REPORT 47 OCTOBER 2006
Mad really, but it’s a curiously sustaining belief . . .
Every time I take the train to London I seem to end up writing to Alison Forster and receiving a courteous apology and coupons for further travel. Alison is the MD of the irritatingly named "First Great Western" - I’m enough of a traditionalist to still think of it as simply the Great Western aka God’s Wonderful Railway. It’s not always Alison Forster’s fault. You couldn’t blame her for the bombs that went off in London last summer while we were hurrying through Wiltshire and I suppose you couldn’t blame her for the fire at Langley the other day .It apparently wiped out all rail traffic between Reading and Paddington so we had to get out at Reading and take the parliamentary train to our friends in Putney. I dare say you couldn’t blame her either for the misunderstanding which led to us setting out on a Virgin train and having to change at Plymouth because the "train manager" wouldn’t issue a transferable up-grade. And, oh well, I must remember to write yet again, boring though it is for me and must be for her.
It was a typical day in London if there is such a thing and I got the sleeper home at midnight to waste as little time as possible. Mercifully that worked, as it nearly always does. Fascinating that this service which was threatened with closure last year seems to be more popular than ever and is even being advertised. Strange, that.
Anyway at ten o’clock I met Michael Gravett the accountant at Wimbledon station, went across the road and had a Starbucks coffee while he tried to explain the latest tax and VAT returns. I signed various documents and thanked God for a safe pair of fiscal hands. Then I got back on the tube with my one day travel card and headed off to Lexington Street and the wonderfully shabby genteel offices of the Literary Review. I’ve been reviewing more or less regularly for the Review since the days of Auberon Waugh, whose memoirs I once reviewed for the Times.(Don’t believe there are no such things as literary mafias). Had a chat with Nancy and some of her young staff and left bearing a copy of an interesting book based on Mass Observation diaries of World War Two. I enjoy reviewing for the magazine but it is mildly ridiculous. The fee is £50. People keep saying it’s a great shop-window. But shop-window for what? As far as I know I have never had anything extra as a result of reviewing for the Literary Review. However I enjoy doing it.
Then back on the tube and down to Kensington for lunch with Andrew Yates of the Daily Mail. The Mail, of course, is tremendously lucrative though I seldom seem to write for them. It happens but the purpose of seeing Andrew, apart from the pleasure of his company which is genuine and considerable, is to see if I can’t make this happen more often. We go to Kensington Place and have razor clams and grilled fish. Andrew says that Edward St. Aubyn, a contemporary of his at Christ Church Oxford, was eating in the far corner of the room. He is on the short list for the Booker and I have twice written to him about Princess Margaret whom he skewered in a previous novel. As yet, no reply. Alas Andrew doesn’t identify him until after he’s gone. If anyone knows him do please ask him to get in touch.
From Kensington Place to the Royal Free Hospital to see my old friend Andrew Duncan who came off second best in an argument with his car in the south of France. Andrew now has no front top teeth, has broken bones everywhere including broken shoulders. Apparently the French mended them but got it wrong so the British are going to have to break them again and reset them. Poor Andrew. As he said, thank heaven his younger son Hamish is a qualified doctor and can monitor his treatment. Andrew himself was bloody but unbowed. Thoroughly indomitable. I hate hospitals though and so I feel does Andrew, grateful though he is. Luckily there is a good restaurant opposite and the family bring him in steaks therefrom. No institutional catering for Andrew who has always travelled first-class through life even when he seems unable to afford it. Entirely in character.
Onward, onward, I got back on the Northern Line and tubed down to the Strand where I met Jeffrey Rayner for a drink at Simpsons before dinner at the Savoy with the Lords Taverners to commemorate Jim Laker’s famous test match at Old Trafford when he took nineteen Australian wickets. It was great to see Jeffrey whom I’ve known ever since he had the PR account for Calabria and Alison and I spent a few days there researching a piece for the Sunday Telegraph,. I wish Nigel Buxton was still the Travel Editor. The main event was a tad depressing as I often tend to find Taverners’ occasions. Although technically ‘mixed’ it was very predominantly male and there were depressingly few survivors from Old Trafford 1956. Those that remained seemed agreeably feisty but there was no disguising their age and frailty. Shortly before eleven when proceedings were far from complete I left for the sleeper. Jeffrey said, next day, that he had to leave at 11.30 for his last train at which moment the aged ‘celebs’ were still in full flow. One of the things I tend to not like about these things is that they have a definite tendency to go on for ever.
So that was the day that was. I could have stayed at home and got on with the writing. Maybe that would have been more sensible. However, enjoyment, apart I feel I need to show my face in the sort of places where....well. I’m not sure. It probably doesn’t make the slightest difference but I have a sort of superstitious belief that from time to time one has to be visible. It’s a bit like Randolph Churchill’s theory that when times are hard one should put on one’s best overcoat, buy the most expensive cigar possible and walk up and down Piccadilly puffing away and hoping to be seem by as many significant and useful people as possible. Mad really, but it’s a curiously sustaining belief.
Back here in what Londoners regard as the sticks we had lunch with Kits and Hacker Browning. I’ve just written about Kits’ mother's book "The Parasites" for Slightly Foxed magazine. Kits’s Mum was/is Daphne du Maurier who celebrates her centenary next year. Kits took photos for the book jacket because the one I’d previously sent - taken by Martin Hesp when we were doing a TV together on the local Hall walk - was deemed insufficiently serious. The Art Department said I didn’t look like the sort of person who would write a book about Princess Margaret. Alas probably true. Kits’s pictures seemed to have more gravamen though the best, of course, was me with a glass in hand. Penny vetoed it but Kits and I agreed we should use it for the book launch. We also had drinks at home with Josephine Pullein-Thompson and Elizabeth Paterson, stalwarts of old PEN days. They - and a friend from Germany, also PEN - seemed on good form and we spent as little time as possible boring on about how much more wonderful it was in the old days. They were doing a sort of Grand Tour of the far south-west.
Otherwise it’s been pretty much me and the keyboard except for another quick trip to London via my mother’s in Wiltshire. I stayed at the Army and Navy, picked up the catalogue for Snowdon’s photo exhibition at Chris Beetles and went to Ion Trewin’s "farewell" party at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Loads of interesting - and useful? - people. A good example of the Randolph Churchill theory in action again. The following morning back to Westbury where I had left the car. Late because of a broken rail at Acton so yet another letter for Alison Forster. Then a thoroughly enjoyable and useful lunch with Lt. Col. Freddie Burnaby-Atkins who was Princess Margaret’s private secretary for just under three years in the early seventies and an evening with Penny Junor and her husband James Leith who live nearby and whom I hadn’t seen for more than a decade. We did a lot of catching up and agreed that the faster and faster passing of time is quite alarming. Hardly an original thought except that even really hoary clichés become original when applied to oneself. Don’t they?
And now it’s back to the computer and scribble scribble
until Thursday afternoon when we head for Newquay Airport and Aer
Arran to Cork, a weekend chez Durell and at some point a visit to
Mungall’s Grave in the cemetery in Kenmare. No, not Fingal’s Cave
which is something else altogether. If you don’t know what I am on
about refer back to Blog Number Nineteen. Some time in the next few
days we shall be raising a glass in memory of Pete. An exercise in
nostalgia as far as some commentators are concerned but I think that
looking back is important, indeed vital. It doesn’t prevent one also
looking forward while living emphatically in the present but it’s
essential for all sorts of reasons so before long we shall be pausing
to remember Pete and the past.
Tim Heald
