At least we still have wine

Even in recent heat, the English summer can be magical. As long as there is shade, a pool and a steady supply of cooling wine, there is so much to enjoy. Trees, flowers, songbirds, butterflies: dolce far niente works here too.

But thinking can be the snake which insinuates itself into Eden. Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler books are always excellent train reading and the latest was no exception, even if the principal character always puts one in mind of Turner’s supposed reply to someone who said that they had never seen a sunset like the one which he had painted. ‘But don’t you wish you could?’ It is hard to believe that there are many actual policemen like Simon Serrailler – more’s the pity.

There are other reasons for pity. Judging by her oeuvre, I would assume that Dame Susan is a conservative, both small and large ‘C’. She is also, I take it, an Anglican, with deep though unostentatious roots in old European high culture, and in old England. Yet in the latest book, her fictional England, centred on the cathedral city of Lafferton, is menaced. The shire is being invaded by the orcs. Drug dealers cross county lines, trying to corrupt children and ready to commit murder. The chief constable, an admirable enough fellow, seems to spend half his time wrestling with inadequate budgets and the other half standing down police operations which cannot be afforded.

In the local hospital, the nurses are far too demoralised to care about their patients, while most of the doctors we encounter seem to be knackered. Is this a true picture of much of modern England? I have a horrible suspicion that Susan Hill is not exaggerating and that the answer is ‘yes’. Many of our public services are failing the public.

There is a further and related problem. Most of my friends come from the sedentary professions: law, academia, politics, journalism. But every time I encounter anyone who is trying to do anything in business, there is the same complaint: the burden of regulation and the time it takes to extract useful information from the regulatory authorities. Is there a more depressing conversation than the one which begins, ‘You have the following three options’? You know that none of those options will involve talking to a sentient human being. I am told that all this is even worse in Scotland.

It is enough to make one turn to drink. Fortunately, that is a gift which goes on giving. Back in London, I have just helped to polish off a bottle of ’03 Montrose, to assist in the obsequies of the year’s first grouse. In all seasons, the British countryside proffers Ceres’ bounty.

Down in the country there was a similar treat, to accompany a pleasure which makes one grateful that we have not yet broken off all trading relations with the French, however much they deserve it. Goose foie gras and, to accompany it, a 2004 Zeltlinger Schlossberg Auslese. Ideally, one would want an even sweeter wine to match the foie, but this worked. We finished it later, as a pre-digestif, to the sound of tawny owls beginning their nightly patrol. I have always wondered why owls warn their small victims that the predators have started on their rounds, but it is an enchanting sound. From the Owl of Minerva onwards, owls have been the intellectuals of the feathered kingdom. Auslese is an intellectual wine. The two go well together, to distract one from the manifold intellectual failures which afflict our public life.