November – December 2022 and
beyond into the uncharted territory of 2023.
The origin of Covid-19. A theme I have returned to before. Under freedom of information requests, a
series of e mails have surfaced between ‘top scientists’ (have you ever noticed
that the Press always refer to ‘top scientists’ or ‘top surgeons’? They are never just scientists or surgeons.)
in which they covertly agree to play down the laboratory origin theory. One of these is indeed a ‘top’ scientist – Sir
Patrick Vallance.
Our days of storm and rain have
been replaced by colder weather with mistiness and we ready ourselves for
Christmas.
December 7
To Poole ‘Lighthouse’, as it
calls itself, ‘Poole’s Centre for the Arts’ for the final Bournemouth Symphony
Orchestra concert of the season before Christmas.
A very enjoyable send off, the
final work being Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.
The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
brings back unforgettable memories of Cambridge.
1970. The Guildhall. Cambridge University Music Society’s final
concert of the year, and indeed of my time at Cambridge. The University Orchestra was joined by a
number of soloists, including Marisa Robles, the famous harpist.
At the very start of the ‘number’
mentioned above, David Willcocks, conductor, tottered onto the stage in full
pink tutu carrying a wand with a pink star.
Perfectly ‘on point’ he tiptoed over to the celesta and started to
play. A final happy souvenir of
Cambridge life.
Almost into Christmas, the
football world cup has come and gone in Qatar.
Although some of the football was stunning, particularly the final
(Argentina beat France on penalties after a 3-3 finish), the obscene pouring of
Qatari money into building stadia which are apparently already being pulled
down, and their various other human rights abuses, were an abiding shadow over
the tournament. The large payments made
to ex-footballer commentators were also subject for comment. Gary Neville, in particular, was called out
by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, on the panel show ‘Have I Got News For
You’. Joe Lycett, comedian, threatened
to shred £50,000 of his own money if David Beckham did not donate his reported
ten million pound fee for talking up Qatar (Beckham didn’t; Lycett shredded the
money, though it was fake). An
unpalatable thing, football, at least as far as money is concerned. Bobby Robson (ex-footballer, ex-manager) once
said, ‘Twenty thousand pounds a week? I
wouldn’t pay them twenty thousand pounds a year’. (It was a long time ago; the late Sir Bobby
Robson died in 2009). A wry comment
during the World Cup came as the Qataris pumped out high wattage pop music on
their expensive sound systems. Much of
it by George Michael, Elton John, and Queen.
‘Has nobody told them?’ was the comment.
(Homosexuality is illegal in Qatar).
The cold snap brought the coldest
day for 12 years.
January 3rd, 2023
Topsy-turvy weather. Awful New Year’s Day. Brilliant January 2nd with
hundreds walking along the shore at Sandbanks and Branksome Chine, and heavy
rain again today.
Bob Dylan has written a
book! ‘The Philosophy of Modern
Song’. Already in the New Year its price
has come down from £30 to £17.50, which suggests it is not selling too well at
the launch price. Generally speaking,
it’s well reviewed though the omissions are curious – nothing about the
Beatles, the Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, Carol King, for instance. One reviewer wittily dubs Bob ‘The Hoarse
Foreman of the Apocalypse’.
Journeyed to Burton Bradstock, to
lunch in the Seaside Boarding House with friends from Somerset. Great company and an interesting menu
compensated for a grey day with an implacable muddy brown sea below the cliffs
leading towards Chesil Beach. The
headland of Portland Bill remained hidden in the murk.
January 6th
Travelled to Switzerland,
ostensibly for a ski holiday, though for medical reasons and lack of insurance,
neither of us actually skied. We walked. This made it the cheapest ski holiday
ever. We were met by our friend who
lives outside Zürich, and she treated us to the opera at the Zürich opera
house. La Traviata. Fantastic.
The opera house is much smaller than Covent Garden, and the feeling is
very intimate. The soprano Nadezdha
Pavlova was superb.
We walked gentle paths up over
the Pflugstein hill, and then on Sunday we drove up to Lenzerheide.
During the week we walked remote
paths, away from walkers and skiers, all marked as ‘winterwanderweg’. Toward the valley of Lain, above the Albula
river, and on other days, up to the middle stations of the ski area, to
favourite restaurants. On one day we
took the bus to Tiefencastel then train (Rhätische Bahn) towards St Moritz, and
changed in Pontresina to the famous Bernina Express, over the Bernina Pass and
down to the little town of Poschiavo – almost on the Italian border. It looked like Italy, sounded like Italy, the
food was like Italy, but the prices were Swiss.
We had a superb lunch in the historic Hotel Albrici in the centre of the
old town.
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| Zurich Opera House |
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| Opera House Interior |
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| Our friend's LPs of the opera - signed for her by Luciano Pavarotti |
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| Zurich newspaper - 'Prince Harry's Revenge' (just after publication of 'Spare') |
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| Winterwanderweg - away from skiers and snowboarders |
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| No lifts required |
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| Poschiavo |
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| All the glitz in St Moritz |
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| St Moritz - the Cresta Run statue by David Wynne |
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| En route to the station in St Moritz |
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| And back to Lenzerheide |
All too soon we returned to
England.
