When you’ve done everything you can over your allotted span, life of course ends but the eternal reward isn’t quite what you think, you who are convinced you’re right about your Nirvana, hovering Heaven, rousting Valhalla, forty bored virgins siting about, leafy Elysium or mythical golf links. No. What really happens is not a one size fits all solution that clogs up the fairway because, as everyone knows deep down in their innermost soul, thank you gifts are always best when they are personalised.

So drop through your insubstantial cloud of certainty for a moment and follow me over the Rainbow Bridge as it crumbles away to peek through one of many windows in another place where the sun sets peacefully beneath a gathering of souls.

“That really is too slow”, the shade that had once been Vercingetorix complained. “Open a window to cool it all down or this coat is going to set too quickly.” Amelia Earhart made a long arm and flicked open the catch, spiritually abetted by a yawn from Cardinal Richelieu.

“Time isn’t very important in the grand scheme of things”, chattered Mozart, elbowing a sleeping Einstein. “not if you’re a connoisseur and you like to relax and properly enjoy it”. Shaka Zulu nodded wisely.

“Why do they order this ‘chemical catalyst’ rubbish anyway, when the stuff we used to have stayed sticky for ages and had that distinctive watery pong to it that you could only clear with a sliced onion? I mean, look at this” Ernest Shackleton huffed, indignant. “if you so much as turn away from this brand, it’s gone solid as a ruddy vinyl tea tray. They didn’t have it in my day and I don’t remember it turning yellow two years later either, so then you have to do it again. I’m pretty sure I could sail to South Georgia on a coat that thick.”

“Stands to reason it’s not like the old stuff. They banned that type because of the lead in it. That’s Health & Safety mate”, advised Baron von Richthofen, with his usual Teutonic adherence to the rules. “It was cyanide in the wallpaper ink that did for poor old Boney over there”. The compact Frenchman in question appeared resigned to the issue but Nico Machiavelli whispered a correction, “cyanide”.

“Inheritance powder, is what we used to call that” chided Madame Curie as her smile quivered at the edges. Anna Seacole looked out of the window languidly and then focussed back to the paint, commenting “Walls used to be more interesting back then, even on tents. I hear now you can hardly see the paint for Star Wars decals in most kids’ bedrooms”.

Gertrude Bell seemed to be locked in a staring contest with the wall but in reality her eyes had glazed over several decades ago and she was being propped up discreetly by T.E. Lawrence and Clive of India.
Marco Polo wasn’t listening either, tuned out and absorbed as he was with the wet wall in front of him. The sun finally dropped and rapt attention wrapped harder around the audience. Eyes bored.

CAUTION. WET PAINT.

Biggles stood up and shuffled closer to the inaction, upsetting those who said he was getting in the way of the view. They’d been surprised enough to find out that he was a real person but now this impertinence capped it all; and Julius Caesar spoke for all of them with a “Quiz decorum est?”

“Back on the ship”, said Magellan, I used to imagine the heavens were an endless expanse of fresh paintwork, approaching the tacky stage at the edges where they curled down into the seas.” Rameses nodded crankily to royally endorse a shared experience, then the more aesthetic of the others, their eyes still attending the settling paint nodded in solidarity with the image the explorer had presented.

“I thought the stars were numbers” mentioned Archimedes, before he got waved down. “Painted numbers, obviously” he supplemented to little effect, before abandoning the conversation altogether. Picasso’s eyes toured a weary arch across the heavens but no doves were out this evening.

The thing is, heroes and other extremely high achieving mortals have very unusually, very particularly, very, very exciting lives. Sometimes they have short lives but even those are very, very exciting. When the mightiest conquerors, the most inflamed thinkers and unbelievably hard working discoverers do drop off the perch and come to claim their eternal reward, in a dimension where nothing is material, what they really want above all other things is glorious rest, peace and quiet. Dull is the new perfect. There are isolation tanks nowadays and you might even find yourself some day in zero gravity but although quiet, neither of those things are comfortable; but there is watching paint dry, which works much better.

“It’s building up to the good bit”, announced Nefertiti. “See? It’s getting ever so slightly sticky and if you get a hair in it now, you’ll mess up everything when you try to pick it back out”. Machiavelli had a dagger for work like that but didn’t say because Alexander Fleming had temporarily borrowed it.
“How long before it’s ready for another coat?” asked Ernest Hemmingway, but Shakespeare pointedly ignored him, as a drooping P.T. Barnum went 12 points ahead crossing ‘lethargy’ and ‘inactive’ at Scrabble. The showman’s hat fell off and rolled away, increasing the pleasure of those behind who had been trying to spectate around it. “We could ask again in a week or two”, Hemmingway suggested.
“Or do the work yourself for a change”, scolded Marie Antoinette.

