Walk the talk - faith into action

This was the title of a stimulating presentation by Mary Colwell today, at a morning gathering of the Clifton Diocese Justice and Peace Commission in Bristol. The aim was to highlight projects from all corners of the Diocese, but sadly only a handful of those "corners" were represented. Mary's keynote address deserved a larger audience: I'm going to try to get her to repeat it in Cheltenham early in the New Year.

Others too spoke with conviction, including Catherine (photographed here) on the IF Campaign. And I was impressed by Dr. Séverine Deneulin of Bath University, whose presence brought down the average age.

On the first break out, I found myself talking earnestly to my contemporary Peter Downey, whom I'd last seen 57 years ago at All Hallows.

Last night on Any Questions, Jonathon Porritt delighted me with an encomium for Pope Francis. I sent him congratulations. "Even as I was thinking about that," he replied, "I was wondering whether you would be listening! Makes up for all those cynical comments over so many years - and I have been seriously impressed by the way he's completely reinterpreting what leadership looks like for the church."

Umbrella post

"Climate change and the art of memory" was an opaque title for what turned out to be the stimulating event I attended last evening, at the Literature Festival.

There was more about memory than art though. Mike Hulme - founder of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research - spoke of us being inducted into the weather from an early age. "Who doesn't remember what it was like on their wedding day?" Weather provides the bookends round which we can safely navigate the rest of our lives, he said: an envelope of stability. So, how might we find a way to embrace weather weirding and the jumbling of seasons?

Greg Garrard, eco-critic, asked how we can widen the discussion of climate change from just the scientific. Shouldn't we be talking about human racism, he asked: the assumption that our future matters above all else. Climate change "dramatically impacts upon our culture." He offered the ambiguous role of children: we are saving the planet for them, yet we might be better off not having any. And ignoring the importance of biodiversity will lead our grandchildren into an age of loneliness. The challenge is so enormous, yet there seems so little each of us can do: the challenge is so urgent, yet the effects of climate change will only be felt over the long term. The huge number of people on Earth "dilutes our agency", and by flying everywhere we treat the world's oceans as if they were so many puddles.

I am not familiar with the work of Maggie Gee, the only "artist" who spoke. Her novels, she told us, are about threatened nature. More people read them, possibly, than the IPCC Report, which - though vital - doesn't begin to engage with our human experience. Perhaps, I reflected, there is a parallel with Richard III. Historians are only now beginning to retrieve his reputation, over which so much water (or worse) was poured by Shakespeare. And maybe Jonathon Porritt is onto something with his new fictional autobiography, now out.

For supper afterwards, Caroline had cooked the mushrooms I picked on the walk earlier, St George's and Chanterelle. I photographed - but didn't pick - these huge ones: they looked iffy. But when I looked them up, I see they were edible - Parasols.

"The world we made"

Jonathon Porritt's new book envisions the world as it will be 37 years hence, in 2050. It's a fictional memoir, looking back to yesterday, today and the intervening years, and postulating that we have responded to all the warnings that he amongst others have issued to date: that unless we alter course sharply, our world then will not be a pleasant place into which to be born.

It is getting on for 37 years ago that I first met Jonathon, in the heady, fairly early days of the Ecology Party: with the eloquence and passion he showed at Party gatherings, he stood out from the pack. I admired, not least, the way he used his experience as a comprehensive school teacher for tackling conference hecklers; but more significantly he was amongst the first to join me and others in recognising that God and his creation were the elephant in the room. As a result, we went on to establish what is now Christian Ecology Link. (I took this photograph of him at our annual conference last year, where he was a keynote speaker.)

Nobody has worked more unrelentingly for the green cause. Not that we have always seen eye to eye. In sending me my copy of The world we made Jonathon expressed the hope that what he has written about population "won't be too infuriating." "Hostile to addressing population issues," the book says, "was a great army of environmentalists and left-wing politicians in Western countries," arguing "that the real issues were poverty, injustice and over-consumption in the West." Mea culpa. The book goes on, "This kind of approach was not just stupid, but cruel." As Jonathon envisages in his inscription, my question remains, does the end then justify the means?

Various turns in Jonathon's career have been marked by his publishing a new book, but none will - I guess - have brought great riches through royalties. The world we made may just be different. "For me," Jonathon says in his postscript, "writing this book has been a big deal." And indeed an immense amount of research and imagination has gone into it. As you expect from a Phaidon publication, it is beautifully produced and presented. Comprehensive, authoritative, easy to read, and aimed at an international non-specialist market, I foresee it selling well. The question here is, will it release the energies in its readers that are needed to produce the change it predicates? And as a supplementary, how much flying will the author have to do to promote those sales?

