REPORT 54 MARCH 2007
Tim's more or less monthly blog since May 2003
"I was greeted by a twenty-something Scillonianne from the Island of Bryher . . ."
At least two of my favourite university friends absolutely refused to
even contemplate the Balliol College Gaudy in Oxford the other day. I
know what they mean but I tend to think the absolute failure to
celebrate one’s past is a mistake and their absence, of course, helped
to make the occasion less enjoyable. I was looking forward to it but
felt disappointed. I suggested writing a piece about the idea for the
Mail but don’t detect much enthusiasm so maybe I should just blog it.
“Well”, I found myself protesting, “He’s charming and bright and
altogether a great advertisement for the old college but, well, he’s
not THAT bright. There are others who are even nicer and brighter.”
(Maybe I did, but I don’t think I meant me)..
Age and self-employment have something to do with the sense of
anti-climax.. Most of my contemporaries are now retired so there was a
sense, inevitably, of lives being over, ambitions fulfilled (or just
as often, not). And there was no escaping the fact that now that we
are all into our sixties we look the part. I remember the late Lord
Boothby once telling me how his inimitably treacle-gravel voice was
recognised in a train compartment in his later years and a woman
peered at him thoughtfully and said “Didn’t you used to be Bob
Boothby”. No-one actually came up to me and said “Weren’t you Tim
Heald once?” but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had. I almost
did it myself once or twice and there were occasions when I genuinely
didn’t recognise old friends. We who were once so full of promise were
now just consumed with regret.
Not everyone, of course, but I wasn’t sure whether I found apparent
failure more difficult to cope with than presumed success. Or vice
versa. As is the norm on such occasions the great and good tended to
be positioned on the top table. The Master presided and the
Chancellor, Chris Patten, was guest speaker. I have always had a
problem with Chris who is a friend and contemporary, with whom I
shared occasional tutorials and now god-children. He is godfather to
my son Alexander, now teaching history at Chris’s old school St.
Benedict’s Ealing; I am godfather to his eldest daughter Kate. Despite
all this our paths have diverged – we’re different.
When he, Chris, first went into politics he joined the Conservative
party which was, in the late sixties, deeply unfashionable. Friends
used to tell me that the Tories were a load of lobotomised fascists
and I would protest – despite being a lifelong Liberal (voter and
one-time candidate) - that there was one Tory who was bright,
thoughtful, compassionate, human and a Balliol man. Viz, Chris. I
rather enjoyed standing up for the old boy like this but then, I
suppose some time in the seventies, the same people started coming to
me and telling me that despite their Neanderthal qualities the
Conservatives had one very bright spark indeed. Viz, again, Chris.
I suppose this is the natural hack’s sympathy for underdogs and
scepticism about tall poppies. In a sense it’s ridiculous and, for
what it’s worth, fantastically unfair on Chris. But it’s the way I am
and, I suspect the way quite a lot us are. Reunions such as this
shouldn’t be judgmental but I felt this one was particularly so
because Balliol sets so much apparent store by worldly success. (I
shall get stick for this but it does, it does). I certainly felt a
strongish sense of everyone eyeing everyone else and asking, albeit
silently, how “successful” they had been. The atmosphere was extremely
competitive even if it seemed relaxed and gregarious. Last time I was
asked to make a speech and afterwards a visibly irritated millionaire
contemporary came up to me and said, crossly “Who asked YOU to speak?”
And I felt the same the other night, much of it, of course, focussed
on Chris. I’m probably being paranoid but I sort of felt that people
were asking themselves “How come he is Chancellor and not me?” “How
come he is ‘Lord’ P” and not me?” “How come, how come?” and basically
“whatever happened?”. Which is a depressing leitmotif for an evening.
“Broken promise – discuss!”
