RUN, RABBIT

It's been a weekend of allsorts.

I made quite an idiot of myself by reprimanding a group of teenagers, failing completely until too late  to see their side of the story. I felt very sorry about that. I got suckered into a moral position that, if I'd had a few moments thought, I'd never have taken. I was boring in my atonement. But no one was greatly harmed, just my pride.

My pride was at stake at the boat, as the worst bit of boating is leaving and arriving at a berth, when there is almost always an audience to see one's hopeless attempts at controlling a large cumbersome object affected by at least three fluid media - water, wind and tide. My marina berth is tight requiring reversing with the helm hard over one way, and then firing ahead, ostensibly pointing directly at other boats, but with the helm hard over the other way, trusting that the bow will spin round. Hitherto calm, hidden boat owners appear during these manoeuvres, with furrowed brows, ready to take steps to protect their vessel as I seem intent on dinging both theirs and mine. Fortunately this time I got it right - just, and a kind lady aboard one sparkling boat gave us a thumbs up. So George said, anyway. I was way too concentrated to notice. But my fear, my true fear, is not damage of property, but, again, damage to pride.

In the conversation this weekend a prominent feature was the subject of men who go off with other women. A few examples have occurred. It's easy to rush to the same sort of judgement I made about the teenagers about this. And maybe moral opprobrium is more appropriate. But many a marriage is a loveless and lonely place, or worse, and that must surely go for men as well as women. Who knows?

I admired George for battling seasickness and still performing the essential functions of a crewman when asked. That takes some effort. A morally upright and righteous determination to do what one says.

I was very tired by the time we'd driven back from Plymouth. As I went to bed, there were two rabbits, gloating on the drive. I grumpily got the rifle out. I shot the first and he screamed. Really screamed. I hit him just beneath the head and he threw back his head and screamed. Then he skittered about, legs going like mad, running nowhere except into his own extinction. The second rabbit witnessed this, and was on high alert because of the screams. She froze. I shot her too. She bucked up, raced a few feet, and fell near the wheels of my car. That's what a moral bloke I am. That people shoot for sport baffles me. It leaves me feeling dirty and debauched. I've persuaded myself that the rabbits have to be shot as they eat everything in the vegetable garden. And that is true. But then, since I've had the boat, I've hardly touched the vegetable garden and, apart from a couple of rows of onions and potatoes and a few sad lettuces, its a weed jungle. So what am I protecting, Lord Bloody Protector of my land. I felt the same after shooting the rabbits as after reproaching the teenagers. Crap.

I went to bed and dreamt, horribly, of grotesque rabbit courts sentencing their rabbit felons for infidelity, and saving their harshest sentence for a pompous, fat man with rabbit ears, guilty of making a damned fool of himself with all sorts of ridiculous actions and judgements.

D DAY

We live in freedom and democracy in our great country today because of the sacrifices made on the beaches of Normandy seventy years ago today. It is a direct lineage. We have inherited our freedom from those who fought and died for it then.

Visiting the Normandy beaches is a terribly emotional thing. It would be a hard person indeed who remained unmoved by the rows upon rows upon rows upon rows of crosses, marking the fallen. And whereas the Allied graves are marked with glorious monuments, backed by a moral rectitude, no less extensive are the plain grey crosses accorded to the German fallen. And they are no less dead, their families no less bereft.

My favourite story of D Day in my mind epitomizes the very freedom which was being fought for. Shimi Lovat, the Brigadier commanding the 1st Special Service Brigade, was a colourful character who, amongst other trademarks of his individuality, eschewed the khaki uniform sweater replacing it with his own white highland sweater with LOVAT embroidered on it, and replaced the standard Lee Enfield rifle with his own Winchester hunting rifle. He also had his own personal Piper, Bill Millin. Upon disembarking at Sword Beach, he commanded Millin to pipe his men ashore. This had been expressly forbidden in orders given to him, as Millin reminded him. "Ah," said Lovat. "Those are Whitehall orders. We're Scotsman. They don't apply to us. Now, for f*cks sake, play something cheery."

"I suppose you want me to march up and down as well?" asked Millin, amazed.

"That would be very good," said Lovat.

Thus the preposterous occurred. Millin, clad in a kilt, patrolled the beach playing Road to the Isles and Blue Bonnets, oblivious to the incoming fire. Later, German snipers reported a variety of reasons for not shooting him, including that they thought it would be bad luck, and that if he was mad enough to do what he was doing, he ought to be allowed to get on with it.

In both Millin and Lovat were men who epitomised the individualistic, slightly mad art of being British.

