Friday June 26th
Woken to the sound of Lindsay watching the morning news on
TV and the unmistakable sound of Scouse accents indicates that last night, by
virtue of Manchester City losing 2-1 to Chelsea, Liverpool cannot now be
overtaken in the race for the Premiership title. Brief visit from Katie yesterday who has paddle-boarded
with friends from Poole Yacht Club to Arne, a tiny but relatively deserted spot
at the back of Poole Harbour. A wise
move in view of the fact that the beaches from Hengistbury Head to Sandbanks
were inundated by an estimated half a million visitors. State of emergency declared. Cars parked everywhere. Record number of parking fines imposed, etc,
etc. High temperature at Heathrow >33
deg C.
More discussions on site about doors. Not as hot as yesterday, fortunately.
In the car (roof down) I listen to Richard Burton as First
Voice in Under Milk Wood, and in my imagination I am back in Fishguard (aged 10
to 13). Hard to believe that when we
moved there from Malta, and I had to go back into the primary school for a year
(in order to take grammar school entrance), my parents were instructed to buy a
slate for lessons. Maybe the Welsh were
trying to up the sales of the national product?
Ink monitors – who remembers those?
And the special honour of being allowed to make up the ink for the day
before it was dispensed into the ink wells.
The worst insult that the teacher could throw at you was that you were
‘twp’, meaning stupid. ‘You’re TWP J…
G……., what are you? TWP’. ‘Yes, Miss
Moodie’. Poor J… G……., he lived over in
Goodwick, son I believe of a railway worker, willing but not the
brightest. I wonder what happened to
him. I will be getting like Captain Cat
if I dwell on such things much more.
‘I’m Dancing Williams; lost my step in Nantucket…’ ‘Come on up boys, I’m dead…’
Saturday June 27th
A change. Two changes
in fact. One: it is pouring with rain,
although it clears. Two, and a subtle
change in the diary. No forcing the
regular daily entry. Our life in
lockdown is unlikely to change very much for the foreseeable future. The new house demands attention almost
daily. Overseas visits are coming but
not high priority for us. We are
unlikely to visit theatres, cinemas, restaurants, pubs. Deaths are coming down but there is
uncertainty about a second wave. Latest
figure of Covid deaths in the previous 24 hours is 100, and the tail of the
curve looks very flat. Though it is true
that the daily number of cases reported still appears to be falling. But will the huge crowds on the beaches, the huge
crowds celebrating in Liverpool, and the illegal mass gatherings and music
events in London mean another disaster around the corner? In the Times magazine today, Professor Sir
David King, a typical figure of an 80-year-old asthenic Cambridge academic,
photographed with his bicycle, vents polite but splenetic fury on the
scientific establishment and its failure to act early. He was the previous chief scientific
adviser, and it is easy to suggest that his thunder might have been stolen by
the highly visible Sir Patrick Valance.
He feels that the evidence was there much earlier than the Government
would have us believe, that the pandemic was under way, and needed earlier
lockdown. He feels that Boris Johnson
was far too focussed on delivering Brexit, to the detriment of our dealings
with Covid-19. He points to the early
response of Greece, which has dramatically limited the number of lives
lost. He and a group of colleagues have
an ‘alternative SAGE’ which deliberates on the management of the public health. He points out that WHO very early on
emphasised ‘test, test, test’, and how we failed in that. In part this failure was not the fault of
Government, or at least only so far as a chronic lack of investment and
interest in the whole system of the organisation of Public Health England, was
a failure of successive governments (my own view in this last sentence). The so-called ‘wonderful NHS’ did not have
the means to protect its workers, the power to isolate and to test, test, test,
until very late in the day. Even now
there is no regular testing of asymptomatic NHS workers.
Enough. In
conversation with somebody who is non-medical yesterday it is clear that
intelligent people throughout Britain now understand what happened.
