So far as I can see, old men are the same whether they’ve spent a life in prayer or in banking. Obviously, some of them become ga-ga, and then – to be frank – their childhood years and memories are much more clear in their heads than the long decades they spent in psalmody. Even the most compus mentus of the old seem more direct than younger people are, and more direct than they used to be when they remembered that being circumspect is necessary whether in monasteries or businesses.

As piles or teeth or arthritic limbs caused them gyp, my elderly charges quite often muttered an audible and often quite basic Anglo-Saxon curse, and it was a pleasure to hear them do so.

It is a bit of problem to know whether the very nearly daft can be spiritual. Certainly, I have seen lots of courage and a lot more to admire in old monks as they face death. But I’ve seen wonderful quality in secular men and women too. But I am not clear which were the more spiritual. I think spirituality is a matter of living life (as Thoreau might have said) in a deliberate way. That takes mental strength.

It was always doubtful to me that the old promise of monasticism could honestly be made in our time. The old idea was that monasteries “were hard places to live, easy places to die”. It was presumed that a monastic life could be a sort of guarantee that unpleasantness and penitence now would be rewarded by a quick march into heaven. One of the reasons I left my monastery all those years ago was that I had great difficulty with both sides of this deal: I didn’t believe we had to do special suffering here and now to guarantee speedy bliss in the here-after.

I don’t, by the way, believe that these old boys wasted their lives by staying in the monastery I abandoned. I still believe that a life of prayer is valuable.

Did I love these old men? I am not sure that I did. But then, I am an ex-monk. I am not any more engaged on a mission to love the world. I am pretty happy to have done at least some of my duty, as I perceive it.

I joined my Benedictine monastery in the 60s as a young radical, a romantic, a seeker after truth. I return now as a “carer”. The community I left was never large and it still numbers about a dozen. A steady trickle of youngsters has joined, but most leave after a few months. Even amongst the older ones, there’s a bit of attrition as love of various sorts – or loss of faith – takes men away.

But how the old linger on! My community (yes, it is still mine) has some old boys who have been “old” for 20 years and more. That is, they have been somewhere between a bit weak and pretty well bed-ridden since the late 1980s.

I go back to lend a hand with these old timers every Christmas and New Year. Some of them have social services assistance, but the Abbot has the enlightened policy of sending some younger men home to their families for the holidays. This was unheard of in my day and is disapproved of by some even now. Anyway, it produces gaps in the housekeeping and personal care regime of the monastery and I go along and help fill them.

In case you are kind enough to wonder why I do this work, here’s the reason. Years ago I struck a deal with the monastery – I mean also with myself – that I would swap ordinary secular commitment for the monastic one. Though I lost my faith – or most of it – after I’d been ten years in the monastery, I still felt that my underlying commitment to lead an isolated, removed and devoted life should stick. It was partly a matter of honouring the commitment the monastery had made to me: they kept their part of the bargain, and I felt I ought to keep as much of my side as I could. That was compounded by the pain I caused my family by not being around for my own father’s last illness and death. I felt and still feel that my being away from him then created an obligation that I be available to other people in their hour of need.

In short, I am still some sort of monk.

The crew has gone ashore and will be getting drunk. It’s not often they can all leave the boat and risk mild incapacity. In normal times, they have to be ready to take the boat to sea at short notice. But here in the repair yard, the main engines have been shut down and all but immobilised. We have domestic supplies only. The crew call them “hotel” services. 

Normally, when the owner’s aboard, the place is all subdued bustle. When he’s not around, there’s usually someone somewhere playing music. Often several, almost competitively.

But now, all is still and silent. It was all dark until I put on a reading light to tap this out. It did me good to let the gloaming take over.  

I try not to wonder about myself and my tastes too much. It’s a waste of time. But a note in a radio schedule reminded me that next month is the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death in Bangkok.

It is unwise to blame any particular person for one’s desire to be a monk. But I would blame Merton if anyone in my case. The more I know about him, the less I am inclined to really admire him. But that is not remotely the point.

When I first read Merton as a very young man, he struck me as embodying spirtuality as it applied to young people who wanted to be both modern and devout. Even now, I can’t rewind my initial impression of him. An idea of him is lodged in my person and perception and won’t be budged. Similarly, I think he threw a switch in me, and I am pretty sure I can’t find it and wouldn’t flick it the other way even if I could.

What is so odd is that I remain in many important respects the monk he made me. I have lost most of my faith and changed some of my opinions. But I remain loyal to the idea of a solitary person risking everything to pursue one rather odd approach to taking life seriously and trying to be useful. I find the shape of Benedictine monasticism still fits me. It remains the history that I want to add another soul to. 

