The midnight hour

This clock - a long-case clock - has for the past two weeks lain in my front room in several pieces, in order to have the hall decorated without covering the clock in cream paint. Now the decorators have gone and the new stair carpet has been laid and some of the dust and chaos have been dealt with. There is still much to be done - it's amazing how much stuff lives in our hall - but this evening, at 11pm, we decided to put the clock back, so to speak.

And in a clock as old as ours, this means rebuilding the thing. Finding the level floorboards, easing the case into position with the wooden batten at the back resting on the wall, pushing the wee bits of wood under the feet to level it - that bit was easy. The scary bit was putting the action back, with me holding the wooden surround (behind the face) while Mr B (not the son of a clockmaker for nothing) re-attached the weights, which he could only hold for about 10 seconds in one hand, and wound the supporting cables round the grooved brass drums which make everything work (I think). Then we had to poke the stem of the pendulum up behind the dangling weights and attach it, set it going, listen to the tick - and move the hands through all the hours till it struck midnight, because the whole process had taken us an hour.

Now the clock seems to be working and I'm a nervous wreck. Something to be said for a wee digital number, perhaps?

Listening in Argyll

Yesterday I was too tired to blog; today I find myself every bit as pleased with the day as I was while driving home through the dark and wet from Oban. I had been attending a day in which the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles attempted to get to grips with the problems still facing gay Christians in our churches - and for some people this was obviously a new area, one they hadn't really ventured into before. One woman bravely admitted to the whole group that what she was learning was so different from her entire upbringing, society, culture - and that she still had much to learn. A priest sitting near me repeated several times how ignorant he felt, and I think we all realised the gaps in understanding when we listened to +Brian (Edinburgh diocese) talking about his visit to Nigeria.

Knowing some of what the Christian church in Nigeria has to contend with was an eye-opener, giving some understanding of what many of us see as outrageous behaviour. However, I came away from this session more than ever convinced that the time has come for us to abandon the Anglican Communion if it is to provide the shackles that bind us to such very different societal norms. I cannot see that any loose federation of churches - and for most of us, I bet, it is loose - is more important than justice. Similarly, when someone in the group whose discussion I was facilitating opined that the church surely had more important things to consider, like global poverty and climate change, I was struck by what seemed like an obvious point: How can we be an effective voice in the world if we cannot look after our own? Why would anyone listen to us?

But an overriding impression stayed with me. This felt like the Body of Christ in action. The facilitators (one of whom was my pal Alison) ran things so smoothly that we were able to concentrate on the issues and on the pain of some present with us. People had travelled huge distances to be there - though it was a pity that some who live much closer to Oban didn't show. Now I'd like to see the experience being repeated in every charge in the diocese. I'd like to go considerably further - but that's for another post. Let's just say that the church on show yesterday was the one I want to belong to.

There's a poem for Remembrance Day over on Frankenstina

Growing in Second Life

A few more thoughts on Second Life, prompted by a conversation with Ewan, whom I have never yet managed to meet in SL and who - perhaps as a consequence - has vanished from my list of contacts. I have, however, met some interesting people and attended a church service - though it has to be said that the service times at the Anglican Cathedral of Second Life are very inconvenient for someone sleeping and eating in GMT time zone. Perhaps as a result of my taking my laptop to the kitchen, I didn't really get the full benefit of the service, with several breaks in transmission and a frozen screen. However, I was able to experience the actuality of the event (before I had to cook) and was interested at the feeling of being part of a congregation (we all sat in the pews, just like Holy T on a quiet morning and the sermon was well worth listening to). Quite apart from services, I actually find the location for them a good place to be - the visuals are pleasing, the sounds soothing and I meet people who are friendly and helpful - just as I would hope to if I were in any Christian community.

Apart from that, I've visited Edunation several times and spoken with someone from the US (using voice - great hilarity over my accent) and Glasgow ( typing - but a real kindred spirit). I've seen some thoughtful exhibition work, and used the links provided to check out background info. It seems to me that Ewan was right when he suggested that a real drawback was the need to be there at the same time as the people you want to see - unlike the Facebook or blogging experience - but in a way I enjoy the randomness of the meetings and the opportunity afforded simply to start chatting to a stranger and find them interesting. However, large tracts of SL are empty when I go there, so that I wander alone through lovely landscapes or empty lecture rooms. If there is to be any real contact and use of the medium, it's necessary to use Group Notices. These turn up in your email as well as in little blue screens in SL, and tend to set SL times for meetings so that you can work out if you can attend.

