DIARY MAX HASTINGS
Almost every member of the British middle classes shares one common fantasy: the certainty of our competence to join the panel of Any Questions? Year after year, we sit at home listening in silent scorn to the token representative of our point of View hovering pitifully across the air waves. We itch to seize the microphone and pour forth a torrent of fluent rhetoric that would at once silence the awful Skinner or Heffer opposite. Then, upon those of us who deliver political polemics in the media for a living, sooner or later reality strikes. We are telephoned by the charming Carole Stone of BBC Bristol and invited to turn UP in Harrow or Totnes or Grimsby one wintry Friday evening to share the plat- form of the local evangelical hall or wher- ever with a brace of politicians and another journalist, or tycoon, or academic. The experience is infinitely chastening. One arrives nursing carefully considered re- sponses to three or four issues of the week which are certain to come up, and never do. One flounders feebly on such questions as 'What do the panel think should be done to curb heroin addiction?' to which only Mrs Gwynneth Dunwoody can leap for- ward sublimely confident of an answer. Above all, one promises John Timpson grovelling gratitude for ever afterwards if he turns elsewhere first for the answer to the funny question. This was, on my last appearance a couple of weeks ago in Armagh: 'How do the members of the panel respond to the full moon?' I envied the sublime complacency of Mr Benn, who after listening to the other three of us making fools of ourselves on another occa- sion, copped out primly: 'The question is frivolous. I have no opinion on the matter.' I trooped home from Armagh conscious of having put up a poor showing, and firmly resolved that I shall do better next time, when the questions will be more my sort of thing. But then, I vaguely remember think- ing the same the time before in Worksop. And the time before that in Bristol. If I am ever invited again, at one of our local Sunday morning drinks parties I shall call for a volunteer proxy who thinks he or she can do better. I shall be surprised and dis- appointed in our neighbours if at least 20 hands do not shoot up.
Within the next few days, the first Christmas decorations will appear in the shops. Those with whom one does business will start to say that they will provide an answer to whatever question you are asking, or arrange whatever service one seeks, 'after the holiday', I love Christmas. But in an age when the Church of England regards any traditions as negotiable, I suggest that the Archbishop of Canterbury bends his mind to the advantages of resche- duling the festivities. They fitted in perfect- ly well at the end of December through all the centuries in which, by that date, we were deep in winter, and could regard the occasion as marking a midpoint between the first snows and the coming of spring. But the whole thing has become quite ridiculous since autumn extended itself to the beginning of January, and spring was abolished altogether. Christmas has be- come a gloomy festival, overshadowed by the prospect of four bleak, hibernatory months ahead, in which the sun will shine only on umbrella makers and exiles. If Runcie can ordain women priests and think well of his frightful new prayer book, he could at least do something of practical value by rearranging Christmas around the second week of February.
While on the subject of rearranging rituals, as Remembrance Day is also close at hand, I plead the case for a reshuffle of the statues that share Whitehall with the Cenotaph. It seems wholly characteristic of the British that we accord pride of place in the most prominent showcase in London to the Duke of Cambridge, one of the most pernicious boobies ever to have been responsible for our armed forces; and to Earl Haig, whom even John Terraine could scarcely nominate as a very Alexander. I may be accused of prejudice in the matter of Haig, having just had a small run-in with the successor to his title. I included a passage from the great Field-Marshal's diaries in a military anthology I recently edited, in which Haig describes in charac- teristically sanctimonious terms a phase in his intrigues with the King and Kitchener against Sir John French. The book was already in proof when the present Earl Haig abruptly refused permission for the extract to be used, unless an editorial rider was added declaring the high and patriotic purpose of the Field-Marshal's backstairs manoeuvrings. We grudgingly substituted a passage from Siegfried Sassoon. From Whitehall, I should remove both Haig and the Duke of Cambridge — to Bemersyde and Balmoral respectively — and substi- tute — who else? — Wellington and Marlborough. As for Cromwell's statue outside the House of Commons — but no, the field-marshals will do to be going on with.
The southern United States, from which I am writing this Diary, remains so richly endowed with lunacies that it seems remarkable they have not yet produced their own Benn, or Beachcomber. My newspaper this morning reported the pro- gress of a court case in Alabama, in which one Mr Hollis Curl, the editor of a local newspaper, the Wilcox Progressive Era, is charged with eating an alligator. The saga began in July 1982, when an off-duty security guard named Nathaniel Manzie shot an alligator he claimed was threatening some children at the edge of a creek in Selma. He then hauled the re- mains to the local newspaper editor, who, he thought, might like to see it. Hollis did more than see it — he took home and ate most of the six-foot beast. Then a few months ago, the ever-vigilant forces of the law at last arrived puffing at the door. Shooting alligators is illegal, and the assas- sin was fined $150. But so is possession of alligators, and Mr Hollis Curl is now fighting tooth and nail the case brought against him. He declared that the creature was shot legally because it was endangering the children, 'and anyway, we're up to our butts in alligators in this county'. He also denies possession. 'But he put this animal in his car, he drove it to his home, cooked it and ate it,' declares the Interior Depart- ment's prosecuting lawyer unyieldingly. 'If that doesn't constitute possession, what does?' Not a bit of it, says Mr Curl. Or rather, a very small bit of it: after tasting a sample, he claims to have dumped the rest in the Alabama River: 'Nobody could figure out how to skin it.'
It is rare enough — at least in the circles in which 1 move – to ring up a private house these days and find the telephone answered by a housekeeper. It is rarer still to find her protecting her master's privacy with such dogged determination: 'Mr Lawson is not available.'
'Can you give me any idea when he will be?'
'No.'
'Will he be back at lunchtime?'
'I really couldn't say.'
'But he had asked me to telephone him.' 'He is very busy outside just now.' 'Surely you could ask him to come to the telephone?'
'That would not be possible.'
'May I ask what precisely Mr Lawson is doing?'
'Directing the fire brigade. The stables are burning down.'
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