Thursday July 2nd
This is the first section of diary with a substantial
gap. This is because relatively little
has changed. Football is now firmly back
with us, and the crowd noise is added in to make it seem more realistic. A good zoom meeting for our (male) book club,
and excellent discussions concerning Rose Tremain’s ‘Restoration’. Others have also had the feeling that
Merivel, the central character, is like a 17th century Bertie
Wooster, but the most interesting contribution came from our gynaecologist
(OBGYN) member, who said that the emergency caesarean section described was
clearly not a ‘classical’ Caesar, but what is called a LSCS, or lower segment
Caesarian section, an operation which is technically more difficult, and which
was not described until at least a hundred years later than the period in which
the book is set. He suspects that Rose
probably spoke to a gynae friend, or looked up the details of how to perform a
Caesar in a textbook. Another colleague
describes Merivel’s behaviour of having sexual intercourse with one of his
psychiatric patients as ‘dreadful, terrible’, though I suspect this was said
slightly tongue in cheek as he says he knows of ‘only one other psychiatrist
who has done this’. Personally I thought
it could be categorized as ‘sex therapy’! On the sex front, there has been dreadful
condemnation of J K Rowling recently who has had the temerity to say that
transgender folk are not truly female, and that the definition of a true female
is someone who menstruates. Cue a huge
number of outraged politically correct actors, many of them from her Harry
Potter franchise. Right on J K, I say,
well done for having the courage to express an opinion. There are many, many strident voices out
there at the moment. Today it emerges
that the leading light of UK Black Lives Matter is essentially a nihilistic
Marxist or even anarchist. ‘Taking the
knee’ has however become a hallowed ritual which the FA (of course) are not
going to do anything about. I was
momentarily amused by one strident feminist who said that seduction was
essentially the same as rape, the main difference being that the initiator of
seduction usually bought a bottle of wine first. Where on earth is this all heading?
So finally for the first entry for a while; amusement that
the Rolling Stones have issued a warning to Donald Trump to stop playing their
songs at his rallies. ‘You can’t always
get what you want’ is his current favourite.
A Third Leader in the Daily Telegraph suggested that perhaps they could
allow some of their titles to be played if they suggested that Trump might be
just a one term President. ‘It’s all
over now’ and ‘You better move on’ being possibilities.
Saturday July 4th
A very pleasant interlude kneading bread to the
accompaniment on Classic FM of Dvorak’s ‘American’ string quartet. Such a lovely piece. Very therapeutic way of celebrating US
Independence Day. The ‘Donald’ visited
Mount Rushmore yesterday and spoke out against defacing statues and
monuments. For once I agree with him,
though just to hear the way he speaks I now find grating and awful. I get a Pavlovian reaction. I have the same feeling when I hear the
introductory music to ‘The One Show’ on TV.
Talk of dumbing down – the nightly news show, with interesting serious
and light hearted stories when I was a child was the ‘Tonight’ programme with
Cliff Michelmore. O Tempora, O Mores…
Today is the day for the re-opening of bars and restaurants;
how will that go? Wait for the second
wave… A retired nursing friend posted
the following on Facebook today:
‘A virologist, an epidemiologist, and an ITU doctor walked
into a bar. Don’t be stupid – No They
Didn’t!’
Some excellent letters in the Telegraph yesterday, as if we
didn’t need reminding, that China is the new threat to the world. The Donald’s self-absorption with America
suggests that he’s abandoning his role as the leader of the free world, leaving
a void which China is delighted to fill.
This they are doing in Tibet, and on the border with India. Most of the signatories on a human rights resolution
(at the UN) approving China’s response in Hong Kong, which is blatantly against
the UK withdrawal agreement, are from countries which are dependent on
China. Enough said.
To happier matters.
Early this morning I had a phone call from the golf club. Although not originally slated to play in the
Captain’s Day charity event, I was asked to fill in because a member of one of
the four man teams had dropped out. Our
tee time? 5pm. The last group. We finished at twenty to ten pm, in the
dark. Unsurprisingly we didn’t rack up
too many points.
Sunday July 5th
A lovely sunny day with a six mile walk from Badbury Rings
up into remote countryside south of Witchampton. Blustery winds. Swallows swooping low over the wheat fields. Iron age tumuli give some perspective to our
brief span on this earth. Even more
evanescent, hundreds of butterflies, though I’m sorry I can’t identify
many. Evening is some lovely wine
tasting at our walking friend’s – Muddy Water chardonnay, and a 2006 Chateau
Calauze Pomerol. A good finish to the
weekend.
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| A tranquil lane north of Badbury Rings |
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| A different sort of Red Kite |
It's been windy recently...
Wednesday July 8th
Anniversary of first performance of Look Back in Anger (no
it isn’t, that was May 8th, but for some reason I’m still writing
May instead of July), but no matter, it’s a segue. A memory from an English lesson at
school. Very dynamic new young English
teacher who subsequently went to the Board of Extramural Studies at Cambridge,
Mike Allen. To us he was Mr Cool; when
we walked in the snow in the Pennines during CCF arduous training he was the
one with ski goggles. None of us had
ever seen these before. Well, it was
about 1966. His girlfriend was Swedish
and studying at the Sorbonne. Do I need
to continue? Anyway, modern theatre was
his bag, and Pinter a particular favourite.