That said, so far it's the church use of SL which impresses me most. It's much easier to drop in on a service in a virtual environment and sample what's going on than it is physically to get yourself to a church and then feel you want to walk out again - and evangelising is easier too, in a strange way. The problem will always be how to make the first contact - but in the meantime I'd settle for meeting a few more of my friends and rellies!

Superlative sourdough

I made another batch of sourdough bread the other day, and found that the memory lapse which led me to abandon the loaves at the final rising stage was entirely beneficial. Last time I made this recipe - Kimberly's - I followed it religiously (well, you would, wouldn't you?), allowing the full twelve hours for the sponge to develop, and letting the dough rise in the bowl for a generous time after hand-kneading it. This time, I bunged the sponge and the flour and so on into the breadmaker on "dough" program, thereby avoiding the sticky-fingers-when-the-phone-rings syndrome, and let it all fit in with what I was doing rather than the other way about. And then I left the formed loaves to rise all night - 12 hours - before I baked them.

The result was wonderful. Huge airholes in the chewy inside of the loaf made for a much less dense bread and fabby toast on the second day. I shall be practising benign neglect from now on.

Examining the past

I've just been watching this extraordinarily gripping film, Taking Sides, which recreates the interrogation of Dr Wilhem Furtwangler during the post-war de-Nazification of Germany. Furtwangler is considered by some to have been the most outstanding conductor of the 20th century, but his role in continuing to provide music for the Nazi regime meant that he was a target for thorough questioning by the occupying Allies.

In the movie, Furtwangler (Stellan Skarsgard) is interrogated by a tough-talking American major (Harvey Keitel), and it is this interrogation which takes up most of the film. The confrontation brings the role of the artist in an evil regime into the limelight, along with all the other moral ambiguities and issues emerging from World War 2. I was fascinated by my own reaction to all this: here was a musician who apparently shook hands with Hitler, directed concerts for him, seemed to be at ease with the regime - and yet, along with the sensitive Jewish American soldier assisting Keitel, I felt outraged at the bullying of the quietly-spoken Furtwangler by this brash soldier. Against the soundtrack of Beethoven and the images of concentration camp atrocities, I found myself wondering what any of us would have done in the circumstances. And in a telling newsreel clip, saved for the closing title sequence, we could see the actual handshake of which Keitel made so much in the interrogation. After bending from the podium to shake the Fuhrer's hand, Furtwangler - the real Furtwangler - clearly transferred a tightly-balled handkerchief from his left hand to his right, as if to wipe it clean.

Not a comfortable film, and not entertainment in the usual sense - but I feel I need to watch it again.

New wheels

The new wheels
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

The more devoted among my readers may recall that way back before the summer (I know. What summer?) I enthused here about our ordering a new car. Turns out it was so new that Renault had to make it for us; they sent us chatty letters telling us of its progress and at last it's come. (This reminds me, always, of my copy of The Sleeping Beauty, in which the first words of the awakened Beauty were "Ah, my Prince, at last you've come!")

As I remarked before, buying a car in Inveraray is not like going to your average city dealer. We drove our old car into the workshop at Semple's, the owner drove the new one into position outside and left the engine running "to warm it up for you" (the temperature had by this time dropped to 5ºC and there was a snell wind), and we popped into the office to deal with the paperwork and the small matter of payment (Haven't done that yet: he knows where we live...) The boss then came with us for a wee spin down the road beside the loch - just to make sure that everything was all right/we knew what we were doing with the automatic handbrake - and then it was ours.

The ride is great - firmer and more butch-feeling than other models we've driven - and the engine does that exciting dig in your back when you accelerate (rapidly) to 50mph. The steering-wheel seems pleasantly low, rather like driving a van - I don't feel I'm peering over it - and the high seat position means you can see so much more. As well as being called a Renault Megane, it is also named "Conquest", and it conquered our Somme-like back lane with ease and no scrapes. It has that lovely new smell and a flat-loading boot.

And the seatbelts are orange.

