DIARY
IAN JACK f course, we have all grown used to seeing television commercials which adver- tise things which really don't need to be advertised. Public utilities such as gas and electricity, for example; we can't change brands, nor are we likely recklessly to burn more of either when the quarterly bills clearly indicate that the opposite is most desirable. And can anybody be unaware of the chief thrust of their message, which is that without them we'd be in the cold and dark and living circa 1850? The commer- cials are there, presumably, because man- agements of public corporations have fal- len for some faddle about 'corporate im- age' and 'making the consumer feel good about the product', and sit fretting over advertising budgets which need to be spent. ('You've seen the rushes? You shot the gas rigs at dusk? Great. Let's have lunch.) Last week I saw a new addition to the genre; a commercial for an old British Institution which, you might think, needs advertising about as much as adults of sound mind need to be told to go to the lavatory. The old British institution is the 999 call, and Mr Shaw Taylor, the best friend of law and order since Edgar Lust- garten's heyday, appears on the screen to tell us not to be shy about dialling this number if we need the fire brigade, an ambulance, or the police. 'So never hesi- tate,' says Mr Shaw in his closing words. 'For any emergency service, dial 999.'
This is more than just redundant advice, It is, in certain circumstances, plain bad advice. I speak as a recent consumer. A fortnight ago I was sitting at home in north London (alone, 1 thought) and watching a late-night film on Channel 4. My wife was in Calcutta. The lodger had gone out, against all the best advice, to see The Color Purple. Suddenly a floorboard creaked directly overhead. I hoped it was something to do with the water pipes and carried on watching. More creaks. I rose from the chair and discovered for the first time the literal meaning of the expression to go weak at the knees. I looked around for a blunt instrument, found a spare length of curtain rod, went out into the hall and switched on the. light. Silence from above. What to do? Rush upstairs with the length of curtain rod? But what if the intruder or intruders should prove to be Daley Thompson clones? I decided to shout something. But what? I'd been watching a tough American film. 'OK you bastards,' I shouted, 'I know you're up there.' Then I made a dash for the front door and the street. Outside, I saw that the bedroom window had been pushed up and all the upstairs lights were on. I found a neighbour — it was only just after eleven
— and asked her to phone the police. They arrived fairly promptly and in force, having been just around the corner ordering six Chinese dinners from the local take-away. But they would have been even prompter had my neighbour dialled the alternative to 999. The voice which answered her did not quite say 'Sorry, but they're in a meeting,' but there was a lot of 'Still trying to put you through,' and 'Hang on a minute, love.' My neighbour was furious; it had hap- pened to her before and she swore she would never dial 999 again. The police nodded judiciously in agreement. They said: 'If you're at home and you need the police, always phone your local police station.' So never mind Mr Shaw Taylor; memorise a more forgettable number.
Last week I took a risk and left the house and went to stay in an old Kentish farmhouse near the village of Rolvenden, which is the essence of rural England in that it has three pubs, one church, a couple of antique shops, and many charming, elderly people. But Rolvenden is also the essence of rural England in another and, I think, more depressing way. Most of the original natives have been moved by low- paid unmortgageability to the council estate on the outskirts. Incomers have bought up all the pretty houses, and any tourist who imagines he might pick up hop-picking lore in the pubs would instead have to endure discourses on the best way of making an Amstrad work. The few Rolvendites who still make a living from the land congregate mainly in the Rolven- den Men's Club, where the beer is 30 pence cheaper and drunk in rural quantity. 'Meet Bob,' said John, a dairy farmer. 'Bob can drink 16 pints a night.' Bob Coles was very big, ruddy-faced, and worked as a layer of drains. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said. 'Is it really true that Taki's on the skids?' This doesn't take my first prize for the question most incongruous to its sur- roundings. (Once, while we were sitting in an obscure and flyblown teashop in Punjab and trying to make sense of the Sikh
troubles, my Indian companion asked me, out of the blue: 'Tell me, how Ls. Tina Brown?') But it certainly runs a close second. Bob was altogether a most surpris- ing man. Later he talked about Milan Kundera and Schopenhauer, and how he couldn't understand what the hell Proust was on about. He was, he said, a great reader. In the summer he laid drains and in the winter he drew the dole and stayed in his council house and read and read.
Urban mayhem has long since re- placed golden pavements as a source of rural fascination. When I told them my burglar story, the farmers in the Rolven- den club asked only one question: were they black? The police who came to investigate asked the same thing. The answer is 1 didn't see them so I don't know. But now I am beginning to wonder if, inside their heads, the police and the farmers were spelling the word black as the New Statesman thinks it should be spelled, with a capital B. Last week a Statesman editorial on South Africa referred to 'white and Black citizens' and a 'Black-run' coun- try. I rang up the Statesman's new editor, John Lloyd, to discover the reasons behind the radical grammar. Lloyd, who wrote the editorial, hadn't noticed that all his blacks had been changed to Blacks and said at first that he was sure it was just a typog- raphical mistake. Then he discovered that it was indeed a 'collective decision' taken by the editorial staff some time ago, on the grounds (I think) that black as a political rather than anthropological entity de- served a big B. 'I agree,' Lloyd said. 'It's both daft and patronising to think you're doing people a favour by giving them a capital letter.' No doubt this and much else at the NS will change under Lloyd's edi- torship. The paper achieved its highest circulation ('ironically' might be the word here) when it was edited by Paul Johnson, the person who in these columns now chides lainthearts' such as me for aban- doning the Sunday Times in its industrial breakthrough situation. Circulation has since slumped from 95,000 to 27,000 a week, less than the Spectator. The NS lacks the Spectator's financial backing, however, and Lloyd is often said to be its last chance. I hope he succeeds and I think he will. He is not only a marvellous journalist — witness his work for the Financial Times — he also possesses a restless and brave intellect; which is what you need to possess if, as Lloyd did, you help run a Marxist party which proclaims the right of Ulster's Protestant working class to be British. And, more than that, he comes from East Fife. If you cannot come from West Fife, this is the next bext place.
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