REPORT 53 FEBRUARY 2007
Tim's more or less monthly blog since May 2003
"At least people at the far end of the room laughed . . ."
My cousin David died.
It was never exactly a condition of Jeffrey’s approval that you
produced column inches after a Rayner Tour but he always demanded the
same professionalism from you as he asked from himself. You were
expected to have a good time, laugh a lot, eat and drink well, and
possibly even play tennis or golf. I remember once being thrashed at
some deck tennis game on the top deck of the SS Norway, erstwhile the
France, in high seas en route to Bermuda; also being taken to his
local cricket ground at Coldharbour, the highest in England, he
claimed. Another time we watched the Derby from the middle of the
Epsom racetrack, free of charge. He was passionate about sport.
He was seventy years old and had been ill for a long time. I was with
him a lot when we were children and I remember opening up our
Christmas morning pillowcases full of tangerines – why tangerines, was
there nothing else? – and holidays with his mother, my aunt Betty.
David was born with physical and mental handicaps and spent much of
his life in homes and institutions of one kind or another. My uncle
Basil, his father, died almost forty years ago; my Aunt Betty about a
decade ago. Then in a very cruel twist his youngish carer Julie, died
of cancer. For the last few years David was in a home on the outskirts
of Colwyn Bay where he was much loved and well cared for by Geraldine
and her staff and visited regularly by Julie’s son Steve who became,
almost, more like family than David’s real family. For a time we
arranged an annual holiday with him but then his physical disabilities
made that impossible. Penny and I used to visit him every few months
and he gradually slipped downhill until he finally died a few nights
ago.
I suppose one’s emotions at a time like this are the same as everyone
else’s. Paradoxically they are also unique. They are also complicated
and contrary – guilt, relief, sadness, anger and much else, a lot of
which one completely doesn’t understand. I suppose my main reaction is
poor bloody sod, what a dreadful, painful, hopeless life. And yet he
gave a lot of people a lot of pleasure in his seventy odd years and he
was much loved. He could also, understandably I suppose, be difficult
and obstinate and, apparently selfish. It’s a difficult life to come
to terms with, especially so, I would think, if one were a committed
Christian. There will be a cremation in North Wales and then a burial
at Martock in Somerset where his ashes will be buried alongside his
parents in the family grave.
For the moment it’s undertakers, and family and solicitors and vicars
and “arrangements”, then a gradually receding memory, I suppose. But
it’s a sad moment.
And while in mournful mood, I had to deliver an address at the
memorial service for Jeffrey Rayner in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet
Street – the London journalists’ church. I’ve only ever done one such
eulogy before and I hope it isn’t going to become a habit. Jeffrey was
a public relations man specialising in travel. This is the draft of
what I intended to deliver. I thought this was an appropriate place to
post it, so a few days before the event that’s what I’m doing. Then I
shall pause and resume the story after I’ve delivered it…
“I last saw Jeffrey in mid-September last year. He had taken a table
at the Lord’s Taverners’ dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of
Jim Laker’s nineteen Australian wickets in a match at Old Trafford
which – amazingly - we won. We met for a drink at Simpsons in the
Strand, just down the road, and then pottered next door to the Savoy.
Jeffrey seemed the same as he always had done since I first met him in
1972: energetic, professional, charming, pleased to see you, anxious
to make sure everyone was having a good time, and generally-speaking
the best possible company. He also seemed characteristically chipper
and it simply didn’t occur to me that I would never see him again.
My first Rayner Tour – that was how I immediately thought of travels
with Jeffrey - was to Calabria where he had entered an improbable
arrangement with an engaging but preposterous Director of Tourism
called Tito Moroli. Tito kept telling us that all would be well once
the huge new international airport was built but, of course, it never
was and Jeffrey and Tito soon parted company though not before I had
written a piece for Nigel Buxton’s travel section in the Sunday
Telegraph.
Food and drink were also important. I did the Beaujolais Nouveau wine
race with Jeffrey. This was one occasion when I couldn’t write
anything but Jeffrey said it didn’t matter provided I brought a suit,
brushed up my French and smiled at the various directors of tourism he
had lined up along the way. I can still picture the expression of
incredulous horror on the face of the gendarme on point duty in Nevers
as we swept past him and Arthur Eperon, trademark monocle firmly
screwed into one eye, raised a glass of red wine in friendly salute
from what to a Frenchman was the driver’s seat. Jeffrey, of course,
was the man at the wheel in an English right-hand drive car.
And there was the time in the Tyrol when we went ski-ing, which was
the only occasion I saw a press group defeated by hospitality. Jeffrey
had arranged an even more than usually busy trip and every place we
stopped we were plied with grog and gluh-wein, dumplings, pastries,
and cakes until we could eat and drink no more. A group of us formed
up and asked if we could be excused meals for a day or two. It was one
of the few times I saw Jeffrey even vaguely discomfited.
