DIARY
STUART REID To London City airport, for the first time. In the mid-afternoon traffic it takes about an hour to make the seven-mile jour- ney from central London, so I arrive angry and frustrated. I take an instant and per- haps unhinged dislike to what I see in the departure lounge: scores of young business- men with laptops. They are bound for Brus- sels and Amsterdam and Cologne to play the single market, and look like the sort of people you see in television advertisements for banking 'products'. Those who are not reading the City pages are reading the sports pages. For a moment the suits make me doubt the desirability of a federal Europe. Is this the future? No, it's only the present, but even so I am seized by the urge to throw a brick through a window. I get over it, though: four hours after checking in I am being driven from Bergamo, just out- side Milan, to Trent, the capital of Trentino, where I have been invited to speak at a seminar on tourism and the press. In other words, I am on a freebie. The subject is not one I am an expert in, and my contribution loses something in the translation. The Spectator's joke slogan — 'firm but unfair' — does not bring the house down. I look up at 40 pairs of eager Italian eyes and realise they are waiting for the punchline. Crikey! Nothing for it but to mop my brow and press on. The key to success in Middle England, I explain, is to make your destina- tion fashionable. Tuscany has done that by attracting such admirable and beautiful people as John Mortimer and Tony Blair, Glenys Kinnock and Petronella Wyatt. Per- haps, I suggest, Trentino should try to per- suade David Beckham and Posh Spice to buy a house in the Dolomites. The Italians are very sporting about it all. They have exquisite manners, and make allowances for the 'irony' some Englishmen employ to cover up ignorance and idleness.
Trent is a beautiful and gracious city. To me, though, its main attraction is that it was the setting for the Counter-Reforma- tion Council of Trent (1545-63). The coun- cil gave its name to the Tridentine (or Latin) Mass, the liturgy that inspired Beethoven, Bach and Mozart, and which was once as much a part of European civili- sation as Chartres cathedral and the Poor Clares. When I got back to London I looked up the Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum, with which, in 1570, Pope St Pius V promulgated the rite. It is rousing stuff: `We grant and concede in perpetuity that . . . this Missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of con- science or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment or censure. . . . Therefore, no one whosoever is permitted to alter this let- ter or heedlessly to venture to go contrary to this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant, indult, declaration, will, decree, and prohi- bition. Should anyone, however, presume to commit such an act, he should know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.' It would be hard to mistake the gen- eral drift of Pius V's thinking. But a mere 399 years later, following the Second Vati- can Council (1962-65), the liturgical reformers chucked out the rite of Trent and introduced the New (or vernacular) Mass. So much for perpetuity. The most distressing thing about this act of vandal- ism, however, is that it has created a num- ber of warring traditionalist sects, whose members believe in Masonic plots, argue endlessly about the proper length of a woman's skirt (should it fall one inch above the ankle, or two?) and rebuke parents who allow their children to see The Sound of Music.
My freebie took me from Trent to Riva del Garda, where I discovered a toyshop selling what used to be called tin soldiers. In the window there were lots of strutting SS men with swastika flags, but I left my body to medical science.' weirdest of all were the limos with Hitler standing up giving a Nazi salute and Musso sitting beside him, chin jutting and arms folded over his chest. The Italians are rather more relaxed about these things than the rest of us: they are as scornful of modish prohibitions as they were of Nazi race theory. Besides, they see the big pic- ture: the shop also sold GI Joes and Desert Rats, as well as figures of Churchill, Roo- sevelt and Montgomery.
It is no coincidence, as they say, that a few days after I returned from civilisation's bosom I had a dream about Julie Burchill. We held hands, no more, and then I woke up and stared earnestly at the ceiling for an hour or two. The massively gifted Julie is lodged in my subconscious because a few months ago I commissioned her to write what was seen in some quarters as an anti- Catholic Diary. What a wailing and baring of teeth there was! How could The Specta- tor have printed such ill-considered and unkind words? Yet all Julie did was to accuse Catholics of superstition, child molestation, unnatural cruelty, anti- Semitism and hypocrisy. She made abso- lutely no case whatsoever against the Church. RCs are among the most privi- leged members of English society, with power and influence out of all proportion to their numbers. They have nothing to fear from a bit of common abuse. Titus Oates is dead.
News that Her Majesty has ordered that her food must be garlic-free during her visit to Italy next week was of more than passing interest to me. For the past 20 years I have been allergic to garlic. If I have even a small amount I am ill for 24 hours. My eyes itch and I feel bilious (to put it as delicately as possible). I cannot concentrate or keep still, and I can't sleep. What's up, doe? Alas, doctors are no help. Some are sympathetic and ask me whether there is any insanity in the family and whether I have thought of yoga. Others are dismis- sive. When I asked one what I could do about my condition, he said, 'Don't eat gar- lic.' But the Queen and I are not alone. Michael Wharton (Peter Simple) tells me of a friend of his who will not enter a house if there is garlic in the kitchen. Once this chap fled from a lunch party when he was told that wild garlic was growing in a field a couple of hundred yards away. Something must be done about this embarrassing social disease. But what?
Stuart Reid is deputy editor of The Spectator.
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