Tim Heald's Blog

            Most people would probably say that our move from Cornwall to Bower Hinton in Somerset was the most significant event of recent weeks but I persist in being perverse and thinking that my not particularly significant birthday took pride of place. The highlight was dinner at Joes Stone Crab in Miami and being serenaded by three waiters who looked as if they would extract stens from their violin cases and finish off their rendition in a blaze of terminal gun-fire. Alas it was no more than a candle in a slab of their signature Lime Key pie and a hand-held video on Leonel's cell-phone. A fine culmination to a good day and the crab claws were delicious. I do like Joe's which is paradoxically far more effectively old-fashioned and traditional than anything we have in the UK. To which I have been anyway.

            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 12^th when we moved and the 25^th 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 31^st. 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 90^th 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."

You can't argue, I think, with the notion that the most important recent event in my life was my mother's ninetieth birthday. I tease her when she is in "look at me, I'm old" mode (which is quite often) but the fact is that her father died when he was only fifty-one and her mother in her sixties; my uncle was killed in World War Two; my father in a car crash aged 54, and my younger brother died when just 60. The only people to even get into their late eighties are my grandmother on my father's side and my Aunt Betty, my Ma's elder sister. I tell her that everyone is living longer and that not only do you get no telegram from Her Majesty for another decade - and even then you have to ask for it. Doesn't make much difference. She thinks that she's done pretty well and on the whole I am inclined to agree.

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 25^th, Gran's actual 90^th 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 Sherborne School, where he went in 1937, (so was Roy) and then went on to run the British Horse Society. They still run a Wolsey Lodge somewhere on the edge of the Cotswolds and said we must come and stay. Steve, David's former carer from llanfairfechan, N. Wales; Debbie Condon, daughter of the novelist Richard, widow of another author Kenneth Jupp; Anne Johnston - widow of a former vicar of Semley; Tom and Laurie, brother and sister-in-law; James Vaughan, their youngest son, who helps run the RNLI in Poole (his boss is the son of my former housemaster, now, God help me, a retired Admiral!); his wife Sarah Vaughan and their sons; Christopher Mann, the hairdresser, who had done my Ma's hair that morning as he has since the sixties; Conti Patch, her oldest friend from Malta in 1947, where her husband, Olly was a "Flying Marine" who, in the war, helped destroy the Italian fleet in Taranto and their daughter Janet; Julia and Freddie from Madrigal, opposite. In the morning Tony and a cleaning assistant came to clean and do beds; in the evening Michael Lodge came with logs and card.

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. Florida flowers and a hamper from the Manns and Inverawre smokery were sent to the "wrong" Malt House, but rescued. The flowers and balloons were from one grand-daughter, a bottle of champagne arrived safely from another in New Zealand. A third grand-daughter was due from London the following weekend. People drank red and white wine, coffee and tea, or even water; there were sandwiches, cake and biscuits and Gran had fish pie for lunch, and a good time was had, I think, by all.

Meanwhile we are supposed to be moving. We have sold our house in Cornwall and we think we have bought a house in Bower Hinton which, amazingly, is a suburb of Martock where my father is buried and my mother was born. All appeared to be going swimmingly and we had the moving people booked for a physical transfer on December 14. Now it's been called off and we have a new date of January 12^th next year. In the context of life itself the delay is probably trivial but it involves us in Christmas in a hotel in Salisbury, no surprise Christmas present after all (it was possible that a new moving date might conflict), rows, tears and fuel for those who maintain that moving house is a trauma equalled only by death and divorce. I am saying nothing more on the grounds that I will believe nothing until we are in a new home and the doors are locked. We shall see. All I would point out is...but, no, I must say nothing which jeopardizes plans and dates and it seems that practically everything has the potential for upsetting all reasonable expectations.

Meanwhile life goes on. Sort of.

The other day we were due to go to London and woke up to find that there was severe flooding in Mevagissey and Lostwithiel, two of our nearest communities. A landslide between St. Austell and Truro meant that there were no trains running out of the county. It was Penny who suggested we should get the taxi to take us to Plymouth using a southern route and to cut a long story short this is what we did.It was quite fun at the Detection Club dinner that night when a list of apologies was read out by our chairman Simon Brett. One was from Jessica Mann, who lives outside Truro said that she couldn't get to London as Cornwall was cut off. "Oh no it isn't", called Penny, "We made it".Very satisfying though I feel for Jessica who lives a good bit further into Cornwall and away from Plymouth. Even so.