We all read a book called ‘Anger and After’, though in retrospect,
perhaps modern theatre should have been dated from ‘En attendant Godot’.
This week has been memorable for two trips to the
dentist. The surgery is now up and
running with very vigorous preventive and protective measures, a bit like
stepping into a Sci-Fi movie. First
filling repair cracked on eating crisps that evening; not even very crunchy
crisps. Today was a revisit.
But most interesting, apart from the continued ‘tail’ in the
Covid graph (126 deaths yesterday), was a farm walk with some friends who are
dairy farmers, on a lovely sunny Monday evening. A very pleasant meander through the fields
which are going to produce dry hay for the animal feed shortly, including a
long stretch by the river Stour. Very
impressive maize field, with the crop nearly shoulder high (should be ‘knee
high by the Fourth of July’) says my friend.
He mentions that this year has seen the highest UV concentration ever,
apparently not completely due to the lack of pollution. Followed by drinks sitting in their lovely
garden, a special hobby for them (the garden not the drinks). Particularly impressive is the new ‘Roald
Dahl’ rose, though the roses are magnificent everywhere. As we are about to leave I ask what is the
magnificent blood red rose planted in a long border leading up to the
gate. ‘Keep in touch’, says Farmer
G; ‘Yes, yes, we will’ I say. ‘No, no; it’s actually called “Keep in
Touch”’. ‘Oh’. Feel rather stupid, knowing remarkably little
about roses. But yes, we will. Oh, yes, there is one thing I can tell you
about roses, but you may know this already.
In Victorian and Edwardian times, roses bloomed much better than they do
nowadays. My grandfather in Crosby had
some very early colour images of his garden taken in the 1920s. The roses were magnificent. The reason?
Coal fires, which were universal, produced large amounts of sulphur
dioxide, a wonderful cure for all the fungal and other diseases which afflicted
roses. But not good for lungs.
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| Herbaceous borders to die for ... |
Main news today is a mini-budget, or a ‘statement’. Various tax holidays including VAT down to 5%
on hospitality and accommodation.
Criticised by the opposition of course; and indeed by the recently
sacked Chancellor, who has clearly had his nose put out of joint by the dynamic
and extremely bright Rishi Sunak, a Wykehamist, and therefore a refreshing
change from Old Etonians.
Friday July 10th
Awake very early, 0530, for no particular reason, and spend
some time listening to the mellifluous voiced Donald McLeod, who presents
‘Composer of the Week’ on Radio 3. Every
other week in 2020 he is presenting Beethoven (Born 250 years ago), but this
week is dedicated to Henri Duparc and Augusta Holmès, mid 19th
century French composers. Some lovely
works. Irritatingly a record title and
recurrent line from a pop song by Sandie Shaw keeps popping into my head,
‘Monsieur Dupont’ I think it was. The
weather here is pleasant with the promise of high pressure developing, but
there is drizzle in Duxford, where Matt, the weather presenter is hoping that a
Spitfire might take off and do a flypast to commemorate the 80th
anniversary of the Battle of Britain. No
joy.
I suppose if a diary is worth anything, it is to reveal the
inner thoughts of the diarist, but I have little profound to say. One keeps an eye on the lockdown easing;
Trump is always newsworthy – the White House is trying to suppress a biography
by his niece which accuses him of being a fraud and a narcissist; deaths are
down (85); and Allison Pearson has written an excoriating article about the
Sussexes. She comments on the latest,
what she calls ‘Cash and Harry’ video, in which they hold forth on ‘righting
the wrongs of the “uncomfortable” Commonwealth’. Ignoring, of course, the 73 years which his
grandmother, the Queen, has spent loving and nurturing it. …’Harry spoke fluent Woke, and Meghan gazed
at him with a look of terrifying, moist-lipped sincerity’. Allison mentions that he was supposedly
thinking of living in Africa, to do some good for his causes, but instead ended
up living in an $18 million mansion on the Beverly Ridge Estates in Los
Angeles. ‘It is quite a diverse
community with a lot of non-white people watering the gardens and cleaning the
pools’. Worth reading in full. I greatly enjoy the articles from the
Telegraph’s female columnists, Pearson, Strimpel, Walden, etc. Worth catching.
But I also suppose that good diarists rarely write about
themselves, unless they are deeply into solipsistic self-analysis, and many
good diaries are only so because they reflect the world around them, a world
which by definition, is now in the past.