Premature

Oh dear. I feel a weensie grump coming on - a sort of Victoria Meldrew moment. As I drove home today, bemoaning the darkness at 6pm, knowing that while I'd walked soaking in the mist the sun had been splitting the sky just down the river at Ayr, I passed the shop which sells real Christmas trees in the season. And as an early rocket lit up the sky I noticed them. Christmas trees, real ones, cut and ready for sale. It's not even the 5th of November yet and they're selling trees. And I bet someone will buy them, and presumably put them up and they'll be shedding their needles all over someone's centrally-heated carpet before the month is out.

Some people moan about their trees: about the mess, and about how they're glad to see the back of them - around New Year, or even earlier. If they've bought them in November then I'm hardly surprised. But I feel there's an enormous dilution of the significance of any festival when it's spread out and anticipated in this manner. Just as I recall the excitement of waiting for the first rocket to be let off after dark on the evening of November 5th and the flicker of the first flames on the huge bonfire we'd all watched growing over the past weeks, I associate the smell of the newly-erected tree with the week just before Christmas, when the anticipation grew with the carefully-timed rituals. Now they all seem to merge messily - pumpkins and peanuts and Christmas trees and fireworks. We'll be having the hot cross buns soon.

Meanwhile I'll be watching for the first fairy lights out there ...

Remembering

Yesterday we celebrated All Souls in Holy Trinity. A handful of worshippers - it was in the morning - but a host of remembered souls. It was an electrifying service. Everything came together in - yes - a wonderful exchange: prayers, music, our own singing. It was as if the memory of our loved, absent ones spurred us on to sing with the care and sensitivity of a trained choir. (Some of us are indeed trained choristers but it doesn't always sound like that.) And at times such as this we know we are not alone, not forgotten, but a part already of the hosts of Heaven.

And yesterday was too close to the moment to write about it.

Ghosts

First papering of hall
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

We live in an oldish house. We know this every time there's a leak in the roof, or a chimney head has to be removed because the stone has grown porous. We know this because we've thrown money at the building for the past 30-odd years. We know this because there's a sone-carved date over the centre of the block: 1897. And now we've seen the writing on the wall - literally. The photo shows the earliest decorators' record of their work. "Papered by D. Fraser, G. Morton 1898".

Our hall is large in that it takes 27 rolls of wallpaper to cover it. We are having it decorated for the first time since Charles married Diana - I can remember the painter singing along with the hymns on the telly. That wallpaper, which we've just removed, had become dark and stained and altogether depressing. The paper which preceded it was even worse - grey with a vertical pattern in black and maroon. And I suspect the layer under it may be the one put up by one R. Borland on 27 July 1956 - as I recall, it had a distinctly 50s look to it. But I can't imagine what the first paper was like. I know the woodwork was varnished dark brown - you can still see traces round the door-frames - but was it as dark and lugubrious as I suspect?

I'd love to have a window in time - to go back and see if anyone slept in the bed which appears to have been housed in our bedroom cupboard, to see what it was like when there were only two houses in the block for the ten years or so before they were subdivided into four, to see who lived here then with the range in the back room and some kind of scullery out the back. And the loo was, I think, at the end of the garden. These long-dead decorators have stirred the ghosts for me, and made me feel like a sojourner in my own house.

And I'm having the hall painted cream - though right now it has a yellowish look ....

Randomly, on All Saints'.

One of the questions in a recent survey to discover the degree of one's addiction to blogging was this: do you look at life in terms of bloggability? (Actually I made that last word up - the original question, lacking it, was much more long-winded). And I had to admit to the second top indicator in that area. But sometimes the blog comes as an afterthought, a sort of coda to a series of events, as it were, and that's today. The astute reader may have noted a lack of blog fervour on my part over the last week; this was due to a horrific bout of what has now been identified as Campylobacter infection - big on Google if you really want the details. But what bothered me a bit was the length of time it took to identify the cause - from my submitting the required specimen on the Wednesday morning to the phone call from the surgery on the following Tuesday. Mercifully, I've had this before and knew that starvation and rehydration lessened the impact - but it did affect the treatment and it'd have been good to have known for sure by the end of the week. I'm better now, and the 4 lbs I lost in as many days have, sadly, re-established themselves.

And yesterday served as a sad reminder of what we do to ourselves. A fatal pile-up on the M8, closing the road for 7 hours, a diversion via Grangemouth, the sudden malfunction of our own car's engine somewhere near Moodiesburn (horror) and the effect of her first injections on a smiley, tranquil baby all made me want to hide in a corner rather than blog, actually. And we have the decorators in the hall and all life is covered in dust.

