Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XVI (1999 – 2000)

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 160

March 26th 1999 – May 13th 1999

Friday, March 26, 1999

It’s some months since I last had a theatre anxiety dream. Now I’ve had two, one last night, I mean Thursday night, & one just now. Once again, as so often, based on Birmingham Rep., my first, with all the travel worries of Paris & The Old Vic. (where did I stay for The Old Vic? No idea.) But the element that amused me, was that last night’s dream followed on from Thursday nights, with full narrative thrust. I was passionately resisting going tonight to a venue, when we could go in the morning. Shades of hideous film locations there.

Why does one get hotter in bed? If I doze off after the papers, I sometimes get hotter than the duvets would necessarily dictate.

Did I say how grotesque! Oscar acceptance speech of G. Paltrow, which made me think less of her?

I have now seen some of the C4 gay series, ‘Queer As Folk’, & it’s rather good. Witty & true. A boy called Charlie Hunnam has something.

A pop group, lead singer, a tepid blonde in pink & a small ruffle or two, with bare midriff, announces ‘we should be making hay, but we’re dead from the waist up’. Well, from the bare midriff up.

No word from Roy & Marian about dinner at Grano. Ah, well.

Saturday, March 27, 1999 Sunday, March 28, 1999

He surprises me every time.

I rang at lunchtime to tell him that clocks go forward – he never knows – & he said come to dinner. So I did. Arlete let me in, & I didn’t see him except from the neck down for the next quarter of an hour, as he was on the steps putting in a new ‘phone line – for something or other. That suggested that they might not be leaving quite immediately, & I had been heartened by the neat net curtains & pretty window boxes of the once hellish house next door. And so it proved. He said he was pissed off with looking at places, especially after Greenfield House …. and was amazed that I hadn’t heard of it. He was sure he’d told me about it, because of course he had in his head. A rather worrying story, in certain of its elements & I could see why A had been worried. I can’t be bothered with all the details. The main point is that he liked the property, & that it was a repossession, & that the former owner was resisting it by living in a caravan on a bit of the land. K. characteristically went to see him. Now K. is v. brave & good like that, but with eccentricity it can work both ways. K. is eminently practical, but that does not necessarily make you a good judge of character.

A. was worried at K. coming to an ‘arrangement’ with this man, which included giving him £100,000…. So K. told me all this at length, & was very much on his line of ‘please do not interrupt me’, when A. said she was doing so because we didn’t need that bit because we already know the next bit. Even I sometimes ‘interrupt’ – that is, drop in a remark carrying the argument forward. It’s called conversation…. I think it’s partly drink, but his mind does move in such narratives slower than mine, & obviously slower than Arlete’s.

‘To cut a long story short’, scrupulously accurate as it was, he decided not, to my relief, thinking of the squatter, whose unlikely name was Goodacre, though he thinks his was far the best offer, ‘& there is a lot to be done to it…’ but the really bizarre thing is its position. It’s down a lane leading nowhere else, there is a barn i.e. studio, ‘difficult to get planning permission to put in a window’, & some acres, six, was it? perhaps not so much. The Really odd thing is that it’s just outside Punnett’s Town, half or three quarters of a mile from the cottage. The milkman was in P. Town. I’m glad he likes the same sort of country. A sad nostalgic regret that I can’t give him the cottage.

Told about Nigel’s visit for his b’day. He came on his own with the baby. I was struck yet again by the mystery of parenthood. The Nigel I’ve known over the years, & a scrubbed boy, a tongue-tied adolescent, a lad about town with others, a volubly funny careless playing-the- field young man, I find extremely difficult to see, coming to K. with a baby on his own, feeding it at the table, changing it, attending to it. Did it interrupt his stories? It is the unexpected unselfishness of young parents that impresses me. I can’t imagine myself being so unselfish. K. echoed that. So dinner was over, sea bass & a delicious salad. A. didn’t have the fish, just pasta & beans. I hope she’s not pregnant in view of the talk. I did wonder for a moment, as she looked a bit worn – it’s probably the curse. Over the coffee K. brought up Kosovo & we talked of it, and with A. on one side, against the bombing, & K. & I saying what else can we do? Even with darling D., I never found out what pacifists would actually do, except nothing.

He’s given up looking till later in the year. We talked of this flat. He made it plain that he would look after me one way or another. I said that I’ve never meant to live with him just wanted to be close. ‘That’s what I want too’.

Sunday, I spent starting on the filing cabinet, where the top drawer at least, was not as much deteriorated from the damp as I’d expected. The only effect really, was that some of the opened envelopes had stuck together again. I was, as usual, surprised by some of the findings – I haven’t been through it since I’ve lived here. So there’s a wodge of letters from Mummy, Daddy & Lalla, straight into the bin. Also Ed Fox’s, tho’ I’ve kept a card from Eileen & Ed’ – that fiery short-lived affair. A wodge of Prim’s letters went, too, tho’ they were sometimes witty. Of course, some have to go for space, but I was interested to find how quickly & immediately I tore up certain letters & kept others. The sort of things one can completely forget our grand chauffeur car hire people, Crawford’s, supplied receipts for all the cars we paid for during Prim’s broken ankle stay, so that she could claim them in her court case against the theatre & the out of alignment lift. Edna’s letters about building on to Nora’s Wood Crest. Quite a clutch of Alan Bennett, a file of Noel, seven or eight Ingrid’s, including a telegram saying from one supporting actress to another, when D got the Clarence Derwent & I. got the Oscar. Five or six from Sybil, & a card signed Edith Evans, in writing recalling the shop-girl she was.

Monday, March 29, 1999

K. rang 11.15 p.m., query about the tapes. Rang off sharpish. Forgot to say he talked to me seriously about the flat, & seems prepared to do the repairs & damp. Can I face it? He also told me that his work has been a bit trying, ‘not getting a job I wanted, & getting work I didn’t want’. The job he wanted was ‘a drama’, a play, I presume, & he submitted a lot of stuff. He said irritably, ‘and I know just why I didn’t get it, my stuff was too bloody good’. Now with some people, that might be idle boasting & self-justification. But with K., at his age & so successful & with perfect confidence, it is simply a statement of fact. It has happened more than once, & will again. Remember the C4 logo.

Managed to go to the shops & go out to buy some books, I think the first time I’ve been out twice since my knee. Found a reprint of a book on Ninette de Valois by Catherine Surley Walters, first published in 1987. It has some chapters by Dame Ninette, & it is a curiously exciting to see ‘Contribulations by Ninette de Valois copyright Ninette de Valois 1998’. I asked for selected Writings 1974 – 99 by Richard Mabey, & after a little confusion with a dim assistant who said ‘Maybe?’, I found it in gardening, tho’ I would put it in natural history. I wish I could stop bookshops dividing Natural History into the Dogs, Cats, Birds & so on. Opened the R.M in the shop & was struck by a sentence about a nightingale’s song ‘whose character relies so much and its pauses’.

Dear old Brian Blessed, with a huge beard on his huge body, told Ester Rantzsen in his huge Niagara voice, that he went to look for the yeti, ‘I asked my Sherpa what the yeti looked like, & he stared at me & said it looks like you’. He didn’t laugh. Just as well, his laugh is enormous.

Tuesday, March 30, 1999

K rang to say hadn’t I mentioned something about bills I couldn’t pay. I said the water rate wasn’t due Thursday, so let’s wait for the reminder, in case some money comes in, & the gas bill I’ve re-estimated & sent back, so same story. I wasn’t going to say anything else, but he cut me off all the same, saying ‘ Gotta go’…. He was in the very middle of something, so I was very touched that he even thought about me, let alone remembered the bills.

In the middle of all this, the sink is still stopped up, & the stopcock dripping.

Wednesday, March 31, 1999

The beginning of the end. At The National no less, Trevor Nunn has allowed actors to be ‘miked’ in a straight play. No more comment.

Hazel rang in shrieks about the sensational end of an episode of Neighbours. Her knee a little better.

Have now read David Leavitt’s The Page Turner. Quite well done. Not a ghetto gay novel, but a novel about people who are gay.

In the p.m. finally got myself to Mary L’s with some more books. Another sign of spring, – she has moved back into the sitting room. She shuts it up for the winter, because it’s two big windows, which give me the feeling that I’m sitting on a shelf, make it difficult to heat it to the furnace-like temperature Mary is convinced is necessary. No wonder she gets bronchitis. Somebody has invented a video recorder that can skip the commercials. How can it tell? There isn’t much difference nowadays.

Strange how pain can hit you unexpectedly. The letters I have looked through without reading them in case, can spring no surprises. But today I turned the flyleaf of a P. Wentworth detective story I hadn’t read for years, & suddenly saw ’13 Heddon St. off Rupert St’. & had a little weep. It isn’t the address, it’s the scribble of an instant, in the middle of something, out alone, alive, in fact. A sharp reminder of loss.

Thursday, April 1, 1999

If there were any of those leaden April fool ‘jokes’ in the papers, I didn’t notice them. People & life are now at once so silly & so venal that it’s difficult to make those sorts of jokes. Isn’t it odd? It did not occur to me until this morning that Christine ringing must be in some way connected with Donald moving into B’mouth. It tickles me to think what they sit about saying about me, if anything. Perhaps Don said ‘well, he was quite amenable to me’, forgetting that he said to me, ‘you don’t change, do you?’ It’s also tickles me that It doesn’t occur to them, that Daddy, let alone not speaking, didn’t have the addresses of his sister & brothers & there numerous children for at least the last forty years of his life. What a mercy for me – I might have had dozens of Christine calls. Oh, dear, isn’t Christine an ugly form of euphonious Christina.

Because of going to Mary L., I decided not to go to the film, especially as I had to go to the shops as well. J. rang back later, to say she wouldn’t go as I wouldn’t – she’s seen The Red Violin already. We talked of her office drains & the rats. Her office is on the ground floor of 29, Whitcomb St., in a late Georgian or early Victorian small house. The basement is just the cellars, – I have to bend double to get to the loo. The loo has been temperamental for sometime, blockages, ‘awful smells’ & so on. Somebody found a rat’s nest under the floorboards, blocking something. How vague even a sensible person like J. can be. Thinking of St. Pancras Way, I said that rats can usually only get into the drains of the house by way of the main drain. I told her that probably the little rat-proof grill on the joint between the main drain & the sewer in the street is probably broken. I told her to look at that first.

Finished the N de V book. The best book about her so far, apart from her own. I am annoyed that I didn’t know about it at the time. The appendices are very full & I hope exact, as she must have looked over them. The sub-title is An Idealist without Illusiions & her character is shot through & through with fascinating & fruitful contradictions.

I made up a witticism for K. on a card to S. I don’t care. I made him say in answer to my ‘why didn’t he wipe the porn off the computer?’ ‘Well, he wiped the desk’.

Friday, April 2, 1999

Still no repeat fees. Now none since Christmas, so I’m short. How I hate it. I know he’ll help, but I hate asking, & if it goes on, he’ll start hating me.

Parkinson interviewed Woody Allen, – the first time in England for thirty-five years. Very funny. He delivered almost every line to the audience, not to the cameras or P. As so often, there isn’t much to quote. ‘I ruined my first film with the seven deadly sins, sloth, lust…’ ‘Oh, yes my parents are still alive, my mother’s 93, my father’s 98, & she says when I come in you haven’t had your haircut…’ P. said, ‘Leonardo Di Caprio is in your new film, isn’t he? I think that was before the huge success of Titanic’. ‘Yes, I cast him before he made Titanic. Its success meant my artistic integrity was rewarded’. Ken B. plays the lead – imagine. From the clips I saw, it seemed to me Ken was too near giving an imitation of Woody. ‘I was so thrilled he’d do it…’ He doesn’t like L. A. ‘I like grey weather’. Certain other remarks, ‘I read a lot’, ‘I wish I’d had a full education’, reminded me of Len R. & Co. I turned the sound off for the distasteful bits about his adopted daughter, now his wife. But I did hear him say that there had been no more therapy since leaving Mia Farrow. After only spending two days with her & her mother twenty-five years ago, that doesn’t surprise me.

He was very interesting on the comparative failure of his films in The States. He has a full command of words, – that in itself is enough to put off the infantile Yank audience.