Occasionally their breath-taking self-importance and way of life takes
centre stage, such as in the first edition of Alan Clark’s diaries; but since I
haven’t climbed from Zermatt to Trift in under two hours, nor driven from the
stately home to the Albany in the Bentley in under 60 minutes recently, pardon
me if I don’t bore you with my own reflections, or at least, very rarely. My favourite Clark story is of Margaret Thatcher,
when asked why she had not promoted Clark to the role of Secretary of State for
Defence said, ‘Would you put Alan in charge of a nuclear weapon?’
The inner workings of a diarist’s mind can probably be
glimpsed from the subjects that he or she selects, and their reaction to
them. But, historically, most diaries
are readable because of the illumination that they provide to the time when
they were written, some times being more dramatic than others. Take, for example, the following extracts
near the beginning of a diary (journal) by Daniel Defoe:
‘It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I,
among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague
was returned again in Holland…’
‘… (It was) December 1664, when two men, said to be
Frenchmen, died of the plague in Long Acre, or rather at the upper end of Drury
Lane. The family they were in
endeavoured to conceal it as much as possible, but as it had gotten some vent
in the discourse of the neighbourhood, the Secretaries of State got knowledge
of it; and concerning themselves to inquire about it, in order to be certain of
the truth, two physicians and a surgeon were ordered to go to the house and
make inspection. This they did; and finding
evident tokens of the sickness upon both the bodies that were dead, they gave
their opinions publicly that they died of the plague.’
Punchy stuff, is it not?
Made more real by the knowledge that we can still walk those streets in
Covent Garden today. It is a genuine
journal, and at this point in the story, we know nothing of Mr Defoe other than
the facts he reports.
I have just finished the very worthy autobiography of
Michelle Obama, entitled ‘Becoming’.
Over 400 pages of it. It is
extremely well written, and, I suppose (again that verb) worth reading. But there is something about it… Read it and tell me what it is please? I think that the problem is despite the very
real memories and thoughts of Michelle coming through, it is ghost
written. Indeed, it is clearly what she
calls a ‘team effort’. But it is useful
to have read it because of another news story which has just come through to
me. This is a widely circulated e mail
which details extracts from a book by Ronald Kessler, a US journalist, who
specialises in inside stories. The book
is ‘In the President’s Secret Service.
Behind the scenes with agents in the line of fire and the Presidents
they protect’. Along with pictures of
the Presidents, there are details of their lurid lives. But when we get to Barack Obama, he says,
‘Clinton’s (sic) all over again. Hates
the military and looks down on the Secret Service. He is egotistical and cunning. He looks you in the eye and appears to agree
with you but turns around and does the opposite. He has temper tantrums. She is a complete bitch who basically hates
anybody who is not black, hates the military, and looks at the Secret Service
as servants’.
Now this is so antithetical to the book I have just read, in
which Michelle speaks fondly of the agents appointed to guard them, and clearly
makes strenuous efforts to support military wives and injured veterans, that I
began to wonder. Then I noticed that all
of the Presidents who are written warmly of are Republicans and I began to
smell a rat. Then I also read the
following: ‘Spiro Agnew. Nice, decent
man. Everyone in the Secret Service was
surprised by his downfall.’ In point of
fact, Agnew took bribes or kickbacks, and was party to criminal conspiracy,
extortion and tax fraud. He was forced
to resign, only the second ever Vice President to do so. Ultimately in a plea bargain he pleaded
guilty only to tax evasion and avoided going to jail. Of course, the truth is that the entire
circulated e mail is a fake. It’s not
hard to guess the source. By taking a
little of Kessler’s book and adding to it, the story seemed convincing, gossipy
but real. In war, the first casualty is
the truth, but it seems to be true of journalism too. Fake news is all around. As a footnote, during my first ever visit to
the USA, when I worked in a hospital followed by the Greyhound bus trip around
most of the continent, I bought a slim volume entitled ‘The Wit and Wisdom of
Spiro T Agnew.’ Every page was
blank. The foreword had a superb
sentence that I remember to this day: ‘When small men cast a large shadow, it
is a sure sign that the sun is setting.’
Sunday July 12th
We are back to ABD weather.
Light breeze only and temperature in the mid 20s. We’ve done plenty of walking recently so I
suggest to Lindsay we should get out on the bikes. It has been so windy recently that when the
sun has shone, there is only one way to exercise, and that is walking. An image of a kite (the toy kind) flying over
Badbury Rings on our last weekend walk comes to mind. It was shaped like the Fokker triplane of the
Red Baron. Lindsay is enthusiastic. It’s so long since our last ride that all the
tyres have to be pumped up. Bike rack on
the back of the car. The ride chosen is
in Hampshire and includes the Test Valley.