David McDougall, who was disarmingly nice about these blogs, later
told me that his wife summed up Chris’s speech as “Haven’t we all done
well and er…that’s it”. At least that’s I think more or less what she
said he said. I agree with David who said if that was right then we
might as well all be dead. I had a definite sense that most people
there had finished whatever it was they set out to do whereas I was
only just starting. Ludicrous I know but there you go.
One other thought which sounds at first sexist and antediluvian but
isn’t meant to. It concerns spouses and sponsors who were invited in a
perfectly sound gesture of egality and correctness. But actually it
meant that you couldn’t simply natter to old mates and say things like
“Did you read about X being murdered in the bath…there but for the
grace of God?” or “Did you see that Y went to Casablanca and changed
sex?” or even “Isn’t Z looking GHASTLY!?” which is really the point of
such gatherings. Instead you had to bother about social niceties and
making polite conversation to people who shared none of your memories
and experiences. So, for once, I thought “partners” were probably a
mistake.
That’s enough of that. This month has mainly been editing. I told my
aunt who I sometimes think thinks that writing is just something you
knock off while you’re wondering what on earth to do when you’re grown
up that I was having long discussions with the editor of my new
whodunit about what exactly went in to a Pontefract Cake and whether
the Laws of Oleron were drafted by Richard I or Eleanor of Aquitaine.
And that, I told her, is nothing compared with the lawyer’s queries on
Princess Margaret and having to decide that if you describe someone as
“erratic” it’s actionable whereas if you say they’re “controversial”
it’s just fair comment.
It all reminded me of the late Larry Adler who sued me for what I
wrote about him in my Prince Philip biography. I was interviewing the
late Reggie Bennett, sometime Tory MP and founder of the Imperial
Poona Yacht Club, about the Thursday Club which met in Wheelers in
Soho and which he and Prince Philip attended. “All sorts of funny
people turned up”, Reggie told me “including that ghastly little man
who played the mouth organ”. “You mean Larry Adler”, I said. “That’s
the chap”, said Reggie, grinning, “ghastly little man”. Naturally I
scribbled this down and reproduced it in the book whereupon Adler
engaged a learned friend and I and Hodder and Stoughton had to
apologise in open court. We didn’t turn up but Adler sent a publicist
with the result that the following day every paper which had
completely ignored the story when it first appeared had a headline
saying “’Larry Adler Not Ghastly Little Man Who Played Mouth Organ’
says Author.” Which I still think was one of the most self-defeating
actions of all time.
I realise looking at the contract that I first embarked on the
Princess Margaret biography almost three years ago. The Tudor Cornwall
trilogy goes back further but then it IS three books. As far as
Margaret is concerned the London Book Fair looms and various people
have expressed interest. On the Tudor Cornwall front however all is
quiet to the point of silence. I find this extraordinarily
dispiriting. When we agreed to go with Hale and accepted their three
figure advance my agent said that ‘Oh well, at least at the end of the
exercise we shall have three books’. This is perfectly true but they
show depressing signs of being three books which virtually no-one else
in the world knows about and which no other publisher in the world
wishes to acquire. Naturally I think they are witty, original,
cleverly plotted, much better than practically everything else ever
written and so on and so forth. Which makes it even more perplexing
that no-one else should apparently share this view. It doesn’t make
for smooth relations with the NatWest Bank either!
My agent said the other day that the lot of a freelance writer is
pretty humdrum but I don’t feel humdrum in the least even when
something apparently quite humdrum happens. Last week, for instance, I
was asked to do a live interview about cricket umpiring for BBC Radio
Cornwall. It was scheduled for 7.45 am and I could either do it over
the phone or they’d send a van. I said “Van , please” and arranged to
meet the reporter/producer/driver outside the harbourmaster’s office
on the Albert Quay. When I turned up I was greeted by a
twenty-something Scillonianne from the Island of Bryher who turned out
to be a gig-rower and was in charge of a “satellite van” which was the
only one of its kind in the country – a studio on wheels with a
flexible satellite dish on the roof. It’s an experiment and Cornwall
is the testing ground. As is the way with high grade cutting edge
technology it promised more than it delivered. My new friend couldn’t
get a signal on her mobile phone and the satellite signal was blocked
by surrounding houses. So we had to drive down the road to the big car
park near the ferry landing where all worked beautifully. I could hear
HQ in Truro perfectly through the headset and they could hear me
perfectly when I spoke in to the microphone. All wonderfully unique
and experimental and only in Cornwall. Sometimes I feel we’re at the
far end of the earth and at other times that we’re the centre of the
universe. Which is why I like it here.
