DIARY JOHN OSBORNE
Food is on my mind after another pro- longed session at the Dental Gestapo, and this enforced regime of slops sets me to mourning the era of Joe Lyons and, in par- ticular, the Corner Houses. With their gypsy orchestras and tango bands they induced heady fantasies of luxury, intrigue and cheap glamour. As a schoolboy, a fugi- tive from the deadening wastelands beyond Clapham Junction, I would dream myself into the character of worldly observer, drinking in the passing show of some exotic European capital, thronged by cunning, beautiful women, where every other subur- ban couple stood in for Conrad Veidt and Vivien Leigh. Each baroque Corner House had its distinctive ambience: the branch at Marble Arch was more Ritz-like than the Twentyish Strand. But they all shared an innovation called the Salad Bowl, a huge room displaying mounds of sardines, anchovies, herring, gherkins, coleslaw, hills of cold baked beans, tomatoes, onions, even lettuce. There was the guarantee of fit-to-bust, unmonitored second helpings, a fulfilment only otherwise found in chil- dren's comics. And no, it wasn't all for fourpence, but 3/6d — half the price of a Sunday newspaper. Joe Lyons teashops were altogether different. Here the food was fast — steak and kidney puddings and pies, Lancashire hotpot and college pud- ding — sped from the factory, yet comfort- ingly appealing in its fake homeliness. You were encouraged to linger in the warmth, and some branches supplied boxes of chess- men, draughts and dominoes. The teashops were havens against despair, loneliness and the cold streets. Then the Nippy waitresses were replaced by self-service, the enterprise was archly rechristened `Jolyon' and soon was no more.
Gluttony, after envy, now seems to be the most encouraged of the sometime seven sins. When I take the cab from Euston, men and women streak past, brief- cases and bags in one hand, clutching blobs of food to their mouths like babies' com- forters. Eating in the open air should be a delight, a releasing freedom for contempla- tion, even reverie. At least they might sit down for five minutes and admire the Prospect of Nelson's column. We've all had to get used to foreign tourists chomping on the pavement like pit-bulls, but watching Young executives and secretaries scoffing on the hoof to the office is a reminder of the nasty habits we have picked up during the years of the Great Tourist Scramble. I suppose this kind of quick refuelling comes naturally to a generation who, as teenagers, preferred to eat standing up out of the saucepan. The establishments which dis- pense the stuff are mere pit-stops for impa- tient bellies: 'Fill her up.' It may not be the end of civilisation but, like rock concerts and raves, just another refinement of public squalor.
he abolition of the telegram was anoth- er portent of darker things to come. It was such a useful SOS for begging money or dashing off impulsive declarations of pas- sion. It was also an invaluable device in the advancement of plot in stage plays. Terse- ness was its grammar and, unlike the fax, it presumed no reply. The telephone is a clumsy, unsubtle instrument. I dread its peremptory intrusiveness. It distorts and over-simplifies. Like many people of my generation, I grew up in phoneless houses. Until I was 13, I knew only one boy whose parents possessed one, and that was rarely used and unattended in a draughty corner by the front door. When I first came to live with my present wife 17 years ago, I was aware that she was no heiress. However, I assumed that, as a weathered journalist, she would ease the days with an effortless command of the telephone. She would dial anyone, however awesome, from the Arch- bishop of Canterbury to Samuel Beckett. I soon discovered that her phobia is almost as severe as my own, often needing a cigarette and a stiff gin before lifting the dreaded receiver. There's no getting away from it, no question of kicking and scream- ing into the 21st century, we are both already bloody and left for dead some- `Pathetic! Under Communism he could have got 99 per cent.' where in the middle of the 20th. I still feel bad news is best delayed, good news more welcome on a postcard. Yesterday, the tele- phone rang at 7.30 in the morning. What demented bearer of ill-tidings could it be? It was the fire-extinguisher maintenance man.
Alesbian friend occasionally sends me a Country and Western tape to buck me up. Lesbians are deep into C & W, and the singer k.d. lang (as in e.e. cummings), already an icon, has now gone 'global' since she became an 'item' with Martina Navratilova. So. I caught a glimpse of k.d. on the telly in Rock Steady Special and she seemed a jolly, bouncy sort of girl. Not that she looked much like a girl, more like Cliff Richard's ballsy brother.
The other night I dreamed about Lord Milner, the 19th-century imperial adminis- trator, of whom I know very little, a famous actress and someone I haven't seen since I was 12. I won't go on. I am a dream bore. Like all one-time performers, I dream I am in a play of which I know nothing. I seek desperately for a copy of a script in order to improvise a character in a plot withheld. Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstem, only this is an endurance of terror rather than reflective joking. I wonder if men dream more than women? Is it mostly those with troubled spirits or fervid imaginations that never truly sleep? Think of the references to dreams in Shakespeare, in Hamlet alone. Is the Ghost a dream? What dreams to come, perchance to dream, a little dream. Do solicitors dream? Tax inspectors? Do they have their own regular, professional dreams? I have been reading Graham Greene's selection of his dreams, A World of My Own. As he says, it is a world shared with no one else, to which there are no wit- nesses. Dreams are not lies, no one can deny their truth. A dream is the one thing in this life, terrifying or blissful, premoni- tion or adventure, that is entirely your own. And you don't even have to pay VAT on it. In the foreword to the book, Greene's friend, Yvonne Cloetta, says that it is a form of autobiography. But, unlike conven- tional autobiography, you can't be accused of vindictiveness or bad taste. It made me think of the wisdom of my own attempts at this treacherous form, under the penalty of censure and libel. I think I have concluded that a writer does have a duty to what is personally honourable, but that there may also be a debt to be paid to that serious inner life, a subjective fiction, an assem- bling of people and experience, which is also the dream of living wide awake. Ah, well: unsweet dreams.
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