Emma
dropped us off in a state of the art urban car park in Miami beach which has
won prizes but gave me the creeps and we wandered down the Lincoln Mall, had
lunch (more singing waiters) at a posh Italian where we began with a glass of
Alfred Gratien to begin a delicious meal. Saw the King's Speech for which all
should have Oscars. Incidentally there are obvious historical inaccuracies but
the essentials are correct and, while C Hitchens is basically right about Churchill,
he is wrong about the King and Queen and Hitler. Part of their dislike was
based on Bowes-Lyon snobbery. It was like Mannheim, the Finnish boss, who said
sniffily as Hitler ran towards him "Only other ranks run." The point as far as
the K and Q were concerned is that he was a common other rank even if he did
make the trains run on time and spoke fluently. Besides, he was a foreigner and
declared war on Britain which was very bad indeed. On such simplicities are
great events founded, alas. But then Hitchens didn't read Modern History even
though he was at Balliol!
So
I had my birthday in Florida where it was warm enough to sit out and we really
ought to be home shivering amid the cardboard boxes. Actually though it was a
month late the move went pretty well. The delay was one of those tiresome
things and it was probably a touch optimistic to expect the new beds to arrive
when they were supposed to. Or for the man from Sky to do what he said he had
done. Or for me to have uninterrupted wi-fi. Essentially it was OK, thanks in
part to terrific movers (removalists in Ozspeak) from Newquay. They struggled
up and down the footpath in Fowey in a howling gale. Admitted that they never
wanted to see another book (4,500 at their estimate). Packed anything that lay
in their path including things we meant to throw out but were generally
wonderful. If you intend moving just let us know.
The
other huge plus was the White Hart in downtown Martock. This was the local pub
where we were forced to bed down on account of the non-arrival of the sleeping
stuff. The pub had been an almost next door favourite of my grandfather many
years ago and was now obviously very different but they were incredibly
welcoming and we felt instantly at home.
Gradually
we started getting to know our new surroundings, aided, of course, by the fact
that so many of my family are crowded into the church-yard - my father on one
side; my aunt and uncle, Betty and Basil, and their son, my cousin David on the
other; with sundry Vaughans including grandparents and great grandparents in
the middle. Naturally I paid visits on both Sundays to the glorious church of
All Saints, second largest in all Somerset and for years the place where my
mother's family all worshipped. In a very real sense I felt as if I was coming
home.
This
was assisted, naturally, by our quick two-hour trip from the car park in
Wincanton to Hammersmith bus station. One of the benefits of my talk to the
annual dinner of the Belgian Cambridge Society was the chance to try the London
trip. This was by Berry's bus. When I was at Connaught House school. Bishop's
Lydeard, many years ago Berry's used to take us to swimming in Taunton, up to
the Quantocks and to away matches against St. Dunstan's and Perrot Hill in
their buses of which there were two. Old Mr. Berry drove the elder bus which
could barely make it up Cothelstone Hill; young Mr. Berry who had
Brylcreem-black hair drove the new bus - a mighty, throbbing behemoth, which
did Cothelstone Hill with ease.Now old Mr. Berry is long gone and young Mr.
Berry has become old Mr. Berry and the company has masses of buses which speed
up and down the A303 to and from London
bearing OAPs who pay astoundingly little for the privilege.
A
quick digression on the marvels of modern science. I couldn't find the "Write
Entry" button in orange/red. I needed
this to post my latest blog entry (this!) on-line. I asked Matt in far-off
Fowey what to do and he said could he come on line and fix it. This he did in a
matter of moments even though he is many thousands of miles away Magic! Like brain surgery, only by remote control
and computer.
So
we have moved to Bower Hinton and the best of many pluses is that it takes
under an hour for me to reach my Mama and between the 12th when we
moved and the 25th when we flew to Florida I saw her three times. Each
visit was an hour or so whereas in the past I was going for two or three days
about once a month. More visits less time seems the prerequisite. And preferable
all round.
On
the work front I am beavering away on my Queen book and sending regular
missives to London. Hope and believe it's OK. Have made corrections and
additions to "Death in the Opening Chapter" which is scheduled for March 31st.
Apparently that's the same day as Methuen are now going to publish my account
of Douglas Jardine's tour in India. Hope so, not least because I have arranged
the first of what I hope will be many talks about it some time in April. In
September Severn House say they will be publishing "Poison at the Pueblo"
though I must make revisions and additions before the end of March. Murray
should do my Queen in the autumn and Frances Lincoln my Richard Cobb letters.
Which makes five books. Plus my work for "The Lady" with a Royal Wedding and
the Duke's 90th both looming. And Sue at the Tablet has just emailed
about a review. In addition I have arranged talks in St. Ives, Fowey,
Bournemouth; I am keen to see cricket in Taunton in July maybe with family and
I have booked for the Indians at Lord's.
All
in all, especially bearing in mind the last birthday, I am now an old man in a
hurry. Brrmm, brrmmm. Scribble, scribble, drone, drone, Stirling Moss eat your
heart out!
It's been a tough year. That's what I'm told though it doesn't always feel like that. I've got through it, I'm alive, and even if all isn't right with the world it isn't as bad as all that. We should, by now, be in our new house in Somerset but, for various reasons, we aren't; I should be the author of a published work on Douglas Jardine in India but I'm not; I should this and I should that and life is full of stupid reverses but at the end of the day we stagger on. Silly to make plans but somehow I'll never learn and occasionally things work out the way you meant and even when they don't... I'm reminded of the old adage to the effect that nothing matters very much and most things don't matter at all. In the long run we're all dead. (He says cheerfully).
Talking of death, Anthony Howard snuffed it the other day. In the Guardian Peter Wilby said in his obit that Tony had perhaps never achieved what he should have done if he had performed according to his merits. What Wilby really meant, I think, was that despite editing the Listener and the New Statesman he had never edited a national newspaper. Does that mean that Donald Trelford, who edited the Observer when Howard was deputy, was more successful. Maybe so, but thank God, real success is not determined by such things. Thomas Hardy at the end of the Mayor of Casterbridge says of Michael Henchard "He was a good man and did good things", which I've always thought as fine an accolade as one could wish for even though in conventional worldly terms Henchard was a bit of a flop. I was also reminded of a tutorial with Jasper Griffin who picked me up when I said that something should be judged "on its merits" and quizzed me mercilessly. "What did you just say?Oh 'merits'. And how precisely would you define these merits?" I felt small beyond belief but Jasper had said nothing hostile, just asked questions. Good technique but an alpha mind and I knew then that I barely rated a gamma. Oh, the humiliation!
Anyway, here we all are at the end of another year and this is almost certainly the last time I shall be writing from Fowey. Next year, d etc v, we will be in Bower Hinton, Somerset which is a suburb of Martock, which is, as every fule kno, the centre of the universe. Meanwhile the sun is shining, the view of the harbour is Mediterranean but it's bloody cold, there is snow everywhere and we have cancelled our trip East to be near my aged Ma at Christmas. I have just had a message from the Millses who are buying our house to say they have bought several books that I wrote here and which they want me to sign as a sort of memento. I shan't be best pleased if they turn up in a local Oxfam shop (hint, hint) but it's a good augury. We have been fifteen years in Cornwall and we will both miss it. Time, though, for a change and for fresh challenges. And the new place has parking and is on the flat. Also there is a mature walnut tree in the garden and the address is 1 Roselands but there is no number two, nor has ever been. I am a sucker for that sort of mystery.
We spent New Year's eve in Newton Ferrers, Devon, with an old study-mate from school. Strange so many years on to be having supper in the yacht club as a pensioner with someone one once shared a study with many years ago.. Really we have very little in common except the school and the study and slightly peculiar fathers who were in the same regiment and both got immediate Distinguished Service Orders which meant, I think, that they fought the enemy with amazing gallantry and must have (we both think) lost their tempers. No sane, cool individual would have behaved quite like that. But my father (aka "Shocker") was certainly not sane in the accepted sense. Got home knackered to have a sad message from my elder son saying that his wife's much-loved brother had just been killed in a car crash in Canada and he was flying away in buckets of tears to the funeral. Couldn't think of anything helpful or indeed sensible to say. Life is a bugger at times and the longer you live the more of a bugger it becomes. Death again. He is always lurking around the corner, ready , apparently, to scythe you down when you are least expecting it.
