DIARY
JOHN MORTIMER
though we're being constantly told about our own rising crime rate, methods of depriving strangers of their cash seem more sophisticated in New York. Walking round the front of the Plaza Hotel to the cinema, I was warmly greeted by a slim, young, elegantly dressed black man, who said, `Hallo there. Fancy seeing you in New York! And you're looking great, I must say, just great! You wait 'til I tell our best friend in London I bumped into you here. He'll just die, I know he will.' Well . . . er . . . which best friend is that?' I felt, as I do so often, that I must have met this man before and was waiting, politely, for a clue. `Our black friend. Think now! You must know who he is.' He looked at me in a pained and critical sort of way. `Come on! Are you trying to tell me you don't have any black friends in London?"Yes, of course I do.' In order to rebut this charge I came up with the name of a black actor. He seemed delighted. `That's it! You got it. Old Henry's just going to be so thrilled to hear I met you and you were looking great. We got to get together.' I'm afraid I'm leaving tomorrow morning.' Then I'll run you out to the airport. Look, my car's just over there.' He waved in the general direction of Central Park. `Trouble is, I just ran out of petrol and they want twenty-eight dollars' deposit on the car. Henry'll kill himself laughing when he hears this. I can drop it round to your hotel soon as I've been to the bank.' Overcome by confusion, and guilt at not being able to remember our best black friend immediately, I started to count out dollars. I'd got to eight when he said, `That's no good. Twenty-eight,' in a voice which was no longer at all friendly. I told him to get lost and went to see, appropri- ately, The Age of Innocence. He deserved eight dollars for ingenuity.
Imust be lucky. I've only been robbed twice before. One was late at night, again near the Plaza Hotel, when a very large man loomed up and demanded 100 dollars. Not rating my chances in a fight with him, or indeed anyone else, I asked him if he would settle for 50. He agreed reluctantly to the deal and vanished rapidly. Outside a shoe shop in Milan, a 12-year-old girl held up a bit'of paper for me to read. I know all about the technique; you bend to read the Paper and half-a-dozen other gypsy chil- dren rob your pockets. I gripped my wallet, but with no difficulty at all they got my traveller's cheques. There is something to be said for these children, who have to bring home a large amount of take to their Fagin-like elders, who live in shacks and Caravans outside the city. A banker to Whom we told this story said they pick-
pocketed the lire equivalent of about £40 from his son. They vanished like greased lightning but caught up with the son in the next street and gave him back his money, saying, `You're obviously a poor man, and we're really not concerned with trifling bits of money like this.'
My admiration for the entertaining Matthew Parris went up considerably because of the article he wrote about the debate on the age of homosexual consent. Although his side won, he said the standard of argument was pathetic, including a `shabby and floundering speech' from the Home Secretary. He then went on to for- mulate, extremely effectively, the way his opponents should have argued their case. The trouble with so many of us is that we receive our opinions like a hand of cards dealt out by the side we support, and never
bother to consider the arguments against them. Vote Labour and you've got to be against flirtations in the office, smoking, jokes which might just possibly hurt any- one's feelings and fox-hunting. Vote Tory and you're meant to be in love with prison for children, huge salaries for businessmen who sack large numbers of their employees, and wages close to the poverty line. We should all follow Matthew Parris in think- ing seriously about arguments against our cherished beliefs. Mr Michael Howard, for instance, should sit down and write an arti- cle on the great importance of the right to silence in our system of justice, and alterna- tives to prison. The Revd Ian Paisley should learn to detail the advantages of a united Ireland. If we all did this it might be surprising how much of the hand we picked up without thinking would have to be dis- carded.
No defending barrister was ever any good who didn't understand the power of the case for the prosecution. Any advocate who followed the line of the present Gov- ernment, and simply pretended that the case against them didn't exist, would lose every time. Everyone regards barristers, less popular as a body than meter maids or tax inspectors, as hypocrites who can argue for any side that happens to employ them, and may wonder why judges who have been barristers should suddenly become wise and dependable. The truth is that unless you can see both sides clearly you can't argue effectively for either of them; so bar- risters are not as unfit to become judges as many people might suppose. The problem is that the old habit of wanting to make persuasive speeches and win cases dies hard when anyone who has spent their life as an advocate becomes a judge. Some judges can't help showing an old advocate's partiality to a jury, and will sigh heavily and roll their eyes to heaven when summing up the defence case. Not many go as far as an Australian judge who said, `That is the defence put forward, members of the jury.' He then held his nose and pulled down an imaginary lavatory chain.
0 ne thing still puzzles me about the sad death of the late Mr Milligan, MP. Claire Rayner, who has considerable nurs- ing experience, explained to me that many people produce satisfactory orgasms when half strangled. A few weeks ago I had a particularly severe asthma attack and found myself, it seemed, fighting for breath. Sadly I have to report that there was not an orgasm in sight.
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