REPORT 51 DECEMBER 2006
Tim's more or less monthly blog since May 2003
If you want to do it take a deep breath and ‘Write it, write it’ . . .
I’m writing this end of 2006 blog while watching yet another
England cricketing debacle in Australia. The sixth wicket has just
gone down in Melbourne and our South African star, Pietersen, is
batting with the tail-enders lamented by Ian Botham and other
commentators who think he should bat higher up. So do I. He apparently
doesn’t.. My new friend Olive from Melbourne whom I met in Spain
e-mailed the other day to ask if I was a cricket “tragic” to which I
replied that I thought on balance I was just a cricket “saddo”. It’s
ludicrous to be bothered by England performances in international
sport, yet alone to begin analysing years in terms of English sporting
success (sorry what was that?!) but major international sports do
command vast amounts of money, huge attention and England at the
moment appear to be quite stunningly dreadful especially at games such
as cricket, rugby and association football. Does this matter? Well, I
suppose not, but having woken at four this morning and stumbled
downstairs to watch our highly paid cricketing performers being quite
so comprehensively outplayed is , well let’s just say dispiriting.
On the really important issues of life and death I sense a definite
quickening as my contemporaries and I shuffle into God’s departure
lounge. A number of famous people who had been part of my mental
furniture for years died in 2006 but one, inevitably, mourns one’s
personal friends the most. I lost two in particular: Charlotte Kell
was slightly younger than me and I didn’t even know she was ill. Her
sister, whom she always called “Fudge” rang one day to tell me that
she had died of cancer. An obituary then appeared in the Independent
but Martin Hammond, also an old friend of Charlo’s and the recently
retired headmaster of Tonbridge School, agreed with me that it was
almost as if it was about a different person. So I did a completely
different highly personalised piece about the Charlotte I remembered
beginning with the time I “managed” her entry in the Miss Oxford
competition in the early sixties. Too much mascara. People seemed to
like the piece though I do see that Charlotte would have preferred the
other one, if only because it took her work seriously (which I confess
I didn’t terribly, much as I loved her).The other departure was
Jeffrey Rayner whom I also memorialised in the Independent. Check
Nigel Starck’s new book on the obit, published by Melbourne University
Press and first dreamt up – I think – in his pool in Adelaide by the
two of us when I was visiting as a Fellow at the University of South
Australia. Anyway Jeffrey was a terrific travel PR and a friend of
more than thirty years standing. I went with him to the Jim Laker
memorial dinner at the Savoy in mid-September and he seemed chipper as
ever. Apparently he subsequently got some kind of leukaemia and
succumbed with hideous speed. As Peter Hughes, another friend, who for
years edited the Wish You were here TV programme said, in effect, they
don’t make them like Jeffrey any more. More’s the pity!
Most other things seem insignificant compared with death but the turn
of the year is a time to take stock and, in the words of Caroline
Righton, our impressive new Tory candidate (she can have my support
but not, I think, my vote!) conduct “an Audit” of one’s life.
Fiction is a big bother. “A Death on the Ocean Wave” has been
contracted to Hale who say they plan to publish in June though they
might change. Naturally I’m delighted. It is the third in what is now
the Tudor Cornwall Trilogy (an A.L. Rowse genuflection) and I’m sure
it will look great. Alas, the money is…well, let’s just say that the
total advance is about half what I would expect to get for a feature
for a national newspaper. I did a short story for a celebration volume
to mark Harry Keating’s 80th birthday, published in the UK by Allison
and Busby and in the USA by Crpipen and Landru and, incidentally,
earning about the same as my advance for an entire book. In it I
returned, after a gap of about fifteen years, to my old friend Simon
Bognor, gave him a knighthood and put him in charge of his department
in Whitehall. Good fun, I thought, and so did Martin Edwards reviewing
it in “The Tangled Web”. Thank you, Martin.
Now I’d like to do the same as a full-length book. I’ve suggested
doing so in a Spanish context prompted by my week at El Pueblo Ingles
and especially by meeting two friendly tenientes from the Guardia
Civil. Unfortunately Michael Motley, the trusty agent, says that
before even trying to sell it in advance he needs copies of an earlier
book, the new short story (both easy enough) plus a detailed outline
and at least three complete chapters. My response is that I don’t work
like that and I’d much rather write the complete book just as I did
with the original “Unbecoming Habits” and the much later “Death and
the Visiting Fellow”.
I suppose this is what I will do but I can’t help feeling mildly
resentful about it. I mean what about the track record – all those
published and well-reviewed books, the TV series, the Fellowship of
the Royal Society of Literature? Especially when I’ve been listening
to a Sky News report about the several thousand city “workers” who are
trousering bonuses of millions of pounds. Not to mention the £300,000
advance paid out as an advance to a twenty-something England spin
bowler who wasn’t even selected for the first two Australian tests.
(All right he should have been but that’s not the point). If I were a
celebrity chef or a top model I wouldn’t have a problem. In a Victor
Meldrewish way I still think of such people as cooks and clothes
horses rather than celebs. Oh well. Stop whingeing. No-one asked me to
be a writer, as people keep telling me. If you want to do it take a
deep breath and ‘Write it, write it’. So I will, I will but with a
slightly heavy heart.
Non-fiction continues to be dominated by Princess Margaret whose
biography really does seem to be nearing completion and which really
should make some money, though nothing compared with…oh, stop it. I
also know that I really must bat on with assembling the collected
letters of the great late Professor Richard Cobb. Publisher’s lunch is
pending and if anybody reading this has any letters please do let me
know.
The money for this, however,is a lot nearer mid-list crime fiction
than a wage, even at subsistence level so I simply must find another
viable subject. I have one crackerjack idea (not mine but the trusty
agent’s). However at the moment the essential co-operation is not
forthcoming so that I’m floundering. I’d love to do another cricket
book but I failed to land the Monty Panesar ghost-ship, which I was
doubtful about anyway. Any ideas gratefully received.
