TIM RICE
My summer has not panned out as expected, and my autumn has been somewhat clobbered, too. Right now I should have just returned from Amsterdam, having attended the Dutch, indeed European, premiere of my most recent Broadway offering, Aida (written with Elton John). Next week I should have been off to Los Angeles for the first night of the California version. Instead, I am sitting at my desk in Cornwall, staring not at all unhappily at the beautiful Helford river. The reason has been a snapped Achilles' tendon which, needless to say. I suffered playing cricket. It is not an injury I recommend. One minute of excruciating pain, as the tendon disconnects and rolls up the inside of your leg like a kitchen rollerblind, is followed by three to four months of plaster, crutches, a ski-boot type thing (reminding me why I hate skiing) and, eventually, a regime of physiotherapy, which I am now well into. But I should be back on the field next year — if selected. My team finished the season without me by putting together the longest unbeaten run in the history of Heartaches CC.
The weather is so beautiful on the Lizard peninsula this week that we should still be playing cricket. The team still bonds (I believe that is the term) in the off-season, however. I have just had a call from Torquil Riley-Smith, still an aggressive fast bowler after more than 20 years of physical and verbal exertion, who tells me that the story of his struggles to launch the country's first gay radio station, LBH (Lesbian, Bi, Homosexual) is shortly to be the subject of a probing documentary on BBC 2, and that the future's so bright he's gotta wear shades. Charles Moore, in these very columns. recently implied that Torquil was straight — which fact I hope will not affect the excellent prospects of the station. After 20 years of intimate contact with Torquil, I can support Mr Moore's statement.
Afew years ago I set up a small charitable trust in an attempt to put some order (and, I admit, some tax advantages for both giver and receiver) into the occasional donations I make to allegedly worthy causes. This, of course, entails having details of my trust listed in places to which prospective applicants have access. It took some time for the message about my own particular organisation to filter through to the serried ranks of the needy, but word has now clearly got out, as my tiny empire is receiving about 30 applications a week. Invitations to art galleries and cricket dinners aside, this represents about 66 per cent of my weekly mail. This works out at some 1.500 letters per annum (and we also get quite a few phone calls), and there are
180,000 other registered charities in England and Wales on the lists. If every one of my 179,999 fellow donors is being hassled at the rate I am —and I am not a major player — there are about 270 million punters on the lookout for a handout every year. I am sure many of the more determined seekers of largesse don't sit back after mailing just one letter, but even at ten shots a year per applicant there are still quite a few out there.
It is, of course, impossible to satisfy 1,500 customers a year, and almost as impossible to tell which of the punters are genuine, and which are trying it on. Others are genuine but barking, such as the bloke last week who wanted £500 to go to India to spread the word of Jesus — £.400 for fare, £100 for Bibles. It seems to me that this is not the best moment to whip up religious fervour in any part of the world, and flinging his letter into the polite rejection file did not detain us long. It is usually harder than that to decide whom to support, whom to cast aside. By and large, I refuse any application containing the words 'community', 'outreach' or `mentoring', which leaves a reasonably manageable pile for serious discussion. M■ correspondent who wanted to take Christianity into places where it might not be welcome has completely missed the religion's greatest strength — at least in this country — that it is a great faith for the waverers and the detached; not the uncaring, but the unworried. No one in charge of Christianity seems to be that convinced about the product, and this fits in well with the civilised, almost horizontally laid-back, attitude that the British have to spiritual matters. We just don't want, or need, a robust religion; merely something gentle as a backdrop to the daily hustle, which, half-a-dozen times in a life, can be upgraded to something more significant. All the same, Christianity seems just as capable of producing saintly men as are more aggressive forms of religion. Robert Runcie and John Betjeman would more than hold their own in any heavenly line-up.
Lst Sunday I attended a Lord's Taverners welcome-home lunch for Babs Powell, a former Pan's Person, who has recently sailed round the world, raising £60,000 for the Lord's Taverners (undoubtedly a worthy cause) en route. She was not alone, but one of 17 amateurs on her boat Veritas, under the command of a pro skipper, as part of the world's toughest yacht race, the BT Global Challenge. They go the wrong way round the world, turning right at Cape Horn. She was away for ten months, and the president of the Lord's Taverners, her husband Robert Powell, led the appreciation, which at times bordered on manic adulation, especially when Michael Aspel crept in. Another Heartaches stalwart, John Fingleton, conducted a staggeringly successful auction of Babs memorabilia. I had agreed to sponsor Babs in a weak moment while with the Powells in a cable-car going up Mount Etna. The volcano erupted, and I briefly thought that we were about to be immortalised in lava and that I would never have to fulfil my promise of lop a mile. We survived, and so did Babs's boat.
My father kept a diary throughout his twenties, so our family has a vivid first-hand account of one man's war in Africa, Italy, France. Germany — and Arriersham, where I was born towards the end of hostilities. I have never kept anything other than an appointments diary, but had I done so at my father's age, the contrast with what he wrote would have been revealing. I could never have reflected a fraction of the danger and excitement, of the highs and lows of Hugh's early adulthood, or that of his contemporaries, so many to die so young. The release of Sergeant Pepper does not quite match up to preparations for D-Day. There may be a few young British soldiers writing diaries as moving as my father's right now.
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