Saturday, April 3, 1999

Two Mary L. trouveilles. When I suggested at the E. David biog. as one of the books, she said ‘it isn’t all about food & menu’s is it?’ When I picked up the books to take back, I found the Frances Partridge specially wrapt ‘because it’s more precious’. Its comic, she really does identify with F. P., whose open-mindedness, good manners & wide sympathies, couldn’t be less like M. L. As I think I’ve already said, she is more like the monstrous Julia Strachey. Paid the £25 ground rent, & popped it in Katrina H’s letter-flap. Just as well, as I took it back later. (She’s away for the weekend.) I’d put in the letter an offer of comps for Pyjama Game, without having asked S. first. Perhaps there is no such thing as a comp now, with prices so much higher.

Sunday, April 4, 1999

Read & finished Alec G’s new diary. What a here-and-there figure he is! I was struck all over again by the strange people he chooses for friends – & praise. Mark Kingston & Marigold, good gracious. He praises Mark’s acting in quite lavish terms, & surely he’s the most ordinary actor, as his career testifiers. Marigold, in the brief time I knew her was quite a personality but this didn’t really know how funny she was. A. shows signs of finding the company of comparatively uneducated people – more congenial, less demanding, more relaxing? I find his self-depreciation rather suspect. He came across to me during the ‘Vichy’ as rather acidly arrogant. However, the book is entertaining, & I am ashamed that I can’t match his continuing theatre & cinema going. I know it’s mainly because I can’t afford it, & find it difficult to sit still. Perhaps if I could just walk back to the Connaught…Still, I wouldn’t go as often as he does, or praise as much. Rather goes on about not being as rich as people think. I thought his percentage of Star Wars brought him a tiny fortune. On the other hand, I also heard, from Eileen A., I think, that he refused to employ an accountant, & just paid whatever the revenue asked. Perhaps neither was true. He seems to have an accountant now.

Lionel Bart has died at 68. Perhaps not surprising, considering the drink & drugs & crises. Said he died at his flat above a shop at Acton. Odd, for in 1982, when K. was put with him by Patricia McNaughton to write a musical, (Hopeless) he was living in a smart flat in South Ken. This was quite long enough after his bankruptcy to have lost his original property, & didn’t Cameron M. give him a royalty on the last revival of Oliver, tho’ he wasn’t obliged to? K. will have a jolly paragraph for his biog having been unsuccessfully groped by L. Bart, & avoided a pass by Francis Bacon.

Hazel rang as usual, but said she mightn’t be able to talk long as she was on some new painkillers for her knee & was feeling rough. In the event we talked as long as usual, about three quarters of an hour, & at the end she said she felt better.

Monday, April 5, 1999

Have started the new Bruce Chetwin biog. by Nicolas Coleridge, a suspiciously glossy journalist. I did scribble in the back of Susanna Clapps mercifully short memoir, ‘I think that’s all I want to know about Bruce Chatwin’, & that’s still true. But Mary L. so raved about B. C. – he preferred anywhere to England, too – that I felt it was worth giving it rather on the analogy of throwing a whole deer to a ravening tiger to keep it quiet. But there is another reason for skipping through it with one eye shut. B. C. sales & reputation of both soaring, especially with what are now called ‘the great & the good’. That is the middle band of second & third raters in the literary, & loosely ‘artistic’ world. I have just got to the point where he is quoted as saying that there isn’t any difference between fiction & non-fiction, & at another point, he has developed ‘stigmata’ on both palms. ‘At this point’ he has no particular religious beliefs, so we cannot start lobbying the Vatican. I developed ‘stigmata’ in 1952, while I was living with Gerard I., through his kindness. He was, & is, I hope, a distinguished alpinely High Anglo Catholic priest. However, as I was sleeping on his sofa for nothing & being fed, I did all the washing-up. I had not come across detergents or much washing-up before – I think detergents were rather more savage than they later became, & I have dry skin – so I wasn’t able to convince anyone my stigmata were of supernatural origin. Depressing early photos of Chatwin, unmistakably The Tart of the Upper Fifth.

The front page of the S. Telegraph art section about John, with a photo of his Romeo in 1924 or whenever, which he won’t relish, & some opinions on his greatness, from such as Richard Briers & so on. Oh, well. He is above the title of a new two-part affair ‘Merlin’. I couldn’t watch most of it, because of the poor speaking of the younger people especially, so I can’t be sure, but all I saw of him were four lines in the prologue & his crown coming off & rolling to his successor. A bit of a fraud. I hope he got a lot of money. The bit of the thing I did watch, amused me, because, although Merlin’s – & others – magic was presented as all-powerful, there still had to be punch-ups & so on. Magic stops the game going on long enough.

K rang 9.0. Coming plumbing on Monday. ‘We’ll eat somewhere cheap because of the hundreds I’ll be spending on washers. Why don’t you get Roy to come to? Haven’t seen him for a year’.

Hm. We’ll see,

Tuesday, April 6, 1999

J. rang & said dinner after the film, which is Ideal Husband. A real help, as I’m not certain of having enough food until Monday. Not that I want to see I. H. very much. The first play I went to by myself was a production of it at the Westminster Theatre. Set’s & costumes by Rex Whistler, just before he was killed. They were infinitely more authentic, more imaginative & more beautiful than Cecil Beaton’s Lady Windermere a couple of years later. Beaton’s was much more a camp ‘30’s review version of Victorian clothes & sets, whereas Whistler’s were authentically in 1895 with proper leg of mutton & so on.

Martita as Mrs.Cheveley was in black with pink bows. Most vividly of all I remember the Lady Markby, Irene Vanbrugh, forty-five before, the original Gwendoline in The Importance. Still struggling & skipping through the loathsome B. Chatwin, & much amused to find Patrick Woodcock was his doctor, too, along with the entire theatrical profession.

A big headline, ‘Child prostitute of 13 dies of overdose in a shabby room in King’s Cross’. Turned out to be a house being squatted exactly like S’s, & in Agar Grove. Well, it isn’t far behind the maze of railway lines, but it’s thought of as Camden Town when it’s Simon Callow. Funny how he’s always chosen? to live somewhere on the squalid side. Poor child’s name, Aliyah Lemail is, comes from a respectable middle-class Jordanian family.

Why is a fire called ‘a house fire’ nowadays?

Football trouvailles: Robbie Fowler? mimed snorting cocaine off the grass after scoring a goal. Didn’t he do something else?

Wednesday, April 7, 1999

Darling D. died twenty-two years ago.

As if behaving so disgustingly to B. Pym wasn’t enough I see that it was Tom Maschler who sold Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Bodley Head to Random House. I never understood about takeovers. If it’s worth R. House buying them for millions, they presumably expect to make back the millions & a good deal more. So why isn’t it worth Chatto’s while to go on & make those millions & keep their precious independence? No wonder dear Fay Maschler divorced him.

Have now finished the Chetwin book, though skipping pages or boring descriptions of foreign parts, & unbearable passages of revolting behavior of B. C., not to mention reams of comments by Salman Rushdie, for instance. I don’t think he had a single acquaintance or friend whom I can unequivocally approve of, let alone admire or believe. The only one I can relate to is Jane Lees-Milne. I first and last, saw BC’s name in the diaries, & his opinion is the only one that comes anywhere near mine. What a crew.

Marian rang, not Roy, I notice, to say sorry for not ringing about dinner. I think it must be money, because almost the first thing she said was that she was going to read the first script of a seven or eight episodes of Grafters. ‘It would mean five or six months work, & in London – very welcome’. She said what about Friday for Grano. I said no because of Janet & Thursday. No sooner had she rung off than J. rang to cancel Thursday. It’ll be full & she can’t stay. Oh well, I won’t have to see Ideal H, that’s something.

Paul R. hasn’t answered my b’day card. I wonder if he’s on the way out of my life.

Thursday, April 8, 1999

Yes, Roy should have rung me himself. K. suggested Monday night, so I wrote a jolly card saying we’d go somewhere cheap because of K’s plumbing. I thought I’d leave it between K. & Roy, but I was pretty sure Roy wouldn’t be keen on having it brought home what K. does for me, & that he can afford dinner out. I don’t think I imagine Roy withdrawing a bit when I talk of K. It interests me, because I’m not quite sure.

When Mary L’s b’day comes along, I always thank my stars darling D. didn’t die a day later….

At last day cheque if only £45 from Felix. He has obviously started waiting for the amounts to add up. He’s always sent £14, £18, separately before. This is £45 start’s in November! Odd, I’ve never been so poor as now. No gin or wine, & by Saturday & Sun., no whiskey. But still lovely K. on Monday. Well, lovely pension anyway.

One way & another without being exactly bored, it was one of those days when it was never as late as I expected when I looked at my watch.

Friday, April 9, 1999

A sudden call from S. to say that John had died. He been asked to write an obituary, but refused, because he hadn’t got his books to check the facts. My letter was accurate enough – for instance, he went to Toronto for the weekend, came back for Monday & Tuesday, going up on Tuesday night for the premiere of Bedrooms & Hallways. ‘How are you getting on with David Bintley?’ ‘Very well. He does some directing, & I do some choreography’.

I rang Hazel to tell her, as she is the same generation & understands. We found we weren’t really sad. For one thing, the sadness came the other week, so now you feel glad that his loneliness is over, & at 95, it cannot be a surprise. We had a long reminiscent wallow & laugh, I finished off with, ‘it won’t be good unless you do it well’.

I was very pleased & proud, yes proud, that she’d got the Ruth Draper tapes with a note saying he hoped she’d be able to forget her knee while she was listening to them. I only mentioned her name in passing, & I was amazed he’d remembered. He is a graceful creature. She’s played Bazaar. I look forward to Sunday.

Roy rang because of my message about John, & we wondered whether he was dead, as there is nothing on radio or television, & nothing in The Standard. It wouldn’t be like S to get it wrong, – perhaps whoever told him used an equivocal form of words. As he was asked for an obituary, perhaps it was a journalist, which would account for anything. All the same S. is not the man to mistake another phrase or word for ‘dead’.

Saturday, April 10, 1999

No news of John’s death again, & no message from S. Odd, all the way round.

John N rang on his b’day, thanking me for my card. The new kitchen is being fair hilarious hell. Said his mother has had a lazy Susan for years. So I said get me one, I’m using a back scratcher. He saw Moira Lister was at a reception, having had four glasses of champagne, & making her way to another room & talking nineteen to the dozen, without missing a step or a syllable, snatched her fifth from a passing tray. I’m amused that a perfectly ordinary bit of stage business can still take in as seasoned a customer as J. N.

Dear K rang warning me it might have to be Wednesday. Like a comic plumber.

No drink at all, but that was rather good, because I passed the time doing some very basic housework, which helped. I think I’m going to get it at least tolerable to a casual glance. But then he doesn’t give casual glasses, I’ve realised, where I’m concerned.

Sunday, April 11, 1999

K. is coming on Monday, thank goodness, as I don’t think I can bear the drip – empty three or four times a day – the lav, oh the effort – or the blocked sink, which blocks a lot of other things.

Still nothing about John’s possible death, & more interestingly, nothing from S. to take back his message. Neither possibility is like him, & I feel a bit annoyed, as I’ve naturally passed on the news.

Watched a bit of the Bafta’s, on a much grander scale this year, in that dreary old Design Centre by the Angel tube station – good heavens. How awful it must be to be there – it was bad enough at that Academy dinner I went to, but at least the dinner & drink were good. I can’t believe it was at Islington. But the great thing was you didn’t have to clap for three hours solid.

Monday, April 12, 1999 Tuesday, April 13, 1999

Yesterday was quite wonderful & quite a strain.

He rang to say he was round the corner, in case I didn’t hear the bell. He got here about quarter to one, & characteristically started at once, & on the sink. He thought it probably wasn’t the u-bend, & it wasn’t. It was that curious upright pipe by the wall that the u-bend pipe went into. It looked as if it could be unscrewed, but he couldn’t do it, anymore than Robin could. And of course it went under the concrete. I regard it as a Mr. Moss problem from beyond the grave. He think’s he’s going to have to run a pipe across the yard. Why not? There’s nobody to see it but him & me nowadays, & it isn’t as if I ever walk fast enough not to trip over anything. I watched him on his knees, his head under the sink, & thought of his career & is money & his most estimable determination that, if he could do a job himself, he would.

I left him to it about half past two, & went to get my pension, pay the Alliance at Ealing, & do the shopping on the way back. When I got back he’d been out & bought the necessary piping & fitted it. The pipe now goes straight into the outside drain. He’d more or less finished by four-thirty. He sat down & looked at the CD player properly for the first time. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘it’s quite funky isn’t it?’

