DIARY MAX HASTINGS
Ajournalists, we all indulge a wide range of petty conceits, but few irritate me as much as the abuse of the definite article. Whenever one reads in a magazine profile, 'lie is married to the painter Monica Smith,' one can bet the ranch that Monica Smith is a painter unknown to the world outside her own misbegotten art college. I do not blame the harassed husbands (or wives, when the situation is reversed) who seek to boost their spouses' precarious ego by encouraging this sort of guff. But jour- nalists, and those who write authors' blurbs for book jackets, should sternly resist it. Anybody whom the world has really heard of does not need their profession to be stat- ed at all. It would sound absurd to say of Laurence Olivier, 'He was married to the actress Vivien Leigh.' If I want to suck up to our own chairman's wife, I can do it far more effectively by writing, 'Conrad Black is married to Barbara Amiel,' than, 'Con- rad Black is married to the columnist Bar- bara Arnie!.' Definite article disease is get- ting out of hand, and should be sternly checked at every opportunity.
Aflock of national newspaper editors turned out for the first night of Sunset Boulevard last week. A group of men and women not usually notable for our diffi- dence, I thought most of us looked as uneasy as I felt in the great sea of assem- bled theatricals. Journalists may spar with lawyers and politicians, but we rub along pretty well with them socially. Journalists and actors, on the other hand, seldom find much to say to each other privately, barring the odd amazing polymath such as Stephen Fry. It is about 20 years since I last went to a theatre opening. It was nice ogling the stars, and fun watching everybody behaving like caricature luvvies: standing up . to shriek adoring greetings at each other across the stalls, collapsing into impas- sioned embraces with dear, dear friends before the flickering flashguns. Not ranking star billing in the seating arrangements, I found myself in a row towards the back with a raft of alarmingly tough, deeply tanned men in floral waistcoats who looked as if they spent a fair amount of time assist- ing the Serious Fraud Office with its enquiries. Angels? Bodyguards? Personal trainers? I must ask Andrew Neil, the only editor present who looked entirely at home among the glitterati.
Because our office is in Outer Mongo- lia, aka Canary Wharf, the only way it is Possible to be sure of getting anywhere else on time is to use our own little boat. This is not hardship at all on a summer's day unless it breaks down, as it sometimes does, leaving us drifting interestingly between bridges, with a few hundred gallons of water sloshing in the bilges. On the good days, of which there are many, we all enjoy gazing out on that exotic river culture par- allel with, yet divorced from, that of the shore. The fierceness of the tides below the City can sometimes seem frightening. The weight of river cargo traffic is a constant surprise. The big yachts, the occasional warship, the battered houseboats down- stream give way to the natty surburban cruisers above Chelsea. The other night, we had a picnic on the boat between Rich- mond and Hampton Court, on the wettest day of summer. I enjoyed every moment of it. The guests, I felt, bore up nobly under trying circumstances. I could hear them muttering to each other, like Ratty and Mole on that grim caravanning expedition with Toad: 'We've just got to stick it out a little longer, until the fever passes and we can go home.' Most yacht owners profess that they have only two happy days, the one on which they buy the boat, and the one on which they sell it. But, if anything can rec- oncile me to Canary Wharf, it is thrashing upriver by boat on a sunny day, to get away from the place.
Thirty years ago, I was briefly an excep- tionally incompetent army parachutist indeed, instructors suggested that I was among the worst ever to pass through the Abingdon training course. I once described my failure as a soldier at length in The Spectator. I certainly never felt the urge to jump again. But one of my most persuasive friends is a superman named Michael Rose, former CO of the SAS in the Falk- lands, today a general who is also chairman of the army parachute association. 'Come and jump with us,' said Michael one day. 'No, no, I said, never again will I risk break- ing a leg and my ego."Ah, but you need not risk breaking a leg,' said Michael clev- erly. Tor people like you, we have the senior officers' parachute jump, into the sea off Poole Harbour, from where the Royal Marines will effortlessly retrieve you.' Thus it was that I found myself prac- tising door exits and flight drills at Nether- avon one morning last week, accompanied by my 20-year-old son and assorted officers including Rose, M. The senior executives of the Daily Telegraph, to whom Michael had also extended this generous offer, declined as one, even though I warned them what effect this could have on their futures. They said that they preferred their futures the way they were. As it was, the joke was on me. At lunchtime at Netheravon, as the rain bucketed down around us, the army announced that the wind was too high to jump, and it was all off. I am still not sure whether I was relieved or not, nor whether I shall accept General Rose's immediate offer of a raincheck. But office legend was delighted by the Monday morning tale of the editor clinging hysterically to the door of the aircraft sobbing, 'No! No!' Anyway, for the benefit of anyone with heroic delu- sions about parachuting, Michael Rose showed us a video of two 74-year-old Arn- hem veterans jumping last week — just get- ting in a little practice for the 50th anniver- sary.
Ihave the utmost admiration for my old friend Simon Jenkins as a columnist. But one of his favourite current themes raises my blood pressure to Disgusted-of-Chel- tenham summits. Simon has repeatedly argued in the Times that all this stuff about modern crime, unsafe streets, fabric of soci- ety collapsing, is a lot of nonsense built upon phoney police statistics and middle- class paranoia. God only knows why château Jenkins, or even l'auto de Jenkins have been spared. For all the rest of us, awaiting the next outbreak of pillage is a way of life. I have had four car radios stolen in a year, two from outside my flat, two from outside my cottage, all with collateral window-smashing. My sister, who lives next door in the country, left a strimmer on her front porch during Sunday lunch the other week, and emerged to find that somebody had run up the lawn, stolen the machine and decamped. Garden sheds are routinely looted. For most of us, this sort of thing has become the norm. The sheer pettiness and irksomeness of removing radios from cars, burglar-alarming before going to the village shop, chaining up bicycles and mowers, ensuring that one keeps no portable valu- ables in an empty house, diminishes the quality of life immeasurably. I can think of no reason at all to take the Jenkins view, that we should regard this situation with equanimity. In many respects, I am a liberal Conservative. But I am right up there with Disgusted-of-Almost-Everywhere in my knee reflexes on law and order.
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