In the morning of New year's Eve I saw the bank manager. I am very lucky to have such a person in this day of press-buttons, passwords and pin-numbers. He has been translated to Tavistock but seems dv etc to be taking me with him despite the fact that I am technically "out of area". He was busy clearing his desk and whereas he has hitherto invariably been dark-suited he was in mufti, a fact which obviously bothered him. As I am a resolutely casual dresser this didn't worry me. Besides I am greatly flattered to be going with him and rather like Tavistock. Heigh ho!
Meanwhile work in between the play. I have been making corrections to the new crime novel and wondering how to explain "emets" to my editor (Cornish grockles?) as well as wondering whether or not there is any significance to my introduction of Tim Tams or Cherry Ripes. I've also been fiddling around with the Coronation of 1953 and wondering why Norman Hartnell and Bernard, Duke of Norfolk, had a disagreement about leeks, what exactly a Court of Claims was, and why the Lord of the Manor of Worksop wasn't at Her Majesty's elbow as he had been since the Coronation of George IV. Maybe earlier. I keep getting side-tracked. My editor thinks I should play down the royal hat-trick apparently achieved by George VI at Windsor when he had three monarchs in successive deliveries (Grandpa, Pa and elder brother). The ball is supposed to be preserved at Dartmouth but the archivist there says no and what's more she has no record of it. Good story though!
I digress. This is probably a sign of age but digression is the better part of everything really and if you only attempt things which have a point or a purpose you'll go mad. I simply don't understand the question "why" and can never answer it.
Nevertheless the turn of the year is a time for taking stock, and for looking forward and back. I did this literally the other day, riffling through the pages of my diary to see what I had been doing in the last few weeks since I last did a blog. To my surprise I found that the launch party in the Massey Room at Balliol College, Oxford, was a culprit. Not a lot to say except that it seems a lifetime ago. There were a number of SNAFUs not least the weather which was embarking on its very cold snap. Nevertheless around fifty people braved the cold and the books were there too.
A brief recap. Tom was a brilliant and funny don who was a classical scholar at Balliol before decamping to Merton. His death about two years ago was not only tragic but ironic. Tom was a lifelong automophobe who never passed his driving test. Once a week, however, kind driving friends took him out to spend the day wandering round appropriate antiquities.
On the day in question Tom was on his way to see the Spencer tombs at Althorp minding his own business in the back if the car with the relevant volume of Pevsner when a lorry ran out of control somewhere around Banbury and ploughed into the back of the car. Tom lingered on in intensive care at a hospital in Coventry but finally died. I went to his memorial service in Merton chapel and said I'd help his brother Christopher edit an anthology of Tom's "occasional writing". The Massey Room was the spiritual home of the Arnold and Brakenbury Society and therefore, up to a point, and in a manner of speaking of Tom himself. You can get the book from Amazon or good bookshops and something of a flavor of one of our great pasticheurs from the beginning of Tom's Romantic Poem which I read out to the assembled company the other day before proposing a toast to the poet. Of course I lament his passing but I am unusually grateful to have known him.
"I must go back to the A and B
To the lamp-lit |Massey Room.
Where the speeches rise like the surge of the sea.
And jokes fall like the knell of doom."
Tom liked to end his graceful celebratory speeches with the words of another Balliol poet, Hilaire Belloc. As the old year slides away and we contemplate its successor it seems peculiarly apt to agree that "There's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends."
So we all know that, despite everything, 90 is quite old and reaching that age quite good. Well played Ma. A friend whose mother was 90 recently gave her a the dansant. At the appointed hour everyone threw down their sticks or leaped out of their chairs and took to the floor for a waltz or a military two-step. I thought this a bit ambitious, besides which I am all left feet or something so we just had a long open-day.
The first person to arrive on Thursday 25th, Gran's actual 90th birthday, was Dave from Deandrive. Caroline had done nothing about cancelling the fortnightly hair appointment in Tisbury, so Caroline (who was already making sarnies) and I persuaded her to go anyway. The only person she missed was Anne Pitman who had a long slightly depressing chat because it seems they must give up the farm. I hadn't see her for ages but she said that she remembers Michael Lodge as a twelve year old in the milking parlour following her late brother-in-law around. The first time my mother and I saw the Malt House in 1966 Michael was on the roof of the family farm opposite. There have been a lot of changes since then.
Next was John Bickersteth and a chauffeuse from Anstey. He used to be Bishop of Bath and Wells. I first knew him when I talked him re the family for Networks. There have been, I think more Bickersteths in the C of E than any other family. John is about a year younger than my Ma and his wife died a few months ago. He is very spry but I couldn't help feeling that old age can be a bit of a pain Then, in no particular order: Nigel and Rosemary Grove-White, He was one of the Staff College students in the fifties, in Kingston, Ontario, along with Roy Redgrave. He was at
I make that well over twenty.. There were pressies, messages, a lit candle in a chocolate birthday cake from Waitrose which was blown out to general applause.
Meanwhile we are supposed to be moving. We have sold our house in
Meanwhile life goes on. Sort of.
The other day we were due to go to
London was the usual mad helter-skelter induced by living so far away (I hope this will be ameliorated by moving nearer to the big smoke , though Somerset is still amazingly rural by the standards of Londoners - but it's not Cornwall!). On Saturday I joined a collection of Sherborne Old Boys for the England Samoa rugby match at Twickenham. I realized that it was well over fifty years since I first went to Twickenham with my father to see the Combined Services lose to the All Blacks who had an amazing kicker at full-back called Don Clarke. Those were the days. The game now is much more professional and physical. Arguably less cerebral though it was never an occupation for the seriously clever. (Watch out for brickbats!) I loved the old place and it's full of memories. I absolutely loathe the new place, the fake razzamatazz, the flares, the electronic hoardings around the base of the stands which are so distracting and which none of the commentators mention. I like the memories of Chips Heron, inebriated, trying to set fire to the balloon seller's wares with his zippo lighter, my father protesting vociferously to the referee "Oh, Doctor Cooper", the general air of grey flannel bags and pipe tobacco. Later I loved the Master's conversation with Richard Sharpe after he was asked to play rugby and take a term out, "Who has asked you, Mr. Sharpe?" "Someone called the Lions, Master." "Where", "
Otherwise I racketed around London in the usual way; I took a whole lot of ancient papers to the Tennis and Rackets Association; had a delicious nostalgic lunch at the Havelock with Euan Cameron; and a ditto dinner with Steve Dobell, Paul Cox at the Groucho with our wives; I saw Venetian pictures at the National and Cezanne's card players at the Courtauld; enjoyed an unexpected but near-perfect lunch at the capital's newest smart brasserie, les deux salons; and much else besides. I had a really enjoyable moan to my lovely agent, Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, again at the Groucho and a productive progress report on my latest royal book with my publisher, Roland Philips.
Ah yes, work. My book on Jardine's tour of
I have been asked to speak to the Dorset Cricket Society, the Belgian Cambridge Society and English Speaking Union branches in
Meanwhile my mother is 90 and still living at home. Now that really IS an achievement.
So I take the view that there are bad bloggers and good bloggers. Most of us think in similar terms. My favourite blogs are by Martin Edwards and the self-styled Earl of Belmont. I wrote down the e-addresses but seem to have lost them. Google works well though and I slightly incline to the view that there should be an easy search engine which gets you there. I also have betes-noirs bloggers. They seem - as Marr suggests - to be in a permanent state of rage. They also seem to be stupid and ill-informed. But I don't like anything Jeffrey Archer writes and it doesn't seem to matter whether it's a novel or a blog.It's still dreadful! It's not the medium I detest but the message and the messenger.
Google should get you there but the internet is seldom as simple as it should be. My dear younger son, who is something of an expert and works in the business says that he has had to create a special file for his PINS and passwords. Otherwise he can't possibly remember them all! I think that from the point of view of communications we are going through a period of swift and messy transition. Those who live by the means of communication - publishers especially - may find the transition difficult but those who produce the raw material, particularly writers should be OK. We need to be savvy and on our guard but the demand for words won't vanish overnight. And contrary to what most people thing monkeys can't even write sentences let alone novels, biographies or company reports! Some writers write like moneys but that is another matter and nothing to do with blogs.
