Spectator peregrinations

Just as my diary starts, Alan Brien finishes his weekly column on the Sunday Times. He • is going to Sunderland for six months to write a book — "a sort of industrial A kenfield." When he announced this to myself and Peter Paterson in El Vino, suave bespectacled Old Etonian Daily Mirror gossip columnist Paul Callan chipped in, "How nice."

Turkish delights

The best news from Turkey that I've heard in recent years reached my ears at a party in the Turkish Embassy given for their former and future Prime Minister Mr Ecevit last week. The rainbow trout in southern Turkey are even bigger than the ones in the North Island of New Zealand.

"I caught a 221/2-pounder. Didn't believe it. But the chap said it was tiddler," said Mr William Burnside of Chelsea. "Later he told me to let a 15Ib brown trout go."

Without difficulty I glimpsed our so-called "shadow" Foreign Secretary Reggie Maudling and the equally vast Labour representative of the Foreign Office, Roy Hattersley. I understand from a leader of the Turkish Cypriot community in London, Dr Sonyel, that Mr Maudling made some "completely unacceptable suggestions" to him.

I have always thought that Ataturk was eminently sensible in replacing that tiresome backward Arabic script with easy Western phonetic spelling. So after meeting the ambassador Mr Menemencioglu it was reassuring to find someone from the Turkish `Petibur' biscuit company.

Avoiding a group of five British businessmen who said, "There's our girl," every time the meat balls came round, I found Mrs Julian Amery, daughter of Harold Macmillan, in the passage outside. She was walking up and down, perching on a chair, getting up again, folding her glasses, putting them on again, flexing her knees and standing on her toes beckoning to her husband that it was time to be off.

New tenant

I have just paid a nostalgic visit to No 9 Vincent Square, scene of Richard Crossman's sordid "kitchen cabinets". Not that I was privy to these Shore-Foot-Balogh-Falkender schemes. The last time I was in this house Mr Crossinan was in his pyjamas and I was climbing out of his bedroom window on to the balcony. He used to let me climb into my house next door when I had left my key behind. And I did the same for him until he ceased to be amused. Latterly he would rather call the police who came round with a black maria and a ladder.

went into Mr Crossman's old study for a lunch-time drink with the new occupant, a Mr Mitchell, clockmaker. He has pendulums all over the walls; when he talks of British,. American and French movements, it is absolutely apolitical. At four o'clock Mitchell said he had an appointment at two. Clockmakers never know the time, he said — hopping into his Bentley.

Country life

Sir John Craster of Craster House, Craster, Northumberland has seen a cat catch two rats simultaneously as they travelled in opposite directions. He relates this episode in a letter to the Field.

"Much to my astonishment there was one rat's tail wiggling from each side of his mouth. He had actually caught the two when they were going in opposite directions. I have not heard of this before or since, and I do not suppose I will do so in the future."

I have written more spurious letters to the Field than anyone else in that paper's 122-year history. Six snipe with one shot, woodcock carrying their young, pheasants flying into telegraph poles, peregrines in London (!), parrots killing sheep. All these have rolled off my typewriter, but I've never thought of multiple rat-catching.

William Shawcross and Johnny Grimoncl, both sons of eminent politicians, used to disguise themselves as Colonel Grimshaw when they wrote to the Field while they were at Eton. Now they are both journalists based in America and I'm sure they'd like to congratulate Sir John on starting a new ball game.

How many rats have you seen a cat catch? Or, since rats may soon be bigger than cats — the dustmen have their way — have you seen a rat catch two cats travelling in opposite directions?

Silver lining

Bollinger's have been moving over Easter from secluded Pickering Place, off St James's Street, to Asphalt House in Victoria. Champagne sales are down 50 per cent this year. But they've gone up in Italy, which is in a sense pod news, because it shows that when we're in really serious economic difficulties we'll be drinking more champagne.

On the carpet

William Hickey carpets editor Ross Benson, who claims to have been at school with Prince Charles, writes, "I am afraid that you have reached the stage of instead of wanting carpet you seem intent on covering your floor in underlay. The enclosed sample you sent me is not, I feel, the kind of floor covering that I would be happy or indeed confident in supplying. I realise that carpets can be an expensive commodity but I really must advise YOU to spend a little more, if you can, otherwise You will find yourself in the unfortunate — and expensive — position of having a threadbare floor covering in just a few very short months."

This is the combination of inane illiteracy and shoddy workmanship that makes the Daily Express famous.

Perks

'Very few MPs realised, before the parliamentary inquiry into the Stonehouse affair, that they too could claim £2,400 in expenses in advance. And a lot of them didn't know that they could have "away from home" money. Look out for vanishing acts.

Pick-me-up

The wild gyrations of British so-called Summer Time continue to confuse me. When I start out of a morning in clear sunshine I tend to be overtaken by a blizzard at lunchtime and the hall porter at my club offers me a white hand towel to cover the seat of my bicycle.

It was on such a day that I went to lunch with 'A woman's right to choose' the campaign against Leo Abse's "ill-conceived" amendment to the Abortion Act. Going from a male chauvinist piggery to a hot-bed of feminists is a shock to the system at the best of times. But When they are discussing the awful details of Illegal abortions — knitting needles, soapy water and "did you know there are more illegal .abortions in Italy than live births?" — you need fortification. Happily the wine was Hungarian 'Bull's lalood'. Perhaps, I asked a doctor, this was an ancient quack potion: "The pick-me-up for virility, sterility and keeping out the frost."

Boring choice

Tired by a Spectator lunch I had the choice one e_vening of listening to the Maharishi Mahesh

inaugurating the Dawn of the Age of c•rilightenment at the Albert Hall — or Stephen Spender discussing European objectivity,

merican subjectivity and English insularity at trie American Embassy. samm, Having already met the sedentary Indian jet-setter and his pin-striped henchmen (two doctors, a professor and an Old Etonian), I went to see the amiable but soporific Mr Spender. I'm glad I was awake when someone asked him a question about Henry Adams.

"I'm very bored of Henry Adams," said Mr Spender "I'll have to try and get unbored of him but that's a project for the future."

Sheepless

Mindful of the energy crisis — particularly on hot summer afternoons — I have been looking for a sheep to mow the lawn. It can have the flowers too, as long as it eats the weeds. The problem is that farmers don't like selling individual sheep. So I joined the Jacobs Sheep Society hoping to acquire one of their blackspotted four-horned Biblical-sheep which were near to extinction before they became the status symbol of an exclusive club, with the Duchess of Devonshire as their President.

But shortly afterwards I was told that I don't have enough grass even for one sheep so I am a member of the Jacob Sheep Society (no. 149) without a sheep. 1 keep getting letters from the secretary, Lady Aldington, wife of Mr Heath's friend Toby, asking if I'd like to enter obscure agricultural shows. Now I have a booklet which illustrates the plight of the Golden Guernsey Goat and the British White Bull. Dear Lady Aldington, you don't understand the situation.

My son the doctor

Otto Preminger's latest film, Rosebud, is something of a nepotistic effort. His elder son Eric Lee Preminger, thirty, has done the screenplay. And when he went to the launching party at the Cafe. Royal lig had his younger son Mark, fourteen, with hitn. Ytking Mark stood with hands clasped behind his back and eyes fixed on his father, occasionally commenting on the obscurer points of the film. When I asked Preminger senior whether he wanted his younger son to go into films he said, "You're going to do medicine aren't you, Mark?" I don't believe it.

Peregrine