The end of the year is the traditional time for taking stock, for reflecting on the past twelve months and musing on the next. The conclusion of 2008 is generally considered to be a particularly glum period with a series of financial disasters characterizing the recent past with even worse to come. It will seem perverse, therefore, if, on balance I take a rather bullish view of life. Perhaps I am more puritan than I thought; perhaps I hope that we may see a greater esteem for what the late Roy Jenkins described as "the less acquisitive professions". It would be good if greed became as shameful as it used to be; if essential competence was more highly regarded; if we became less enslaved by conspicuous consumption and more motivated by altruism. I happen to think that much of the world in the last few years has been profoundly unattractive and I sense some prospect of society becoming a happier whole. Who knows, may be we'll even return to a world in which people believe once more that there is such a thing as society.
The past comes first and two deaths loom largest, not because I feel gloomy about them but because they are very important to me and because they remind me that I was really lucky to have known those concerned. Both the dead are women and I loved them dearly and feel much better for having known them. I'd hate that to sound goody-goody-two-shoes not least because both of them were robust, no-messing-around people, without an ounce of schmaltz or false sentiment in them.
One was my godmother, Mary Sharpe, and the other was my friend, Kate Mortimer. They are united, of course, in death but were remarkably similar in life even though there was a quarter of a century between them. My godma was the sort of person of whom it was said, almost invariably "We'll never meet her like again" and "They broke the mould after they made Mary". She won the war, ran an Empire, was indomitable, slightly scarey in the nicest possible way and underneath an imposing exterior something of a softy. I remember many moments but best of all the one when I asked her why, during the war, she rode a Royal Enfield motorbike. She looked at me with what I have described - in a phrase lots of her friends and admirers recognize - with an expression of "fond contempt" and said that, "dear boy" the Enfield was the only bike that could be repaired in a jiffy by removing one's stockings and doing something clever involving cam-shafts and reef knots.
Kate was, gloriously, the same sort of person. She had a half-blue at cricket, got a brilliant First at Oxford and I remember once asking a cabinet minister friend what she was doing only to be told that she was "sorting out Poland for us". Which, naturally, and with great good humour, she was. I should have introduced them as they lived quite close. My Godma was in the middle of Chagford and Kate in a farmhouse between Okehampton and Sampford Courtenay. They were both avid Christians and believers in the Authorised version. They were also both very funny.
I remember Kate once sending me a postcard after I had split up with my first wife writing to tell me that she had given a lecture on "the meaning of loyalty" to a mutual friend who had criticized me. Kate was resolutely loyal. So was my Godmother. This did not mean that either was uncritical. Far from it. If they disagreed with you or with something you had done they let you know. Forcefully. But nothing ever interfered with their support. I knew that they were both always there for me no matter what and although I loved them both for all sorts of other reasons it is for their unswerving loyalty that I most remember them. The late Brian Redhead once asked me, apropos Prince Philip, if I felt better for having known him which was a much smarter way of asking whether I had liked him. I feel privileged to have known Kate and Mary and feel much better for the experience. I salute them both and thank them and God or what or whoever - should they exist which I slightly doubt although they never did. He or it or whatever did me a good turn when I was given them.
I delivered the address at Mary's packed memorial in the little church at Gidleigh in Devon and I wrote Kate's obituary in the Independent, so I have been able to pay a public tribute already but it seems appropriate to record another now at this time of reflection. I miss them both but I feel perhaps ludicrously enriched by having known them.
What else has been good about 2008? Maybe not a lot. I have just received a note from the States saying that I have been selected as "A Great Mind of the 21st century" and may, for many dollars, have a plaque to prove it. Such,my wife tells me, is life and it is not the first time I have received such an accolade. Part of me would love to see the complete volume of great minds, all 1,000 of them, all paying out considerable numbers of dollars for the book and the concomitant things-to-go-on-walls. What of those who don't pay up? Anyway I'm jolly chuffed to be a Great Mind. Coupled with the accolade from Penny's chiropodist in Redruth who took rather a shine to my feet (despite her warnings) I'm feeling pretty bucked up myself from tip to toe. Perhaps one should hurry past the middle but even so.
