Et tu Brute?

This post might seem like a "poor me" or parts of it even like boasting. Think that if you want, but I am trying to make a point.

If you know me or you've followed my blog you'll know that I excelled in my school A-levels. My parents told me to do my best, so I did. Although I grant that, in my O-levels, I failed History and only just passed English Literature even though I could (and still can) quote from memory Et tu Brute? and Let me have men about me who are fat... yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look... such men are dangerous. My English teacher had said quotes were like the plums in the pudding.

I excelled at college too, leaving with a First Class Honours degree. And did pretty well in my first job working in the prestigious BBC Research Department during which I was granted MIET and CEng which title I have retained (by paying an annual subscription) until recently.

After a few years doing odd jobbing building work while playing at radical church, I started my own electronics design business and completed a number of projects for various customers. To facilitate this work I have a home office cum workshop and have taught myself how to hand solder down to 0.4mm pitch, how to program embedded devices in assembler or 'C' and some PC programming as well.

And then, all of a sudden I retired and electronics work dried up. True, I continue to provide occasional technical support for that one active project, but otherwise my office and its equipment and stock of components has become largely redundant.

I had wondered about teaching - trying to pass on the skills I have learned, for the benefit of the next generation. But so far no one appears to be interested. The parents of young children in the community here have decided to quit the assisted home schooling we have assumed to be the norm for oh so many years, so it looks like there will be no need for my usual maths and physics teaching here. So instead I am helping my son doing some building renovation work here, and stoke the wood-burning boiler, weed the drive and mend things around the place that others have broken. Come the summer (if we haven't already missed it) I may take a day or two to go exploring now that I have a Senior Citizen free travel pass. But otherwise it is a strange feeling, this being retired is. I have always considered myself as being highly motivated and never, dare I even utter the word, bored. No, I'm not bored, really I'm not, but sometimes I'm not sure that I am fully motivated and I wonder what life is all about. We come and go like a ripple on a stream.

Rhodes must fall part 2

I refer to my previous post and to yesterday's news announcement that, although the commission supported the statue's removal, it will in fact remain in place for the time being because it would be too expensive to remove it. Which comes across as rather a lame excuse even though I was and still am in favour of leaving things be. Because you cannot change history by merely deleting all reference to it.

It was as an Oriel alumni, I suppose, that I received a long email from the Commission of Inquiry the opening of which I quote below (click on to enlarge), and...

...which ended with a link to the even more verbose full report. The amount of effort and associated expense that must have gone into this conclusion defies my imagination but already the campaigners for the removal have reacted in dismay.

So once again, does my own opinion to leave the statue and associated memorabilia in place (but by all means decorate them with an explanation, for example via a bronze plaque placed at street level, of our present understanding of Rhodes' political agenda), and the education which I received and still enjoy the fruit of and which might have been in some part made possible by Rhodes' endeavours, make me in some way culpable?

Floreat Oriel!

Rhodes must fall

The day before yesterday thousands of people filled The High outside Oriel College to peacefully protest for the removal of the statue to Cecil Rhodes that adorns the frontage to the college. All this in the wake of the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in an anti-racism demonstration in Bristol, one of many in the UK sparked by the death of George Floyd while he was under arrest in Minneapolis in the United States last month. The statue, which will probably end up in a museum, has since been retrieved from Bristol harbour early this morning - the absence of protesters that early in the day itself says something.

Cecil Rhodes statue, Oriel College

Quoting, the frontage ...displays a statue of Rhodes himself, under a shell canopy propped by barley-sugar columns. At his feet a relief inscription reads E[X]: LARGA: MVNIFICENTIA CAECILII:RHODES, ie 'Out of the splendid generosity of Cecil Rhodes', the raised letters (here in bold) forming the laborious chronogram LMVIICICILIID (ie, reshuffled, MDCCCLLVIIIIII, ie 1911). the date when the building was completed.

The Rhodes Building owes to the initiative and generosity of Cecil Rhodes, intermittently an Oriel undergraduate between 1873 and 1881, whose £100,000 legacy included £40,000 'for the extension to the High Street of the college buildings': £22,500 was to be for building, the rest to replace income from tenements to be destroyed.

Four years ago there was a similar hue-and-cry to have the statue removed, and then it was apparently quashed when furious donors threatened to withdraw gifts and bequests worth more than £100 million if it was taken down.