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", "South Africa". Much later I remember standing on the South Terrace (I don't really think you should watch rugger sitting) and Uncle Monty being sick over the parapet. The crowd was so thick that those over whom he had been sick (usually Welsh supporters in my memory) couldn't get at him for revenge but were reduced to just shaking their leeks and daffodils in impotent rage. It almost made up for the subsequent inevitable England loss. Anyway I don't like the new Twickenham which seems like everything else to be all about money.

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 India should be out from Methuen but there is no sign of it. The book I have co-edited with Christopher Braun is due after a Balliol launch on Saturday. (Tomfoolery - the occasional writings of Thomas Braun. It's the perfect Christmas present.) My piece on Blashford-Snell is in Michael Kerr's excellent Telegraph anthology on sea voyages - another good Christmas present. Talking of which, the Tablet named Miles Kington's posthumous Franglais book as my book of the year. I had a lot of royal stuff in the Lady. Thank you Prince William for announcing your engagement. How about a year's sub to the magazine as another Christmas present? I have done an extra five thousand words of Death in the Opening Chapter for Kate Lyall Grant my editor at Severn House/Crème de la Crime, who tells me that 60,000 which I was brought up to believe was the right length for a crime novel is now regarded as much too short (The punters are believed to want more words for their buck, while I adhere to the old-fashioned belief that more is almost always worse.)

I have been asked to speak to the Dorset Cricket Society, the Belgian Cambridge Society and English Speaking Union branches in Florida and Georgia. In other words it's all go: scribble.scribble, drone, drone. And somehow I ...we...have to move house in among all this.

Meanwhile my mother is 90 and still living at home. Now that really IS an achievement.

`           I first met Brian in one of the Rome Youth Hostels in 1961 and he and his friend Simon were arguing noisily about Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and the meaning of life. Matthew and I joined in, and Brian and I, at least, have been arguing in a similar fashion ever since. Maybe that is the true meaning of life: discuss. I was reminded of this the other day when Andrew Marr whom I usually regard apart from that absurd duck-egg-blue superannuated, oversized Dinky toy in which he drives to work every Sunday before his eponymous show, as almost sensible. Anyway he said something really silly about blogs and bloggers which seemed to me to have about as much sense as someone complaining about pencils or biros and those who use them to write words. Blogs are means of expression; bloggers are those who use them. A blogger isn't one who writes in a particular way about a particular subject. A blogger is one who writes and places his words on the net. You might as well have a rant about paper.

            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 Cornwall but we have accepted an offer on our house and had ours accepted on a place in Bower Hinton, a hamlet near Martock just off the A303.

I'm there already in my mind, scribbling away under the walnut tree, attending matins in All Saint's Church, Martock, speeding to London in the Berry's bus and ambling up to the Palmers' farm shop round the corner. It's fantasy, of course, but if it doesn't happen I will have wasted all these opportunities for day-dreaming. And blogging about it. It's part of a whole philosophy which is basically about qualified risk-taking, indulging fancies and fantasies and leading what I believe is a fascinating life. For those who take a more prosaic view of our time on earth this is frivolous and irresponsible. I'm sure, incidentally, that I have misrepresented my case. All I know is that many people think of me as frivolous and irresponsible and I care less and less as I get older. However I shan't say more about Bower Hinton until we're there. Or not.

So what happened in the last month? Well, I attended the tenth Sherborne School media lunch. Basically Sherborne does majors and bankers and not, pace such journalists as Sir Michael Hogg, Bt, once of the Daily Telegraph and Nigel Dempster most famously of the Daily Mail, people like Hogg, Dempster and yours truly. We were all there, though, and ten years ago when I was an improbable President of the Old Shirburnian Society, Peter Moeller, volunteered to stage a media lunch at the Groucho Club in London. It's taken place every year, the least likely people in the world attend and after we've all eaten and drunk a fair bit a member of the chorus from Les Miserables or some such, lurches to his feet and leads about fifty perfectly grown up men in two verses of the School Carmen. In Latin. Bats, British and charming. Well that's my view anyway.

I then spent a few days with my mother who will celebrate her ninetieth on the 25^th 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 South Australia and serve me right for having not just had thoughts but blogged about them to an astonished world.

What else? Oh Jardine. Amazon say my book about Douglas Jardine's last MCC tour (to India just after the much more famous "Bodyline" tour of Australia) will be available from November 4^th. Typically and preposterously I told as many friends as possible but the agent who did the deal with Methuen now says that the publishers will have finished copies at the end of the month, not before. Silly me. Never believe a publication date until you have the finished book in your hands.

