Since I last posted I celebrated a birthday. It was not a significant number, although aged over 65, one should be happy to mark all birthdays. I had a pleasant few days, with family being very kind, generous and supportive! Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” At present we are happy, long may it last and touch wood. My sister Gill came up for the weekend ahead of my birthday, and Rowan and Ben joined in with many events.

The weather was benevolent all weekend. On the 16th March we had a family outing to Blickling Hall. This stately home, set in beautiful Norfolk countryside, is only about 12 miles north of us. It was built in Tudor times by Sir John Fastolf of Caister (1380–1459). The house subsequently passed to the Boleyn family and may have been the birthplace of Anne Boleyn (1501 or 1507 to 19th May 1536), the second of King Henry VIII’s six wives. She failed to produce a living male heir and was executed on Henry’s orders.

The current house was built by Sir Henry Hobart (1560–1626) who bought the estate in 1616. It was left to the National Trust by Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian in 1940. The house is a stately home, not a castle, although there are the remains of a moat. This was apparently retained by Hobart to ensure he did not overrun his budget. It is a very impressive and huge red brick rectangular building, with towers at each corner.

We did not go into the house but contented ourselves with walking round it and admiring the gardens, lake, and grounds. The spring flowers were magnificent, and while it was cool, it was a lovely, sunny day. The trees still had bare branches; it is only in the past two weeks that the leaves have started bursting out! We treated ourselves to tea in the café, sadly it was ordinary!

One of my other birthday activities was a theatre visit. There is a small, thriving theatre scene in Norwich. The Theatre Royal tends to show popular productions, especially musicals. The smaller Norwich Playhouse Theatre has shorter runs. Jonny and the Baptists played there for just two nights. The show, with Jonny and his partner, is hard to describe. Music, social commentary, and satire were all part of it. I was not pleased to see many empty seats in the building, they deserved better.

Douglas is a great fan and encouraged us to go. While I enjoyed it, I think I was in the most uncomfortable seat in the theatre. It sagged to the left. There seemed to be little padding, and what was there formed waves and hummocks under my weight. I admit to being short, even so it felt as though my knees were next to my ears. Despite these challenges it was a great show and was enjoyed by all.

We had a pre-theatre supper at The Bicycle Shop on St Benedict’s Street. This is self-described as a “Former bike shop, now a bohemian cafe/bar serving food from breakfast to tapas with live music”. The food is excellent and the space interesting! The ‘theme’ of the furniture is that it all appears to come from house clearances. Nonetheless the interior design, or perhaps ‘thrown together’ would be a better description, works. It is a welcoming, if eclectic, space.

Norwich is well endowed with excellent restaurants and the family has eaten out a great deal over the last month. Over Easter we had a visitor from Durban, Tanya Brauninger, who is between Douglas and Rowan in age. The Brauninger family lived up the road from us in Durban and were great friends. Tanya stayed with Rowan and, at Rowan’s suggestion, we went to The Weaver’s Arms for their special roast Sunday lunch. There was not much choice for the vegetarian contingent: just nut roast! The carnivores could choose between roast pork, beef, lamb or chicken. However, there was an array of delicious roast vegetables, so everyone was more than satisfied. No one had room for dessert.

This mundane and somewhat indulgent news from Norfolk needs to be contrasted with what is going on in the many crisis hit parts of the world. It seems just yesterday that we were watching, with shock and horror, the treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uyghurs of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwest China. These events were, rightly, described as genocides. Are there degrees of genocide? It seems there are.

Events in Israel and Gaza beggar belief. They have dominated the pages of the left-wing media and been given a great deal of coverage on the BBC. I need to say at this point that, despite the views of some, I do not consider the BBC to be left wing, indeed I consider it an unbiased and balanced news source. I find it increasingly hard to follow the twists and turns in the story. At the same time, I recognise ordinary people caught up in the horror do not have the possibility of turning the page or changing channels, this is their lived, daily reality. I hope sanity prevails and there is settlement soon. I want western nations to act and put pressure on all parties.

The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than two years. To my mind that is clearcut. We know who the bad guys are. Naked, unjustified aggression by Russia resulted in a conflict on Ukrainian territory, with consequential destruction and death. I have a family member working in Moscow, and South African apartheid paranoia means I am cautious about what I say and write. I recently read an excellent book: The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes.¹ It is a history of the country from the earliest days to about 2021. I read it slowly, a few pages a day, over a couple of months. When I finished, I thought to myself, ‘Now I understand more about what is happening’. It does not give any hope for a resolution to the conflict soon.

In my view the biggest threat to world peace is the potential re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency in the USA later this year. A comment in The Guardian summarised this very well:

“American politics is dangerously thrilling because it is so consequential for the rest of the world. In Britain we are doomed to sit through a more trivial show, an unfunny farce played out in a theatre that is crumbling around us’.²

I pray this does not happen.

This is also a comment on the state of British politics. Next week there are local government elections in England and that should give a clear indication of the bankruptcy of the Conservative party and government, but it does not mean a general election is imminent, Sunak can cling to power until January 2025. There are no seats being contested in our area, but the Police and Crime Commissioner is up for election, and I am not sure what that means.

Let me end on a lighter note. On the website Political Compass there are a series of questions to plot one’s position on a social and economic scale: libertarian to authoritarian and left to right. My red dot shows me to be more libertarian than Nelson Mandela and Bernie Sanders and further left than Mahatma Gandhi. My friends and family all fall in the same area of the graph. This is predictable but troubling, do we operate in an echo chamber? I recommend the quiz as a thought-provoking exercise. The website is worth exploring: do you know the words and tune of the Internationale? If not, they, and an eclectic collection of tunes are here.

1. Orlando Figes, ‘The Story of Russia’, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2023
2. Peter Conrad http://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/mar/31/the-washington-book-how-to-read-politics-and-politicians-carlos-lozada-review-unpicking-the-unpicking-lexicon-america-leaders