Competition

We picnicked at Guiting Power on Friday night, before the opening concert of its annual music festival: not exactly Glyndebourne-come-to-Gloucestershire, but pretty perfect on a sunlit evening. On previous occasions we have used the one and only table, stationed by the swings, but this year it had been spirited away - I spotted it, across by the Hall: though we were there early, I felt that its removal might not go unremarked. Anyway the rug was all that was really needed.

Probyn Miers, Chairman of the Festival committee, thanked the audience for turning out despite the "competition" elsewhere. But was this really necessary, given the quality of what was respectively on offer - at Guiting and in the Olympic stadium?

In the intimate surroundings of Guiting Village Hall, Joanna MacGregor gave us characterful takes on two contrasting Beethoven sonatas - the Pastorale and Waldstein; and then joined with the Heath Quartet for the always thrilling Shostakovich piano quintet. High definition performances. In Stratford East - we caught up with the ceremony on the iPlayer this afternoon - Danny Boyle laid on his spectacularly quirky melange of Britishness to precede the athletes' parade etc. - an incredibly-long drawn out affair, which must have exhausted everyone in the arena, participators and spectators alike. It was certainly amusing in parts, but it tired me out, watching it even with the benefit of the fast forward facility.

At the back of my mind was the ever-resent [I'm leaving this typo: too good to change] thought: this ceremony has set us back £27m. Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the London 2012 Sustainability Ambassadors, happened to be dining here last night: he was at pains to set the minds of those of us present at rest about the Games' overall... sustainability - given that we accept the Olympics are a good thing in principle.

The Romans were appeased by panem et circenses, bread and circuses: for us it's circuses, sponsored by McDonalds. Those without bread will have to await David Cameron's Hunger Summit.

Egg box on wheels

Robert Llewellyn used my post title to describe the Renault Twizy in which he drove to Cheltenham today, to speak at our Science Festival. His was one of the three "environment" events I sat through, my enjoyment decreasing as the day wore on.

Taking wind power as a subject for debate, the day began really well. The "motion", that this house believes that Britain should be a fan of wind energy, was proposed by Andrew Garrad, supported by Jonathon Porritt: it was opposed by blogger Ben Pile, aided capably by John Constable. The audience's view (two-thirds in favour) was monitored both at the outset and at the conclusion: only a couple of minds were changed, but the debate's chair, science journalist Vivienne Parry, conducted proceedings very fairly and with some degree of flair - going amongst the audience, for instance, to elicit questions created a much more level playing field between us and them on stage.

The dialogue was typified by Ben Pile's "complaint", that policy makers seem to think it's their responsibility to get us to change our behaviour. To which all we (in the majority) would reply, "I wish!"

Compared to that for the debate, the audience for Roger Kemp and Robert Llewellyn's talk, "Can we keep warm and still save the world?" was made up of the converted. No tricky questions there. But two amiable speakers, with good wit (Robert) and slides (Roger). Their joint conclusion, that a socialist-type solution is needed (e.g. to convert us to using combined heat and power) felt surprisingly acceptable in Cheltenham.

This evening, we turned out to sit for a further hour in one of the many excruciatingly uncomfortable tents that have taken over Imperial Gardens. (Not only are the rows of seating far too close together, but the temperature control leaves much to be desired - and why turn the lights down so low that it's impossible to take notes?) This final event of the day was possibly the most bizarre ever to have taken place in this Festival. (Interviewer Jonathon Porritt confirmed as much to us over a much-needed whisky afterwards.) The meat of it? Well, several hundreds of us sat there while "charismatic fashion designer and businesswoman" Vivienne Westwood demonstrated, by what she did NOT say, how vital it is to walk the talk. She praised Jonathon for his credibility: there was alas no way he could return the compliment.

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin"?

We spent the best part of today in the Old School Rooms, Stoke Gifford, hard by Bristol Parkway station, at the Christian Ecology Link annual conference. Wouldn't we have been better off "on our allotment"? Jonathon Porritt - our keynote speaker - postulated the possibility, only to reject it. After "a hundred years of suicidal growth", it is still possible to transform our (dire) situation, he said, but we need to strain each sinew to do so - and call in aid every spiritual resource: that's what justified congregating in a stuffy hall on a sunny Spring morning - and joining a peaceful protest at Hinckley Point ("No more Fukushimas!"): Jonathon was off there after his speech.