I should be getting tremendously agitated about our impending move.Is this a subject on which I should shine a blogging light? This is one of several areas on which my wife and I take completely different views.Penny thinks we shouldn't even mention our move until it actually happens. We're both superstitious but whereas she believes that the merest hint of counting chickens leads to disappointment and disaster I believe that if you don't count chickens in advance you may never have the opportunity. On this basis I have been firmly - if only mentally - ensconced in an ancient Hine house in Beaminster,Dorset, a similar place in Crewkerne, Somerset and a cottage conversion in Long Street, Sherborne, the town where I spent five years at school in the late fifties and early sixties. Needless to say we are still in
I'm there already in my mind, scribbling away under the walnut tree, attending matins in All Saint's Church, Martock, speeding to
So what happened in the last month? Well, I attended the tenth
I then spent a few days with my mother who will celebrate her ninetieth on the 25th of this month and will be much more accessible if and when we are living in Bower Hinton. There we go again... shush...it may never happen. We'll end up in Stornoway or
What else? Oh Jardine. Amazon say my book about Douglas Jardine's last MCC tour (to
By the same token I have a short story in the latest Crime Writers' Association anthology and another in a German-Swiss production next summer. We are supposed to be launching an anthology of posthumous writings by my friend Tom Braun, sometime Fellow of Merton College,
Incidentally I've just been looking at my diary to see what I actually did, as distinct from what I thought I did, and I see that our second visit to Bower Hinton was only at the beginning of October with our offer being made a day or so later. I am chronically impatient, the classic old man in a hurry, but actually we have progressed quite fast and many are incredulous that we have done as much as we have in a relatively short time.
Almost the only outside visit/work was a few hours in mid-month talking to our estimable Lord Lieutenant about her job. V useful for the book I'm working on about the Queen's reign. Otherwise it's mainly been scribble, scribble as usual; not to mention blog, blog which comes to much the same thing. And in the rare interstices wondering why..
]]>It's probably batty to say that
the highspot of one's month was a conference at
What
we got the other day was shop.Like John Buchan, who once described it with a
shrug as experts talking about their area of expertise,I rather like shop.
There seem, to me, to be two sorts of people at the Guild's meetings - those
who teach, coach and win prizes and those who have fallen into speech-writing
almost by accident. I'm afraid I prefer the latter category, in which I place a
number if those present, viz Charles Crawford, Edward Mortimer, Martin Broughton,
Ryan Heath and Phil Collins. Crawford was a diplomat and Ambassador to such
places as
I don't mean to seem unpleasant
about the professional coaches and theorists but I'm afraid I didn't find them
as interesting as those who actually did the job. I got a real sense of what it
was like to be at the UN or the European Commission and I loved Martin
Broughton's story of a phone call from the Prime Minister. Years ago I was
lucky enough to moderate a discussion between Phyllis James and Simon Brett on
the subject of crime writing. They know each other well but they obviously
hadn't seen each other for a long time so they indulged in a gentle but
intimate game of catch-up which required little or no prompting from me. The
audience was given the unusual sense of eavesdropping on a private
conversation. That's what I felt I was getting from the practitioners at the
Incidentally Edward Mortimer who I've known since we both read history together almost half a century ago at Oxford more or less accused me of not being a speech-writer. This is true in the sense that, like him, I think of myself fundamentally as a writer and a hack but I did write speeches for the first ever non-Englishman to be president of the Royal Warrant Holders Association. He was a French count who ran a champagne house and the fee which was generous did not involve anything as vulgar or commonplace as money. I also ghost-wrote an auto-biography of a peer of the realm who went to prison many years ago for homosexual "offences" which wouldn't carry any penalties today. He had kept the transcripts of his trial but couldn't bring himself to read them. I had to do it and then pretend that I was the prisoner in the dock. Not easy but the absolute acme of ghost writing and therefore, I think, of speech writing too.
Otherwise busy as usual. We have
accepted an offer on our house. Cash. The asking price. The other day we looked
at a number of other possibilities in the
Anyway
the opening of my new royal book seems to have found favour with my smart new
publisher and my ditto literary agent so I feel encouraged and will press on.
Next stop the Lord Lieutenant of
Meanwhile we went to Sherborne
for the 70th anniversary of the Luftwaffe bombing which killed 18
townspeople but despite several direct hits to the Courts no-one from the
school. An impressive turn-out and some good lines. I particularly liked the
man who questioned the veracity of Lord Haw-Haw because he claimed that the
German Air Force had destroyed half the British fleet at
And so we trundle on. In all
sorts of ways the move East is the most significant item on the agenda and it
is astonishing how many people say that Cornwall was impossibly far but in
future we will be within recognized civilization so that we may actually see
old friends and family. I rather hope we will end up in Martock where my
grandfather once owned a glove factory and where many of my family lie in the
churchyard. But who knows? Planning, I have always been told, is God's idea of
a joke; but I like to dream and Martock and environs is rather a good dream.
Maybe I will become a fan of Yeovil FC and go to the cricket ground at
Life is seldom dull. Despite God and his jokes.
]]>Ended the month with a visit to my mother who celebrates her ninetieth birthday in November. I know I shouldn't intrude on her privacy but it was a sad few days in many ways, not least because it confirmed for me the essential selfishness of the society in which we live. My Ma and I have a running joke (mine and feeble but there you go!) about how she is not as old as she thinks or claims. She has ten years to go before she qualifies for a telegram from the Queen and even then she has to ask. Everyone is living much longer. She is no longer unusual just one of an increasing number.
In a number of respects she is lucky and well-off and in lucid moments she realizes this and is grateful. She is still able to live in her lovely home in glorious countryside where she has lived since the 1960s. One way and another she is provided with food and comfort and I see her as often as I can.
Not so long
ago she would have been a difficult presence surrounded by several generations
of family who would no doubt be mutually maddening. Now she has pensions, a
variety of paid help and relations who live mainly in
Of course
everything could be much much worse. You see people on TV every day whose lives
have been blighted by famine, flood, fear and everything but even so it's not a
lot of fun being old and increasingly alone. Which is just one of the reasons
the house in Fowey is on the market and we're hoping to move East. The plot is
somewhere in a triangle of which the main points are Crewkerne, Sherborne and
Beaminster. There are other reasons - the
Mind you,
it's easier said than done. We have put the house on the market with
I began
last month with a visit to my Mama and more or less concluded it with another.
There was house hunting. Professionally I chugged along and the biggest
successes were the sale of two short stories - one to a CWA anthology which is
being published by Severn House in the autumn and the other (Bognor goes to
Basel) to be published in German for the next AIEP, international crime writers
conference in Zurich next summer. "What
does Bognor sound like in German?" asked my literary agent thoughtfully. And
then there is the Connaught House Reunion in September 2011 - see the attached letter at the end of this post.
Ah, the
Connaught House reunion. Absurd you might think to be nostalgic about a prep
school which folded many years ago and has given way to a Health Farm (Cedar
Falls) which itself is in to the celebration of anniversaries. Only its 25th
but even so; Connaught House which was all too briefly at Watts House, Bishop's
Lydeard near
Anyway Guy
Knapton who was head boy there and won a scholarship to Downside turns out to
be a beadily efficient academic businessman living near
Otherwise
it has been very much the mixture as usual. I spent a day at the Pakistan Test
match which was almost entirely obliterated by rain. Foul play came later. Had
an agreeable and unexpected lunch with the Marchwoods and a racing friend from
On the home front we had Regatta Week but stayed home and watched from the house. It rained quite hard on the Thursday so the Red Arrows only put in a token appearance. Never mind. We had a less than usually extravagant lunch and entertained the Hans-Hamiltons, the Owens and Marcia and her nephew (?) Jeff. Gavin H-H celebrated a significant birthday on the Friday. We had a jolly lunch with Julia, the daughter of my dear departed Godma one day in her converted cottage outside Beaminster.
Otherwise it's been head down and scribbling. Scribblers always scribble and never retire. No pension schemes for most scribblers but they don't really anticipate such luxuries and expect to be condemned to a lifetime of scribbling and no retirement. Never mind, we enjoy it and it essentially serves us right. Lucky to be doing it
It reminds me of the reaction I seem to have had to practically everything at all different or dangerous that I have ever attempted. I am nearly always confronted with a sharp intake of breath, a sucking of teeth and words to the effect that "I wouldn't do that if I were you, old boy". (Everyone who counsels inactivity is always masquerading as a great friend). The advice always seems to be that it's better by far to remain at home, take no risks, maintain a low profile and do as little as possible. Whenever I disregard this my course of action usually (though by no means always) works out. When I meet the person who advised me to stay at home and not on any account to raise my head above the parapet, they listen to my mildly truculent tale of success and then shake their head and opine wisely and unanswerably "It's different for you." I invariably protest "How?" I ask. "Why?" But they just shake their head a tad sadly and say "Just is".
