One of the more consequential political stories here last week was the prospect of MPs legalising assisted dying in England and Wales. This was for citizens having less than six months to live with ‘a clear, settled and informed’ wish to die—the dying itself to be self-administered. As a result, a normally closed-shop political media machine was packed with interesting conversation—from the philosophical to the plucky—with the potential for coercion the most prominent theme. Politicians ordinarily caught up in the polarising chopping machine of politics suddenly showed themselves to be deep thinkers, as if unleashed to become who they really were through a discussion on mortality of all things. ‘It is about how we feel as human beings,’ said one MP.

At the same time, on the personal home front, the artist left with the musicians for the English countryside. Well, for a friendly English market town in the English countryside. A place to rival Rivals, the latest streaming adaptation of a Jilly Cooper romp of the same name. I was sorry not to travel with the family but had a lot on my non-silver plate. Like many, though, I don’t really mind my own company. Where once I would be out and about exploring the whole time, I now tend to pull back over the manhole cover and buckle down to some writing, with only the occasional longish walk or trip into the heart of the capital.

The best panorama in London is only a short walk away. This embraces Canary Wharf and the City of London, the legendary curve of the River Thames, St. Paul’s Cathedral, The London Eye, the O2 Arena, The Shard, The Gherkin, The Cheese Grater. In fact, I stood there gazing at all this with a friend, a former union man, last week. Walking back, we could see the last of the leaves cling to dear life above rained-upon stretches of green grass, though the sun was bright in the sky.

Talking of music, the musicians ended up stuck in the countryside because of flooding, though the artist was staying on anyway. Not a deluge as apocalyptic as that lately in Spain, but it would have been traumatic enough for the elderly in particular in the middle of nowhere caught up in it. As it happened, the musicians returned only one day late—the same day they had their first song on national radio.

I was in the centre of London the day after the farmers protesting the recent changes to inheritance tax for farms. It was not exactly the end of Woodstock as people cleared up, but demonstrations are like gigs. At most—I never hear the word ‘demo’ anymore—the metaphorical band shows up. They play. The crowd cheers. The road crew clears the set. Everyone disappears home. In the case of the farmers, they left possibly unaware of just how gentle and polite they had been. Not so much a battle of rights as a quiet soap opera which most forwent.

Someone asked me why they weren’t bolshy like the French. The reason was simple, I said. In France, farms are mostly smallholdings and there are a lot of them. In this country, many farmers own large swathes of land. Which is part of the problem with their optics.

On social media I see the faces of the prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer have been gleefully superimposed on the bodies of two of the country’s worst ever serial child killers, reminding us of our uglier instincts in more ways than one. This was no match for the real carnage taking place in Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Northern Syria, and Sudan, but it remains a violence of sorts. Someone pointed out that the use of such imagery bears no understanding of how it can damage the families who have lost children.

Talking of hate fests, we hear it said with increasing candour that we are at war with Russia. Not pre-war, as Poland’s Donald Tusk puts it. War. Another figure, pleading to Trump perhaps, repeats that abandoning Ukraine seriously diminishes UK, American and European security, ultimately leading to a vastly higher bill. Then, wearily, we discover Russian forces are advancing at their fastest rate since the start of the invasion, and in the past month have taken land half the size of London.

On the other hand, Georgians have been gathering in the streets to rebut Russia. Russia’s ally Assad is suddenly ceding territory in northern Syria, with Russian forces said to have abandoned a land base in Al-Suqaylabiyah and an air base in Hama, at the same time as a possibly weakened Iran and Hezbollah, though a Russian counterattack was taking place at the time of writing.

Furthermore, for the very first time, Ukraine’s President Zelensky has indicated to Sky’s Stuart Ramsay, who I once ran into at a remote heliport in Helmand, that he might surrender land for ‘umbrella’ protection from NATO after all.

In today’s eternally sobering reality, we try to be humorous. It is human nature and all we can do. We become joke-cracking medics around a bloody operating table. Jokes abound from Ukraine. One I heard was of a Russian approaching the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian soldier at the border asks, ‘Name?’ The Russian stares at him and answers, ‘Boris.’ The border guard asks, ‘Occupation?’ The Russian says, ‘No, just visiting.’

Though there has been at least one arson attack here on a Ukrainian-linked business, in the relative peace of London I do find that ‘incidental aesthetics’ also help. It is night and I stare out of the window for instance at the busy street and two backlighted posters on the opposite bus stop, advertising a brand new TV series and chocolate bar respectively. A bus passes—or an incidental aesthetic. Oddly, there is something immediately pleasing about the warm electric blue interior and shiny cold red exterior of a passing iconic London doubledecker bus.

The next day, my offshore friend writes about concerns over France. He seems committed to the idea that Blighty may return to an EU-style set-up, in part to be a more reliable partner to France. Already, Germany is being mooted as on standby to bail the French out. Vouloir, c’est pouvoir. To want is to be able. My friend is less positive however about Angela Merkel’s new book.

On the day of the Assisted Dying vote, people had gathered outside Westminster. It was time to make the old feel valued, as one newspaper put it, not hastened out the door. Dr Philip Howard, who I spoke to ten years ago in a film about the NHS, was saying he resented this potential for ‘catastrophic change’. He even quoted directly from the Hippocratic oath: ‘I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel.’

Despite the good doctor’s concerns, MPs backed the landmark bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales in the end. As lawyer Eva Vlaardingerbroek said after 20 years of euthanasia and assisted suicide for over 20 years in her country of Holland: ‘Always keep in mind that the power one gives to emperor Augustus can – and will – end up in the hands of someone like Nero.’

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