As planned, today was laundry day. I went out in the morning with a bag of washing, rather than my camera backpack. I was apprehensive about having the right coins and so forth, but remarkably the local laundrette had central wireless control for all its services, complete with contactless payment. The elderly proprietor helpfully talked me through the process in clear and elegant French. 

Every product and device had a number. I typed in the one for washing powder, held up my phone and it dropped from the dispenser. I loaded the washing machine, selected my programme, typed in its number, flashed my phone and was ready to go.

Armed with clean clothes for another six days I returned to the hotel via my favourite Metz brunch spot where I had just one meal for the day.

Back at the hotel I checked my roaming minutes and was happy to find I have many to spare, despite streaming TV shows of an evening. Reassured, I settled down on a rainy afternoon to watch the latest episode of Welcome to Wrexham.

When I was a teenage boy my mum, worried I wasn’t getting on with dad, made him agree to take me to the football. I was a Liverpool fan but he refused to take me there saying that, at 30 miles away in North Wales;

My car’s already parked too close to bloody Anfield!

Rather than pay Scouse scallies running parking protection rackets, he bought season tickets for Wrexham. So I was a fan before it was fashionable. Dad and I followed the club from the old fourth division to the second — during what I now know from the documentary were its glory days. Then I went to university never to return.

Mum’s idea was a good one. Dad got into it and we made happy memories together but once I was off the scene he stopped going. In later years I suggested taking him to a Boxing Day match for old times sake but he replied; 

Wrexham?! I’m better now thanks

He was bemused by the club becoming a global phenomenon because of the documentary. I showed him an episode and it did nothing for him. I however am oddly moved by it and by the the theme song an American fan has written for it;

Don't forget where you came from
Don't forget what you're made of
The ones who were there
When no one else would care

I studied French at A level fifty years ago. The only lines of French poetry that have stuck in my mind all those years are these;

Les sanglots longs des violons de l’automne blessent mon coeur d’une langeur monotone. 

It’s from Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine, who was born — I found out this week — in Metz. I visited his birthplace; an unassuming apartment building near the Palais de Justice. It wasn’t open so I didn’t go inside. Interestingly, given the 80th anniversary of D-Day currently being celebrated, those lines were broadcast by the Allies to signal the imminent landings to the French Resistance.

My first conversation with the late Mrs P. was on that A level course. Her father later told me I'd made quite an impression. She was the star student and teachers pet. I was comme çi, comme ça — I eventually scored a C. She was infuriated by my dominance in the conversation classes and protested too much about me to her family for the importance of the grievance.

I’ve been expecting to see you for some time,

her father wryly observed, when first I met him. 

The teacher whose pet she was, was a cynical careerist. He later escaped the boredom he never bothered to conceal by becoming Director of Education for our County Council. It was not he who introduced us to Verlaine and Rimbaud (who had a passionate romantic affair in their youth). That fell to a prudish lady whom I teased with constant sly references to the affair. In the 1970s teachers had not yet been trained to praise and promote homosexuality. The poor lady loved their poems and — blushing furiously — defended their “honour” from my insinuations.

A more influential teacher for me was an eccentric who took his three best male pupils to France every year in his Renault 4. My worst enemy, a friend and I qualified when we were 12. After inviting our parents over to meet his wife (and thus be reassured) it was he who took me to France for the first time. It was my first visit abroad. We camped our way down to the Loire Valley and its chateaux — and back.

I remember being impressed by the flying buttresses of Chartres Cathedral and the beauty of the Château de Chenonceau. From the Eiffel Tower in Paris we looked down to watch him be arrested for sunbathing shirtless while he waited for us. Skin cancer was no more discussed than gayness back then. He sunbathed constantly to maintain his nut brown tan. Quite a character, who wouldn’t last ten minutes in suspicious modern times, but a good teacher who believed in what he did.

I wonder what influence these teachers had on my eventual international career — all unforeseen then in rural Wales. As I sit in the lawyers’ quarter of Metz I’m pretty sure they didn’t know France’s legal system differs more profoundly from ours than its language does.

Given a year living here, language would not be a problem. I love the lifestyle, good manners and culture. However I’d miss the organic, bottom-up nature of English Common Law and the way it informs our attitudes. Abolish Parliament, repeal every statute made by our politicians and within five years we’d once more have the best legal system in the world, grown organically in the soil of our everyday experiences.

