I spent an enjoyable day last week in Oxford with one of my boys, who is applying to go there to read medicine. After he’d done the dutiful things (attending talks in the Department of Medical Sciences, looking over some of the colleges he’s interested in, etc.) I asked him if it’d be ok if we ventured down memory lane. And so we went looking for this bust of T.E. Lawrence in the chapel of Jesus College.

I hadn’t seen it since one glorious late-August day in 1967 when I had visited Oxford for the first time. The whole place was deathly quiet (this was before the tourist boom) and the colleges, in particular, seemed like magical oases of scholarly peace. I had been reading The Seven Pillars but hadn’t known of Lawrence’s connection with Jesus (the college, that is. I later found that he had written a thesis on Crusader castles during his time there.) So the bust came as a delightful shock. Having grown up in the Ireland of the 1950s, a society which was not in the habit of honouring writers and in which James Joyce was still reviled as a pornographer, I was very struck — and touched — by it. And it led me to a critical decision that shaped my life.

At the time I was about to embark on the final year of my undergraduate engineering degree in Ireland. Insofar as I had a forward plan, it was to go to the US — maybe to MIT or to Berkeley. But sitting there in the sunlight shafting through the chapel windows on that peaceful August afternoon, I decided that I’d like to go to Oxford or Cambridge instead. In the end, I applied to both, and Cambridge made me an offer first. The rest, as they say, is (personal) history. It’s strange to rediscover the hinges on which one’s life turns. We lurch from one chance event to another, and then later on try to impose some kind of retrospective order on it. But in fact it’s more like what mathematicians call a ‘random walk’.

Flickr version here.

First, find some flowers.

This (plus most of the recent flower/plant pictures in my Photostream) was taken with a Panasonic DMZ-TZ6 camera that I picked up for a song in a sale. I bought it because it has a Leica Vario-Elmar lens which not only has a 12x optical zoom, but also a terrific macro capability. It’s a truly extraordinary lens. The only downside is that the camera doesn’t have a standard mini-USB connector. Why can’t camera manufacturers see sense about things like this? (And don’t get me started on to the subject of battery chargers. We have three Canon digital IXUSes in our family, each of them superficially identical, and yet each requires its own charger. Madness.)

Flickr version here.

Jeff Bezos’s Princeton Commencement Address is the best thing I’ve read today. Sample:

On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

At that age, I'd take any excuse to make estimates and do minor arithmetic. I'd calculate our gas mileage — figure out useless statistics on things like grocery spending. I'd been hearing an ad campaign about smoking. I can't remember the details, but basically the ad said, every puff of a cigarette takes some number of minutes off of your life: I think it might have been two minutes per puff. At any rate, I decided to do the math for my grandmother. I estimated the number of cigarettes per days, estimated the number of puffs per cigarette and so on. When I was satisfied that I'd come up with a reasonable number, I poked my head into the front of the car, tapped my grandmother on the shoulder, and proudly proclaimed, "At two minutes per puff, you've taken nine years off your life!"

I have a vivid memory of what happened, and it was not what I expected. I expected to be applauded for my cleverness and arithmetic skills. "Jeff, you're so smart. You had to have made some tricky estimates, figure out the number of minutes in a year and do some division." That's not what happened. Instead, my grandmother burst into tears. I sat in the backseat and did not know what to do. While my grandmother sat crying, my grandfather, who had been driving in silence, pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway. He got out of the car and came around and opened my door and waited for me to follow. Was I in trouble? My grandfather was a highly intelligent, quiet man. He had never said a harsh word to me, and maybe this was to be the first time? Or maybe he would ask that I get back in the car and apologize to my grandmother. I had no experience in this realm with my grandparents and no way to gauge what the consequences might be. We stopped beside the trailer. My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."

What I want to talk to you about today is the difference between gifts and choices…

In my gloomier moments I sometimes feel that a lifetime spent in universities has left me with the feeling that there’s a high correlation between cleverness and moral cowardice. At any rate, I’ve known some very high-IQ cowards, and rather more modestly-endowed heroes. Who was it who said that anyone with sufficient intelligence can think of a dozen reasons for not doing the right thing?

