July 2010 Archives

            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...