DIARY
Al this week has been like a phoney war. Or rather — since the expectation of a new baby is hardly that of an invading army — it has been like the half-hour before a party, with everything prepared and still a few minutes left until the arrival of the first guest. The top floor of our house is trans- formed in readiness. When you see a Kur- dish baby born on a snow-covered moun- tain top still managing to live it makes you wonder whether the hundreds of pounds of baby hardware are really necessary, and yet there is considerable pleasure too at the sight of so many brand new appliances. They remind me of the brand new geome- try sets I used to be given to take back to school every term: a fresh beginning. What kind of child do we want? Not what sex (who cares with a first one?) but what char- acter? It would certainly be good if it is interested in reading books, and chatty, natural, kind, polite when out. I hope it Isn't too good looking and successful as a teenager, or at school, since such people generally go to the bad; or so ugly and unsuccessful that it's permanently scarred by its adolescence. I hope that it's adven- turous with its food and doesn't only choose melon in restaurants. It'd be a bless- ing if it is bad at sport, which would save us from standing on too many touchlines. I hope it is unspoilt enough to enjoy lovely treats, but sophisticated enough to appreci- ate them without being over-impressed. I hope it's good at drawing when little, but doesn't become an art student. I hope it doesn't hang around Notting Hill when 15 wearing black clothes. I'd prefer it too (if a girl) that she doesn't step out with any of my unmarried friends. I hope it doesn't realise too young how conventional its father is becoming.
One lunchtime last week I had a strong desire to be massaged, but particularly didn't feel like going to a sleaze parlour. I needed only my neck pulled and my shoul- ders pummelled, and I wanted this to hap- pen somewhere clean and bright within walking distance of my office in the West End. The Yellow Pages was ambivalent. It lists 47 massage places in its Central Lon- don directory but few of these advertise- ments seemed to be offering as little as I was looking for. It is not so much the word- ing as the graphics that tip you the wink: the masseuses illustrated in the line draw- ings either have fingernails so long and red that they'd lacerate you with every touch, or they're shown with a towel around their waist and black leather gauntlets. The most suspicious ones are often the most flatter- ing to potential customers, and the cus- tomers they want are business executives: Come let us pamper you after your busy NICHOLAS COLERIDGE flight or high-powered meeting. A charm- ing young Dutch girl wishes to relax you completely.' My own day, thus far, hadn't been quite so high-powered that I merited the Dutch girl, and it was hard to locate any legitimate massage clubs at all. After a while everywhere looks pretty suspicious. And why is it that the word 'gentleman', in this context, is such a giveaway: 'Adrienne revitalises gentlemen and connoisseurs.' Eventually I risked the St James's Sauna and Health Salon, a fairly dodgy name (too respectable to be true) but located in a basement between Lock's and Lobb's. Everything about the place, I'm happy to say, is entirely above-board. 'What sort of people come here?' I asked my excellent masseuse. 'All kinds of top business tycoons like the publisher Mr Naim Attal- lah,' she replied as she worked over my shoulder blades.
Iwent to the christening of a goddaugh- ter in Northamptonshire. Instead of the inevitable silver napkin-ring or coral bracelet, I decide to give her the complete set of Beatrix Potter in the special Beatrix Potter bookcase. But when we unwrap the bookcase we find it's been redesigned, and Peter Rabbit now looks like one of those Ninja Turtle transfers you see stuck on people's fridge doors. Why redesign Peter Rabbit for God's sake? What point can there possibly be? Certainly less point than being a modern godparent. Christian
'A he sepipe banne is jetliner' in . .
supervision apart, the duties seem to be: 1. Buying ex-pensive Christmas and birthday presents for godchild. 2. Providing amusing summer jobs for godchild, when older, in own office. 3. Acting as sympathetic sound- ing- board for godchild to complain about its parents.
Whenever we pull in to a lay-by in Gloucestershire these days we invariably stumble, as we get out of the car, over decomposing piles of dead calves. Al- though not so artfully arranged as the pyra- mid of dead dogs in the notorious RSPCA advertisement, the calves are every bit as repulsive since their ears have been torn from their heads in a gruesomely clumsy manner. Initially we thought that the ears must have been bitten off by wild animals (foxes? the Tetbury puma?), but now I learn from Lord Mancroft that similar heaps of dead, earless animals are to be found all over the Midlands and the West Country. Mancroft, despite being the only boy in my year at school to be as ignorant as I of Latin, spoke in last week's debate on the subject in the House of Lords. The problem, he tells me, is that BSE and the fall in the market price of livestock means that nobody any longer needs dead ani- mals. The local knackers, who until a year ago paid farmers to pick them up, now charge £60 to £90 a ton to dispose of car- cases, and the Government, seeking to be helpful, have said that farmers may bury their own dead. 'Have you ever dug a hole deep enough to bury a cow?' asked Man- croft. Indeed I have not. But I can see that it would take a lot of backpower. This is why many farmers find it easier to dump their animals at dead of night in lay-bys with the tagged ears cut off, mafia-style, to prevent identification. I was rather pleased to know this since for some weeks, as an intermittent listener to The Archers, I had been thoroughly bemused by Eddie Grun- dy's reluctance to summon the knackers but preferring to bury a dead calf himself in the soft earth of Clarrie's vegetable patch.
Imeasure the depth of this recession not by the number of letters I get sent by grad- uates looking for jobs, but by the increas- ingly preposterous lengths they go to to ensure they're opened. Two prize examples arrived this week: one in an envelope made of tinfoil, the other wrapped up in layer upon layer of pink and purple tissue paper and tied with lime-green ribbon. Once opened (this can take several minutes) the job applications begin,. 'Hi! Now that I've caught your attention, let me introduce myself. I'm a third-year English graduate from Kent university, very creative. . . . '
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