Then there’s journalism. Oh yes. Again a couple of lunches loom but I
don't honestly see a lot of grounds for optimism. Perhaps I’m being
pessimistic but I am more and more reminded of a piece by Alan Judd in
the Telegraph in which he said that the function of a newspaper was no
longer to give its readers “news” but to indulge in conversation. I
hated this idea then and I hate it now but I am bound to accept that
it has proved a self-fulfilling prophecy. Newspapers today seem to
consist of terminal pub bores such as Simon Heffer sticking their
thumbs in their braces and hectoring the rest of us.
So, on the whole, I don’t terribly like contemporary newspapers which
seem to be opinionated and self-obsessed. The old cliché used to be
that journalists had a good time because they went to interesting
places and met interesting people but nowadays the top hacks don’t
seem to get out of the office much and the only people they appear to
meet are themselves. Heigh-ho, Victor Meldrew, but my lack of optimism
about journalism is based on the sad realisation that I’m no longer in
love with papers in the way that I think I once was. And I think
that’s because of a fundamental change in the nature of the beast.
Judd’s Law has become a fact of life and newspapers are not about news
any more, they are about having conversations with their readers. In
fact journalists, in the old-fashioned sense, are becoming obsolete.
Readers are no longer confined to the letters page, they’re invading
obituaries, restaurant columns being invited to send in e-mails on
every conceivable topic and before long will, to the great
satisfaction of the new generation of profit-oriented owners, be
writing the papers as well as reading them. Cheap. Free in fact!
Which leaves “other activities”. I’ve just been asked to do a panel on
“Q” (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch) at this year’s du Maurier Festival here
in May. In July I’m off to Oz for a Visiting Fellowship at St. John’s
College, Sydney University. At the end of January I have a Radio Three
Discussion on blogging. There is talk of advising on a TV docu-drama
about Barbara Cartland. So maybe this is the future: nattering and
chattering on panels and at festivals, on cruise ships and at
festivals. There are worse fates I suppose but the prospect doesn’t
fill me with the enthusiasm that perhaps it should.
Oh well. England have promoted Kevin Pietersen to number four and he
was out for one. Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death. Former
American President Gerald Ford has died in his nineties. Writing a
blog such as this involves a continuing conflation of past and present
so that I find myself thinking about the past year and watching the
England cricket team sink to defeat by an innings and 99 runs at one
and the same time. After the Melbourne Test was over, at about 7 am, I
went back to bed and then came down around three hours later to find
that “Duke” Hussey had been obituarised by Dan van der Vat who had
worked under his “management” as a hack at the Mail, Times and
Sunday
Times. I was a colleague of Dan’s on the Sunday Times and later went
on a Raynertour (see above and elsewhere under Rayner, Jeffrey) to
East Germany in the bad old days of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint
Charlie. Dan was once the Times’' man in Bonn. He obviously loathed
Hussey and though he declares his interest I wonder if an obit should
be quite so partisan. As I often allow my affection for dead friends
to show in what I write I suppose it’s only fair. Still, I do feel a
possibly weedy distaste for speaking quite so ill of the newly dead.
The paper also carried a long article on the probable closure of the
Arts College at Dartington for what sound like the usual accountants’
reasonings about ‘economic grounds’. As someone commented
lugubriously, they’d probably have tried to get rid of Picasso if he
were a student here. There was also a bank statement and the latest
issue of the Society of Authors’ magazine which is nearly always
depressing though its saving grace is a timely reminder that there is
always somebody worse off than yourself. The bank statement was bad
too.
I’ve just returned a call to someone on Saga magazine only to be told
with apparent incredulity that they won’t be back till January 2nd. A
reminder that unless you are a Saga switchboard operator, an England
cricketer or a self-employed writer you don’t do anything as banal as
pretending to work during these dog-days between Christmas and New
Year.
As 2006 creaks to a close and 2007 dawns I find myself unreasonably
depressed. The last year was good to me on the whole. Not many dead,
though those that did die were much regretted, a lot of enjoyable
European travel, two publications of sorts. New friends even. They say
that you can’t make new friends after a certain age but I don’t think
that’s true. There is much to look forward to in the next year too,
hoffentlich two publications of brand new hardbacks and a paperback
version of an old one, the Australian trip, opportunities to see
family, a base in the most beautiful part of Britain overlooking one
of the world’s great views. There’s a Balliol Gaudy and a du Maurier
Festival. The sun is shining.
And the New Year’s Honours have been published. There is a knight-hood
for Michael Holroyd which I’m particularly pleased about as I know,
first-hand, what an incredible amount of unpaid and largely unsung
work he has done for innumerable writers’ organisations. Besides which
Maggie Drabble may now, should she so wish, call herself Lady Holroyd.
My former sister-in-law, Ann Leslie has been made a Dame; my former
housemaster’s son, Paul Boissier, already a Vice-Admiral becomes a
Commander of the Order of the Bath (which brings him under the aegis
of my university contemporary Major-General Charles Vyvan who is the
Order’s scarlet stick or something); Chris :Pickup, the retiring
secretary of the Royal Warrant Holders, whose official history I’ve
written is a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and James Kidner,
with whom I stayed outside Sofia when he was first secretary at the
British Embassy in Bulgaria has got something slightly lower down the
list for services to the Prince of Wales. All of which makes me feel
like the narrator in an Anthony Powell novel.
Are we down-hearted? Well, I’m sorry to have to admit it, but yes, a
little.. However I shall raise a glass to say good-bye to the old and
to salute the new. I hope 2007 is kind to all of us – even the England
cricket team!
Tim Heald
