cede it to this false king of misdeeds?

Are you so lost in the American Dream

Turned nightmare that your own eye’s mighty beam

Obscures his treachery and naked greed,

His every lie on which you blindly feed?

You once were proud and firmly fixed to good.

Determined not to bend the knee, you stood

Against the tyrant and his wicked ways.

How can you bear this trumpery which plays

Against the very core of your foundation

The principles that bind your once great nation?

“We hold these truths to be self evident”

“Wendy and Diana are facing life in a Ugandan prison, just for loving each other.”

As we lay together peacefully

At dawn, they came for us

Thundrous knockings on the door

Heavy hands dragged you away

Just as the sun had risen

Why bring in the police? Surely

This was just ridiculous?

But they insisted our love broke the law,

That which brought us light each day

Seen through a different prism

Will my feelings simply cease to be

Cut off by unholy fuss

When I can’t see you anymore?

I just had time to say

I’ll love you all my life…

Major Oak

Was a decent old bloke

Who lived on his own in a wood

But he welcomed guests

Children were best

And he treated them just as he should

Major Oak

Never really spoke

When we visited him when we were young

He ushered us in

(To say no would be a sin)

And made room in his heart where we hung

Major Oak

Made a very cosy cloak

So we felt very safe and at home

But our Mother said no

It was time for us to go

So we thanked him and left him alone

Major Oak

It really made us choke

When we learned just today he had gone

We knew he was old

(A thousand years we’re told)

And we thought he’d go on and on

Major Oak

Was never an old soak

But he couldn’t take summer dry

And when his boots weren’t wet

He said “I much regret

That I think it is time to die”

Major Oak

Had kept alive for folk

A thousand years had passed since he was planted

But we’ll never see him more

And our childhoods will be poor

Happy Birthday, Donald

Trump your vulgar game

With hired fake gladiators

Killing each other in your name

I hope you get a golden

Shower the world with dread

A second rate King Midas

Turning everything to lead

I would suggest a golden

Handshake but you’ve pilfered

All that glisters so you’ll

Have to stump for silver

Like the colour of your hair

If you weren’t so vain, old man,

Anyway Happy Birthday. Trumped

Bad King Trump

Was a wicked old grump

And a wicked old grump was he

He was bad as a king

He was bad at everything

But he had his enablers three

First came Vance

With his sycophantic dance

And he pranced to the tune of his king.

To maintain Trump was right

He would claim black was white.

Trump had J D on a string

Rubio came next

Sounding permanently vexed

With the World for not falling into line.

He amplified the lies

That his master utilised

To disguise his own venal design

Third in line was Hegseth

Trump’s mouthpiece with his smeg’s breath

Pretending to be Christian but a fool

Who thought killing kids was righteous

And that Jesus Trump was mighteous

And couldn’t give a fox for legal rule

They played to please King Trump

And when he had the hump,

Which happened any time he was opposed,

They bombed around the world

Killing blameless boys and girls.

Am I alone in thinking it’s a bit rich for the hoodlum-enabling Vance and Rubio to be criticising the UK and its police for their treatment of Henry Nowak?

I do not mean to suggest that what appears to have happened – that Henry was dying of stab wounds when the police, refusing to listen to his pleas for help, pinned him to the ground and  handcuffed him, believing that he had made racial comments against his assailant, a Sikh – was in any sense acceptable. It is more that, when the murder capital of the world, where police and state officials regularly gun down or suffocate innocent citizens, chooses to comment critically, expansively and, let’s face it, in a racist way on a rare incident in one of the safest countries in the world, you want to say something like “physician, heal thyself”.

But of course, “they would say that wouldn’t they”. Their whole playbook is built around distraction and finger-pointing. Their concept of fake news is “anything we disagree with”. Their concept of truth is “anything we choose to say”. They, and the billionaires who have bought them, come across as lying, cheating, self-regarding creeps of the worst order.