I cannot bring to mind such things without my eyes moistening. We owe so much to these men and their comrades. But to honour their bravery and sacrifices properly, I believe takes a personal commitment not to nationalistic patriotism, but instead to a desire to break national boundaries and closed minded entities which ultimately are the reason for conflict and war in the first instance. Our freedom, fought for and won at such a cost, contains as its essence a permission to think beyond what binds "us" to a deeper questioning of "them", and a more universal definition of "us" that includes all humanity.

In this way, at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, will we best remember them.

AN UGLY SCENE

The footballer Joey Barton has had to apologise for saying on BBC Question Time (why was he on it anyway?) that the four main political parties are like four really ugly girls.

If he'd said they're like four really ugly blokes, would he have had to apologise?

ADRIFT

Four yachtsmen are missing after their yacht capsized and sank mid Atlantic. The US Coastguard has been persuaded to resume a search, assisted by RAF aircraft.
I hope the men will be found and returned safe to their anguished families. Feeling great solidarity with the worried families, I signed a petition to urge resumption of the search.
But those of us who go to sea for adventure have no real right to expect others to rescue us. Though it is the duty of any vessel to respond to a mayday if they can, the extent to which, as a yachtsman you call on this is up to you. We go to sea by choice. I know of more than one sailor who sails with no expectation of rescue, and whose philosophy is to sort out their own salvation, or perish in the attempt, without endangering anyone else's life in a rescue mission.
My boat has an EPIRB and a radio to call for help.
I have a horror of the rescue situation as it inevitably signals my failure as a skipper.
But is it worth losing your life by not calling for help?
The other day I made my first single handed passage. It was close coastal work in home waters. I was still terrified. At every second there was a keen awareness that going over the side would very probably be the end of me.
Alone, though, the decision of whether to call for help or not is perhaps morally and practically clearer than with others aboard.
I pray for those in peril on the sea.
And I pray for my own wisdom to not go to sea in circumstances even the least bit perilous, and if I do, to take the right responsibility for my life, and any entrusted to me.

AWAY

• I am away, staying at Fawsley, the most bonkers of all places. A bonkers pile, exploded into the British countryside. The sheep are arrogantly bonkers, mutely submitting to being run over on the gated road. The place is bonkers, architecture all over the place, mainly bonkers Tudor with bonkers bits of Georgian and Palladian fill in. The staff are bonkers. I thought the receptionist was going to bite my neck. She is a long dead Russian ballerina. The systems creak more than the floorboards. Even the menu is bonkers. Smoked salmon, but in some mad curry slurry, which obviously you have to ask them not to put on the plate. A perfectly good steak is ruined by some Cajun nonsense. Why don't cooks just do the simple thing well? Eating out would be so much better if they tried less hard. A glass of wine is a tenner, but a bottle only twenty. They have every form of gin but not Plymouth. The pictures on the wall are all of British Royalty, from Tudors onwards. Oil paintings. Except they aren't - they're prints with odd dabs of paint put on to make them seem authentic. Even the guest list is bonkers. The place is full of lesbian couples, each a bonkers combo of pneumatic babe and industrial lump.
• An interesting conversation about autism and how autistic people work from detail outwards. I recommend the book The Reason I Jump. I see  this detail out tendency in people who would not be thought of as autistic too.
• Late food makes my sleep intolerably awful. Alcohol in the evening also has this effect. It is difficult to accept this after such a long career of carousing.
• Can women have it all? Career, motherhood, loving partnership? An interesting chat about whether it's the media asking this question which limits women's sense of entitlement. Little girls are criticised for being bossy. Little boys aren't.
• One of my clients has resigned, following a single session with me. There is a frisson to this. Excitement. Fear, too.
• The Hopping Hare is a place I really like. I stay there quite often and the people are getting to know me. They are very nice and helpful. For example, I went mid afternoon to try and get some lunch. No chef. But the barmaid said "I'm no great cook but I could rustle you up a sandwich." That kind of straightforward care is rare.
• I desperately need an early night, having feasted and thus slept so badly. I am ready for bed at about nine and am just dropping off when there's a fireworks display. The bonkers tin lid on it.
• Tomorrow I sleep on Cylesta. I dream of it.

The Giro d'Italia is starting in Belfast.
The Tour de France is starting in Yorkshire.

The Marathon des sables is due to start in Barnsley.
The Venice Biennale will start in Caracas.
Rio's famous carnival will shift its start to Antarctica, posing costume challenges for the participants.
The May Day parade in Russia's Red Square will start in Belgium.
The London Marathon will start on the moon.
The Edinburgh tattoo will be in Cameroun.
Timbuktu will host for the first time the Palio.
The Derby will be run mid Atlantic.

I'm all for cosmopolitanism, but to an older gent like myself it can at times be a touch confusing.

