REPORT 55 APRIL 2007
Tim's more or less monthly blog since May 2003
They just told me to move away from their desks. . . .
I’M BOOKED for a post-prandial talk at the Theatre Royal, Bath on
September 21st. It seems to be a series and the other speakers are
Simon Sebag Montefiore and Paddy Ashdown, Douglas Hurd, John Major and
William Hague. Apart from Sebag-Montefiore who is a professional
writer that’s a team of reasonably ‘A’-list politicians. I am, despite
my basic mistrust of politicians, rather impressed to find myself in
this group. Most of us are speaking after lunch and I find myself
studying the menus. Ashdown is cod, Major is pork and I’m chicken.
Hang on, why am I given chicken while Hurd, for example, gets leg of
lamb?. Will people be turning up on the basis of the meal or because
of the speaker? Does it matter? Do I care? Am I going mad? Hague, by
the way, is obviously too grand for food at all. He’s in the Abbey
talking about slavery.
I mention this in order to remain up-beat and optimistic and also to
demonstrate a truth about my life which is that it is a wonderful
helter-skelter. One minute I’m worrying about the respective menus
which precede talks by me and a former Prime Minister of this great
country of ours; the next I am pleading with my agreeable bank
manager, or whatever he is now called, for an overdraft extension.
Most people it seems to me , either spend their lives fighting off the
bank manager or speaking after pork at historic theatres. I do both.
One minute penury and pittance, the next pride and prejudice. I
suppose unalleviated success is good and unremitting failure bad. I
can’t help feeling that life as a roller-coaster-ride is more
stimulating than either. And incidentally, the last time I rang the
bank to talk to the aforementioned manager I was told that he had left
unexpectedly without telling anyone he was going. I knew I was trouble
but not that bad. Seriously this sort of sudden unexplained departure
seems to be becoming par for the course. It’s a bit of a worry.
An example of the down-side is the problem I am having selling the
idea of travel pieces arising from the half-semester visiting
fellowship in Sydney in July and August. I suppose I’m being naïve but
I would have assumed that newspapers for whom I had written in the
past, apparently with some success, would be keen to take stuff from
me based on this trip. I accordingly wrote to various people and got
some positive responses. However the editors of three national papers
to whom I wrote didn’t even reply themselves but got minions of one
sort or another to send form rejections of the sort one would expect
to get if one were a first-time supplicant with no form, qualification
or track-record. I regard this as what, at school, used to be called
“a beatable offence”. Did those well-displayed articles in the past
count for nothing? Can they really not even find the time to answer a
former correspondent personally? It’s even more bizarre when
juxtaposed with the Theatre Royal, Bath billing alongside Ashdown and
Major. Surely some mistake? No, not actually. Just par for the course
– but bizarre all the same!
We went to Cambridge in the middle of the month. We went as part of
the Hong Friends of the Royal Asiatic Society – or some such mouthful.
Basically it’s old Hong Kong hands, friends of Penny’s. Fun for the
most part.. We stayed in Peterhouse where Lord Wilson is Master. He
was Governor of Hong Kong before Chris Patten and one of his
predecessors was Hugh Trevor-Roper who was not, I think a popular
success. I stayed in the Master’s Lodgings in the eighties when the
Trevor-Ropers were there and we went to a Bach Choir concert in King’s
Chapel. I was writing a profile of Sir David Willcocks, the choir’s
conductor . Seems like another world, which, in a way, of course, it
is.
This time we were shown round the library – a terrific combination of
ancient and modern - on Saturday night before adjourning to the
Master’s Lodgings opposite college and then coming back to “Upper
Hall” for dinner. Both Wilsons were charming and infectiously
enthusiastic about the college. He tactfully produced his copy of my
Hong Kong book and asked me to sign it and she, after dinner, told me
an attractive Princess Margaret story about her kicking her off her
shoes and helping arrange the newly arrived furniture for Government
House in Hong Kong. It was all very agreeable and made one ache
slightly for manicured lawns, ivory towers, cooked breakfast in an
ancient hall even if it meant sharing a rather grotty shower. I felt
even more wistful when I spotted an ad in the Times for the
Mastership from which Lord Wilson was standing down in 2008.
This was powerfully nostalgia-inducing stuff because I remembered how
when the Mastership of my old College became vacant in 1965 and I was
an undergraduate I helped Nick Tomalin produce a lead story for his
“Atticus” column in the Sunday Times. In those days even
iconoclastic, cutting edge columns like Nick’s Atticus made a habit of
writing fascinating Sampson-style pieces about such things as
Mastership elections in Oxbridge colleges. Not any more they don’t.
Well, ahem, there is no such thing an an “Iconoclastic, cutting edge
column” and precious few hacks like Nick. It’s all instant celebrity,
but hush stop being grumpy. It’s a change, that’s all and the world
that once cared passionately about the next Master of Peterhouse is
lost and gone for ever.
And now a weekend in Helsinki, courtesy mainly of air-miles. I am
writing about it for the Spectator – I hope and pray – so won’t
give away too much except that it was thoroughly enjoyable and we made
friends with the Finnish Cricket Association with whom we watched the
World Cup Final at the Olympic Stadium. An almost wholly enjoyable
break was marred by the usual charmless performance from immigration
officials at Heathrow. That maxim (is it de Tocqueville about absolute
power corrupting absolutely) seems wide of the mark. It’s the limited
authority given to people like immigration officials and traffic
wardens which is so corrupting. I suppose sitting behind a desk in an
airport and going through people’s passports is a horrible, ill-paid
job., but you seriously begin to think that the people who do it
regard international travel as a sin and one for which travellers
should be punished. Basically Penny was sent back for not filling in
some form about which she was ignorant (I know, I know, ignorance is
no excuse) and then we lost each other. Did any of the ‘officials’ try
to help? You must be joking. They just told me to move away from their
desks.
Also, no matter what the apparent ease of the arrangement when
travelling between Heathrow and home, don’t stay in Reading. Don’t ask
me about it, just don’t try to spend the night in Reading. If you must
pass through the town proceed directly to the railway station and take
the first available train or bus out of the place. Don’t even ask me
about it, just do it.
In the event we got stuck again when our First Great Western broke
down between Liskeard and the renamed Bodmin Road Station (It’s now
Bodmin Parkway!). We got a cab from the station and arrived home to
find, you guessed it, a message from the assistant to the former but
now vanished bank manager. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
Oh, and my enzymes are elevated. Very bad. More of that later I
suspect….
Tim Heald