And I was fortunate to know one extremely intelligent man who was also a genuine hero.

The interview that Johannes Kuhn did with me is up on seuddeutsche.de. Bet you didn’t know I spoke such fluent German. Er, neither did I. Fortunately Johannes speaks excellent English.

… means something, said Pooh, or my name isn’t Pooh, er, which it is.

Spotted on a pavement near my office.

(With apologies to A.A. Milne.)

We come to the North Norfolk coast a lot, for the very good reasons that it’s beautiful, peaceful and within 75 minutes’ drive of where we live. But yesterday morning, bending down to pick up my walking boots prior to setting off, I pulled a muscle in my back and wound up hobbling around with a walking stick. It happens occasionally — often when packing to go on holiday (so I ought to be alert to it by now) — so I just take painkillers, keep moving and wait for it to go away. Which it usually does in about three days.

What it meant, though, was that the long walk we had planned from Burnham Overy Staithe out to the sea wasn’t feasible. But we went there anyway and parked on the Staithe, thinking that we could always read the newspapers and take the air. In the event, I read nothing, but spent a fascinating few hours watching the English merchant-banking classes at play.

It was a truly glorious evening, with a fresh breeze and a cloudless sky. The tide was nearly full when we arrived, and the Staithe, which until then had been mostly slumbering in the sun, had begun to swarm with seafaring (or at any rate dinghy-sailing) life. It was mainly families and kids, wheeling dinghies down to the water, setting up masts and sails, chattering and shouting (and sometimes bickering) before pushing off for an evening’s sailing. Watching the kids reminded me that this is where Horatio Nelson — who was born a few miles away — learned to sail a dinghy at the age of 10.

I once took a dinghy-sailing course, so I know what a deceptively difficult art it is to harness the wind to propel such a flimsy craft in a desired direction. I was hopeless at it, which meant that I was able to view the scene with a sympathetic but marginally informed eye. Some of the solo sailors were wonderful to watch — intuitively coaxing the last ft-lb of thrust from the wind, pushing their tiny craft to the edge of capsizing, leaning far out and waiting until the last possible moment before coming about. There’s a marvellous rhythm to expert dinghy-sailing, but it’s entirely intuitive — which is why it’s probably best learned at the age of ten rather than at the age of 50 (as in my case).

To reach the sea — or even Brancaster Harbour — from Burnham Overy Staithe you have to sail up the creek. For a dinghy sailor this means not just tacking to and fro across a narrow winding stretch of water, but also zig-zagging round the larger boats that are moored to buoys in the creek. And dodging incoming boats as well. So, as the creek filled up with more and more sailors anxious to catch an evening’s sailing, the opportunities for ignominious collisions increased dramatically.

And yet, there were surprisingly few mishaps. One pair of chaps in their mid-twenties were clearly not up to the challenge posed by their gleaming new Laser dinghy, and suffered a humiliating capsize or two. Later, we saw them being towed back to base by an obliging chap in a big, old-fashioned fishing boat. A middle-aged couple — she portly and confidently bossy in a classic English upper-middle-class way; he tall and thin with a military bearing and the kind of moustache one only used to see in the Blues and Royals — bickered noisily as they endeavoured to rig out their ancient boat; eventually the husband pushed the boat out and left his wife to it. She turned out to be a modestly competent sailor and disappeared from view.

Gradually, the creek quietened as the flotilla made its way to the sea. In the distance one could see upwards of a dozen white or red triangles sailing back and forth round the harbour. In a couple of hours they would be back and the Staithe would be busy again — with tired and hungry children, and sailors who’d had the kind of enjoyment they dream about in the long winter evenings. But for us it was time for supper: we were booked in at the hotel for 8pm. As we drove away I reflected that while we might not have had the walk that we had planned this morning, we had been reminded of the value of simple pleasures: the sound a boat makes as it cuts through the water with nothing to propel it other than the wind; the satisfaction of feeling the sheet tauten as the sail fills; and the beauty of this strange, flat, unforgettable place where Nelson learned to sail.

