REPORT 42 JUNE 2006
Decency’s not a bad thing to be remembered for . . .
This is an early report because I’ll be away for a fortnight in Spain at the end of the month and if I waited till I got back I’d be late. So better early than...oh well...you know what I mean.
I also wanted to set down some thoughts because I have some good
schadenfreude-provoking stuff and I feel this is therapeutic for me
and, of course, enjoyable for readers. Even as I type this I’m
experiencing a third setback, trivial but still irritating. When I try
to save this blog the computer tells me the file is "inaccessible". I
don’t know what this means and I don’t have the vocabulary to engage
the computer in argument. I’ve got round the problem by using cut and
paste but it’s not satisfactory. I suppose I’ll have to phone
computer-man tomorrow. I get the impression that almost everyone who
uses a computer has similar sorts of problem and while we’re on the
subject John Bennett the trusty webmaster has solved a problem
identified by Chris Meakin which was that on many screens the pages
came up without a right-hand column. John said this was because some
of us dinosaurs were still using antique low resolution screens. This
seems to include me and may explain a worsening irritation in my right
eye. My doctor (now alas retired) has recommended a specialist who has
not yet been in touch. I shall also invest, I think, in a new flat
screen.
Tim Heald
Anyway enough techno-burbling. The two setbacks are both rejections of
a sort. The first involves my talk at the Warwick Cricket Club which
was supposed to be the culmination of last week. All was going fine -
room booked at the Lord Leycester Hotel (yes the spelling IS correct),
train tickets from Marylebone ditto - and I was rather looking forward
to it. Then I phoned in to home in Fowey after a successful morning at
the Royal Archives in Windsor looking at the papers to do with
Princess Margaret as a Counsellor of State and was told by Penny that
there was bad news. Only ten people had bought tickets to hear me
speak so Tamsin at Little, Brown was suggesting we cancel. Which we
did. Considerable blow to ego and a disappointment. Nice-sounding
Helen Meeke, the organizer in Warwick, sent a regretful e-mail hoping
for a rematch but there’s no escaping the fact that it was a touch
depressing.
Worse still on the home front. The lovely and supportive James of the
Marina Hotel and Ann and David at Bookends bookshop had between them
organized a book launch for the paperback Village Cricket and the
hardback Denis Compton both of which are supposed to be, as it were,
hot off the press. Not apparently so. When Ann rang Aurum to check
progress she was told in what she took to be a rather offhand way that
finished books would not be available by the day of our planned party.
At a hasty conference I suggested that one solution might be to
arrange a couple of dozen books without their hardback bindings - the
binding being the most time consuming part of the process. Ann and
David said they’d be happy to sell them at a special price. I got on
to my editor and the publicist and they said they’d do their best and
let me know before our cancellation deadline at 1pm the following day.
Well, it’s a long boring story but the publishers were apparently
adamant that they couldn’t provide books so "No book, no launch".
Letters had to go out to all who had accepted and although the Bishop
of Truro and I will still be having our onstage chat at the du Maurier
festival we won’t, apparently, have finished copies of the Denis book
to flog.
I won’t get in to a slanging match about this and admit that for
reasons beyond my control some last minute revisions came very late
but it was still very disappointing and, like the Warwick
cancellation, lowering for morale.
Penny thinks, I think, that I shouldn’t complain or whinge in these
messages but while I agree that it would be grotesque not to admit
that life is generally charmed, wonderful and agreeable in almost
every way I don’t think one should pretend that everything always goes
smoothly. It’s not true and it gives a bad impression! I was asked to
give some advice about writing as a career the other day and I’m
afraid I said "Don’t do it if you want to make a comfortable living
from it.", or words to that effect. Most writers live uncomfortably
near the lower end of the food chain and the ever-growing belief that
absolutely anyone can do it makes life increasingly difficult.
Of course there are writers such as J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown who make
huge fortunes from their writing (though not always at the first
attempt) but they are a tiny minority. Ever since I embarked on my
career it has also been true that the middle ground is being squeezed
and it’s harder than ever for what used to be called "the mid-list".
