Always swim”, says a big noticeboard down on the seafront here in Bournemouth, “at a lifeguarded beach.” I’ve been staring at it, bemused, in the weak September sunshine, thinking of all the un-lifeguarded beaches I’ve swum at in my life: those beautiful little sandy coves on the northern coast of Cyprus when we lived in Nicosia and I was a six-year-old boy who loved swimming under water with my eyes open; the huge Indian rollers that used to roar in at Umhlanga Rocks near Durban, after we moved to Africa; the gentle waters of the vast Lake Nyasa (now Malawi); the heaving, eucaplyptus-fringed Pacific in New South Wales; the cold, clear Atlantic on my 60th birthday weekend in the Isles of Scilly; that freezing lake in the Pyrenees last month ...

What fun. What unending fun. And none of them lifeguarded, not one. Pity the child who must go through life without the thrill of swimming alone, unsupervised.

Sinking ship?

Before this party conference Liberal Democrats took a deep breath, and confronted reality: that their Bournemouth do is probably not at the top of al-Qaeda’s hit list of targets.

Imagine those murderous terrorists in an Afghan cave: “First the twin towers, brothers; then Madrid, then London. But now for the big one: we can wreck a dastardly Lib-Dem debate in Bournemouth on a motion to ensure ‘that the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) only permits sustainable biofuels . . .’.”

No. So for this conference everything has relaxed. After years of negotiating our way from A to B at the conference centre via complicated routes between security barriers, the walls have come down, the locked doors opened and the dark tunnels cleared away — and we’ve realised how close many points actually are to each other. Like laboratory rats conditioned by electric shocks to follow circuitous paths to our goals, we blink nervously in the light, look around and, almost flinching at the expected prods, proceed hesitantly in straight lines.

First, not worst

But Lord, it’s dull. I bumped into the splendid Elinor Goodman, that former star of Channel 4 News. “Enjoying the conference?” I asked. She gave me a glassy stare. “Unlike those people who always hold the opinions of the last person they spoke to,” she said, “I always hate the political party most whose conference I’ve most recently attended. Luckily for the Lib Dems, they’re the first of the season.”

Not flinching

I’m at a table for ten at the West Beach restaurant, at a Times dinner for Vince Cable. The great man is speaking in his usual measured way. On the next table the Chinese Ambassador, Madam Fu Ying, in an elegantly severe high collar, is in serene command of an even larger group, speaking with quiet authority. Suddenly, somebody, somewhere drops something big. There’s the most almighty crash. Everybody jumps. Someone near the Ambassador actually ducks. Waiters rush. Even the imperturbable Dr Cable stops, flinches. Alarmed, we look around.

And Madam Fu Ying? It is as if she has not heard. Not a muscle in her face betrays the slightest discomposure. She pauses for not a beat. Slowly the rest of the room recovers the equilibrium Madam Fu Ying never lost. What a diplomat. What a woman.

Sure thing

I’m enjoying the correspondence about my denunciation (on this page last week) of the British tour of the bones of St Thérèse of Lisieux. One Christian correspondent deplores the “vituperative” language of atheists like me with my “depraved mind”.

If modern Christians had but a cursory sense of history, they would know that this was what the Reformation was all about. Martin Luther was wonderfully vituperative on indulgences. John Calvin’s Treatise on Relics is unequivocal: “The desire for relics is never without superstition and, what is worse, is usually the parent of idolatry.” England is a Protestant country. It should be the Anglican and Nonconformist Churches leading the charge against idolatry.

But one attack I must repudiate. “As an atheist,” rage my correspondents, “how dare you claim certainty?” What cheek! Are Christians agnostic on the question of whether (as Muslims believe) Jesus was not the Son of God? Seeing no more evidence for the truth of Christianity than Christians see for the truth of Hinduism, I proceed on the basis that both these beliefs are wrong. Are only the “faith community” permitted confidence that they’re right — while the rest of us must limit ourselves to respectful uncertainty?

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