Story of my life. It's different for me. Just is.
*****
Connaught House School
Old Boys Reunion
To mark the first year of Connaught House School in 1885/1886, in Weymouth, a 125th anniversary reunion of all Old Boys and staff members of the School is being planned for 13th and 14th September 2011, at Pembroke College, Cambridge by courtesy of the Master and Fellows.
We are writing to you in the hope that you will be able to attend the reunion, and to ask you to spread the word far and wide, among as many Old Boys and staff members as you know or know of, and to ask them all to do likewise.
At 6 o'clock on Tuesday, 13th September 2011, by courtesy of the Dean of the College, there will be a Service of Thanksgiving in the College Chapel for all Old Boys and Staff, and especially for those who fell in the two world wars. It is hoped that at least one Old Boy in holy orders will agree to be a celebrant. The Service will be followed by drinks, after which we shall make our own arrangements for the evening.
On Wednesday, 14th September 2011 drinks will be served at noon followed by lunch in the Old Library of the College. The price for the two functions will be about £50 per person, and it is hoped there will be enough room for wives and partners to attend.
Accommodation, including breakfast, will be available in College for those wishing to stay overnight. The modest charge for this is not included in the price above.
To help with the organization of the anniversary reunion, please send as soon as possible to one or other of the addresses below, and this no later than 31st October 2010, notice in writing of your intention to attend the reunion and whether you expect to be accompanied.
Payment will only be due on 30th June 2011.
We are very fortunate in being able to hold this reunion at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Randall Hoyle, whom so many of us knew as Headmaster, was an undergraduate there from 1923 to 1926. Roger, his only son who sadly died in 1999, went up in 1961. Guy Knapton, the last surviving direct descendant of the school's founder, J. R. Morgan, who
was also a pupil, went up in 1960.
Pembroke is the third oldest college in Cambridge, founded in 1347. The Old Library replaced the first College Chapel in the late 17th century. Pembroke was the first college to have its own chapel, and the present Chapel is the first building of Christopher Wren, dating from 1665.
For further information, please get in touch with either Tim Heald or Guy Knapton. Please be sure to let us have your full contact details, whether or not you intend to come to the reunion. Their respective addresses are:
Tim Heald
66 The Esplanade
Fowey
Cornwall PL23 1JA
tim@timheald.com
Tel: 01726-832781
Guy Knapton
76 Chemin du Gros Tienne
1380 Lasne
Belgium
guykguard-books@yahoo.com
Tel: +32-2-6538079
I sensed this the other day inWiltshire watching my mother. She will celebrate her ninetieth birthday in November and she is having ever greater probems with vocabulary and communication while, as far as I can see,suffering little or no diminution in brain capacity. Because of this, and for other reasons, she is retreating more and more into a world of her own with her own thoughts and where no-one else, even those closest to her, are unable to go. I do feel sad about this but not disconsolate. In the end, I think, we are, however gregarious, however blessed with family and friends, on our own.
End of solemnity and seriousness. It was just a thought and one which I wanted to share. It may be that the self-employed writer is more prone to such feelings but that doesn't make me less aware of them, nor, for that matter, dangerously inclined to universalize. Things may be different for others but basically we bring nothing in, we take nothing out, and when chips are down it's just us.
It's been an interesting hard-working few weeks for me with a number of trips down memory lanes which some people think counter-productive but which I rather enjoy. One of the more recent was a day in Sherborne. I am now contracted to write a history of the school, which is sometimes said to date back to the eighth century and to be sandwiched between an interesting trio of royal Old Boys - Alfred at the beginning and the Crown Prince of Qatar and the King of Swaziland more recently. I stayed with John Harden, the Secretary of the Old Boys - thank you John, thank you Caroline - before a morning with Peter Currie and an afternoon with Michael Earls-Davis. I remember them both as masters when I was a boy at the school and it's strange to meet them again on more or less equal terms even though there is still, inevitably, an urge for me to call them sir and to defer most of the time. Pete taught me French and Michael was in charge of the Combined Cadet Force. I perversely enjoyed ceremonial drill and the Field Day. The former involved thumping military music which I like and the latter meant seeing beautiful rural
Anyway I am determined to enjoy being the new "Unks" Gourlay, the peculiar, scholarly schoolmaster who wrote the last
Anyway from there I took the train to Wiltshire to stay at my mother's for a few days.One brief excursion was to the Lamb at Hindon for lunch with Michael Dobbs with whom I shared a stage a year or so ago. Thoroughly enjoyable occasion in every way but we should have been at the Beckford Arms at Fonthill Gifford. We had booked but she burned down in the middle of the night. The last time we attempted a meal there she was closed for several months of refurbishment. Sorry Beckford Arms, no jinx intended.
One of the big plusses of my stay at the Malt House was the chance to get to know the latest addition to my greater family, Henry, a grandson now eight months old. Henry seems to spend most of his life chortling while not bawling or sleeping, eating or trying a spot of interesting projectile vomit. How enviable to lead a life so uncomplicated by thoughts of mortgage and mortality, but, alas, it is all to come while for people such as his grandfather a descent into a second age of not-so-serene simplicity is getting all too close. But steady on, I must not be maudlin.
And so to Balham where my younger son Tristram and his wife Beth celebrated a happy harbinger with dinner in a brasserie in which the ubiquitous Rick Stein appears to have a stake. He's everywhere. Inescapable.Balham is no longer Peter Sellars' famous "Gateway to the south" distinguished only by the ever-changing traffic lights. It has become trendy - a place of suits, ladies who lunch, salsa bars and yes, the ever-present Rick Stein. Next day I spent brow furrowed over the collected Tom or Thomas or TFRG Braun and all his works which his brother Christopher and I are trying to edit into acceptable volume form. A labour of love in which Tristram came galloping like the
In the meantime the letters of Richard Cobb where the cast-list of characters has risen to almost 10,000 words and the proposed jacket of my book on Douglas Jardine's tour of India in 1933 and 4 which Methuen are to publish this autumn: all muscular Christianity, pith helmet and a posthumously maddening sense of missionary zeal, lesser breeds and Gandhi in the distance rattling his bed of nails.
So I'm exhausted and yet can't sleep.. It is the middle of the night and I should be in bed but am instead at the keyboard. Perhaps this is the punishment God has in store, a sort of Sisyphus substitute where the self-employed writer is bound to an eternal QERTY and forced to rap out ceaseless drivel for an illusory audience. Oh well. Scribble, scribble. Could be worse. And there is the Connaught House reunion to look forward to. Autumn 2011.
The one day
international between
Anyway it
seems extraordinary to be back in the
Oh what?
It's certainly different though. In some respects it is the similarity with what we know which
is striking. Thus the best thing to come out of the conference for me,
personally, is being commissioned to write a short story for a German language anthology
to be published for next year's conference in
The best things at conferences A LWAYS happen in the interstices,; over the breakfast table, in the corridors but seldom on stage. There were exceptions, of course. I loved the lecture by a former Dean of Journalism, an ex White House correspondent called David Dary, one of whose books I have since acquired from Bookends of Fowey, which is generally unobtainable on this side of the Atlantic and is called Cowboy Culture. It's very good indeed - rigorous, readable and about a subject on which we are parochially ignorant.
Despite this and such incidental public pleasures as a man and a dog describing policework among the Indians and a baseball game between the Oklahoma team and their Memphis counterpart it was moments of natter and chatter with the likes of Jutta which were most memorable. It is ever thus.
Don't incidentally fly all over the States. Americans do and they always tell you that the train and the bus don't operate but Greyhound and Amtrak still exist and while we were told by all and sundry that they are dangerous, unpunctual or had simply passed on we used both and were well satisfied. I suppose a failure to tell the baggage handlers that our departure gate had changed, the nail through the tire and the failure to find the only man allowed to change said tire were par for the course. The emergency landing in North West Arkansas because a nearby passenger had thrown a fit was bad luck (a lot worse for him than for us) but I'd still pass on planes and stick to buses and trains - even in the States. Maybe it is a risk but you see a lot more and we enjoyed them. Flying involves wandering around without a jacket or shoes and is a pain.