We have humble courts of law. They have palaces of “justice” (yes those are sneer quotes). Our laws grew like mushrooms. Theirs are gifts from on high for people to submit to gratefully (or evade). Just as Shariah is a gift from Allah, so Civil Code is a gift from Ancient Rome, rewrapped by Bonaparte. You can build a civilisation on it — they have and I am fond of it — but I couldn’t breathe their legal air for long.

One good reason to leave the EU was to prevent more generations of our politicians being infected with the pompous self-importance of theirs. It may take decades to get our MPs back to humility, but our future depends on it.

Before returning to my hotel to process photos and blog, I had lunch at La Bistro de la Cathedrale, TripAdvisor top pick for Metz. I had my most substantial meal for days and thoroughly enjoyed it, staying on afterwards to enjoy a Ricard in the sunshine.   

My album of Metz photos has been updated.

“Breakfast near me” typed into Google Maps this morning yielded several better prospects than yesterday’s mediocre fare in my hotel. I was delighted with my choice — a brunch spot favoured by young French families. The only disadvantage was it made me feel old! Polite young children sang along quietly to the English pop music in the background and were generally delightful. I’m pretty sure they’d no idea what they were singing, but then neither did their parents so only I got to be amused. I’d have been delighted to be a grandad at any of their tables.

The late Mrs P. and I braved disapproving fellow diners on many occasions in England by taking the Misses P to restaurants when they were little. They learned how to behave and never once showed us up. One proud parenting moment was at the old River Room at the Savoy. If daggers looks involved real daggers we’d have been acupunctured to death as we were shown to our table. Our girls behaved with perfect decorum however (just like the young French children this morning, who brought the story to mind) and we had a lovely family meal.

Before we called for the bill the Italian leader of the band providing live background music came over to chat to the girls He was surprised to find we were English. He said we looked just like a family in Italy and that it was “lovely to see” — for the first time in all the years he'd played at The Savoy. I still think it's a mistake for parents (and society in general) to assume young children are too barbaric for polite society. They don't have to be. 

I adjourned to a nearby park to take photos, catch up on messaging and read the Sunday Telegraph and my usual blogs on my iPad. I sighed to see there was a children’s playground. In London a lone elderly man (especially one with a camera) would trigger suspicious gazes. The French families today were stereotypically insouciant as I sat on a bench nearby.

French privacy laws make street photography (ironically pioneered by their greatest photographer, Cartier-Bresson; whose most famous photos would now be forbidden) illegal. I was careful to respect a law I despise by ensuring any human subjects were unidentifiable figures in the frame.

I think my desire to obey laws is one of the reasons I’m a libertarian. People with looser attitudes to compliance may worry less about 3,000+ crimes per Parliament being created (as happened under New Labour).

I used to ask people how many of those new crimes they could name. No one ever knew more than one; hunting with hounds. Others included entering a nursery school without prior appointment, which must be broken regularly by grandparents stepping in when a parent is delayed. However well intended those new crimes were (and most were just pointless propaganda to make the government seem "active" and “caring”), it’s not good to make the perfect knowledge of law assumed by our courts even more of a legal fiction.

Not least because it undermines respect for Law itself. A few laws based on commonly-accepted moral principles and rigorously and reliably enforced are the way to build respect for Law. The alternative makes lawyers rich but I can see no other benefit.

That said, I note the current British election campaign turns once again on the stupidest question of all — "what can government do for me?" The answer, if you’re not an apparatchik or on benefits, is “***k you and take most of your earnings.” That, however, is a lesson not yet learned.

Keir Starmer is keen to add 1.5 million new voters aged 16 and 17 to the electorate, precisely because they'll have learned no economic lessons at all. One wonders why anyone ever thought it a good idea to put our children's education in the hands of parasites who profit from voter ignorance. It would certainly account for why Starmer is also keen to drive more future voters into state education.

Not one party in this election proposes less government and fewer laws. Not one. Unless something changes (I hope it does because both my grandads volunteered to defend my right to do so) I shall for the first time in my life not vote. Even when I lived abroad I voted every time by proxy until I lost the right to do so. The Conservatives are authoritarian statist socialists with no respect for individual freedom. So of course are Labour, but at least they're honest about it. Given a choice between thieves and lying thieves, I'm not inclined to express an opinion.