The whole business is ridiculous IMHO. Firstly, in order to be consistent, if the statue is to be removed the inscription must also be erased and, indeed, the whole building ought to be demolished as it was built with funds supplied by Cecil. Secondly my own education owes itself in part to Cecil's generosity - in my first year I lived in the Rhodes Building, I came up to Oriel on a scholarship, not the prestigious Rhodes scholarship but it was probably funded in part by the Rhodes' legacy. History is history and should ideally be presented as both truthful and unbiased - yes in retrospect slavery was wrong, yes the holocaust was evil, yes both black and white and any other colour of lives matter and yes I owe my wonderful Oxford experience and its positive effect on my life in some small part to the generosity of a historical figure who represented white supremacy and was steeped in colonialism and racism. Does this make me culpable?

Floreat Oriel!

On the fringe - or - never able to arrive at the truth

It is a universal truth - though largely ignored by some die-hard archaeologists - that there is no known culture in the world without religious beliefs (Terence Meaden, Archaeologist, Oxon). An interesting observation - some would say it is because there is a "God shaped hole" in everyone.

I have a rich Christian heritage but more to the point where am I now? Like in "But whom do you say that I am?".

I remember cringing when someone we used to visit would ask me "and what has God being doing in your life?" - because I could never think that there was anything in particular.

My earliest church memories were of Alresford Congregational church. Later we went by train to Winchester Baptist Church where I, tacet, would sometimes sit beside my father on the polished organ bench. His own folk were at various times nonconformist evangelical, Baptist and Peculiar and his father was at one time a reverend.

Winchester Baptist Church

Speaking of which, the ‘The Peculiar People’ were initially quite a fiery bunch but, doubtless after a generation, their zeal diminished. They later changed their name to the ‘Union of Evangelical Churches’ and their web site now says "divine healing does not now have such prominence..." If folk really were healed once, this seems a strange statement to make. Like, we don't want any of this getting better stuff.

My parents then joined NFC from whence stem most of my childhood church memories. Here I went to Sunday School and later the Adventurer's Club, was baptised, and first spoke (briefly and timidly) in public. Open Brethren based, I am thankful for the good knowledge of the Bible that NFC instilled in me, but I must have been suitably indoctrinated because, when I left home for college, I naively considered all other churches inferior and probably heretical and was surprised when I discovered committed Christians from other persuasions. In my final year I agreed to become the OICCU "Rep" for my college and, under considerable duress, was obliged to sign a statement of doctrine. It wasn't that I had a problem with anything there but I disagreed strongly (and still do) with the need to sign.

Whilst in Oxford I tried various church flavours including the James Street brethren assembly (now re-branded "evangelical") - the folk there were very friendly but I didn't fit in. Plain contrary to my upbringing I ended up most at home in the reasonably high Anglican college chapel - because the chaplain cared about my well being, because it was local and because I found I could worship God there. Despite the occasional smells and bells.

On finding my feet in my first job I started to attend CBC where I met and married Ali, and when we both wanted to be involved in young people's work we first had to become church members which implied signing up to their doctrine, which I once again did under much duress.

Both Ali and I wanted more than CBC appeared to offer and thus we met together with like-minded folk of similar age. One year the group had a holiday-cum-conference hosted by a Christian community in Eastleigh and this was our first introduction to communal living and The Move.

You can Google The Move and its founding leader Sam Fife and you'll find a lot of nonsense as well as some truth. And sure there was some nonsense, doubtless because of People. We had our share of this nonsense but thankfully nothing serious - because we were on the fringe.  The Wikipedia link is rather dated and things have changed, mellowed - a bit like the Peculiar People I wonder?

That Sam Fife (who I never met) was a "one man ministry", or at least the dominant leader, did raise warning bells in me but, hang it all, wasn't Jesus also a "one man ministry"? The thing is, some of what Fife preached his followers now don't go along with - at least they no longer emphasise - like "people of God we are not going to die" and the "wilderness message". If those radical areas that so intrigued his followers are now mellowed, do we revert to being plain evangelicals?

Probably not - Ali's parents were, for a time, Exclusive Brethren. When they left, not being able to stomach some of the more radical and intrusive teachings, her father could never feel at home in any other church flavour, none of which had the same sense of family and depth of conservative doctrine, so ended up without christian fellowship for the rest of his life.  I think I might have done similarly.

Seen in Texas 3 days ago

A recent guest on the Ryan Tubridy Show on RTE-radio-1 told how, when he was about six, he saw an angel standing beside his bed.  He hadn't told anyone else for years but much later his younger brother (who had shared the bedroom and would have been less than two at the time) asked him if he remembered the angel. So did that really happen?

I once saw an angel. I was a child sitting up in my bed at home. The angel was standing on top of a chimney stack on a building opposite my bedroom window: much taller than a human, with wings and shining white. Certainly not a cloud formation! But it might have been a dream - I cannot remember clearly: did that really happen?

