A month in the (town and) country

            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...