My feeling is that life is harder than ever for nearly all
self-employed people and particularly for writers. I am perfectly well
aware that in a sense I have only myself to blame and that it was my
choice to be a writer and my choice to go freelance. I also
acknowledge that I lead a very privileged life. On the other hand I
find it, let’s say ‘interesting’, that I work very hard and am
generally regarded, I think, as moderately successful, yet have nearly
always found it hard to make a living. I also think too many people
make ludicrous amounts of money doing very little and not even doing
that well. The Deputy Prime Minister strikes me as a particularly
vivid demonstration of this but he’s a long way from being the only
one. I often feel like a guerilla, ill-equipped as a typical British
squaddie and facing a monstrous regiment armed with all the latest
gear. Or as someone else put it the other day - like a goalkeeper
facing a hundred center-forwards all at the same time. Exciting
though!
That’s enough whinge. The Princess Margaret research continues to be
riveting. I had a fascinating time in the Archives checking through
papers and also a rather wonderful meeting and lunch with Major the
Lord Napier and Ettrick who was the Princess’s private secretary for a
quarter of a century and Major-General Sir Michael Hobbs, Governor of
the Military Knights of Windsor. The former was in the Scots Guards
and the latter the Grenadiers so conversation was like a military
version of a Michael Frayn or Alan Bennett play. Lots of anecdotes and
reminiscences about men who once commanded companies in Germany or
Hong Kong, not to mention brilliant little vignettes of pouring a long
defunct brand of bitters into the Duke of Gloucester’s gin. My
favourite story involving the Duke is his greeting to Harold Macmillan
when he turned up at Balmoral in 1960. "Thank heaven you’re here Prime
Minister," said the Duke, "There’s a man called Jones here who says he
wants to marry Her Majesty’s sister." Like the bitters it has the
definite aroma of truth.
Talking of "Forty Years On" and all that we had a modest Cornish
Connaught House reunion the other day. Connaught House was the little
prep boarding school in Somerset that I was at between the ages of
eight and thirteen. There were about half a dozen of us including two
ex High sheriffs of the county. I’ve seen both of them recently and
got used to their contemporary appearance. However I have to remind
myself that we now go back half a century or more so inevitably we’ve
changed. One of us was someone called Christopher Ricardo who I
remember as a cherubic child of, I suppose, eleven; he was one of
three - Scotland and Clothier were the others - in a dormitory called
Lamerton (they were all named after hunts) when I was the monitor in
charge. Anyhow, in he came to Nicholas’s house, hot foot from New
South Wales, and lo and behold, he had a bushy white beard. Smashing
bloke and after a while recognizable as the little boy in the blue
aertex shirt but even so... He had brought along a letter from the
headmaster to his parents about the sex talk all leavers got. Pure
Frayn/Bennett, as, in a way was the whole occasion. Salutary though.
Age has wearied us and the years condemn’d and looking at the photos
which Nicholas has just e-mailed I am, yet again, mildly depressed. We
look like the regional committee of the Rugby Football Union.
And now off to dinner with Miles Kington and Mrs. who are down for the
du Maurier festival...well, that was very agreeable. Excellent meal at
the Marina and good chat. Then the following afternoon (I’m writing
this several days later) I did the gig with the Bishop which I think
went well although I think I should make a rule and add "prelates" to
that caveat about never appearing with small children or furry
animals. When I introduced His Lordship by nodding in his direction
and saying: "He’s the Bishop", he, without a pause, responded, "And
he’s the actress". Actually he’s great fun and a total pro though he
has a line in mildly risqué remarks and stories which the punters love
but only a bishop could get away with. The final twist in the wound of
non-availability of the Denis biography came just as we were winding
up when Jonathan Aberdeen, the festival organizer, appeared at the
back of the tent waving a copy of the book and calling out "They’ve
just arrived!". Indeed they had. Dozens of them, so I sat in Ottakars
and signed loads of them while feeling even more aggrieved on behalf
of David and Ann at Bookends. We saw them later that evening and they
were remarkably phlegmatic though I would have been spitting with
fury.
To London on Friday for a trip of almost unadulterated self-indulgence
and pleasure which involved an Oz wine-tasting at the Horticultural
Hall - wow, that Langmeil Sparkling Shiraz and the Tassie botrytis
Riesling and, oh, well - it was delicious and lovely to see so many
familiar labels and winemakers. Then a convivial lunch with friends
old and new - smoked eel and pigs’ trotters which is my sort of stuff.
On Sunday morning we did the Americans in Paris exhibition at the
National which was wonderful and we went with our friend Jill Trew in
whose house ("The Putney Hilton") we often stay though it is closed
for repairs at the moment! Also visited the Groucho and Frontline
Clubs and the top of the hotel next to All Soul’s Langham Place where
I once had breakfast with Brian Redhead and the Today team.