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, Oxford, (very funny, utterly eclectic) on December 4^th. And my complete new crime novel is due in the spring of 2011. However none of this may happen and given the usual sod's law, probably never will.

   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 Bournemouth University's Business Centre but I honestly believe this to be so. "Oh", I hear a strangled cry, (as satirists use to write in the dim and distant)"Get a life", but it's true, honestly, strike a light, it's true guv. The conference was the second annual do of the UK Speechwriters' Guild which, I concede sounds pretty dire. It's a terrifically cumbersome title and I am amazed that some PR agency hasn't got hold of the Guild and renamed it "Alert!" or "Gozo" or "Beezer" or something equally meaningless but the organization and it's conference remain gloriously unequivocal and old-fashioned. What you see is what you get.

            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 Poland; Broughton is Chairman of Liverpool FC and British Airways; Mortimer wrote for Kofi Annan, Heath for Neelie Koes, a glamorous Dutch eurocrat and Collins for Tony Blair.

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 Bournemouth conference. They were letting us into their world, treating us as equals, as confidants, as real flies on real walls. I loved it.

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 South Somerset area. I think I am less concerned about where we go than my wife. I know what I am in favour of and though we would like more money, many mansions and so on I feel comfortable with the possibilities and in any case "nothing matters much and very little matters at all" or words to that effect. It's sad to be going but we've had 15 wonderful years here and now it is time for new adventures while we still have time. I think that has to be the attitude. I heard the other day, by the way, that this decade is known in the medical profession as "Snipers' Alley" on the grounds presumably that anyone can be picked off when least expecting it. On the other hand if you make it through to 70 you can breathe a sigh of relief and skip through some broad pastures. I wish. The time for skipping is long gone, alas. Oh, life has moved fast and we've made an offer on the house in Bower Hinton and had it accepted. Watch this space and remember that in my end is my beginning. Or something.

            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 Cornwall, no less. My snla has also sold a couple of crime novels to Severn House/Crème de la Crime which is good. The first one ("Death in the opening chapter") is out next year so let us pray. It features the return  of Simon Bognor. He is knighted and running his department so his wife is Lady B. Such, for some of us, (though not me I hasten to add) appears to be life. And the short story in which he deals with expenses and fiddling thereof is out any moment. Again watch space, cross fingers, chiz chiz as Molesworth say.

Meanwhile we went to Sherborne for the 70^th 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 Milborne Port. I have also been seeing people about the 60^th anniversary of the Queen's accession which is fascinating. Little new to report on the planned Connaught House reunion though Guy Knapton and I are in a stew over numbers. The Berry's bus takes around 50 and the Old Library in Pembroke does 64 for a meal but will we be short or over-subscribed. We're trying to find out but easy it isn't.

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 Taunton like my Great Aunt and Aunty Betty. Maybe not. We shall see and time will doubtless tell. Stop press is that we have made an offer and it's been accepted, so dream on, dream on. Shades of bananas before batting, of Prebendary Wickham, Archie Maclaren, yew trees and fire brigades.

            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 London or even further. She had a stroke a year or two ago which left her with worsening speech problems which make her difficult to understand and means that even her old friends are reluctant to spend a lot of time with her. Two of her grand-children live abroad (the States and New Zealand) most of the  rest live in London and since my brother died unexpectedly at the end of 2008 there's me but I still work and live many miles away in darkest Cornwall.

            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 Real Tennis Court at Walditch is one, my history of Sherborne School another.It is sad and a wrench but there you go. We've been here for fifteen years and it's been wonderful but it's time for a move.

            Mind you, it's easier said than done. We have put the house on the market with Fowey River after Penny had had a spat with one rival agent. Two people have viewed so far but we haven't yet had a nibble. As far as purchase is concerned I have seen a house in one town which was not suitable; the other day we looked at three in another place, discarded two quite easily and agreed that the third,though lovely, just needed too much work. We are attracted by one in a third place but it's not perfect and the vendor refuses to let the agent have a key and Penny's first attempt to view was on an inconvenient day. We shall, however, persist and I am encouraged because I think there are houses of a suitable sort within our price range. We want a dining room; I work from home; we go away a lot and don't therefore want a huge garden; we'd like to be near shops and a railway station. This makes us unusual. Most people who move to West Dorset seem to want a modern bungalow in an enormous field. Not us. We shall see. Watch this space.