My Aunt Mary claimed she had seen angels. She claimed all manner of things, mind you, but it would be wrong to discredit her experiences just for that reason.

If we cannot confirm whether recent extraordinary things like these really happened, what chance have we of confirming stories about a man who lived 2,000 years ago?  Most historians concede that the man Jesus existed - but they get woolly about the miracles. Did they really happen?  On the other hand why would anyone writing a Gospel account chose to blatantly lie?

Along with many others, I have a burden for a child with leukaemia and have earnestly prayed for his complete healing. His father is a Methodist minister and he also is praying for total healing: I would interpret this as "faith". But whilst there has been good medical progress, currently there has been a relapse. I am at least encouraged when I read "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven". It's not the end of the story, of course, but I had hoped... But maybe I am missing something, maybe his being healed now would spoil some vast eternal plan?

We humans are rum creatures. We think we know so much and yet we know so little. Our understanding of science, when descriptive and thus concerning things we can measure now, is all very well. But when it becomes inferential, concerning things long ago or yet to come or far, far away or far too small, who knows whether we have it right? I sometimes wonder whether, if you look hard enough with a preconceived dogma, nature will oblige. Thus the double slit experiment which could be thought to answer to two apparently contradictory theories.

There's people who genuinely think the earth is flat. Or this guy who goes along with the electric sun hypothesis and writes:

Yet, here is an incredible thing. Even though the theories of Newton, Einstein, and Twentieth Century astronomy are blown to pieces on almost a daily basis by what is actually out there, yet modern man has refused absolutely to let go of those dis-proven ideas... And so to explain how "gravity" can do all these wondrous things, the mathematicians have pulled out of their hats such unprovable bits of nonsense as "dark matter," and "black holes," and "string theory," and "nuclear fusion," and so on. None of these fantastical ideas ever find their way into a practical laboratory because all engineers know they are complete fabrications. Governments have spent untold billions of dollars to duplicate "nuclear fusion" on earth to complete and continuing failure. Why? Because there is no such thing. That's why it takes government money to build the huge "super colliders." No private business would waste a penny on such nonsense. So, let's look at astronomy as it really is. The universe is electrical. The sun is a large solid ball of rock that sustains a vast and continual electrical arc lamp discharge above its surface exactly like the electrical arc used by welders. That electrical arc is fed by huge currents of electricity that flow down the arms of the Milky Way to its center.

His position is gently ameliorated here but, honestly, with things we can, at best, hardly detect, who can say whether our theories are correct?

In our early community years we were already convinced about home schooling our kids. We listened to a CLA teaching about legal cases where the US child protection authorities took kids from their parents and, on their advice, we decided to eschew child benefit to cut one possible hold the government might have on our kids. Years later I think of all that cash we didn't get and see all the young parents here taking child benefit without a thought. And yet I read the other day Norway's hidden scandal - so were we so stupid? I certainly have no regrets about home schooling. Our four children have not grown up with carbon copies of their parents strange beliefs as some think home schooled kids will, but each are now making their own choice as to how they should live and what they should belief, as is right and proper. And I am proud of them.

I like to think that I am searching for truth (though probably not nearly hard enough as in strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able).  But I am allergic to religious or hypocritical sort of "truth". Like in the parable of the leaven in all three measures of flour: I suppose the Kingdom of God must attract error.

In searching for truth I find myself coming back, again and again, to the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. I try to read them without the preconceptions I grew up with, and I find a very human man with emotions and a sense of humour, who enjoys a good meal, who gets tired and thirsty after a long journey. Here I might add (though the accounts leave it out) that doubtless his body sweated and needed washing, that he had to go to the loo, cut his finger nails, and all the basic stuff we experience but don't generally advertise. But in this human frame he did only what he understood his Heavenly Father wanted, and thus he wrought amazing miracles, and he was crucified and died "to make us good".  And I get goose-bumps when I sing:

...Risen with healing in his wings 

Mild he lays his glory by, 

Born that man no more may die: 

Born to raise the son of earth, 

Born to give them second birth...
[Charles Wesley]

and

There is a green hill far away,

Without a city wall,

Where the dear Lord was crucified,

Who died to save us all

We may not know, we cannot tell,

What pains He had to bear;

But we believe it was for us

He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,

He died to make us good,

That we might go at last to heaven,

Saved by His precious blood.

There was no other good enough

To pay the price of sin;

He only could unlock the gate

Of heaven and let us in.