"But how can you work with a monolith like Unilever?" he's asked. "Well, I can imagine a sustainable world with no Magnum ice creams, but not one without Marmite."

Three decades or so ago, at one of the still nascent Ecology Party half-yearly conferences, a small group of Christians met to form a pool of holiness within the warring world of Green politics. And here some of us still were, seeking mutual encouragement within that same pool, Christian Ecology Link.

Today, we were marshalled, facilitated and inspired by Barbara Echlin, Ellen Teague and poet Clare Best. And - Jonathon apart - a further seven men (!) came forward to offer that encouragement.

Tim Gorringe proclaimed the whole of reality as God's, not "capital" for accrual, but gift for our nurture and for use for others' sake. Adopting an altogether lower tone, Chris Sunderland spoke of the need for inner transformation for our generation, which lived in the shallows and marketed the mind, having turned its soul into a desert - rather than a fertile land for spiritual growth.

Jeremy Williams invited us to share his quest for a simpler, more sustainable life, by detoxing from consumerism. The excellent presentation by Mark Letcher showed how we might reframe our specific concerns about climate change, so as to persuade a broader cross-section to take it seriously, while a more general political engagement was urged upon us by Jonathan Essex, a Green Party local councillor: he took me back to the early days when we were all paid up members of the Ecology Party.

The gentle, prophetic voice of Ed Echlin was heard advocating organic food production, and sparking a wide-ranging discussion amongst both young and old. Finally, CEL Chair Paul Bodenham steered us towards the darker form of hope - based not on bright, shiny technology, but upon God's sustaining power within us, drawing us into conversion: sharing that hope, we become evangelists.

"All of us find our communities where we can," Jonathon Porritt reflected: CEL brings people together from a diversity of local and national communities - a unique network, and repository of goodness.

"The Great Food Debate"

We were kindly invited to this Cheltenham Literature Festival event by its sponsors, the SKGR Project; so it ill behoves me to speak ill of it. However, I'm bound to say I found the short hour all rather disappointing. Too many hares were set up and left unchased.

Jonathon Porritt was in the chair, the others on the stage being journalist/food writer Felicity Lawrence and Colin Tudge, promoter of the Campaign for Real Farming, originally a biologist. My frustration stemmed from the lack of any proper debate upon the platform; and from Jonathon's failure to pin the others down in answer to some quite sensible questions, including a couple from pupils of Cheltenham Ladies' College: it didn't help that in his usual way he took three questions at a time. So, we heard no argument as to how prices would remain stable following a transition to a more extensive (and organic) agriculture; and little response to a question about the effect of climate change on food supplies.

Afterwards, I overheard Jonathon saying that he had to put a zip on his mouth; but - I wanted to ask - for heaven's sake, why?

Population matters

In the evening yesterday, Caroline and I biked down to a meeting in our Town Hall put on by the NGO Population Matters: its Chairman, Roger Martin was on the platform with Jonathon Porritt, whom he introduced as "Britain's leading campaigner on behalf of future generations". Jonathon (speaking of himself as a sustainability activist) boasted that he'd been described by Ann Widdicombe as "completely bonkers" for suggesting that the time would come when having more than two children might be regarded as irresponsible.

He quoted the 2009 report by Murtaugh and Schlax of Oregon State University, looking at the relative benefit of decisions which have an impact on one's carbon footprint. Based on then current figures, doing an aggregate of "good" things like driving a fuel-efficient car, introducing energy-saving measures at home etc. might save one individual a maximum of 500 tonnes of CO2 in a lifetime. Deciding not to have another child, however, would save nearly 9,500 tonnes - six times the average US citizen's lifetime CO2 use.

It was our wedding anniversary: this is one of the few images we had of us on that sunny day 36 years ago - there were no group photographs. Since then we have acquired four children and three grandchildren...

"A sustainable world: reasons to be hopeful"

Jonathon Porritt spoke to a full house at our local Friends' Meeting House last evening on this, at first sight surprising, theme. (I had organised the event on behalf of Christian Ecology Link, of which Jonathon has for long been a Patron.) It was appropriate for "hope" to be the watchword at a Christian gathering, though "optimism" was how Jonathon more often referred to it - something rather different.