            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 25^th but even so; Connaught House which was all too briefly at Watts House, Bishop's Lydeard near Taunton is history and maybe that's as it should be. The Waughs (Evelyn, Auberon and so on) were neighbours at Combe Florey and when Connaught House had folded and before Cedar Falls bought the house Alexander, Bron's son, used to break in and smoke in the Music Room pretending that, Toad-like, he was Lord of all he surveyed. I find the idea rather captivating.

            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 Brussels and he has set in motion a reunion at Pembroke College, Cambridge. This is  the third oldest college in the city and is his alma mater. He rowed in the same boat as Roger, the ill-fated son of Randall Hoyle who was also at the college (and had an oar proudly displayed in the drawing room at Watts House by way of proof). Randall owned the school when I was there and was the headmaster. We called him Pecker; his wife Grizel called him Bun. Guy is the grandson of a Mr. Morgan who founded the original school in Weymouth some time in the 1880s. Evidently it was modelled on Oundle where Morgan was a boy. So there will be a final final reunion lunch on - provisionally - September 14^th 2011 in the Old Library at Pembroke. Watch this space. Tell your friends. We even have a committee. I am amazed and rather impressed. As I told Guy I'd be quite happy to spend a couple of quiet days in Cambridge with just the wife, so in a sense we have a quorum already. I don't mind attending a contemplative memorial evensong on my own if necessary. However I don't think it will be.

            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 Yorkshire; bumped into Winlaw in the Long Room, David Webb-Carter queuing for money at the hole in the wall, and sundry buffs in the top of Q.  Before that Dorset with the Wagstaffes and Broadwindsor, Cerne, Poundbury and other attractions. I'm afraid I like Dorset and regard the move as a sort of homecoming. So it's relatively easy for me.

            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

            A few years ago I was researching a book about the Landmark Trust. This was a doomed enterprise for all sorts of reason but I remember staying in a typical Landmark property in Lancaster (typical buildings seemed to me to be a pineapple, a mill-keeper's cottage, a mediaeval watch-tower), got up early in the morning walked through beautiful, strange and ancient streets and  found myself humming "one more step along the way we go" and feeling very alone. Not lonely but alone. I was quite optimistic, quite happy, fatalistic, realistic and was on my own contra mundum. Not at all bad but I experienced a strong sense that this was what life was about.

            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 Dorset and always seemed to end up in a hay wagon with all my section and their ancient bicycles. That must be memory playing tricks. I hated most things about "corps" but I remember a sort of Captain Mainwaring-like lunacy. Storming Portland Bill in eccentric craft and running across the inspecting general's picnic lunch half way up the hill letting off loud and aimless (literally) explosions from my old 303. That sort of thing.

            Anyway I am determined to enjoy being the new "Unks" Gourlay, the peculiar, scholarly schoolmaster who wrote the last Sherborne School history. My researches are already throwing up endless strange joys. I was talking to Ripert Uloth the Deputy Editor of Country Life the other day and remembered that his brother had been in Lyon House, like me. An odd preparation for buying the Piccadilly tailor, Cordings, with his friend, Eric Clapton. And I remember playing the vicar's wife in an end of term Agatha Christie in which the vicar was played by Tim Cumberbatch. Tim changed his name to Carlton when he went on stage but it didn't seem to make a lot of difference except that he met and married an actress named Wanda Ventham and together they begat Benedict who has kept the name Cumberbatch and is famous. Stanley Johnson, whom I remember as a brilliant and progressive head of house ("Please may I clean your rugger boots, Johnson, sir? " were my first words to the great man as I recall) is now famous chiefly as father of the Mayor of London, the Editor of the Lady and the new Tory MP for Orpington: Boris (Alexander), Rachel and Jo. Sic transit Shirburniensis whether you "hail from Cam or Isis" as John Harden sang not altogether sonorously in the middle of Dorset the other night.

            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 US cavalry to a rescue late in the action. Or appeared to. Fingers crossed!

            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. Pembroke College, Cambridge. Maybe, maybe not. We shall see. Watch this space. 

