DIARY
0 n Monday I stopped at the petrol sta- tion on the A339 at ICingsclere specifically because I thought you got free glasses there. You don't get glasses, I was disap- pointed to find; you get some voucher or other which I tossed aside, a Nintendo poster which I gave to my godson, and a free copy of the Sun which I haughtily dis- dained, after a second's hesitation. I long ago vowed never to pay money for the Sun, though I often find myself desperate to read a particular edition, and have to steal a copy or beg it off my fellow- commuters (not many Sun-readers among them). Being offered a copy free, just like that, without filthy lucre having to change hands, had my principles hamstrung for a minute. But what is editor Kelvin MacKenzie doing, giving away the Sun? Did the whole nature of Britain's underclass alter radically while I was in France for a fortnight? Has it stopped buy- ing his paper in its millions, even at the Beano price of 20p a copy, which he's promising to peg until 1994? Is the Sun going down at last? I fear not. You don't lose a circulation of 3 million in ten min- utes.
But, anyway, I wouldn't want Mr MacKenzie to go down with it. I feel very Christian about Mr MacKenzie. Hate the sin, love the sinner. His yah-boo truculence is very taking; like a Bash Street Kid's. I saw him through a slightly boozy haze (mine) at Sir David English's 21st birthday ball (21st year in Fleet Street) and tapped him on the shoulder for a Ladies' Excuse Me. He was gallant enough as I waltzed him away, leading with his chin about posh magazines being stuck-up and snobby. He was quite a nimble dancer. He needed to be. As we stepped rather dizzily around the dance-floor, I became aware that a woman in white was attempting to hit Mr MacKen- zie over the head with her evening bag, While shouting, You bastard, Kelvin! Yes, you! You ruined that poor girl's life! You and your bloody paper! while Mr MacKenzie shielded himself with his Upraised arm, ducked, weaved, smiled a big fixed smile and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. 'I don't know what she means,' he kept saying. 'She's got the wrong guy.' The band played hideously on — Uptown Girl or Una Paloma Blanca — while In the distance I could see the recently elected Mr Major and Viscount Rother- mere toasting each other and roaring With laughter. Mr MacKenzie led me back to my table, which was full of Fleet Street staff-officers in an advanced stage of bonhomie. They closed ranks, smirked at me, refused to name the woman in VICKI WOODS
white and agreed that she had got the wrong guy.
When my son slid to the floor of his study at Westminster School last term, moaning in pain, it was to St Thomas's Hospital, just over the bridge, that he was carried, as I imagine Westminster boys have been carried for the last 500 years. He remained on the Nightingale Ward for the next ten days while they scanned him and said, 'It doesn't seem to be on the bone', and, 'It doesn't seem to have turned into an abscess.' (They never said what 'it' was, but I never mind a doubtful doctor so long as the patient lives. The more godlike the fig- ure in the white coat, the more spooked I get about cryogenics and renting your grandmother's womb.) There didn't seem to be any empty beds on the Nightingale Ward, paid or unpaid. When whatever it was had been zapped with antibiotics and died away, I went with the boy to SOPD4 to be signed off. Surgical Out-Patients Department 4 is through quite a lot of building work; about £6 million worth, I believe, which seems to have only just begun. When you get there, SOPD4 teems with humanity like Calcutta. We waited half-an-hour past the appointment time, which I didn't think was too bad, consider- ing the teeming. Everything about the stay in St Thomas's, in short, was just what you'd expect from a large London teaching hospital: lousy food, long waits, insufficient
explanations, tired junior doctors, absent — Doh, the apple looks tempting.' consultants, miracle cures. Except that all over the walls posters urge staff and patients to fight the threatened closure.
Now — who'd threaten St Thomas's? Sir Bernard Tomlinson is due to hand a report this autumn to Mrs Bottomley about whether St Thomas's should be closed or whether it should be merged with Guy's. Forgive me, but I've completely lost the plot on hospital closures. I've caught up with closing pits, naval dockyards, village schools, entire sections of British Rail, Thames Television and City of Angels and mourn them all, but I can't remember why Mrs Bottomley is 'threatening' so many hospitals. Has she a particular grudge against St Thomas's? It was notoriously a bit lefty in the Seventies (my neighbour the urologist once felt himself obliged to thump a very right-on COHSE picket who stood between him and his patient's blad- der. He ended up in a police court — still cursing) but we were all a bit lefty in the Seventies, even Mrs Bottomley. Can she really close the hospital that all parliamen- tarians see from their windows as they slide to the floor in pain? No, she cannot possi- bly — so why is Sir Bernard Tomlinson wasting his time and ours reporting on the impossible?
We possibly buy more newsprint and magazines off Mr and Mrs Patel of Kingsclere than anybody else in the county; nevertheless, it was a surprise to be asked, along with my neighbour the headhunter and his family, to their niece Lena's wed- ding. The wedding invitations were prettily bordered in red and green, with rice grains stuck to them. The wedding was at 1.30 on a Sunday and lunch was to follow. Those of us who are not prompt by nature but accus- tomed to the rapid-fire Anglican wedding always get to church dead on time: ten min- utes late and you might as well stay outside. We live opposite a church and never grow tired of the sight of handsome young men in spongebag trousers slamming their sports cars into the hedge and racing the last 100 yards, tossing their Marlboros as the bells' echo dies away. Hindu weddings are stunningly unprompt. Things take as long as they take. Where's the bride? Somebody grins: a hold-up possibly. When the bride did come, she was stunning in red and gold; the ceremony was impressive and (in parts) heartwarmingly funny; the food was, when it arrived, mouth-watering. But the main difference, for those wise in the ways of the Anglican ceremony, was that my husband drove back from the Reading wedding stone cold sober. Hindu weddings wash down with Diet Coke.
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