He was also slightly thrown by the Tourism Official in East Berlin who
said that normally he would speak for six or seven hours to such a
distinguished group of journalists – but as time was short – he would
ration himself to a mere two. Jeffrey got his own back by absolutely
insisting that his group should make a detour to the Krankenhaus at
Colditz Castle which was, to our hosts’ bemusement, a place of great
interest to the Brits.
He was always a snappy dresser. I can see him on the Isle of Capri,
purring with pleasure after purchasing a pair of nifty lightweight
striped trousers to go with his white co-respondent’s shoes. And late
one night on board ship my wife spilled a glass of Famous Grouse over
Jeffrey’s pristine jacket and he said nothing at all but went rather
pale and opened the coat to reveal the maker’s name: Christian Dior.
Latterly, of course, it was the Star Clippers and I was lucky enough
to go on Rayner Tours in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the seas
between Singapore and Thailand.
He, like the rest of us, loved those beautiful ships with their
billowing sails and classic lines and I sometimes felt they came to be
Jeffrey’s spiritual home. With all due respect to Michael Kraft, the
impressive sea-captains, and even those noisy parrots they became, in
a real sense, Rayner ships. My most vivid memories are of Jeffrey
standing on deck as the sails unfurled, the theme from the film, 1492,
crashed out and we put to sea. I so identified him with those ships
that I’ve written him a little cameo role in my latest whodunit, “A
Death on the Ocean Wave”. Half way through the novel Jeffrey sails
into view in mid-Atlantic, a vital figure in solving the mystery of a
man overboard, skipper of the clipper in all but name. I would love
him to have read it and just hope they have a decent bookshop wherever
he has gone.
On the last trip the Chief Feature Writer of the Western Morning News
got married on deck somewhere in the Malacca Strait. Jeffrey wrote the
ceremony up for the UK Press Gazette.. He never missed a trick – or a
treat.
I’m sure all of us who were lucky enough to know Jeffrey and
especially those who .were privileged to accompany the great man on
one of his Rayner Tours will have similar memories. One of the things
which made him so unusual, I think, was his brilliant ability to mix
business with pleasure and to combine consummate professionalism with
terrific fun. So Thank You God; and Thank you Jeffrey.”
That was the long – six and a half minute I think – version but
because we slotted in an extra reader – Leslie Thomas – I cut it back
to about four which was probably unnecessary as at least one of the
so-called “readers” delivered a long, apparently impromptu eulogy as
well as reading “other men’s flowers”. The choir, as always at St.
Bride’s, was wonderful and the music, including a number from
Casablanca and Panis Angelicus and the hymn “Immortal, Invisible” was
brilliant but the turn-out was less than I had hoped and I felt my
piece fell a bit flat. At least the reaction seemed flat.
Afterwards it seemed that one or two people had had trouble hearing.
In fact Penny said she had been completely unable to hear some of the
others, including the actor Freddie Jones who did a piece of Betjeman
in flamboyant mode – I could hear every word and am increasingly
persuaded that some people are very bad (lazy?) listeners. Part of the
problem was, I thnk, that the acoustics were surprisingly poor. The
St. Bride’s web-site goes on at some length about how great their
sound-system is and we were all asked to turn up half an hour early
for a “read-through”, rehearsal. However it consisted entirely of
“business” – where to sit, mind the step and so on. We didn’t actually
try reading anything out loud which was almost certainly a mistake.
The verger said not to worry, the mikes (two on either side) would
pick everything up and all we had to do was speak normally. Er, no.
This simply wasn’t true but in any case I think it’s nearly always a
bad idea. When I first did any public speaking or reading in church,
at the school debating society and so on – we never had a microphone
so you had to project. Of course this was a challenge but at least you
knew where you were and you were in control. You couldn’t blame the
machinery. The folly of the mike was brought home to me most
spectacularly when I had to speak in Balliol Hall at the leaving
dinner of Maurice Keen, one of my history tutors. The mike
(predictably) didn’t work so in exasperation I stood on the bench and
projected. After all Jowett and the Victorians for whom the hall was
originally built never had mikes so they spoke properly. It seemed
fine. At least people at the far end of the room laughed at the jokes
which is a good a sign that the acoustics are working. Most of the
time I loathe modern sound systems because they encourage you to “talk
normally” and trust them. My experience is that you can’t trust them
and that when performing in public you simply aren’t supposed to talk
normally. It’s not a conversation, it’s a performance. End of lesson.
Otherwise there has been much Margaret. I suddenly find that I have
compiled almost eight thousand words of footnote alone. I’m as
ambivalent and grouchy about footnotes as I am about sound-systems,
but here we are. I’ve done them. Maybe I’m motivated by the words I
remember from years ago,in Hong Kong of Penny Corfield. Penny, a niece
of one of my history tutors, Christopher Hill, is now a professor and
she said that no-one would take me seriously unless I did footnotes.
Well now I’ve done them. Am I going to be taken seriously? Watch this
space.