            The one day international between England and Australia at Lord's was probably top. The cricket is slightly incidental though anything involving those two sides is always good even with pyjamas, a relative failure by Ponting, the wrong result and overly cautious captaincy by Strauss. (I'd have brought on Broad and Swann much earlier!) And the only familiar face was the general in the champagne bar of the Tennis Court which was deeply wonderful but more would have been better still. We were also very conscious of the wedding cricket at Worcester College, Oxford, which turned out to be stylish and enjoyable and blessed with good weather when we had supper at Quod in Oxford with Rick and Judi the following evening. It seemed bizarre that only a month earlier we had been at the crime writer's conference in Oklahoma City before jetting eventfully to Chicago where, incidentally, I see that the sinister policeman and alleged torturer whose trial I attended has been found guilty and is to be sentenced in November when he could face as long as 45 years in prison. As he's not well and in his sixties it seems unlikely that he will ever come out which is probably right and proper. Bit late in the day but reassuring in a way.

            Anyway it seems extraordinary to be back in the United Kingdom dealing with everyday problems after a period of exoticism - not, I hasten to add, a holiday. To apply the chronological approach which is more logical and sensible we began June in Oklahoma City which was fascinating. We had a few days on our own before the conference began and, as usual were struck by the money, the space and the difference as well as the similarity. There is a well-established belief that we are, as Churchill (?) said, united and yet divided by a common tongue. This is true but it's a common yet different culture as well. The university which was at the centre of our exchanges was modeled on Oxford and Cambridge and yet, although there are similarities it is the differences that strike one. There is a reading room which is obviously derived from the Bodleian or something but it is ten times as big, ten times cleaner and empty. The University has the best, well most expensive, private art collection ever given to a university in the USA. Gaylord College which is endowed by a man called Gaylord is, I think, the journalism faculty and yet it has a state of the art newsroom we can only dream of in England. The sofas and armchairs are of a leatheriness, depth, comfort and, yes, emptiness, that we can only dream of. Gaylord's main claim to fame seems to be that he or the family own the Oklahoman. I can't imagine a similar endowment on the back of say the Western Morning News and while I am sure that the Oklahoman is at the cutting edge of modern journalism I can't help thinking...

            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 Zurich. I have already begun it, urged on by the energetic and indefatigable Dr. Jutta Motz, who was of our number in Oklahoma. 

            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 Iceland.

            Once home we spent a night with friends just outside Salisbury and then stopped off in Sherborne for lunch with friends and a night with the headmaster who I like to count as a friend too. Simon is retiring and he and his wife, Olivia, are moving to Bath. One of his final acts however is to commission me to write a new history of the school. I am going to enjoy this. They have found someone who shared a study with Alan Turiung, Simon has all the relevant papers involving the doomed reign of a distinguished predecessor, there are some old masters to interview, the manuscript of Alec Waugh's Loom of Youth to consult and much else besides.   

            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 New Zealand. A literary friend of friends has just rung to say she has moved in to Bodinnick.  Must rush, more next time...

            A friend said the latest adventure read like a musical and I suppose it does really. We're in Oklahoma City and I quite expect to step outside the hotel and to find myself caught up in a chorus line of people singing about cowboys and farmers and snapping their braces as they jig about to the strains of a man playing a fiddle. Actually it's not a bit like that but I still feel as if I'm about to learn about poor Jud being dead or the corn being as high as an elephant's eye.

            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 Miami when the new coalition government was announced. The Sara Ferguson debacle took place while we were somewhere in Georgia and everyone wanted to know what really happened. I hadn't much more of a clue than those who asked though I couldn't help feeling that "investigative journalism" had come to a pretty pass when it consisted simply of dressing up as a sheikh and conning some poor simple girl who happened to marry a prince. "Investigative journalism" used to mean what it said, he says, sounding grumpy and ancient.

            Anyway we voted and flew round volcanic ash to Miami where Leo (my son-in-law) met us. We were only a couple of hours late unlike the next day when flights were delayed by some fifteen hours. Anyway Coconut Grove/Coral Gables was a treat. Emma and Leo, Leonel and Daniel, live in a  large, cool (in every sense) house and the few days we were with them flew past. We went to Joe's Stone Crab place downtown and had a wonderful seafood meal served by a mildly grumpy old French waiter; I went and chatted to Leo Jr. and his classmates for half an hour one day - "Hi Guys - Let me know how you are and if you have any more questions"; had supper with Carter Parsley who had been in charge of flags and anthems at the Atlanta Olympics and was an an old friend of Penny's from Hong Kong; and generally chilled out and caught up.

            All too soon Leo drove us to the Amtrak Station and we got on the train for Savannah. The station is miles from the city centre and everyone looked rather shocked when we said we were making the journey in such an impossible, old-fashioned, slow and dangerous way. Actually it was enchanting, spacious, friendly and dignified by a nice dining car where we had breakfast and lunch. The only drawback was that the Savannah Station had also been moved to the town outskirts. 