SWEATY PALMS

DAWN

0540.
Blackie is singing outside my window.
This is the rough end of a belief that we should be diurnal. Go to bed when it is dark. Rise when it is light.
So comes the listening - a practice I do not find easy. The mind strays away from the present moment into all sorts of versions of past and future. Stories.
This morning, Blackie holds my attention. It is a truly beautiful, heart-filling sound, and with a background rivulet of curlews, I cannot imagine a finer alarm clock. For one raised in sounds of traffic, rowing neighbours, and the odd siren, it is a privilege worth daily thanks.
It sets me thinking too.
Current science holds that the dawn chorus is a territorial claim, made over and over again. In some time, I imagine science will be proved wrong again.
Blackie does not repeat himself. The core melody is similar, but not the same each time. He ends it differently, and adds all sorts of variants throughout his aria. Each call is different. And the answering calls from neighbour blackbird also differ each time they are made. Sometimes I could swear they are interrogative, sometimes jussive, and sometimes downright imperative.
What I believe I am listening to is conversation, perhaps with repetitive themes, but with stimulus and response both present in the song.
Why would they just repeat the inane "here I am; this is mine"?
Why wouldn't they be talking about what would be important to them that day? The weather? The wind direction? Where they will be going for food? Where they have heard or sensed food might be? What threats are about? What opportunities? These seem far more likely to me, even if more sophisticated.
Maybe even, like me, Blackie sends up a prayer of exultation at simply being alive to hear this marvellous round of sound.
Birds and animals are far cleverer, I believe, than we humans, and especially scientists, acknowledge.
After all, we have many singers, but few as fine as a blackbird.
And not a single one who can combine that beautiful voice with the ability to fly.

NO CRIMEA?

Now that Russia is enacting the answer that ought to have been enacted from the start - a Crimean referendum - one might think that the invitation to OSCE observers to monitor the referendum would be accepted.
But it hasn't been.
That is because the Crimean referendum will be free and fair. It doesn't need to be anything else. You don't need to rig an answer you can get without rigging it.
But the OSCE has handed the West what it would want - an excuse to condemn the referendum. Indeed, they are already doing so, in terms of it being illegal. Rigged, will follow as a headline.
The situation tells us something else though.
It tells us that the OSCE is prey to following the West's own on and off definition of democracy, based on European and Western geopolitical and economic advantage.
What the world needs is a democratic monitoring force which actually is interested in democracy for its own sake, disinterested from any national or supra national interests.

U KRAINE IF YOU WANT 2

Congratulations to the lucky winners of the competition launched in the last blog post. Well done, Mr V Putin, of Moscow, who shares his win with 79 members of Crimea's parliament. Your prizes are on their way to you.
It is disappointing to note that winners from further West have been few indeed. And there has been some quite bad sportsmanship too. Mr B. Obama, of Washington DC has complained loudly about breaches of the rules. Apparently, holding a referendum on separatist feelings is a violation of international law. Even more disappointing is a universally supine western media, not one of whose ranks has had the sense to ask Mr Obama "Mr President, which law?" I am not a lawyer so cannot of course be definitive about what is or is not legal or illegal in these matters. But if Mr Obama is right, then MR D Cameron of London, England, and Mr A Salmond, of Edinburgh, Scotland may both be in legal hot water. Everyone knows though that in law invading another's country is illegal and that is why, as an example, we would never see US or UK troops invading, say, Iraq or Afghanistan.
What is most puzzling is this - that the West would expect Mr Putin to simply lay down and accept the machinations of the West in creating a pro Western Ukraine, with concomitant access to its important gas supplies. That is an arrogance which is pretty unbelievable, and, as the events have shown, misplaced.
What is also puzzling is this - that the West does not simply listen to what Mr Putin has to say and take him seriously, accepting a greyer, less absolute but much more workable version of both truth and national and international best interest.

U KRAINE IF YOU WANT TO

Here's a simple spatial problem.

A country is surrounded by two powerful neighbours. Lets called one simply East and one simply West.

Half of the said country overwhelmingly want alliance with East, and half want alliance with West. Those who want alliance with West live overwhelmingly in the west of the country. Those who want alliance with East live overwhelmingly in the east of the country.

Bearing in mind modern principles of democratic self determination, solve the above problem.

You have (shall we be generous) two minutes to provide a suitable answer.

I am expecting that any sensible reader of this now has the solution.

Yet, for leaders of two of the world's superpowers, this seems not to be the case, and, instead of an amiable tension free arrival at the solution, we have bellicose escalation on both sides.

Why?

Because to be a modern leader it is more important to be seen to be hard, warlike and powerful (based on military power) than it is to be seen to be emollient, wise, flexible in thought, and able to get on with one's neighbours.

We shall see how a dangerous situation in Ukraine progresses. On pragmatism, or on ego?

My guess is, it'll get worse before it gets better.