And if you want to find out more about what drives a blogger, have a look here - a link for which I am indebted to Neil, whose revamped blog is happily enticing him to post on it more frequently. And with that little bit of nepotism, I shall leave it for today.

8+1 = music!

8+1
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This extremely cheerful bunch of people is the singing group 8+1 - so called because eight women sing under the direction of on man, aka Mr B. Yesterday we felt we'd arrived, after three public appearances either physically far away (ie in Kames) or far from our comfort zone (remember last year's fiasco in the Queens' Hall?) This concert, however, took place in the lovely acoustic of Holy Trinity Church, Dunoon - and even with over 60 people in the audience we we sounded good. (People who sing will know the potentially devastating effect of bodies on a resonant acoustic)

What made it such an excellent gig? Somehow, I guess, it all came together - all the weeks and months of work on projection, face shapes, hanging the face on the ears (you either do this or you don't), posture, mouth shape, the position of the tongue behind the teeth .... and that's before making sure of every note, every consonant, the swingy off-beat bits, the ....

Stop, stop, I hear you cry. Enough already. And indeed, the goal is always to make it look and sound easy, so that people don't think about the hard work beforehand. Yesterday I think we succeeded. The church fell silent to Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, swung along to Fly me to the Moon, and rejoiced with Good News. Our two organists did us proud, and the applause was sustained and enthusiastic. And I don't think that was simply a result of the wine at the interval.

I think we done exceptional!

SL revelling

Wey hey! I've just been to a party - danced like a lunatic for much longer than I normally have the legs for, looked a million dollars, met some charming people and a white tiger (it danced too) and listened to some cool music. I talked without raising my voice, managed a few minutes of private conversation, looked around me a bit, and sent a quick message to someone whom I wanted to invite but who had too much work to do and was needing the extra hour of the elongated night to get it done.

All too good to be true? Of course it is. But I'm in that photo, and I was invited by the guy on the left of the pic, all in Second Life. And I'm exhilarated because that's the most people I've met at one time in all my wanderings through SL, and after I got used to the oddity of it all it actually began to feel like a party, so that when I said it was past my bedtime and I had to go, I felt sad to leave. (It was only early evening in SL, but they're very understanding)

Anyone wanting to certify me: could you wait till after tomorrow, please? I'm singing in a concert. *(Plug)


*8+1 in concert, Holy Trinity Church, Dunoon, 3pm.

Re-engaging the brain

Feeling slightly recovered from the malaise of the past four days, I felt up to opening my new book. ( I must just add, however, that it is dispiriting to note that the 4lbs shed during the aforementioned four days seem to have come off such unhelpful parts of the anatomy as the fingers and the face. Perhaps this is why I needed to engage my brain again).

But a nos moutons. Spong's prologue and opening chapter have left me asking the same question as he does:

"Is faith so weak and life so afraid that those who dare to pose questions must expect to be attacked for faithlessness by the religiously insecure?"

Immediately before that question, he asks his readers if they have felt the tension between their inability to believe literally the supernatural things said about Jesus in the Bible and reiterated in Christian history and their being drawn "deeply and expectantly" into the Jesus experience. As one of these readers, I know that there are areas of my religious thought that I simply don't share - unless, perhaps, with an interested non-believer. Safer that way, don't you know.

There is little chance that someone like me will receive death-threats over this - unlike Spong. And my job doesn't depend on my toeing the party line. But surely all these highly-educated clergy of my acquaintance must know all this stuff? So what happens? Does every priest have to stick to the curriculum regardless of what they know? Is there a rule about this? (These aren't rhetorical questions: feel free to enlighten me)

I wasn't really brought up to believe much. I was taught the basics and allowed to go my own way, and it was experience of something which happened in an Anglican framework which caught me, so perhaps it was always going to be easy for me to question and to feel it was ok to use the brains I'd been given rather than give them a Sabbath rest. And yes, I'm a Christian, one who doesn't want to live in a mediaeval cosmology. Just let me keep the music ....

