I’ve been totting up all the places in Britain I’ve resided in. The list does not include holidays or short stays, only genuine residency. I’m staggered.

Here they are: London, Edinburgh, Farnham (Surrey), Oxford, Melton Mowbray (Leics), Bournemouth, Poole (Dorset), Exeter, Cambridge, Canterbury, Cardiff, Swansea, Borth (Mid-Wales), Penzance and Cheltenham. I may well have missed out one or two.

This does not include foreign climes: Spain (Benalmadena and Estepona), Paris, Perth (Australia), Kaiserslautern (Germany) and a myriad of short stays here and there. I could claim to be an expert in answering the question in the title of this piece.

What makes someone extend their gap year for the rest of their life? Restlessness, perhaps? Inability to settle in one spot? That’s not true, since I’ve been over a decade in my current city in Devon.

It’s a mystery, especially as I’ve known for a long time that most locations have their faults and are much the same once you are familiar with them. Your own viewpoint is always present wherever you go. If you allow it, it will flatten all differences and enhance dullness.

One spot will always stand out though.

For me, Devon is the pitch-perfect place to be, across a wide range of variables. It has everything. Solitude, crowds if you want them, sensible cities, intriguing towns and chocolate box villages, beaches to north and south, and the greatest moor of them all — Dartmoor. Not to mention cream teas and great fish. It never fails to amaze or surprise.

It’s also relatively peaceful by today’s standards, and is thankfully insulated from most of the big political questions of the day. Even union leaders are more benign in Devon than elsewhere.

The big society is a reality here. Take a look at Northlew on Dartmoor, the tiny village that set up its own wireless broadband service, undercutting BT and all other providers feeding off the internet backbone. Devonians are nothing if not enterprising. They have to be. Big Society writ large.

While Cornwall can at times seem like the Wild West, Devon is for ever civilized and tidy. It’s the perfect county for a writer, even better for a contemplative, superb for a conservationist.

This is not a hagiography, nor a billet-doux to a patch of red soil. It is nothing but the unadulterated truth.

The Royal Mail, it is said, intends to abolish counties for delivery purposes. Those upcountry folk just don’t get it, do they?

John Evans

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Last week I wrote a rather alarming piece about the euro currency: Is the eurozone about to collapse?. Some significant commentators are doing likewise, notably, Will Hutton, Liam Halligan, Edmund Conway and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard.

These guys don’t mess about. If they are nervous, we should be too. My antennae have been twitching for some considerable time.

And yet, and yet … Where are the front-page stories in our national press warning us of the calamity to come? Today’s Sunday Times does have a mini article, “Greece urged to give up the euro” on page 11 of the main paper, squashed into a bottom corner next to a large advert for Hyundai cars, and cut into by a promotion for “Britain’s Best Picnic Walks”.

What comes next will not be a picnic, nor a drive in a spanking new motor.

We are informed, in around 250 words, that the British Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) “has warned Greek ministers they will be unable to escape their debt trap without devaluing their own currency to boost exports. The only way this can happen is if Greece returns to its own currency.”

As Greece’s debt is denominated in euros, it will increase as the local currency falls. Thus the debt must be “converted into the new currency unilaterally.” I’m sure that will go down a storm with holders of Greek euro bonds.

Doug McWilliams, chief exec of the CEBR, thinks the move is “virtually inevitable” and other members may follow. “The only question is the timing. The other issue is the extent of contagion. Spain would probably be forced to follow suit, and probably Portugal and Italy …”

He ends ominously, “Could this be the last weekend of the single currency? Quite possibly, yes.”

At least the ST lifted that out of the Business section. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.

David Laws is gone, having entered the annals of the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest occupier of a Cabinet seat in British history. I’m talking about time here, not stature. Someone should check that out too.

Eighteen days is not a long time in politics, whatever grumpy old Harold Wilson might have said. One thing made Laws stand out. His vanishingly small career is filled with superlatives.

Apart from the length of his stay on our political radar, he has been elevated to the status of “the star of the coalition government”, a Prime Minister-in-waiting, the best brain in Parliament, the ablest candidate for the job, and “a good and honourable man” (David Cameron).

If he can manage all that in 18 days, what might he have accomplished in 18 months?

Can we afford to lose such concentrated talent in these hard times?

If you have ever watched old British films, you will know what a charabanc is.

Charas (pronounced “sharabang”, suggesting a French connection) were old buses designed for long-distance outings to the seaside and, more often than not, pub crawls through the countryside. They were usually painted a drab green, or cream with brown highlights. Very public sector.

Charabancs were the quintessential working class form of transport right up to the 1960s. When in Malta a few years ago, I had the misfortune of travelling in one on a tourist trip to Medina in the centre of the island.

It was a very uncomfortable journey, especially when the engine caught fire, filling the bus with thick, black smoke. Alarmingly, the Maltese driver regarded this as perfectly normal.