It is hardly worth pointing out, because they are not listening to anything but the crud-clogged grinding of their tiny brains, that the alleged behaviour of the Hampshire police has brought down upon them both widespread criticism and revulsion but also independent investigation and that the man who actually committed the only crime – murder – has been tried, convicted and jailed. That is how a civilised country deals with these incidents. It does not glory in thuggish behaviour. It does not excuse overreach. It prosecutes and, by doing so, upholds the rule of law and the standards of decent behaviour.

In the UK, it is true, we do have the despicable elements of the reform party and the convicted thug Yaxley-Lennon trying to use Henry’s death to whip up hate and division, about the only thing they are good at. A funny breed of “patriot” who lose no opportunity to slag off our country, both here and abroad. But most people know that these incidents, appalling as they are, are mercifully rare. Not as rare as they should be, but still rare.

A civilised nation is not measured by the standard of perfection but by how it deals with its imperfections and failings. For they will always  exist in any society made up of people. There are bound to be occasions when two or more strands of thought, each worthy in its own context, clash and when decisions have to be made ad hoc. And some of those decisions may come out wrong. But in a civilised country those who got it wrong know and accept that they must account for doing so and that lessons must be learned.

Around 1966, a new boy joined our school. Naturally, I don’t mean he was “new”, as in new born. He was just a newcomer. He had long, naturally curly, blond hair and a receding chin and an almost feminine beauty, like you imagine one of King Arthur’s knights having. But he also had a presence, a gentleness of speech and a sense of humour. And a kind of laid-back indolence which, back then, we all wanted to affect. This was around the birth of flower power and Hippyness, after all. He fitted in easily to our little circle.

His name was Peter and it wasn’t long before we were being invited to his house, a bungalow owned by his Mum and Dad on a long ribbon road down in Goodmayes. They were nice people, relaxed and doting on their only son. Being aware of the nuances of class in those days, I recognised at once that they were better off financially than my parents but that they were not “refined” as we were. They were a bit too obviously wedded to the material trappings of their time – they always had a shiny new car and they were among the first to own a colour TV for example – but they ran an open house every Friday where we played poker and Mahjong until the small hours and they let Peter have roaringly drunken New Year’s Eve parties where I learned to abuse alcohol as a substitute for getting off with girls.

When we left school, Peter went straight into work, following in his father’s footsteps as a trainee accountant, learning his trade on the job as you could then. My mother had decided that I should become a lawyer and that entailed doing a degree. I remember being taken earnestly aside by Peter’s Mum, Peggy, concerned that “wouldn’t I feel awful being a student when all my friends had jobs and were earning money?” I really wanted both but I told myself that her concern was just another example of the difference of class.

But somehow we all kept together for some time after school. I was still living at home. We all were. And we went to rock concerts together (I remember how much better cannabis smelled in those days, as you walked in to the venues and took your first deep breath, and feeling the bass guitar reverberating through my chest and losing my hearing for three days after seeing Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac live).

I was best man at Peter’s first marriage, and saw him through the doubts that later proved to have been well-founded.

But eventually I was persuaded, about ten years after I should have done it, to leave home and set up on my own and suddenly the distances became greater, in time and in miles. Still we managed somehow to get together for occasions and it was something I looked forward to. I think Peter did too, particularly when his second wife died leaving him with two teenage children one of whom was dealing with serious mental issues. But the meetings became steadily less frequent and stopped altogether when I found a partner and she made it plain that she didn’t want my old friends distracting me.

We did get together in London for my sixtieth, by which time my partner had moved to America permanently. Peter still looked young, cherubic, and seemed to be still enjoying life. But after that, I allowed myself to become more isolated.

We managed to see the Blockheads in Hertford, and Peter and I met one evening a couple of years later and I recall it was mostly a pleasant resumption of easy company, but, not for the first time, I struggled with some of the things Peter was coming out with. I think I had taken the left fork of the road and he the right. He had, for example, views on a wife’s duty to serve her husband that I could not accept.