Left holding the baby

One of the good things I did over my long weekend away was to attend a lecture in Edinburgh by Jack Spong, radical American bishop and theologian. I was delighted to realise as I passed the Unitarian church where it was delivered that the event was a sell-out long before it started - not just because I was able to sell my spare ticket (at the purchase price) but because this seemed a hopeful sign. For much of the time I feel that religion in our society is so much a minority sport (I'm talking ethnic Brits here) that I wouldn't have been surprised at a half-empty hall, but no, it was packed. The audience was interesting - I felt young by comparison with 90% of those attending - and resembled a cull of many piskie congregations, which was probably just about right.

Spong was speaking about the subject of his latest book, Jesus for the non-religious. To attempt to summarise the 90 or so minutes of his talk would be to diminish it, and I don't intend to try. But it was heartening to hear someone of his undoubted scholarship reinforce ideas which I feel I've instinctively held for years, and to realise that this was another of these inspiring Christians who could blow new life into the flame of faith and show how possible it all is. I'll share one of my insights which he touched on.

When setting Interpretation passages for senior pupils, we often used to put a question about the nature of the text used. Was it fact or fiction, and how could you tell? And one of the possible pointers to fiction would lie in the close reproduction of the most private or intimate moments of conversation. Like the one between Pilate and Jesus, for example. Now, go too far down that road and you could end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But explain the Jewish background and a bit of history and suddenly - hey! You grab the baby and embrace it. The superfluous bits are seen for what they were. It's what is that counts.

Ok. I told you it was simple. I bought the book (link on the Wikipedia site already linked to) and will be on surer ground when I've read it. But at the end, when he stood like an old-fashioned Baptist preacher and demanded of the church: "Give me back my Jesus!" the hall erupted. It was exciting and exhilarating, and all these aged persons were full of it. No doubt there were those who had come to mutter, but they must've slunk off.

And me? I had a bad attack of the whirring brain and wasn't asleep till after 3am. Isn't religion exciting?

Devilish good read

Having been deblogged by a weekend in a monastery (again) and a dreaded lurgie, I feel I have so much to catch up on that I'll start with the present and then look back. Feeling too poorly to sit at my desk, I've been reading the way I used to before computers took over my life - James Robertson's The Testament of Gideon Mack. What a good book! I'd read the same author's The Fanatic, set in the dire Scotland of the post-Reformation period, but this story is of now, very much of now, when the church is no longer a force in the lives of the majority but can consume the souls of its adherents. When the minister of the local Kirk - Gideon Mack, himself a son of the Manse - is rescued from drowning and claims it was the Devil who saved him, he is cast out by the Presbytery as vigorously as he would have been four hundred years ago. Then, of course, he would also have been burned at the stake. But his devil is seductively ordinary, cantankerous but compelling, and God is nowhere to be found.

The story is presented as Mack's own, some written as a conventional biography, some - the crux of the narrative - as if dictated and transcribed. The whole is set up and concluded by an imaginary publisher, filling in the gaps and commenting on the strangeness of it all. I found it absorbing and convincing, and beautifully written. Gideon Mack is a 21st century Scot, with a job to do and no faith to bring to it, who runs marathons for charity and has an affair with his best friend's wife, an independent spirit or a weak one depending on your point of view. You may never again look at a minister without wondering.

Stuck in the mud

This is the record of a late afternoon walk we should never have taken. This is what happens when you find a new forestry road where no road should have been; this is what happens when you rashly decide to find out where it goes. This is what happens when the road ... stops, as forestry roads tend to, in a heap of mud and felled trees, and you have to retrace your steps as the sun sets behind the hills and you worry that you may have to blog from a ditch your last, immortal words.

Enough of this over-dramatic piffle. But there is a new forestry road above the Bishop's Glen; it wasn't there a month or so ago and bits of it are only just there now. It dips in and out of great holes to accommodate - we imagine - pipes which will take the many streams under the road, and its surface is rutted and soft. At one point, two of us got stuck and had to be heaved out of mud over the tops of our feet, and great was the torrent of expletives thereof. This picture was taken shortly after that, before we had found our way off the road and back to civilisation.

Now my boots are drying and my trousers in the wash. Second Life seems safer, somehow - I really wanted to teleport this afternoon.

Thinking about language

I'm currently putting together material for a workshop on Poetry and Prayer. I've had my wrist cyber-slapped for insisting on the close relationship between the two; I'm passionate in my belief that banal and over-specific language has no place in our liturgies and refuse to accept that the language of the supermarket is suitable for every situation.