After being brought down by such political reflections while reading my newspaper and blogs, I set off again in holiday mood to take photographs. I headed to the plan d'eau de Metz, a kind of leisure-boating marina. I'd forgotten about my intermittent fasting regime and found myself not having lunched with minutes to go. The few restaurants that were open on a Sunday had closed by 2.30pm, so I grabbed a beer and an ice-cream at a place which – it transpired – sadly lacked a loo. Like many gents of my age, this is now a matter of more concern than it used to be. I swiftly followed the directions given by the ice-cream vendeuse and found myself in a queue. A clever automated public WC performed an impressive cleansing so thorough each time that it took longer than the typical visitor! Fortunately, I was spared embarrassment and continued my waterside walk in happier mood.

I'd planned to call an Uber to return as I did yesterday. When I checked the distance however, I realised I'd walked in something of a circle and was less than half a mile from my hotel. In consequence, though I'd planned to walk a little less than yesterday, I ended up covering the same modest distance. I enjoyed the walk more today. Partly because I'd left my tripod and lighting gear in the hotel to lighten my load. Mainly because I was more confident I could handle it. 

My album of photos has been updated if you’re interested.

It’s been two months since I last posted here. The Last Ditch is not dead but it’s moribund. The same might be said for me.

I have made some progress since Mrs P the Second left last November. I am no longer in purdah. I am going out with my friends. I am making plans for my future. I have progressed from saying that I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with me to actually meaning it. That’s not the same as being happy about it  I still feel bereft, lost and lonely.

We have filed for one of the new mutual divorces. We have agreed on the financial terms of our separation. It has not taken many conversations with friends who have experienced divorce for me to realise that I am blessed. Mrs P the Second is being reasonable, kind and considerate. She clearly regrets hurting me and is trying to make this as easy as possible. If anything, I like her better than ever. By this stage of most divorces, the other party and her lawyer would have raised the emotional temperature to the melting point of love. I know how lucky I am (though a smidgeon of hatred might make it easier at this point).

The pandemic being over, I am making travel plans. I intend to tour all the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movie locations in New Zealand on an epic road trip next January/February for example. I hope my spirits will have sufficiently revived by then to make a good travel blog of the journey. I’m not shipping Speranza though. I will do it in a hire car.

Having no wife to leave my assets to tax-free I am revising my estate-planning. I’m responding to the wicked, perverse incentives of Inheritance Tax by planning actively to destroy the modest wealth I worked so hard and long to build. I hate that, of course. Those perverse incentives, born of envy and malice, will destroy our civilisation one day.

An Ancient Greek proverb said a civilisation is where a man will plant a tree to shade his grandson. By that definition IHT is uncivilised. No UK-resident family will ever own a global company in the way the Porsche family does. Much English energy that could have been expended on wealth-creation will be wasted. But “equality” (defined as “all being equally insignificant in the face of state power”) is more important to most English people now than productivity. Especially to the leftist “Deep State” Establishment wedded to that state power.

Felicity

Those readers who know me will be unsurprised that I plan to destroy my wealth by automotive depreciation. My much-loved maternal grandfather was a store man at the Bentley factory in Crewe. He died young and still in service when I was sixteen. The company (then Rolls-Royce Motors of course) sent a car and bearers to his funeral. Talking to his co-workers I learned that grandad, though he had no interest in cars himself, had marked me as a petrol-head. He’d persuaded his craftsman colleagues to make me a scale model from offcuts of real cars. He was almost fired when caught trying to smuggle it out for me and was forced to destroy it in a furnace. Ever since hearing that story for the first time at his funeral, I’ve had an ambition to commission a new Bentley. 

I have already worked out the configuration for “Felicity”, as she is to be known. She’s to be a V8 Flying Spur in a burgundy colour. I plan to place the order when the divorce is final. My financial advisor is clear I shouldn’t tick off the Family Court judge by placing it sooner. Mrs PII is a robustly independent feminist who wants nothing from me but continued friendship, but our courts still see marriage as a financial transaction.

