Visiting Scotland was probably the high spot of the last two weeks. The purpose of the visit was to address the Cricket Society of Scotland's branches in Edinburgh and Glasgow. This occasioned much mirth among my Sassenach friends although my researches in to the life of Douglas Jardine for my Methuen book on his MCC tour of India in 1933/4 suggests that the Scot may have been the best captain England ever had.
We flew up from Exeter by Flybe which was incredibly quick and painless and far cheaper than the train which trundles all the way from Par, ten minutes from home, and ends up in Waverley Station within walking distance of the New Club where we stayed. I don't see how we can possibly reduce carbon emissions and so on when flying is so cheap and convenient and rail travel so uncomfortable and expensive.
Edinburgh was warm and almost balmy compared with the frozen south but that changed on the Sunday night when the snow fell and the city was carpeted in white stuff. As before I was struck by the difference between the two places. We spent the Monday in Glasgow, arriving later than hoped because two trains were cancelled because of unexpected and apparently unaccustomed cold. The first time I visited I was walking down a street when a completely strange woman at a bus-stop handed me the baby she was carrying, lit a fag took two deep sucks and accepted the baby back with a smile and thank-you. Edinburgh by contrast has always seemed polite but even though I understand more of what people say, slightly more distant.
Anyway we saw a lot of old friends in Edinburgh, visited a rather unsatisfactory Jean Muir exhibition in the Museum and went to the wonderful Art Galleries which used to be run by Sir Timothy Clifford whom I remember as a not very impressive member of my platoon struggling across the Mendips during a blizzard while he and a future banker called Jonathan Long tried unsuccessfully to open a tin of spam. As always I was struck by the profusion of beautiful late Georgian or early Victorian terraces, crescents and circuses. How on earth can there be so many elegant residences in such a moderately small city?
The talks both seemed to go fine. The audiences seemed friendly and knowledgeable in both places and in Glasgow we sold so many books that we actually ran out of "Village Cricket" which was gratifying. I have a sort of theory that there is always someone in an audience who knows more about your subject than you do yourself, no matter what it is. My prime example was talking to the scarily erudite Hampshire Cricket Society some years ago and thinking I would give them some Italian cricket as I had just returned from reporting the finals of the Italian six-a-side cricket competition in Cesenatico and I thought that even the HCS would be relatively ignorant about this. They clapped dutifully when I'd finished but the first questioner began his remarks with "When I was keeping wicket for Bologna last year..." Much the same happened in Glasgow. I had said how one wartime England team was the best ever as it had Denis Compton on one wing and Stanley Matthews on the other. One of the audience got up and admitted that it wasn't a bad team but not as good as the Scottish team they played at Hampden Park and which beat them. He added, for good measure, that he knew because he was there. Collapse, in my case of stout party. He was extremely nice about it but I felt suitably deflated, as nearly always, and it just goes to prove my point. Moral; never assume!
The whole brief excursion was a wonderful opportunity to renew old acquaintances of all kinds as well as making new ones. I had a jolly lunch in Glasgow with an ex-Daily Express photographer, and suggested in a vague way, that we should collaborate (presumptuously in my case) on a Glasgow/Edinburgh picture book called "A Tale of Two Cities" which Canongate could publish for a vast fortune. I somehow know it will never happen and that it will be done instead by someone like Ian Rankin or Alexander McCall Smith. Nevertheless it was a very merry lunch and we agreed that we had been very lucky to work together on Fleet Street in the last of the glory days. We then went and looked at the once magnificent Black Lubianka which had once housed the Scottish Daily Express and was just up the road from the Café Gandolfi. It looked abandoned and neglected and we felt both sad and triumphant. Well, I did.
Actually we seem to have been away a lot and I haven't had my nose at the keyboard/grindstone in the way I should. Age and the promise of a pension perhaps. The month began in London immediately after Tom Braun's memorial and a lecture by the Chichele Professor of War in Oxford. As a result I seem to be helping Tom's brother Christopher with a slim volume which should include Tom's brilliantly witty occasional verses. The first Monday of the month I was in Putney and it snowed completely crippling the capital. Even the local cinema was closed. Next day we were stuck for about half an hour on Putney Bridge in a tube but still managed an enjoyable lunch at the Frontline Club with the travel writer, Peter Hughes. We agreed, quaffing wine and contemplating the death of friends and relations, that spending our way out of the recession was the way to go.
After Edinburgh there was a trip to stay with my Mama punctuated in the middle with a weekend in London and an overnight in Swanage to discuss the return of Simon Bognor with the writer, Jeremy Paul. Bognor's return got an airing in the Times, together with my plans for a royal anniversary book, on my birthday in January and I sent Jeremy my newish Bognor short story, Harry's Beard (in honour of the great HRF Keating) and my complete Spain-based novel. It was an enjoyable visit and productive too, I think. The on-dit is that nobody wants crime novels such as my Bognor's return but we both agreed that the on-dit was mistaken and ridiculous. At least I think we did. We shall see but my view, shared I think by Jeremy, is that wit, style and a waspish sense of "contra mundum" are exactly what is needed in these dumbed-down, credit-crunched times.
London was interesting as always. I saw "Doubt" which I enjoyed very much, and the new Woody Allen which I also enjoyed and "Slumdog Millionaire" in which I was disappointed perhaps due in part to the hype. We also tried "Terroirs" and Thomasina Mier's Mexican place in Covent Garden, Wahaca. I thought both were really good. The proprietor at Terroirs had an MBA from Montpellier and was brilliant at dealing with Penny when she sent her Prosecco back because it was cloudy. He brought a new glass without argument but explained that the cloudy glass was perfectly OK but due to the fact that the wine was organic it looked a little murky That was all. In other words he accepted that as the customer she was entitled to change things but that didn't mean to say that he was in any way at fault. Admirable I thought.
The last blog was a bit late being posted because I keep getting it all wrong and the instructions are in my view gratuitously misleading. Apparently I should use "Write Entry" not "Create New Blog". As the computer whiz is in India for six weeks it was difficult to get right though he was able to sort it out from his hammock slung between a couple of palm trees in Kerala or something like that. Then it was back to P.G. Wodehouse. Good for him. Admirably unlike Sir Fred the pension and his fellow garagistes.
The confusion made me wonder not for the first time why I do this blog. The only real answer is that it - or the opportunity - exists, and most people, though not all, seem to quite like it. My own belief (not shared by everyone) is that the more honest the better. And if in the process you seem to be whingeing then tant pis. Which is why I finish by saying that I have complained to as many people as possible because on returning to Tisbury station and paying £9 in parking fees to a ticket office man who was very much not there when I left on Saturday morning I found a parking ticket and a demand for £50. Evidently my explanatory note left on the windscreen counted for nothing; nor the fact that the station was unmanned when I left .
In my letter of protest I said that I thought this was evidence of incompetence and greed. As it happens I believe that these two things are now pervasive and endemic - vide Sir Fred and others. Saying so is evidence of grumpy old mannishness and my chronic pensionability. Bad PR, very. To which I'm inclined to shrug and say that I feel like that and if I feel like that I don't see why I shouldn't say so. I do feel assailled by incompetence and greed and if that makes me a grumpy old man I think I'm grumpy and old enough to say what I like.
Besides which I think I'm right.
