Behind the Hedge

 Behind the Hedge

I have an old violin I bought in 1972 and used frequently for playing in pubs and folk clubs. Its distinguishing feature is scratched into the varnish of the back – 2£. But it plays freely. The low clearance at the nut makes stopping easy. Through frequent use I am familiar with the curve of the bridge, and the separation of the strings. It has history**. But last summer it came unglued, and was inexpertly repaired by a wife-husband team who deal mostly with school violins. And now the pegs do not hold the tension of the strings. Caswells Strings is a much bigger concern with a well stocked showroom in town. My niece bought a violin from them 7 years ago and, more recently, I bought a 'mute' there. But I had not seen any sign of a 'craftsman' on their premises.  

I looked online for local violin makers (as I had some years ago in Mexico City – see my blog-post), and found an entry from a firm I had never heard of, in a tiny hamlet I had passed through many times; a mere handful of houses and a letterbox. I telephoned to make an appointment and was given instructions on how to find the "workshop", by turning off the lane 50 yards before the hamlet. 

I could not have been more surprised if I had found behind the hedge, in that little hamlet, a fully equipped and well manned space ship. As the door opened I heard a faint hum from the engines, two men in aprons; it could be about to take off.

One man was bent over the body of a double bass gripped in a large vice and was preparing to fit a new neck to the block. The other I must have caught between jobs, for he had nothing in his hands at the moment I entered. I looked around me, astonished.

It is amusing that the firm advertise themselves as 'Violin Makers', for they clearly specialise in the less romantic double-bass, and more often repair those than construct them from scratch. The founder of the firm had for many years been a professional bass player with a London orchestra till he retired some 30 years ago, to open the workshop. The 'firm' moved up from Henley 25 years ago. 

        There were some twenty basses lining the walls in various states of repair, but also a cello in the process of construction and a solitary violin, ready varnished but as yet unplayed.  

'David' looked at my pegs, applied chalk to all, gently reamed one peg-hole, trimmed a whisker off its peg to make it more circular in section, and drilled a new hole for the string further up the shank. All inside 40 minutes.  

(** If you are interested in the story of how I came by my old 2£ fiddle, drop me a line to: cawstein@gmail.com)

Padraig O'Reilly

 Padraig O'Reilly

As I approached the bus-stop this morning, hat-less and care-free, enjoying the noon-day sunshine, I looked around for my new friend Padraig O'Reilly. It has become one of my routines on alternate Wednesdays, after the coffee-house discussion in the Old Mill. This smartly turned-out young man caught my eye a few weeks back with his rubber knee-pads,  leather belt, high-boots and his taut, kung-foo, readiness. I was too polite to ask his business, but too curious to ignore his evident plea to be noticed. Perhaps a fantasy warrior. Or a prisoner on early release for good-behaviour. 

He had responded most courteously to my greeting in a lovely Irish lilt. I soon gathered his destination, his preference for the early shift, his ambitious saving-plans, to learn to drive and then to buy a car. He wanted to know the hours I used to work (9 – 5 in my case, or 8–6 when I accounted for travel). And my regular breakfast. I was charmed by his openness, and interest. I learned of his 'traveller' in-laws; and out-laws, as the case might be.  I realised that I was being measured against his own experience. 

This morning I complimented him on his neatness and he, in return, praised my turnout. He reached for a note-book in one of the conspicuous pockets hanging from his leather belt. As he thumbed through to the back page, I remembered that writing was one of his prouder accomplishments. There he had listed half a dozen lotteries, including Euro-millions, Set-for-Life and the "Post-code" Lottery, in which he had decided to invest £50 a week.  Forty pounds, he corrected himself, sheepishly, as he crossed out the "post-code" lottery; someone must have told him that it did not operate like the others. 

"You are feeling lucky, are you?" I teased. "A feeling in your bones?"

"Some years ago", I continued, "I thought I might run a lottery in which the punters would all give me £2 a week, I would pocket one pound and give them £1 back. For that is all these other lotteries are doing, isn't it," I continued; "except that they give a million pounds to one guy and nothing at all to a million other guys. (Maybe they give 50p to charity; and pay tax on the 50p they keep.) 

"You can't win if you don't enter", he replied. 

"Very true, very true," I conceded. "What would you say to this, then: every week you give me £50;  and after 4 weeks I give you £200?"

"You have to stick to the limits you can afford", he told me. "Never go over". 

"That is good advice" I agreed. 

He waved me onto the bus ahead of him, and I accepted. He likes to sit up front by the driver; by the door. 

Levelling Down

 Education Act – is it levelling down?

Lord Harris of Peckham (founder of the Harris Federation which runs over 50 academies) wrote in the Times “Failing schools are letting people down. We have to make sure we do not let our children down. The best way to address failing schools is to allow good academies to take over, and give them the freedoms that have made them successful." “Taking these away is madness."