I’m not sure what the lead time is so this may take a while. I’m hoping to take my mother to the factory to collect Felicity. I plan to have Bentley place a plaque in the engine compartment that says “Commissioned in memory of” my grandfather. If you know Mum don’t spoil the surprise please. She hates all extravagance and is quietly horrified by all this. I’m hoping the plaque will make her smile. 

I apologise for posting once more about my personal life. It’s not in my nature, I hope, to overshare. The Oprah Winfreyite idea that everyone has a personal “truth” that it’s somehow brave or noble to bare disgusts me. It’s self-indulgent and morally-corrosive. Having begun a sad story here however, I didn’t want to let lie the impression it must have left.

I have felt sorry for myself since that post. Apart from two doctors’ appointments I’ve stayed home alone thinking dark thoughts and kept away from friends and family. There was perhaps an element of improper pride in that. I didn’t want the people who love me to see me broken. 

Today I had a drink and a meal with an old friend. A simple and yet a powerful thing. We touched on my grief and my reaction to it, but mostly we talked of things I blanked out in my self-pity. It was enough to help me see that, though I’ve suffered a blow, my life is still good.

We began, for example, to hatch a plan for a trip to Japan — for whose culture and food we share an affection. I would love to make that happen and document it here. COVID has put travel (and blogging about it) on hold but it would be good to do more. To take better photos, a wise man once advised, “stand in front of more interesting stuff”. It would be good to dust off my photography gear and do just that.

Yes it’s hard to be rejected by someone you love. It’s sad when a relationship breaks down, for whatever reason. Being dumped is certainly not good for that self-esteem the Winfrey-ites value above all but so what? How we feel about ourselves is often a poor guide. The Kray Brothers did not lack for self esteem, for example. The world might have been better if they’d had less of it. Amour-propre used to be considered a bad thing.

Ultimately there’s no value in being with someone who doesn’t want to be there. The only good human relationships are consensual. That consent having been unexpectedly and disappointingly withdrawn, a good libertarian must blink back his tears and move on. My soon-to-be-ex wife has her story and I love her enough to hope, in the end, it’s a good one. I’m sorry I won’t be in future chapters but hey ho.

Thank you, gentle readers, for your words of support and encouragement. They helped. I apologise to those of you (and those of my family and friends) who reached out directly and were ignored. I did not mean to spurn your help, I just wasn’t ready to handle it gracefully.

I am sorry to have troubled you here with problems that were no concern of yours. Please let’s say no more of it and move on with dignity.

Two svelte American ladies of a certain age were having coffee today at my West London health club. They were in the next "pod" to me outdoors as I had a post-swim coffee before heading home. Perhaps it's those wide-open prairies but Americans, bless them, always speak a little more loudly than us so I didn't really have a choice but to listen to their conversation.

The topic was their mothers. Both moms back in the States are apparently unsure of the wisdom of being vaccinated. One cost of parenthood no-one tells you about beforehand is that one day you will be judged and found wanting by humans you could not love more; your children for whom you would cheerfully die. I confess their mothers immediately had my sympathy, regardless of the correctness of their views.

There was a good deal of sneering about conspiracy theories circulating on the internet. I found it surprising that both errant moms believed 5G was involved, but having listened quietly for another few minutes discovered that neither had ever said so. Their daughters were simply assuming that if they doubted government advice on vaccines, they believed all the other stuff too. One of the mothers is apparently a 9/11 "truther" and her daughter's observation that no government is capable of keeping such a dark secret struck me as fair. 

I have read all I can about the vaccines. As a lawyer I was uneasy that – whereas normally pharmaceutical companies complain of the time taken by regulators to license new medicines – in this case they were only prepared to release them so quickly if governments indemnified them against claims for adverse side effects. They were not prepared to stand behind their products and that concerned me. I was also concerned that, while I am sure regulatory regimes in America and the UK involve much pointless bureaucracy, delay and legal overkill, they were being swept aside so casually. I have no medical expertise, but my legal training made me uneasy.

Britain has been pretty quick in vaccinating its population, but (fortunately or otherwise – only time will tell) it was not the quickest. I read what I could about the effects of the vaccines in Israel and, based on that data, made a risk assessment in favour of being vaccinated. My concerns are still there, but I made a choice. I could easily have chosen the other way and I respect the opinions of those (like my fellow health club members' mothers) who did.

