Matthew Parris

Look out. Here comes a column banging on about something that, in the grand scheme of things, really doesn’t matter. But I’ve just turned 70 and surely among the compensations for old age must be the right to have a jolly good grumble from time to time. Mine, here, will be about the new hard train seats. ‘They feel like sitting on an ironing board,’ passengers are complaining. Since the beginning of last year, and all over the country, rail operating companies have been rolling out (hallelujah! — a chance to use this ghastly expression entirely appropriately) a new kind of railway carriage. First it was Thameslink; then it was GWR; and last week I suffered in one of these carriages going all the way to Leeds. My buttocks ache at the very recollection.

Our involuntary responses know us better than we know ourselves. As I left King Charles Street in Whitehall last week and passed under the archway into the great court of the Foreign Office — and before I knew where it came from or why — an old and familiar feeling inhabited me. Dejection. This is where I started my working life as an administrative trainee, and those two years were a wretched time: a gradual understanding stealing upon me that I had no talent for this job. This courtyard was the opening scene of my every working day. It struck misery into my soul then, and 45 years later it still does. I blame myself, however, not our Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

My voice is often recognised by people who don’t know me. My face, which is unmemorable, less so. But once I open my mouth it’s not uncommon at railway stations, on buses or at the supermarket till for someone to approach and ask me to confirm I’m Mr Parish, or Malcolm Parris, or whatever. I make no boast: anyone who appears from time to time on radio and television gets recognised a bit, and over many years this has been my experience too. But something has changed in recent months, something I can’t ignore. In the past, the enquiry ‘Are you Matthew Parris?’ was made mostly out of curiosity.

‘Life pours back in.’ A score of us, listening to Charlie Burrell at the Knepp estate ten days ago, will always remember his words: so palpably true. We could see just what he meant as he took us through his work ‘re-wilding’ the estate in West Sussex where he and his wife, Isabella Tree, live at Knepp Castle. The family have owned and farmed these 3,500 acres for more than two centuries. Sir Charles, 10th Baronet, and Isabella are giving their all to this brave project, for which they have become pioneers, leaders, opinion--formers and evangelists. And the religion is spreading. Everyone in the world of environmentalism talks about re-wilding now.

Please don’t suppose I’m unaware I’ve been an idiot. I recount what happened to me last week without expecting your sympathy or understanding, and this account carries only the very slightest plea in mitigation: the suggestion that it could happen to you too, even if you don’t think you’d ever be so stupid. Because I certainly didn’t think I was. I’m not IT-illiterate, I’m not particularly slow-witted, I’ve attended ‘take online security seriously’ lectures, and I do know about the new ways thieves steal from the unsuspecting these days. I’m forewarned. So I thought myself proof against such attempts when the landline phone rang on Friday morning.

‘Too tweedy? Goodness gracious me!’ Rory Stewart sounded startled. A contender for the Tory leadership, he was being interviewed by the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell last Sunday morning on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. O’Connell asked the MP for Penrith and the Border how he responded to the criticism that ‘the Conservative party is too tweedy’. A short discussion of the relationship between 21st-century Toryism and tweed followed, during which Stewart revealed that in his rural constituency ‘quite a lot of us wear some tweed’. Only ‘some’ tweed, mind you: Stewart sensed he was on tricky ground here. Leadership candidates in all parties get used to being asked if they’ve ever smoked weed — but worn tweed?

A pale sun had emerged from wintry clouds and the hillsides were topped snowy white. But all around me was the workaday bustle of Beirut streets still wet from overnight winter rain. This was the Armenian quarter, near the docks, at morning coffee time. I was standing on the Rue Qobaiyat, opposite a downtown petrol station and outside a corner barber’s shop, Salon Anto. My partner and his mother wanted to go to a museum and I’m not a great one for museums, and needed a haircut. ‘There’s a barber just around the corner,’ said the helpful owner of the little Baffa House lodge where we were staying. ‘A bit … old-fashioned. Nothing “cool”, you know.’ ‘Just my place,’ I said; and soon found it.

The three most popular justifications for punishment under the law all (as it happens) begin with R. They are retribution, rehabilitation and removal. But the fourth and to my mind the most important seems to have fallen rather out of public consideration. Yet that fourth, deterrence, is by far the best reason for the investigation and interrogation of Shamima Begum and — if there is a case against her to answer — her detention and trial. Leading all other reasons for the prosecution according to due process — and, if convicted, the punishment — of those who may have committed a criminal offence is deterrence: the discouragement of others who may be tempted to commit similar offences. I can’t understand why more is not being made of this.

‘Don’t even try,’ said the man on the car deck as Brittany Ferries’ Finistère tied up on the dock in Santander, late because of the winter storm. ‘You’d be lucky tonight to get through the snow to Valladolid. Find a hotel here and try tomorrow morning.’ He was one of those confident Englishmen you meet who seem to know. Working across northern Spain, his business took him always on the road. Passengers had been warned that roads were closed by the snow, and winter tyres and snow chains were a must. ‘The Guardia Civil will stop you and those guys don’t mess about. They’ll check you have neumaticos de invierno.’ Which I didn’t. Or snow chains.