Anyway we
ended up for a couple of days in Chicago which seemed like the centre of the
universe and was amazingly cool after the extreme heat of the old south and
then headed home getting into Heathrow
early in the morning sleepless and having watched a surfeit of. Still, we made
it, so thank-you Virgin and the volcano in
Once home
we spent a night with friends just outside
I have a marginal quandary about Sherborne because when I was a boy there in the fifties and sixties I was a serious rebel, helped to start an allegedly subversive national magazine, disliked many activities such as compulsory boxing and the Combined Cadet Force. Since then, however, the school has changed in some ways quite dramatically. In any case, like so many institutions, there was stuff I disliked but other things such as the quality of some of the teaching and the beauty and history of the place which I enjoyed and still do. I disapprove of the basic notion of fee-paying education but I don't see why people should be discriminated against just because they have rich parents besides which I am attracted by the notions of my late (and great) English teacher there, John Buchanan, who said there were only two sorts of school, good and bad and presumably I wished to make them all better. I'm not sure I agree but I see what he meant.
In any case I think I'm probably the best person for the job and I will enjoy it. I don't think that means I have "sold out" or betrayed my original beliefs. Not everyone will agree but I think Sherborne, for better or worse, is part of me. After all I spent five years there and I can't deny it.. Not everyone will agree but there you go! If I do nothing else I shall work in an approving mention of the world's greatest biscuit: the Dorset Knob. Let's hear it for Dorset Knobs everywhere.
So home at last . Bank manager, a Cornish pasty lunch plus crime fiction at the local library, alfresco lunch in a friend's beautiful garden. Rugby (better than usual from a crummy England), World Cup Soccer (abysmal from another crummy England), Wimbledon Tennis (not even a crummy England but a half decent if surly Scot) all available on terrestrial TV and the only half-decent "England" is cricket which you can only get (like rugby come to think of it) on Murdoch's Sky and which relies heavily on the South Africans and Irish. Maybe the English should abandon any attempt at playing top-whack sport. Foreigners do it so much better.
Anyway back to earth with a vengeance and at the end of the month off to see my aged Mama (she will be 90 next birthday). It's normally four hours from our local station, Par, to Tisbury, hers. On this day, however, there had been a derailment so my train was nonchalantly cancelled; I was an hour late and almost missed the butcher. On Tuesday, after among other excitements, a merry session with Bishop Bickersteth (who claims to be the only Bishop to have gone shooting with Prince Philip at Sandringham), I travelled on to London (the normally trusty taxi failed to show but luckily Dave who is even trustier came to the rescue and I caught my scheduled train before embarking on the usual hectic London schedule involving lunch with friends, supper with my younger son, Tristram, a visit to Buckingham Palace (no that was the day after), another to Sally Soames' terrific exhibition of photos including one of Clement Attlee for which I did the interview, maps at the British Library, a chat with a former royal policy chief, breakfast with an old friend and favourite editor who was put out and late because his bath overflowed and so to bed at the Frontline Club.
That was
the month, that was. Busy, busy; a bit of a roller-coaster. Such, I think is
life. A matter of hanging in sometimes by one's finger tips. It can be
frustrating; often fascinating; sometimes fun. But it IS, like it or not and
another month has passed. It's foggy outside and I can't even see Polruan. The
Dutch are in the final of the world cup. I've almost finished reading the
history of
A friend
said the latest adventure read like a musical and I suppose it does really.
We're in
We voted an
eternity ago in the public library in Fowey where I am due to return to
normality in a few days talking about crime-writing over a pasty lunch and we were
in
Anyway we
voted and flew round volcanic ash to
All too
soon Leo drove us to the Amtrak Station and we got on the train for
We loved
After a few days on our own Frank
Rizzla picked us up and drove us to his huge and comfortable house in mid-town
We had already clocked him at an exhibition of silver because much of the
exhibition seemed to be his! Frank was charming and hospitable and that evening
drove us to the Chatham Club where we had dinner with Bob and Frankie Vinyard
and their friend Chloe. The "event" (my drone) was held on Sunday afternoon in
a hall next to the Episcopal Church which we attended that morning with the
Vinyards. It was followed by an informal reception to which members contributed
plates. A well-informed and enthusiastic audience, I thought. Well I would,
wouldn't I? Frank hosted a small "brunch" at the Oglethorpe Club beforehand.
Apart from the Vinyards the only other person there was the sister of one of
the main characters in the book about
From Savannah we went to Atlanta, handed on by one branch of the English Speaking Union like a relay baton, illegal immigrants or something.Pace our new host was much younger than most ESU officials, (46), and put us up in his smart modern town house. On our first night they gave a very enjoyable drinks party for us with a lot of interesting people many of whom turned up at the black tie dinner the following night. This was fine though Penny put up a mild black for asking NOT to be seated next to me. I spoke from a rostrum with a lapel mike. Not everyone wore a tux which seemed to be a source of some confusion. The club was smart and the atmosphere formal but friendly.
We sat next to a fascinating German couple and one guest, present at both functions, knew an alarming amount about Neville Shute.
From
In some ways this was the most impressive branch: numerous, well organized and enthusiastic. We stayed with Joan who was enchanting and of serious Scottish descent. Dinner was a black tie event with a good crowd many of whom we had already met at a pretty swagger cocktail party before a concert by the Nashville Symphony with Bartok's Bluebeard illuminated by glass by Dale Chihuley, the artist from Seattle about whom we should have known much more than we did (nothing!)
From
In Memphis
we stayed in a condominium owned by our hostess and we did all the trippery
things such as the Peabody Hotel and resident ducks, B.B. King's place in Beale
Street and Graceland where Elvis lived and which is now the most visited house
in the States after the White House. My speech in
Next day we
celebrated a significant birthday for Penny with a ritual mint julep at the
Peabody Hotel and a BBQ supper at the Rendezvous where a local doctor came up
saying he had been at the ESU the previous night. And so in three hops, via
Meanwhile
the laptop continues to bring news of home and I have been sending out royal
letters to potential helpers on the next big book. Penny has been blogging and
writing postcards and it is now early morning in
My new
friend the Earl of Belmont suggested recently that I might perhaps write
something in my blog about royalty so yes I think I will. I should perhaps
explain that
My piece about the Duchess of Cornwall is due in the next issue but more importantly Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson has sold my idea for a new book to mark the 60th anniversary of the Queen's accession to John Murray. Well played John Murray; well played Christopher; well played me. I first came up with the idea years ago and in a sense my worst fears have been realised because I am aware of at least four other books which were signed up ages ago and to which I have notionally lost ground. I remain, however, quietly confident. This is probably silly and arrogant but I feel I have been working and preparing for this book most of my life. If I can't write this I can't write anything.
So that's the royal story, specially for the belted earl. It bears out my theory of 'reasonable expectation" which says, broadly speaking, that if you come to a bend in the road and you can't see more than a few yards ahead it is reasonable to suppose that the road continues around the corner and you continue to drive in the same manner as before. There have been moments in this latest royal saga when those who don't share my belief have despaired. I, however, have urged doubters to tighten their belts, hold on to their seats and all will be well in the end. And so, however, belatedly, it came to pass. And no I am not crowing.On the other hand I wish everyone had shared my confidence.
I am about to write letters to as many royal contacts, experts and so on as I can think of but if anyone reading this feels they have something to contribute do please letg me know. My email address is tim@timheald.com and I look forward to hearing from you. I've also made the cover of "The Lady" magazine with my story on the Duchess of Cornwall. I hope that my role as the magazine's "Royal Correspondent" will help with the book.
Thursday is
election day and Penny and I aim to vote first thing and then whiz to Par
station. I'm not sure either of us know how we're going to vote. I have voted
Liberal at every election for which I've had the vote. After all I was on the
candidates' list when Thos D.Nudds was in charge of us. He really had known
Lloyd George and the great Garth Pratt was the party's candidate in
Meanwhile I
have been carrying on with "Yet another Death in
As always when I feel slightly disoriented I have been going through my diary to find out what I have been doing. A problem I find with advancing years is not such amnesia as a related problem which concerns fitting events into a time frame. I seem to be reasonably good at recalling things that have happened over a reasonably catholic period but I do have the greatest difficulty putting a time to such events. In my case I am also increasingly bad at recognizing "celebrities" and am not much the wiser when this is painstakingly explained. And I have increasing difficulty remembering my passwords. As for "security" questions I have increasing trouble remembering my mother's maiden name nor the fourth letter of my password (especially when I can't remember my password.) It might help if remembering such things made me feel more secure but I feel as threatened as ever.
