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The Heald Report . . .
Number 2 27 MAY 2003
I'm writing this from Australia where I'm
researching a couple of travel articles for the Independent on Sunday,
advising on a new Literary Festival, seeing some mature students whose projects
I've been supervising and recovering from an unusually hectic week just before
departure from London.
The first part of this was taken up with three
sessions at the Daphne du Maurier Festival in my home town of Fowey in Cornwall.
It's in its seventh year and has become an unexpectedly enjoyable and succesful
event. On the Sunday I chaired a discussion on cricket writing with Ronnie
Harwood whose screenplay for Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist, won an
Oscar earlier in the year and the Rt. Rev. Bill Ind, Bishop of Truro. Both of
them are passionate about cricket (Bishop Bill still plays) and we had a
suitably erudite and animated discussion filmed by David Taylor and his team for
the six-part series on cricket that he is making for Carlton TV. This was
followed by a chilly barbecue at the Marina Hotel laid on by the Manager
James Coggan, another cricket enthusiast.
The following day I spoke at a literary lunch at the Fowey Hotel. This was an
innovation of Howard Alexander's. Howard is a local publisher but sadly he and
his wife Christine are leaving to live in the Azores though the bookshop which
Christine ran is going to continue operation under new management.
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On the
Tuesday I did a crime-writing session in the Town Hall but rather than ask an
audience to endure a third consecutive day of Heald-drone I enlisted the help of
Jenny Turner, a leading light in the Troy Players, the local theatre group, and
asked her to select some suitably feminine readings from my ten Simon Bognor
whodunnits. We called the session "Femmes Fatales" and Jenny read
wonderfully well - so much so that I found myself glowing with pride in passages
I had entirely forgotten having written. I concluded with a description of the
murder of Vernon Hemlock, boss of Big Books plc, which released all my pent-up
resentments about the publishing industry, He is squashed to death between the
shelves of his pornographic library. Extremely satisfactory. |
Tim with Jenny Turner at the Daphne du Maurier Festival. |
On Thursday I drove to Charleton Horethorne in
Somerset and left my car with Hugh Archer, Chairman of the Sherborne School Old
Boys' Society of which I am unexpectedly an improbable President. From there I
hitched a lift with the film crew to Kent where we spent a day
interviewing the proprietors and staff of the Cricketer Magazine which organises
the annual village cricket cup competition as well
as the cricketers Matthew Fleming and Derek Underwood.
Then back to Sherborne for a day's filming at the
annual Old Boys' day with me walking endlessly through the cloisters and
trying to look nonchalant and happy while watching the School play the Sherborne
Pilgrims in freezing rain. Interviewed my former housemaster by the Abbey and
the headmaster in the top of the pavilion before rounding off the day by
chairing the Old Shirburnian Society's Annual General Meeting.
And so to London Heathrow, sleep on Singapore
Airlines and various antipodean adventures of which more next month.
Tim Heald
27 May 2003
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