DIARY
PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE AGarrick club member, purple with rage, approached me at the bar last week and said, loudly and repeatedly, 'Sir, you are a shit, an incorrigible shit.' I knew what he was referring to. He is a friend of Kings- ley Amis and had every right to attack me for writing, so soon after the great writer's death, about his self-destructive alcoholism. All I could say in exculpation was that Kingsley himself, in his memoirs, had writ- ten much crueller things about his recently deceased friends, particularly John Wain, than anything I had written about Kingsley. Had my critic, I asked, slagged off Kingsley in the same fashion as he was now slagging me off? Naturally this did not do anything to turn away his wrath; in fact it only added to it, since he then went on to call on me to resign from the club. It was an experience nonetheless painful for being — as many might think — well merited. Septuagenari- ans do not expect to be given verbal mug- gings, or to be the target of raw anger, least of all at the bar of a club celebrated for bonhomous conviviality and mutual toler- ance. The only other time anything like this has happened to me was as the defendant in a libel action brought by Andrew Neil when his QC put it to me, in the witness box, that I had just uttered a pack of lies. At school such insults were par for the course. But in adult life in England, at any rate among the professional classes, verbal violence is as rare as physical violence. So when it occurs, the effect is all the more deadly. Fortunately, once my attacker had stalked off, I was able to settle my nerves with a large Bloody Mary which the bar- man, who must have overheard the exchange, served with his usual cheerful grace. Yes, I know I bring these troubles on my own head. I should resist slagging off the recently deceased even when they fully deserve it. In fact, after last week's experi- ence, I solemnly promise, when next writ- ing the obituary of a shit, to conclude with that well tried euphemism: 'He was funda- mentally decent.' Everyone knows what that means without the need to spell it out.
Ait happens a black postman was delivering a parcel on the stroke of 11 a.m. last Saturday, 11 November. He looked at his watch and reminded me of the two- minute silence, which we both observed together. Earlier that morning I had heard Michael Cockerell's Radio 4 preview of his television programme on Enoch Powell, in which an extract was played of his contro- versial 'Tiber Foaming with Blood' speech. At the time I was an ardent supporter of Enoch's and shared his fears about coloured immigration to the full. But increasingly I find myself marvelling at how well the blacks have been assimilated. My views may well be rose-tinted since I don't live in or near an inner city and such blacks as I run into all tend to have jobs, such as the aforementioned postman. But among these — delivery van drivers, London Underground officials, bus conductors, gas repairers, telephone engineers and so on the old English characteristics of good humour, helpfulness, politeness and relia- bility seem to be rather more evident than among the indigenous white population. Travelling to West Ruislip, at the end of the Central Line, at night I even feel safer when the carriage is full of blacks — very often sitting straight up in city suits with briefcases on their knees — than with a lot of sprawling young whites. Enoch has been proved wrong, and I had hoped that on this valedictory programme he might have been magnanimous enough to say so. That would have been the English thing to do. Sadly, although born and bred in this country, Enoch remains defiantly un-English.
In a letter to the Times on Monday, Mo Mowlam (is that really how the Shadow Minister wants to be known?) challenged Matthew Parris to produce evidence to sup- port his assertion that Tony Blair told a delegation on behalf of the homeless that `there were no votes in them'. As it hap- pens, I too have good reason to believe that
`Oh yeah? Well my kid's more disruptive than your kid.' Mr Blair made that remark, having been told about it, soon after the event, by a member of the delegation. My informant, a long- term Labour supporter of unim- peachable integrity and general renown, was profoundly shocked, and refused to accept my suggestion that the Labour lead- er's flip remark might have been meant ironically. None of this should be taken to mean that the next Labour government won't help the homeless; only that delega- tions of compassionate luwies should look elsewhere for a shoulder to cry on.
Iimagine the readers of the Independent were as appalled to read that Charles Wil- son, the former Murdoch and Maxwell apparatchik, had been put in charge of their paper, even if only temporarily, as readers of the Telegraph were, not so long ago, to read that Conrad Black was plan- ning to recruit the dreaded Andrew Neil. Nothing came, I'm glad to say, of the Neil rumour and for the sake of the Independent I hope the shadow of Charlie Wilson will prove equally insubstantial and short-lived.
On the jacket of my recent book of memoirs there is a posed photograph of the author, aged about five, stark naked, look- ing coyly and invitingly over his shoulder. It was taken in 1928 by the then very fashion- able children's photographer, Marcus Adams, and were the negative to be pre- sented to Boots for development today it might well cause raised eyebrows, if not worse. Marcus Adams, I believe, is still in business and his 1920-30 files must be full of many other equally suggestive and provocative childhood shots of contempo- rary elders — field marshalls, archbishops, lord lieutenants and suchlike — not all of whom would be as happy for them to see the light of the day as I was. Which is a pity, since a select 'then and now' Marcus Adams retrospective exhibition could well be a great draw.
In village politics, as in all politics, there are many conflicts of interest. As the owner of four dogs, we are compelled to have their canine interests primarily at heart. But their canine interests often involve us in quarrels with other village dog owners who — were our respective packs not minded to bite each others ears off — we would very much like. With one such dog owner we are on particularly bad terms which precludes us coming to her aid in a loud music dispute, in spite of all my human sympathies being on her side. As well ask Mary Killen to solve this as to solve the Bosnian crisis.
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