Pity the poor folk who also died on Friday, news of their passing eclipsed in the tidal wave of coverage following the Duke of Edinburgh’s death.
Roughly 1,600 people go every day across the UK, and it’s a wry fact that those who went on April 9 will be lodged in family annals as “dying on the same day as Prince Philip” until such time as no one remembers who Prince Philip was.
Just 15 minutes before the BBC newscasters scrambled into black suits for the announcement, I received a call to say my neighbour had died that morning.
There were many parallels. Both men had extremely long, honourable, hard-working lives. Like the duke, two months shy of 100, my neighbour was a couple of weeks short of 92. Like the duke, he was a cynic with a dusty dry humour who didn’t tolerate fools. He’d also kept excellent health until very recently and remained sharper than people 50 years his junior.
He still lived on the farm he’d inherited at 15 when his father died. A clever, intellectually curious man — he rose high in the NFU — he had epic memories of almost a century of farming practice, natural history, local life and local history.
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We used to meet occasionally on the road and talk. He grew prizewinning flowers and took lovely photographs. I could have listened to him for hours, and I’d have exchanged the hugely rehearsed, wall-to-wall tributes to the duke for 10,000 words and a documentary about my old friend any day.
He gave me some dahlias and geraniums, prizewinning stock. Through them — fingers crossed I keep them alive — I will treasure his memory.
National treasure
Charlotte Brew was about the same age as me when she became the first woman to ride in the Grand National in 1977, after the passing of the Sex Discrimination Act. She was treated like a freak, first patronised, then smirked at when her horse refused at the 27th fence. Rachael Blackmore stands on the shoulders of giants.
Skies getting busier
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The tiniest sign the world is starting to creep back into life is written in the sky. I live close to one of the places which correspond to beacons in the sky for aircraft navigation. (Roughly speaking, think of the globe as having broad air motorways drawn around it, using these beacons.) In pre-Covid days, we would see daily contrails of planes, maybe eight miles above us, en route from England and possibly Europe across the Atlantic. There were waves of them — a row of morning flights, unzipping the sky together, repeated later in the day.
Covid stopped all that. The sight of a jet became something remarkable. But recently, on clear days, more slow white lines unfurl above us.
Centuries of strife
The resurgence of skirmishes in Northern Ireland coincides with my continuing desire to understand this gnarly, unloved place, restless and blood-sodden since the Middle Ages. God has a lot to answer for.
I’m reading The Plantation of Ulster by Jonathan Bardon, about the Scots who, when James VI became James I of England, took up his offer of land across the water. Their job: to plant Protestantism.
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They began to arrive in force from 1607, sailing three hours from Portpatrick to Donaghadee, loaded with wares and provisions. This lot, one thread of my ancestors, were labourers, ambitious squires, merchants and stolid farmers. They populated Down and Antrim.
Much more intriguingly, the colonists who settled Fermanagh were badass reivers from the Scottish Borders, violent robbers and lawless plunderers. Devoid of piety or theology, they conformed to whatever was handiest, the Anglican Church of Ireland, and became diligent farmers. Who knew?