Peter Rhodes on heatwaves, remembrance and an encounter with a sticky tree

Tips for coping with a heatwave. First, choose the right parking place. Here in Beer we grabbed the perfect spot, sheltered from the furnace-like sun, beneath a shady tree. Clever, eh?

Apparently not. Turned out to be a lime tree which drips a sort of gloopy gum. By the time I checked it two days later, the car looked as though it had been marinated in Bostik. I switched on the wipers to clear the windscreen and the gum was strong enough to grip the wiper blade and rip it in half. Perfect start to the holiday.

Remembrance is impressive down here. The steel statues of WW1 Tommies, commissioned in 2018, are still on show in the main street and on the cliff top there’s a tribute to all the young men from Beer who died in the 1914-18 conflict. The official certificate issued to the bereaved of that terrible war says: “Let those who come after, see to it that his name be not forgotten.” More than 100 years on, some good folk still take up that solemn duty.

Down the coast at Seaton the WW2 coastal defences have been spruced up. Information boards take us back to the grim days in 1940 when Britain waited for the expected Nazi invasion. On the front line at Seaton the local Home Guard had a puny 6lb gun to confront an armada likely to be led by the cream of Hitler’s navy. You can’t help wondering at what stage you are expected to give away your position and commence hostilities with your little gun which fires a shell no bigger than a carrot, at a battleship which fires a shell as big as a Volkswagen. Somehow the words “stupid boy” spring to mind.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Covid inquiry begins. It is expected to last three years but the history of such inquiries is that they always take longer, and cost much more, than forecast. Worse, they rarely change a single opinion or bring closure to the bereaved. So why do we have them? Because we’re British. Because it’s what we do. In the words of the marching song from both world wars: “We’re here because we’re here / Because we’re here because we’re here.”