To Chatsworth. Poky.
WOODROW WYATT
January 15th
Repetition is the memory of repetition. And repetition is the memory of repetition.
ADAM PHILLIPS
January 16th
BBC announcers insist on using the expression ‘This is the news.’ One hears it every night, without fail. Yet news is plural. They should say, ‘These are the news,’ and, half an hour later, ‘Those were the news.’ They never will, of course, because the BBC is a socialist institution, within which correct English is regarded as the enemy of the state. Have we ever had a more horrid public culture?
CHARLES MOORE
I maintain (though she might, in truth, query this) that it was I who usefully introduced my Aunt Phyl to scampi and chips, at an excellent but now defunct castellated hostelry overlooking the Bristol Channel at Linton in 1973. Or was it 1974? Conceivably (and here I am, metaphorically speaking, sticking my neck out) it was 1972, or even 1971, though if it was 1971, then it might not have been the castellated hostelry that we ate in, as a useful visit to my local library yesterday afternoon between 3.30 p.m. and 4.23 p.m. confirmed me in my suspicion that the hostelry in question was in fact closed for the greater part of 1971, owing to a refurbishment programme. In that case, and if it really was 1971, which, frankly, seems increasingly unlikely given the other dates available, then it is within the realms of possibility that we ate at another hostelry entirely, possibly one overlooking the North Sea, and, if so, it is equally possible that we feasted not on scampi and chips but on shepherd’s pie. Did we also consume a side order of vegetables? Memory is, I have found, a fickle servant, so I am unable to recall whether, on this occasion, we indulged in a side order of vegetables, if we were there at all. It is, I fear, another blank, another lost or discarded piece in the jigsaw of my past.
MARGARET DRABBLE
January 17th
They tell me that in some shops they have started selling loaves of bread that are what they call ‘ready-and-sliced’. I fervently hope this is one trend that doesn’t ‘catch on’. And is there really any need for this new-fangled idea of soup in tins? Broth tastes so much better bubbling away in a great big open pot, stirred by a chef who really knows his stuff and served at one’s table in the open air by a marvellous old character somewhere on a wonderful Highland moor. By denying our children such pleasures, I fear we are in profound danger of cutting them off from reality.
HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES
January 18th
Throughout this year, I shall be following the famous not to say distinguished rock singer Michael George for a three-part documentary series. Today, we recorded the first in a series of interviews, as well as my introduction. There’s a very great deal of excitement about this extraordinary project:
MELVYN: Michael George* shot to fame as a leading member of the trio Whim!. As a signwriter, sorry, songwriter, he has achieved international success by writing acclaimed songs such as um er by writing several um famous songs. Michael George is now internationally acknowledged as a erm as a leading erm singer, indeed as one of the most singery and singerest singers erm of his generation. On the eve of his first world tour since his last, Michael George gave us this exclusive insight into the way he erm…
GEORGE: Super to see you, Melvyn! How you doin’? Ooh, you smell nice! Mmmm…doesn’t he smell nice, boys?
MELVYN: Can we start with the early days, Michael? You began life as a foetus and then you were a baby for – what? one or two years – and then, am I right in thinking, proceeded to become a child, in your case a boy?
GEORGE: Yeah, it was really eating me up, all I wanted was my dignity and my self-determination and the whole process of like being a child made me understand something about how this government really manipulates us into believing – sorry, Melvyn, can we stop for a sec? You know what? I’m feeling a bit sweaty. Do I look sweaty to you, Melvyn? Now, be honest!
MELVYN: Zzzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzz. (Wakes with a start.) Where am I? Who are you? Where were we?! Yes! Go on!
GEORGE: D’you know, Melvyn, I’m feeling a bit sweaty?
MELVYN: Um. No. Remind me. How does it go?
MELVYN BRAGG
January 19th
Swiftian? Come off it. That’s what I thought when I read this week’s obituaries, dripping with a sweaty mixture of vintage port, caviar and Marmite sandwiches, of Auberon Waugh.
I remember it well, the smug old world of El Vino in Fleet Street. Right-wing journalists would mix with left-wing journalists, both drowning their differences in champagne (so much more fizzy than common-or-garden white wine, dontcha know, old chap). It was all just a game – and instead of smashing each other’s faces with their fists, and demanding urgent, much needed social reforms, they preferred to discuss their differences over what they would no doubt call a drinkie-poo. They spent hours ‘debating’, ‘exchanging opinions’, ‘seeing the other point of view’, and so on, in a typical recreation of the toffee-nosed public schools which had, years before, puked them out in their stiff collars, sporting blazers, corduroy shorts and school neckties imprinted with a hundred little swastikas.
To that hoity-toity coterie, all that matters is a joke or two. And it doesn’t matter if the rest of us can’t for the life of us understand it. ‘Knock, Knock,’ they say, and when their victim replies: ‘Who’s there?’ they mention a perfectly ordinary Christian name, rendering us, their victims, speechless. ‘There’s an Irishman, a Scotsman and an Englishman,’ they say.
‘And we are all part of the EEC,’ I correct them.
So what’s so funny about ‘jokes’? Don’t ask me. I’m not someone who likes to ‘laugh’ – especially not at a time when so many ordinary Britons are living below the poverty line in inner cities deprived of inward investment by the self-serving machinations of big business. Laughter is to be distrusted and abhorred, whether it comes from the right or the so-called left. Funny? So funny I forgot to laugh.
Don’t imagine the breed is dying out. Far from it. Boris Johnson, editor of the Spectator, is a writer of just this ‘humorous’ stamp, with mannerisms to match. Charming? If you say so. But how can you describe someone as ‘charming’ who subscribes to a belief in the free-market economy?
The last time I saw him, Johnson asked me to write an article for the Spectator, damn him.
I refused point blank. I told him that throughout my career I have only written for people who share my views. I’m certainly not going to start arguing with people who’ll disagree with me for political reasons of their own.
POLLY TOYNBEE
January 20th
Alfred Wainwright died today, in 1991. He wasted a lifetime on walking, but still never managed to get beyond the Lake District.