Tim Heald's Blog

            The one day international between England and Australia at Lord's was probably top. The cricket is slightly incidental though anything involving those two sides is always good even with pyjamas, a relative failure by Ponting, the wrong result and overly cautious captaincy by Strauss. (I'd have brought on Broad and Swann much earlier!) And the only familiar face was the general in the champagne bar of the Tennis Court which was deeply wonderful but more would have been better still. We were also very conscious of the wedding cricket at Worcester College, Oxford, which turned out to be stylish and enjoyable and blessed with good weather when we had supper at Quod in Oxford with Rick and Judi the following evening. It seemed bizarre that only a month earlier we had been at the crime writer's conference in Oklahoma City before jetting eventfully to Chicago where, incidentally, I see that the sinister policeman and alleged torturer whose trial I attended has been found guilty and is to be sentenced in November when he could face as long as 45 years in prison. As he's not well and in his sixties it seems unlikely that he will ever come out which is probably right and proper. Bit late in the day but reassuring in a way.

            Anyway it seems extraordinary to be back in the United Kingdom dealing with everyday problems after a period of exoticism - not, I hasten to add, a holiday. To apply the chronological approach which is more logical and sensible we began June in Oklahoma City which was fascinating. We had a few days on our own before the conference began and, as usual were struck by the money, the space and the difference as well as the similarity. There is a well-established belief that we are, as Churchill (?) said, united and yet divided by a common tongue. This is true but it's a common yet different culture as well. The university which was at the centre of our exchanges was modeled on Oxford and Cambridge and yet, although there are similarities it is the differences that strike one. There is a reading room which is obviously derived from the Bodleian or something but it is ten times as big, ten times cleaner and empty. The University has the best, well most expensive, private art collection ever given to a university in the USA. Gaylord College which is endowed by a man called Gaylord is, I think, the journalism faculty and yet it has a state of the art newsroom we can only dream of in England. The sofas and armchairs are of a leatheriness, depth, comfort and, yes, emptiness, that we can only dream of. Gaylord's main claim to fame seems to be that he or the family own the Oklahoman. I can't imagine a similar endowment on the back of say the Western Morning News and while I am sure that the Oklahoman is at the cutting edge of modern journalism I can't help thinking...

            Oh what? It's certainly different though. In some respects  it is the similarity with what we know which is striking. Thus the best thing to come out of the conference for me, personally, is being commissioned to write a short story for a German language anthology to be published for next year's conference in Zurich. I have already begun it, urged on by the energetic and indefatigable Dr. Jutta Motz, who was of our number in Oklahoma. 

            The best things at conferences A LWAYS happen in the interstices,; over the breakfast table, in the corridors but seldom on stage. There were exceptions, of course. I loved the lecture by a former Dean of Journalism, an ex White House correspondent called David Dary, one of whose books I have since acquired from Bookends of Fowey, which is generally unobtainable on this side of the Atlantic and is called Cowboy Culture. It's very good indeed - rigorous, readable and about a subject on which we are parochially ignorant.

            Despite this and such incidental public pleasures as a man and a dog describing policework among the Indians and a baseball game between the Oklahoma team and their Memphis counterpart it was moments of natter and chatter with the likes of Jutta which were most memorable. It is ever thus.

            Don't incidentally fly all over the States. Americans do and they always tell you that the train and the bus don't operate but Greyhound and Amtrak still exist and while we were told by all and sundry that they are dangerous, unpunctual or had simply passed on we used both  and were well satisfied. I suppose a failure to tell the baggage handlers that our departure gate had changed, the nail through the tire and the failure to find the only man allowed to change said tire were par for the course. The emergency landing in North West Arkansas because a nearby passenger had thrown a fit was bad luck (a lot worse for him than for us) but I'd still pass on planes and stick to buses and trains - even in the States. Maybe it is a risk but you see a lot more and we enjoyed them. Flying involves wandering around without a jacket or shoes and is a pain.

            Anyway we ended up for a couple of days in Chicago which seemed like the centre of the universe and was amazingly cool after the extreme heat of the old south and then headed home getting  into Heathrow early in the morning sleepless and having watched a surfeit of. Still, we made it, so thank-you Virgin and the volcano in Iceland.

            Once home we spent a night with friends just outside Salisbury and then stopped off in Sherborne for lunch with friends and a night with the headmaster who I like to count as a friend too. Simon is retiring and he and his wife, Olivia, are moving to Bath. One of his final acts however is to commission me to write a new history of the school. I am going to enjoy this. They have found someone who shared a study with Alan Turiung, Simon has all the relevant papers involving the doomed reign of a distinguished predecessor, there are some old masters to interview, the manuscript of Alec Waugh's Loom of Youth to consult and much else besides.   

            I have a marginal quandary about Sherborne because when I was a boy there in the fifties and sixties I was a serious rebel, helped to start an allegedly subversive national magazine, disliked many activities such as compulsory boxing and the Combined Cadet Force. Since then, however, the school has changed in some ways quite dramatically. In any case, like so many institutions, there was stuff I disliked but other things such as the quality of some of the teaching and the beauty and history of the place which I enjoyed and still do. I disapprove of the basic notion of fee-paying education but I don't see why people should be discriminated against just because they have rich parents besides which I am attracted by the notions of my late (and great) English teacher there, John Buchanan, who said there were only two sorts of school, good and bad and presumably I wished to make them all better. I'm not sure I agree but I see what he meant.

            In any case I think I'm probably the best person for the job and I will enjoy it. I don't think that means I have "sold out" or betrayed my original beliefs. Not everyone will agree but I think Sherborne, for better or worse, is part of me. After all I spent five years there and I can't deny it.. Not everyone will agree but there you go! If I do nothing else I shall work in an approving mention of the world's greatest biscuit: the Dorset Knob. Let's hear it for Dorset Knobs everywhere.

 

            So home at last . Bank manager, a Cornish pasty lunch plus crime fiction at the local library, alfresco lunch in a friend's beautiful garden. Rugby (better than usual from a crummy England), World Cup Soccer (abysmal from another crummy England), Wimbledon Tennis (not even a crummy England but a half decent if surly Scot) all available on terrestrial TV and the only half-decent "England" is cricket which you can only get (like rugby come to think of it) on Murdoch's Sky and which relies heavily on the South Africans and Irish. Maybe the English should abandon any attempt at playing top-whack sport. Foreigners do it so much better.

 

            Anyway back to earth with a vengeance and at the end of the month off to see my aged Mama (she will be 90 next birthday). It's normally four hours from our local station, Par, to Tisbury, hers. On this day, however, there had been a derailment so my train was nonchalantly cancelled; I was an hour late and almost missed the butcher. On Tuesday, after among other excitements, a merry session with Bishop Bickersteth (who claims to be the only Bishop to have gone shooting with Prince Philip at Sandringham), I travelled on to London (the normally trusty taxi failed to show but luckily Dave who is even trustier came to the rescue and I caught my scheduled train  before embarking on the usual hectic London schedule involving lunch with friends, supper with my younger son, Tristram, a visit to Buckingham Palace (no that was the day after), another to Sally Soames' terrific exhibition of photos including one of Clement Attlee for which I did the interview, maps at the British Library, a chat with a former royal policy chief, breakfast with an old friend and favourite editor who was put out and late because his bath overflowed and so to bed at the Frontline Club.

           

            That was the month, that was. Busy, busy; a bit of a roller-coaster. Such, I think is life. A matter of hanging in sometimes by one's finger tips. It can be frustrating; often fascinating; sometimes fun. But it IS, like it or not and another month has passed. It's foggy outside and I can't even see Polruan. The Dutch are in the final of the world cup. I've almost finished reading the history of New Zealand. A literary friend of friends has just rung to say she has moved in to Bodinnick.  Must rush, more next time...

            A friend said the latest adventure read like a musical and I suppose it does really. We're in Oklahoma City and I quite expect to step outside the hotel and to find myself caught up in a chorus line of people singing about cowboys and farmers and snapping their braces as they jig about to the strains of a man playing a fiddle. Actually it's not a bit like that but I still feel as if I'm about to learn about poor Jud being dead or the corn being as high as an elephant's eye.

 

            We voted an eternity ago in the public library in Fowey where I am due to return to normality in a few days talking about crime-writing over a pasty lunch and we were in Miami when the new coalition government was announced. The Sara Ferguson debacle took place while we were somewhere in Georgia and everyone wanted to know what really happened. I hadn't much more of a clue than those who asked though I couldn't help feeling that "investigative journalism" had come to a pretty pass when it consisted simply of dressing up as a sheikh and conning some poor simple girl who happened to marry a prince. "Investigative journalism" used to mean what it said, he says, sounding grumpy and ancient.

