DIARY
VICKI WOODS By dint of much special pleading with editors, I narrowly escaped being sent to Beijing this week for the UN Women's Conference. Every time I hear the news about the elite cadre of spy cab-drivers who would stop me taking my clothes off, I am weak with relief that I didn't go. I was sup- posed to travel on that crackpot train, packed with 400 French and German femi- nists. No sane person could go to China on a train with French and German feminists, even at the call of duty. It crawled through Europe for ten days, making 15-minute stops at Warsaw, Moscow, Yekaterinburg and then on to Ulan Bator, while the women on the train exposed their art to each other in exhibition, dance and song (it says in the brochure), at breakfast work- shops (it goes on) from seven o'clock in the morning. And we can contact the outer world via the Internet and Electronic Witchery (it concludes). Thus speak the Femmes en train pour Pekin, the poor silly gowks, and any attempt — however well- meant — to report dry-eyed on their works and days would be like spearing fish in a barrel. They are the softest targets since the Iraqi army on the retreat to Basra.
The hundred years' war between the sexes in Britain (actually 138 years this month, if you date it from the Married Women's Property Act) has broken out again, viciously. There was a bit of a peace process over the last few years but the irre- sistible combination of the newspapers' August silly season and the words 'UN Women's Conference' flagging away on the long-range news schedules has turned yes- terday's reasonable men into today's abu- sive, vulgarian misogynists. There are bloody skirmishes all over the tabloids, especially the Daily Mail, which is rapidly losing the knowing, sexy voice with which it flattered women and coming across like two builders in a strippers' pub. I know, I know women are their own worst enemy, especially on the very field of battle. When Janet Street-Porter laid into the 'M' people (middle-class, middle-aged, middle-brow, Masonic and mediocre) at the Edinburgh television conference, her speech wasn't as funny as she thought it was and it won't have the effect that she hoped it would, but if a line is to be drawn, I'll shuffle over there with the 'W' people, dunderheads and no-hopers though they be.
My husband is peg-legging round our Saharan garden on a natty pair of crutches, recovering nicely from his recent brush with death in the shape of a Greek potato lorry. He now veers between boredom and irascibility and is cursing the perfectly tern- perate light airs, the cloud-capped British summer skies and the occasional five- minute spritz of gentle rain that prevents us from eating out of doors while it (albeit very slowly) greens up the straw on my lawn. Sic transit the hellish drought (as gar- deners say), the most fabulous weather since 1976 (as I say), or the what could turn out to be a one-in-one-thousand-year lack- of-rainfall event (as the chairman of York- shire Water memorably said on the World at One last Friday). How's that again, Mr, Laycock? The chairman was being heavily pressed about the champion leaks that Yorkshire is famous for, not to mention disappearing up his own S-bend after his company's famous U-turn on standpipes in Bradford. He was obviously struggling for a definitive put-down soundbite. By heck, I think he got it. A what could turn out to be a one-in-one-thousand-year lack-of-rainfall event, indeed. Never mind the quality — feel the weight of that towering great com- pound modifier breaking over the one little drowned rat of a noun.
The invalid's irascibility was lifted slightly last week by the good wishes of The Spectator's High life correspondent, who assured him that his late ill-treatment by Greek doctors wasn't personal — i.e. malevolent xenophobia — but rather a sim- ple neo-Hellenistic mixture of medical incompetence and political corruption. Fun- nily enough, for one wild moment on Naxos, driven almost to madness by a lack of lan- guage so all-embracing that I couldn't even come up with the word for 'the', never mind the word for driving licence or car crash or neck-brace, I actually did think of ringing Taki up. How many Greek-speakers does anyone know? I had my old address book with me, for fear of losing the new one, and in among the French and Italian frock- designers were George Michael's agent, Nadia from Cosmo and Mr Theodoracopu- los. But even in extremis I felt I hadn't world enough and time to ring Taki from a Naxos call-box. Last time — the only time — I rang him, earlier this year, I began reintroducing myself at obviously time- wasting length and he cut in with 'Do I know you?' The rest of the conversation was brief. Me: Well, we've met a couple of times . . . ah, at The Spectator. Taki: Have we made love? Me: Er — no! No! ha-ha, absolutely not! But I'm ringing because — Taki: Why not? Me: Er, well, I'm not your type, ha-ha; too old for you for one thing; anyway, the reason I'm ringing is — Taki: How old are you? Me: Er, forty-seven, but anyway, I'm ringing because — Taki (in ear-splitting crescendo): Forty-seven. My God! Forty-seven! Appalled silence for a moment while the great swordsman pon- dered his next jab. Then he howled, 'Get off the phone at once!' So I did.
Having had power of attorney over all the mail that comes into the house for five weeks while my husband languished in trac- tion, I've been opening letters that he nor- mally chucks away before I have a chance to read them, including the Action Aid air- mail letters that come from Kenya. Peninah Muthokoi is my husband's latest African baby. He is in Standard 5, which must make him about 11, and in the quarterly airmail letter he sends he explains what he's doing with his little life: mashing ugali, he says chattily, and hoping everlastingly for rain, for all the world like the loquacious boss of Yorkshire Water. There is a space on the air-letter for comments from his class teacher, which are assiduously filed in: Position in class: 33rd out of 44. Favourite sports: Netball, Volleyball. What other extra curriculum activities does the child enjoy? Singing, Drama. Once it said Rats-killing, which had a robust 18th-century ring to it and made me laugh. 'Why won't you read his little letters?' I want to know, and my husband grits his teeth and berates me for a pathetic sentimentalist, a sanctimonious Pharisee, a Mrs Jellyby. We've been having the same argument for ten years. The latest letter arrived in August. Peninah wrote in his ever-improving English handwriting, in pencil:
Dear Mr Wood, Greetings to you and your friends. I am sad to inform you that my grandmother was killed by thugs during the day. She died in the month of April. Our class teacher is called Miss Ruthiks and the head Master is Mr Mutinda. With best wish- es, Love from Peninah Muthoki.
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