DIARY
JULIE BURCHILL My mother died last month, and I do miss her. I miss her most of all because she was the only person I've ever known who was remotely like me. This is the curse of Teen: when our hormones kick in, all we want to do is get away from our par- ents and be with people like us. Too late we realise that, if we've been lucky enough to be blessed with good parents, they're the only people like us we'll ever find. All our roaming and searching was in vain, then, forsaking our heart's ease for a soft parade of straw dogs. For ages my writing hero has been Alan Bennett, so imagine my delight when I realised about 15 years ago that my mother was a living, breathing Bennett heroine, with all the spirit and eccentricity that implies. An incident that happened a few months before her death sums this up wonderfully for me. Walking the dog in broad daylight in the back lanes of our part of Bristol, my mother, a 70- year-old lady not in the best of health, espied what she called 'an old junkie' tak- ing his solitary pleasures courtesy of a roll of Bacofoil and a ballpoint-pen case. I must point out that my mother, as anti- drugs as all of her generation, called any- one who took more than two Disprins 'an old junkie'. 'Come over 'ere, love!' called the junkie. 'I'll sort you out!' Get away!' cried my mother. 'I'll set the dog on thee!' The dog was only small, but it was enthusi- astic and apparently saw the old junkie off handsomely. My mother walked on, her honour satisfied. 'And then I thought ... ' my mother mused. 'I had a roast to do, and I'd run out of Bacofoil. . . . "No, Mum!' I squealed, in the delicious agony of anticipation. 'Oh, yes! I went back and there was the roll of Bacofoil — ee'd 'ardly touched it. So I rolled it up neat and took it 'ome and did a roast in it.' Her eyes twinkled with glee. 'That roast you ate yes- terday!' I loved the fearlessness and surre- alism of this story, and started telling it to everyone who came to the house. My mum eventually told me to stop it, saying it made her look stingy and dirty. But I found it so funny that I didn't stop. After I returned from the hospital, less than an hour after her death, I went to the cup- board to get some biscuits for a neighbour who had called to commiserate. Some- thing fell on my head, hard, really hurting me. 'Ow!' I picked it up. It was a roll of Bacofoil.
Those Catholics! Surely they were invented by the Monty Python comedy team? Not a week goes by without another Case of the forced buggery of male chil- dren by Catholic priests coming up, and yet the Catholic Church is leading a no- holds-barred assault on the right of teach- ers to explain homosexuality to their pupils. Could it be that the Catholic Church considers the secular way of teach- ing homosexuality all theory, no practice, and therefore invalid? Far better to bug- ger a boy and have done with it than to fill his head with all that fancy book-learning like Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin. The Catholics — now that ITMA and the Comic Strip are no more, what would we do for laffs without them? According to them, abortionists are Nazis, homosexuals are Nazis; only Nazis, it would seem, aren't Nazis, but rather decent chaps, as John Cornwell's recent book about Pope Pius XII revealed. In the Eighties, some of my C-of-E-born friends converted to Catholicism, saying that Anglicanism was `boring'. Be that as it may, I'd rather sub- scribe to a boring religion than one which can find excuses not to excommunicate a priest who takes three orphaned brothers under the age of 12 out for a day by the seaside, and brings them back all bleeding from the anus. No wonder the Catholic Church is against abortion; it needs an p,4 OUT DOWNI,ON THE FARM endless stream of innocent young flesh to defile. Like Ronald Reagan, the Catholics seem to believe that human rights start at conception and end at birth.
My name's mud in my beloved adopted home-town. My one-time good friends Councillor Ian Duncan, the ex- mayor of Brighton and Hove, and Coun- cillor Andrew Durr, the next mayor of Brighton and Hove, haven't spoken to me in months since I refused to join their campaign to make our burg the next des- ignated English city. Apart from us, Reading, Milton Keynes and Luton were up for it — I am not being snobby, but I thought this wretched roll-call spoke vol- umes. B&H is a beautiful town; neither city nor country but with the best of both so close to hand. Coming back from Lon- don, where one is sometimes forced to do business, on the 50-minute express train, there is a singular thrill on hearing the words 'This train stops at East Croydon — and then fast, to Brighton only.' To Brighton only!' I've been Pseuds Cornered for this before, but on leaving the sweaty groin that is London, shooting deep into the undergrowth of the Sussex Downs, and emerging into the glistening pink of Brighton, one does feel an almost sexual sense of possessiveness. I don't want my beautiful lover town to become a city whore, as London is; a sour repository of spent desires. And, after a year of us being the front-runner, apparently Luton's going to get it. Hooray! Living in a city used to make you look sassy and smart and where-it's-at; now, after the age of 30, it just makes you look sad and stranded — only 20 per cent of city dwellers say they are happy living where they do, rising to 89 per cent in town and country. Cities, I can't help but feel, are very much an idea whose time has come and gone.
My friend Charlotte Raven calls me from the Dome: I knew I was there, in the Self-Portrait Zone, but so far numerous acquaintances have gone and missed me. Not Charlotte. I hear her voice on my call- minder: 'Baby! I've found you! You're beautiful and colourful, six feet tall in your light-box, and you're a poignant and reso- nant image of our island race!' Pause. `You're between Stephen Lawrence's grave and a plate of bangers and mash.' Some- where between racism and gluttony — moi! Charming. No, I won't be going.
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