After all that, he sat down and started to work through my finances, or lack of them. He said that I could live quite well on my pension if it wasn’t for the bills, the Alliance & the video. He suggested I cancelled the video hire, & he’d buy me one. He worked out how much I needed a month, & said he’d give me that amount each month. I must get a cheque account at Halifax, ask if I could make a deal with someone else for the insurance at a better rate, from the Alliance, & ask a reversion deal estimate. I don’t want this last, as I rely on the value of this place to pay him back when I die. I’m not sure that you can do a reversion deal on a leasehold & with a mortgage. I can’t believe he can be so good to me. He said, ‘I want to make sure that you aren’t unhappy or worried about anything’.

He rang Roy & arranged the restaurant, which turned out to be The Chiswick. As we drove there, in his dear little Kar, there was one of those funny little moments of intimacy that had almost no substance but you remember. Why? We were haring down King St., & silent. We looked at one another at the same moment & smiled. And in his smile was wrapped up the work he’d done & the talk about money we’d had.

At The Chiswick we were moved from our first table, because it wasn’t the smoking bit. Didn’t know there was one. Then K. was very firm with the American waiter about the fish. After sending him back to enquire twice, waiter was obliged to report that the sea-bass & halibut had in fact being delivered on Saturday morning, so K. didn’t have it. Fish on a Monday is not a good idea for a reputable restaurant. K. didn’t have a starter, but Roy & I did. I had crab with cucumber & mint. Then Roy & I had sweetbreads with lardons of bacon & broad beans. You seldom see sweetbreads these days, & never in a supermarket. K. had duck, & then banana bread. Roy had something custardy- looking, real, I mean, with a prune somewhere about it. I had a good vanilla ice. I never have an ice now except in a restaurant. It was good to see them both together again. I emitted a burst of brilliant, I insist, talk about John G & others, as I was in high spirits after such a day. But after that sat back & enjoyed them sparking each other off. I hope I don’t flatter myself when I say that I think they were talking almost as if they were alone.

We gave Roy a lift home, & he asked us in to see Marian. The place was in such a mess, the floor awash with toys & videos. When I think of my childhood, we had to put all our toys & books away every day before we went to bed. I’m glad of it now. Mariane was looking v. smart, in a black jacket & skirts, the jacket loose-fitting, square cut, with a broad edging of white. But she still feels very fat. They took us up to see the children, the boy for the first time. Always difficult, just a baby to me, the most wonderful etc to them. Not that they gush. I’d forgotten how completely children’s sleep when they are asleep. You’d think four huge monsters standing muttering in the shadows round the bed would be an instant living nightmare, not a bit of it. Had some whiskey & came away. K. started off & then backed to look aghast at a false Tudor front on one of the houses. Like me, he quite liked the road when we got there, but was fairly appalled by the motorway’ish bypassy journey & the squalid row of shops & the tower block and….

I was struck yet again at the extraordinary unselfish impulse that makes people have children. Today, Tuesday, found that so much more activity, – I must have gone up & down twenty times to answer K’s queries, & then Ealing – has made my knee pretty stiff again. Suddenly picked up the Joan Wyndham diaries, & finished the first without looking up.

Wednesday, April 14, 1999

Rang various people for K’s queries, & thought I’d write him & not interrupt his work. I can’t get a cheque book at the Halifax unless I have £500 pounds a month. The Alliance query was negative, too. K rang during dinner, & was a bit cross I hadn’t rung. How I hate that. Gave me two more queries. I didn’t think there was any particular hurry.

I’d cancelled my hair appointment because of knee & money, although K. gave me £40 in cash. So went racing on through the Wyndham’s. The tone is caught by ‘there was no running water on the boat, so we washed the glasses with Gin, & drank something called Algerian vin d’oran’. The second volume goes all through the war. If Hitler had been assassinated, would the war have stopped? The Napoleonic Wars stopped when Napoleon was finally imprisoned.

Thursday, April 15, 1999

Mary L. sneers if I repeat myself. She repeats herself more & more often. However I have forgotten this story & it’s quite a good one. Or it could be without the wearisome detail she loaded it with, as so many people do. ‘So I walked up the path’, & son on. I don’t think I wrote it down in the first time – I may have done.

Mary was at Dundee. Pauline Jameson was also in the company. They had a dresser called Agnes, in her early twenties. Pauline was already concerned about her, when Agnes did not coming one night. P knew there was something wrong, & set to Mary she would go to Agnes’ home, ‘& in case I need backup, can I ring you?’ She took a taxi to the council estate where Agnes lived with her uncle. She found Agnes in the front room, on a mattress on the floor, delirious & incomprehensible. The uncle was in another room & didn’t appear. She did ring Mary, who joined her there. They spent the night in the freezing room with the door locked. Early in the morning they saw the uncle go out. He was not only everything that was sinister, but also a hunchback. As soon as he’d gone, Pauline went out to find a telephone box, rang a doctor on the theatre board & got an ambulance. Uncle came back, but again did not approach them. They got Agnes into hospital, & went off to do two shows of As You Like It. Agnes left hospital after a fortnight or so, & Pauline helped her to move to London, & get a job looking after a child. Pauline brought her over to South Side for tea once. She never went back to the council estate & the uncle.

Mary lost touch, but, fifteen years later, getting on a 24 bus to go and see Prim, she realised that the clippie was Agnes. She meant to speak, but, when she had to get off, Agnes was upstairs.

Thirty or so years later still, Mary was house sitting for someone, & therefore watching some TV. A programme about a house in Canonbury, & its gradually gentrifying tenants & districts, caught her interest. A little woman who did sculpture’s, or use to, was having to move to a council flat, & was mourning the loss of the lovely tall ceilings, ‘better for the light’. She had an accident bad enough to disable her arm, having been flung from end to end of her bus …. It was Agnes. She had now turned to painting & drawing. The camera panned to a wall covered with paintings & drawings. And they will all of hunchback’s.

As Mary said, ‘of course, that she was being abused by him, but in those days, we somehow didn’t think of that’, despite being perfectly sophisticated actresses. ‘Those days’ I take it to be the early fifties. Well, it shows Pauline’s bossiness in a good & useful light.

Dealt with K’s queries. Realised it was the day for the video payment, so I rang up & asked them to take it back. Rang up to tell him the various results, & was rather relieved that he was out, in case he will still cross.

It’s not very aristocratic to pronounce it aristocrat.

It must be ten years since I glanced at the ‘stars’ in the paper. Mine said ‘events are about to take place could have a profound effect on your status & spending power’, & K’s say ‘… you may be in a position to spread your money around rather more than usual’. It doesn’t say about him being cross, tho’ it does rather ominously finish. ‘The best way to help certain loved ones is to show them how to fend for themselves’. There you are, astrology is true.

S. sent me an improbable CD., A setting of the Jungle book by Percy Grainger. And a chatty card, with not a word about John. Really.

Friday, April 16, 1999

Well, at last there was a paragraph in some column about the rumour of John’s death being false. I wonder who started it.

I very seldom go out in a.m., & I’ve never been able to chart what causes or allows me occasionally to do so. To Ken High St., & bought the D.J. Enright commonplace book, & Dorothy Simpson omnibus, another thriller by an unknown, & The English Pig book had come in. It’s a scholarly little affair, & I can see it’ll be fascinating.

Last week I picked up a Trollope, first time for a few years. First The Belton Estate & then Is He Popenjoy? I was as held as ever. There are very few who can present so clearly the varying motives pulling someone back & forth – the way you can’t do that because of this, & the embarrassment of that admission makes you miss an intended moment of honesty. I identify completely with his leading characters. Good.

Saturday, April 17, 1999

Interesting that I went out before lunch yesterday, & yet didn’t mention that Karen had rung. S. wanted me to lunch with him on Sunday, & I heard myself immediately refusing. This was partly because Janet had asked me to supper on Sunday, & I certainly couldn’t do both. But I can’t lunch out with drink any more. It stalely spoils the rest of the day. A pity as I would love to have heard all his Pyjama news.

Played Shallow Brown. Extraordinary accompaniment, as if the music is being carried away by great gusts of wind. I’d use it for the tempest in The Tempest. Realised that I don’t know properly how to pronounce Köchel. Looked it up, & find the ‘o’ is as the ‘e’ in herb, & the ‘ch’ as the ‘ch’ in Scottish loch….

Wrote to S. to thank him for the CD & say sorry about lunch. It’s no use worrying about white lies.

Janet rang to ask me whether I liked broccoli.

Sunday, April 18, 1999

A bomb in the centre of Brixton. Nobody has yet ‘claimed responsibility’, – oh, these phrases. Usually if its politics, they look for publicity, and do ‘c r’. My fear is that it might be racial. Brixton is the major black area of London – that is its defining characteristic. Thirty- nine or so injured, many of them are black.

Found a reversion firm at last in the paper, & sent off for a brochure, though I don’t want to do it at all. How can I repay him after all? I still don’t quite believe I’ll get B’mouth, or that it’ll be worth anything if I do.

Janet rang, & through the racket of the answer machine going wrong, I knew she was going to cry off again. Poor dear, she has violent stomach cramps, I think it’s a combination of the change & ‘stress’. I think it’s genuine, – it happens when she stops after working overtime. Still, I was in a bit of a hole, as I’d relied on a good dinner & some drink. So it was just a tin of sardines, & carrots & potatoes. Well, I won’t starve.

‘Stress’ continued with Hazel’s call. ‘You know things go in threes? Getting out of the car I caught my bag strap & fell on my side & my face’. She has badly bruised her ‘good’ leg ‘& has a lump like a pigeon’s egg’, on her head. And her wrist isn’t better yet. And they had to take refuge in a café – two inches of rain, hey all enough to crack the greenhouse, but happily it hadn’t. And she was waiting for a call from her American friend Jan whose Canadian? friend Ruth, has had a relapse from her successful (sic) cancer operation.

I very seldom even try to watch the ‘prestigious’ TV plays now. I tried one tonight, a remarkably silly play about a prosperous English couple trying to adopt a Bulg/Rom baby. I have to declare my irritation with couples who suffer from not having children. I wonder when such idiots will realise that the world is too full of people, not to mention their dreary selves. I wasn’t helped by the perfs. The girl, Lia Williams, was in that only Oleanna thing, & the husband is an actor I’ve heard a lot of, Alex Jennings. A mild bank clerk figure, with no apparent gifts, but he joined with Lia in playing these prospective parents with a barely suppressed hysteria that left you not trusting them with a goldfish, let alone a child. The only excuse for the thing is that it’s third rate science-fiction, & the child is the devil. And how old hat that would be.

Angus Deayton on Have I Got News For You, quotes Michael winner as saying, ‘I wake up & walk out on my balcony & look down at the flowers & think how lucky I am’, A. D. goes on, ‘two more steps, & how lucky we’d all be’.

Monday, April 19, 1999

Such a relief to get to today, & some money. So I was out in the a.m. again, & did all the basic shopping, a half shoulder at half price & so on. Then the p.m. to new film The Faculty at Whiteley’s. A typical silly horror-film at an American high school, but with an all- important edge. It has a lot of echoes of other horror films & is conscious of that. It is also quick & crisply written. One of the leading actors was young Elijah Wood, one of the best child actors in any real sense I’ve ever seen, & now unusually, perhaps to become a good adult actor. He has one physical asset I rather envy, those large well opened eyes, so wide that there is white all round the irises. With it you could hardly fail to register on film. The other young man might be a bit of a star, Josh Hartnett. Went through the whole film with the back of his hair rumpled, not surprisingly nowadays, but he certainly had the air of not noticing it. Might be a bit of a start, tho’ his name is a bit un-starlike.

After to a bit of shopping at M&S, Talleggio, & courgette. Drink at my shop. A relief.

I am always alert to idiocy. Already I sense the mounting idiocy of the end of the century. A news item began, ‘what does the millennium mean for animals?

Tuesday, April 20, 1999

A TV flash. A yank mom, – always pronounced ‘maarm’ with just a touch of whine – kissing, with newly lipsticked lips, a lot of little cards, ‘so that my little girl can have her mommies’s kisses wherever she is’.

I decided to go to the new film Happiness at The Renoir after having my hair cut & taking Janet the Lilly Langtry & her Partridge tape. I found it was raining & went back to get an umbrella. I forgot the book…

My barber, Giovanni, tells me his children speak Italian as their second language. He tells them off in Italian.

Sat & chatted at Janet’s. The deer thing sewed up a flapping panel of my umbrella. Only one strut’s panel had come loose, but there is nowhere you can get such a thing repaired. Nobody dreams of keeping an umbrella for life any more. So the repair, just a few stitches, was satisfying.