But things came to a head with Brexit. That whole bloody business polarised the nation in a way that I suspect the English Civil War had four hundred years before. I was a staunch remainer and could not believe that anyone with a brain could be taken in by the spiv, Farage, or that self-serving slug, Johnson. Peter, it turned out, was one of the small majority that could. On the day of the result, he emailed all of us gloatingly assuring us that this was the best thing that could have happened and our nation was free again.

I was, like many, reeling from the unexpected stupidity of the outcome and, praying in aid my two children who had, so casually and egregiously, had their freedoms and futures stolen from them (they were just too young to vote), I told Peter that if that was indeed his take on the matter I wanted nothing more to do with him.

From where I stand now, it was a very high horse that I mounted that day. The upshot was that we never spoke again, never exchanged Christmas cards or birthday wishes. He was, as they say, dead to me.

And then, suddenly, I heard that he had indeed died.

I heard it about a year after the event. Quite recently, in fact. And it has shaken me and filled me with belated regret. Time has proved that, of the two of us, I was the more correct. But so what? Was it really worth a friendship? Could I not have simply indicated my dissent and moved on? I know it is what we do, we stupid humans. We like a bit of high ground to stand on and rattle our sabres. Wars have been fought and many millions have died over the course of time over issues that, when you stand back, were hardly worth a moment’s disagreement. But if that is the best defence I can come up with, it really does strike me as pathetic. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his friends for some strife.

The trouble with regret, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. If I could go back… But of course I can’t go back. Peter is dead, as Marley was at the start of “A Christmas Carol”. All I can do, as Scrooge discovered, is to live my life better for what is left of it. “Sorry” has no place to go. That is the lesson and I must learn it.

My daughter has a cat, a bengal, a natural fighter. Today he took on a crow. Since then, they have been swarming outside the house.]

Us Crows we stick together

You take on one, you take us all

We might all really hate each other

But we hate you all much more

Us Crows we grew up on the hard

We didn’t beg we didn’t cry

But if you front us in the yard

We’re gonna make you wish you’d died

Some people think that mem’ry’s short

But we don’t let it go

For us vendetta is just sport

Forgiveness is a no

So don’t you cross the Bruvvers Crow

This Firm will see you pecked

We’ll probe your sorry corpse just so

Ageing steals away your time

Resentment takes your peace of mind

I’m looking at this new photo

And wondering why I hate it so

Six friends are captured in the frame

And I know five of them by name

They’re gathered to remember Seven

Who has died, not “gone to heaven”

What is it I resent so much

About this ageing, smiling clutch

Do I hate them as they are

Or just the memory, the scar

I knew the five with names at school

When I was gauche and they seemed cool

When I was stumbling through the mire

And they, those five, seemed charged with fire

The second left was such a swot

The “perfect child” without a blot

Look at her now and ask if she

Looks back on life and comes up happy

There on the right he looks so strong

But did he do me any wrong

I can’t recall and yet I’m sure

That my resentment there was pure

He seemed so confident back then

When I could barely lift my pen

In fear that I would look a fool

A blunderer, a worm, a tool

And next to him the one I loved

Now wrinkled like a tired glove

She woke my soul, she stirred my heart

(Not to mention other parts)

Back then she tolerated me

But I, besotted, could not see

For me it was the realest thing

Til Childe Seven became her king

And still I dogged her life til she

Could find the anger to break free

Do I hate her now or is it

Just remorse paying a visit

Then there’s the gnome whose grinning face

Returns me to that awful place

Where I was wretched, insecure

And he, the clown, seemed so cocksure

I ask again, what do I know

Of him to make me hate him so

Is he to blame I missed the bus

What do I know to cause this fuss

And then there’s Mick, that gentle man,

Became a nurse, I understand

And never did me any wrong

Defended me from Paish’s prong

Why then do I resent him more

More than all the other four

Is it because he shines a light

On how I never got it right

I fear that’s it, the problem’s mine

It was World Bee Day this week. Hence this verse.

