DIARY JOANNA LUMLEY
We had wondered whether to cancel the press call which was set to start at exactly 11 a.m. on Friday 14 September. Compassion in World Farming had booked the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. Professor Fred Brown, world expert on footand-mouth disease, was over from the United States for the next day's conference in Bristol; but we were all sick at heart about the American tragedy and were anxious to observe the silence scheduled for 11 o'clock that day. There was also the possibility that almost anything would seem trivial and unimportant or insensitive in the aftermath of such a catastrophe. In the event we stood, like others all over the country, with our heads bowed as the three minutes went by; and afterwards just went on because there seems no other way of dealing with things. Professor Brown, who has been working in the US for 30 years, strongly advocates routine vaccination for the entire cattle and pig population worldwide. The distinguished vet Ken TyreII says he would use vaccine in all species, starting now. The professor demonstrated a machine which can detect if an animal has, or will get, foot-and-mouth. It was offered to our government in March but was rejected. Horrifying statistics were released, including those of the Livestock Welfare Disposal Scheme, by which animals which can't be fed because of movement restrictions are killed for their own good to save them from slow starvation: 1.4 million and rising. As costs spiral upwards, along with the number of creatures continuing to be slaughtered, the shameful figures were revealed: more than £2 billion spent trying to save meat and dairy exports that bring in a little over £600 million a year. All animals in the food industry are routinely vaccinated against a number of diseases already, and a new independent opinion poll has shown that 80 per cent of the population would readily eat meat from FMD-vaccinated animals. But vaccine is not being considered.
Actund us in Lambeth we have the liveliest road markings in London. Apart from the usual yellow boxes, red routes, white zigzags and lines, we have expensive and superior coloured tarmac: red for bus lanes, or occasionally pedestrian crossings, and a vivid emerald green for cyclists' areas. I say 'areas' as we have specially designed patches, often with a white bicycle thickly embossed on them, which don't immediately disclose their purpose. We have round green rings in the middle of quiet side-streets (which cyclists have always frequented) to show that they may ride there. We have very narrow green lanes whipping along the sides of big, quick roads like the Embankment which suddenly vanish without warning. The roundabout south of Lambeth Bridge is now
an astonishing paved cake with a deep cyclists' path slashed across it: around it a complicated system of green patches has brought the traffic to its knees, as we all try to guess who has priority and who will be to blame if they are ever used. But our cyclists are largely a fearless bunch who regularly ride through red lights, over pavements and the wrong way up one-way streets, weaving to avoid the huge speed bumps. A Jamaican minicab driver told me his family back home had cried with laughter when he gave them the news that in London we build expensive hummocks to make our roads more impossible to negotiate. In lateral-thinking countries they just let vast holes appear to slow you down, and earmark the money they've saved for a really worthwhile project.
Sadler's Wells had a full house on the evening we went to see Birmingham Royal Ballet's new triple bill: two works choreographed by their resident genius David Birttley and one, the Dante Sonata, by the late Sir Frederick Ashton. Bintley's two works show the broad talent that marks a great creator: The Seasons which is pure dances and dancing, and Still Life at the Penguin Cafe, a brilliantly surreal piece featuring extinct animals. In the original programme notes about Ashton's Dante Sonata, the ballet is described as 'the warring attitudes of two groups of equally tortured spirits'. Half a century after its last performance, and with the smoke still hanging over Manhattan Island. the Children of Darkness and the Children of Light still confront each other and fight to the death; but as we applaud in admiration we know
that this is a stage and they're only dancing. Art has a way of putting its finger into the heart of darkness and leaving no casualties.
We were in Corfu when the first episode of Absolutely Fabulous came out, so I missed all the press articles and reviews, which was rather a relief. I don't usually look at reviews of my own acting for fear of realising I'll have to give up altogether, and anyway, you get a flavour of what's been written, good or bad, because people can't resist quoting them to you. However, I read other people's notices with a passion; and, although we all pretend they're not important to us, they are, as far as the industry is concerned. I collected, read and re-read the press cuttings and reviews about The Cazelets, a BBC 1 drama serial that I had co-produced with the legendary Verity Lambert. We could have written them ourselves, they were so good. In almost every case The Cazelets was pick of the day, the week, the month; its production values, casting, direction, acting and fidelity to the original (the first two books of Elizabeth Jane Howard's quartet) were praised to the skies. So it came as a bit of a blow to be sent the Dear John letter saying that the last two novels of the quartet would not now be commissioned for television. In our last episode we had Rupert lost in France. Hugh widowed. Edward's affair escalating, Louise unsuitably married, the war boiling over — everything, in short, that a rattling good drama should be, halfway through. It's rather like telling the story of Gone with the Wind but stopping before the burning of Atlanta, Scarlett O'Hara, tightly laced and flirtatious, setting her cap at Ashley Wilkes is a very different creature from the battle-scarred woman at the end who has lost everything but Tara and the chance of a new tomorrow. You have to tell the whole story to get the picture.
Every year the plan is to pick the conference pears before they drop, but every year some feeble excuse prevents us from being there before the first fat gold fruit plummets down into the surrounding wilderness we are pleased to call a garden. Squirrels, blackbirds and wasps get there early in the morning so they can't be offered in a fruitbowl, all stabbed about with beak marks and incisor slashes. This year I peeled and cored the windfalls and stewed them up in Orange Colombo, a mystery substance found in a tall dark bottle lurking at the back of the cupboard. Now they're bottled and labelled and may become Christmas presents. I could call them pears from the Big Ben region, as we can hear the hour striking when the wind is in the right direction, late at night, if the foxes aren't making too much noise. Rus in urbe.
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