She told me she was expecting Edward Petherbridge before six. My film was at 5:30, I got up to go at 5.0 & Edward turned up. He’s white-haired now, but still the same beautiful dreamy face. He’s written a novel, which J. is typing. We had a little chat, & as I left, he was finding he hadn’t brought his glasses.

The film was written & directed by Todd Solondz. I saw him interviewed & he is in his mid twenties & very odd looking. Almost certainly bullied at school. The film is rather too long, – the last quarter needs tightening up – & the brilliant use of pauses & inarticulacy suddenly gets wearisome. But the thing shows an acute intelligence, every word tells. When he grows beyond unrelenting youth, he should do good work. 134 mins eh?

Another high school shooting in America. To 18-year-olds with Nazi sympathies went through the school with guns & bombs, killing or shooting Blacks, Hispanics & athletes. Racism & jealousy. There are perhaps as many as twenty-five dead.

The handle of the umbrella J mended is ridged like bamboo but I think it’s rotten, ‘an E. Indian climbing Palm with many jointed stems’.

Wednesday, April 21, 1999

Hungover.

The American shooting is no particular surprise to me. The spiritual emptiness & shallowness of American society can only lead to such events.

Gruesome statistics. There were 300 killings in Britain where guns were involved. In the USA there were 9,769 murders by guns, & over 25,000 deaths where guns were involved. As for gun control, there is no minimum age, no waiting period for getting a gun & no details need to be registered anywhere. Even this has only led to the usual minorities calling for control.

Thursday, April 22, 1999

Another round of inept films. Yes, some of them are not my type of thing, but none of them seem to have come off.

I found, to my surprise, that I have recorded none of the last four episodes of Queer As Folk. Was I so drunk that I recorded the wrong channel four times at weekly intervals? Odd. No word from K. about money or the video. Granada comes to take back the rented one, tomorrow. Ah well.

Friday, April 23, 1999

World Book Day. With some of us every day is World Book Day.

The Granada man came to take the video away, a tall big made plump jovial black man. He was a dear, but oh dear, he’s stank. He is one of those, I think, who have a violent natural smell & washing & deodorant really don’t work. We had a workman once at Manchurian Rd. doing something to the spare, fortunately, bedroom. He was white rather weasely-looking, and, as D. said, as she opened the window as wide as it would go, ‘stank like a stoat’. That smell lasted for twenty-four hours. The Granada lasted a couple of hours, despite spraying the air with Sure. It’s odd, how does it last? If they’d left a bit of clothing behind or slept on the sofa, you could understand it, but just scenting the air? One or two women in my life have been even worse. From deepest cunt? Or just unusual sweat glands?

Sometimes in the last three or four years, perhaps once a month, I get that strange jagged dazzle moving across my eyes, that I used to get years ago at school when I was fifteen or sixteen. I suppose it’s something to do with migraine, as then I knew that when the dazzle faded out, I’d be sick. Now it just goes on about twenty minutes, moving from right to left or left to right. I can just read while it’s moving, but I don’t.

I am looking here & there in D.J. Enright’s Play Resumed. Far more like me than I would have expected. Records that glowworms are declining because of too much light. Oh how I felt that even at the cottage – well, not at it itself but around. Real darkness…. Did I say his remarks about soap operas? Also me.

Sorting thro’ various things, found the little mock-leather rexine indexed notebook that was my first guide to all my book collecting. It’s full of poignant little reminders, like D’s scribble in The Thriller. It had got rather full & I obviously abandoned it for another notebook, as I have not crossed off a lot of books I did get. I made a note of a lot of secondhand shops. I’d forgotten most of them, incl. one at 7, Whitcomb Street. Must tell Janet, oh how many more there were, before it was all money.

Saturday, April 24, 1999

Sent Hazel a couple of pages from The Spectator, Joan Collins diary, & an article by the editor, Frank Johnson, sort of reviewing the biography of Peter Mandelson. Very funny. He says it introduces a new genre, ‘The New Labour bodice ripper.’ And later a phrase he hopes will be on the back of the paperback, ‘it is a yarn of love, sex & hate set against the torrid background of Labour modernisation’. Apparently Clapham Manor St. was a ‘torrid’ venue….

In the p.m. for some money at the Halifax at Whiteley’s, rather nervously, as there had been another bomb, at Brick Lane this time, so it is racist, just as I thought. How horrible. Bayswater is very Arab & I looks nervously at all the many waste bins, which, unlike the tube, are still there. The Pig book is beguiling.

Sunday, April 25, 1999

A rare outing to the shops on a Sunday. Bought The Observer, & a long article by Adam Nicholson on buying a farm in Sussex, revealing his nervous breakdown, leaving his wife & children, a new partner, staying in bed for three months …. Really what a mess so many people make nowadays. They have no idea what marriage means, obviously. I’m disappointed, I thought he had more sense. There is a fair amount of unknowing tumbril talk, not surprising from Vita’s grandson. He’s worried about money, but, despite some bargaining, he & his new partner managed to drum up £400,000 odd to buy the farm, & I suppose do it up. It sounds as if it needs it.

K. rang at seven, not cross any more, to see how I was. ‘I’m writing to Roy, how do you spell Mitchell? Two L’s?

Monday, April 26, 1999

Shocking murder just round the corner, of a well-known TV presenter, Jill Dando. She was a very English, straightforward decent person, on & off screen. She was one of the two presenters of the Crime-watch programme, which is a force for good. There is a suggestion that her murder may have been connected with this work, as she was killed by one bullet to the back of her head. Alternatively, it might have been a mad fan. As I say, she seems to have been a decent woman, who did her job well. All the same it seems absolutely exaggerated for her death to have pushed the Yugoslav affair off the front pages, & the Prime Minister & the Palace coming out with tributes. It’s the ‘power’ of TV, that’s all, & pathetic to me that they can’t tell the difference. Compare her actual abilities & achievements with D’s, for example. Ridiculous.

It’s also interesting that you feel such an event more keenly if it’s nearby & you know the road it happens in. It’s quite illogical, but because she lived in Gowan Avenue, at 29, & Neil & Lynda used to live at no. 11, I watched the news reports more avidly than I would otherwise have done. I suppose she must have driven past here on her way home, quite often. It happened about twelve, but when I was at H’smith as late as five, there was no mention in the Standard. I got back to B. Court & there it was. The seller let me exchange my earlier edition. ‘No need to pay twice’. He knows me, of course. I was touched that Hazel rang, having seen how close it was. Jill D. is actually on the cover of the radio times this week. Article begins, ‘Jill Dando….. will remember 1999’.

Tuesday, April 27, 1999

Sent the front page of The Independent to Neil with a photo of Gawon Avenue & a map. An ex-Met expert described the shooting as typical of a hit-man, & certainly his description fitted the facts better than any other explanation. The suit, the dark glasses, not caring if he’s seen, as he has no connection with district or victim, & getaway car out of sight of witnesses of shooting, if any, the efficiency of the shot, with an expanding bullet, the mobile ‘phone to keep in touch with a confederate perhaps trailing Jill D., & warning him she was on her way. He also said the sort of gun used had a folding stock & could look like a mobile phone to a layman.

Another expert, psychological this time, rolled out some interesting statistics. There were only two hundred & fifty odd murders of women in 1996, & none shot like this. He said that no stalker has killed his victim. Even in the U.S.A. only John Lennon has been shot by stalker. He thinks that a former lover or an associate is the overwhelmingly likely murderer tho’ it would be ‘unprecedented’ for such a lover to hire a hit-man. Such hit-men are used by criminals, but in circles of international finance & intrigue far removed from a BBC television presenter. As for the suggestion that it was something to do with the exposure & possible arrest of criminals on Crime-watch UK., he said that he didn’t think the sort of criminal able to hire an obviously professional hit-man, would be stupid enough to imagine that a presenter was responsible for his arrest. Another couple of experts said laconically that anywhere in London or other big cities, you could get a gun like that, ‘for about £1000 in about an hour’.

Bringing it further home, on her way back from her fiancé’s house in Chiswick, she stopped off at Kings Mall, & bought some food at Safeway’s, something for her computer at Smiths, I suppose, & some paper at Ryman’s across the road. I go to Safeway’s most days. I might have seen her in the last half hour of her life.

K. rang at nine past eight. At least this time he said, ‘are you dishing up?’ Wants me to do some lines from Magic Roundabout over the ‘phone sometime. Said again he hadn’t forgotten about the video.

Wednesday, April 28, 1999

Jill Dando’s fiancé interviewed gently by Anna Ford, a friend. Affecting because he did not cry, but looked at us with stunned bewildered eyes. Janet rang & we speculated about the murder. There is something mysterious about it.

Much amused by the H.P companies promising wonderful new apparently extended payment periods, by trumpeting ‘Nothing to pay until well into the next century’.

In some ways Hazel is as prejudiced as Mary L., little tho’ she would like to hear it. For example, she is more or less as prejudiced in favour of Americans as Mary is against them. The interesting thing is that most elements of modern life that she particularly dislikes, violence, fast food, pop music, emotional incontinence & so on, are of largely American origin. But then how amusing modern life is in its idiocies & ignorance’s. Now, on Blue Peter someone comes along & heads a little procession of schoolchildren. They are questioned by the presenters, & say they have invented this new safe way of getting to school to try & cut down on ‘the school run’ – parents motoring their children to school, it apparently is a worryingly large percentage of the rush-hour – & the children are in luminous jackets. Why? Because this new way is called ‘the walking bus’. So good for the children’s health, & a teacher at each end of – ’ the crocodile….

K rang at 7:30 & said we’d do the Magic Roundabout bits. So there I was over the gin & tonic doing a voice-over, a gin & tonic over Zebedee, Florence, Ermintrude & so on, with various tones & inflections. I did it over the ‘phone – how odd modern technology is, able to use the comparatively poor quality of a ‘phone call, & presumably convert it in his machines….

I think I must start a new series of euphemisms, inspired of course by Yanks.

Advert for incontinence calls it ‘every day personal wetness’.

Thursday, April 29, 1999

Now the head of the BBC News service has had a death threat, & has gone into a protected refuge. Yes, we are well into the fin de siècle hysteria.

Perhaps something called glucózamine, if that’s how you spell it, is a natural substance rushing round the body repairing cartilage & reducing inflammation. If so, it might be worth taking it, as its now on sale at chemists. It might be that it can replace gluco. that diminishes with age, & help my knee & my back.

Bought some books at Earls Court, Adam Nicolson’s Perch Hill, a detective story, & Alan Warrens ‘Dukes Queens & other Stories’. Hm.

Friday, April 30, 1999

Oh, and a book of essays by D.J. Enright mostly about television…. Fin-de-s. Someone called Ramsey has died & his death was the ‘top story’ in both papers & TV., coming before Jill Dando’s murder, let alone the war in Kosovo. It seems he was the main mover in ‘the greatest event in British history this century’. He turns out to have been a football manager in charge of the England team when ‘we’ won the cup in 1966…. Decadence, thy name is football.

Now there has been a third bomb targeting a minority, but much closer to home – in Soho, in Old Compton Street which, in the last ten years or so, has become the visible high-street of the gay world. They blew up the Admiral Duncan, which has been a gay pub ever since I can remember, long before the ‘higher profile’. Two people are dead, & sixty-six are injured, some seriously. Soho Square was used as a sort of dressing station – the nearest space as the police shut streets off in case of another bomb. (As I was watching, Dean Street was mentioned, but turned out to be a false alarm.) The leading policeman was interviewed against a background which pieced out as the corner of the square which is forever Twentieth Century Fox, where I go to the Academy films. The bombed pub is next door to the Algerian coffee stores, where we have got our coffee for forty years, one of Edna’s favourite shops, just a counter & every sort of coffee & coffee machines, a good many teas, & odd kickshaws like vanilla pods & marron glacé’s & Turkish delight. An expert shop, a little centre of civilization, & a bomb next-door. Well, coffee & Algerians I’ll both ‘alien scum’….

Felt sick & rang K to see that he was at home. He goes to Soho quite often, & though I don’t expect him to be in a gay pub on a Friday or any other night, I had to be sure he wasn’t walking past. And he wasn’t. Also rang J. who might have been. Rang Roy & M. He is in Munich, ‘playing football’ at 42?!