Actually I’m not going to leave it there although I know that the
number of people interested in footnotes may be quite small. I’ve
expressed that badly so I’ll start again. The late great Nick Tomalin,
one of my journalistic mentors, once wrote in a seminal piece about
the prerequisites for journalist success – or indeed survival – that
these deopended in part on the ability to believe in second-rate
projects. Nick was a past master at this. Some booby of an editor
would commission a really second-rate idea for a piece but Nick would
be so enthusiastic about it that he could transform it from base metal
into gold, platinum or whatever.
Well footnotes are a case in point. Considered baldly they are merely
bits of small print at the bottom of the page. Yet Penny Corfield is
surely right. They have become an indicator of academic rigour.
Another of my mentors, the late Derek Jarrett, who taught me history
at school, produced the definitive edition of the works of Horace
Walpole and ended up with pages of book in which the footnotes often
outscored the main body of the text. Literally. You would turn the
pages and find a paragraph of large print at the top and a great
agglomeration of small print apercus, thoughts and glosses underneath.
I have always taken the view that one should convey as much
information in the text as you possibly can and that to resort to
extra paraphernalia in the form of notes, footnotes and appendices is
a sort of cop-out. In the case of Margaret, however, I – we, because I
have a terrific editor in Ion Trewin, on whom I rely a great deal –
decided that , more or less, we would give every character mentioned
in the text a note at the bottom of the page. This would take the form
of full name and/or title, followed by dates and a sentence or
possibly a tiny bit more of relevant description. Thus there was a
financier called Olaf Hambro who bought the house of a Lord Lieutenant
called Lord Cornwallis. He’s mentioned so he gets a note. Name, dates
of birth and death. Then I discovered that one evening eating oysters
at the Mayfair restaurant Wiltons, Hambro heard a bomb explode nearby
and this helped him realise that the proprietors of Wilton desperately
wanted out. With extreme casualness he asked, when finished, if the
restaurant could be added to his bill for oysters and Chablis. It was
and the place has, apparently, remained in the Hambro family ever
since. Don’t ask me why but I enjoyed this story, thought it told me
quite a lot about Hambro and I have put it in the book.
Sometimes, however, it is difficult to find information and even
dates. One living person I mentioned had no immediately ascertainable
date of birth. However I had his e-mail address and sent him a message
asking politely if I could have it. He refused. He is, of course,
entirely within his rights to do so but it means a tiresome
inconsistence in the footnotes. He’s not unique.The late Roy Plomley,
inventor of “Desert Island Discs” spent his entire life concealing his
birth-date and got away with it to the very end and beyond. (Part of
the reason he was able to do so was that no-one really cared that
much!)
I mention all this because I think the footnotes now work in a mad
sort of way. The main reason is that I have forced myself to believe
passionately in them just as Nick used to do when forced to write
about canal towpaths or the counterfeiting of imported wine. The late
Marshal McLuhan, whom I interviewed years ago in his native Toronto,
had a flip-phrase about the medium being the message. Mmmmm. Without a
degree of passion the message won’t get through, whatever the medium.
Discuss.
Which brings me finally and yet again to the whole question of
blogging and the internet. I noticed on the Guardian media pages the
other day that another novice blogger had sold her material to an
old-fashioned publisher who was paying her £70,000 to turn it into an
old-fashioned book. My trusty web-master and I believe that something
of the same kind could, maybe should, happen to me. My literary agent,
however, thinks quite otherwise. He incidentally seems to me to be
reluctant to embrace the new technology which may, or may not be an
unconnected matter.
Anyway I realise increasingly that ever since I started my first
magazine – the Morning Monitor, a sort of samizdat bulletin,
handwritten and pinned to the walls of my first boarding school when I
was very young indeed – I have been at loggerheads with those who
determine what people read. I was able to continue acting, in effect,
as my own publisher and editor more or less until university. Then I
fell prey to the professional middle-people, who in the conventional
mainstream world of books, newspapers and magazines, determine what
gets published and what remains, in effect, private.
The internet and blogs have changed that. For the first time in many
years the intermediary has become redundant and there is no barrier
between the writer and his – or her - audience. This is what makes
blogging so seductive and so dangerous. I don’t suppose, for instance,
that I could have got my eulogy for Jeffrey Rayner on to the obituary
pages of the Times, Telegraph or Guardian (though thanks to the
excellent Jamie Fergusson, the Independent did publish a similarl
piece- though it was by no means identical.. I can however post my
words about Jeffrey on this blog at the press of a button.
I enjoy this, not least because I believe I know more about what
“people” (whoever they are) want to read than the average editor. For
the same, no doubt arrogant, reason I think there is a market for
these words in an old-fashioned print and paper form. Old-fashioned
guardians of the middle ground between me and the reader seem not to
agree. I think they are mistaken. Of course I do. It’s the nature of
what I’m doing.
Which is why I shall continue to blog and you, I hoped, will continue
to read and respond as, I’m delighted to report, you seem to be doing
in ever-increasing numbers. Between us I think we are helping to
change the whole nature of communication.
Tim Heald
