DIARY
Ihave a possibly dubious tip which may be useful to anyone enduring hospital menus. Recently sprung from Intensive Care, I remembered Somerset Maugham's advice that the only guarantee of eating decently in England was to consume three breakfasts daily. Hospital food, of course, mugs all description, violated by bland dieticians and working-class cooking. But breakfast, on the whole, defeated their ingenious dislike of quite decent materials provided by a proper butcher and wet fishmonger. The poached eggs were pale Pink and flowered open, Ritz-like, at the first incision. The grilled bacon was cured
locally; cornflakes or grapefruit, wholemeal toast, Hotel Convention mar- malade and drinkable coffee. Like British Rail on a good day. I was elated at my too simple discovery. Ditch lunch and dinner and go for three breakfasts. For two days I got it. Everyone was astonished and even discomfited by this eccentricity. Nurses from other wards visited me in secret, curious and giggling. Was it really true that I didn't want lunch or dinner? 'We've never had any complaints before.' I ex- plained that I wasn't complaining, just exercising a whim. True, it became boring by the third day but it provided a refuge from the hourly dread of what the lid on the sick tray will reveal next. It's worth a try, before some NUPE nark decides to put a stop to your subversive attitude to the cultural eating rights of workers.
They are scum,' was also Maugham's verdict on the class of state-aided universi- ty students represented in the early Fifties by Lucky Jim and his like. Since the eruption of the Heysel Stadium, the effect has been like the aftermath of the Lisbon earthquake with philosophers, politicians and clerics uncertain where to apportion the blame. If only there were a black box which could be recovered and examined to establish where the nation's flight went wrong. What would Maugham have thought of the New Scum palpably re- sponsible?
First, schoolteachers, progressive and dominant. The schoolteacher is certainly underpaid as a childminder but ludicrously overpaid as an educator. Teaching, in Maugham's time an escape route for in- telligent proles denied access to university and the more esteemed professions, is now a bolt-hole for those who have failed to make it in the media, advertising or ICI. The PT (Progressive Teacher) is an in- adequate who, whatever facts he may have accumulated in his 'specialism' (a beloved word of his, like 'Texts' and 'Scripts', by which he means books and answer papers) will almost certainly be as semi-literate as a
JOHN OSBORNE
football manager. Failed in the 'real world' of company cars and expense accounts, he flashes his professional status and third class degree like a stadium Neanderthal's tattooed arm. PT also prides himself on his `radical' approach, the introduction of Black and Political Studies, courses that confound reactionary notions of 'learning' and substitute all-purpose sloganteach, polished and perfected in the Sociology Department of North Eastern Polytechnic. PT so abhors 'value judgments' attributed to what he quaintly regards as still the Establishment (of which he is now a bastion) imprinting its values on the young that he abandons all critical standards. The thought of presenting Mozart as 'superior' to David Bowie is unthinkable, even if he knew the group's name in which Amadeus played. His total inability to control a class is an exercise in 'progressive methods' and `free expression'. Devoutly anti- authoritarian, he makes virtues out of his inadequacies so that each time a child treats him with total contempt, he claims this as one more expression of the 'rapport' he has established with his pupils and the 'positive' aspect of their relationship. He is not discouraged to use or be abused by four-letter words in class because this would be 'inhibiting' and a 'denial' of working-class culture, black culture or Leon Trotsky. The generally appalling standard of work is proof that his charges are 'enjoying' the 'learning process', a technical term for lounging about, feet on desks, and spitting. In fact, the dedicated PT is so eager to identify with his pupils that he will take on their mode of dress from their earstuds to the Dr Martin boots, their accents, tastes in music, the Sun and 'streetwise philosophy'. The key word is 'enjoying', everything from graffiti to rap- ing the domestic science mistress. Indubit- ably Scum.
'He's such a bore with his Antony Sher imitations.' Scum Productions excelled last weekend with the Live Aid concert, de- vised by 'Saint' Bob of the Boomtown Rats, who is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by the Member for Bradford South. Mr Geldof may well be on the royal road of preferment that through 'charity' leads to knighthoods and beyond. A gen- eration of self-besotted yoof that can be gulled by such dismal stuff deserves the fine mess they've gotten us into.
Asimilar Golden Scum Award must go to Nancy Reagan embracing the prone President at the operating theatre door. 'I love you', were the last words from the First Lady's lips close to his shell-like. Lady Dorothy never carried on in public like this to Harold.
Ihave been reading the recent biography of Tennessee Williams, The Kindness of Strangers, by Donald Spoto. I didn't know Williams well but spent some very agree- able hours with him, once in the company of Brendan Behan in his last New York days. (Another sweet-natured man but almost comically alien to Tennessee, who became quickly bored by a barrage of Irish and Colonial Boy songs.) He had the most intriguing rasp of a giggle which could strike an irreverent and rattlesnake blow, particularly on famous actors' entrances and exits. At supper in Sardi's, I watched a Very Warm Human Being come over to his table and address him warmly, and loudly. 'Mr Tennessee Williams?' The playwright looked up defensively. 'My wife, Hor- tense, and I have just been to a perform- ance of your latest play, Period of Adjust- ment'. (Not one of his best but certainly not insubstantial.) 'I have to tell you, Mr Williams, that we thought it just great. Truly great. Congratulations, sir. May I shake you by the hand?' And so, meaning- fully on. Tennessee smiled a Southern Bel- le's shy, courteous smile. 'Now your last play, and I just hate to say this,' boomed VWHP, 'Your last play was just awful. We really hated that. Just awful.' Tennessee, blood draining from him, spat at his long-time companion, Frank Merlo, a fear- some Sicilian. 'Hit him, Frank!' he shrieked. 'Hit him. For God's sake'. The creator of an evening's warm, human experience was chattering with pain and outrage, while the grateful recipient of this bounty returned to Hortense, baffled by such ingrate bad manners. It happens all the time.
ho would rather sleep with? (Part two): Lord Longford or Myra Hindley, Boadicea or Virginia Woolf, Barry Manilow of Paul Boateng.
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