On Friday 9th I see that I met Gage Williams and Tim House at Fowey Hall Hotel. The former is a retired Brigadier, the latter C.O. of the 6th Battalion of the Rifles, and a man of Dorset who like me was born in Dorchester.We met to discuss the charity cricket match we are (or were) to play in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund. Apart from the cricket a highlight was the Salamanca Band which was to play and beat retreat. I had been looking forward to this for over a year. Anyway, suffice it to say, that the Rifles have withdrawn and I have resigned as President of the Fowey Club. End of story which I am sure has many sides of which mine is less than one. I'm sad but, well, as I say 'end of story' and time to move on. This doesn't make me any the less sad but crying over spilt milk won't refill the bottle. Goodness, how philosophical!
Or defeatist?
A week later I went to see Ma in Wiltshire. Tristram and Beth came on Saturday and left after lunch on the Sunday. Afterwards we went to the new bungalow of her old friend Conti and had tea. Somewhere along the line she lost her handbag. Vanished into thin air. A minor miracle. On Monday Penny and I looked at a house in Crewkerne, lunched at a pub in Bradford Abbas and I dropped her in Sherborne. It's pretty Sherborne but there is lot of skewed history there: Mould and Edwards is no longer an old-fashioned grocer's; the Three Wishes is stripped pine and baguettes not linen table cloths and scones; the Abbey Bookshop has no caxtonian printer in the attic let
alone Bert Chamberlain to operate it. Next day I drove to
Bog
standard month. Fatigued very; election looms; volcanoes back; flooding in
I've been thinking about Christianna Brand which I concede is not something I often do. She was a large lady who affected bell tents and hung around Crime Writers' meetings when I first joined in the seventies. She seemed slightly superannuated even then and vaguely reminiscent of the woman we called "The Red-faced warbler" who enlivened church services in Fulmer when I was a child. She never seemed quite real. Rather like that large woman with the fake vowels on TV. Hyacinth Bucket aka Bouquet. I had to consult my wife over her name, a sure sign of age.
Anyway Christianna reminded me slightly of her and she died in her eighties almost thirty years ago, However some time in the sixties she wrote three novels with a character called Nurse Matilda based on someone who had looked after her cousin, the illustrator Edward Ardizzone. These novels have now been adapted by Emma Thompson and have become a film which is getting loads of publicity.
Very occasionally I hear the name of Christianna Brand in this context but it's nearly all about Emma Thompson who is famous and a flavour of our times whereas Christianna Brand is neither of these things. No fault, as far as I can see, of Miss Thompson who has been scrupulous about naming her source but an indictment of the times and the press. I admit to a certain self-interest, not because I remember Christianna but because I have a dreadful feeling that the same sort of thing will happen to me. A latter day Emma Thompson will "discover" someone I invented such as Dr. Tudor Cornwall.re-invent him for film and stand back to take all the credit. Meanwhile I will be dead, forgotten and ignored.
Such, I suppose, is life but it does seem a bit unfair.
I don't know if this confirms or denies my doctrine of "reasonable expectation" but I had some (to me) interesting examples last week after trying to catch a train from Tisbury the nearest station from my mother in Wiltshire. I booked a cab. This sounds grand but it's sensible and we've been using the same company for ever and they've always seemed incredibly reliable. This Monday they failed to show. Consternation. More "unreasonable expectation" followed. First, I encountered a neighbour driving towards me just a few hundred yards from the house as I began to walk the two or three miles to the station. Freddie very kindly told me to hop in the back and drove me to the station. There I was able to catch the next train and get back more or less on schedule. However I was technically on the "wrong" train. When I confessed to the guard he scolded me briefly but did the necessary scribbling on my ticket and didn't make the extra charge to which he was perfectly entitled.
So three cases of "unreasonable expectation" aka surprise, in a single morning. The two goods outweighed the bad but on the other hand they should not have occurred without the first. Oh well. Pooterish, no doubt. But of such Pooterisms is life composed.
Simon Hoggart had an interesting piece on similar lines in the paper the other day. Basically he was saying that he understood the greed behind the apparent actions of Stephen Byers and Patricia Hewitt and other MPs. That didn't mean he condoned them but he did understand them. Essentially Hoggart was saying that MPs sweat blood on our behalf and are confronted by quite large numbers of people who have done infinitely less for the common good but have walked off with much greater financial rewards. It's not surprising if some of them cut corners to secure something similar for themselves.
I know the
feeling. My own instinct is to blame Thatcher and Murdoch who I tend to blame
for everything. It was they more than anyone who introduced the idea into
There is a lot to be said for this approach but nowadays nobody seems to be listening.
I have been looking back at my diary to see what exactly I have been doing and find that an awful lot has been dispiriting. The weather, which seems to have been uniformly ghastly, hasn't helped. Nor has work which I mustn't go on about though I found myself slightly chastened when my elder son remarked that most people of my age had given up and were enjoying their retirement. That is, if they were still alive and well enough to do so. I'm afraid I remain in a hurry with too much to fit into the time available but I sense that this is widely regarded as rather bad form. It's certainly true that if one were in conventional salaried employment one would have been pensioned off. However I am not in conventional salaried employment and never have been. This is widely regarded as "a bad thing" and there are still lots of people around who want to know what I am going to do when I grow up. Alas, it's a bit late for that.
On the work front I can't pretend that it has been easy though there are signs that the lot of the self-employed writer generally may be improving after a more than usually bleak period. I suppose it is bad that I seem to derive as much if not more pleasure from things that don't bring financial reward.I hear Roy Jenkins, not someone who had much apparent need to be worried on that score, admonishing the Oxford Society with the words "Let us hear it for the non-acquisitive professions". I like the idea of the non-acquisitive profession even though I understand the need for food, drink and shelter. On the other hand I have just agreed to do a morning show at Radio St. Austell Bay and to natter at the local library during National Crime Fiction Week.
Neither is going to make me rich and yet I seem to care about them in a way that I don't always care about paid employment. I suppose it's because everything nowadays seems to be about money. I remember, for instance, how, when going to a college re-union I found more university teachers than I had ever seen before in a single room. Most of them could have made more money, pursued more lucrative careers but they chose not to. When it was my children's turn I found that most of their contemporaries went on to be bankers and to try to make money because making money was all that mattered. University now seems to be measured almost exclusively in terms of whether or not a degree will lead to more money. Thank you Mrs. Thatcher. I am one of those who believes that there is such a thing as knowledge in the abstract and that it is worth pursuing for its own sake. But then I believe that there is such a thing as society as well.
Ah well, we live in material times and perhaps it is God's punishment that we are not very good at it. Serves us right. Oh I have just had an "expression" of interest from a TV production company and have sent them a puff for my "Tudor Cornwall" trilogy. I'd love any forthcoming money; of course I would. But I have a feeling that I'd enjoy everything else about the exercise at least as much. It's a salutary thought. Money and all that it buys is important but it's not THAT important.
And on that Pooterish thought I will sign off thinking about the meaning of life and wishing and hoping that there is more to it all than money.
]]>Lucy's wedding was the high spot of the month; an informal affair in a garden with a view overlooking the Matakana coastline in New Zealand, presided over by a Kiwi celebrant called Sykes (female), followed by speeches and supper and skyped home to the bride's brother in a frosty West London. I spoke, before supper, and tried to be mildly embarrassing for the last time, recalling the occasion that Lucy had been confronted by her brother, now a teacher at St. Benedict's, and asked to remove the pin from his nose which he had inserted with huge sartorial enthusiasm a few hours previously.He had since repented of this but could not remove it unaided. Lucy did the trick.
Penny and I
flew to
Anyway I
like it here and people - including some transplanted Brits and Australians -
couldn't have been kinder and friendlier. I have written lots of the latest novel
("Death in the opening Chapter"), a successful piece for the Lady about the
visit of Prince William and another piece about the wines and other attractions
of the Matakana country for Country Life. On Saturday we are going to drive
over to Wally's (Wally is a lost Australian bird called a galah - a sort of
noisy budgerigar) on the Wharf at Whakatane for fish and chips (fush and chups
in the vernacular) and maybe on Sunday we hope to go to an amazing sounding
estate nearby for clay pigeon shooting. Depends on our new friend Virginia. I
have the use of a lovely old Land Rover from Yeovil but Penny doesn't like my
driving and keeps complaining that it is very wide and the roads very narrow.
We didn't hit anything on the way to and from Rotorua the other day and the
Land Rover reminds me of driving Cecil round North
Last night we had a scary electric storm but
generally the views of
I shouldn't
be here, of course. There is a school of thought which says I should be back in
the
I know I am going to get flak for applauding this and saying that, to a certain extent and within obvious limitations, one has to ignore rules, other people and even what passes for common sense, but I nevertheless believe it quite passionately. It may end in tears but it's important to be able to say, in the words of the Sinatra song, that you did it your way.
