Also, I planned to visit the Hereford HSBC branch while we were there. My old Mum was kind enough to send me a cheque  for my recent birthday, scraped together out of her meagre pension, . . . → Read More: Radio HSBC]]> We all popped into Hereford today, to buy some creosote to get over my clothes and into my eyes and also to some extent on our ricketty backyard fence.

Also, I planned to visit the Hereford HSBC branch while we were there. My old Mum was kind enough to send me a cheque  for my recent birthday, scraped together out of her meagre pension, and I wanted to pay it into my account. Since the The World’s Local Bank has closed its branch in Presteigne, it has proved really quite difficult to get to do my little bit of banking. The cheque had been in my wallet for a couple of weeks.

You’re supposed to do banking all by yourself on machines, but I pretend I don’t know how to do this, and I make the HSBC apparatchik who is always hovering around fill in the paying-in slip, write down my details, put it through the paying-in machine, etc. while I explain that all of this had been done by Gwennie in Presteigne before her bosses closed the branch for not being profitable enough. Not loss-making, you note. Not profitable enough. She explained that there was a counter upstairs, and that I’d probably have to use it anyway, since my cheque was too curly. I didn’t like her, and she didn’t like me.

And yet, I found myself strangely uplifted. I felt as though, no matter what struggles I might go through in life, there would always be somebody there for me. Then I realised that these good feelings were being caused by the HSBC in house radio station (really), which was playing Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terell’s classic ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’.

‘This is great. ‘ I said to my new friend. ‘Now I can listen to the radio while operating machines in a bank 25 miles away from my house. How much does this cost? About as much as you saved closing your Presteigne branch?’

‘I doubt it sir,’ she said. But I’d be really interested to know how much HSBC radio does cost. So I’ve written to the customer relations team at HSBC and to their press office to ask, and I’ll let readers know what they say.

As I followed the line across England on the map drawn up by Prof. Danny Dorling of Sheffield University,  I became convinced that the divide, unsurpisingly really, has some substance. Mostly, though, I was struck by the fact that many of these divisions have roots deep in . . . → Read More: Us (us us us us) and Them (them them them them)]]> It has been a very interesting experience making the programme for Radio Four about the North/South divide.

As I followed the line across England on the map drawn up by Prof. Danny Dorling of Sheffield University,  I became convinced that the divide, unsurpisingly really, has some substance. Mostly, though, I was struck by the fact that many of these divisions have roots deep in time. The line seperates upland from lowland, arable fields and nucleated villages from pastoral farming and scattered homesteads. In the feudal period, for example, the North tended to pay its rent in cash, and the South in service to their Lords. Pastoral farming takes place all year round, whilst arable farming depends on seasonal employment. If Southerners seem polite to the point of deferential it’s because they had to be. Rude mechanicals wouldn’t get so much work from the aristocracy as servile ones. The South was traditionally far more reliant on Poor Relief than the independent North. And so on. Lots of stuff in the show.

It struck me how deeply both culture and socio-economic status are still related to land ownership. There are roughly 60 million people in the UK. 59,800,000  of us own one third of the land. About 198,000 people own the next third. About 2000 people own the last third, which coincidentally contains lots of the best bits. These 2000 people live, on the whole, in the South, where they can still rely on a traditionally jumpy workforce.  The biggest gulf is between the merely well-to-do and the super-rich.

I have a modest proposal. There is a ‘legal fiction’ whereby all land is actually owned by the Crown. All of the rest of us own certain rights, but really, it all belongs to the Crown. (NOT HM The Queen, but The Crown in Parliament, ie the State, ie not you). We are ‘tenants in chief’. There must be some point still to this legal fiction, so why couldn’t we rewrite it slightly? Hand over ownership, in this legally fictional sense only,  from the Crown to a Land Trust, a Real National Trust to which all British citzens were joined at birth. Landowners of whatever size, would still be ‘tenants-in-chief’, but of a Trust with a true stake in the future of all of us, north and south. It would then be for the members of the  Trust to decide which way to write the story of their land.

To say the college made a fuss of us would be an understatement. They could not have been lovelier. The Senior Tutor Mark Wormald took time out from an . . . → Read More: Marchant, Pembroke… (well, SDUC Lampeter, the Poly of Wales, Lancaster and Birmingham City University, really)]]> On Wednesday evening I did a talk with Richard Beard under the auspices of the National Academy of Writing at Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, Yurp. The college were kind enough to invite my wife too.

To say the college made a fuss of us would be an understatement. They could not have been lovelier. The Senior Tutor Mark Wormald took time out from an insanely busy schedule to ask us for tea in his study before the talk. The seventy-strong crowd were gripped by Richard’s Masterclass, and laughed at my jokes. Sitting right in my eye line was Edward Bankes, who is a member of the current Pembroke University Challenge team. I recognised him at once, as my wife and I are supporting Pembroke this series, and I did that thing that light entertainers do on telly when Kerry Katona is in the audience and they say ‘Kerry Katona is in tonight Ladies and Gentlemen’ and the camera whizzes round and Kerry stands up and smiles and everyone claps. Nobody stood or clapped, but Edward was very nice and smiley about me pointing him out as ‘that bloke off the telly.’

After the talk, the college threw us a drinks party. My wife and I went over to Edward, and we told him we were supporting Pembroke all the way. He told us that the recording took place last April, so he already knew the result, but that he was sworn to secrecy. I told him that my wife was on the Trinity team back in the 80′s. My wife told him that I had twice been the subject of a question on University Challenge. I’m sure he was almost as thrilled to meet two such paragons as we were to meet him.

The college were kind enough to invite us all to dine at High Table after the drinks party. Mark Wormald took us into the Senior Parlour, and introduced us to the Master, a kindly looking chap in his mid-sixties. A butler/maitre de bloke called us into dinner. Richard and I were invited to follow the Master. As he led us in, the students fell silent. The butler bloke gave him a Latin prayer to read off a card. Then we sat down, Richard on the Master’s right hand, and I on his left.

The Master apologised to me for missing the talk, but explained that he had been getting ready for a trip to the US the following morning. I asked him why he was going; he explained that he was going to Rhode Island to discuss the possibilities of setting up some scholarships, given that Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island was a Pembroke graduate. He asked me what I was working on. I told him that it was, in a sense, a history of the British counter-culture, from 1956 to 1994. His face lit up.

‘I was a student at Cambridge from 1963 to 1966, and I experienced the wonderful liberation of those times. We felt so free; free from constraint, free from worry too. I hope you’ll be writing about the influence of the French New Wave cinema. Just as important to my generation in opening up ideas about new ways of living as music in my opinion. And even though my work took me away from Britain for many years, I always knew that I’d lived through those remarkable times, and that they had changed everything for me.’

‘What was your work?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I was head of British Intelligence. I ran MI6.’