He spoke powerfully, and with his customary fluency - who answers questions more generously? - about the uniqueness of human knowledge; about the benefits that he perceives will come from technology, and about the new mandate existing in civil society worldwide, to create wealth with lower impact. And he suggested that, so far from being wired for agression, we might indeed be wired for empathy, his "hopeful" conclusion being that "the sheer urgency of the crisis will bring us together!"

But we need to call upon our spiritual resources, and - crucially - at present, social justice is not there in the churches' practice, even if it is in the teaching.

Jonathon Porritt

The programme for the Cheltenham Science Festival came today. Unfortunately, we are going to miss it all this year, as we shall be in Portugal meeting up with Thomas. A pity, because it is full of good things, including a talk by Festival regular Jonathon Porritt on "The Limits of our Planet". One of Jonathon's earlier appearances was at our Festival of Literature in 1993, when Canadian poet Heather Spears - self-appointed artist in residence that year - sketched him.

I have dug out the sketch to publicise a talk Jonathon is giving on 25th May here in Cheltenham entitled, "A sustainable world: reasons to be hopeful". (7.30 at Friends' Meeting House, Cheltenham, GL52 2NP - admission £3: prior booking needed.) This is under the auspices of Christian Ecology Link, of which he has for long been one of the Patrons.

Did anyone hear him on Any Questions? today: excellent.

David Fleming RIP

This afternoon, I was looking at this amongst other photographs I had taken during 2010, to select some for our usual kitchen calendar. As I did so, I thought to myself how short life is for some people - and that perhaps indeed it would be so for David. I can't imagine what gave me this idea, as that Michaelmas Day in Cornwall when I took this, just two months ago, he was in prime form - as cadaverous as ever, but enjoying a healthy if quirky diet, and no more stressed than usual about what might become his very own Casaubon delusion.

An hour later came the shocking news that David had indeed died at the weekend. What a friend we have all lost! Others have written more knowledgeably than could I about his originality of thought. You could see him as a curmudgeon if you opposed the invasion of Iraq; or the mad professor if you looked for a practical, straightforward answer to a question. He regularly won the family's competition for most unusual Christmas card. Sir Andrew Aguecheek sprang occasionally to mind, though David was nobody's fool - and never had money enough to match his generosity of spirit. Such a mixture of the extremes of conservatism and radicalism puzzled many, but beguiled our children, who will be heart-broken. And what other economic dictionary offers a definition of "quick" in the biblical sense?

The Iraq conflict re-erupted over supper in our kitchen on 8th October 2005 - between David and his good friend Jonathon Porritt. This photograph was taken a few glasses of wine later.

"Bad habits die hard"

Yesterday marked the start of this year's Cheltenham Science Festival, which seems to attract bigger audiences year by year: certainly, if the crowd at the event with this title last evening is anything to go by. Jonathon Porritt was talking to psychologist Stuart Derbyshire, of Birmingham University's School of Psychology, and the ESRC's Dale Southerton about why we find it difficult to change our behaviour.

Dale preferred to consider habits, not as addictions we needed to kick, but as essential matters of routine. They are shaped by our daily context. So, the development of deep freezes – which has happened at a rate "faster than that of the internet" – gets us into a dependency on out of town supermarkets: we have become locked into the freezer habit. And power showers lock us into more water use, as few of us use them solely as an alternative to the bath. Our need is to design habits that are more sustainable: what about Tesco's turning into a food delivery service only, and converting their stores into laundrettes? Tesco vans could then return full of our dirty washing when they have delivered the groceries, and millions of home washing machines would never need replacing.

Stuart, however, generally took quite a contrary tack – possibly for the sake of argument, but I rather doubt it. "I refuse to wash my yoghurt pots," he boasted. Che sarà, sarà. But that drip in the background didn't turn into a cataclysm, at least while this hour lasted.

"Cheltenham under attack"

Jonathon Porritt was busy defending Cheltenham from the big planners last night - those wanting to bring on the Regional Spatial Strategy and dump unsustainable quantities of new housing onto the town in what they term "Sustainable urban extensions".

He was on good form. The numbers had emerged after "multiple meddling" by Government at every stage of the RSS development process. The challenge, he said, with any new housing development was to achieve a genuine "sustainability", such that, "as you uttered the word, you didn't trip up over your own despicable hypocrisy." What chance was there, at this point in time, that Government was going to provide the infrastructure needed for any substantial new housing development?