I mention all this because while out walking in Exeter the other day, I came across a perfectly preserved example of a charabanc. By wonderful serendipity, it was parked alongside a luxuriously modern German coach with every facility and comfort known to man. Here’s my pic:

Doesn’t it just warm the cockles of your heart?

Annoyment of the Week

One of my pet aversions of the late, unlamented Labour government, was Yvette Cooper and Ed Ball’s constant use of the phrase, “It’s the right thing to do”.

Where do I start?

The word “right” is a value judgement, so should always be prefaced with “In my opinion …”. Instead it was used as a fait accompli, an argument stopper.

The gruesome/winsome couple (you decide who gets which adjective) were claiming infallibility of decision, something even the Pope would be wary of these days.

Imagine then my surprise when our shiny new leader, David Cameron, started using this verbal tic in putting his points across.

Dave, it’s not the right thing to do to say it’s the right thing to do.

Here in East Devon we’ve had a major sporting triumph, something we’re not used to, or geared up for.

Our local rugby club, the Exeter Chiefs, won a splendid two-leg final against formidable Bristol, 38-17 to win promotion to the rugby Premiership. That is a huge event for the club, for next season it will be hosting the like of Wasps, Leicester, Bath and Northampton, giants among the rugger crowd.

Yesterday the entire city centre was filled with an enormous crowd welcoming our heroes in their open-topped bus as they were greeted by the Lord Mayor of Exeter.

My photo is a bit blurred, but it was the best I could do in the circumstances.

Hail to the Chiefs

John Evans

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An 18th-century view over the River Exe captured this morning. Click on pic for larger image.

Photo by John Evans.

I have not written about politics for a week or so because the smoke of battle had not yet cleared, and the toe-curling necessities of compromise were still underway.

We’re getting a better picture now — some commentators might later regret their bawling out of that bloke called Dave. Far from being a LibLab pact in all but name, the new arrangements have “Conservative” embedded in their core, rather like a stick of Torquay rock.

Daily we’re seeing Tory policy changes implemented, largely below the surface, or at local level, that tell a different story from the prevailing mood of gloom on the Right.

Civil servants are reporting a new atmosphere of courtesy in Government circles, in place of the aggressive “f-ing and blinding”, equipment-hurling chaos of the Labour administration.

On the macro view, the Prime Minister’s strong performance in Berlin yesterday reset the scale on Europe.

David Cameron put aside weasel words and articulated unambiguously what many of us have thought about the EU for decades. No more treaties, no eurozone business conducted under the umbrella of the wider European Union — Britain will veto them at birth.

A notice of intent has been driven into the gap between eurozone and the concept of the EU. This wedge is apposite because, although around half of our exports go to the eurozone, they are sold to people and companies, not to politicians.

The implications of this are profound. If the eurozone wants to turn itself into a country with a new political government to oversee its economic infrastructure, it will have to make treaties of its own. The UK will have none of it, knowing it would be drawn into the net at some point.

This is very shrewd. What Cameron seems to be implying is that Europe must make up its mind about the solidity of the common-currency zone, or break it up so that what’s left is viable.

Britain is now striking out on its own, daring a central core of states to remake its own EU. If that happens, whole chunks could be ripped out of the existing treaties where Britain, Sweden and other possible volunteers are concerned.

It’s almost a new Doctrine that the Prime Minister would do well to define more clearly in the near future. Brussels has dug itself into a hole that could have been avoided. Its blinkered personnel need to be forced into an acceptance of the magnitude of their failure.

The alternative is that the once smug, comfortable-in-its-own-skin euro area could indeed be responsible for a worldwide Great Depression II, as some economists are now warning.

On a local level, the beast of Whitehall is stirring too. Here in Devon, the proposed Unitary authority of Exeter, pushed through at the last moment by outgoing Ministers — with more than a hint of gerrymander about it — has been scrapped, subject to repeal legislation. The impoverishment of the County of Devon has been averted.

Similarly, the absurd emergency fire callcentre in Taunton has been abandoned in favour of retaining the service in Exeter. Localism lives. Well done the Tories.

I’m also satisfied that the abysmal Human Rights Act (read: Human Wrongs Act) will be tamed by subterranean forces if only we have the patience to wait awhile.

As for the muddle of tax cuts/rises disputed by the two parties of Government, they will be massaged into shape in their own good time, I have no doubt.

It could be a lot worse. Gordon Brown and Ed Balls could still be there.

Hope trumps despair. I’m increasingly sanguine that something approximating a minor Panglossian scenario is at least visible on the very far horizon with the correct magnification binoculars.

And the Conservatism is just below the surface.

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In need of a break from politics, I am away this fine weekend. Back on Wednesday.

Here’s a picture of Exeter Ship Canal, taken last week:

John Evans