6th APRIL 2008
Tim's blog has been a regular feature since May 2003...
A purist might say that it’s a form of fabrication or fiction anyway . . .
STRANGE how life is a bit like waiting for a bus: nothing for ages and
then a sudden procession. I hadn’t done much walking in recent weeks
for one reason or another but last week I not only got in some regular
daily conferences on the cliffs around Alldays Fields, I also
did a couple of away walks. One was on Tuesday with my old friend
Brian Perman and the other was a more professional occasion with David
Taylor and Laura Hill, the television duo who made the TV series about
Village Cricket, starring moi. Sort of – they say the camera never
lies but it’s worth watching my apparently flawless innings on TV
achieved by dint of repeating several times the one half decent shot I
played. I don’t look like Denis Compton but I look quite good.
I’ve known Brian since we met in the Youth Hostel in Rome in 1962. I
was hitch-hiking round Italy with my Sherborne and Balliol friend
Matthew Melliar-Smith; Brian was with his friend Simon Holmes. We had
a serious discussion about the meaning of life and in a sense and up
to a point Brian and I have gone on having the same conversation for
the last forty-six years. On the one hand a very scary but on the
other deeply satisfying thought. We walked, with the two lurchers,
Fowey and Shady, to the beach below the Nare Head Hotel. Odd that
Brian who used to be a crash-hot, cutting-edge, publisher who was at
various times the boss of Hutchinson, Heinemann and Simon and Shuster
should now be pre-occupied with keeping the vixen away from his hens
(she killed the cockerel), editing the parish magazine and attending
meditation classes in St. Mawes.
Anyway it was a lovely day and a lovely walk and we ended up at a
smart pub in Ruan Lanhorne or something where I had a crab sandwich
and we split a virtuous old codgers’ bottle of mineral water. The
countryside was looking lovely and spring, which it really felt like,
always fills one with a sense of optimism, however misplaced.
On Friday I went up to Exmouth to do a walk for David and Laura’s
inter-active DVD on the South West Coastal path. Not as much walking
as one might have wished and a lot of posing. One moment reminded me
of why, despite the publicity and so on, I’m so pleased that I don’t
major in TV. For all sorts of reasons my fellow walkers (Keith and
Silvia Wainwright) and I boarded a bus. We only went as far as the
next stop but it was an integral part of the recording. Unfortunately
Corin (son of David and Laura who was cameraman for the day) and David
were unmistakeably reflected in the rear of the bus as it pulled away.
It’s a long boring story but after several phone calls, an abortive
attempt on “the wrong sort of bus”, David and Corin got an apparently
satisfactory shot of another bus and we were able to head, rather
wearily for home.
Viewers will hardly notice the shot but few will suspect the amount of
aggro and work that went into getting it. A purist might say that it’s
a form of fabrication or fiction anyway and I confess that is slightly
my view. Most of all I am constantly struck by the way in which man
with pencil and notebook has little or no visible effect on those he’s
writing about whereas a cameraman and a clipboard are immediately
transforming.
I rang Penny to say I was going to be late and was greeted with the
news that the Duke of Edinburgh had gone into hospital and the world
and his wife including Newsnight and the Daily Mail was
trying to get hold of me for instant authoritative comment. Pause for
long thought.
Meanwhile I plodded on with the crime novel and the Cobb letters. I am
modestly pleased with both but the truth will be apparent – perhaps –
when they are both complete. I also got royalty statements for several
books. Depressing but I mustn’t labour the point. We have had snow;
more and more boats are back in the water of the harbour. I can see
them from the window as I type. Lucky me!
And on a sporting note:
I’m sorry but I do think that modern newspapers do a poor job even
though there is compensation on the web and with pages such as this.
One item which restored my faith but went almost completely unreported
in the Mainstream Media (honourable exception for Brendan Gallagher in
the Telegraph) was the return of Richmond Rugby Football Club to the
National Leagues. Richmond are part of my life and have been ever
since they, together with teams from Harlequins and Blackheath, were
the beginning of term opposition at Sherborne School. A few years ago
thanks to the vagiaries of the new professionalism of rugby union they
collapsed and were expelled only to re-invent themselves as an amateur
club. (I may have this slightly wrong but I plead bad reporting in
part-mitigation). Now at last they have clawed their way back and will
be playing in National League South as an amateur club. I regard this
as a huge moral victory for a certain sort of attitude which I much
admire. I’d like more of it and I’d like to see much less of the
pre-occupation with money which, I believe, has greatly damaged this
country in the last twenty or thirty years. Not just in sport either.
Oh, by the way, Richmond have their own site on the web.
Tim Heald
