by
Frank Hatton

It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I feel sure that most of us have experienced that awful realisation of what started out as a good deed turning into an absolute disaster. It's quite normal on such occasions to wish that the floor would open up and allow you to drop into obscurity, but, my own worst moment happened when flying at a considerable height above the ground in an aeroplane, so, even that wish was not a practical solution.

Everything had started normally enough. I was en route to Germany, and the plane had taken off, and was rapidly climbing to operational height. In those days, I was a cigarette smoker, and as soon as the 'No smoking' sign was turned off, out came my cigarettes, and I lit up. It was normal at that time to be able to request a non-smoking section of the plane, but, if that section was full, then you were seated in amongst the smokers. It quickly became obvious that the young lady sitting next to me was a non smoker, in that she was leaning as far away as she could get from the drift of the smoke, so, I did what I thought was the right thing to do,--- I opened the ash tray in the armrest, and stubbed out the cigarette.

What I hadn't realised, was that the ashtray had not been emptied before take off, and while I sat back enjoying my unselfishness, the contents of the ashtray were slowly igniting. The first indication that things were not as they should be, was the plume of smoke that started to emit from the armrest, and it was much worse than the original smoke from my cigarette. The poor girl next to me was now really having a bad time. She started to cough, and attempted to waft the smoke away with her hand. I then thought I would help the situation by opening the ashtray again, and stabbing at the contents with my pen...... Stupid me, this of course increased the supply of oxygen to the conflagration, and the volume of smoke increased to a level which completely obscured the poor girl from my view. My next sighting of her, was when she pushed past me to escape into the gangway, and as she did so, she looked at me with such loathing, I felt like Lucifer himself. Ultimately, with the aid of a glass of water from the stewardess, I was able to extinguish the combustion, but, when the young lady returned to her seat, and I tried to apologise for the incident, she made it quite clear that the filthy habit of smoking was not among the best qualities she liked in her fellow creatures.

The point in recounting this unfortunate episode in my life, is to exemplify how easy it is to make a situation much worse, by trying to improve it. The incident that sparked off this particular piece of thought was an article in one of our national daily newspapers on the subject of the Princess Diana memorial fund. As you are probably aware, when the good lady was alive, she devoted quite a lot of her time to various charities, and on her death, this memorial fund was set up to invite contributions from all and sundry. The idea being that the money would be distributed to what the organisers considered to be worthy causes. It would seem that there is now some £30,000,000 ($50,000,000) or more in the kitty, and it is anticipated that by the millennium, this will have grown to around £200,000,000 ($330,000,000). The main discontent seems to be the slowness with which the money is actually being used,.... much of it still lies in the bank account gathering both dust and interest, while many of the charities which expected a donation, are still waiting for it to happen. The other opinion being voiced, is the length of time that the fund is going to exist. The brother of Princess Diana is saying that it should be wound up, and the money used for what it was intended, but, others are saying that a lot more money could be generated, and that it should continue until the donations start to 'dry up'. There are also other arguments going on about the number of commercial organisations who are jumping on the band wagon, and producing goods using the name of the good lady, but not giving up any of the profits. Hence, even with what one would consider to be an excellent idea, which should do nothing but good, there is always the possibility of the thing going sour on you. The solution to my problem was easy,..... I just gave up smoking. How the Princess Diana Fund dilemma is to be resolved, I do not know.