 

            Anyway we voted and flew round volcanic ash to Miami where Leo (my son-in-law) met us. We were only a couple of hours late unlike the next day when flights were delayed by some fifteen hours. Anyway Coconut Grove/Coral Gables was a treat. Emma and Leo, Leonel and Daniel, live in a  large, cool (in every sense) house and the few days we were with them flew past. We went to Joe's Stone Crab place downtown and had a wonderful seafood meal served by a mildly grumpy old French waiter; I went and chatted to Leo Jr. and his classmates for half an hour one day - "Hi Guys - Let me know how you are and if you have any more questions"; had supper with Carter Parsley who had been in charge of flags and anthems at the Atlanta Olympics and was an an old friend of Penny's from Hong Kong; and generally chilled out and caught up.

 

            All too soon Leo drove us to the Amtrak Station and we got on the train for Savannah. The station is miles from the city centre and everyone looked rather shocked when we said we were making the journey in such an impossible, old-fashioned, slow and dangerous way. Actually it was enchanting, spacious, friendly and dignified by a nice dining car where we had breakfast and lunch. The only drawback was that the Savannah Station had also been moved to the town outskirts. 

 

            We loved Savannah almost without reservation.

 

            After a few days on our own Frank Rizzla picked us up and drove us to his huge and comfortable house in mid-town We had already clocked him at an exhibition of silver because much of the exhibition seemed to be his! Frank was charming and hospitable and that evening drove us to the Chatham Club where we had dinner with Bob and Frankie Vinyard and their friend Chloe. The "event" (my drone) was held on Sunday afternoon in a hall next to the Episcopal Church which we attended that morning with the Vinyards. It was followed by an informal reception to which members contributed plates. A well-informed and enthusiastic audience, I thought. Well I would, wouldn't I? Frank hosted a small "brunch" at the Oglethorpe Club beforehand. Apart from the Vinyards the only other person there was the sister of one of the main characters in the book about Savannah by a New York journalist and about which we sensed a slightly mixed reaction.

 

            From Savannah we went to Atlanta, handed on by one branch of the English Speaking Union like a relay baton, illegal immigrants or something.Pace our new host was much younger than most ESU officials, (46), and put us up in his smart modern town house. On our first night they gave a very enjoyable drinks party for us with a lot of interesting people many of whom turned up at the black tie dinner the following night. This was fine though Penny put up a mild black for asking NOT to be seated next to me. I spoke from a rostrum with a lapel mike. Not everyone wore a tux which seemed to be a source of some confusion. The club was smart and the atmosphere formal but friendly.

We sat next to a fascinating German couple and one guest, present at both functions, knew an alarming amount about Neville Shute.

 

            From Atlanta we were driven to Chattanooga where  Chet, the branch President was an old acquaintance of Penny from Hong Kong days. Dale Harrison met us half way and deposited us in our room at the Chatanooga Cho Choo Hotel (a former carriage) before taking us off to a jolly and convivial lunch at a local seafood place. That evening the three of us had a BBQ dinner at Chet's with Chet and his girl friend.Next day Chet showed us around and took us to a sandwich lunch. I spoke after supper - uniquely on crime fiction - in the Roosevelt Room at the hotel. Next day Chet drove us to the university at Sewannee where we had a brief tour before being handed on to Donna from the Nashville Centre.

            In some ways this was the most impressive branch: numerous, well organized and enthusiastic. We stayed with Joan who was enchanting and of serious Scottish descent. Dinner was a black tie event with a good crowd many of whom we had already met at a pretty swagger cocktail party before a concert by the Nashville Symphony with Bartok's Bluebeard illuminated by glass by Dale Chihuley, the artist from Seattle about whom we should have known much more than we did (nothing!)

            From Nashville we flew to Birmingham Alabama where we stayed with an unexpectedly simpatico couple Bert and Elizabeth Nettles. She came from Canada and had worked forMichael Ignatieff, leader of the Federal Liberal Party and possibly Canada's next Premier, whom I had known when we were both employed by the Observer. I spoke that evening as well and this dinner too was at an amazingly smart country club with an echt-immaculate golf course outside the French windows. From Birmingham we took the Greyhound bus - again against most native advice - up to our last port of call, Memphis. We paused briefly at Elvis Presley's birthplace, Tupelo, and were unsurprised to learn that his parents were keen to escape.

            In Memphis we stayed in a condominium owned by our hostess and we did all the trippery things such as the Peabody Hotel and resident ducks, B.B. King's place in Beale Street and Graceland where Elvis lived and which is now the most visited house in the States after the White House. My speech in Memphis was in a private house with, basically, too many in the audience and a hand-held mike which I hate. I also found it difficult to speak to an audience, some of which was behind me and staring at the back of my head. I got through it OK and thank-you Debbie for taking care of the acoustics and being within earshot in case of disasters. As it happened there weren't any and we managed OK but I found it slightly disconcerting to be constantly worried about such peripherals as whether or not I could be heard and whether my flies were undone. (They weren't!) It passed off OK but I wasn't as relaxed as I'd have liked.     

            Next day we celebrated a significant birthday for Penny with a ritual mint julep at the Peabody Hotel and a BBQ supper at the Rendezvous where a local doctor came up saying he had been at the ESU the previous night. And so in three hops, via Little Rock and Dallas to Oklahoma City where the corn is as high as the elephant's eye and so on. It took all day thanks to such "British" disasters as a failure to alert the ground staff of a change in schedule and a nail through a tire in Arkansas. We longed for the slow pleasures of the Greyhound or Amtrak.

            Meanwhile the laptop continues to bring news of home and I have been sending out royal letters to potential helpers on the next big book. Penny has been blogging and writing postcards and it is now early morning in Oklahoma and we are about to enplane for the last stop on this magical mystery tour: Chicago. This time next month I hope to be at Lord's for England v Australia at cricket. There are some things that the English still do quite well. In theory anyway. Meanwhile, however, the musical continues and if I seem a bit like a transatlantic version of Jennifer writing her diary I apologise. Sanity and a straight bat await!

 

 

            My new friend the Earl of Belmont suggested recently that I might perhaps write something in my blog about royalty so yes I think I will. I should perhaps explain that Belmont is not an Earl in the accepted sense but he rather fancied the idea, so, why not?

My piece about the Duchess of Cornwall is due in the next issue but more importantly Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson has sold my idea for a new book to mark the 60^th anniversary of the Queen's accession to John Murray. Well played John Murray; well played  Christopher; well played me. I first came up with the idea years ago and in a sense my worst fears have been realised because I am aware of at least four other books which were signed up ages ago and to which I have notionally lost ground. I remain, however, quietly confident. This is probably silly and arrogant but I feel I have been working and preparing for this book most of my life. If I can't write this I can't write anything.

            So that's the royal story, specially for the belted earl. It bears out my theory of 'reasonable expectation" which says, broadly speaking, that if you come to a bend in the road and you can't see more than a few yards ahead it is reasonable to suppose that the road continues around the corner and you continue to drive in the same manner as before. There have been moments in this latest royal saga when those who don't share my belief have despaired. I, however, have urged doubters to tighten their belts, hold on to their seats and all will be well in the end. And so, however, belatedly, it came to pass. And no I am not crowing.On the other hand I wish everyone had shared my confidence.

            I am about to write letters to as many royal contacts, experts and so on as I can think of but if anyone reading this feels they have something to contribute do please letg me know. My email address is tim@timheald.com and I look forward to hearing from you. I've also made the cover of "The Lady" magazine with my story on the Duchess of Cornwall. I hope that my role as the magazine's "Royal Correspondent"  will help with the book.

            Thursday is election day and Penny and I aim to vote first thing and then whiz to Par station. I'm not sure either of us know how we're going to vote. I have voted Liberal at every election for which I've had the vote. After all I was on the candidates' list when Thos D.Nudds was in charge of us. He really had known Lloyd George and the great Garth Pratt was the party's candidate in Rochdale when Cyril Smith was still mayor and a member of the Labour Party. Strange to see the Prime Minister commit a classic gaffe after a confrontation with a voter who was originally full of pro-Brown intentions. I am torn because I don't particularly care for the local Lib-Dem candidate and even less for the campaign which has been waged on his behalf, gloating about the fact that he is a 'local' whereas his Conservative opponent is some sort of interloper. God knows what this has to do with suitability for government. Rather the reverse. Besides I like our Tory candidate whose original selection meeting I attended. I told her I would do anything for her except vote. I might yet do even that. We shall see.

            Meanwhile I have been carrying on with "Yet another Death in Venice", the third of my crime novels featuring the return of Simon Bognor, now knighted and head of SIDBOT, aka the Specials Investigation Department of the Board of Trade.    Tomorrow I am due to have lunch with Christopher S-S to talk, among other things, about Bognor. I do hope he likes them. I'm sorry but I intend writing more. I want to know what he's up to. If, for some reason Christopher doesn't share my enthusiasm and interest, then... There is no trade quite so dependent on the opinions of others.           