Saturday, May 1, 1999

A man has been arrested in a small place, Cove, outside Farnborough. All the neighbours have been evacuated because of explosives in the house – presumably a lot of explosives. I have always wondered why, when some ghastly organisation ‘claims responsibility’, the police don’t trace the call & arrest them at once. This time I presume that they have, as I can’t imagine how otherwise they would have known about him. I hope they’re able to charge him – they so often can’t.

Read, or rather skipped over, Alan Warren’s book, which turned out to be signed. I remember Alan as a pushy, sharp do-anything-to get-on seventeen or eighteen year old, when he was in Forty Years On. As the photos can testify, his eyes & mouth will always open in faux-naif surprise & delight at your (or anyone’s who could profit him) presence. This book is certainly a testimony to his carrying out his creed. He has photographed all twenty-six Dukes, met everyone who has little discrimination, & slept with most of them. So there you are, he’s a creepy little social climber. An amusing book can be written about this sort of expedition, but this isn’t it. For a start he is rather on the illiterate side. There are many verbless phrases between full stops, some of them plainly part of a sentence, but is it the sentence before or the sentence after? There are many factual errors, not to mention errors of judgement. Misspellings abound, especially with names. Gingold & Baddeley Turn up at different times, their Christian names being rendered as Hermoine. To show us that it isn’t just bad proofreading, both Hermiones are Hermoine in the index. Now I can’t pretend all this is unexpected, & I could have ignored it, if the book had been funny. He can’t see where the jokes are, nor could he tell them if he had. The book is dull.

Another death in Soho. The three people work together, a woman married for two years, four months pregnant, her husband’s best man, his best friend, & the husband is critical but doesn’t know about the deaths. They were on the way to Mamma Mia. Frightful. Of the five who are critical, three have lost limbs.

Three episodes of a play about a young actor coming down to play Jesus in a village Passion play – what a lot of plays – taken out by Freddie Jones to shout his part out over a tractors engine. Quite practical. Spotted Paul Nicholls four or five years ago.

Sunday, May 2, 1999

K rang about the video, sorry to have done nothing about it but behind with the wiring in the mixing desk, so go & get one in Hammersmith on Tuesday. Dear.

This evening to Janet’s, at last! Lovely evening. We didn’t watch the Central Station film as it turned out J. has been watching The Passion’. That boy is certainly not just a pretty face. Tiger is now death & rather blind, but his fur is sleek & shining, & he doesn’t move too badly. The Uxbridge Rd is a bit rough, but there was nobody about. Janet likes to hear I’ve got home all right, so I rang her & we had a long talk about S. She sees him pretty clearly, tho’ I don’t suppose he’d be pleased to hear it. If only he wouldn’t overdo so much.

Monday, May 3, 1999

Left my reading specs at J’s. To my surprise my old ones turned out to be perfect. Unless my eyes have improved, I can’t think why the optician said I should replace them. It must be seven or eight years ago. But of course I can think …. Didn’t attempt to do anything. The Kinky Friedman’s are really good, – no wonder he’s published by Faber.

Tuesday, May 4, 1999

Set off about four to get the video. Went to Curry’s & choose the only Sony. The rather sleazy manager served me. I said, ‘I’m buying a video recorder but I’m not paying for it’. ‘I see’. But how simple the credit business is now. I rang K., handed the receiver to the manager, who staggered slightly under the weight of K.’s personality, & took down the rather lengthy particulars of his MasterCard. But then the conversation went on, with the manager saying, ‘yes, yes, yes, I will, yes’. K. said to me, ‘see to it that he does what I asked’. ‘Mr. Malpass said I must get you a taxi & help you in with the box – he’s paid for it’. Is there anyone like him, getting the manager of a high-street Curry’s to order me a taxi & load me into it?

The amusing part is that I never thought I’d walk away with the video, & I would go on & do my shopping. So when I dropped the video at home, I had to go back to H’smith. I knew Jill Dando had been photographed going into Dixons, which I pass everyday, but the Curry’s man told me she’d been in there too.

When I came back, there, pasted onto the door of the Kings Mall, was the sort of poster so often seen on Crime-watch, though the photo was for reminder rather than identification. I see that Hammick’s Bookshop is closing, not surprising as the K. Mall is rather downmarket, & Books Etc. arrived across the road. It’s being refitted to sell Time Computer Systems. A sign of the time.

Oh, I had a theatre dream this a.m. Perfectly successful, improvising cleverly with John G. As, I’m sure, we’re both spectacularly bad at such a thing, & dreams are supposed to be nightmares, I thought there was something Freudianly wrong. Opposites reign. Is this a premonition of death?

K. rang later lots about the video, but to say, ‘now Myles Rudge & The Magic Roundabout – he wrote the signature tune?’ I said, ‘no, only words, never any music’. Odd, to think of them talking – D. would be pleased.

Wednesday, May 5, 1999

Now my left foot is painful, – the Achilles tendon.

‘Planned’ afternoon, Halifax, pick up my specs, go to see S’s Bedrooms & Hallways, Waterstone’s, & Tesco. For once did it all.

Paul, J’s assistant, was dealing with fan mail, & we had a jolly chat. J. was in the middle of typing something urgent but was interrupted so many times by calls that I never got a word out of her. Her honeyed tones to her clients can change to rancid fury at the touch of a put down receiver. Impressed by a tower of wire baskets marked, Julie Walters, Maggie Smith etc. And then to the ABC to see S. in Bedrooms & Hallways. This is the nearest thing to a sex Cinema left in the West End. Although there are quite often films of quality showing there, & almost never openly pornographic, there is never a film without a strong sexual content, especially gay. And that’s B & H. It’s a fairly intelligent film, fairly funny, more or less well acted – Tom Hollander, for instance, is good at last because he’s playing what he is, a nasty little camp queen. S. plays the guru of one of those male bonding clubs. He has to be solemn & quiet & pretentious & that stopped him exaggerating too much. One exaggeration was amusing, when he emerged from a prolonged fuck almost hunchbacked. But the toing & froing’s of the characters love lives made me impatient. I wanted to say oh, go on, go to bed with him or her is, or not. Or admit that your two undersexed to decide at all. It passed the time, but I quite see why it is only running where it is.

And Then to Waterstone’s, & picked up that Covent Garden diary by the chief executive who only stayed about six months. Two plays of the Irish ‘renaissance’, Our Lady Sligo & Beauty Queen of Linane. A couple more Kinky Friedman’s, a John Baker detective. Finally Tesco, not to full at nearly eight. My knee is not too bad, but now my left Achilles tendon is stiff & painful on the backward step.

Thursday, May 6, 1999

Both legs rather poor, & shall move as little as possible.

Read the C. Garden diary. What a crew! The whole book is an insult to Lillian Bayliss & Ninette de Valois. The ridiculous proliferation of committees of unqualified people, with decisions falling between them. The constant lunches & dinners in rich restaurants. The absence of any real mention or knowledge of the singers & dancers on whom the top-heavy mess is living. One fact. She discovered a deficit of £800,000 to be carried over the closure period. This is a reasonable figure for such an organization, especially as the reopening can be relied on for box-office returns, because a new theatre always fills the house for the first year. She felt that the finance department needed overhauling, & appointed an accountant to do so. Three weeks later he told her that the deficit was not £800,000 but £10 million.

Friday, May 7, 1999

Electrified by Blue Peter explaining cricket in detail,….

I occasionally get those curious flashing lights, which I think are linked to migraine. I used to get it at school, though in those days, it was a more typical migraine in that the dazzle going away, I knew I would be sick, & then develop a raging headache. No doubt a defence against the severe bullying – shall I ever forget my main tormentors, amazingly named Turley & Gout? –, because I had to go to the san for the rest of the day. Now it’s a bar of refracted light, like cracks in a mirror, which goes across my vision, only stopping me reading when it’s right in the middle. This time it was rather bigger, & a circle, which gradually widened until it vanished. It takes about half an hour. I believe it’s technically called an aura.

The Jill Dando suspect being perhaps seen in three or four places around Gowen Ave., is now thought to have panicked on missing his getaway car, not knowing the district.

Saturday, May 8, 1999

Hitchcock’s Secret Notebooks have been published. Must get them, but gosh! I’m glad I never worked for him.

Reading the list for Robin Bailey’s memorial service, saw John Warner’s name, of course. Oh dear, what a busy-body he is! And Malk was there. Hope he doesn’t ring or I have to Hoover. Surprised to see that R.B. had not only the three or so children we never heard him speak of, but six or seven grandchildren.

Dirk Bogarde has died. I never thought he deserved his reputation. He was a mass of mannerisms, & his acting was superficial. ‘Death in Venice’ for instance, will be seen as ridiculous as time goes by, as I saw it at first. As for his writing, I only read his first volume of autobiog. He took about three hundred pages to get to the age of eight. That sort of concentration on childhood is usually the sign of a control freak, & often a whinger. He was both to an extreme.

Mary L. really is extraordinary in herself absorption. We touched on Bronson Aldery, I’ve forgotten why, a sacred figure to her because he owned Wyndhams when…. Oh, yes, I think we were talking of the decline in quality of (any) theatre managements. I said how charming he was when he spoke at the first anniversary party for ‘Salad Days’. and I wasn’t going on, but she snapped, ‘for goodness sake, don’t tell me that story for the hundredth time’. She then proceeded to tell me, for, I think, the third or fourth time in as many years, of Bronnie donating money to Charing X Hospital so that his theatre companies could have free treatment, & a good mass of money beside – & her with a swollen leg. I said nothing, & her telling did not jog her memory. So I shall tell it now, as I don’t suppose I wrote it down then. I suppose Bronnie was in with Linnit & Dunfee. Anyway, he was there in August ‘55, the show had got the Evening Standard drama award – the most interesting award, as in its first year, there was not only the usual award from the board, but an award voted for by playgoers in every theatre foyer in the West End. Continued in May 12th entry – included here. Amusing that I was distracted, writing about Bronson Alderby, refilled my pen, & left out half the story. I had organized the drink, sale or return, we had a Toastmaster, & when he announced ‘Sir Albery Bronson’, Bronnie stepped forward, taking his place in front of the E. Standard Award sinking slowly into the cake, made a graceful little speech, & fell into the orchestra pit, happily on hurt.

May 8th Continued:

No answer from Neil or John N. in acknowledgement of their own letters from twenty years ago, that I sent them. Or indeed the front page of the Ind. with Jill Dando & Gowan Avenue on it to Neil. Careless of both. But then rather a lot of my younger friends have more or less abandoned. In dear Robin’s case, it is complete, – it must be getting on for a year. I think that is understandable. I am afraid he probably senses that a new partner met behind a pub-bar, & with two sub-teenage daughters, hardly fits into my life, or even K’s. Do we presume that he’s abandoned his theatrical career & ambitions? Perhaps you doesn’t want to have to tell us that. I have not heard from Sharron since well before Christmas, when I think I received my congé. I think that’s the combination of her probably doing badly, & perhaps being happier. I am pretty sure that she did like me, but a big element in visiting me was to feel closer to K. As the room is unchanged down to the last ornament – except for the holes in the loose covers – from her first visit with K., that could at first be a comfort, now it may be a painful, or possibly only a tiresome association. Paul R. sent me a cheque for £20 pounds for Christmas, but nothing since, nor a call after his b’day card in April. Tim’s postcards have dried up. It will be funny if all he’s done is wish Tony Church on me. They’re all well into the 30’s & don’t need a father figure any more. Also I can’t be much help professionally any more. Thanks heaven/God? for him.

Sunday, May 9, 1999

The S. Times was delivered instead of the Telegraph. Murdoch, ugh! When I threw it away, it is so obscenely large that it filled a whole carrier bag by itself. Not that I don’t feel like throwing away every paper without reading it. I almost do this anyway, as I can’t read about the Balkan War, the Welsh & Scots devolution, attacks on royalty, the abolition of the House of Lords, or the bombs.

And another round of pretty awful films, - by the critics standards, not mine.

Monday, May 10, 1999

I forgotten the full version of the magpie verse: One for sorrow Two for joy Three for a girl Four a boy Five for silver Six for gold Seven for a secret never told.

Not in my Oxford Dic. of quotes.

Reading myself to sleep with the Egos, as I often do, came across a word that I hadn’t noticed as odd, before. In a list of comedians, ‘….the cithood of George Carney’. It’s not in any of my dictionaries. I can only suppose it is based on ‘cit’ for citizen. I know too little of G.C. to help me.

I caught a glimpse of some wildly cheering football crowd, at Bradford, of all godforsaken places, I think. I watched for a few seconds & thought all over again how sad, how cheated people are by such a threadbare little experience. Talk about panem et circenses ….