More cold snaps – we were
babysitting grandchildren in the middle of West Sussex where the temperature
fell to minus 8 overnight, but the weather was clear and cold.
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| A chilly evening in West Sussex |
A milestone birthday on January
21st – 75th. I am
sure that those of my age experience a slight sense of disbelief on reaching
this point.
Again, too soon, it was time to
visit hospital yet once more and have cataract surgery.
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| Still cold. Poole Harbour, January evening |
February 2023
Reality will soon intrude, but it
is often the trivia and the ridiculous that catches one’s eye. The Daily Telegraph must have made itself a
laughing stock with a front page showing a bath with two people sitting comfortably
inside it – one wearing a Duke of York mask, the other a Virginia Giuffre
mask. This ‘mock-up’ by the Maxwell clan
purports to show that this bath was too small for Ms Giuffre’s alleged sexual
activity to have taken place. A K.C.
writing in to the paper a few days later recalls defending a case on such
grounds, to be gently told by the judge that in his long experience in court,
no space was ‘too small’ for sexual activity to take place. Private Eye, the satirical scourge of
corruption, ineptness, and hypocrisy, has had a field day with this one. Extraordinarily, the Telegraph followed up
this laughable headline with another large photo of the actor Rupert Everett
claiming that he knew who the woman was who ‘took Prince Harry’s virginity.’ He was probably wrong anyway – the unfortunate
and likely person in question, now a married mother of two has come forward to
silence the rumours.
But reality in this last week (6th
February) is a massive earthquake in Eastern Turkey and Syria, with many
thousands dead. After the first shock of
the tragedy and the occasional picture of a live survivor (including a newborn
baby, all of whose family died), questions are inevitably being asked about the
misuse of funds intended to be dedicated to amelioration of damage due to
earthquakes. It is only 24 years since
the last substantial earthquake in this highly susceptible region. The East Anatolian fault line marks the line
of tectonic battle between the Anatolian plate and the Arabian plate.
Politics continues to
baffle. Rishi Sunak (a name unpronounceable
if you are called Biden) continues as Prime Minister. Nadine Dorries (dyed in the wool Johnson
supporter) known to Private Eye as ‘Mad Nad’ is leaving politics. Liz Truss thinks she is returning to politics
and gave an overly long statement of her beliefs and policies to the Daily
Telegraph. Andrew Marr (experienced
journalist and commentator calls her mini-manifesto ‘unhinged’). Nadim Zahawi, former chancellor has been
caught out tax-dodging and has paid a fine to HMRC of several million pounds. He called his misfortune ‘Careless not
Deliberate’, but the swingeing fine imposed implies that it is the other way
round.
Talking of suspicious characters
and shady money, the book club has read ‘The Great Gatsby’. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925). I was surprised by the high mark it
achieved. But re-reading it after an
interval of nearly 50 years I was struck by the quality of the writing. The excellent use of simile and metaphor is
surely very original. Most critics agree
that Fitzgerald’s style improved markedly from book to book, though by the time
he wrote ‘Tender is the Night’ he must surely have been more sozzled than
not. The autobiographical nature of the
latter is clear. But ‘Gatsby’ also
contains characters from life, and themes from Fitzgerald’s earlier life,
including an unrequited love for a girl above him in social station and
wealth. It has many famous quotes, and
the well-known last lines, ‘So we beat
on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’ are
engraved on his and Zelda’s memorial in an unremarkable cemetery in Rockville,
Maryland. John Dos Passos remarked of
the short stories that "everybody
who has put pen to paper during the last twenty years has been daily plagued by
the difficulty of deciding whether he's to do 'good' writing that will satisfy
his conscience or 'cheap' writing that will satisfy his pocketbook.... A great
deal of Fitzgerald's own life was made a hell by this sort of
schizophrenia." (Source – Wikipedia).
The Wikipedia entry on FSC reads like a PhD thesis with over 420
references and almost as many print sources.
(It probably was. Ed.)
February 24th,
2023. 1st Anniversary of
Russia’ invasion of Ukraine.
Dear Desultory Diary:
It is impossible to let this day
past without some sort of diary entry.
Unfortunately, as was pointed out by analysts this morning, neither side
has the superior weaponry, at least at the moment, to claim victory. Ukraine has appealed for tanks, weapons, and
aeroplanes, but the reinforcements are coming at a dribbling rate.
This day marked the end of my
‘Corona Diary’ as it was. Lamenting,
locked down, and recording our lives, medicine, and virological science, seemed
to become superfluous from February 24th, 2022. That part of my diary is now encased in
aspic, and over.
‘Borne back ceaselessly into the past.’ It seems that every step, every corner, every nuance of London,
reminds one of the past. Walking to
various medical appointments recently, I spy a well-polished plaque beside a
Harley Street door indicating that a former friend and colleague at university
now consults there. Two doors away from
where I am now a patient, I occasionally performed cardiac catheterisations. Walking up to the Wellington Hospital, I
remember being asked (while I was still a senior registrar) to go there to put
in a temporary pacing wire. Missing out
on lunch at King’s and rushing up to St John’s Wood to do this, I remember
walking out of the X-ray suite to be greeted by the senior sister with a plate
of smoked salmon sandwiches and a glass of fresh orange juice. An introduction to the elite world of London
private medicine. All of the signs there
are now in Arabic as well as English.