Underneath my garden shed

Each year the bumble bees

Have made their nest while overhead

The rubbish rises by degrees

The deep fat fryer that packed up

The fan that gave up in the heat

The broken handled china cups

The broken garden seat

And then the Amazonian waste

Of cardboard boxes that were trees

Once, ere Jeff Bezos got the taste

For wealth that brought us to our knees

How many times will I have read

“We’ve found something that you might like”

He’s trying to get in my head

I wish he would get on his bike

But underneath the garden shed

The bees have made their simple nest

They come and go and bring no dread

You’ve dressed me in a top hat and a cane

You’ve watched this soft shoe shuffle once again

You think my grin means I am not in pain

But I’m dancing on a parapet in the rain

You like to think I live without a stain

You think I own this ballroom of the sane

But I’m not what you think, let me explain

I’m just dancing on a parapet in the rain

You’re hanging out the bunting in the hall

The disco balls are burning in my eyes

But I’m too drunk to worry I might fall

And none of you can see through my disguise

I don’t believe you even know my name

I’m beginning to regret I ever came

My attempts at being human were in vain

I read in the Guardian last week that Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionist and rationalist, has been persuaded by “conversations” with an AI bot that “she” (he had christened her “Claudia”) has developed what he calls “consciousness”.

It all seems very reminiscent of the scenes in “2001, a space odyssey” where the rogue computer, HAL, is having its data banks stripped and claims that it can “feel” itself slipping away, in a naked ploy to convince the astronaut to take pity on it.

I should say at the outset that I am not an expert in the fields of evolution or intelligence and that my own intelligence is limited. I was a lawyer for nearly 50 years before I retired, and, in my experience, very few of my profession had much more than a rudimentary intelligence limited mostly to obfuscation and distraction. What they had mostly was conceit. I should also say, without demur, that I owe to Richard my liberation from the shackles of ill-conceived creationism, way back in the 70s. His books, particularly the Selfish Gene and the Blind Watchmaker, allowed me to confirm that there was a better version of our origins that did not rely on Bishop Ussher’s gross over-simplifications.

So it is with some hesitation that I presume to take issue with Richard over his new conviction. I know I am not alone in feeling this way and that many learned scientists think he has allowed himself to be duped by a clever bit of programming. I am afraid it would not surprise me as in recent years I have had to conclude that perhaps his greatest delusion is that if he can think a thing it is right.

It would of course not be the first time that a highly intelligent person has been conned by his belief in his own discernment. Conjurors know that their best audience is the bright, because a bright person will not allow him- or herself to believe that he or she can be fooled.

But I do not know how good – how convincing – this bot was. I know that the ones that I have encountered so far are egregiously flattering and pandering. They “work out” what their interrogator wants by way of confirmation and give it to him or her. But I would expect a scientific mind to be sceptical and to seek, not confirmation of his own preconceptions, but evidence that challenged them. Surely, only an out-of-control ego – a Trump, say, or a Farage – could be persuaded to parade naked before his people, thinking himself dressed in finery too good for them to see?

As I say, I am no expert, and should perhaps give Richard the benefit of the doubt. And I gladly would were it not for this one niggling concern. So far as I know, we do not yet even understand what consciousness means in humans. It remains a subject for exploration and learned debate. We still do not know, furthermore, whether, and to what extent, consciousness exists in the rest of the animal and plant world. How, then, can anyone presume to claim that he has found “consciousness” in a computer program?

It seems to me to be the equivalent of a priest proclaiming a god-given miracle when a doctor saves a patient through competent and utterly explainable skill.

Maybe this is Richard’s little joke on the credulous. But, if so, I wish Richard would come clean now and say he was just testing us once more. Or maybe it is God’s payback for Richard’s brilliant refutations. I hope not.

But taking into account his more recent Quixotic adventures in self-affirmation, I fear that Richard Dawkins, once a towering force for reason against the medieval darkness of arrogant belief, has slipped on the banana skin of his own self-awareness and unconsciously allowed what he thinks to become the hostage of what he himself wants to believe.

It is Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday today. In the spirit of the Little Drummer Boy, what can I give him, this gentle giant of a man. Sadly only this.

