DIARY
SARAH SANDS
The third of May, the election date that never was, still has some significance for me. The game is up on my thirties. What is the social guidance for 40-year-olds? Friends is a celebration of the twenties. Bridget Jones a tribute to the thirties. Magazines are hooked on the notion of being fabulous at 50. For self-interested reasons, I would like to whip up a bit of interest in the forties, so have been been keeping an eye out for contemporaries. The most famous British 40-year-olds are Hugh Grant and William Hague. Grant has been extensively interviewed about the crisis in his private life. Hague is relentlessly questioned about the crisis in his public life. Adding to the generational turmoil is Nick flornby, whose new novel How to be Good is about a 40-year-old couple who are thrown into confusion about their marriage, their values and themselves.
My hairdresser/psychiatrist Debbie, who is also verging on 40, says that it is a good age for women. Her 40-year-old girlfriends look younger than the generation before and after them. Debbie says that this is because we are squeezed between structured hairdos and drugs. Plus, we have discovered Botex, which means only the young now have frown lines. 'I promise you, look at the evidence; 40-yearolds look younger than 30-year-olds,' says Debbie. If there is a grain of truth in this theow, and it sounds mighty scientific to me, I suppose that it is another part of Diana's legacy. Thanks to her, we are a uniquely highmaintenance generation.
Diana, Princess of Wales, is still much discussed among the Vogue set, who miss her as a social barometer. The two questions most urgently asked last week were: would she have been at the Jackie Kennedy gala in New York? And would she have been for or against cosmetic surgery? The questions show a proper sense of proportion. This week Diana was back on the front pages of newspapers for being voted third (behind Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn) most glamorous woman of our time. In other words, her photograph is no longer used simply to bully the rest of the royal family.
Only the News of the World raises her spirit to shake its gory locks. Justifying its exposure of Sophie Wessex's PR firm, the newspaper quoted Prince William's indignation on his late mother's behalf. 'How dare she [Sophie] compare herself to my mother; my mother was a princess, a grand lady.' How precisely the newspaper has captured the patois of a public-school-educated 18-year-old. Don't they all speak as if they are on the set of My Fair Lady? The only mid-life crisis so far as I am concerned is economic rather than domestic. The downturn means hairshirts for all of us. Yet, paradoxically, it is only Gucci shirts that will get us out of it. A wise Washington economist explained to me that his nation is in a state of 'clis-saving'. This, as I understand it, is a position equidistant between saving and spending. People need to be less financially cautious if we are to retrieve the feel-good growth. A New Yorker cartoon last week took up the theme with a strip about the economy doctor who does house calls ordering women to trade in their white goods. 'I don't understand you people. You go, "waah, waaahh, waaahhh, the economy's going down!" But you refuse to do anything about it,' says the bubble. I have never before thought of my psychotic spending habits as an economic virtue, but I see now that I am a saintly citizen. Only I stand between a downturn and a slump.
0 n Sunday, in Trafalgar Square, one Nelson was eclipsed by another. There is no doubt which Nelson is more famous among schoolchildren. Yet maybe Horatio Nelson could enjoy a revival on the back of the better-known Nelson Mandela. His
biography contains some similarities, after all. 'Spectacular success in battle, combined with his humanity as a commander raised Nelson to godlike status in his lifetime.' The rhetoric of the two men is not so close. Horatio Nelson's is based on military glory and domination, Mandela prefers the language of peaceful multiculturalism. Guess which Nelson these quotes belong to: 1. 'May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great and glorious victory.' 2. '1 have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.' Ken Livingstone said ominously last year, 'I think the people on the plinths in Trafalgar Square in our capital city should be identifiable to the generality of the population.' In language, as much as in appearance. It can only be a matter of time before Nelson is replaced by Nelson. At least, according to this column.
The attraction of the countryside, says the publicity, is that people have time to stop and pass the time of day. This is all very well, but there is no room to do so in London. School drops already require crowd control because of parents chatting in the corridors. Airports, most of all, demand spatial awareness. The increase in elaborate public displays of emotion is resulting in multiple trolley pile-ups. Last weekend at Arrivals, I watched with grim impatience the tearful parent—child reconciliations and ecstatic snogging of united lovers. We ought to follow the example of taxi firms with their phlegmatic, misspelt boards held aloft in silence. Any rapturous embraces should be broken up by riot police.
Ihave been practising my new wave. I recently graduated from timidly opening and shutting my fingers, to the flat-handed, stretched-arm salute of Nelson Mandela and marketing executives who are going places. Now I prefer the loose, rap-inspired arm swing of what Simon Jenkins calls the New Creatives', The look is somewhere between Darren Gough and Shaggy. Try it.
Anotice in front of a west London housing estate reads: 'Slow Down, Children at Play'. Beneath it, a gang of 8to 12-year-olds were last weekend scrawling obscenities on to a wall, in between hurling beer cans at the Highway Code-conscious motorists.
Sarah Sands is deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph.
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