Typically, I had thought of the great man even as I looked down from 35,000 feet at a trans-Mediterranean ferry cleaving the sparkling briney. I would have been on it if my conscience had been in better nick.

The funny thing is, reading JP makes me feel less guilty than just dreaming him up. This latest piece berated politicians for not promoting a post-growth economic and social creed. Mr Porritt seems to believe that this absence of leadership is blameworthy. He may think (but doesn’t really say) that the public can’t be blamed for not getting the message, because their political masters haven’t pushed it.

I’d have thought that there is very limited scope for democratic politicians to get ahead of their voters. Voters have been on the receiving end of twenty years of green campaigning, and it has become the leading orthodoxy, so if the masses choose to ignore the green message I’m inclined to think that it may because they’re living life the way they prefer.

I got almost cross with the Porritt message at the end of his column. He seems to feel that if voters won’t lead or be led toward “sustainability” then it’s just as well a recession will show them the way.  

This argument suggests that recession will give people a taste of green living – and pehaps a taste for it. We’ll see. I can imagine that people may learn that a camping holiday in Britain is even nicer than a Tuscan villa. But it won’t stop people hoping that the recession passes and they can be more confident that their mortgage is safe. 

I think that Jonathon Porritt believes that there is a large spiritual as well as an ecological deficit in modern life. He thinks people ought to embrace a radical alternative. Maybe they should. But I haven’t, and I know very few people who have. I mean that I know monks, greens, environmentalists - exactly the people who understand Jonathon Porritt’s message and even share it. But in every serious respect almost all of them go on living lives which are well short of radical transformation in a green direction.  

For the life of me, I can’t imagine what would radicalise people. An apocalypse might force such a change, or fear of one. But I don’t think an abstract concern for humanity or the planet will. And I find I can’t despise my fellow-humans for not being as altruistic as Mr Porritt thinks they should be.

Nor is it quite an absence of altruism. It’s more a sense that they don’t want to give up their definite delights for hypothetical improvements accruing to others.   

I am a natural royalist. Monarchy, opera, hunting and monasticism are similarly irrational, even absurd. And well worth defending. It would be tempting to do so because they are ancient. But that might take one toward celebrating torture and wouldn’t help you to defend opera. No comfort there, then. The best defence of any of them is that they are glamorous.

Princess Anne is the patron of the organisation which looks after the lighthouses of Britain’s northern coasts. But she’ s said to be a collector: an acquisition pharologist. It seems a wonderfully batty thing to be, and wholly admirable. The Times says she’s going round, ticking them off like a bird twitcher. Some, she sails to with her Navy husband.

Lord knows how she gets to the others. Probably on some sort of service vessel, as Robert Louis Stevenson did when he was still trying to prove to his father that he wanted to be a lighthouse engineer. That was before RLS tried to persuade his father that he wanted to be a lawyer. The story is beautifully told (though there’s not enough on lighthouses) in Claire Harman’s RLS biography, which I’d say is destined to be a classic. RLS was not keen to be a lighthouse engineer in the way of his grandfather and father. But he did like any kind of sea voyage and even went diving (at one his father’s sea defences) when to do so must have seemed a very hazardous thing to do. Like Anne and her husband, he liked married yachting, renting a schooner for Pacific cruises before taming bits of a tropical rainforest. Always thought to be on the point of death, discomfort and adversity seemed to invigorate him.

By the way, the Harman biography notes that Stevenson’s religious father’s wrestles with Darwinism matched those of Edmund Gosse’s father (who had his own seaside obsessions, as a naturalist). That story is told in Ann Thwaite’s biography of Gosse, which well matches Harman’s for sympathy and vigour. Gosse met and liked RLS, but then so did everybody, including, eventually, Henry James who didn’t take to him at first. (The correspondence between James and RLS, an almost incredibly different pair, made a neat book of its own.)

In the TV show, we sail toward the lighthouse on its islet off the Croatian coast. Francesco buzzes over from his schooner (The Black Swan) in a rib, and we meet the lighthouse keeper. It looks in every way an encounter with a charistmatic loner. He’s the kind of man I thrill to.

Online, I discover even better news. It seems one can rent an apartment and courtyard at the lighthouse. This what I really like: spiritual tourism. It’s my oxymoron of choice. I strongly believe in temporary monasticism, even if one shares one’s isolation with a partner. I accept that the pair pair be lightly hedonistic. None of that is quite penitential enough for some. But it can be very valuable as well as enjoyable. It goes toward the examined life.