Notebook
hose finger was on Britain's thermo- nuclear trigger during Mrs Thatcher's stay in hospital? Anxious inquirers were told last week that Lord Whitelaw had this !natter in hand, so to speak, from his farm in Cumbria, and I for one found the thought of Willy coping with a missile crisis In the style of an episode from The Archers wholly reassuring. But I now learn that he was in fact playing golf at the time with Dear Bill and other cronies in Scotland. Coping with a red alert from the tranquillity of a Cumbrian valley is one thing; but from the nineteenth hole quite another.
Harold Macmillan was heard recently comparing the new Tory majority in Parliament with the one which he first ex- perienced in 1935. According to this nonagenarian elder statesman, the characteristic they both share is blindness in the face of a terrible threat which they like to think will just go away — Nazi aggres- sion in the case of the one and unemploy- ment in the case of the other. In the 1930s, however, he pointed out, there was a Chur- chill warning the country about the true situation, whereas today there was no man of stature in sight. Since there were quite a number of Tory MPs and ministers present, these strictures provoked vigorous dissent, not least from the host, Jonathan Aitken, (in whose house the gathering took place) who bravely told the old man that he was talking nonsense. Macmillan took this in excellent part, recalling that a previous owner of the same house, Brendan Bracken, sitting in the same room, often used to shut Churchill up no less imper- tinently. 'Quite like the old days,' he added, taking a sip of Dom Perignon as if to add further verisimilitude to this re-enactment of times past.
Having inveighed last week against nakedness on the London Under- ground, let me redress the balance now by putting in a good word for the growing cult of topless bathing which has at last hit my corner of the Essex coast. Far from leading to even more brazen public necking, etc., it seems instead to have led to very much less, as if internal inhibitions increased in pro- portion to the removal of external restraints. On our beach, for example, the only couple not lying chastely side by side without touching, like so many Moises and Abelards, was one where both boy and girl were fully clothed — the clothes acting as a form of camouflage (denied to the topless) for all sorts of covert operations. Nudist camps have always claimed that what you can easily see you do not want so Much to touch, and that a satisfied
eye makes the groping hand less eager, and this does indeed seem to be the case. How long this will continue is anybody's guess. Perhaps at the moment it is just the novelty of toplessness that induces what will prove soon to have been only a lull in the storm of brazen and unrestrained lasciviousness. But for the time being topless beaches are a haven of decorum and propriety where both voices and transistors are lowered out of respect for the newly-exposed beauties of nature. Gaucherie and shyness have even returned. Presumably the same process in reverse took place when men and women first started to wear clothes. The novelty of such behaviour must have temporarily given pause to all but the most unfazable of fumblers. Imagine all that male agonis- ing over how to make a public pass at a girl whose bosom was covered. Now the new challenge is how to make a public pass at a girl whose bosom is bare. Doubtless the necessary art of technique will soon be mastered, and male self-confidence restored. But what unexpected good for- tune to have a short respite of modesty even if caused only by confusion and uncer- tainty, which cannot be expected, alas, to last for very long.
C o long as you only walk through the LI contemporary Covent Garden complex, everything seems as it should be and the redevelopers, for once, have improved the old site not out of all recognition. But don't, I urge you, on any account — not even an expense account — allow yourself to be beguiled into stopping at any of the street cafés, as I did recently, hoping to please an American visitor. First, it was ex- ceedingly difficult to get any service, because the waiters and waitresses were too busy chatting. When one of them did deign to take our order — for two of the advertis- ed cream teas — Ile informed us that they had run out of all jams and conserves. (It was only 4.30 p.m,)Then, after a long wait, he reappeared with a dirty lidless teapot, in which the teabags floated like two brown toads or turds, and the scones were sur- rounded by a sea of once-whipped cream reduced now to a greasy grey liquid by
reason of having been put on plates still hot from the washing-up machine. Nor was it any good complaining, since the West Indian waiter proved quite incapable of understanding what he had done wrong. In the event the white manager, also of sub- normal intelligence, did have the grace to refuse payment, grandly informing us that the meal 'came with the compliment of the house'. At least he had learnt the patter of the caterer's trade, if nothing else.
Almost every day we read about some new directive being dispatched from Whitehall to this, that or the other body — the police, prison officers, teachers etc — on the subject of racial discrimination, with long lists of 'Dos and Don'ts'. If my re- action is any guide, this is the worst way to encourage better white behaviour, since, British human nature being as bloody- minded as it is, the most likely response to such pompous official directions is to do exactly the opposite. I have no idea what the answer to this problem is, but I am quite sure that this governessy approach is deeply counter-productive. Would not the author- ities be better advised in this matter to enlist the professional services of some first-class PR firm like Saatchi and Saatchi? Perhaps, too, subliminal persuasion would be worth trying. Such methods, shamelessly adopted by Mr Heseltine, have done a marvellous job in making us love Cruise missiles and there is no reason to suppose that they would not be equally effective in removing other prejudices just as well.
Fl" alking of discrimination, I gather that in Willesden even many of the white shopkeepers are now refusing to serve In- dian 'untouchables', for fear of losing the custom of the higher caste Indians who refuse to patronise premises contaminated by their lowly presence. When a judge of my acquaintance took one such white shop- keeper to task on this account, the excuse given by the reprobate was that he was only trying to conform to indigenous Indian customs, and show sympathy and under- standing for cultures other than his own, for which behaviour he thought he deserved more praise than censure.
'Time magazine are celebrating their 60th
anniversary by giving a party in the Festival Hall in September for all the British whose faces have ever appeared on the cover, or their closest living relations. In the case of one widow whom I know, the cover story appeared as long ago as 1929, and she sensibly asked to see a copy of it before accepting the invitation, in case it had con- tained derogatory references which the shade of her late husband might still find offensive. Of the living subjects, Lady Diana Cooper, the famous society beauty, goes back furthest, to the 1930s, and she is still likely to be the belle of the ball.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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