REPORT 35 DECEMBER 2005
There was an incredulous sucking of teeth. . .
FROM the Ritz and the Savoy to the disabled toilet at Readymoney Cove
may seem an odd progression but somehow it seems to encapsulate all
the rollercoasterness of the freelance writer's existence. Or this
one's at any rate.
First things first. The Ritz was the annual inauguration dinner of the
Detection Club . A black tie affair involving Eric the Skull with a
lot of mumbo-jumbo in doggerel presided over with his customary
urbanity by Simon Brett. It's a private club even though it's just
published its own volume of short stories and has an unofficial
web-site dedicated to it so I suppose I shouldn't reveal more. As
always it's a chance to meet old friends in the crime writing business
and to eat and drink too much in extravagant surroundings.
The Savoy at the end of the week was what seems to have become the
annual dinner of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston
University.. The indefatigable Howard was too struck down by
rheumatism or arthritis to make the flight this year so the occasion
was presided over by the Managing Director, Vita Paladino. At the last
minute I was asked to reply on behalf of the guests, or the Eastern
Campus,. as Vita called us. A tough call, particularly when you're
only asked after a dry martini in the American Bar (with Penny and
Margaret Yorke) and an hour or so of "social drinking" with guests
before the meal. I'm not entirely sure what I said but it seemed to
more or less hit the spot. Essentially the dinner is for those of us
whose manuscripts and papers are collected at Boston. Howard started
the exercise from scratch in the 1970s and one of his initial targets
was the British crime writing scene. All of us who wrote crime novels
at that time got fulsome letters from the doctor congratulating us and
asking if we would do him the honour of depositing our papers in his
library. The flattery paid off at least to the extent that Boston now
possesses probably the fullest collection of late 20th century British
crime writing in the world. You may think that's not worth a lot and
you could well be right. But who knows? I sat next to Selina Hastings
who knew Princess Margaret, so that was not only a pleasure but useful
too.
And so to the disabled loo at Readymoney Cove. Penny and I travelled
home on the ludicrously-threatened Night Riviera sleeper from
Paddington and arrived home to find the builders and plumbers in
occupation. They were dealing with the damp which is the inevitable
consequence of living on the side of a cliff overlooking a Cornish
harbour. The team were terrific but, as is the way with builders, the
minute they stripped anything away there was an incredulous sucking of
teeth and an invitation for me to view the incredible botch one of
their predecessors had perpetrated. So not only were we confronted
with exposed and rotting timbers, we had no bath or shower and only
the most rudimentary and temporary seatless loo in the downstairs room
which used to hold the filing cabinets now piled higgledy piggledy in
my so-called 'office'). The temporary loo involved buckets as there
was no cistern let alone automatic flush. So nothing for it but the
disabled facilities which are the only ones open at the little beach
near the beginning of my daily conference/walk.
"Such", as Ned Kelly observed at the gallows, "is life".
A couple of weeks later we had a loo back but still no shower; debris
all over the place; bits of filing cabinet; black plastic sacks
silting up the workspace and meanwhile I'm trying to write books. Then
dv tomorrow I fly from Exeter to Edinburgh on Flybe for Princess
Margaret research including a visit to her birthplace at Glamis
Castle, then a train from Waverley to London, a chat with a BBC
producer about appearing on a documentary for the Queen's eightieth,
before the Literary Review's Bad Sex Awards and then an early morning
departure for a flight from Heathrow to Singapore and a week on the
Star Flyer (a modern version of a Cutty Sark style clipper) up to
Phuket. I shall be trying to write a nautico-Literary piece for the
splendid sounding new(ish)_literary magazine Slightly Foxed. A
flyer from them arrived in the latest Oxford alumni magazine and I
suddenly thought they might like my pieced about J.G. Links' Venice
for Pleasure so I e-mailed it and to my great pleasure they said yes.
What I had completely forgotten was that, piqued by my failure to sell
it to various other people, I had posted it on the website. When they
realised this Slightly Foxed said, regretfully, that this
constituted publication and therefore they couldn't run it themselves.
I honestly hadn't thought of this but of course they're quite right
even if only half a dozen people actually read it on the site. I shall
try to think harder next time.
The TLS finally published.the letter John Nicoll and I wrote appealing
from letters from the late great Richard Cobb. A healthy response. We
aim to publish in time for next Christmas and it should be great fun.
One of the letters was a great four pager to Herbert Butterfield dug
out by John Wells who now works at the Cambridge University Library
and who I knew in 1991 when we both held Hawthornden Fellowships and
spent a month together up at Drue Heinz's spectacular castle outside
Edinburgh.If anyone else has letters do let me know.
My main task is revising, updating and editing my Denis Compton
biography for Aurum. I made what I think was a mistake by sending
'work in progress' to my editor with the result that we have had what
I regard as an unnecessary disagreement. I'm now going to wait till
I've finished the whole shebang before submitting it.
Meanwhile I must rush because the trusty webmaster has just written to
say he's out of commission for a fortnight and I want to get this
posted. A final thought before my last missive of 2005 which will be
in the form of a Christmas greeting! (saves postage!)
When I first wrote my Denis Compton book Denis told me how in his very
first match he was given out LBW by an umpire simply because said
umpire was absolutely dying for a pee and was desperate to get off the
pitch in order to relieve himself. Denis definitely wasn't out as
everyone knew, the umpire best of all. Perfectly jolly story except
that Denis told me the umpire was called Bill Bestwick. In all other
versions, including Denis' earlier autobiography the umpire is Bill
Reeves. I guess I can check with Wisden's account of the match which
took place in 1936. Should I then just put in the name according to
Wisden? Or mention Denis memory lapse? If that's what it was…
Writing biography is never simple…
Tim Heald
Report Number
35 DECEMBER 2005
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