I noticed John G. said he was sorry forward D. Bogarde’s death. Well, he can answer the telephone.

Thursday, May 11, 1999

Letter put on my side of the hall – Katrina never does anything about unknown letters – addressed in the big feminine writing, rather odd as it’s from BT to a Mr. Ganesh-Moorthy. The address tho’ slightly wrong, – 12, St. Dunston’s Rd. W.6. 8RA, instead of B., was perfectly clear. I didn’t think they could be many columns of that name in the directory. Actually there was only one, and the address is nothing like this, in, of all places, Earls Court Square. As the W.6 & 8R are nearly right, I take it to the number is wrong.

The Queen Mother unveiled a memorial to people killed in the Blitz. I had never before heard how many there were – 32,000. What an enchanting accent & voice she has from a vanished world. Mustn’t tell poor Mary L. that.

At last a doctor has been acquitted of murder for giving a terminally ill patient morphine in doses heavy enough to kill the pain & possibly the patients. Just as dear Dr.? did to Mummy & Daddy. A woman doctor with a trap of a mouth & waves of granite said that doctors took an oath not to harm a patient. Her opposite number said, ‘and you don’t think screaming in agony harms a patient?’

On a holiday programme two middle-aged men on holiday buying diamond rings for each other. They’ve been together three years. ‘Michael is a bank manager’. Another sign of the time…

Wednesday, May 12, 1999

Mary L. sent me an article by S. reviewing Harriet Walter’s book on acting. An adverse review the other day made it sound very silly. He praises it. I can’t say I think much of her, & I wish actors would shut up about acting. It only makes the public contemptuous. Still, it gives me the wink not to bring up her acting as I might otherwise have done with Bedrooms & Hallways. S. mentions books by actors about acting, Cibber, Irving, Tree, Coquelin (later misprinted as Coqueline), Jouvet, Gielgud. Irving? Can he mean those speeches written for Irving by Bram Stoker, or Percy Fitzgerald etc etc.? No mention of Ellen.

‘Which’, investigating tourism, says that the rooms open to the public at Buck House are ‘Un-interesting & sterile’, & makes fun of ‘flock wallpaper’. This last is K. with my Morris paper. They don’t know the difference between the flock in Indian restaurants & the original rich paper that led the restaurants to think of it as glamorous. As for ‘uninteresting & sterile’, I suppose they won’t be satisfied until the Queen comes out of her bedroom in her nightdress & shows them her loo.

Jokes from a programme about comedians in drag. Lily Savage: I dropped this cigarette end on the floor, & this man sweeping the floor said, ‘can you read?’ I said, ‘yes, that’s why I’m not cleaning floors at Heathrow’. Dame Edna Everage to Cliff Richard: ‘I’m old enough to have breastfed you…. and under certain circumstances, I still might’. Les Dawson & Roy Barraclough as Ada & Cissie. RB: ‘oh, it’s such a nice guesthouse, & such good food. Have you had the shish kebab?’ L.D. ‘ever since we arrived’. RB: ‘Have you been to the Acropolis?’ LD: ‘Never been off it’.

Thursday, May 13, 1999

Did not sleep too well of course, but better than I expected.

I am amused to think of my friends leading full lives & being rather scornful of my preparations for one lunch. Yesterday I bathed & washed my hair. This morning cut my nails & shaved. Went to the Halifax in lower Regent St. & wandered slowly, – Achilles tendon permitting – to St Martin’s Court to find Sheekey’s still shut & no sign of S. tho’ he’d rung to confirm at ten. No bell to ring, & my back hurts when I stand…. At twenty to twelve a rather gaunt plain but welcoming young man came hurrying out & I ushered me gratifyingly in. First impression was of plain paneling, dark brown & deep red stools at the bar, no special décor to tiresomely knock you out. Heard that there are 154 photos. Started to glance at them & relieved to find that I could identify them at a glance. S. arrived in a burst of talk & laughter. We started in the bar, & found the photos almost without exception, to be taken between 1949 & 1965, easy pickings for me, as they were also mostly Tennent’s. Solo portraits were nearly always signed. We’d finished by about quarter to one, & sat down at an excellent corner table, where I could hear. For once, because I was thirsty, I joined S. and having a glass of champagne as an aperitif, but as always didn’t care for it that much. To me, it’s like fizzy – which I don’t care for – slightly acid white wine, & I presume it was a goodish champagne.

That apart, it was a lovely meal. We had a seagull egg each, properly served on a little bed of cress, a dash of mayonnaise & a little heat of celery salt, as an amuse bouche. S. then had beetroot soup, & I had mixed asparagus, three sticks of blanched Spanish asparagus, laid across four English sticks. I asked for melted butter instead of the chervil sauce. My only complaint in the entire meal was that the asparagus was slightly under-cooked, so that the taste had not fully come out. However, this is a fashion not careless cooking. First I gave S. K’s love. S said again he’d love to see him. Again I didn’t say you’ve only to pick up the ‘phone.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 161

May 13th 1999 – June 25th 1999.

May 13, 1999 (continued)

Then, over the main course, I opened the floodgates of The Pyjama Game. My main course was Sea Bass, grilled, on a bed of risotto & sorrel. Deliciously subtle, as the bed of risotto was a thin delicate layer of rice, & not a great slab of rice with a small piece of fish. I ordered it with an endive & chicory in English salad, just that reddish edged chicory, each leaf and just coated with a creamy lemony peppery dressing of the utmost deliciousness. And a bottle of Aligoté to myself, as S. regime still demands red. Except sometimes.

He told me he’d had dinner with Peter Ackroyd the night before, P.A starting off with seven double vodka’s in the first half-hour – & they drunk four bottles of white, was it? & some unimaginable number of red. He wasn’t hung over, though a little pouchy when he arrived. Poor Peter Ackroyd.

So to Pyjama Game. At last I found out to the cast. Ulrika Jonsson – ‘imposed on me for the box office, nice enough girl, can’t do much’. Elizabeth Seale part, Alicia Limerick, ‘a pop singer, quite good some of the time, but her energy goes on & off in the strangest way, sometimes in the middle of a sentence’. John Hergel, the pop poet, ‘will be all right’; ‘the man is Graham Bickley’ – & at once I knew why he hadn’t mentioned the male lead before, G.B. is quite good looking, quite fair, with quite a good voice, ‘he has never created any part of any sorts, he’s only taken over, & resents any attempt to make him think creatively’. Not very encouraging so far. It got worse. ‘I think there’s a jinx on us. Quite early on, one of the dancers fell & shattered her kneecap. She’ll be in hospital for two months, & won’t be able to dance for six. She isn’t a member of Equity, so can’t get any damages or insurance. Then the man doing the orchestrations & coordinating the chorus & so on, fell so violently in love with our woman producer that they were flaunting it all over the place, & he has now left his wife & children. Then Joe Hegley turned out to have a gig in Lincoln the evening before the first preview. We went to him & said about how many people were going to come to it. Oh a hundred or a hundred and twenty. We said we’d bus them over to see the show free. He had little or no experience of such frantic lavishness & said wow. Howard then unwisely said it would be such good publicity. Joe said, ‘forget it’ & walked off, happily not out……then these 78-year-old author asked Ulrika up to his hotel room’ – ‘for what?’ ‘No, worse. He tore her perf. to shreds, she, being a charming presenter, has never had any requirements to fall short of, & was destroyed. Her perf. was right off next day’.

They’re going to Toronto at some point. The Torontorians were enchanted with the first night, which, I think, must be put on the depressing list. One way & another, and the management is mostly to blame, & S’s casting, but even the most tentative of rebukes was met with ‘Howard Panter is a friend’. How he can be on any terms with him, except for expediency, I can’t imagine.

He changed the subject to Query as Folk, which he’d much enjoyed, as I had, but gave it more weight than I would, in changing the public perception of gays & gay issues. The rest of the lunch was the usual entrancing exchange of anecdotes & illusions & opinions that I value so much. I forgot to say but he introduced me to one of the two owners of the place, Chris Corbyn?, A bright face thin alert forty-year-old. You can see his success in his face. Was surprised to hear S. praising my ‘most remarkable memory’. Not really, it’s just that I was there. We identified all that about five, three of which were not really theatrical, one on the death of a ship, was real-life, with no clues. I’ve checked what I can here. We haven’t done too badly – & a free lunch. I asked him if you could send me a copy of the Peggy book. It seems there is some scheme on to make a film out of it, & Maggie S. is interested…..

Back here, the following letter from Janet, a printout with the opening & signature written. TIGER MACKLAM November 1984 – May 1999. Dearest Angus, Tiger has had to say goodbye & was peacefully put to sleep at home on 10th May 1999. He is buried in the garden at Warbeck Road & will be greatly missed. He was a wonderful companion & I loved him dearly. Love Janet xx

It is quite astonishing to those of us who are rational about animals, that someone with intelligence and humour, can be guilty of such rancid sentimentality. But so many people are, – look at Hazel. I suppose Janet is expressing her emotional deprivation, & usually says nothing absurd. But oh so many people betray, I suppose without knowing, that they are hopeless emotional cripples. They say things like ‘dogs give you unconditional love’, ‘they don’t answer back’, they are so loyal’, they give you such a lovely welcome.’ Oh dear. Quite extraordinary, after all our jokes that she could solemnly print Tiger Macklam.

One of the better days of my life.

Friday, May 14, 1999

Rang Roy & Marian & actually got both of them, & got proper news of work at last. Marian does three weeks filming this week, & two next, in Teddington. All very convenient, but she says it’s pretty rubbishy, ‘just think of the money time’. As for Roy, The Spanish Civil War goes into production in September. Ella has a loose tooth & wants to pull it out. They told her not too. Later, ‘I know you’re both looking at me’. Not particularly funny.

But the great new venture, which comes from Esther Charkham. There was a real-life law case in the USA and a few years ago. Someone found old family documents suggesting that they owned the freehold of most of Manhattan, & sued to get it. I don’t think the suing part took place. The bit I cling to is Esther Charkham, who was certainly a potent force once. Is she still? Didn’t Neil benefit from her? Or was it suffer?

No mention of dinner, but I can’t be surprised. They’re hard up, I’m sure, & anyway people with small children turn in on themselves, quite rightly, too.

Two more bits to recall about S. The film treatment of the Peggy book that Maggie S. is said to be interested in – I said, ‘And who will play you?’ ‘I want Robert Downey Jnr’. On the pavement outside Wyndham’s, waiting for his taxi, is suddenly poured out a bit of tam. I must say it is straight young men can be really bad teases. I presume he knows how S. feels. So why did he drive up to see P. Game? I can’t remember how it fitted in, but I sent him into his taxi with a French tag. D. knew John Barber at her university, & combative as ever, attacked him for liking, even tolerating, Ruby Keeler. ‘But she’s so limp, so silly, so bad’. To which he replied, ‘Sa stupidité m'attire’.

Janet rang later to ask my advice! A friend of hers, Trevor Ingman, is setting up as an actor’s agent, & is using her office as an address while starting out. (Good for her) she has helped him to an early client by recommending him to Janet Brown on the (fairly) sound assumption that an agent starting out, does work really hard for his first clients when he needs to make money. But he is working at his former job, a film unit production manager, not only in Spain but the new & very demanding Bond movie. An important potential casting has turned up, Janet B. is keen. T I keeps promising to write to the casting director, nothing keeps appearing from Spain & time is running out. I know unit production manager is a very demanding job, but, if he started his agency, he’s got to run it, & heavens, it only needs one fax after he puts the phone down from J. So she’s written the letter herself & wanted to try it on me ‘as I’ve never written to a casting director before’. She’s got it just right for an established star (sic) like Janet B., not crawling or arrogant. The job might be interesting, eight film version of The House of Mirth, starring Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame.

Saturday, May 15, 1999

Noel’s centenary is certainly hotting up. ‘Hay Fever’ somewhere, ‘Private Lives’ at The National, spectacularly miscast & obviously as flat as a pancake. First review in The Spectator, three pages by Bevis Hillier surveying in collections of his lyrics, his short stories, his review sketches & parodies his verse, as opposed to his lyrics, & his autobiographies, five whole books…. He has one or two goodish things to say, but comes to the equally spectacularly wrong conclusion, by saying that his songs are his best thing & what he’ll live by. Well, he hasn’t, has he?