Senior politicians, he observed, have no difficulty these days in talking about climate change, and "even possibly with some sincerity," but they exhibit deep discomfort about going over to a truly sustainable low growth economy.

Last night, despite the thaw, Jonathon wasn't looking quite as summery as in this photograph - taken at last June's Cheltenham Science Festival.

Two Cheltenham festivals

This weekend, the high-profile Cheltenham Science Festival draws to a close, and the 2009 Cheltenham Art Festival & Open Studios - a Cinderella in comparison - sparks into life. Yesterday, local MP Martin Horwood (pictured here) nailed his colours to the mast at the Science Festival, in introducing Jonathon Porritt to speak on "The Green Resurgent."

We need a dramatically accelerated change in our lives, Jonathon said in the course of a punchy presentation; that's pretty blindingly bloody obvious. He reported that one of the Nobel prizewinning scientists, who assembled in Britain recently, said 50% of the world's energy needs could come from renewable sources within 10 years if we we were to move onto a war footing: by this, he seemed excited. He also spoke of the Labour Government of the past 12 years as illiberal and authoritarian: this, by contrast, kept him awake at nights. It rather appears that all depends on who the dictator is.

Today, Ann Sohn-Rethel and I opened our joint exhibition of pottery and photography as part of the biennal Cheltenham Art Festival. A respectable number trickled into the house to have a look during the day: one couple were refugees from a rained off bowls match, so perhaps the dismal weather helped. Takings were up on two years ago, when we also combined, but numbers were slightly down.

Cheltenham's new Mayor, Lloyd Surgenor (pictured here with his wife Ann) was able to put in an appearance, amidst a host of other engagements. Sadly it seems that the elegant chain of office was too valuable for him to risk wearing it for a visit to our house. A keen racing fan, he went away having bought a photograph of Kauto Star. The nice bit about being Mayor, he said, was having to do all those things you always wanted to do but could never quite fit in.

Ours is just one of 72 venues, open till 14th June: the Festival website has all the details.

Is the Pope green?

Leo Hickman raised this question last weekend, in the Guardian. It followed Pope Benedict's words in Australia: gazing out of the window on his flight there, he had, he said, been filled with introspection about the plight of the environment.

Benedict is getting something of a reputation as a green Pope. Solar panels have appeared on Vatican buildings, and the Apostolic Penitentiary numbers ecological offences amongst new forms of social sin.

Moreover, Vatican City boasts it is the only sovereign state to have zero carbon dioxide emissions - thanks to the Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary. But, as a theologian from Louvain University points out, where is the justice in this "indulgence-type" method of offsetting one's carbon footprint?

As expected, Hickman's crunch point is to home in on the population consequences of the Church's opposition to contraception - much the same as I reported Jonathon Porritt had concluded in a blog I posted last month.

The Vatican hosts, amongst very many other organisations, a Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerants, headed up by a Cardinal. Travel lightly, it urges: use public transport, carry less luggage and do everything you can to make your holiday environmentally friendly. But what about Vatican Airlines, launched last year to ferry pilgroms back and forth to the world's shrines? Given that a pilgrimage is a metaphor for life's journey, shouldn't we be thinking more in terms of making virtual pilgrimage these days?

Those who may have been gazing down from the two planes in my photograph could also have been "filled with introspection," but it is only we who gaze upwards that see the damaging vapour trails.

Sustainable world?

Besides the sessions on photography and population, mentioned in preceding posts, we attended a number of other Cheltenham Science Festival events - and my back has yet to recover from those agonizing chairs. By the time Stephen Pinker and Anthony Grayling embarked on a discussion of what language reveals about ourselves, I had had enough. On a sunny Sunday afternoon in June, there were better things to be doing than sitting in a tent in the dark with the air conditioning whirring.

My concentration had begun to stray earlier yesterday during a survey of the technological fixes available to counter the effect of climate change. (The distinguished panel of three wise men was unanimous in giving this approach the thumbs down.)

However, two talks by the recently-appointed and the recently-retired Chief Scientific Advisors to the Government, David King and John Beddington, impressed hugely in their rather different ways. David King side-stepped the nuclear issue, on which he is famously bullish: John Beddington, speaking with tempered optimism in spite of recent food price rises, advocated smart interventions on the supply side (in the words of Jonathon Porritt's summing up). "You are a conucopian!" "Well, I'm certainly not a Utopian," John Beddington responded.

