Every year I go camping in wild places with the same friend. After 46 years, we’re thinking that one day soon we’ll be too old for this – but not quite yet. We’re in Andorra now, high in the Pyrenees, and the terrain is spectacular but rugged. It’s easy to lose your footing or lose your way entirely. As I stumble along, I remember Michael Mosley, whom I knew a little. Everything you’ve heard about him is true: he really was the kindest of men. It seems that Michael was defeated by the heat while out walking on the Greek island of Symi in June. In our case, it’s a sudden storm that nearly gets the better of us.
As we cross a mountain pass into France, sunshine turns to driving rain and there’s no sign of our path. We’re lost at the worst moment. Our rescuer is the simplest of things: a small pile of stones, otherwise known as a cairn. My companion, Pete, a retired primary school headteacher, remembered how he’d dedicated a school assembly to cairns. He had brought in three stones and laid them on top of each other, to show the children.
Our cairn on the mountainside is a life-saver, given the appalling conditions, and more cairns follow to guide us safely to an empty shepherd’s hut. As we light the stove and warm ourselves, Pete seeks to explain his theory that cairns are essentially socialist. They only exist because, when we pass by, we add a stone to the pile. We do so not for our own benefit, because we’re already on the right trail, but for the benefit of others. We do it for hikers who we will never know or meet, who are at risk of becoming lost without the help of those simple piles of rock. Cairns are a selfless, individual action for the wider, common good. Cairns are definitely socialist
Stranger things
I’ve been talking to strangers a lot recently. Do try it. Michael Mosley advised that doing so is good for one’s mental health and sense of well-being. In the mountains this is easy, because everyone stops for a chat, and nobody thinks you’re mad. Apparently when we talk to someone we don’t know, something special happens in our brains. It makes us feel good, and, according to Michael, can be more effective than therapy or antidepressants.
Am I the only person left in the UK who still hitch-hikes? It’s another way people you’ve never met are happy to help. And it’s an excellent way of meeting strangers. When someone stops I always feel overwhelmed by an immense feeling of gratitude.
Simple pleasures
Back home I volunteer at the local food bank, where people queue for an hour in the rain just for a small bag of groceries. Last month I noticed a woman crying. I asked what was wrong. “I just feel so ashamed,” she said. I was reminded of a similar scene from Ken Loach’s film I, Daniel Blake, when a volunteer simply says to a mother: “Let me help you with your shopping.” The empathy of those words always brings tears to my eyes.
Tax burdens unfairly
Why is it that people go hungry in the sixth-richest country in the world? When I was a boy in the mid Sixties, the earning ratio between the boss and the lowest-paid employee was 1:20. Now it’s more like 1:400. Back then, the economy was much smaller, but there was enough money to fund public services and build new schools and hospitals. Today, thousands rely on food banks. The share the rich get is so much bigger; they’re sucking the oxygen from everyone else.
A friend tells me about a billionaire who had bought a £50m house in Westminster. His foreign accountant apparently thought it hilarious that the council tax was less than £2,000 a year: “What, £2K a year? I thought that was going to be £2k a week!” Come on, Labour, when are you going to reform council tax, and bring in a proper tax on wealth and land?
Cairn together
From cairns guiding us to safety to strangers offering help, and to the people queuing in the rain for food, I’m struck by the same thought: it is our collective actions, not individual wealth or privilege, that truly define us. We thrive when we support each other. Yet, in a society where the wealth gap widens and the super-rich evade their share of responsibility, this spirit of solidarity feels increasingly under threat. If we can find our way in the wilderness, guided by small acts of kindness and cooperation, surely we can find a way to rebuild a fairer society.
Phil Jones is the former editor of the “Jeremy Vine Show” on BBC Radio 2
[See also: Colin Greenwood’s tour diary: checking in with Radiohead and suiting up for Nick Cave]
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This article appears in the 23 Oct 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The crisis candidate