            As always when I feel slightly disoriented I have been going through my diary to find out what I have been doing. A problem I find with advancing years is not such amnesia as a related problem which concerns fitting events into a time frame. I seem to be reasonably good at recalling things that have happened over a reasonably catholic period but I do have the greatest difficulty putting a time to such events. In my case I am also increasingly bad at recognizing "celebrities" and am not much the wiser when this is painstakingly explained. And I have increasing difficulty remembering my passwords. As for "security" questions I have increasing trouble remembering my mother's maiden name nor the fourth letter of my password (especially when I can't remember my password.) It might help if remembering such things made me feel more secure but I feel as threatened as ever.

            On Friday 9^th I see that I met Gage Williams and Tim House at Fowey Hall Hotel. The former is a retired Brigadier, the latter C.O. of the 6^th Battalion of the Rifles, and a man of Dorset who like me was born in Dorchester.We met to discuss the charity cricket match we are (or were) to play in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund. Apart from the cricket a highlight was the Salamanca Band which was to play and beat retreat. I had been looking forward to this for over a year. Anyway, suffice it to say, that the Rifles have withdrawn and I have resigned as President of  the Fowey Club. End of story which I am sure has many sides of which mine is less than one. I'm sad but, well, as I say 'end of story' and time to move on. This doesn't make me any the less sad but crying over spilt milk won't refill the bottle. Goodness, how philosophical!

   Or defeatist?

            A week later I went to see Ma in Wiltshire. Tristram and Beth came on Saturday and left after lunch on the Sunday. Afterwards we went to the new bungalow of her old friend Conti and had tea. Somewhere along the line she lost her handbag. Vanished into thin air. A minor miracle. On Monday Penny and I looked at a house in Crewkerne, lunched at a pub in Bradford Abbas and I dropped her in Sherborne. It's pretty Sherborne but there is lot of skewed history there: Mould and Edwards is no longer an old-fashioned grocer's; the Three Wishes is stripped pine and baguettes not linen table cloths and scones; the Abbey Bookshop has no caxtonian printer in the attic let

alone Bert Chamberlain to operate it. Next day I drove to Dorchester to see father's medals in the military museum at the Keep. Then publishers' lunch; publisher's tea;Christopher Braun for work on his brother's book. Next day two GCVOs and the Dame at the Palace and an ex Presidential lunch to say goodbye to Charles Collingwood and hello to Stanley Johnson. And so the weary traveler wound his way by train to Cornwall.

            Bog standard month. Fatigued very; election looms; volcanoes back; flooding in Tennessee; so-called England cricket team lucky to beat the Irish at rounders. And somewhere taking part or looking on: me. Time passes. Pluc ca change...

            I've been thinking about Christianna Brand which I concede is not something I often do. She was a large lady who affected bell tents and hung around Crime Writers' meetings when I first joined in the seventies. She seemed slightly superannuated even then and vaguely reminiscent of the woman we called "The Red-faced warbler" who enlivened church services in Fulmer when I was a child. She never seemed quite real. Rather like that large woman with the fake vowels on TV. Hyacinth Bucket aka Bouquet. I had to consult my wife over her name, a sure sign of age.

            Anyway Christianna reminded me slightly of her and she died in her eighties almost thirty years ago, However some time in the sixties she wrote three novels with a character called Nurse Matilda based on someone who had looked after her cousin, the illustrator Edward Ardizzone. These novels have now been adapted by Emma Thompson and have become a film which is getting loads of publicity.

            Very occasionally I hear the name of Christianna Brand in this context but it's nearly all about Emma Thompson who is famous and a flavour of our times whereas Christianna Brand is neither of these things. No fault, as far as I can see, of Miss Thompson who has been scrupulous about naming her source but an indictment of the times and the press. I admit to a certain self-interest, not because I remember Christianna but because I have a dreadful feeling that the same sort of thing will happen to me. A latter day Emma Thompson will "discover" someone I invented such as Dr. Tudor Cornwall.re-invent him for film and stand back to take all the credit. Meanwhile I will be dead, forgotten and ignored.

            Such, I suppose, is life but it does seem a bit unfair.

            I don't know if this confirms or denies my doctrine of "reasonable expectation" but I had some (to me) interesting examples last week after trying to catch a train from Tisbury the nearest station from my mother in Wiltshire. I booked a cab. This sounds grand but it's sensible and we've been using the same company for ever and they've always seemed incredibly reliable. This Monday they failed to show. Consternation. More "unreasonable expectation" followed. First, I encountered a neighbour driving towards me just a few hundred yards from the house as I began to walk the two or three miles to the station. Freddie very kindly told me to hop in the back and drove me to the station. There I was able to catch the next train and get back more or less on schedule. However I was technically on the "wrong" train. When I confessed to the guard he scolded me briefly but did the necessary scribbling on my ticket and didn't make the extra charge to which he was perfectly entitled.

            So three cases of "unreasonable expectation" aka surprise, in a single morning. The two goods outweighed the bad but on the other hand they should not  have occurred without the first. Oh well. Pooterish, no doubt. But of such Pooterisms is life composed.

            Simon Hoggart had an interesting piece on similar lines in the paper the other day. Basically he was saying that he understood the greed behind the apparent actions of Stephen Byers and Patricia Hewitt and other MPs. That didn't mean he condoned them but he did understand them. Essentially Hoggart was saying that MPs sweat blood on our behalf and are confronted by quite large numbers of people who have done infinitely less for the common good but have walked off with much greater financial rewards. It's not surprising if some of them cut corners to secure something similar for themselves.

            I know the feeling. My own instinct is to blame Thatcher and Murdoch who I tend to blame for everything. It was they more than anyone who introduced the idea into Britain that it was not only acceptable to discuss money, it was positively good. Moreover the acquisition of material goods was not only an end in itself, it was the best possible end. Life used not to be like that. I remember a telling remark of Julian Critchley's to the effect that if the Japanese had won the war all British businessmen would have been like his friend Michael Heseltine. What was rather wonderful about the good old days was that when a businessman had made what he considered enough he bought himself a Georgian rectory, and devoted himself to fly-fishing and Trollope. We, the British, had a well-defined sense of perspective and believed in "hinterland". It's like whoever it was who said that he didn't want a Prime Minister who wished to leave his name in history, make new legislation and so on. He wanted a lazy Prime Minister who was content simply to let things tick along while he read a good book and enjoyed long lunches at his club.

            There is a lot to be said for this approach but nowadays nobody seems to be listening.

            I have been looking back at my diary to see what exactly I have been doing and find that an awful lot has been dispiriting. The weather, which seems to have been uniformly ghastly, hasn't helped. Nor has work which I mustn't go on about though I found myself slightly chastened when my elder son remarked that most people of my age had given up and were enjoying their retirement. That is, if they were still alive and well enough to do so. I'm afraid I remain in a hurry with too much to fit into the time available but I sense that this is widely regarded as rather bad form. It's certainly true that if one were in conventional salaried employment one would have been pensioned off. However I am not in conventional salaried employment and never have been. This is widely regarded as "a bad thing" and there are still lots of people around who want to know what I am going to do when I grow up. Alas, it's a bit late for that.

            On the work front I can't pretend that it has been easy though there are signs that the lot of the self-employed writer generally may be improving after a more than usually bleak period. I suppose it is bad that I seem to derive as much if not more pleasure from things that don't bring financial reward.I hear Roy Jenkins, not someone who had much apparent need to be worried on that score, admonishing the Oxford Society with the words "Let us hear it for the non-acquisitive professions". I like the idea of the non-acquisitive profession even though I understand the need for food, drink and shelter. On the other hand I have just agreed to do a morning show at Radio St. Austell Bay and to natter at the local library during National Crime Fiction Week.

            Neither is going to make me rich and yet I seem to care about them in a way that I don't always care about paid employment. I suppose it's because everything nowadays seems to be about money. I remember, for instance, how, when going to a college re-union I found more university teachers than I had ever seen before in a single room. Most of them could have made more money, pursued more lucrative careers but they chose not to. When it was my children's turn I found that most of their contemporaries went on to be bankers and to try to make money because making money was all that mattered. University now seems to be measured almost exclusively in terms of whether or not a degree will lead to more money. Thank you Mrs. Thatcher. I am one of those who believes that there is such a thing as knowledge in the abstract and that it is worth pursuing for its own sake. But then I believe that there is such a thing as society as well.

            Ah well, we live in material times and perhaps it is God's punishment that we are not very good at it. Serves us right. Oh I have just had an "expression" of interest from a TV production company and have sent them a puff for my "Tudor Cornwall" trilogy. I'd love any forthcoming money; of course I would. But I have a feeling that I'd enjoy everything else about the exercise at least as much. It's a salutary thought. Money and all that it buys is important but it's not THAT important.

            And on that Pooterish thought I will sign off thinking about the meaning of life and wishing and hoping that there is more to it all than money.

