REPORT 34    NOVEMBER 2005

God’s way of paying me back for Boodles and the QE2 . . .

LAST MONTH seemed to be dominated by talking and building though I managed to get in some writing, planning and even unexpected commissioning and publication.

The talking was most important and began with the annual cricket dinner at Boodles Club in London. The meal was terrific but as usual I was so nervous that I couldn’t do much more than push my partridge and cheese soufflé round my plate and barely touched the seriously excellent wines. There were eighty diners and a waiting list which was even more intimidating. I don’t think I’ve ever had a waiting list before!

Anyway I think it went OK. Everyone seemed disconcertingly tall and massed dinner jackets are always a bit alarming, besides which they all, obviously, knew a lot about cricket and most had played up to at least goodish club standard. One man had even played for Middlesex in the same team as Denis Compton and proved it by telling a J.J.Waugh story about him which made everyone laugh. We had questions afterwards and I had to use a hand-held mike which I don’t like. Anyway my host John Lawton and Charles Vyvyan with whom I stayed both made all the right sort of noises and at least I wasn’t pelted with rolls as I’d half expected. There was even one guest – Brearley A.D. - who had been at school with me.

Almost immediately afterwards we drove to Southampton and embarked on the QE2 for a cruise round the Mediterranean. I had to do four talks, one en route to Gibraltar and three on consecutive days on the way home from Civitavecchia It was great to be back on the old ship after too long an absence. We had previously sailed the Atlantic once with the Sheridan Morleys and then done the Auckland to Perth leg of the round-the-world cruise, taking over from Hugo Vickers and handing on to Leslie Thomas.

I also remember seeing her steam into New York on her maiden crossing back in 1969 (I think – give or take a year or two.) There are now only five members of the crew who go back that far, two of them being David and Denis the Maitre-Ds in the Queen’s Grill where we had our dining table.

Was it our imagination or had there been a barely perceptible decline? Only the Queen’s Grill Bar served nuts with drinks and Penny was unable to get caviar for lunch as she done on the two previous voyages. I cannot believe I wrote that last sentence! How can one possibly be so spoiled?!  And yet the main purpose of the QE2 is to pamper one and I think we did feel marginally less pampered than before despite the luxury and the wonderful sense of being on a real ship and not a floating block of flats.

I think the talks went well. I was in the theatre this time whereas before I’d been in the ballroom. It’d different because you don’t have passing trade which is both a distraction and a benefit. Also they can’t give you a lapel mike which they could do in the ballroom so I had to have a fixed one. (These things may sound trivial but they make quite a difference for speakers). Luckily I had brought my lap-top and a printer as they didn’t have a photo and the CV and lecture notes were pretty out of date. The Cruise Director was Martyn Moss whom I’d been with two or three times on the Caronia so that was reassuring. Safe pair of hands! Ocean Books had organised copies of “Village Cricket” and “Death and the d’Urbervilles” and I signed copies after every talk, my sales being assisted by various members of the ship’s dance troupe. Three of the four talks were recorded on video and broadcast on the internal TV system with the result that all sorts of strangers came up to say they’d seen me on the TV. Very disconcerting to turn on the set while changing for dinner only to find oneself droning away on screen. I forced myself to watch a bit on the grounds that it was a bit like watching a training video and the best possible way to spot mistakes and failings.

The speechless Mediterranean part of the trip was interesting: Gibraltar, Barcelona, Cannes, Livorno, Naples and Civitavecchia. We sailed at night which meant that apart from Gib where we just had a morning, we got a full day in each place. As usual we didn’t take the tours but pottered about on our own trying where possible to stay clear of other tourists. We had a wonderful Michelin starred meal at the Park Hotel in Barcelona thanks to a PR friend called Lisa Walker. They even had a dessert based on “Fisherman’s Friends” – we didn’t try it. Other highspots were attempting to find Tobias Smollet’s grave in the English cemetery in Livorno but ending up in the German cemetery instead; lunch with my god-daughter Kate in Rome and meeting her two month old daughter Isabella, ogled by Roman matrons in various piazzas as she was wheeled round the city; the funiculare in Naples and a wonderful cheap and cheerful pizzeria with fat sweaty Neapolitans whacking pizzas in and out of wood ovens; a kir in the Carlton in Cannes; and lots of people-watching everywhere.

I’m rather a fan of sea cruises though I freely confess I would never have contemplated them were it not for being asked to speak on them. The original invitation came as the result of Harold Pinter making it clear that he would never be seen dead on one. I came in a sort of sub which is pretty bizarre but it was good to learn as we departed that the great man had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. A Good Thing, not least because it seemed to annoy many of the right people.

Otherwise it’s been a moderately uneventful period. I managed to get a bit of work – mainly Denis Compton writing – done in my cabin. At home I have been getting on with that and with Princess Margaret researches as well as the putative David Taylor project and my own whodunnit – “A Death on the Ocean Wave”. I floated this last ‘work in progress’ before my audience on board ship and invited suggestions. Several were forthcoming, including a murder method involving the new compulsory hand-cleansing which takes place every time you board ship or enter a restaurant. The unexpected commission was a piece for the Mail about rocketing Cornish house prices. I wrote it. They didn’t use it. The surprise publication was a Daily Telegraph obituary of a great English teacher, John Buchanan, who died in July and whose death had somehow escaped the Telegraph’s notice, and mine as well. He was, after leaving Sherborne where he taught me, a radical reforming headmaster of Oakham School. Well worth obituarising.

Next week we’re off to London for the big annual Detection Club knees-up at the Ritz and a Boston University dinner at the Savoy hosted by Howard Gotlieb for all the Brits whose papers are included in his special collections. I have working breakfasts with a couple of editors at the Wolseley and Simpsons, two Princess Margaret interviews in Windsor Great Park and a postponed lunch with Denis Compton’s widow, Christine and Trevor Bailey. And while I’m in ‘jammy so-and-so’ mode I might as well add that my PR friend Jeffrey Rayner has just asked me on a week’s sailing cruise off the Thai Coast.

I do see that all this makes it pretty difficult to plead that it’s a tough life at the pit-face but I should like to say, in mitigation, that I am seriously considering legal action against one employer whose chief executive said he had authorised an overdue four figure pay cheque in August but whose successor admits to still having the (unpaid) invoice on his desk. And, oh yes, when we left, the builders came in to deal with various damp walls – the penalty for living in a beauty spot overlooking a Cornish harbour. On our return the work was incomplete, new problems had surfaced as they always do and the hot water supply had failed. We got it back after three or four days and then it failed again!

I guess that somehow that’s God’s way of paying me back for Boodles and the QE2.

Tim Heald

Report Number 34  NOVEMBER 2005                                                                               Return to Homepage