DIARY
MILES KINGTON Any day now I am due to reach my fiftieth birthday, and I had hoped to arrive at that safe haven without ever having to go skiing, enjoy opera, become a poker player or wear a white tie. I was wrong about one of them. Last week I was invited to a grand dinner at Lincoln's Inn and accepted because the guest list also con- tained my boss, Mr Andreas Whittam- Smith of the Independent, a man whom I never get to meet otherwise. I did not notice until it was too late that it was white tie. So I rang Philip Howard at the Times for his advice. He does not run an advice column but until four years ago he was my neighbour in Notting Hill and I know that he knows about dressing grandly for strange affairs. After all, he went to Eton, which is five years of dressing grandly for strange affairs. 'When I go to Moss Bros to hire this stuff, Philip, what do I ask for exactly?' Dear boy, you don't go to Moss Bros. If you go there you will spend £35 or so, and go to Lincoln's Inn looking like a man who has just spent £35 or so at Moss Bros. Now, I have at home a whole selection of stuff inherited from uncles and fathers and if you go to my place and let my Wife sort you out, you will go to Lincoln's Inn looking like a man whose white tie has been in the family for three generations.' And so it was. The best fitting jacket was somewhat frayed, but cosily so. It was also missing a button, but Myrtle Howard flourished a spare one and sewed it on. 'It's tartan, but very dark,' she said. 'From Philip's old days in the Black Watch?' 'From the sofa.' I entered my white tie and evening dress like a man becoming his own effigy at Madame Tussauds. Like a waiter going to a restaurant, Myrtle thought. Or a conductor, she thought more kindly, off to the Albert Hall. 'A conductor wouldn't go on a bike,' I said. 'You're going on a bike?' she said. 'This I must see.'
Bicycling is the quickest way round London. Everyone knows that. So when I moved to Bath four years ago, I found it made sense, every time I had to come back to the capital, to put the bike in the train at Bath, get it out at Paddington and tackle London at speed. Even cycling past the taxi queue at Paddington makes it feel worthwhile. But cycling all the way to Lincoln's Inn in white tie seemed a little ambitious, so I left the bike at Paddington en route, took a taxi and arrived at Lincoln's Inn in time to be introduced to the 100 other diners, most of whom were Judges, and silks, and common law advo- cates, and benchers of the Inn. I was confused, partly because a knowledge of the legal hierarchy seems to me as unneces- sary as a love of poker or knowledge of Opera, partly because I realised I was the only man in the room whose waistcoat did not cover the top of his trousers, though this could be overcome if I bent over like an old tree. Every time I was introduced to someone, I bent over and did not return to the vertical. It was in this position that I met Kenneth Clarke, the education supre- mo, and fellow guest. 'Do you get out to hear much jazz these days?' I inquired. 'No,' he mourned. 'I only got to Ronnie Scott's once last year. And the trouble is that when I do go out to jazz, I am recognised and get heckled.' But everyone gets heckled by Ronnie Scott, I would have told him, if dinner had not been announced. The meal was held in a hall that would have made a very fine Tudor railway terminus. At one end were 400 or so junior lawyers, occasionally dropping their cutlery or their portable phones as they ate; at the other, above us, was a huge mural painting which I was informed by a kindly judge, or silk, or something, was insured against theft. 'The insurance com- pany, however, returns the premium to us every year as it is incapable of theft,' he smiled. This is the kind of donnish joke which I suspect keeps lawyers of all ranks reconciled to their strange way of life. Not always successfully: the man opposite me suddenly said, halfway through dinner, 'I have been in the law for 32 years, and it has been 32 years of total tedium.' No wonder they need these dinners.
Iwas amused to see Kingsley Amis slaughtering Jazz Anecdotes by Bill Crow in these pages the other day. Amused partly because I have been leafing through Crow's book for a month or more and have found a great deal to enjoy in it. It's the first time anyone has tried to collect all those musicians' stories which make jazz an oral tradition, and along with the sawdust there's a lot of good beer in there. Amused, partly because the attack was predictable; no fraternity is so ready to indulge in internal warfare as the jazz one, and even though Amis has not been very active on the jazz scene since he and Larkin were lads, it was nice to know he hasn't lost that proclivity. When the new London station Jazz FM opened, for inst- ance, it was wonderful to see how the jazz community with one accord turned on it and tried to rend it limb from limb. Their very own station! It works with railways too, as I found out earlier this year when Literary Review got Sean Day-Lewis to review my Steaming Through Britain, and he gave it the lordly thumbs down from the viewpoint of the locomotive fanatic, whom I was purposefully not addressing. Still, it's all swings and roundabouts, as I remarked resignedly to a Review staff member some time later. 'But we were so upset!' she said. 'We asked him because we really thought he'd be awfully nice about your book!' I thought of trying to explain that choosing the real train buff was the way to guarantee the opposite, but didn't have the time.
Kingsley Amis tried to add insult to insult by saying that Bill Crow's name sounds like a pseudonym 'but seems to be real'. Is it any more unlikely than Simon Raven or Jean Rook? Certainly, it's more feasible than Kingsley Amis, which doesn't even sound like a convincing village. It's the sort of name I'd invent for my column, where names have to be unlikely, or they will attract libel suits from people of the same name. Last year some time I con- jured up the name Dacre Balsdon from thin air and, several weeks after using it, was shaken to get a letter from a reader who wanted to know if I had really known dear old Dacre Balsdon. She even enclosed the funeral address given over Balsdon's grave by Neville Coghill. Heaven knows what recess of the mind it had popped up from. Last week I found a second-hand copy of a 1939 novel by Balsdon, called Charily Bizarre and dedicated to Coghill. I bought it. It's very funny. Not bad for a man who I thought didn't exist.
Actually, the Lincoln's Inn dinner turned out quite nicely, considering it's the only white-tie affair I intend ever to attend. I got a lift back to Paddington and my bike from the genial High Commissioner for Canada. I spotted a judge having much worse trouble than me — when he sat down, his waistcoat shot up three inches behind his left ear and stayed there all night. And the experience gave me added insight into the final performance of Ham- let which I saw at the Bristol Old Vic on Saturday, directed brilliantly by Paul Un- win (Bristol is crazy to let this man go) and starring Ian Glen. I thought Glen was superb, but never more so than in the scene with Claudius and the players. Why? Because he played the scene in white tie, and barely had five minutes to change into his clobber. That's what I call artistry.
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