And so home on First Great Western and Virgin - change at Plymouth -
which was amazingly only five minutes late. Home to gale force winds,
a still unaligned satellite dish, a letter making an appointment with
the eye specialist which I cannot make, confirmation of the Public
Lending Right registrations I made over the internet before leaving
and a phone message from Lucy en route home to Auckland saying that
Daniel’s christening in Miami went well.
So back to the keyboard. Describing let alone explaining the creative
process is a considerable challenge and one which I won’t attempt to
meet at the moment. I find it absolutely fascinating to do but perhaps
not such fun to write about. So, instead, a couple of final thoughts.
Sitting in the Festival refreshment tent the other day I was
approached by a local resident who knew about my late father and whose
brother had served with the Dorset Regiment and been killed on D-Day.
He had a book by my old friend "Speedy" aka Brigadier A.E.C.Bredin
DSO, MC describing the wartime exploits of the First Battalion and
wondered whether I’d like to borrow it. Naturally I said ‘yes’ and in
due course the book turned up at the Royal Fowey Yacht Club. It was a
wonderful nostalgic read written in that clipped no-nonsense military
style that you get in a certain sort of military history and full of
men with initials and nicknames rather than Christian names. There
were lots of familiar ones that I remember from childhood but three
stood out. The first was Speedy himself who I remember as an almost
impossibly dapper retired officer with a brisk manner and beautifully
trimmed moustache. I remember once watching one of the D-Day memorial
parades and Raymond Baxter marvelling at the spectacle of Speedy, with
his bowler hat and furled umbrella immaculately deployed, leading his
men in the march past. "Good gracious!" said Baxter, "This simply must
be a Brigade of Guards detachment". But it wasn’t, it was Speedy and
his Dorsets. He used to write to me when one of the many letters he
fired off to the editor of the Daily Telegraph failed to get printed;
I was supposed to intercede with Bill Deedes but I’m afraid I didn’t
have much success. In his obituary the Telegraph revealed that Speedy
in India used to work trouserless at his desk because it was so hot.
His shorts, immaculately starched, stood in a corner and whenever he
left the office Speedy would simply slip into them and march outside,
immaculate and unsweaty as ever.
The second familiar name was Major F.F. Laugher, known to my father
and other friends as "Skinny". Skinny was a great character and had a
terrier called Bonzo who went everywhere with him. "My name’s Laugher
and this is Bonzo" was his standard introduction. He and Bonzo once
arrested a gang of Malayan terrorists single-handed. The Laughers were
with us in Vienna in the early fifties but now, alas, only their son
Robin and daughter Caroline survive.
The final name was "Tony Bab" who I got to know many years later when
both of us had a lot to do with PEN, the writers’ organisation. Tony,
who became a judge and an author wrote ground-breaking books on courts
martial, stood in for Skinny at Nijmegen as Commanding Officer of ‘A’
Company when Skinny was invalided out with a bad leg. One night he was
asleep when a German shell landed in his room and he was severely
wounded. It was months before he was able to walk or even talk and for
the rest of his life he had a head full of metal of some kind. Yet he
was always indefatigable and cheerful and the best possible company. I
wrote his obituary for the Independent. I remember him with the
greatest possible admiration and affection. Reading about these people
and those terrible times described in Speedy’s wonderfully laconic
prose I was reminded of Jan Morris’s remark about the men on John
Hunt’s Everest expedition which Morris accompanied as the Times
correspondent. The adjective he used to describe them was "decent" and
that to me is how that generation comes across. Growing up I often
found them and their attitudes fusty and old-fashioned and maddening
but, especially in retrospect, they were never less than "decent".
Decency’s not a bad thing to be remembered for.
News this morning that the Cornish Pirates are decamping from their
temporary home at Kenwyn outside Truro and are moving, not back to the
Mennaye in Penzance, but to the Recreation Ground at Camborne which
they will share with the local club - once glorious but now much
reduced. I think this represents a defeat and it will have a
ridiculous effect on my weekends next winter.
I would write more about this but I’ve already sent a letter to the
Guardian, from Fed-up of Fowey, which I bet they won’t print.
Tomorrow, God and Brittany Ferries willing it’s off to Spain - I shall
write about beards, blood, and Bulgarians at the Zaragoza crime
writing conference for the Spectator and about Spanish narrow gauge
railways between Santander and Bilbao for the Sunday Telegraph.
Watch those spaces. But if nothing appears there you’ll be able to
read it here. I promise.
Report Number
42 JUNE
2006
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