UFO Info Week-End

Apart from a few embarrassing episodes the worst of them sleeping through the long-awaited first television

Apart from a few embarrassing episodes (the worst of them sleeping through the long-awaited first television showing of The War Game), I’m not a great nodder-off myself. And one of the advantages in staying awake for concerts, plays and operas is that it allows you to observe those who don’t – the discreetly snoring bourgeoisie. Some sleepers are prodded awake at regular intervals by companions with sharp elbows; a few are unreachable until the final curtain. When people speak of having “a good night out”, this probably isn’t what they mean. But it comes to the same thing: an evening’s culture, perchance to sleep.
There is nothing new about this Rip Van Winkle Syndrome. Haydn was conscious enough of it to plant a fortissimo chord in the slow movement of his Surprise Symphony. The next day the council was gibbering: “We were only following orders .. Government Chief Medical Officer …

British Egg Industry Council advice…”
Soft-boiled eggs restored, and a nation’s confidence.. I went to a concert in Aldeburgh last week at which, at one point, roughly a quarter of the audience around me was asleep. It wasn’t at all a bad concert – an East European string quartet playing Haydn, Shostakovich and Beethoven. But it had been a warm day, and what with the sea air and the lull of the Snape marshes and a glass or two of white wine beforehand and then the gentle sawing of bows and the opportunity for those in the uncrowded promenade area to stretch out and just close their eyes a moment… The council ruling threatened not only the preferred soft-boiled eggs served at breakfast: afternoon tea would also have been out, lamented the Major, with mousse, meringues and pavlovas also verboten. (Goodness, they eat well in this camp.)

Action was swift (a bombardment of puns in the national press), victory swifter. A victory for freedom! (And after a week of tongue-lashing from the Minister without Portfolio, we needed one.) Second World War fighter pilots and other veterans, who once daily risked death in pursuit of it, have chalked up another triumph under the leadership, now as then, of Major John Howard.

He was the hero of the attempt to seize Pegasus Bridge during the D-Day invasion (younger readers can search out a video of the Hollywood film based on this glorious episode in British military history – The Longest Day). Word had come from local council officials that eggs not cooked to at least 75C (hard therefore) should not be served at the veterans’ Surrey retirement home The lily-livered administrators of the home caved in But not the veterans. Major Howard, holder of the DSO and Croix de Guerre avec Palme, is now 88 and would “under no circumstances” (his words) eat hard-boiled eggs Well, maybe in salad or fish pie, he added to one newspaper. The text for this week comes from the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, who is visiting Australia, where he said that he believes that should Prince Charles choose to remarry it would create a crisis for the church. Dr Carey was careful to distinguish between divorce – “not an issue at all” – and remarriage, which is an issue because no Supreme Governor of the Church of England has been divorced, never mind remarried. The Church of England may not now be divided by the idea of a divorced man becoming its Supreme Governor, but significant sections of it do vigorously oppose remarriage after divorce.