SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

STRIX

yoigrow mushrooms?' is the 240th and last question on Form c412/css (Agricultural ct Horticultural Census: Return for 4th June 1970) which the Ministry requires me to complete and return within a week. It is an easy question to answer, and by the time I reach it I am no longer disconcerted by the stage-directions (Punch 1 for Yes. Skip for No.) which are 'included to facilitate computer processing'. But it is the 240th question, the form has to be filled up in duplicate, there are penalties for not returning it, and its sponsors' insistence that all acreages must be entered to the nearest quarter-acre strikes me as hec- toring and pedantic.

Its arrival, moreover, coincides with a great spate of cv/a/100s—about seventy of them—seeking particulars of properties to be assessed for rates; on each there are some twenty questions to answer, and they must be returned within three weeks. Also to hand is a comparatively straightforward form, with two pages of notes which tell me how to fill it up ('show parts of an acre as decimal?), on which I claim my cereals deficiency pay- ment.

I am only vaguely encouraged by a manifesto (css 3356/3092) from the Agricultural Census and Surveys Branch in Guildford. This reveals that, in aid of the World Census of Agriculture, 'a few supplementary questions will be added to the September form', but that experiments are being made which-1f they prove to be workable'—will reduce the output from Guildford by some 150,000 forms. 'This reduction in form-filling will help the small farmer to whom' (the statisticians somewhat grudgingly admit) 'paper work is usually most irksome.' My italics.

The people who devise these forms, the People who print them, who send them out, receive them, computerise them and analyse the results all get paid for doing so. But their endeavours would be sterile, their talents wasted, their appointments redundant—their tea-breaks would last all day and mice would nest in their computers—if we didn't fill the forms in. Why farmers should be expected to discharge this essential, distasteful and in- creasingly onerous task for nothing I fail to understand.

a l'americaine

The General Editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica wishes me to undertake, in 1,000 words, a new entry dealing with the life of the Empress Dowager. The letter in which he makes this request is 700 words long and contains guidance almost as detailed as the notes from the Ministry of Agriculture on how to apply for a cereals deficiency pay- ment. I was particularly struck by this passage: 'Finally, there is the matter of style. Clarity, of course, is basic. We hope, in ad- dition, for literary grace; perhaps even elegance. And yet we must recognise that our first obligation to our readers—to inform them—is not best met by pieces that subordinate clarity or accuracy to style, or that call attention to themselves rather than to their subject. We assume an educated reader and there is no limit on vocabulary other than an editorial dedication to the elimination of that which is merely arcane on the one hand and of jargon on the other.'

What he seems to be saying is that he wants me to write good, clear English, but the way in which he says it leads me to doubt whether, if I did, he would recognise it as such. They will have to get somebody else to concapsulate Tzti-Hsi.

The Cossacks

Talking the other day to a posse of police inspectors. I suggested that the effectiveness of a village constable would be increased if be had the use of a horse. In the saddle you have a far wider field of vision than you have in the driving seat, whence—apart from the necessity of keeping your eyes on the road—all you can normally see until you stop the car and get out of it are the hedges on either side of you. Provided you carried wire-cutters, which you obviously would, you would have no difficulty in overhauling / a miscreant in a cross-country chase; you could penetrate with ease and expeditiously those parts of your beat—woods, heaths, old gravel pits and the like—which are most likely to be the scene of foul play or the dumping-ground for surplus swag, and on which the motorised policeman rarely sets foot unless a general search is under way; and you would of course keep much fitter than the average village constable has any chance of doing.

The officers foresaw administrative pro- blems but thought there might be something in the idea. One of them, earlier in his career, had been a mounted policeman in Leeds. -"There are two things', he said, 'that a man on a horse can do better than a dozen men on foot. One is to control a long, potentially unruly queue—outside a football stadium, for instance. He just walks his horse up and down, he can see everything that's going 6n and if there's trouble he's there in a flash. You'd need an awful lot of men on foot to get the same results.' We asked him what the second thing was.

Turning the 'No Parking' signs round in streets where they park on one side one day, t'other side the next. The infantry can't reach them.'

In darkest Scandinavia

I flew the other day from London to Oslo, where I had an hour to wait for a local flight.

There is nothing exotic, nothing outré about the interior of the Fornebu air terminal; outside, rain fell from a leaden, business-as- usual sky; the ra et vient of passengers and those who had come to meet them was charged, for an observer, with no discernible significance. Three hours earlier, at Heath- row, I had been watching the same ant-like pageant performed on a larger stage, with a bigger cast, at a brisker tempo. Why, now, was there something strange in what I saw? Why, having crossed the narrow sea-march between two old neighbours, was I vaguely aware of a novel experience, subconsciously challenged to solve one of those 'What-is- wrong-with-this-picture' puzzles that used to confront children?

It took me several minutes to work it out. Everybody was the same colour; 1 was en- tirely surrounded by white men, white women and white children.

The veteran traveller, adjusting himself with his customary sangfroid to an un- familiar situation, ordered a glass of beer.

Enough is enough

Mr Neville Chamberlain's voice, I once wrote in these pages, had something in it strongly reminiscent of stale digestive biscuits Mr Harold Wilson's puts me in mind of grated dandruff, Mr Edward Heath's of a water-buffalo which has somehow got itself immersed in a squash-court but is determined to make the best of things. I don't think I have had the pleasure of hear- ing Mr Jeremy Thorpe's.

I wish the last two of them luck in a con- test on whose progress curious readers will. I am pretty sure, be able to find a sufficiency of comment elsewhere in the public prints.