6 JANUARY 2008
Tim's blog has been a regular feature since May 2003...
The past is important. . . .
LAST WEEK was turn of the year with three of my four children
turning up and staying in Cornwall for two or three days. Great fun.
They stayed with one wife and one partner in a self-catering apartment
but had meals, walks and general celebration with us. If this sounds
slightly anti-social I suppose you could be forgiven for thinking so
but on the one hand we only have one spare room and on the other there
is a lot to be said for your visitors, even family, having a base of
their own. The flat was within walking distance and very nice. And
they’re all, well, young enough to be my children. They tend to have
more stamina and to stay up later!
Old friends came to lunch on the Sunday- Brian, whom I met in the
youth hostel in Rome in 1962 is godfather to my son Alexander and
Alexander himself is godfather to Brian’s son Joe. At one stage there
were fourteen of us sitting down more or less around a dining table.
Very noisy and convivial and good fun. Then almost as soon as the
family had driven off we were visited by Penny’s former teacher,
mainly of hockey, Marg, who was in England for a few weeks from South
Australia where she lives.
So it was not only a week of looking forward to 2008 but also a week
of agreeable nostalgia and celebrating family and friendship. I’m
always mildly irritated by people who bang on about how they live only
in the present and future and have no time for the past, wallowing in
nostalgia and all that. It always seems to me that one of the
pleasures of living in Britain is that the country is as much a
“continuum” (fashionable word isn’t it?) as it is for us as
individuals. The past is important and without a sense of history I
don’t believe we are whole. The age range round our table on Sunday
was from teens to sixties; some people were meeting for the first time
and others had known each other for over forty years. I think that
sort of mixture is a privilege and a pleasure.
Next week looks dull in that it should be lived almost entirely in my
head. I will get on with all sorts of planning and organisation, not
least finalising my consignment for the Heald archive at Boston
University. It was great to hear from Howard Gotlieb’s successor, Vita
Paladino, that they are expecting them eagerly. I must try to get them
ready for transatlantic transportation by the end of the week. I’ll
try to write as much as possible of the new novel, my book on Douglas
Jardine’s cricket tour of India and my commentary on Richard Cobb’s
letters. Fascinating for me but dull for the audience at least until I
finish.
On the Cobb front it was a great pleasure to get a letter from David
Gilmour in Edinburgh saying that there is to be a Richard Cobb
memorial dinner at Balliol on January 28th (my birthday which is
another story). I also heard from Charles Collingwood that we are to
have an Old Shirburnian Society Presidential lunch in London on
February 11th, the same day as Orion’s author party at the Opera
House. I also had an email from an old Daily Express friend, Charles Lyte, saying that he and his wife, Sarah, had been living near
Christow for the last few years and asking me to stay on the night of
February 28th when I talk to the Teign Valley Book League. I also had
confirmation that I will speak about Princess Margaret in Brittany on
February 19th not to mention talk on the late great Denis Compton and
on village cricket to cricket societies in Derbyshire and Lancashire
in March – Chesterfield 11th, High Peak 12th, Old Trafford 18th,
Southport 19th, Liverpool 20th.
All that seems to me to represent a good example of what I mean by the
“continuum” - an enjoyable fusion of past, present and future. Much of
a writer’s life takes place, inevitably and boringly for others,
inside the head; but this one at least does get out from time to time
and I hope that I’ll meet some of you at one or other of these
forthcoming events.
I’m looking forward to them and to the rest of 2008, apprehensively
and optimistically.
Tim Heald