Despite this we ventured East of the Tamar at the very end of the
month to bury the ashes of my cousin David in the family grave at
Martock. Penny and I drove to my mother’s house just outside Semley on
the Wiltshire-Dorset border and then went with her in a Dean-Drive
(her brilliant local taxi service) car to Martock. I thought I’d taken
care of everything. We had a coffee in the George opposite the church
and everyone turned up – my brother, wife and daughter, my two sons,
first wife (the two wives seem to have taken, on the few occasions
they meet, to circling each other warily, not quite snarling and then
telling everyone else how immaculately they’ve behaved!). Oh, they’ll
probably read this and complain so let’s just say that having them
both in the same room makes me a bit tense. After a while my uncle,
eighty-four turned up having been driven from Emsworth and a bit
shuffly, leaning on a stick. The idea was that we’d have a short
service conducted by the local vicar, the Reverend Trevor Farmiloe
(e-mail = “RevTrev). Angie and Phil at the George said they’d fixed a
funeral buffet for afterwards and when the Rev. Trev was ready at the
door to greet us I confess to feeling just slightly smug.
It didn’t last. As 12.30, the time for kick-off got nearer, there was
still no sign of the undertaker and David’s casket. The Rev Trev and I
decided to walk down to the grave to see if the undertaker was there
digging but no, no sign. So The Rev got out his mobile and phoned the
undertaker who said he knew nothing whatever about it. Communication
breakdown. I had assumed that the Rev and the undertaker would liaise;
they had obviously assumed I would do the necessary. Anyway the
undertaker was charming and willing and said he’d be round with the
ashes in twenty minutes. So Penny and I nipped across to the pub to
warn Angie and Phil that we were running late (yes we did have just
the stiffening one) and everyone else stood or sat around in church
and chatted.
Eventually David’s ashes and the undertaker turned up and the business
was done. Poor old David had actually arrived early for his cremation
in North Wales but all through his life he was late for everything and
somehow it seemed appropriate that he should be late for his
internment. At the George we all sat round and chatted over far too
many sausage rolls and chicken wings (modern health and safety
legislation seems to mean that anything left over has to be chucked
out which seems incredibly wasteful) and then got into our various
vehicles and dispersed. It was good that Steve, his friend and carer
from Wales, had made the journey but sad to think that this particular
episode in the family history is almost closed. No member of the
family has lived in the little town since the 1930s and the only two
left who will end up in the family plot are my uncle and mother now
both well into their eighties. I hope they both go on for ages but on
an actuarial basis it seems eerily probable that most of us will be
back at the graveside at least within a decade.
Oh well. On that slightly morbid note I’d better close. My mother said
that while she knew it was a sad occasion she had rather enjoyed it. I
know what she meant. There was a certain satisfaction in seeing so
many family members together and for her to see three of her
grandchildren smiling and happy and sociable. But, like the Balliol
Gaudy, the occasion was a reminder of passing years and a time for
slightly glum reflection.
So on a slightly glum, reflective note…but no. I had a full page in
the Spectator and Jan Morris is coming to lunch during the du Maurier
Festival and Sarah Standing has left a bubbly phone message about
travel pieces in Australia. The sun is shining, boats are reappearing
in the harbour, spring is sprung. England even managed to beat Ireland
in the cricket World Cup. Life goes on – at least for the time being!
Tim Heald