There are available facts and facts that will only become available in the future. People must make their choices based on their own risk assessment today. That useless truism is not the point of this post. The truly significant thing I overheard was this. Having sneered at her mother's belief that "we can't trust government", one of the ladies said;

I thought to myself – Mom, I don't want to believe what you believe because if it's true I can't have any of the things I believe in.

There, I thought, was a moment of insight; a moment (almost) of self-awareness. If government can't be trusted, then the societal change she wants isn't possible. Therefore, whatever the evidence, government must be trusted. That pretty much sums up the statist mindset. 

I don't know whether these mothers or daughters are right about this issue. I do know that one of the daughters (and her companion seemed to agree) is allowing her desires to displace her reason. In consequence, sadly, her mind will only ever be changed by a catastrophe I would never wish upon her.

I suspect many such earnest, well-meaning souls as Goneril and Regan (as I christened them) felt they needed to believe the state could be trusted at key points in the deadly history of the 20th Century. If the brave new world of Communism was to happen, for example, government had to be trusted with enormous power to make immense change.

Many Gonerils and Regans must have ruefully reflected on that in the Gulag.

In their prime my paternal grandparents were each – in their different ways – formidable members of the "great generation". They didn't suffer fools gladly or (unless obliged by family ties and then with open scorn) at all. They thought psychology was fake. They thought depression was weakness glorified. My grandfather was a cripple and, as I learned the hard way, got angry if you used the euphemism "disabled".

Why are you playing with words? Calling me something else makes me no less crippled you bloody fool!

They thought hard work, prudence, patriotism and family loyalty were the keys to all progress. 

They may sound scary and  – to their first of many grandchildren – they often were, but they were impressive too. This, despite having suffered losses that would justify many moderns in claiming lifelong victimhood. They just accepted them as their fate, got on with life and became angry if you mentioned them.

My grandmother had received "the telegram" from the non-euphemised War Ministry during WWII after my grandfather broke his back in an accident on a troopship. His commanding officer had assumed he wouldn't make it and sent a premature report of his death. He survived, but was told he'd never walk. Grandmother's first inkling that the MoW had erred was his knock at the door, having walked several miles from the railway station. They expected no apology for the Army's incompetence and lack of concern for their welfare or (God forbid) feelings. They suffered no PTSD. They never thought to sue. There was a war on. Worse had happened to others. Worse still needed to be done to others, so the war could be won.

Grandfather was not confined to the long-promised wheelchair until his eighties, by dint of forcing himself to walk miles every day in agony. His country had rewarded him in 1946 by seizing the transport business that he and his brothers had founded with their savings from working down a coal mine as teenagers. He never complained about that, saying that the Labour Party was sincere, if misguided, in taking it and that his fellow citizens (including his sister) had voted for it genuinely believing the country would run it better. It hadn't (as he had predicted to them at the time) and he'd lived to see his business re-privatised. He had also lived to see the Soviet Union fall and died thinking such nonsenses were now ancient history. He never bemoaned his own fate in that experiment; saying when I pressed him on the subject near to his end, that to be angry at his Labour-voting family and friends would have achieved nothing but to make him miserable. Life wasn't ever fair. He didn't vote Labour precisely because he wasn't naive enough to think it could be. 

Why do I tell these stories now? Because I remember watching the personalities of these formidable folk crumble when old age and frailty confined them to their conservatory. Their view of the world became distorted as their direct experiences of it dwindled. Their news of events in their old orbit was limited to what visitors chose to share. These fiercely-independent people began to live inside their own heads and to get things wrong in ways their admiring, if fearful, grandson would never have expected.

As I have watched my country during the pandemic from my own equivalent of their conservatory; locked-down not by ill-health but state force, I have been alert to parallels between my experience and theirs. My information sources were limited as were the range of friends with whom I could discuss them. I feared to blog about the issues, not because I was afraid to be in a minority – I have been in that position for many decades now – but because I sincerely worried that I might be losing touch with reality. The situation was so artificial that I feared for my own judgement. I thought my mind might be failing me as theirs had in their isolation. As we begin to return to normality, I begin to realise I drew the wrong parallel.