Professionally I suppose the year has been pretty bloody. I have an outstandingly brilliant outline for a new royal book; an outstandingly brilliant complete new novel featuring Simon Bognor plus two outstandingly brilliant beginnings to sequels; BUT my outstandingly brilliant new agent, Caroline Michel, has failed to find any takers. The only book to appear under my own name is the history of Palmers Brewery in
I have had one or two pieces in the Mail and the Spectator but nothing that really set the pulse running. It looks as if I'll be involved with a new Readers Digest humour special for which I produced one of their inimitable "blue books" but even though it will be good I don't think any of us really expect it to be great.
There were drones and there are more to come. I talked about cricket to societies in
Another drone was at the annual Governor's meeting at the University College of Falmouth. This was fun because not only was the audience wall-to-wall grand governors, it also included Nicholas Trefusis and Michael Galsworthy whom I first met in 1952 when I originally pitched up as a little boy at Connaught House School near Taunton. Brian Perman, whom I originally met in the Youth Hostel in
I've always made a point of combining business and pleasure particularly where travel was concerned but last year was pretty ghastly in that respect. I wrote a couple of pieces based on the
I should be really bothered by this and the general down-turn in work but somehow I feel more optimistic than I have done at more obviously buoyant times. I'm not sure why this should be. Perhaps it is my looming 65th birthday on January 28th. If I make it I start to collect an old age pension. The amount will be pitiful and it seems to be administered by the current combination of prim politeness and devastating incompetence. Nobody has been in touch with me except the pension people who send me long repetitive statements telling me that I owe £00.00 and need do nothing. When I said I'd like to be paid quarterly the (consummately polite) woman on the other end of the line said that in all her life in pensions she had never known such a thing. Most people get paid weekly or monthly, so once again I'm a freak.
65 is nothing to write home about - my Mum is 88 and won't even get a royal e-mail or whatever for another twelve years. The pension is derisory and I'm regarded as past it despite feeling energetic and bright and having lots of hair not to mention near-perfect feet as well as one of the great minds of the 21st century.Maybe it's the fact that my two younger children are getting married - Tristram in July and Lucy the following January. Yhat means that all four children will be legally attached to their partners. And the two grandsons seem bright and well even though living in
So maybe its grand-paternal bliss that's making me all euphoric. Or the thought of drones to come - the Baconians in
And travel. I forgot to say that Spectator Business took a piece on crime writing based on the meeting of the International Crime Writers in Frontignan in the South of France last August. We're using air-miles to get us by Easy Jet to
Christmas Day was quiet and domestic punctuated by telephone conversations with all four children. Strange that when I spoke to Lucy in New Zealand early in the UK Christmas hers was ending whereas Emma in Monterey, Mexico, to whom I spoke hours later was operating almost a day later and had hardly begun.. Around lunch time we heard that Harold Pinter had died. We knew Harold, had policed a play of his in
And so Christmas is over; the sun is shining, I have sent off about 40,000 words of Richard Cobb, people are coming in droves to look at Penny's amazing artificial eco-friendly Christmas tree and 2009 looms or lowers depending on one's state of mind. As I say I approach it in a spirit of optimism looking forward to birth, marriages and pension. The optimism is probably misplaced but what the hell. It should be an interesting and eventful year. Happy thoughts to all my readers and may you/they multiply and have more than ever of mine on which to feast the eyes.
Enjoy, enjoy.
While we can!
And I'd just typed this and was sitting in the kitchen drinking a reflective glass of wine with Penny and a visiting friend when the phone went and we learned that my mother had just found my younger brother dead on the bathroom floor at her house in Wiltshire. Funeral in Wells Cathedral this Thursday.
I think I need time to think this one through.