In BBC's 'Today' programme (18th March 2025) Justin Webb quizzed Pat McFadden on the government's Education Act, currently going through parliament, challenging the government's negative attitude to Academies. It seemed to me that he was charging the government with spoiling successful schools. 

The words that seemed to elude him, the charge, was that of "levelling down". 

The Girl on the Bus

 The Girl on the Bus

I celebrated my retirement from Newcastle University by buying a round-the-world plane ticket, and arranging to work for a year in a bichemisty laboratory in Taiwan. My kind friend, gave me a 'Travel Diary' in which to capture my thoughts and impressions; though she by no means understood why I was leaving her for a year.  I found it, the other day, gazed at the cover for a few moments, before opening and leafing through a few pages. I stopped at an entry titled "The Girl on the Bus" where a book-mark fell out. The words on the page were powerfully evocative. 

It was three days before Christmas (though I had been warned several times that our Christmas and New Year were very minor days in the Taiwanese calendar). And it was a Sunday. I decided to make a modest trip out of the city of Taipei, perhaps to the extreme north of the island. I took the mass-transit-railway to its westerly terminus at Tamsui. From there I could catch a bus to take me round the coast to Shi-men. I would have no idea when to get off the bus except by keeping an eye on my watch and assuming the bus was running to timetable; an hour and 10 minutes to Shi-men.

The ramshackle bus set off from Tamsui bus-station shortly before 11.30. I, an obvious foreigner in his early sixties, had a good window seat on the left side of the bus. A considerable number of people got on at the next stop, and a local girl in her mid-twenties came and sat by me. 

I looked out seaward at the passing view, with my chin in my hand. We swayed against each other occasionally but it did not seem to matter; we had room enough; it was only momentary. 

After 20 minutes the girl started to search for something in her bag, and eventually brought out a little bookmark, or 'favour', made out of a dried leaf-skeleton decorated with bright yellow straw flowers, green straw leaves and a tiny blue straw butterfly. This she offered to me. I have it still, twenty years on, as a bookmark in my travel diary.

I am sure that my face fully expressed my surprise, gratitude, and embarrassment. I had got accustomed, over the months, to conversing almost without words, using glances, gestures, and guesses. Imagine, in a barbershop, I requested a trim and declining a massage, a shave, and a facial, all in gestures. 

"It is Chinese" she said in cautious English. 

"Indeed, very Chinese!" I agreed, delighted at the opening thus created. We got to talking, occasionally, and carefully. I told her I was was going to 'Shi-men'. She thought I would arrive at about 12.35. She was going to San-zhi. 

"I am meeting someone", she confided. "I have a 'date' ",  

"Really?", I asked, laconically. And again I am sure my face must have shown my surprise and my pleasure. Though not, perhaps, their cause. For it was her trusting directness that surprised and charmed me. And I am sure my face must have beamed my happiness, and gratitude; but could she read my best wishes for her future happiness in this exciting development?

No NATO boots in Ukraine

To the Editor of The Guardian.

Dear Sir,

    If Russia regards the presence of NATO, or European Union, troops in Ukraine as unacceptable conditions for long term peace, I think Europe should concede that. Of course, Russian troops would be similarly excluded. 

    The situation is very similar to the "Cuban Missile Crisis" of 16-28 October 1962, but with rôles reversed. The resolution achieved on 28th October, involved the Soviets dismantling their offensive weapons in Cuba, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement not to invade Cuba again. The US also dismantled their missiles in Turkey. 

    That crisis showed, de facto, that hostile missiles in Cuba were as unacceptable to the US as missiles in Turkey were to the USSR.  It similarly demonstrated that the US did not have the liberty to invade Cuba if the USSR did not have the liberty to protect Cuba. (Thank goodness, the US and the USSR with equal foresight both 'backed down'.)

    It is axiomatic that our allies  are reasonable and can be trusted, while 'the enemy' is un-reasonable and un-trustworthy; such is the the distorting lens of inevitable prejudice. But we can easily see that our enemy will be liable to the same distortion and see the same asymmetry.

My father, Ranyard West, in his last book ("International Law and Psychology", 1974) described a similar technique, which he called "inversion-substitution". He evolved it as a way of exposing the prejudices that inevitably cloud our judgements. He would take a piece of journalism that defended our actions abroad and attacked our enemy's, but would swap the names of the adversaries and their adjectives and adverbs, so that the value judgements were inverted. For example: "The {Russians} made a {generous} offer which the {cowardly} {Americans} spurned. Etc."  The result is revealing – shocking but salutary.

Ian West

Middleton Cheney,

BANBURY

OX17 2NB