    I've been thinking more about my doctrine of "reasonable expectation" in the light of my re-entry into "normal life" in the UK. I understood, of course, that the journey home from Auckland would be long and not much fun . This was true: three hours at Auckland Airport, three hours twenty to Melbourne, around two hours wait in Melbourne, and then six or so to Singapore. The Tanglin Club was the usual wonderful sanctuary but in about forty-eight hours we were off again with thirteen and a half hours after a three hour wait. The Customs shed was a nightmare and so in a different (and over-priced way) was the Heathrow Express. The Oyster Card to Waterloo worked but the man issuing a ticket to Tisbury spoke no known language and appeared to have started his job about five minutes earlier. The bag for my hot chocolate was too weak  and collapsed. All this was depressing if predictable.
    However I really hadn't expected to get to the barrier and be met by a jobsworth obviously transferred from duty on the East German side of the Old Berlin Wall who told me firmly that I had the "wrong" ticket  and she could not let me on to the train. I'm afraid I was unamused and got on the train nonetheless, had a word with the very civilized guard who said the whole thing was ludicrous, I had paid quite enough already (over £36)and I was not to worry.
    So she was contrary to "reasonable expectation" whereas everybody and everything else came within my definition. The only moral seems to me that you have to meet unreasonable expectation with equally unreasonable (though scrupulously polite) ingenuity. This time it worked. Apart from anything else I have a real loathing of mindless bureaucracy. Which this was.
    Anyone I'm home and I wish I could say it was great. Sadly it's not much. In fact it's pretty dire. The Ray Gosling story depressed me enormously. It wasn't so much the core of the perceived story - Gosling's apparent "confession" that he had assisted the death of a gay lover. In any case this is sub judice so I can't comment even if I wanted to. What really saddened me was the uncontested observation that Gosling, now 70, had been declared bankrupt about a decade ago and was living in some sort of sheltered home in Nottingham. This is a man who brought pleasure to lots of us during his radio career and this is how he is rewarded. Compare and contrast the umber of out and out spivs who have tried to make our lives as miserable as possible and you have the reason for my depression. It's not right and just makes me want a nasty old corrupt communist regime whereby entertainers were rewarded with vodka, dancing girls and dachas and being an entrepreneur was a crime. I think there's a lot to be said for it and I'm only half joking.  I don't feel Gosling has enjoyed "reasonable expectation".
    I sent quite a lot of this blog, which now goes back seven years, to a friend in the writing business and he read it and said that at times it seemed slightly "Pooterish". Naturally, I have been pondering this, not least because he also said that this might be deliberate. He was referring, of course, to the humorous classic first serialized in Punch towards the end of the nineteenth century by George and Weedon Grossmith and later published in volume form as the "Diary of a Nobody."
    At first I was mildly offended by the verdict not least because the most important feature of Mr. Pooter's diary is described in "Wikipedia" as "a tendency to take oneself excessively seriously". Another definition I found on the internet says "somewhat pompous, unintellectual and unimaginative (but basically well-meaning) traditionally with an unexciting lifestyle; probably derogatory if used by a Guardian reader, more sympathetic if by a Telegraph reader".
    On reflection, however, I have decided to take it as a compliment on the grounds that the original was predicated on the notion that there were far too many diaries of "somebodies" and not nearly enough, ie none, by nobodies. Let's hear it for nobodies, is therefore the distinctive cry of the Pooter. In an age of celebrities and bankers I'm inclined to think this rather a good thing. Yes, of course, Pooter is self-important (though who is to pontificate on what's important and what not, besides which if you yourself aren't important to you then who on earth is?) and he is snobbish and right-wing and probably a Telegraph reader. On the other hand he hasn't done anyone any harm and his values , though conservative, are, on the whole, admirable. A friend rang this morning and said we all should have been bankers: the more you screw up the greater your rewardz. Pretty true. More so in the UK than most places and the net result is to persuade the majority to pay no attention to rewards, money and so on. No matter how hard you work, how worthwhile the things you do, it makes no difference. I'm afraid that breeds indifference and cynicism not to mention a complete distrust of the alleged system.

    Incidentally I suppose I began blogging because I thought it was the correct thing to do and also because publishers seemed to be turning so many blogs into lucrative books. I now realise, however, that most of these were the work of people who had not previously written anything and certainly nothing commercial. I also realise that part of the essence of the true blog is to engage in conversation which I don't wish to do. Also that the true bloggers- see Richard Dawkins and others - are amazingly angry. I am not yet angry enough. Just Pooterish.

    Anyway I have almost finished a second crime novel; I await response to various ideas and pieces of work; I went on behalf of  "The lady" magazine to see the Duchess of Cornwall in action at Helston,, friends have been to see us.other friends are coming; I have booked tickets for the States in May; it is very cold and the wind is blowing. Oh, and the computer is on the blink and with the expert's brother. The expert is in Bali. I wish I were there as well.

    I cannot think how people got through this long,long abject winter and I am incredibly relieved that I was able to spend so much of it away. I can't think how so many survived and seem optimistic and cheerful. It's very salutary.

            Lucy's wedding was the high spot of the month; an informal affair in a garden with a view overlooking the Matakana coastline in New Zealand, presided over by a Kiwi celebrant called Sykes (female), followed by speeches and supper and skyped home to the bride's brother in a frosty West London. I spoke, before supper, and tried to be mildly embarrassing for the last time, recalling the occasion that Lucy had been confronted by her brother, now a teacher at St. Benedict's, and asked to remove the pin from his nose which he had inserted with huge sartorial enthusiasm a few hours previously.He had since repented of this but could not remove it unaided. Lucy did the trick.         

            Penny and I flew to Auckland from Brisbane on New Year's Day and have spent the entire month in New Zealand. Australians, including my dear wife, tend to be odd about New Zealanders and New Zealand; the British less so. It is incredibly beautiful and on the whole attractively empty. I am becoming slightly bored with people telling me that the top of the north island is as far from the bottom of the south as Canada from Mexico but when you remember that the country only has just over four million inhabitants roughly a third of whom are in or around Auckland it makes one think. It is also almost ludicrously benign - devoid of the  killer crocs, lethal spiders, dodgy dingoes and above all the crippling drought which make Australia slightly problematic. Australians tend to be patronizing about Kiwis and the funny way they talk. To a Brit , however, they don't talk any funnier than the Australians (of whom I am incidentally very fond - he says patronisingly . After all I married one) Nevertheless Australian attitudes to its smaller neighbour across the Tasman seem similar and no more justified than Spanish condescension towards Portugal or American to Canada. It's just big brother syndrome.

            Anyway I like it here and people - including some transplanted Brits and Australians - couldn't have been kinder and friendlier. I have written lots of the latest novel ("Death in the opening Chapter"), a successful piece for the Lady about the visit of Prince William and another piece about the wines and other attractions of the Matakana country for Country Life. On Saturday we are going to drive over to Wally's (Wally is a lost Australian bird called a galah - a sort of noisy budgerigar) on the Wharf at Whakatane for fish and chips (fush and chups in the vernacular) and maybe on Sunday we hope to go to an amazing sounding estate nearby for clay pigeon shooting. Depends on our new friend Virginia. I have the use of a lovely old Land Rover from Yeovil but Penny doesn't like my driving and keeps complaining that it is very wide and the roads very narrow. We didn't hit anything on the way to and from Rotorua the other day and the Land Rover reminds me of driving Cecil round North Africa with Martin and Bill many years ago. Unfortunately I told Penny about the time I almost backed Cecil over the side of the Rock of Gibraltar and she holds it against me. Silly me. I should know better. And maybe have known better in 1963 on Gibraltar.

             Last night we had a scary electric storm but generally the views of Lake Tarawera are spectacular and everything grows and flourishes.No wonder Cook christened this area the Bay of Plenty. I had a birthday on the 28^th and am feeling incredibly old. The spuds, though, came from the garden. As did the leeks and carrots.

 

            I shouldn't be here, of course. There is a school of thought which says I should be back in the UK, suffering, but ...All my life I have taken a modicum of risk but this doesn't necessarily win friends. For instance Alison and I often took the children abroad, most dramatically to Toronto and to Santa Fe, New Mexico. On both occasions I was warned that to spend a year away from home would severely interfere with their education, would be generally disruptive and contrary to decency and common sense. On our return after, on both occasions, a thoroughly enjoyable and productive time away (I think) I was told by a number of people that it was "different for you". Quite how was never very satisfactorily explained. Maybe it runs in the family. My father who, in my opinion, erred slightly on the risky side of life, was, as a young man in World War Two sent to Naples to get hold of lifejackets for the members of his battalion to wear on the perilous crossing of the River Garigliano. Bye-passing the usual channels he went directly to the Royal Navy and was given the requisite number of Mae Wests which were otherwise surplus to requirements. He returned to the line with his trophies, the men crossed the Garigliano without anyone drowning, and my father obviously thought he had done good. Not a bit of it. There were regulations to cover that sort of thing and any number of jobsworths to complain about that shocker Heald who had broken them. No matter that lives were saved. My father had broken the rules and used his initiative. Bad show.