On two consecutive days this week I was working in London. On one of them I followed in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg (and indeed of Trollope’s hero Phineas Finn) and lunched at the Reform Club in Pall Mall. I was there as the guest of an historian friend, an American academic who uses the club as his London base when he’s in England. I wore my Garrick tie in the hope that it might annoy the Head Porter, but of course he was alert to the trick and allowed not a flicker of contempt to cloud his features.

The Reform is a palatial building, allegedly modelled on the Farnese Palace in Rome. Unlike many clubs, it has a lovely garden, with large, stately trees under which we sat having a drink before lunch, marvelling at the existence of such a peaceful oasis right in the heart of a major city. But then being an oasis was always part of the ‘gentleman’s club’ ethos. These places were designed as (male) refuges from women and real life. In Miss Potter, the biopic of Beatrix Potter’s life, for example, it’s to the Reform that her (independently wealthy) father repairs every day instead of going to his office.

Somebody told me once that the main qualification for being elected to the club was that one accepted the principles of the 1832 Reform Act — the statute that gave political representation to the cities that had sprung up during the Industrial Revolution and extended the franchise to about one in six adult males. Not exactly a demanding requirement. It was one of the first of the Pall Mall clubs to admit women as members. On my last visit, some years ago, I looked at the ‘new members’ list as I was going in and discovered that Mrs Stella Rimington, then the boss of MI5, had just been elected. When researching a New Statesman profile in 1972, I sought an interview with Lord Balogh, who had been Harold Wilson’s Economic Adviser in the 1960s. Balogh insisted on the interview being conducted in the Reform, but omitted to offer any refreshment.

The Reform is also famous for a recipe — Lamb Cutlets Reform.

We had lamb, needless to say. And as I munched contentedly I remembered a line from P.G. Wodehouse. “To attract attention in the dining room of the Senior Conservative Club between the hours of one and two-thirty”, he wrote in Something Fresh, “you have to be a mutton-chop, not an Earl”.

Well, well. So the top US General in Afghanistan has been summoned to Washington, where his fate hangs in the balance. He should, of course, be fired by Obama. According to an article in Rolling Stone, it seems that McChrystal and his aides spoke critically of nearly every member of the president’s national security team, saying Obama appeared “uncomfortable and intimidated” during his first meeting with the general, and dismissing Vice President Joe Biden as “Bite Me.” Big mistake, as Fabio Capello might say.

For a long time now, the US president that Obama has most reminded me of is Harry Truman (IMHO the most under-rated president of modern times). He was also faced with an insubordinate general, Douglas MacArthur, and on April 11, 1951 fired him.

“With deep regret [said the White House statement] I have concluded that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government and of the United Nations in matters pertaining to his official duties. In view of the specific responsibilities imposed upon me by the Constitution of the United States and the added responsibility which has been entrusted to me by the United Nations, I have decided that I must make a change of command in the Far East. I have, therefore, relieved General MacArthur of his commands and have designated Lt. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway as his successor.

Full and vigorous debate on matters of national policy is a vital element in the constitutional system of our free democracy. It is fundamental, however, that military commanders must be governed by the policies and directives issued to them in the manner provided by our laws and Constitution. In time of crisis, this consideration is particularly compelling.”

Later, in an article in Time magazine, Truman wrote:

“I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

Maybe it’s something about generals with “Mc” (or “Mac”) in their names?

As I write, Westminster reporters are wittering mindlessly about the Chancellor’s emergency budget. All the talk is about “pain”, how it’s going to be inflicted and upon whom, and what the reactions to this ‘pain’ will be.

This is not just cant; it’s also illiterate. The Web version of the Encyclopedia Britannica defines pain as:

“A complex experience consisting of a physiological (bodily) response to a noxious stimulus followed by an affective (emotional) response to that event. Pain is a warning mechanism that helps to protect an organism by influencing it to withdraw from harmful stimuli. It is primarily associated with injury or the threat of injury, to bodily tissues”.

The Chancellor may have lots of powers. But the infliction of pain isn’t one of them.