VERY WELL - ALONE!

So, Europe has at the last moment been sufficiently scared to take on the might of the bankers and the widespread corruption of some governments, and draw back from the brink of financial disaster with the only plan of rescue that would seem to have the slightest chance of success.

And Britain? We have stood aside yet again, and missed yet another chance of becoming at last an integral part of the continent to which we so obviously belong. To please whom? Well, there are the London bankers, whose inordinate greed has contributed to our own internal shudder, and who must still be allowed to rob the till. But above all there are the die-hard Tory back-benchers, who can be seen alive on TV crying for the government to adopt a 'bulldog' attitude to the insidious attempts by the Germans and French and other untrustworthy ethnicities to infiltrate the perfection of the British way of life.

Perhaps they have a muddled awareness of the spirit of the war-time cartoon at the time of Dunkirk, and ache to do an imitation Churchill act. But Churchill for all his quirks was a man of true greatness, operating at a time of our near-extinction, and their cardboard cut-out histrionics ring flat. Little Englanders to a man.

Another echo from the past: 'I took my harp to a party, but nobody asked me to play....They might have said Play us a tune we can sing, but somehow I don't think they noticed the thing......' Ah, the ancient folk-wisdom of the music-halls.

SIR TERRY CASTS A COLD EYE ON LIFE, ON DEATH

And immediately unleashes a volume of hate mail for doing so. Only to be expected, I suppose, but it would be encouraging to feel that critical comments were well founded.

Not so. The Care not Killing Alliance complains that the programme was 'propaganda'. Well, what else do they exist for if not for the dissemination of propaganda? Only Our Sort, the right sort, of course. As usual, care for truth is the first thing to go out of the window. 'There was no presentation of the alternative.' Untrue - we were shown one patient who had chosen to reject anything to do with euthanasia, and was well satisfied that in relying on palliative care he had made the right decision. Sir Terry made no comment.

And in any case we are surely well past the stage when every broadcast had to be 'balanced'. If an individual or a group wish to present a point of view then they have a perfect right to do so (within the bounds of generally acceptable decency). Those who do not agree are equally entitled to make their own programme in reply. No politician, for example, feels any need to present the views of his opponents - and very confusing it would be if he did.

And the dear old C of E? Here is a bishop, brought out of retirement to tell us that 'life is a gift; we do not have the right to take it'. Well, that is an opinion, and he has a perfect right to hold it. What he does not have is the right to impose the force of the law on those who, for good reason, utterly disagree.

So the obstructionist forces are still out there, hard at work. But could we hope that the increased shrillness of their utterance might just indicate that they are at last aware that their case is crumbling?

NO-ONE DOES IT AS WELL AS US.

We weren't going to waste time watching the royal wedding, were we? Well, only a quick glance, just to see the interior of the Abbey. And suddenly, there it was, in all its vertical splendour. And so - we spare a little time for the ceremony.

The silver snarling trumpets 'gin to chide*. And you're hooked, and the tears spring to the eyes, and the slow archaic ceremony begins to unfold. Here is the Dean of the Royal Peculiar; here is Cantuar himself, in High Anglican vestments. Here is the groom, in a totally impractical scarlet jacket, and here the best man, befrogged and aiguilletted beyond endurance.

Here comes the bride, in a long straight stream of pallor in the dark interior, deviating, as is only right, in deference to the Unknown Warrior. And suddenly it all seems so right, with all the authority of ancient truth, and you bask in the certitude of it. Archaic it may seem, but it is surely based on immemorial truths, and Anglican truths at that.

And then the mind wanders, as it is all too prone to do in such circumstances, and you begin to listen to what is being said in such measured tones. '...ordained by God in the time of man's innocence....' And as such participated in by Adam and Eve? Who published the banns?

'.... to have and to hold, till death do us part.....' This in front of a whole row of royalty who have slipped in and out of marriage with the dexterity of lampreys. And how many in the audience - sorry - congregation, had straight down the middle of the road married lives behind, or indeed in front of, them? Do they believe the Bible's references to the subject? Water into wine? As Rowan Atkinson says, 'You should go professional.'

So it's all very moving and impressive, but at times it seems to owe more to the Royal Shakespeare Company in a lush historical production than to fundamental reality. We do it better than anyone else: the French always look as if they have just escaped from an operetta, and the Americans as if they are doing a Historical Re-enactment in a charitable cause. But what precisely is it that we are doing?

*Only the Police Trumpeters, unfortunately, rather sub fusc. The cameras, very wisely did not linger. But the sound did the trick.

I SURRENDER!

Constant readers of this blog will know that I have conducted a long campaign to protect the English language from decay. I should like to report that there has been some improvement in usage generally. But clearly this is not so - the reverse is true. Despite my protestations, and those of even more distinguished academics, the viruses seem to be increasingly well embedded; beyond hope now, I think, of eradication.

On radio and television speakers of education and culture seem not to notice that they are using vulgarisms such as (my own favourite targets) CONtractors: PROtesters: kilOMeters: REEsearch: WestMINNster.....

As for other sloppy pronunciations, the letter t seems doomed to eradication. Americans. of course, pronounce it as d, as in the wader poured the wine, but even that is better than the glottal stop, as in bread and bu''er, or mili'ary. Final t has become silent already - Christmas presen'. This gives rise to the fascinating thought that the word knight is destined to become the first in the English language to have more silent than pronounced letters.

Incidentally, the protests at the proposed closure of libraries formed part of a necessary and urgent campaign, but one can't help feeling relieved that the media are now free of constant references to libaries - especially during Febuary.

And so it goes on; a constant blurring and mumbling of language. Sam Johnson laid it down that dictionaries should reflect the language as it was really used, rather than dictate, but surely he was referring to the use of educated men. Dictionaries now scoop up any old rubbish and give it the authority of print. It's a long time, for example, since they gave up defending the valuable distinction between imply and infer; so muddled thought is reinforced.

The time has come for all old codgers to retreat into their ivory castles, and meditate on why they prefer to write an historian rather than a historian. 'But nobody says an horse!' - precisely; and if you didn't have tin ears you could hear why.