            We loved Savannah almost without reservation.

            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 Savannah by a New York journalist and about which we sensed a slightly mixed reaction.

            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 Atlanta we were driven to Chattanooga where  Chet, the branch President was an old acquaintance of Penny from Hong Kong days. Dale Harrison met us half way and deposited us in our room at the Chatanooga Cho Choo Hotel (a former carriage) before taking us off to a jolly and convivial lunch at a local seafood place. That evening the three of us had a BBQ dinner at Chet's with Chet and his girl friend.Next day Chet showed us around and took us to a sandwich lunch. I spoke after supper - uniquely on crime fiction - in the Roosevelt Room at the hotel. Next day Chet drove us to the university at Sewannee where we had a brief tour before being handed on to Donna from the Nashville Centre.

            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 Nashville we flew to Birmingham Alabama where we stayed with an unexpectedly simpatico couple Bert and Elizabeth Nettles. She came from Canada and had worked forMichael Ignatieff, leader of the Federal Liberal Party and possibly Canada's next Premier, whom I had known when we were both employed by the Observer. I spoke that evening as well and this dinner too was at an amazingly smart country club with an echt-immaculate golf course outside the French windows. From Birmingham we took the Greyhound bus - again against most native advice - up to our last port of call, Memphis. We paused briefly at Elvis Presley's birthplace, Tupelo, and were unsurprised to learn that his parents were keen to escape.

            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 Memphis was in a private house with, basically, too many in the audience and a hand-held mike which I hate. I also found it difficult to speak to an audience, some of which was behind me and staring at the back of my head. I got through it OK and thank-you Debbie for taking care of the acoustics and being within earshot in case of disasters. As it happened there weren't any and we managed OK but I found it slightly disconcerting to be constantly worried about such peripherals as whether or not I could be heard and whether my flies were undone. (They weren't!) It passed off OK but I wasn't as relaxed as I'd have liked.     

            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 Little Rock and Dallas to Oklahoma City where the corn is as high as the elephant's eye and so on. It took all day thanks to such "British" disasters as a failure to alert the ground staff of a change in schedule and a nail through a tire in Arkansas. We longed for the slow pleasures of the Greyhound or Amtrak.

            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 Oklahoma and we are about to enplane for the last stop on this magical mystery tour: Chicago. This time next month I hope to be at Lord's for England v Australia at cricket. There are some things that the English still do quite well. In theory anyway. Meanwhile, however, the musical continues and if I seem a bit like a transatlantic version of Jennifer writing her diary I apologise. Sanity and a straight bat await!

            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 Belmont is not an Earl in the accepted sense but he rather fancied the idea, so, why not?

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 60^th 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 Rochdale when Cyril Smith was still mayor and a member of the Labour Party. Strange to see the Prime Minister commit a classic gaffe after a confrontation with a voter who was originally full of pro-Brown intentions. I am torn because I don't particularly care for the local Lib-Dem candidate and even less for the campaign which has been waged on his behalf, gloating about the fact that he is a 'local' whereas his Conservative opponent is some sort of interloper. God knows what this has to do with suitability for government. Rather the reverse. Besides I like our Tory candidate whose original selection meeting I attended. I told her I would do anything for her except vote. I might yet do even that. We shall see.

            Meanwhile I have been carrying on with "Yet another Death in Venice", the third of my crime novels featuring the return of Simon Bognor, now knighted and head of SIDBOT, aka the Specials Investigation Department of the Board of Trade.    Tomorrow I am due to have lunch with Christopher S-S to talk, among other things, about Bognor. I do hope he likes them. I'm sorry but I intend writing more. I want to know what he's up to. If, for some reason Christopher doesn't share my enthusiasm and interest, then... There is no trade quite so dependent on the opinions of others.           

            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 9^th 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 6^th 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 Dorchester to see father's medals in the military museum at the Keep. Then publishers' lunch; publisher's tea;Christopher Braun for work on his brother's book. Next day two GCVOs and the Dame at the Palace and an ex Presidential lunch to say goodbye to Charles Collingwood and hello to Stanley Johnson. And so the weary traveler wound his way by train to Cornwall.

            Bog standard month. Fatigued very; election looms; volcanoes back; flooding in Tennessee; so-called England cricket team lucky to beat the Irish at rounders. And somewhere taking part or looking on: me. Time passes. Pluc ca change...