At the moment I'm wondering just how much non-specialists (and I don't necessarily mean liturgists) are aware of language as a tool. Are they like me with this laptop - able to use it fairly effectively to do what they want it to, without any glaring errors, but unable to tell you how or why it works, even if they wanted to? For I'm aware that my "class" will be an amazingly bright and thoughtful one, in no need of background info on the subject matter of the poetry - but what about the workings of language? imagery? rhythm? Do people who have not spent their lives teaching others how to communicate effectively, or how to analyse the writings of others, think about the effect of a word, or a line break, or the connotations of an expression? I don't know.

So, dear readers, you have two days in which to enlighten me - and to ensure that my workshop isn't going to teach my grandmother to do something she can do standing on her head!

Sourdough bread

Sourdough bread
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Many, many years ago, when all the world was young, I was inspired to make my own bread using the recipe given me by a good friend who at that time was the wife of the Rector of Holy Trinity, Dunoon and lived in the Rectory. On a regular basis I would make a batch of four loaves and freeze three of them. When I returned to teaching, such domestic goddess stuff was an early casualty, and it is only in the last few years that I have returned to breadmaking. Now, however, my breadmaking friend is the wife of the Bishop of Argyll, and I use a breadmaking machine.

But today I was inspired by the current occupant of The Rectory to try making sourdough bread. Using Kimberly's recipe, and Kimberly's starter, I produced these two beauties. I've nibbled a wee bit and it's delicious, though at this hour of the night I don't care to eat more. I'd forgotten how long hand-made bread can take - and going for a trip on the Waverley didn't help to hurry the process; next time I'll plan the start-time more sensibly. But I shall heat it up tomorrow and enjoy it to the full.

Another thing I'd forgotten: the phone always rings just when you've begun the kneading for the first time. Always. I think that bit might be done in the machine ...

Virtual Christians

As I write this, I’m listening to a sermon. On a Friday, and on my laptop. It’s about the church and the possibilities of using new technologies for mission, and it’s to be found here, along with other posts on the subject of the speaker’s virtual ministry. I met him last night, in his virtual Anglican cathedral in Second Life, and reflected later that even if I were to go no further, I’d have noticed the difference in attitude between him/his avatar and some I’ve met already. It’s heartening to note that educators and Christians share a concern for encouragement and a willingness to approach and help the stranger in a virtual world – because if I notice this, then others will as well. And that, if I’m not mistaken, is ministry.

With any luck, I’ll attend a virtual church service on Sunday – though the time differences make for odd service times in the UK!

Darling? I don't think so

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer - now, of course, Our Great Leader - more to vent my spleen about Inheritance Tax than in any hope of a sensible response. This is a part of that letter:

Dear Mr Brown

Yesterday my sister and I paid a total of just over £££££ [an amount which seemed a very large sum of money to me] inheritance tax/Capital Gains Tax/whatever on our late mother’s estate. In pointing out to you the circumstances under which this estate was accumulated, I am looking for someone – yourself, a minion – to convince me that this is reasonable. As a member of the Labour Party for some 15 years, I am not averse to an equitable distribution of wealth, but have never considered my family to come into the ‘wealthy’ category.

My parents were both teachers in the State System – not much chance to avoid paying taxes there. My father died four years after retirement at the age of 65. My mother, deprived of the companion with whom she might have taken expensive holidays, lived modestly in the family house that they had bought in 1955 in the West End of Glasgow. She had some investments, which she guarded against the possibility of extreme old age and ill health.

In the event, she lived in that house until she was 92, when a stroke meant she had to move into a nursing home. She died a year later. When we sold the house, it made what to us appeared an impressive price – the basis of the estate on which we are now taxed.

How would you have avoided that tax? How should we ensure that our children do not suffer the same burden? And how, finally, will we feel if the law is changed in the near future to raise the threshold for paying inheritance tax?
Rhetorical questions for a busy chancellor? But this retired teacher suddenly finds herself in sympathy with a group of people with whom I have never before identified. Convince me, please.

Yours sincerely

He - or rather some minion - did reply, to the effect that, you know, the country couldn't manage without this tax money, and come on, old thing, you're obviously rolling in it. Actually I made that last bit up, but the firm tone of the letter left me in no doubt that without Inheritance Tax the Treasury would grind to a halt.

Do I feel pleased at my clairvoyance? Huh. Will I vote for Flash Gordon's lot again? Your guess.