O dearly, dearly has He loved,

And we must love Him, too,

And trust in His redeeming blood,

And try His works to do.
[Cecil Frances Alexander]

Interestingly Cecil Frances Alexander, née Humphreys, second daughter of the late Major John Humphreys, Miltown House, co. Tyrone, Ireland, b. 1823, also author of All things bright and beautiful... The purple-headed mountain, the river running by might well have lived at or at least been associated with Humpreystown House, in which case those purple headed mountains are the ones we see across the lake at this time of the year, and the river might be the Liffey or Kings River.

Community is...

... sharing a common vision?

In our circles the question is asked "what is your vision?" the implication being that God has given the community some specific raison d'être.

As I ponder this question I am of course aware of our links with certain other Christian communities across the world. A Google trail will turn up some good but mostly negative opinions of these communities, the negative ones being fairly obviously written by folk who have left with a large chip on their shoulder. Personally I do not identify with this sort of "vision". Back in Oxford days I agreed to be the OICCU "Rep" for our college for one year, but in order to do this I was told I had to sign my agreement to their Statement of Faith and this I refused to do on principle. Later, in my BBC Research days, I attended a baptist church and wanted to help out with young people's meetings. I was told I had to first become a "church member" and to do this I had to sign an agreement to their Statement of Faith. They would not budge on this requirement so I signed under considerable duress. Although since then I have not been asked to repeat this signing business, I hope you will surmise that I strongly resist and abhor being constrained into someone else's belief pattern.

When I consider the individuals in our community I do not find strict adherence to any particular denomination or movement in spite of the fact that every year we invite ministries from the aforementioned "links" for our annual convention. True, a common denominator is our Christian faith and obviously a desire to express this in our living together, but beyond that we are all different. Some have thought this a weakness but I rather think it is a strength. Although at the same time I wonder if there is enough cohesion to keep our community from self-destruction, which cohesion has to be that agape love that transcends human differences.

How I came to be married

There were 4 or 5 of us doing Physics at Oriel in my year. If you had asked any of them who was the least likely to get married it would have been me. After we graduated I think they laid a bet on my being the last. And so it came as a surprise when in fact I was the first - it surprised me too!

I have recorded else-where some of my earlier would-be sweethearts. It didn't take very long for the penny to drop and thus I vowed never again to try to make a relationship happen. If God wanted me married I figured He could arrange it.

Cheam Baptist Church

There was a girl, a blonde, who played guitar in our Young People's meetings at NFC. She was several years older and thus out of my reach but I respected and looked up to her. I liked her guitar playing. When I started working for the BBC I found lodgings in Sutton and started going to CBC which happened to be where this girl went. So it was natural that I should look out for her and renew acquaintance. Being a nervous newbie I sat at the back - and saw a head of hair I thought might be her. When, after the meeting, this person turned around to leave I saw my mistake but also saw love at first sight. So I slyly followed her to the car park and found she drove a white Triumph Spitfire. I was duly impressed.

1960's Triumph Spitfire

I decided to find out where she lived so the following week after church I tailed her - me in my 600 cc two-cylinder horizontally-opposed Ami 8. It was some chase and I have to admit she got the better of me, but by driving up and down every street in the area I tracked the car down and thus narrowed the search to a couple of houses either side of where it was parked.

1971 Citroen Ami 8

Fervent in prayer and cognisant of my vow I allowed myself to go no further than as follows. I had a friendly yellow bicycle with 3-speed Sturmey Archer gears (sadly it was later stolen) and it was in the habit of going for rides at weekends. I dooned old clothes and, since in those days bell-bottom trousers could easily get caught in the chain, bicycle clips, and set out on an arduous ride planning my return to go past her lodging. I knocked on what I judged to be the correct house and, wonder of wonders, she came to the door to behold me in all my sweaty and bicycle-clippy glory.  My party piece was to invite her to "Sunday afternoon tea" (what else for a first date?). She declined. Then, being polite, conceded - perhaps another time? But I rejoiced - I had purposely made myself unattractive and yet had made first contact.

I do not think the afternoon tea ever happened but from then on we started a friendship. We had both started going to the church at about the same time and because our work took us to the area. We both had an interest in working with young people and ended up "teaching" in the JBF (Junior Bible Fellowship) for young teens. We sometimes prayed together for these youngsters. And many such sometimes later I blurted out that I loved her and asked her to marry me. She declined. She said she had never thought of me in that way and could we be "just good friends". I considered this to be impossible and so we started seeing less of each other.  I told her that if ever she changed her mind she could write me a postcard.

The postcard idea came from one of my father's much repeated stock of jokes. "If you get left behind just send us a postcard and we'll come and pick you up".