“I just love this stage”, Mohammed Ali interrupted. “Look how the brush strokes like the veins in a butterfly’s wing seep in and merge tiny furrows together into a perfectly even surface. It’s like gravity, but sideways. What an adventure.”

“Hey y ’all, if we flick a speck o’ grit on that they’ll need to sand it down in the mornin’ and start the whole thing over again. What say?” This suggestion by Calamity Jane, or perhaps she was Annie Oakley because they wore the same hat, sparked a murmur of agreement in the throng.

“It’s still not dried. We’ve got at least another three hours” protested Leonardo, willing them all to stay. He needn’t have bothered because they weren’t going anywhere. Unseen but fervently admired, a few more watery molecules evaporated from the surface of the paint.

Farther up the metaphorical mountain of eternal and exquisite boredom, which happened to be, also metaphorically, situated far up in a torpid sky, according to the most ancient of legends from the dawning of time, there is a unique place to those super-rare and precious few heroes whose unbelievably energetic accomplishments qualify them for an experience even less exciting and fabulously dull than watching paint dry. What this reward might be, only the transcendental scribes of the Universe can hint at – and they’re not telling, but there is hope of an answer if you ask around the more attentive of seekers.

See how your attention turns to the seldom noticed errand-boy who serves this little niche of heaven, whose obligation it is to descend from the mountain once in an age and drop to the surface of the Earth, whereupon he crosses the threshold of a bookshop with a shining fifty pee coin out of petty cash, reaches into the remainders basket and traipses back up to provision those in the silent sanctum, the only place of its kind, to feed the ultimate, unadulterated epicentre of boring in the Universe with the perfect fit for their requirements: Ken Clarke’s autobiography. ( )

Kenneth ‘Ken’ Clarke is currently the Father of the House of Commons, being the longest sitting current member (He was first sworn in as an MP on the same day on 1970 as Dennis Skinner, but takes the honour of being Father of the House because he took the oath of allegiance to the Queen before the ‘Beast of Bolsover’). He has represented the same constituency (Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire) throughout the whole of his time as an MP, and during that period he has held several ministerial posts, including two of the ‘great offices of state’ (Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary).

I used to see Ken Clarke quite regularly, wandering along Tothill Street towards Parliament most mornings, and even came to develop a very British, vague nodding acquaintance with him. To be honest, he generally contrived to look even more unhealthy than me, with his face a vivid shade of puce and dripping with sweat, though he always gave off an airy of cheery optimism. That positive approach reverberates throughout this volume of memoirs, even though, somehow, he managed to overlook any reference to me.

I was amused by his comments about a couple of the civil service buildings that I have worked in (though never crossing with his time as a minister there). Caxton House (formerly one of the locations of the Department for Education and Employment, and now home to the Department for Work and Pensions) is dismissed as the ‘drab department building’ [Quite true, of course, but there was no need to labour the point – he may have secured a ministerial exit visa to another, more luxuriously accommodated department but his poor officials were left behind without that avenue of escape), while the old Home Office headquarters and current home of the Ministry of Justice (to which I will be moving in three weeks’ time) is ‘a hideous concrete fortress’

Being a politician, he does, of course, adopt a tone that veers between self-congratulation and defensiveness, and he also gives the impression that at each new department to which he was assigned (and that was a lot of departments), he inherited a morass of inefficiency but left a legacy of streamlined reform simplifying the work of his successor. Despite this, the book is very entertaining and informative. His ministerial CV is certainly as impressive as it is varied, including stints at the Departments for Health, Education and Trade & Industry, along with the Home Office, Treasury and Ministry of Justice, before finishing up as Minister Without Portfolio in David Cameron’s short-lived post-2015 administration.

In the forty-seven years (and counting) during which he has been an MP, he has met a terrific assortment of other leading political figures, and his observations are always entertaining. He also avoids falling into the trap of mindless political partisanship, strewing praise and disdain fairly liberally, regardless of political affiliation. ( )

Normally, whatever my opinion about the politics of someone, I always like the more after reading their autobiography. It was therefore a surprise and a first for me to like the person less. This is partly because while I don't agree with his politics, I have always found Ken Clarke kind of okay. He adores jazz, he says what he thinks and can be very funny, he wears Hush Puppies and had a wife who looked like she would lie on the road to stop major developments going ahead. But to be honest, it reminded me of how divisive the Thatcher years were and how every change was done within an atmosphere of punishment and disrespect. ( )