So here I
sit on the shores of
I see that
the Grim Reaper continues to scythe away. He got Michael Mavor, ex headmaster
of Loretto, Gordonstoun and Rugby aged
only sixty two on holiday in
And even when it isn't the finality of a death sentence there are other evidences of passing years. Our latest consignment of mail included an invitation to the farewell party of a friend who had been at the same publishers for forty years. I remember him as a young man when we both had everything before us. Now we are members of the old guard about whom we used to giggle forty years ago. Incidentally I recall a military friend of mine writing a rather good biography. When I remarked, rudely, that I didn't know that he could write English he answered that our friend was his editor. This explained the excellence of his prose. My Army friend then looked thoughtful and said that in the military his editor would have been a first-rate fighting man. Unfortunately all soldiers were dogged by a body called HQ Company. It was his philosophy to pare HQ to an absolute minimum but he had noticed that in publishing HQ company was ginormous and fighting men thin on the ground. "I wonder what they all do", he mused contemplating the dead wood at the heart of the ailing business. Life is dogged by huge HQ companies.
I remember once speaking at a writers' conference and the evening before I was due on a highly successful and famous author spoke. I thought he was entertaining and instructive but my friends, mostly unpublished and struggling, were furious and unimpressed. "He made it seem so easy", they chorused. I don't think that's what he meant. He was just trying to emphasise the fact that he had been lucky and good fortune can strike anyone. (Likewise bad). But my new friends didn't agree. They thought he had failed to suggest that it was amazingly hard work. So, I would venture to suggest (and was very careful to say next morning!) it is.
I don't for a moment deny my good luck. It's been phenomenal and as I sit typing this and looking out across sunny lawns and shrubs to the lake beyond I count my blessings. But I wouldn't claim that it's easy. My experience is that if you don't work you don't get. And even if you do work you don't necessarily get. On reflection that's wrong too. One of the sad and depressing things about life is that many of those who reap the greatest rewards - financial anyway - seem not to do a hand's turn. But I don't see the satisfaction of a life spent in HQ company.
On the other hand there is a school of thought that says that confronted with problems and adversity you pull in your horns, hunker down and do as little as possible. That's a parody but not far from the truth and it's emphatically not my style. Confronted with adversity one has two alternatives. One is to go into your shell and give up; the other is to come out swinging. As the late Randolph Churchill said when things are bad you put on your best overcoat, get hold of the most expensive cigar you can, and walk up and down Piccadilly smiling broadly.
I am of the
Churchillian persuasion which is, I think, why I am in
That said, I have, I think, arrived at a policy of "reasonable expectation" which sums up my beliefs and actually everyone else's in a sense, if you see what I mean which you probably don't. "Most people" are in salaried employment and "reasonable expectation" means that they can expect to be so for the foreseeable future (another interesting concept). This means that they can plan and budget accordingly. Those relatively few of us who are not in salaried employment have also to rely on "reasonable expectation" but we don't enjoy a regular salary and all we have to go on is past performance. In my case, I think, it was reasonable to expect that I would go on having fiction and non-fiction books published, sometimes serialized, and that this together with more or less regular income from journalism would correspond to a reasonable salary.
Maybe I should have foreseen a collapse of all this more or less completely and more or less simultaneously. Unfortunately I didn't. Add in the unexpected death of my younger brother and a semi-debilitating stroke for my mother and you have a pretty bad case scenario which runs, I think, counter to "reasonable expectation".
The question now is how do I deal with this? My answer is to fight one's corner. I can't change personal disasters but I can strive to get myself back track.
A case in
point though. Next June there is an international crime writers; conference in
I think this is all perfectly reasonable but many won't and don't. Which is, I suppose, another way of saying that I would never have hacked it at headquarters.
I belong in the trenches with my friend the editor of the last forty years. "Reasonable expectation" is what I look forward to and I am determined to make it come to pass! ]]>What I found almost most fascinating is that at the end of the year Lithuanians traditionally wipe the slate clean, cancel all debts and generally start afresh. Terrific, of course, but alas life for most of us isn't like that and we don't have the luxury of being able to start completely fresh because the accumulated baggage stays with us no matter what. So even though this is a time for taking stock and making new resolutions there are things which have been done and things left undone and they can't be changed. I'm all for wiping slates clean but there is, for better or worse, a limit. Our slates can't be wiped clean if only because much of the writing is indelible.
On the plus side the arrival of Henry Heald on November 25th is the best news. The third grandson and the first to carry the family name and a British birthplace. Welcome Henry. In the summer my son, Tristram, got married, and I am now in
My job on Friday is to "give Lucy away" though the service seems likely to be predictably contemporary and will take place en plein air or under canvas and as far as I can see with minimal religious involvement. My Lithuanian sister-in-law, responsible, of course, for Christmas, eve has urged me not to do what all Australians do which is to make a really insulting speech on such occasions in the belief that this illustrates true devotion. I am further encouraged in this by the words of Gabriel Garcia Marques, the great Colombian novelist, who is retiring from public life because he has lymphatic cancer. His words, accompanied by a chanson and pics of Paris have been sent on by Annie van Es widow of the photographer Hugh, whose wake Penny and I organized at the Frontline Club in London and whose obituary I wrote last year for the Guardian. Marques says we should speak fondly of our nearest and dearest, reminding them at all times of how much we adore them.
Well, I will do my best, but I am reminded that I was brought up and educated in an old English tradition which thinks tears and expressions of love rather cissy and bad form while encouraging one to go in for stiff upper lips and loads of deprecation and understatement. Old habits die hard and I am wary of too much public display of emotion. On the other hand...Whatever else I do however I shall use Lucy's mantra about me as a source of constant encouragement. "Dad...you're so embarrassing." I feel that's my role in life, both generally and in particular. Which includes, of course, saying the unexpected and contrary as often as possible. More on all this next month.
The down side began with my younger brother's funeral in Wells Cathedral. He actually died at the very end of 2008 but his departure has cast a shadow over the whole of my 2009 and will I am afraid be part of the rest of my life. This is very un-Lithuanian but a mark of what I mean. There are certain things which can't be eradicated and which are part of one's life however one comes to terms with them.
I suppose that the sudden death of a close and younger relation always has a significant effect - you'd have to be pretty bloodless to be unaffected. The most obvious lesson is probably "Carpe Diem". For example on this trip to
Death seems to have that effect and there seems to have been an increasing number of them in 2009. Some of them were contemporaries, some a little bit older, a very few younger. People's passing inevitably changes one's mental furniture and I find that this means many of one's assumptions alter as well. If life is just one clattering carousel there is no escaping the fact that one is getting to the moment when one falls off, or is taken off, that new people are arriving and that the balance of power has shifted. My elder daughter, Emma, will be forty next year, and will hate me for telling everyone but it's as big a landmark in my life as it is in hers. A man with a forty year old daughter is a senior citizen, a pensioner, a grandfather and will, if he gets into trouble, be described as such in the morning paper - if there is such a thing.
So, suddenly, this is where one is at: old man in a hurry. Much advice has, as always, been of the sit tight, hunker down, take no risks variety and while I am, contrary to much general perception, very sensitive about advice especially from experts. all my life I have been counselled to be cautious and then when a calculated risk works out I am told that "it's different for you". Such is life and if I have advice it is to listen to everything that is on offer and then to take the decision oneself erring on the side of risk. That way life is interesting, rewarding and relatively free of "if only". There are an awful lot of sad people around who will never know what they might have achieved if they had only taken what seemed at the time to be an unacceptable risk. Carpe Diem.
I have undertaken two speaking engagements to interesting foreign parts in the last year. One was a trip north of the border to speak to the Scottish Cricket Society in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Know-all Sassenachs and even some Scots assured me that there was no such thing but there was and Penny and I had a thoroughly enjoyable and unorthodox visit to both cities. We also spent a few days in
We also spent a week in Krakow and almost three in the
Anyway from a commercial and creative point of view my 2009 was an absolute shocker. I use the word advisedly because when my mother was startled by a loud explosion shortly after arriving at the military HQ in Dorchester, Dorset, in World War Two the Regimental Sergeant Major, said, by way of explanation, "It's that shocker Heald". It was my father who was, at the time, the Weapons Training Officer, and who amused himself by removing the pins from hand-grenades and then throwing them after the longest possible interval. This earned him the family sobriquet of "Shocker" which was generally pretty well justified.