I had done what I allowed myself to do. The ball was now firmly in the court of Providence. All I could do was to wait. I do not know how long it was - it seemed an age but I doubt if it was more than a couple of months - before the postcard came. And so we were engaged and the rest, as they say, is history.

One of the things one has to do is to meet the parents. I rang my mother to say I was coming home for the weekend and could I bring a friend? Wisely she asked if it was a special friend... and later observed that she had always reckoned it would be like this - one moment unattached, the next moment a serious relationship and I'd come home with the girl of my dreams on my shoulder. As soon as they met Ali they approved of her, so that was the first hurdle crossed.

Came the time to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Her parents were then living in a rather grandiose house near Brockam, Surrey. We arranged to come for a meal and I did the necessary and in reply he asked if I "had the means to provide for her in the way in which she was accustomed" - to which I said I thought that I did, having a better than average job in the BBC. Doubtless to calm my nerves he then invited me to a drink. Not being used to being presented with a well stocked drinks cabinet I blurted out the only thing I thought was at all appropriate - a shot of Bénédictine - which was duly served and consumed. I think he had sherry and, whilst sipping mine, I wished I had chosen his.

I could (but will not) talk about the intense pleasure of even the slightest physical contact at Leith hill or how, once married, I solved the problem of which way up, and so forth.  Which makes me wonder - why is the older (at least British) generation so bad at communicating with the younger generation, or vice versa, about such things?

Is it not strange that it never occurs to the young to benefit from the possible wisdom of older folk who have so obviously gone through the process of growing up, falling in love, getting married, intercourse (hard for a young person to believe) and raising children. Indeed, when young, one imagines that any experiences the last generation might have had would be totally out-dated and not even worth asking about. Or one is too embarrassed. Do they think we have never had sexual feelings? Do they think we would laugh at their immaturity or naivety? Goodness - what do they think? Whereas when those of us who are older see youngsters struggling, we would gladly reach out a hand. But to be the instigator: for me it is once-bitten-twice-shy, I have been the fool and am now too cautious to go where angels fear to tread. If, should be, someone who qualifies as "younger" is reading this post, consider carefully. Folk older than you have had, still have, like passions...

Oxford

I must have done well in my entrance exams because I won a scholarship.  A small group of us traveled to Oxford for the interview.  It was very cold at the time, and the only form of heat in the room I had been billeted in was a one-bar electric fire set into the wall.  I remember huddling around the fire with many layers of clothing and still feeling cold.  The chairs were upholstered with some hard, coarse material which had as much give in them as coconut door matting. And the nearest toilet and wash-room was down a flight of stairs and across the quad.  I understand that Oriel College has now gone soft with en-suite showers and central heating.

In spite of these (literal) inconveniences I look back at my time in Oxford with great thankfulness.

On going up for my first year I was allocated a room in the north-west corner of the Rhodes building, with the same one-bar electric fire, and nearest loo outside in the quad arrangement. But bliss, oh bliss: in the basement at the foot of our stairwell a wash-room with a concrete floor, several baths long enough to lay down in, open-plan showers with huge shower-roses supplied by 3/4" pipe work, and lashings of hot water.  Everything in one room, open-plan style, but that didn't faze me. To this day this sort of arrangement has been my prototype for the ideal bathroom. Regrettably no one else agrees.

The Rhodes Building - my room was on the first floor to the left

My next door neighbour, Neil Mapley, was a self confessed pyromaniac. More to suppress the traffic noise than to create a warmer environment our windows had sliding "double" glazing panels on the inside.  I remember Neil putting bits of paper in the space between the window proper and this sliding panel and lighting them - I tried to stop him...  I enjoyed several walking holidays and one sailing holiday with him: he's the one with the generous mop of hair in my pictures below. Sadly Neil was killed in a motor-bike accident in Africa a number of years ago.

 Neil Mapley and Mike Attwood descending Helvellyn to the Striding Edge

Neil Mapley and Ranolph Poole on the Norfolk Broads

The 2011 edition of the Oriel College Record article "100 years of the Rhodes Building: its creation and a re-appraisal" reveals that the building was opened in 1911.  I had always assumed it was much older.

Recent picture of the front of the Rhodes Building - my room's window is highlighted

The building is famed for its statues with Cecil himself in South African garb taking the highest position. The inscription beneath his statue reads (when translated from the Latin) "From the great generosity of Cecil Rhodes".  The enlarged letters are a chronogram giving the date of construction, 1911, in roman numerals but involving a little "poetic" license as explained here.

The inscription below the statue of Cecil Rhodes