            I know I am going to get flak for applauding this and saying that, to a certain extent and within obvious limitations, one has to ignore rules, other people and even what passes for common sense, but I nevertheless believe it quite passionately. It may end in tears but it's important to be able to say, in the words of the Sinatra song, that you did it your way.

            So here I sit on the shores of Lake Tarawera tapping away at a crime novel set in an English Literary Festival. I have no agent, no publisher and quite possibly no audience. Tant pis. I shall revolve in, well I won't be able to revolve, since I have every intention of being cremated but if the book is published posthumously and becomes a huge success I shall be jolly cross. However we shall see. I like it. In fact I know it's rather good but unfortunately that won't make any difference. Good books don't get published; bad books do; good books remain unread; bad ones become best-sellers. Fact of life. And proper writing is a disease which afflicts proper writers. We can't stop. Some of us end up revered, award-winning and prosperous. Others don't. It doesn't, alas, have an awful lot to do with talent or hard work and I don't think one has any alternative but to plug away. Pity about the people who get in the way but don't, please, think that any commercial failure is the result of indolence or lack of foresight.

            I see that the Grim Reaper continues to scythe away. He got Michael Mavor, ex headmaster of Loretto, Gordonstoun and  Rugby aged only sixty two on holiday in Peru and he reeled in Geoffrey Van Hay who used to be a suave, pin-stripe trousered presence behind the bar at El Vino in London. Not to mention the mother of our hostess in New Zealand who was in her nineties but even so...

            And even when it isn't the finality of a death sentence there are other evidences of passing years. Our latest consignment of mail included an invitation to the farewell party of a friend who had been at the same publishers for forty years. I remember him as a young man when we both  had everything before us. Now we are members of the old guard about whom we used to giggle forty years ago. Incidentally I recall a military friend of mine writing a rather good biography. When I remarked, rudely, that I didn't know that he could write English he answered that our friend was his editor. This explained the excellence of his prose. My Army friend then looked thoughtful and said that in the military his editor would have been a first-rate fighting man. Unfortunately all soldiers were dogged by a body called HQ Company. It was his philosophy to pare HQ to an absolute minimum but he had noticed that in publishing HQ company was ginormous and fighting men thin on the ground. "I wonder what they all do", he mused contemplating the dead wood at the heart of the ailing business. Life is dogged by huge HQ companies.

 

            I remember once speaking at a writers' conference and the evening before I was due on a highly successful and famous author spoke. I thought he was entertaining and instructive but my friends, mostly unpublished and struggling, were furious and unimpressed. "He made it seem so easy", they chorused. I don't think that's what he meant. He was just trying to emphasise the fact that he had been lucky and good fortune can strike anyone. (Likewise bad). But my new friends didn't agree. They thought he had failed to suggest that it was amazingly hard work. So, I would venture to suggest (and was very careful to say next morning!) it is.

 

            I don't for a moment deny my good luck. It's been phenomenal and as I sit typing this and looking out across sunny lawns and shrubs to the lake beyond I count my blessings. But I wouldn't claim that it's easy. My experience is that if you don't work you don't get. And even if you do work you don't necessarily get. On reflection that's wrong too. One of the sad and depressing things about life is that many of those who reap the greatest rewards - financial anyway - seem not to do a hand's turn. But I don't see the satisfaction of a life spent in HQ company.

            On the other hand there is a school of thought that says that confronted with problems and adversity you pull in your horns, hunker down and do as little as possible. That's a parody but not far from the truth and it's emphatically not my style. Confronted with adversity one has two alternatives. One is to go into your shell and give up; the other is to come out swinging. As the late Randolph Churchill said when things are bad you put on your best overcoat, get hold of the most expensive cigar you can, and walk up and down Piccadilly smiling broadly.

            I am of the Churchillian persuasion which is, I think, why I am in New Zealand enjoying the sunshine and working very hard rather than shivering in the cold back home and doing nothing. Not everyone thinks this desirable or right, but it's the way I am. It's in the genes. I protest too much.

            That said, I have, I think, arrived at a policy of "reasonable expectation" which sums up my beliefs and actually everyone else's in a sense, if you see what I mean which you probably don't. "Most people" are in salaried employment and "reasonable expectation" means that they can expect to be so for the foreseeable future (another interesting concept). This means that they can plan and budget accordingly. Those relatively few of us who are not in salaried employment have also to rely on "reasonable expectation" but we don't enjoy a regular salary and all we have to go on is past performance. In my case, I think, it was reasonable to expect that I would go on having fiction and non-fiction books published, sometimes serialized, and that this together with more or less regular income from journalism would correspond to a reasonable salary.

            Maybe I should have foreseen a collapse of all this more or less completely and more or less simultaneously. Unfortunately I didn't. Add in the unexpected death of my younger brother and a semi-debilitating stroke for my mother and you have a pretty bad case scenario which runs, I think, counter to "reasonable expectation".

            The question now is how do I deal with this? My answer is to fight one's corner. I can't change personal disasters but I can strive to get myself back track.

            A case in point though. Next June there is an international crime writers; conference in Oklahoma City. I would like to go. I contacted the English Speaking Union in New York about it and have as a result been asked to undertake a speaking tour of their branches in the American south-east. They don't pay but they will look after myself and my wife once we get ourselves to Savannah, Georgia. En route I would like to call in on my daughter Emma and her family in Miami.

            I think this is all perfectly reasonable but many won't and don't.  Which is, I suppose, another way of saying that I would never have hacked it at headquarters.        

I belong in the trenches with my friend the editor of the last forty years. "Reasonable expectation" is what I look forward to and I am determined to make it come to pass!

            An interesting Lithuanian Christmas Eve with Penny's brother John and his family at their house high in the hills on the New South Wales/Queensland border. John's wife is originally from Lithuania and likes to keep some old customs one of which is Christmas Eve and involves twelve dishes, all fish or vegetarian, each of which you have to sample and no alcohol. You also wish each other a happy and prosperous new year and break unleavened bread.

 

            What I found almost most fascinating is that at the end of the year Lithuanians traditionally wipe the slate clean, cancel all debts and generally start afresh. Terrific, of course, but alas life for most of us isn't like that and we don't have the luxury of being able to start completely fresh because the accumulated baggage stays with us no matter what.  So even though this is a time for taking stock and making new resolutions there are things which have been done and things left undone and they can't be changed. I'm all for wiping slates clean but there is, for better or worse, a limit. Our slates can't be wiped clean if only because much of the writing is indelible.

 

            On the plus side the arrival of Henry Heald on November 25^th is the best news. The third grandson and the first to carry the family name and a British birthplace. Welcome Henry. In the summer my son, Tristram, got married, and I am now in Auckland in anticipation of the fourth wedding, that of Lucy. When she is joined in holy matrimony next Friday that will make all four children married and still with their spouses. Almost a record.  

 

            My job on Friday is to "give Lucy away" though the service seems likely to be predictably contemporary and will take place en plein air or under canvas and as far as I can see with minimal religious involvement. My Lithuanian sister-in-law, responsible, of course, for Christmas, eve has urged me not to do what all Australians do which is to make a really insulting speech on such occasions in the belief that this illustrates true devotion. I am further encouraged in this by the words of Gabriel Garcia Marques, the great Colombian novelist, who is retiring from public life because he has lymphatic cancer. His words, accompanied by a chanson and pics of Paris have been sent on by Annie van Es widow of the photographer Hugh, whose wake Penny and I organized at the Frontline Club in London and whose obituary I wrote last year for the Guardian. Marques says we should speak fondly of our nearest and dearest, reminding them at all times of how much we adore them.

 

            Well, I will do my best, but I am reminded that I was brought up and educated in an old English tradition which thinks tears and expressions of love rather cissy and bad form while encouraging one to go in for stiff upper lips and loads of deprecation and understatement. Old habits die hard and I am wary of too much public display of emotion. On the other hand...Whatever else I do however I shall use Lucy's mantra about me as a source of constant encouragement. "Dad...you're so embarrassing." I feel that's my role in life, both generally and in particular. Which includes, of course, saying the unexpected and contrary as often as possible. More on all this next month.

 

            The down side began with my younger brother's funeral in Wells Cathedral. He actually died at the very end of  2008 but his departure has cast a shadow over the whole of my 2009 and will I am afraid be part of the rest of my life. This is very un-Lithuanian but a mark of what I mean. There are certain things which can't be eradicated and which are part of one's life however one comes to terms with them.

 

            I suppose that the sudden death of a close and younger relation always has a significant effect - you'd have to be pretty bloodless to be unaffected. The most obvious lesson is probably "Carpe Diem". For example on this trip to New Zealand I was quite keen to explore the South Island where I have never been. My wife who is naturally more sensible and cautious said that we had neither time nor money and we would be much better leaving the south to "Next time". I protested that there might not be a "next time" but I lost as usual and I have a horrible feeling that I will never see the South Island.