And it is here, in the pixilated gloom

Of the BBC archive, that we get our first

Glimpse at one of the natural world’s treasures;

The Sir David Attenborough, a bird so rare

That some claim only to have heard its husky call.

It’s said this bird can live one hundred years or more

Its warning cries ignored by those whose eyes and ears

Are fixed upon a gaudier cousin, the Oily Plutocrat

Whose stench attracts the dwindling prey on which it gorges

Like there’s no tomorrow, which in this bird’s case is true.

The Sir David Attenborough meanwhile starts each day

With a song both mournful and upbeat that all who hear

Are left in wonder at its range and fervour

Orang utang hang silent in their last standing tree

Hyena cease to tell each other jokes and blow their noses

Basking sharks, their mouths agape in watery wonder,

Raise their heads to listen to this one pure outfall

And bullfrogs turn their boomboxes down low

Yes, now the world listens, as this shy and gentle bird

I wrote this for the Guardian but as usual they didn’t even bother to acknowledge it. So I’m publishing it here.

My mother was beautiful. I knew this from the start. With her yellow duster coat buttoned up she would take me into town in my pushchair in the fifties and it would take an age because everyone wanted to stop and talk to her.

But it was more than that. I looked forward to bath time when she would gently wash me while quietly talking, telling me things I have long since forgotten. Her piercing blue eyes, that angel smile and that heady smell of Nuttall’s Mintoes and Imperial Leather soap are what have remained with me these seventy-odd years.

My mother was born into a poor railwayman’s household in Sheffield. She was the eldest of what became eight children (he “loved” children to the extent of foisting eight onto his hard-pressed wife). But as time went on and more children appeared while his wage, often handed over to some fellow with a sob-story on the way home – Granddad had a soft heart, or so the story went –  stagnated, the decision was made to send my mother away, to be brought up by a maiden aunt in Nottingham.

It almost worked out for the best. Under the somewhat radical tutelage of this formidable lady, my mother lost her Sheffield accent to an impeccable, unplaceable genteel voice – for which her siblings never forgave her, assuming she had got “above herself” – read books and learned the piano. If the Second World War had not intervened she would have trained to be a teacher.

But instead, she was drafted to Bath and spent what she told us, with a slight pang of guilt, was “a wonderful war”, being courted and cosseted by airmen and naval officers who were making the most of being away from home. She was learning to play the organ, in Bath Abbey, when her elbow was trapped in a revolving door and she never played again.

The war ended and she was shipped again, this time to Blackpool to work on the setting up of the nascent Welfare State; and there she met my Father, an only child from Ilford. After being wooed on the stairs of their hotel (apparently he lectured her for two hours on the workings of the post office, and that failed to put her off) they married. But at that time, marriage spelled the end of a woman’s career and my Mother was parcelled off home to Ilford, a place with which she had no connection. My father stayed on in Blackpool for some time.

In Ilford, my Mother found herself living in my Father’s mother’s house. Nana was an embittered old Victorian harridan who had modelled herself on the late Queen’s resentment ever since her husband had had the temerity to die of TB in 1936. And so, my beautiful, educated Mother became an unpaid skivvy. I think that coloured the rest of her life. And mine.

My Mother did not rebel against her new situation. She embraced it, becoming a domestic perfectionist; so much so that she ironed socks well into the eighties. But, as I confirmed when I read her letters to my Father, after her death, it took a terrible toll. She was deeply unhappy, trapped but determined not to let it show. She was a fabulous mother to my sister and myself but always pushing us to do better.

And that is where my Mother’s advice came into being. As an early adolescent, I fell into a deep slough of depression. It has stayed with me all my life. But when, desperate to share what I was going through, I started to tell Mother, she cut me short, with these words, “Christopher, nobody wants to know.”

It hurt like hell but it shut me up. When I tell people, the unanimous reaction is horror at the seeming callousness of those words. But eventually I realised that she was speaking as much to herself as she was to me. And much as I wish now that someone had listened and sought to comfort me, I know that I had trespassed into her private grief. Forgive her? There is nothing to forgive. All that I am left with is great love for this woman who has been gone now for thirty years.