DIARY
WALLACE ARNOLD After a most convivial dinner with very dear friends — beef on the bone fol- lowed by chocolate sponge on the bone, then a little bone on the bone to suck with coffee — our host invited each of us to pick the single word that, in our opinion, might -best sum up the 20th century. A thoughtful hush descended upon the assembled company, a hush broken only by the distinctive tick-tock of the grandfa- ther clock (no digital nonsense in that household, if you please, Monsieur Jospin!). It was my own good self who broke the silence. 'The word is tiresome,' I piped up. 'We can all agree that it has been an immensely tiresome century.'
My choice was greeted with a murmur of approval. But what, asked our host — a regular panellist on the Home Service's Round Britain Quiz — what did we feel to be the single most tiresome aspect of this most tiresome of centuries? Suggestions came in thick and fast — the television, the `Y-front', air travel, the portable tooth- brush, 'jogging', public transport, the gramophone. But, once again, it was I who put my finger on it. 'Chewing-gum!' I exclaimed, pronouncing it in my humorous `cockney' voice (`choowin' game). We all agreed that Mr Wrigley (dread name!) had much to answer for, though his answer would doubtless be inaudible, his mouth being chock-a-block with his stringy comestible.
T his is not to say that all gum is to be abhorred. Far from it. Bubble-gum has long been all the rage in our great country houses. Historians date this to the days of King George V, for whom no weekend at Sandringham was complete until each of his guests had blown a handsome bubble: the King would measure the radius of each one with a pair of compasses before faithfully recording the statistics in his beloved game book. Paradoxically, one of the principal reasons why the royal family never took to Wallis Simpson was her inability to blow a properly rounded bub- ble; rumour had it that the bubble-blow- ing valve in her throat had been destroyed after too much casual use out East. Con- sequently, when the Duchess's wardrobe was put up for auction eight years ago, many potential purchasers were dis- tressed to find that some of her finest frocks — by Givenchy, Dior and Balencia- ga — had the tell-tale gubbins of straw- berry-flavoured bubble-gum splattered over their necklines, testament to hun- dreds of botched attempts by Mrs Simp- son to ingratiate herself with the King and Queen. For 200 years the small Lancashire firm of Ritblatt and Son has produced old-fash- ioned sticky mints by dipping dead sheep's eyes in treacle, and jolly delicious they are too. But no more: the EC in its wisdom has decided that this contravenes health and safety guidelines. What price the euro now, Mr Blair?
mall wonder that our own Queen Mother, a stickler for tradition, so despised poor Wallis. She herself has, of course, always been highly gifted with the bubble- gum. Indeed, Noel Coward once remarked that she could blow a bubble the size of a small dachshund, its growth foreshortened by smoking, a common enough problem in those days. In the second volume of his journals my old friend and quaffing partner `Some ending to our fearless-flying course.' Woodrow Wyatt records in loving detail a dinner party he gave for Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, on 23 May 1972, during the course of which a selection of hand- made bubble-gums by Bendicks of Mayfair was offered around. The Queen Mother took to them like a duck to water, discreet- ly popping a couple into her handbag for later. But Woodrow neglects to mention that this dinner party was a landmark in other ways, too. Roy Strong, the then clean-shaven director of the National Por- trait Gallery, was also present, keen as mustard to prove himself in the upper reaches of society. Alas, his mother had always kept the young Roy at arm's-length from bubble-gum (it is one of those pas- times that unite the working class and aris- tocracy, bypassing what one might call the `in-betweenies'), so when it came to a round of blowing, his attempts met with disaster, the livid vermilion gum splashing itself any old how across his upper lip. Amid much well-intentioned mirth, poor Roy ran from the dinner table in shame. Sadly, after half an hour with nail-brush and chisel in the men's cloakroom, he had come no nearer to removing the unsightly smear, so he decided to hotfoot it to the nearest all-night emporium of jokes and assorted ice-breakers. It was there that he came across the specs-nose-and-whiskers novelty mask that has been his trademark ever since, returning to the dinner table just in time for coffee, his distinctive new appearance gathering plaudits from all and sundry. A happy tale, with an uplifting moral for the new millennium.
B ut happiness and morality are notable by their absence in the Millennium Dome. Attending the New Year's Eve fiasco as the treasurer-elect of the Conservative party, I took care to distance myself from the pro- ceedings, shielding William and the doughty Ffion from the worst excesses of New Labour triumphalism. Being well- mannered, William happily pinned to his chest a badge with 'squiffy' on it, but one wonders whether a more robust stance might have played better in the country. Nor can I see the Dome's wholesale ban on bubble-gum as anything more than an act of class hatred. Hounds, single or in packs, are similarly excluded, as are shotguns, fer- rets and clay pigeons, though the area would be perfect for all these activities. And I see that Mr Simon Heffer's heartfelt plea for an interactive replica of J. Enoch Powell in the so-called Spirit Zone has gone unheeded, a grievous snub to the ordinary decent Briton's enduring belief in a Divinity. The most likely phrase to sum up the forthcoming century? Thoroughly disagreeable. You read it here first.
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