 

            Death seems to have that effect and there seems to have been an increasing number of them in 2009. Some of them were contemporaries, some a little bit older, a very few younger. People's passing inevitably changes one's mental furniture and I find that this means many of one's assumptions alter as well. If life is just one clattering carousel there is no escaping the fact that one is getting to the moment when one falls off, or is taken off, that new people are arriving and that the balance of power has shifted. My elder daughter, Emma, will be forty next year, and will hate me for telling everyone but it's as big a landmark in my life as it is in hers. A man with a forty year old daughter is a senior citizen, a pensioner, a grandfather and will, if he gets into trouble, be described as such in the morning paper - if there is such a thing.

 

            So, suddenly, this is where one is at: old man in a hurry. Much advice has, as always, been of the sit tight, hunker down, take no risks variety and while I am, contrary to much general perception, very sensitive about advice especially from experts. all my life I have been  counselled to be cautious and then when a calculated risk works out I am told that "it's different for you". Such is life and if I have advice it is to listen to everything that is on offer and then to take the decision oneself erring on the side of risk. That way life is interesting, rewarding and relatively free of "if only". There are an awful lot of sad people around who will never know what they might have achieved if they had only taken what seemed at the time to be an unacceptable risk. Carpe Diem.

 

            I have undertaken two speaking engagements to interesting foreign parts in the last year. One was a trip north of the border to speak to the Scottish Cricket Society in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Know-all Sassenachs and even some Scots assured me that there was no such thing but there was and Penny and I had a thoroughly enjoyable and unorthodox visit to both cities. We also spent a few days in Antwerp where I conducted a crime-writing workshop to some daunting Flemings. I enjoyed the whole business even though I found my audience suitably daunting and Antwerp itself was every bit as remarkable and wonderful as I had hoped. Our B and B, overlooking the cloister of the St. Paulus Church was quite one of the most special either of us have ever experienced.

 

            We also spent a week in Krakow and almost three in the Veneto where I interviewed the American crime writer, Donna Leon for the Daily Telegraph. In a different (and better) world I would have written lucratively and publicly about both these places but the world has changed and though I wrote about them here, with enthusiasm, I couldn't generate interest from traditional outlets on which I used to feel I could rely. The same has been true of the latest long visit to Australia and New Zealand which has taken in all five days of a fascinating cricket Test between the West Indies and Australia at the Adelaide Oval, a tour of Manning Clark's old house in Canberra, weddings in Sydney and outside Auckland, and much much else besides. But there you go. There is a widespread saying voiced by today's young Turks that says the days when you could do a deal over lunch at the Garrick Club are long gone. I'm afraid I belong to a generation which believed in the efficacy of such lunches. It reminds me of the great Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson's response when I proposed writing him a proposal to bolster my notion of writing him a biography of the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland. I explained that such proposals were now very much the vogue. Christopher looked perplexed and said that he wanted no such thing on the grounds that "I know who you are; I know who Barbara Cartland is; and I know what a biography is." We did the deal; I wrote the book,; it was a critical and commercial success.

 

            Anyway from a commercial and creative point of view my 2009 was an absolute shocker. I use the word advisedly because when my mother was startled by a loud explosion shortly after arriving at the military HQ in Dorchester, Dorset, in World War Two the Regimental Sergeant Major, said, by way of explanation, "It's that shocker Heald". It was my father who was, at the time, the Weapons Training Officer, and who amused himself by removing the pins from hand-grenades and then throwing them after the longest possible interval. This earned him the family sobriquet of "Shocker" which was generally pretty well justified.

 

            Anyway from a professional point of view my 2009 was an absolute shocker. I could go into more painful detail but I have already used up 1500 or so words and I don't want to seem unduly grumpy. I'm told it's bad for business and I hope that from this point of view as well as many others 2010 will be a huge improvement on its predecessor. Not that 2009 was consistently dreadful. It wasn't. There was much to enjoy. But professionally speaking it was an absolute shocker.

 

            And I see no sense in pretending otherwise.      

 

 

            Let's start with some unequivocally good news. We are, to echo the words of Mrs. Thatcher, a grandfather. Henry Heald arrived in the early hours of November 25^th. Mother, father and Henry all appear to be doing well and last Saturday, the morning before flying away to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, Penny and I went over to Ealing, bearing gifts, to say hello. I am pleased to report that Henry seemed fine, slept throughout our visit, twitching slightly, not being sick or difficult in any way and is obviously destined to score 100 before lunch at Lord's in roughly two decades time as well as winning a Nobel Prize later, becoming Prime Minister, Pope,a national treasure and much else besides His two cousins in Florida are already rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of a third member of a gang to come and I am extremely pleased to be able to pass on news which seems to be to be good without reservation. I don't wish to tempt fate nor to be unduly triumphalist so meanwhile, this is what I had to write before the happy event.

 

            I'm sorry. I hate sounding old and grumpy but...

 

            Last week I ordered a Royal Horticultural Desk Diary from Amazon, for my mother's 89^th birthday. There should have been a saving though the charge for p and p lifted it more than somewhat. Anyway I ordered it and was told that thanks to the marvels of modern science I could "track" my parcel's progress using my special Royal Mail 13 character tracking number, It actually specified 13 characters and I duly put in my number and counted the characters which came to 13. However when I sent it I got the response "Sorry. Your tracking number is too long". Twice. I gave up.

 

            Earlier that day I had had a letter from some outfit in Preston saying that my aged Ma was getting a winter fuel allowance of £275. There was an asterisk next to the amount and underneath in parentheses the information that the amount was affected by the fact that according to their records there had until recently been someone living with my mother. This person had recently left and my mother's handout was consequently  being reduced. I thought this slightly peculiar as my mother has been living on her own since my father was killed in a car crash in 1972. I rang the people in Preston and the woman who answered was charm itself but could not alas help as this sort of thing was dealt with by someone else. After three different calls to three different numbers I got a charming man who said that he could do absolutely nothing without my mother's National Insurance Number which at that stage I did not have at my fingertips. I found it in the file and rang back. Another charming person answered, female this time, and from somewhere near Doncaster. She checked everything, took every conceivable sort of detail in the interests of efficiency, security and heaven knows what else and then said that she could find no record of my mother whatever. This, despite the fact that my mother's 89^th birthday is next week and she has, to the best of my knowledge, been drawing a pension for decades.

 

            I'm sorry, I really am, and I don't mean to sound old and grumpy, but there are times when I don't seem to be able to help myself. Meanwhile we flew off in a smart new Qantas airbus, sitting at the back of the plane in Tourist, me between Penny and a mercifully small woman. The video system was fantastically sophisticated and I was able to watch take-off and landing on screen as well as see Julie and Julia. A thirteen hour flight though so when we got to Singapore and went straight to the Tanglin Club without passing go we checked into our room (Number 14 aka Bouganvilla) and crashed out. Then after a short stay in an uber-Christmassy city - so many carols and lights and trees amid such stifling humidity, we embarked on another Qantas flight which was mercifully shorter though with a less sophisticated video system and marginally better food and service which wasn't saying much as the food on the first flight was disgusting and the service slow and charmless. Almost non-existent actually.

 

            And so to the Adelaide Oval for the whole of the Test match between Australia and the West Indies. Also, on the day, of our arrival, the annual, Lord's Taverners' "Sundowner" as guests of John Bannon, a former premier of the State, prominent South Australia cricket person into whom we had bumped at a party for the Australian cricket team at the London High Commission on the eve of the Lord's Test, My leg is playing up. But more a little later.

 

             

            More death I fear. Geoffrey Moorhouse, the former Guardian hack and author. Communications are fantastic. I was able to read poor Geoffrey's obits in Wiltshire and London, then compose a brief note for the Guardian, transmit it from the Tanglin in Singapore, read it on the internet and have a chat with Geoff Trew on Skype. Geoff said he would scan it and sent a copy asap. I had spent the previous Saturday afternoon with Geoff and Nicolas, son of the late great Arnold Ridley, freezing to death nostalgically while watching a one-sided rugby match at Rosslyn Park. I was also able to send a couple of "Royal Blogs" to the Telegraph and to read them as well. Unfortunately the Adelaide Hilton, aka 27 William Street, didn't have the relevant password which was with the Singing Professor in China and he didn't return until the Sunday, which meant that I was less communicado in Oz than in Singapore, at least to start with.

 

            The Guardian ran my recollections of a walk with Geoffrey in Yorkshire when he revealed that his real name was Heald, but that he lived his life as Moorhouse because his Ma left home v early and remarried. The death of those most intimately concerned meant that he could reveal this. What the Guardian didn't say was that I had read his latest elegiac column in the Oldie and had written to him saying that I, like him, was visiting New Zealand to see rellies and suggesting we might meet down under. Sadly Geoffrey wouldn't be making the trip as planned (and foretold in the Oldie) and his elder son Andrew emailed giving me the news as he had found my letter among his father's papers. Forward planning is God's idea of a joke: discuss.

