Postscript
Disagreements
P. J. Kavanagh
There has been a flurry about civil defence round here and a story has been going about. At a nearby parish council meeting they were discussing the matter, and a lady declared stoutly that the first bomb would obviously fall on Chel- tenham GCHQ, the survivors would jump in their cars and head for these hills. 'What are we going to do about those refugees? Contaminated refugees.' There was silence for a moment and then a military type spoke up: 'We have to face facts. I think we'll have to shoot them.'
Wherever that story is told it raises a laugh and I disagree with the military man but also with the laughers; worse things than that have happened. But then, nowa- days, I seem to disagree with everybody about everything, and it worries me. I don't know where I got the idea that we should all be a merry band of brothers, but we are certainly not. So I make a point of agreeing whenever I can but am constantly astonished how rarely this is.
We have had a particularly pleasant band of sunlit weather and Lawrence Whitfield and I were agreeing (certainly) one Saturday evening, over our pints of Real Ale (they've started putting Specific Gravity numbers on some beef-pumps; it makes one long for the bad old days of ink-tasting keg) that we couldn't imagine why everybody round us wanted to go somewhere else, making holiday plans and talking of them tediously. We were fine where we were. We refused to acknow- ledge for a moment our own complacence, that we had things of our own we wanted to do, and were unusually self-sufficient. Why couldn't everybody be like us?
He went away for a moment and I remembered that I had been greeted five times that day with the odd question 'Hot enough for you?', which is a form of complaint. I turned to an elderly couple sitting quietly nearby, as they do every Saturday, summer and winter, and asked them, with intense hope, whether they were enjoying that golden evening. 'Oh no,' they said, as though it was expected of them, 'too hot for us!' In February it will be too cold, in March too wet . . . . What in heaven's name do we all want?
It was about the time of the Wimbledon men's final during which McEnroe (to- wards whom I am warming) was visited by an angel. He clearly surprised himself. Some of his serves were within a quarter of an inch of the centre line and so fast Connors never moved. It was no contest but there will never be a better exhibition of tennis. Next morning in the bread shop the woman behind the counter said, 'Wasn't it over quickly? Glad I wasn't there. Waste of money.' I nearly dropped my large Allinson's.
Driving back I heard on the radio that part of York Minster had burned down and hoped it wasn't an old bit. The report was by Our Religious Affairs Correspondent, which amused me — 'Vicar in nude romp drama, a report by Our Religious Affairs Correspondent' — but then she said, 'The tragedy is that the part burned down was only rebuilt two years ago.' That wiped the smile off my face. I nearly crashed the car, and the Allinson's slid off the seat. That was precisely the part I least minded burning down. Can't f agree with any- body?
(It seems I'm on to something. The reader will have to believe, because it is true, that at this point I was interrupted by a farmer friend who had come to do me a favour and stayed for a chat. His conversa- tion ranged from religion to the pomposity of our neighbours to the miners' strike. 'I don't want either side to win,' he said. 'Everybody's wrong. Everybody's always asking the wrong questions and getting irrelevant answers.' I was silent (his elo- quence is enough for two) and dared not tell him I had just begun a piece headed 'Disagreements'. I wanted to get back to finish it. Maybe it's our age — his is about the same as mine — maybe it's in the air, and we are both contaminated refugees.) But Laurie and I are surely right about the holiday business, as a reflex among those already reasonably placed. One family told me they leave their comfortable Gloucestershire house every year and rent a French one found from the back of the Times. It costs them hundreds. 'Is it better?' I asked. 'Better than what?' Than where you are.' He seemed puzzled at the question, as though he had never seen it in that light. 'Not really,' he said, as though doubtful that was a relevant answer. You really can't start agreeing with people until there is something solid to agree with.
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