During a gap in medical
consultations and scanning, I visit the Wallace Collection in Manchester
Square. This fabulous collation of art
has two of the most famous paintings in the world – ‘The Laughing Cavalier’
(Frans Hals) and ‘The Swing’ (Fragonard), but there is also an embarrassment of
riches including Titian, Canaletto, Rubens, Rembrandt, and many more. Even a case of Sèvres porcelain made for
Louis XVI is worth a King’s ransom.
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| A favourite - sea scene by Willem Van De Velde (younger) |
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| Fragonard - 'The Swing' |
Turning a corner, I come across
Canaletto’s ‘Bacino di San Marco from San Giorgio Maggiore’, a print of which
hung in my parents’ lounge for perhaps forty or more years.
The Laughing Cavalier has plenty
of attention from the visitors to the gallery.
When working in the kitchens of
the University Arms Hotel, in the summer of 1969, I was warily welcomed by the
cooks and the apprentices. They could not
understand why a ‘Grad’ would want to come and work there. One, whose name was Terry, was usually
addressed as ‘Phoebe’, or ‘Pheebs’ on account of his extravagantly effeminate
manner. Phoebe was a jack of all trades,
but his preferred metier was pastry. He
told me however that ‘Robbie’, the other pastry chef, a small, rather
obsessional and fussy older man, who always seemed to be hurrying about the
kitchen was a genius at icing and cake decoration. One of the cooks had recently got married,
and Robbie had baked the cake.
‘You’ve seen the f…..g Laughing
Cavalier, haven’t you?’ Asked Phoebe, rhetorically. I answered that I had indeed seen images of
the picture in books.
‘All the f…..g lace and
everything. Well, when Robbie had
finished, it was as good as the f…..g Laughing Cavalier on top of that f…..g
cake.’
I confessed that it must truly
have been a wonderful cake.
March 3rd
I had thought that my Corona
diary had ended, but there are tailpieces.
American select committees have come firmly down on the side of a
laboratory leak from the Wuhan Virological Research Institute. Probably accidental.
The other tailpiece, which will
run and run, is the release by a Telegraph journalist (Isabel Oakeshott) of
120,000 WhatsApp messages that included the former Health Secretary, Matt
Hancock in their circulation. Ms
Oakeshott, 48, is attractive and looks as though she could twist
vulnerable men around her little finger.
Indeed she has history in this area (having done the dirty on David
Cameron in the past, after ‘helping’ with his autobiography, ‘Call Me
Dave’. She also brought about the
resignation of the UK Ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch, after
she obtained and published confidential e mails in which he called Donald Trump
‘inept’, ‘insecure’ and ‘incompetent’).
She has helped Hancock write his book about the pandemic, signed an NDA,
but has released the data ‘in the public interest’. This begs the question that had we had a prompter
inquiry into Covid-19 the release would not have been necessary because these messages would already be in the public domain.
Other countries (e.g. Sweden and France) have already concluded their
public inquiries. Isabel seems like a
dangerous woman to know!
Nonetheless, the triteness of so
many of the ‘conversations’ is striking.
No evidence of true statesmanship is apparent in them. A distinguished businessman, speaking on a
comment programme last night, observed that the correct way to deal with such
grave matters was to meet together, in committee, to have the minutes recorded,
and to come to decisions, whether wrong or right. He was appalled, and rightly so, by the
conducting of such serious business in one line exchanges.
At least my Pandemic Diaries have
been written without the help of Isabel Oakeshott.
March 7th, 2023
Awaiting the next cold snap. Yet again, there is now more credence being
given to the Covid-19 laboratory leak theory.
It seems we are no longer afraid of the Chinese. They ignore us anyway.
March 13th, 2023
I was going to write something
about the ‘Gary Lineker Affair’. Oh no,
I won’t. It is not worth my time and the
column inches. Instead, a quotation from
a review of a new book called ‘Georgian Arcadia’ by Roger White. The review is by Iona McLaren, who has
gardens in her blood – she grew up at Bodnant in North Wales. The book traces the often weird architectural
structures that began to populate the English garden of the nobility from the mid-18th
century, with elegant landscaping replacing the formal parterre style of the French. She says, ‘It is axiomatic that the only
thing architects hate more than budgets is people.’ After many experiences with architects one
can only say, ‘Amen to that’.
It’s time to conclude. These pictures are probably more eloquent
than a few thousand more words…
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| Winter beauty. This year's hellebores (not mine) |
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| Tarrant Crawford church. Dating to the 12th century, the last remains of a Cistercian nunnery. A winter walk |
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| Early Spring. Snowdrops at Tarrant Crawford |
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| The warmest way to sail in winter - radio-controlled model yacht racing, Poole Park |
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| Detail. Poole Harbour lights. |
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| A view from Evening Hill. 'Set in a silver sea...' |