A long interview with Jane Russell. She looks beautiful at 77, plainly without any artificial agents, & just like herself. Humorous, sensible, without vanity. ‘I wasn’t happy with the role, – the director wanted to make her a prostitute. I said no, would you like your daughter to be a prostitute?’ Yes, I think to be a prostitute could be the most interesting & satisfying job for a woman’. I said to him, ‘You jackass’.

Caught a face I knew in a ridiculous film about beauty contests. I let it go by, & turned it back on for the cast list – David Weston. I worked with him twenty-five years ago or so. I was interested in him because he’d made quite a big hit with The National Youth Theatre as Henry V, I think. Pleasant looking, fresh-faced gunmetal hair. Wasn’t fulfilling that early promise, & I could see exactly why. There was a slightly raffish devil may care air to him, no harm but you knew he would probably mess up his life somehow. He drove me home a few times, & I was right. He’d had bad money troubles, his marriage was decidedly rocky, & he was working for a car hire firm in the evenings. I must still have been in Manchuria Rd., – yes, I was, because of Molly. Coming over Chelsea Bridge, he pointed to a large handsome Victorian – Georgian house incongruously set down by the large handsome pumping station. The spaces between them filled with derelict railway lines. The house therefore had the very busy bridge on one side, the very busy embankment on another, the pumping station on another, & the marshaling yard at the back. Only narrow passages on each side, with high wire fences. ‘That’s where I live. My father-in-law is a big noise in the railway’. Did I see the inside, – probably rather handsome, two, very big rooms, & meet the wife? I think not. She was, of course, richer & obviously dissatisfied. He had had affairs. I could tell he was a pushover. I remember him chiefly for a story told me about one of his customers. His car was quite grand, a relic I suppose, of a period of brief prosperity, or possibly a contribution from the in-laws, so the car hire firm was quite grand, to, & one day he picked up a middle-aged Italian from Claridges or somewhere similar, turned out later to be a millionaire. He had been a prisoner of war over here, & had had a son whom he had never seen. He had only daughters, & intended to make this son his heir. They eventually tracked him down to an obscure suburb in the Midlands.

David W. said the scene was touching. The young man was comically like his father & very good looking. They both wept. Later he drove them to London, & they all met. The millionaire’s wife was an Italian principessa, & there were two daughters, I think. The son was offered a house outside Florence, and a executive position on the board of his firm etc. Etc. His new family gave him a wonderful welcome, & all was rosy…except that the son’s (very) suburban wife wouldn’t go. She wanted to stay in, I remember now, it was Wolverhampton. I also remember coming home & telling D. the story, & both of us being startled by Molly saying viciously at the end, ‘I don’t blame her’.

As for David Weston, I’m pretty sure his marriage must’ve broken up soon after, & I’ve never heard of him theatrically since. He was pretty wooden as Janette Scott’s boyfriend in the one clip I saw. To think that irresponsibly boyish creature must be sixty or so by now. I bet he’s had some bad moments, poor chap.

Sunday, May 16, 1999

Hazel rang as usual & told me about her scan for her knee. Let’s not have a scan. Apart from the frightful claustrophobia of being shut in a metal coffin – not quiet at its worse because her head was outside – there was to my surprise, the noise. She said, despite the earplugs it was like having a pneumatic drill in your ears. Isn’t it odd? Wouldn’t you think they could find some way of soundproofing your head? She has to have keyhole surgery on her cartilage in a fortnight. She asked me if I could find out what classical series videos were available from the BBC. ‘Don’t make a special journey, if you’re near Bush house or Langham Place….’ Curious. I simply rang the shop in Bush house & asked them to send her a catalogue. Why did she think you had to go there?

Have now read & finished Adam Nicolson’s Perch Hill with mixed feelings. Oh dear, that class, even in his generation has no idea how spoilt they are. Because he’s a writer, he naturally believes that he isn’t a rich urban intruder playing at country life. It’s really comic that he thinks he’s poor. They’ve already spent more money in the first week then D. & I could have afforded to spend on the cottage in twenty years. At least we left it in good repair, but otherwise as we found it.

I skipped as it was, but it couldn’t have finished it if I hadn’t realised that the valley his 90 acre! farm is in, just the other side of the Brightling –Burwash road, & therefore about as far to the east of the cottage as K’s place is to the west. Odd. He says all the small farms have been taken over by Londoners. There are no small dairy farms any more. I wonder where Mr. Cummings gave up, poor woman. He mentions twin brothers having to auction the farm & its contents, because there’s nobody to take it over. One has a bungalow to go to in Dallington, the other is to be exiled to Ninfield a few miles away. They are twin brothers called Keeley. I have the faintest memory of them in the pub. At least when we lived there, the real life of the country was still going on, & we did not interfere with it. Sad. I hope I don’t have to go back. How I despise the divorces & ‘extended families’ passing on the infection to the children.

Monday, May 17, 1999

Oh, dear, no sooner is my knee more or less working again, then my left Achilles tendon went stiff & painful, & now my rights a. p. has joined in. What does it portend? Limping, in that way, worse than my knee & both legs. I know I had a classical education, but this is ridiculous.

The Kinky Friedman detective stories are a real discovery. No wonder they’re published by Faber. Quote:’ Trouble was most people didn’t know what fun was, or how to have it’. A description of the travel & tourist industry.

Tuesday, May 18, 1999

Meant to get to a film, but a slight hangover & my A. tendons made it seem better to sit on the sofa.

There was a programme about wartime clothes – oh, yes, my life has shrunk to the span of a TV programme – & of course it was clouded with inaccuracy. Over utility clothes being modelled, came the strains of Binnie Hale singing Spread a Little Happiness. I suppose nobody knows that it was a ‘20’s song, completely dowdy & old hat in 1942, & never played till the revival of the ‘20’s in the v. early ‘50’s. There is so little historical sense nowadays, especially in the complete misunderstanding of the rigidity of what was & was not fashionable before the ‘60s. One of the elderly couples interviewed said he had sold various things on the black market, ‘like everyone else, just making up my money, & this is my wife, Betty Martin’. No one said anything.

Crimewatch about Jill Dando. Reconstruction of suspects running to the bus stop by the modern church, where I have waited a hundred times on the way back from the nurseries. Unpleasant.

Wednesday, May 19, 1999

Limping, or shuffling, both tendon’s painful & stiff. Will it be permanent? Still, I was determined to get to a film. Chose ‘Get Real’ the new gay film – what a lot there are now – because, or partly because, it was showing in Tottenham Court Rd., a shortish walk from the tube. Still, the familiar tunnel at Leicester Sq., when I changed, has never seemed so long. It’s both legs – that’s the difficulty. The film wasn’t at all bad, tho’ I have some definite reservations. Set in a school in Basingstoke, a sensitive thin junior 16 ish, is gay & knows it. Haunts the local lav., & gets a note through a hole in the wall. It turns out to come from golden boy athlete senior. The epitome of straightness. He tries to pass it off, but has to give in on a subsequent meeting. A pity they didn’t aim for a few lyrical sequences for what was supposed to be a real love affair. For instance, they had a long weekend at the senior’s big luxe house. There was a big outdoor, heated to steaming, swimming pool, lit by elegantly mounted flares. Extensive woods, gardens & so on. All we got was some horseplay in the pool that might have been between any two teenagers. No romantic meals or even beds. Not very courageous. As so often, the end was precipitated by a melodramatic twist to be sure of an unhappy ending. Nothing special about the two youngsters. The elder not very talented, he found his two or three ‘I’m confused. You’ve got to help me. There was this boy…’ speeches testing. He rightly searched for words, & thought every now & again, but unhappily the pauses were always the same, & there was little evidence of thought. I can’t remember the boy’s names, but there was ‘a fat girl’, her own description, the younger boys confidante, played by Charlotte Brittain. We may hear of her again. Took a sandwich in, chicken & salad, & felt enough to stand at the exit door thinking I might have to go out. Not exactly sick – I have bolted it, but I think its wind, or mental more than physical. More or less as the film began, I felt better. Odd & trying.

Thursday, May 20, 1999

Hazel rang to thank me for the Lunts talk. So we had a jolly talk about it. How lucky we are to come from a generation who loved & admired great artists who were great & admired by everybody.

Long talk in street to the dear woman who was married to the Russian. How we are in tune. She looks quite restored, as I hope I do. A happy marriage can do wonders.

Went on with the Hitchcock book. V. Tiresome. There is some interesting material, – a correspondence between H. & Sidney Bernstein, his one time partner & close friend for instance, & H’s audition notes for the Joan Fontaine part in Rebecca – but a lot of the stuff needs a frame by frame knowledge of, & admiration for, the film concerned. It is under edited, & what editing there is, is on the sloppy side. Rather a wasted opportunity.

Friday, May 21, 1999

Notices for Notting Hill a bit grudging, but forced to admit that it was ‘very entertaining’. I don’t know how good it is going to be, but I do know how cross it makes some critics, from both sides of the track, if a film is both extremely popular & extremely good. You’re not supposed to be both nowadays. Unlike the Lunt’s. A film has also come out Apt Pupil with Ian Mck’ as a Nazi criminal hiding in the States. He is discovered by a high school kid, whose price for silence is detailed reminiscence. Made two or three years ago, it is now eerily chiming with the Nazis inspired murders in Colorado. Boy played by Brad Renfro, who is fifteen or sixteen, supposed to be a rising star. We shall see.

In the p.m. to new film at Whiteley’s. She’s All That. I am always a pushover for a Cinderella/ Pygmalion story. This is the usual mixture, the high school heart-throb is dumped by his girlfriend, & he & his best friend have a bet that he can make any girl ‘Queen of the Prom’ in six weeks. And of course he does, she takes off her glasses & he is struck dumb. She is struck a bit dumb, too, but then finds out about the bet. She goes to the prom with someone else, but comes home to find him waiting for her. Rather crudely done, but not so much that the quite large young audience did not laugh & cheer & go aah when the young man was discovered in the girl’s drawing room at the end. Even crudely done, I still relish the change that love can make in two people.

Did some shopping at M&S – no proper gin & whiskey brands. By luck, found Grants & Gordons reduced at Threshers, opposite the tube station. No more walking.

Saturday, May 22, 1999

Card from Tim! He’s been back six weeks…. I rang his mobile. He rang back, from a village near Stow-on-the-Wold. Thinking of buying something outside London. Lunch soon. The dear thing. No work, but the American lecture tour & the Audi advert are keeping the wolf from the door. Just the same, tho’ I haven’t spoken to him for getting on for a year.

Over the last two or three years, I sleep less well, but, more tiring, about half-past one, if still awake, I get so hungry that I come down & have some soup or scrambled egg or something. I must try & stop this. As I got up tonight to do this, I heard a few light bumps upstairs. This would be their living rooms, bedrooms on top floor. Quietly cutting up dead bodies?

Sunday, May 23, 1939

Found a leaflet with the Sunday papers headlined ‘We are PRAYING for you’. I regard that as a direct personal insult – how do ‘they’ know I need praying for? Not to mention that I come from a professional praying family. Fascinated to see you that they hold – well, not a service, a Church meeting – every Sunday 3.0 & 6.0, at the Drewe Theatre, St. Dunstan’s Rd. Where can that be? Except, I suppose, in the, now, sixth form college. It tickled me that the theatre is in the Reynolds Building. I must have given the money & plaque for it, without remembering. How proud D. would be!

Watched a rerun of the Antiques Roadshow held at Chatsworth. The book expert was shown a book by the Duchess, not that she identified herself or was identified in anyway. The book was by Evelyn Waugh, a great friend. He’d written in it to Debo who will not find a word to disturb her Protestant sympathies. I think the spine said Brideshead. But the point is, that every page was blank. The toy expert examined a very early – pre-1914 model aeroplane, found in a cupboard at Chatsworth. The Duchess had never seen it. It was of v. fine quality, only one other in the world, in China or somewhere & the expert valued it at £100,000. And that’s only one shelf at Chatsworth. I wonder if I described the Waugh thing before. Still, better twice….

I would set the boy in Get Real to watch a young actor in Eastenders. Joe Absolom plays a very young man involved with a murder. He has to tell his girlfriend. His stammering halting tear sodden delivery was completely believable & very touching. She rejected him, & his desolate breakdown brought a tear to my eye. He has a face that shows intense feeling easily, & those speaking eyes that are such an important gift for an actor.

Oh dear, it’s no use, I find it difficult to believe that S. ever read anything really thoroughly. I’m sure he does, but I can never really believe it, because of his taking on too much.