Anyway from a professional point of view my 2009 was an absolute shocker. I could go into more painful detail but I have already used up 1500 or so words and I don't want to seem unduly grumpy. I'm told it's bad for business and I hope that from this point of view as well as many others 2010 will be a huge improvement on its predecessor. Not that 2009 was consistently dreadful. It wasn't. There was much to enjoy. But professionally speaking it was an absolute shocker.
And I see no sense in pretending otherwise.
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Let's
start with some unequivocally good news. We are, to echo the words of Mrs.
Thatcher, a grandfather. Henry Heald arrived in the early hours of November 25th.
Mother, father and Henry all appear to be doing well and last Saturday, the
morning before flying away to Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, Penny and I
went over to Ealing, bearing gifts, to say hello. I am pleased to report that
Henry seemed fine, slept throughout our visit, twitching slightly, not being
sick or difficult in any way and is obviously destined to score 100 before
lunch at Lord's in roughly two decades time as well as winning a Nobel Prize
later, becoming Prime Minister, Pope,a national treasure and much else besides
His two cousins in Florida are already rubbing their hands in gleeful
anticipation of a third member of a gang to come and I am extremely pleased to
be able to pass on news which seems to be to be good without reservation. I
don't wish to tempt fate nor to be unduly triumphalist so meanwhile, this is
what I had to write before the happy event.
I'm
sorry. I hate sounding old and grumpy but...
Last
week I ordered a Royal Horticultural Desk Diary from Amazon, for my mother's 89th
birthday. There should have been a saving though the charge for p and p lifted
it more than somewhat. Anyway I ordered it and was told that thanks to the
marvels of modern science I could "track" my parcel's progress using my special
Royal Mail 13 character tracking number, It actually specified 13 characters
and I duly put in my number and counted the characters which came to 13.
However when I sent it I got the response "Sorry. Your tracking number is too
long". Twice. I gave up.
Earlier
that day I had had a letter from some outfit in Preston saying that my aged Ma
was getting a winter fuel allowance of £275. There was an asterisk next to the
amount and underneath in parentheses the information that the amount was
affected by the fact that according to their records there had until recently
been someone living with my mother. This person had recently left and my
mother's handout was consequently
being reduced. I thought this slightly peculiar as my mother has been
living on her own since my father was killed in a car crash in 1972. I rang the
people in Preston and the woman who answered was charm itself but could not
alas help as this sort of thing was dealt with by someone else. After three
different calls to three different numbers I got a charming man who said that
he could do absolutely nothing without my mother's National Insurance Number
which at that stage I did not have at my fingertips. I found it in the file and
rang back. Another charming person answered, female this time, and from
somewhere near Doncaster. She checked everything, took every conceivable sort
of detail in the interests of efficiency, security and heaven knows what else
and then said that she could find no record of my mother whatever. This,
despite the fact that my mother's 89th birthday is next week and she
has, to the best of my knowledge, been drawing a pension for decades.
I'm
sorry, I really am, and I don't mean to sound old and grumpy, but there are
times when I don't seem to be able to help myself. Meanwhile we flew off in a
smart new Qantas airbus, sitting at the back of the plane in Tourist, me
between Penny and a mercifully small woman. The video system was fantastically
sophisticated and I was able to watch take-off and landing on screen as well as
see Julie and Julia. A thirteen hour flight though so when we got to Singapore
and went straight to the Tanglin Club without passing go we checked into our
room (Number 14 aka Bouganvilla) and crashed out. Then after a short stay in an
uber-Christmassy city - so many carols and lights and trees amid such stifling
humidity, we embarked on another Qantas flight which was mercifully shorter
though with a less sophisticated video system and marginally better food and
service which wasn't saying much as the food on the first flight was disgusting
and the service slow and charmless. Almost non-existent actually.
And
so to the Adelaide Oval for the whole of the Test match between Australia and
the West Indies. Also, on the day, of our arrival, the annual, Lord's
Taverners' "Sundowner" as guests of John Bannon, a former premier of the State,
prominent South Australia cricket person into whom we had bumped at a party for
the Australian cricket team at the London High Commission on the eve of the
Lord's Test, My leg is playing up. But more a little later.
More
death I fear. Geoffrey Moorhouse, the former Guardian hack and author.
Communications are fantastic. I was able to read poor Geoffrey's obits in
Wiltshire and London, then compose a brief note for the Guardian, transmit it
from the Tanglin in Singapore, read it on the internet and have a chat with
Geoff Trew on Skype. Geoff said he would scan it and sent a copy asap. I had
spent the previous Saturday afternoon with Geoff and Nicolas, son of the late
great Arnold Ridley, freezing to death nostalgically while watching a one-sided
rugby match at Rosslyn Park. I was also able to send a couple of "Royal Blogs"
to the Telegraph and to read them as well. Unfortunately the Adelaide Hilton,
aka 27 William Street, didn't have the relevant password which was with the
Singing Professor in China and he didn't return until the Sunday, which meant
that I was less communicado in Oz than in Singapore, at least to start with.
The
Guardian ran my recollections of a walk with Geoffrey in Yorkshire when he
revealed that his real name was Heald, but that he lived his life as Moorhouse
because his Ma left home v early and remarried. The death of those most
intimately concerned meant that he could reveal this. What the Guardian didn't
say was that I had read his latest elegiac column in the Oldie and had written
to him saying that I, like him, was visiting New Zealand to see rellies and
suggesting we might meet down under. Sadly Geoffrey wouldn't be making the trip
as planned (and foretold in the Oldie) and his elder son Andrew emailed giving
me the news as he had found my letter among his father's papers. Forward
planning is God's idea of a joke: discuss.
I
am now sitting in a state of maximum e-frustration. On the one hand I keep
getting little messages saying that my connection with the wi-fi thing is
terrific, no worries. On the other every time I try to actually send messages I
get another couple of messages saying that I have failed to connect with
server, have failed at this, failed at that and am stuck, stymied. Any moment I
expect the thought police to turn up and charge me with some unidentifiable
Kafka-like offence. Being very simple I can't understand why something which is
so wonderfully simple in darkest Wiltshire and cutting-edge Singapore is
apparently not possible here. I have put my blogs for the Telegraph on to a memory
stick which I am assured will work perfectly. Meanwhile I shall do the same
with this and hope for the best. But I feel I would be better off like someone
in Scoop, relying on cleft sticks, pigeons, paper and pencil. Ah progress!
So,
for now, I will cease and have a shower instead. An ancillary problem - no not a problem but a fact of internet life is that
whenever anything fails to work everyone
else assumes it's your fault and that you are an imbecile, a Luddite,
don't know anything, are too old to be alive at all. You think the reverse but
don't dare say so. Everyone apart from me and sundry cats and dogs are out. The
wife and the hostess are doing a girlie supper; the Prof is at choir practice;
the boys are doing whatever boys do these days and I have spent a few happy
hours trying to make sense of communications. I sense I may have managed a
passable stitch up and sent cricket blogs to the Telegraph from the lovely
Adelaide Oval where we have been every day of the Test. Lucky us. And it's enthrallingly
and surprisingly two-sided. Gayle spent all day all day making a big hundred, I
had lunch with John and Catrine Clay whose daughter lives in the hills at Mount
Barker, our dinner host from a few nights back was there and came over to
congratulate me on not looking quite so Pom(egranate) pink, and there are
oysters and Aussie meat pies and pretend Cornish pasties with carrots in them -
an amazing culinary solecism!
I
fielded a reassuring email from Caroline, my Ma's main minder - thank you Caroline
- and another from my niece telling me she was finalizing her plans for a
Wiltshire Christmas. So, in a frazzled way, all is right with the world. In
fact, better than all right. Hurrah for Henry. Penny bought him an Australian
cricketing teddy bear at the Oval and I like to think that in twenty years or
so he will be rampaging through Australian cricketers, ursine or human.
Meanwhile we're lucky to be here and welcome to the team. Good to have you
batting at three or opening the bowling or whatever.
Which
reminds me. August 8th. 2010. Fowey. A great cricket match. A band.
The Army. Something to put in your diary and look forward to. I'll bore you
about my leg some other time. I hear voices off - the ladies are back. The
possums are at play on the roof. The West Indies are about three hundred ahead
with three wickets left and a full day to play. So tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow...Next stop the Barossa.