Moving onwards,.....we have another difficult problem to resolve over on our side of the water. Firstly, let me try to give you an idea of the rudiments of it. Imagine if you will, a water bucket which is very badly rusted at the bottom, and the water leaks away through a number of holes. A hosepipe is being used, attempting to fill the bucket, but, the rusted bottom of the bucket is getting worse, so more and more water is leaking away. Right,..... now, the bucket is our National Health Service, to which we all contribute. The hosepipe represents the endeavours of our government, to put in sufficient money to keep the service efficient. The rusting bottom of the bucket is the ever increasing demands that are made upon the NHS by a growing elderly population, plus the advances in medicine and health treatment which will enable folk to recover from illness. Finally, we have the overall growth of the number of people living in this country. It is of course more complex than my simplified explanation, but I trust you will grasp the fundamentals of the dilemma. It has been suggested that our NHS is the envy of the world, but, the noises now being made, are that we just cannot afford it for much longer, and folk will be encouraged to take out their own private medical insurance, as well as paying into their own private pension fund. I am ancient enough to remember the starting of our NHS in the late 40's, and for a while we had the ridiculous situation of people from other countries, paying their fare to come here to have their medical treatment free of charge, plus getting spectacles, dental treatment, and false teeth free at the same time, ........because the fare was cheaper than paying for the treatment in their own country. That loophole was eventually taken care of, but our Utopia has slowly and surely broken apart.--- -- Too many people are taking too much from too little. I wouldn't mind betting that the founders of our NHS, when they put the thing together in the late 40's little thought that their aspirations would come to such a messy ending. Of course the thing was designed to work with the number of people contributing, being in proportion to the number of people claiming from it. For many years now, we have had the situation of large numbers of folk coming to this country, and drawing all sorts of benefits, and never having contributed a penny to the scheme. "The best laid schemes of mice and men, etc.",....old Rabbie Burns certainly knew what he was on about!!!!

On a happier note, we have my wife's sister, who was recently widowed, staying with us for a while........ I think the loss of ones life partner is a very traumatic experience to go through, and we have been taking her around all of our local beauty spots to cheer her up a bit. It is at times like these that I renew my appreciation of the loveliness of our particular neck of the woods. It's hard to pick out which area is any more attractive than another, but, one of my favourites is The New Forest. This is a section which stretches westwards from Southampton for around twenty miles, and is about fifteen miles wide. Full of wild ponies, and abundant with quaint villages, along with lots of olde worlde pubs and restaurants, it is truly a joy to explore. Then, along the coastline, we have a mixture of old fishing ports and modern seaside resorts. All of which lend themselves readily to a relaxing evening watching the sun go down, whilst sampling a couple of pints of the local beer.......I know this sounds nice and peaceful, but, the background to this tranquillity, is the chatter which goes on incessantly between my dear wife and her sister. I'm not 'knocking' the female tendency to indulge in non-stop talking, but, to the average male, it can reach unimaginable levels sometimes.

I often recall the time when I was requested to drive my wife and her sister across London to a famous market, where they wished to go shopping. The distance was about 15 miles, and with the London volume of traffic, the time factor involved was around 45 minutes. As we set out, they were both going 'full steam ahead' on the chatter, and I thought it might be interesting to attempt to count five seconds between one of them stopping talking, and the other one starting talking. I kid you not, it was a hopeless exercise. I would guess that for 75% of the journey, I could not get above two seconds,.... maybe 20% I got to three seconds, with the odd 5% I reached four seconds. The amazing bit was, that when we reached our destination, my sister-in-law said, "You've been very quiet Frank, is anything wrong?" It is on such occasions that my flabber gets well and truly gasted.

On a change of tack,... I have mentioned my appreciation in the past, of the fact that we have only four television channels from which to chose our programmes. Unless of course one is a subscriber to one of the satellite suppliers. However, we are currently in the midst of an absolute deluge of sporting activities, with the football world cup, tennis at Wimbledon, the cricket test match against South Africa, plus a few periphery items of golf and rugby football. All of this means that our television screens are overflowing with these activities, leaving little or nothing for the non-sports loving section of our population. Among such folk, my good lady wife is a prime example, and she is at the moment extremely fed up with the lack of entertainment on offer. I will sincerely be very glad to see the return of her films and game shows. As much as I enjoy the sporting programmes, I fear that my priorities lie in getting my spouse back to normal,... leaving a bit of peace and quiet for yours truly.

'Til next time,

Frank Hatton

I would love to hear from you so email me.

You can find more articles in the archive under From Over the Pond