At another point during the Festival, Jonathon observed that we still need our “Pearl Harbour” moment on climate change. After the Japanese attack on the US base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, in December 1941, President Roosevelt talked about there now being “only one reality, namely winning this war.” The result? Within nine months, 80% of the US’s industrial capacity was being used for weapons manufacture.

Just as impressive as any of these events was a fringe talk given by botanist Ghillean Prance at the University of Gloucestershire. He urged his predominantly Christian audience - the meeting was convened by the Rector of Cheltenham, Andrew Dow - to wake up to the environment. Christians tended to see their duty as converting others and involving themselves in social issues, but not caring for God's creation. The speaker's unaffected modesty and his patient and direct handling of a wide variety of questions impressed everyone. What a pity space could not be found for a lecture as good as this in the main Science Festival programme!

"The world must be peopled!" said Benedick

It's a while since I heard Jonathon Porritt give a lecture of his own (as opposed to interviewing someone): I had forgotten what a devastating speaker he is when he's on top of his subject, as he was last night speaking on the theme "Too many people" at the Cheltenham Science Festival. He held a very large audience in the palm of his hand.

The message he brought was extremely simple: "Save the world! Have fewer children." The Italians had got the idea, he said: their population growth rate was the lowest in the world, indicating that "for them it seems that using a condom is a better guide to life than Papal infallibility." Benedick - yes; but Benedict - no.

Indeed, for a Catholic this was not a comfortable hour's entertainment. Jonathon was asked how the UN could be made more effective: "It has to act by consensus," he pointed out. "The Rio Earth Summit in 1992 was paralysed by the Vatican - a UN member - intervening to oppose artificial family planning." The loudest applause of the evening was for Jonathon condemning the Catholic Church's adherence to the teaching of Humanae Vitae as "immoral".

And yet. "Aren't you depressed at the lack of signs of progress?" asked a questioner. No, came Jonathon's response, because of all the spritual resources that remain untapped. (Here was evidence for Gordon Lynch's analysis, that I mentioned on Thursday.)

A final question was lobbed in. Jonathon had been praising the Chinese for having prevented 400m people from being born through their one-child policy. "Did the end justify the means in China?" a woman asked - the only woman to get a look in. A long pause. "On balance, no," came the eventual reply.

Isn't this the crux of the issue? Do wrong means ever justify good ends? We have since last year a beautiful granddaughter, born after very much soul-searching: how impoverished would our family life be without her! Not to speak of that child's mother, our only daughter - the fourth of our children, born after Caroline's doctor had warned her to have no more.

Burne-Jones' image of the Christ-child in Birmingham's St Philip's Cathedral misleadingly shows a white baby. Had the "necessary" funding for family planning - advocated by Jonathon - been available within the third world community into which Jesus was born, my question is: "Would he have been?"

Cleaning the stables

This photograph may not at first seem to relate that closely to the title of this blog (and the FT blog to which it's linked). Patience.

That was forwarded to me by Tony Weston, a university friend who lives in Prague: he keeps a close eye on the international scene, including what's going on in the UK. I don't often rush for the FT myself, but the article seemed to me worth sharing more widely. I enjoyed the Responses too, and was struck by Esther Phillips' comment: I am tempted to conclude that people with “common sense” don’t go into politics and hence there can be no “common sense” found amongst politicians. It was this realisation thirty years ago that pushed me towards joining what was then quite a new political party, the Ecology Party. There I met Jonathon Porritt, who - unlike me - is still a member of what is now the Green Party. In spite of his high profile in affairs environmental over the whole of the intervening period, Jonathon has never gone into mainstream party politics - having, as Esther Phillips would say, far too much common sense.

Five years ago yesterday, Caroline planned a major surprise dinner for my 60th birthday at Stanway Tithe Barn, and was cross with Jonathon's wife Sarah for spilling the beans - inadvertently. On that occasion, another university friend, Colin Russell made an embarrassingly elaborate speech in my favour. This year, for my 65th birthday (and to mark my retirement), she planned another, smaller dinner, which was a complete surprise - only revealed at teatime (when this photograph was taken). Though two of the special guests - Edmund and Claire - had to cry off at the last moment, Leo and Mini came, and also the Porritts and the Russells. On a warm, sunny evening, we sat in the garden drinking champagne (provided by Colin and Jessica), before going indoors for a delicious dinner with excellent conversation: exactly how a birthday should conclude!