I have been inclined to despise my fellow-Brits to be honest. Opinion polls suggested they were not the potential John Hampdens I had always imagined, but actually more like Pavliks. Even friends I had considered essentially "sound" were in fearful submission to, essentially, whatever the hell the establishment chose to tell them would save them from the plague. I kept quiet because I feared I might be wrong – and I was, but not in the way I thought.

We Britons have let ourselves down in this crisis. We have looked for answers elsewhere rather than seeking them out ourselves. We have listened too much to authority, while demanding it give us bread. In the last few days we've allowed ourselves to be distracted by authority posturing about the modern circus that is football. But in some ways we have been like my grandparents at their best, not their worst. Terrified by data deliberately warped to maximise our fears, we have tried our best to be good citizens in the face of danger. "There's a war pandemic on" we told ourselves, so normal rules don't apply and it would be disloyal to moan. Others have it worse (look at what a mess those idiots in Brussels, Paris and Berlin have made, for example) so we should just get on with it as best we can. 

Yes I was in my equivalent of my elderly grandparents' conservatory, but I was not alone. The whole frightened nation was in it too. The difference is that – unlike my grandparents – we're going to emerge. We have not yet failed the test of who we are as a nation. It is about to be set as we return to normality. I hope we pass it in a way that would make my grandparents in their prime proud.

Judge overrides prenup as Bob the Builder tycoon's daughter divorces | Law | The Guardian.

Child taken from womb by social services - Telegraph.

she was deemed to have had no "capacity" to instruct lawyers

...even if the council had been acting in the woman’s best interests, officials should have consulted her family beforehand and also involved Italian social services, who would be better-placed to look after the child.

The video is a little ropey but please persist and view the whole thing. As ever, Dr Anthony Daniels (aka Theodore Dalrymple) is both interesting and darkly amusing.

He reports that, under a threat of violence (50% of doctors have been assaulted in the last 12 months) most general practitioners in Britain are routinely filling out fraudulent certificates enabling fit individuals to go "on the sick" where benefits are 60% higher than for unemployment and there is no need to pretend to seek work. More than 2.5 million people have such certificates and he claims that "the great majority of them are fraudulent or at least untruthful." More than a million people have them for "depression and anxiety" alone. He comments wrily that it is an achievement of the British welfare state that it has "created more invalids than the First World War".

Another achievement of the British welfare state is an enormous growth in heroin use. In the 1950s, when heroin addicts were registered with the Home Office, there were known to be about 60 in the whole country. It is now thought that there are about 300,000. He describes an official ideology that heroin addiction is a sickness beyond the addicts' control, which renders them unable to work and drives them to crime. An ideology he says is "completely and obviously wrong."

Every user chose freely to take heroin the first time and most use it intermittently for up to a year before beginning to take it regularly. Most users live in a sub-culture in which the consequences of taking heroin are far better known, as he puts it, than "the dates of the Second World War".

He says it's untrue that medical or other support is necessary to give up heroin. He jokingly calls Mao Zedong "the greatest drug therapist in history" because he told China's heroin addicts that if they didn't give it up he would shoot them. 20 million duly did. Without recommending such a radical approach, he points out that this clearly proves a "conceptual difference between, say, rheumatoid arthritis and drug addiction." Mao's approach, after all, would not have "cured" the former.

For so long as users don't give up heroin he says that's no reason for them not to work. Research shows that in the fifties most American addicts worked normally and indeed most of our own users now lead very active working lives - except that their "work" is burglary.

The growth in heroin use is therefore driven, he seems to suggest, by the needs of the "bureaucracy of care" serving the addicts. Its members need a passive population that takes no personal responsibility in order to secure their jobs. He believes that "at some level" these public employees know full well that they are playing games. In his words;

I would say the addiction services need the addicts more than the addicts need the services.

That's a more shocking critique of welfarism from an insider that I would ever have dared to offer from the outside. To suggest that an army of "carers" has, in effect, steadily built heroin use from 60 to 300,000 to give themselves jobs seems so wicked as to be scarcely believable. But then who would have thought the learned members of our medical profession could be recruited to knowing, if not willing, participation in frauds worth billions of pounds?

For all that its servants justify their jobs by droning on about the supposed immorality and greed of their bogeymen in business, only the state, ladies and gentlemen, can corrupt on such a massive scale.