Listed in the book as ‘Easy to Moderate’. It must have been 15 years since we last did
it. We head for the tiny village of
Michelmersh, because I assume that most large car parks will be full. There’s not much space in Michelmersh, but we
manage to park near the church and set off.
The temperature is perfect, 25 degrees, but somehow the ride seems much
harder than when we last did it. Chunky
little hills, what to us seems like a puncheur sort of route. I’d like to call it the ‘Hampshire Downs’,
but that would be fanciful. Nonetheless,
the highest point of the route is some 400 feet higher than the Test at
Mottisfont. As we descend into Crawley,
a recollection comes of the last time we cycled this. Beside the beautiful duck pond are lovely
thatched houses. As on the last occasion
we stop here for our picnic lunch, but unlike before, the tranquillity is not ruptured
by Mister Thatched Cottage gentleman trimming his beautiful yew hedge. In the middle of the pond is a small island
with a lovely duck house, which would do credit to the estate of Sir Peter
Viggers, who infamously claimed for one in his MP’s expenses (2009). As we picnic, a veritable flock of ducks
waddle up, no doubt hoping for some bread.
But they don’t press the issue, just settle down for a little nap next
to us, some with beaks forward and some with beaks backwards, leading me to
marvel at the anatomy of their cervical spines.
Later, two perfectly white doves flutter from tree to tree. This seems such a rare sight it triggers an
earworm, ‘How many seas must a white dove sail…’? As we leave this peaceful scene my bike
judders. A back wheel puncture. Easy to identify; a substantial tack right in
the middle of the tread. So Lindsay gets
to enjoy some more peace, ducks, doves, and sunshine. Just after I’ve managed to change the tube
and reassemble the bike, a huge posse of the West Surrey Cycle Club pedal
up. All looking suspiciously skinny. If they had arrived earlier there would
undoubtedly have been a couple whose unfulfilled mission in life is to mend
other people’s punctures, probably in about half the time I’ve taken. Later I discover that my mini hand pump can
only inflate the tyre to about half its designated pressure, which makes riding
more comfortable, but harder work. Seems
like a very long 32 miles, but worth it for some of the views, especially at
Wherwell, where we cross the crystal clear stream and the occasional trout
flits between the weeds.
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| Now that's what I call a duck house |
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| Test Valley |
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| The Test at Wherwell |
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| Test Valley |
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| Roses at Wherwell |
Monday July 13th
A very good and deep night’s sleep and another pleasant
day. Finish the little book ‘Fat Chance’
by Simon Gray, the playwright, about the ill-fated production of his play ‘Cell
Mates’, which became notorious because of the walk out of Stephen Fry. What emerges from the book is that (my own
opinion based on Gray’s observations) Fry is an extraordinarily clever
empty shell, and that Rik Mayall was a wonderful man and should have been
famous as a very gifted actor. ‘God
Bless. Bye’, as Fry was fond of saying.
Eleven deaths from Covid (remember, post weekend, but at
least I can now type the letters of the number rather than the numeral).
Briefly back to diaries.
We learn (Daniel Defoe) that he was a saddler, and elected to stay in
London because he felt he needed to keep working to earn his living. So much echoes with our own times.
An e mail from a close friend, with whom I have enjoyed
theatre going since 1964 (The Bacchae of Euripides; Mermaid Theatre). He rails against the current trend for gender
swapping in every possible role; ‘nor flooding casts with non-white actors
playing white characters’. He mentions
the fine non-white actors; Hugh Quarshie, Paapa Essiedu. ‘But we also saw a Twelfth Night where Toby
Belch was a woman and she was dreadful.’
I think he gave up after seeing Mercutio played by a punk female. Fortunately, Shakespeare can survive almost
anything, and no doubt will return in better productions. He’s pushing at an open door as far as I’m
concerned. A recent newspaper article
interviewed several actors who said that they would never consider ‘blacking
up’ to play Othello nowadays. Why
not?! Why not?! Theatre is artifice. The whole point of theatre is artifice. Makeup is a word, but it is also a
metaphor. Behind the greasepaint… Oh my Pagliacci. Tonio, Tonio, wherefore art thou Tonio? How appropriate that today, in these
politically correct times, the newspapers refer to J K Rowling’s handprints, which,
on view somewhere in Edinburgh, have been daubed with red paint. I give up too. But ‘You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’
And on that note…
