Heigh Ho, The Wind And The Rain

My mother's alarm clock failed to wake me this morning- probably because it was drowned out by the wind.

It was a very stormy night- and the wind is still blowing hard this morning. Two of our trees have had large pieces knocked off them.

Yesterday was our day out. The wind hadn't started up at that stage, but it was raining hard. We needed a break so we went aquaplaning round East Sussex. Ian said we might like Forest Row- and we did. We had lunch there in an organic restaurant called Taffels and it was very good. On the way home we stopped briefly in Hartfield which I learned afterwards was A.A. Milne's home village.

The paper says our storm system and America's storm system are holding hands over the Atlantic. How sweet.

Wrapping Myself In The Union Flag

I'm a Unionist- and if I had a platform to speak from I'd be going on about all the wonderful things the Scots and the English have done together.

I'd talk about Boswell- and how the biography of the archetypal Englishman was written by a Scot. And how the archetypal Englishman and the little randy Scots lawyer made a tour of the Highlands and Islands and were received in her family home by the Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald.

I'd talk about "good Sir Walter" and how he gave us a wonderful myth of Scottish history and a wonderful myth of English history too (think Ivanhoe).

I'd talk about all the Scottish engineers who came south and all the English landscape painters who went north.

I'd talk about all the great Scots writers who lived in England and became citizens of the world. Carlyle and Stevenson and Barrie and Conan Doyle for starters. I'd talk about de Quincey's residence in Edinburgh and how Orwell wrote Animal Farm in a Hebridean bothy.

I'd probably feel bound (however much it went against the grain) to talk about Victoria and Albert's little place at Balmoral and the Queen Mother's little place at wherever it is.

I'd talk about how the two nations have intermarried and created a bonded culture. I'd also (sotto voce) mention how we once ran an Empire together.

I'd talk about the Scots Guards at Waterloo.

And so on and on....

I'm not at all a fan of Churchill's but there are times- and this is one of them- that cry out for the "Winston touch".

None of our current leaders has it. Not even a smidgeon of it. All they seem to care about is money.