 

            I am now sitting in a state of maximum e-frustration. On the one hand I keep getting little messages saying that my connection with the wi-fi thing is terrific, no worries. On the other every time I try to actually send messages I get another couple of messages saying that I have failed to connect with server, have failed at this, failed at that and am stuck, stymied. Any moment I expect the thought police to turn up and charge me with some unidentifiable Kafka-like offence. Being very simple I can't understand why something which is so wonderfully simple in darkest Wiltshire and cutting-edge Singapore is apparently not possible here. I have put my blogs for the Telegraph on to a memory stick which I am assured will work perfectly. Meanwhile I shall do the same with this and hope for the best. But I feel I would be better off like someone in Scoop, relying on cleft sticks, pigeons, paper and pencil. Ah progress!

             

            So, for now, I will cease and have a shower instead. An ancillary problem -  no not a problem  but a fact of internet life is that whenever anything fails to work everyone  else assumes it's your fault and that you are an imbecile, a Luddite, don't know anything, are too old to be alive at all. You think the reverse but don't dare say so. Everyone apart from me and sundry cats and dogs are out. The wife and the hostess are doing a girlie supper; the Prof is at choir practice; the boys are doing whatever boys do these days and I have spent a few happy hours trying to make sense of communications. I sense I may have managed a passable stitch up and sent cricket blogs to the Telegraph from the lovely Adelaide Oval where we have been every day of the Test. Lucky us. And it's enthrallingly and surprisingly two-sided. Gayle spent all day all day making a big hundred, I had lunch with John and Catrine Clay whose daughter lives in the hills at Mount Barker, our dinner host from a few nights back was there and came over to congratulate me on not looking quite so Pom(egranate) pink, and there are oysters and Aussie meat pies and pretend Cornish pasties with carrots in them - an amazing culinary solecism!

 

            I fielded a reassuring email from Caroline, my Ma's main minder - thank you Caroline - and another from my niece telling me she was finalizing her plans for a Wiltshire Christmas. So, in a frazzled way, all is right with the world. In fact, better than all right. Hurrah for Henry. Penny bought him an Australian cricketing teddy bear at the Oval and I like to think that in twenty years or so he will be rampaging through Australian cricketers, ursine or human. Meanwhile we're lucky to be here and welcome to the team. Good to have you batting at three or opening the bowling or whatever.                   

            Which reminds me. August 8^th. 2010. Fowey. A great cricket match. A band. The Army. Something to put in your diary and look forward to. I'll bore you about my leg some other time. I hear voices off - the ladies are back. The possums are at play on the roof. The West Indies are about three hundred ahead with three wickets left and a full day to play. So tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...Next stop the Barossa.  

 

 

 

 

            

            The Masterclass in Antwerp was probably the high-spot of a busy month. I talked on character in crime fiction following in the footsteps of Professor Jim Madison Davis of the University of Oklahoma who spoke last year on plot. We started at 8 in the theatre of the Literature Centre, had one coffee break and were still going strong at 11.30 when Mieke who organized the whole affair said we had to leave the hall because the staff had to get home A small group of us adjourned to a nearby bar and I stayed until 1.30 when Rene Boers, Mieke's husband, walked me home to our digs where a worried Penny - she's heard me droning on professionally a million times before and had stayed in with a good book - was waiting anxiously. Next day we heard that the really hard core had stayed in the bar until five.

 

            Antwerp was everything I had hoped for and more. It used to be one of the world's most important cities and it's still Europe's second biggest port and home to what is arguably the centre of the world's diamond trade. Perhaps most significantly it is the home of Rubens and his most famous pupil van Dyck. I associated the former with blousy naked women and the latter with small men with pointed beards sitting astride vast horses but in Antwerp the best examples of their work seem to be religious pictures of one kind and another. Our brilliantly stylish accommodation, run by the equally brilliant Monika, was just opposite the Paulus Church and we went there for Mass on Sunday which was, for me, almost the best moment of a fascinating visit. Stunning pictures, architecture and atmosphere.

 

            Otherwise we did a lot of walking, visited Rubens' house, had lunch with Georgina and Nigel - moules and frites opposite the cathedral -, watched Rene lead a demo against a proposed bridge (and were delighted when the referendum that Sunday won the day with 60% of the popular vote), went to the fabulous print museum, attended a concert at a hall a tram drive away from the centre, had a smart dinner in a converted pumping station, loved Monika's breakfasts with the most scrumptious boiled eggs and generally had a great time savouring a seriously civilized city with relatively few tourists. It's so easy and cheap to do Flanders. You can go anywhere in Belgium for no extra charge if you take the Eurostar to Brussels. Next time I want to go to Mechelin, HQ of Cummins Diesels where the fascist green-shirts shot at Richard Cobb and his Poles during the war. And missed.

 

            Antwerp was in the middle of a longish trip away from home which began with a gastro-pub lunch with Peter and Jenny Hughes, continued with a wake for van Es at the Frontline Club and continued frenetically until I came home on a crowded train after the 8^th fully subscribed Old Shirburnian Media lunch. I never cease to be amazed when thirty or so grown-up and slightly bolshy men solemnly rise and sing two verses of the school song in Latin. At the Groucho Club in the middle of Soho after a good and prolonged lunch. Apparently it's the only Old Boys' event which is in the official school calendar. And this year they even had to turn people away because they were over-subscribed. Van Es, by the way, was the Dutch photographer who lived in Hong Kong and took the photo of the last Americans piling up a rope ladder into a helicopter as they tried to get out of a lost Vietnam. A successful evening I thought and made odder yet when a man came up and introduced himself as Simon Pike whose father was once Chaplain-General to the Forces and later Bishop of Sherborne. Simon had arrived at Lyon House the same term as my brother James and for a while the two were "best friends". He didn't, unsurprisingly, know that James had died.

 

            The  day beforfe the Media affair I had lunch at the Fire Station in Waterloo with Christopher Braun to discuss the anthology of his brother Thomas' work. We both think we are progressing and I hope we are. Christopher has amassed some 400 possible entries, mainly light verse both published and unpublished. Tom, as I always knew him - the family always called him Thomas - was a genius in his own inimitable way.

 

            Otherwise. Well, I had lunch with Lindsay Fulcher, basic, nice Thai round the corner from "The Lady" which is now edited by Stanley Johnson's daughter, Rachel, sister of Alexander aka Boris. We had a chat before lunch and as far as I can see I am now the Royal Correspondent of the "The Lady". Arise Dame Tim! Who would have thought it but, hey, why not?! I am pursuing potential interviewees, preferably Royal Ladies.Heard Colin Amery give a lecture on Nicholas Hawksmoor at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street. Fascinating and a good subsequent debate about how redundant or semi-redundant churches should re-invent themselves. Colin was on the Orient Express to Venice with Gavin Stamp many years ago and the two did a wonderful drone round Venice. I remember embarking, improbably, at Ealing Broadway.That lunchtime  I., but I will be accused of name-dropping. It was good to see old friends including Rachel's Dad who I realize I have known for more than half a century. My first words to him, as far as I can remember, were "Please Johnson sir may I clean your rugger boots". I'm not certain about the sir" but otherwise true. If I didn't clean his boots I'd be beaten for not having enough signatures on my "fag chit". To his credit Stanley was amazed and appalled.

 

            Met up with niece Becky and had a family do to celebrate Tristram and Beth completing a half marathon through the royal parks - Tristram did it in 1 hr 42 which is an improvement of ten minutes on his previous best. Then last weekend I went up to London and stayed with Alexander and Kirsten. A and I went to see London Welsh beaten by Doncaster and afterwards listened to a wonderful sounding male voice choir wearing blazers and looking like massed bank clerks of a certain age. Alexander cooked biryani and dhal that evening. We were accosted at Old Deer Park by Mr. Hartigan who had taught Alexander at the Oratory. And on the Sunday I had lunch at Simpson's in the Strand courtesy of the Mugar Memorial Library in Boston, Mass, which collects my stuff. More old friends and acquaintances.

           

            Anyway am now back looking out at grey drizzle. I finished my book on Jardine in India and have sent it off electronically to Methuen. And, in a way most interestingly, I have been "blogging" regularly for the Daily Telegraph about royalty. I'm rather enjoying this and we've had lots of hits and some comments. Odd that the one that really seems to excite people is Prince Philip and his alleged "gaffes" which seem to polarize opinions amazingly. Some people think he's terrific and saying what we'd all like to and other people say he's appalling, Neanderthal, never done a day's work in his life and so on.

 

            As before I am depressed at the angry, brown paper bag semi-literate quality of some of the responses. And people are astonishingly lacking in self awareness. One correspondent complained bitterly about the laziness and awfulness of various members of the royal family, failing to make a plausible case - I didn't say there wasn't such a case, only that the frothing complainant failed to make it. Check out the comment on the www.blogs.telegraph.co.uk site (I think) and see if you agree. The most bizarre moment was, I thought, when he banged on about our obsession with PC and non PC remarks and then commented that if being PC meant tolerating someone who is offensive then you could count him in. What he didn't seem to realize was that he was the one being offensive and       people like me who didn't agree with him but said so in an inoffensive way were the ones being tolerant.

            But I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I? Check the site and see if you agree.           

 

            Travelled up to London on the 2^nd of the month and returned by a prolonged journey on train and bus (engineering work silly) on Sunday 20^th. So a hectic period doing all sorts of things including trying to drum up work but, on the whole, away from the humdrum tapping away in front of the screen which is essential but boring to write about - and I presume to read. The charging around is tiring and challenging but more fun for both reader and writer. I think.

 

            So to London for an interview with Renegade TV who have 3D footage of the Queen's Coronation in 1953. We watched the two DVDs at home first and were amazed at how incredibly ancient and dated they seemed. The commentary in particular seemed impossibly deferential and fruity; the Queen impossibly young and the soldiers impossibly numerous. Never seen so many chaps in khaki. I suppose it was all more than half a century ago but I remember it myself which is unnerving. To so many people it's history but for people such as myself it's part of one's life. Inevitable and obvious but salutary even so.

 

            The filming was in the old Breakfast TV studios where, once upon a time, Anna Ford poured a glass of wine over Jonathan Aitken. I felt an ass pontificating away to camera while wearing a pair of cardboard 3D glasses which come mid-November will be given away free in Tesco and with copies of the Sun and News of the World. It was surprisingly hard work and seemed to go on for ever, most of it destined presumably for the cutting room floor.

 

            Afterwards Renegade laid on a car to take me to Alexander's house in Ealing. It was the first time I had been there and we made the journey courtesy of Satnav which was something of a revelation. I simply gave the driver the Post Code and he  drove to the front door without a single query pulling up outside the correct terrace house in the suburbs apparently effortlessly. I felt like a High Court judge who had never heard of the Beatles. Modern technology?! Jolly clever, these science fellows!

 

            Kirsten, Alexander and I went out for a very adequate Indian meal at a modest restaurant within walking distance of the house; Alexander lent me a novel by David Peace about Brian Clough; we talked a lot about everything and I had a very enjoyable brief stay. The only depressing thing was that the perfectly nice but essentially small terrace house would probably have cost at least £250,000 to buy. (They rent).Property prices particularly in the capital are absolutely scandalous and show little or no sign of coming down, any more than bankers' salaries which are, equally scandalous, though whether they are cause or effect of our present discontents remains mysterious to me at least.

 

            From Ealing I tubed back into central London before checking in to the Army and Navy Club for a single night and an evening at the Society of Bookmen which meets once a month at the Savile Club and which I hadn't attended for ages. It was particularly good to see Sue Bradbury, formerly editorial director of the Folio Society and an old friend with whom I had done many enjoyable jobs. The  speaker was the CEO of Atlantic Books and sitting almost opposite me at the top table was the son of Anthony Cheetham who was almost a contemporary of mine at Oxford. Disconcerting as always to find one's contemporaries' children grown up and being taken seriously. Perfectly understandable but disconcerting nonetheless.

 

            Penny came up on the Friday and I met her at the Frontline Club before staggering off to Tooting where we were staying with our friend Marcia. Tooting is a relatively mixed community - as is Ealing which has a lot of Poles as well as Indians. Living in places such as this means, among other things, some fascinating new taste sensations in exotic restaurants. That evening we went to a vegetarian South Indian which was spectacular. In particular we started with some wonderful puff pastry bombs full of chili and coriander which you bunged in your mouth and which then almost literally exploded with an amazing combination of heat and flavour.            

            The following day we went to the National Theatre for "The Pitmen Painters" a drama about worker-education between the wars. I thought it was funny and thought-provoking and made me think, inevitably, about Sandy Lindsay who was Master of Balliol, a leading light in the WEA and I think the first Vice-Chancellor at Keele. On the Sunday Penny and I were at Lord's in a packed house for a slightly anti-climactic and one-sided Australian victory in the one-day match. Australia won the series 6-1. It was nice to see Brett Lee back and we sat in reserved seats where I met a disarmingly keen prep-school cricketer called Toby who asked me all sorts of tricky questions. I later sent him my book on Denis Compton.

            I found all this salutary not least because it was so unlike life in Cornwall. Cornwall is fantastic and I love it but it IS rural and, in a way, remote. In a number of ways it is every bit as sophisticated as the metropolis but we don't do state-of-the-art South Indian vegetarians, or international cricket. We do have some goodish theatre but we can't match the National and we certainly can't do so on a day-to-day basis. Kneehigh Theatre, the native Cornish theatre company, is world-class but seem to be relatively unappreciated here.

 

            All of which is a way of saying that much though I love living in Cornwall and having a view of the Fowey estuary  and being able to walk out on to the cliffs without having to get in a car and drive anywhere I do need a fix of town-life from time to time. That's not at all the same as saying I want to live in London. Done that, been there and I don't fancy the constant hassle, noise, dirt and, my dear, the people. When I did live in town I was pretty happy spending time there and only fairly occasionally venturing out to the countryside though I confess that for most of my time in London I lived near Richmond Park and the river. Latterly I lived so close to Palewell Common that one could walk out of the back gate, in to the common and be in Richmond Park in moments, so it wasn't very urban living.

 

            I know people in Fowey who haven't been to London in years and don't even venture across the Tamar.I don't think I could do that. I need a regular fix of the big smoke but I'm more than happy now to reverse the norm and to be based here in the relative wilderness while making occasional forays into what passes for urban sophistication. Perhaps it's a function of age. Maybe it also has something to do with the sophistication of modern communications. In any event I like living down here but I need to be able to go up there from time to time.

            On the Monday I had a working lunch with Christopher Braun brother of Thomas whose collected writings we are engaged in putting together. Then, that evening I saw Ion again and by chance. I'd had breakfast with him at Roast in Borough Market. And Tracey, the aspiring writer who we had met at the Australian High Commission, came to the Groucho for a chat before we returned for a jolly dinner with Marcia and friends where I banged on at length about how I longed for curry goat. Wait a mo though. Maybe I had breakfast with Ion on the Tuesday because that was the day I was encumbered with luggage and temporarily lost my credit cards and valuables at Tooting Bec station. In any event I had lunch at the old Brasserie St, Quentin with Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson before heading off to Wiltshire and my Mama where on Wednesday Julia, the daughter of Ma's oldest friend, my Godma who died last year, came to lunch and the following day I drove Ma over to Anne and Anthony Johnston's for tea before heading back to London where we had lunch with Shakey from Hong Kong and went to see David Fellows, the lawyer, to discuss wills before I met Emma Hartley from the Telegraph to discuss royal blogging.

            And on the Saturday there was another ODI at Lord's, won again by Australia quite easily, with Ricky Ponting back from a break in Australia and then supper with the Australian High Commissioner, John Dauth, whom I had  known in an earlier life when he was seconded to the Royal Family with the job of looking after Prince Charles and the press.

            So all in all that was quite a busy week and it's not altogether surprising that I can't remember whether I had breakfast with Ion on the Monday or the Tuesday. Not over yet though. On the Sunday Marcia, Penny and I drove to Paddington, put Penny on a train back to Cornwall, went home and read the Sunday papers before venturing out to the neighbours for delicious curry goat (they had taken me at my word!). The first half of the week included a working lunch with one editor, John Nicoll, to discuss the Richard Cobb letters; another working lunch with another editor this time from the Mail on Sunday; a party given by a former Jardine bigwig from Hong Kong; another brilliant Tooting curry with my son Tristram and Beth; a book launch at the Garrick for my friend Ion Trewin's biography of Alan Clark; and so late to my Ma's;a hair cut at Odette; the first ever annual Guild of Speechwriters' conference in Bournemouth; a very old friend of the family from Vienna days for a cup of tea and finally on Sunday home allegedly by train but actually because it was Sunday partly by a trundling bus through much of  West Somerset and East Devon on account of the traditional Engineering works.

            Back home I should have put my feet up but there was a piece about Willy Shawcross and his new book on the Queen Mum for the Lady who also asked me to become their Royal Correspondent; much blogging for the Telegraph made more difficult by having to grapple with new IT challenges; reviews for the Tablet; plans for my workshop in Antwerp; lunch for ten held, thanks to a lovely Indian summer, out of doors and overlooking Fowey harbour; this diary/blog; bits of books and now I am tapping away at the keyboard while keeping one eye on the screen which is showing England against Australia at cricket yet again, though this time in South Africa.

            So, gentle reader, behold an old man in a hurry. Now we have something approaching a respite before heading off across the Tamar again on Wednesday. I wouldn't have it any other way and I think I much prefer to be based in darkest Cornwall with forays up country. Much better that than the other way round.

            I think.

            Up to a point.

            Perhaps.

            Anyway, carpe direm, scribble, scribble, hurry, hurry...