Monday, May 24, 1999

How mysterious vitality is as you get old. Today I was up, shaved dressed & out at the shops just after ten. Why? I can’t most days. My Achilles tendons were a bit better for the rest, but returned to pain by the time I got to H’smith. After some mackerel pâté, to see you film Apt Pupil at Whiteley’s. Ian Mck’, as a Nazi concentration camp commandant in hiding in America fifty years later. He is discovered by seventeen year-old student, who agrees not to expose him – he has fingerprints & DNA – in exchange for hearing all about it. It is intelligently done & well acted, but all the more morally repellent for that. The base of it has not been thought through, so the film is battening on the Holocaust & the assumptions that caused it. Just the sort of muddle that suits Ian Mck. But he is getting better & laying aside his mannerisms – oh the little winsome pouting of the lips – at least to a point. As for the boy, Brad Renfro, now eighteen?, he is setting out his stall as a serious actor, not least by the choice of the script, I suppose. He knows not to make faces in close-up, but I must see him in something else. Janet reminds me that he was the eleven or twelve year-old in an excellent film called The Client, I think. Susan Sarandon as a barrister, taking on this articulate & courageous boy who’d been accused of something. I only remember her & him, & he stood up to her. However, that means nothing for adult acting.

On the way back sat opposite a very young man, slender, spiky gelled hair, pale skin, rather snub nose, well cut fall lips, altogether a complete thing. The point of all this is that, while listening to his cassette player – what do they call the mobile ones? he was reading Being an Actor. I presume he is a drama student or hoping to become one. Odd if we meet him later. It isn’t a face one would forget. Wrote to S. to tell him all about it. It’s still in print. Good.

Tuesday, May 25, 1999

A lot of election pamphlets, the Lib. Dem. one was very clearly addressed Miss Angus N. Mackay. Not even Agnes, as sometimes happens.

At Barcelona there is a football match involving Manchester united. At least 55,000 fans are flying to watch it. One man in the queue said he’d sold his house…

Oh, the European leaflets revealed to me that London has more members than the whole of Scotland. London 10, Scotland, 8,Northern Ireland, 3, North West 10, South East 11. Interesting.

Wednesday, May 26, 1999

Took down Edmund Crispin’s last & late book Glimpses of the Moon. Read the pages with great enjoyment of his unabated wit & ingenuity, & with no recollection of ever having read it before. I bought it new in 1977, so there’s nothing surprising in my forgetting that reading. But I was startled to find scribbled in the back in faint pencil, ‘has no narrative grasp at all. To be read only academically which I can’t do at the moment. 1992.’ I suppose that was the height of my difficulties, financial & professional & lodgers etc. & I found it difficult to concentrate.

Finally an answer from Donald with the statement of debts & confirmatory letters. One of them was from K. What a graceful letter he writes! Oh I could kill that English master. Wished Donald & Hannah much happiness in their new home.

I suppose it’s much more difficult for totalitarian dictators to hide the truth for their people since the Internet & email & so on. Even in China there are computers.

I am disgusted that that football match is the first item on the news. The Queen opening the Welsh assembly the third.

And on the 11 o’clock news, it is fourth. 1st, Football match. 2nd. Poor Sophie Rhys Jones topless photo. 3rd Milosevic made war criminal…. I find this utter lack of proportion of frightening.

Thursday, May 27, 1999

H’s operation. I’m afraid her knees will be more painful before better.

The first really hot day – how I hate it. Stayed in till the worst was over. My Achilles heel pain worse, tho’ whether the heat makes any difference, I don’t know yet. Some filming outside the tube station, Rory McGrath, rather smaller & read up in the face, and then on TV. Wild celebrations in M’chester, all night for two nights. Saw the dear Midland, not that it’s dear any more. If you were on the St. Peters Sq. front, not a wink. Perhaps room 390 would have escaped.

Friday, May 28, 1999

I’m afraid I won’t live to see football fans grow up. Or even become children.

In the early p.m. to the Earls Court W’s & bought a couple of detective stories, a novel, Allan Stein by Matthew Stadler, & a fascinating book called The Rise of the Nouveau Riche, with fifty double sided pages of the interiors of mostly demolished grand houses built for the new tycoons of the ‘70’s, ‘80’s & ‘90’s.

Caught a film on TV I’d meant to see at the time, Different for Girls, a patchy affair but redeemed by the perfs’ of the two principles. A biker & a rather gentle girl meet, & realise they were at school together, when the girl was a boy. Girl is Steven Macintosh, who has taken a lot of trouble to walk & use his hands & speak like a girl. The biker is Rupert Graves. Oh dear, I wish Rupert G. would acquire technique rather quicker then he is. There is scarcely anyone like him for the capacity to let feelings rush through him, & sometimes, as in March-banks at the Kings Head some years ago, it is magical – the best M. I’ve ever seen. But when the feeling isn’t there, he can seem messy & careless. Acting has to be technical & feeling held in solution. The feeling was there tonight.

Peter Hugo Daly had a tiny part. What a wasted actor! He doesn’t seem to be ambitious at all. Is it perhaps that he still spends six months with his Scandinavian girlfriend?

Saturday, May 29, 1999

It’s nearly Hitchcock’s centenary, & the TV is full of him. Although I do admire The 39 Steps, Rebecca, The First Man Who Knew, & Rear Window, for instance, some of the later films having a morbidity about them. In fact I have never seen, or wanted to see, Psycho or Vertigo. But then I have never liked suspense. As for working for him, I’m glad I didn’t, as I’m sure he belonged to the ‘he’s-perfectly-alright if-you-stand-up-to-me’ school of directors. Watched part of the ‘fifties Man Who Knew, & I can give two reasons for it not being so good, it’s in too immaculate techni-colour, & it’s half an hour longer. Then there is Doris Day’s hit song….. watched Rear Window, a more or less perfect film. Grace Kelly at her loveliest, & not over-parted. And her clothes – how I remember them in 1955, one of the happiest years of my life. I remember D. had one of those very decollete black sweaters & a red skirt. The content of the film is exactly matched to its form. Wonderfully cast.

In the p.m. I went to Ken high St. for more books. That life of Mahler, John Preston’s new novel, Ink, Shadows by Tom Bowler an Andrew Taylor detective story. On my way back, shopped in H’smith in the closed – in Mall. As I walked along to the tube, & there were windows ahead, I realised that there was a cloudburst thunderstorm in progress. Huge classic flashes of lightning from top to bottom of whatever sky was visible. The wide passages leading to the platforms were I thought, under the huge office block, just as the shopping mall is. Perhaps it is, in which the curtain of water falling from they join in the roof might be even more serious. Nervous smiles & jocular remarks on all sides from complete strangers.

A popular group of young men singers, or ‘boy bands’ as they’re called now, had an hour in which their fans could ring up, offer a little story & then choose one of their hits, to be sung, ‘Just for You’ – the title of the programme. The form cynically intrigued me, & I watched a few minutes. It was just as I thought. I daresay they’re innocent, largely early-teen fans took it as spontaneous & live. I suppose it didn’t occur to them that if it was spontaneous & live, each fan might choose the same song, & there would, at best be much overlapping & upset fans.

Eton put firmly in place, by being described on the news, as ‘the Berkshire boarding school’.

Sunday, May 13, 1999

Dream, not theatre for once, there is some sort of rooming house. Draycott Place, perhaps? Only clear memories, a loo covered in thick wet lumps of new shit. Odd, as I think I have as little pollution mania as can be, & only the ordinary reaction to shit. Quite separately, a fair girl not unlike Katrina upstairs, leant over the back of a sofa, saying that she might be one of my many unknown cousins, intended to get in touch with them & what did I think?’ ‘Well,’ I heard myself saying, quite prosaically, I don’t want any more relations, if that’s what you mean’.

Now that is an even more boring dream than usual, because it is just exactly what would happen in real life on a rather humdrum & tiresome occasion.

Ah, I see, Hitchcock was at a Jesuit school. A bore. The daughter is now 70, & entirely American, accent, varnish & all. They lived, when she first remembers, at 153, Cromwell Road, &? Shammany? Green, Guildford.

And talking of Catholic miracles, while I was washing up, the kitchen roll holder unrolled itself till it was all on the floor, untouched by human hand. I expect the first miracle cure hourly, & wait for international queues to form.

Why I like Rex Stout. Nero Wolfe, to his client who has complained that his questions are intrusive & irrelevant, ‘Miss Frost, I am a detective. Therefore while I may be accused of incompetence or stupidity, I may not be accused of impertinence’. He writes very well & exactly.

Monday, May 31, 1999

New ‘phone numbers again. What I can’t understand is why, if they want so many million more numbers, they don’t return to letters, of which there are twenty-six as against ten numbers. But then that World hates language, I suppose it’s that. What a silly world that technological one is, all that elaborate expense, & so little to convey with it.

Rang Mary L. who had been to The Players on Saturday to see a one man show by someone who was in the Kendal Co. in India. Naturally a sacred figure, touring abroad. Odd, with her elephant’s memory, despite seeing it, I suppose, with a programme. She said it was superb. As she doesn’t like Dickens or one-man shows, perhaps it was. But I doubt it.

A concert in celebration of the Welsh assembly was a perfect illustration of that vein of coarseness in the character of the Welsh. That is why Lalla & her family have always grated on me. Look at the list of artists, all of them marked with it, Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Aled Jones, Michael Ball…. Poor Queen. Oh, & Sian Philips. And think of Emlyn.

Tuesday, June 1, 1999

Too warm again.

Reading Allan Stein by Michael Stadler, another novel with a gay theme. Gus Van Sant’s Pink is ‘experimental’ (sic) with four or five different typefaces, & abrupt changes from one narrator & location to another, not by any means always made clear, from Muzzy thinking rather than ‘mysticism’. Allan Stein is outstandingly well written, & its jumps about in time are always crystal clear & illuminate the main theme. Quite difficult to believe it’s American. Forgot to say that Hazel told me on Sunday, when we were talking of the royal family, that it was her friend Henry James, the distinguished civil servant, who’d made Harold Wilson go to Aberfan, when he’d had no intention of going.

Came across ‘apodictic’ in R. Stout. It means ‘of a clear demonstration’. He used it as a qualifying adjective for ‘proof’.

Wednesday, June 2, 1999

Storms in the night. I didn’t hear a thing. Very dark all day, had the overhead light on. Legs & heels stiff.

Another parcel from S., another compendium CD from the Gramophone, quite interesting, & all Scriabin’s piano studies. Two of his double sided cards so a longer note than usual. The ‘Sheekey boys’ were thrilled by my catalogue, so thrilled ‘that they insisted that I had another free meal. Comic. So S. says he’ll take me to ‘Mon Pleashur’, which is open again. He’s doing something called Trial-Retribution, on ‘another’, not that I registered the first, for money, I suppose. ‘Then Toronto with TPG which ended its Birmingham run on Sat. amidst a plethora of complaints & misery’. Poor S. he should recast, but I suppose Howard P. is to mean. Oh, I do wish S was better at the casting. The only possible ‘new star’ that he talked about getting in every part of months ago, is the black girl, & she is badly flawed so far. No wonder he’s decided to give up directing, if he has.

Thursday, June 3, 1999

Pru Scales in her successful Tesco adverts as an intrusive insensitive northern Mum, is, mutatis mutandis, I’m afraid, more or less typecasting. Have I ever said that Eileen Atkins said to me, apropos of a meeting with Pru, ‘after it I felt as if I had done nothing, I had been nothing, I was nothing’. Delivered for comedy but still…. Oh Eileen’s twisted mouth. Wry. Talking of wry, I’m delighted that there are to be some religious ceremonies in the Millennium Dome. Everyone feels how lucky it is that Jesus’ 2000th anniversary coincides with the Millennium.

Rang Hazel. Her knee is getting on, tho’ she is still suffering from the anaesthetic. Only a little row of needle holes. Red heather Nero Wolfe quote, & asked her whether she knew the provenance of the amazed/ surprised anecdote. It isn’t in any of my quotation dictionaries. And Oxford or Cambridge don find a colleague in flagrant delicto with his wife. ‘’Well I’m surprised.’ ‘No I am surprised. You are amazed’. I wonder if it actually happened & if so, who it was? Or if Maurice Bowra threw it off?

K rang & said he wanted me to do some bits on a tape. The whole of the shipping forecast & four or five lines of Latin, ‘and Greek?’ ‘Terrific’. ‘Will I get dinner as well?’ ‘If you’re good enough’. He is paying the bill. He always remembers to say. He warned me to find out whether the bits of Latin & Greek were out of copyright.

Friday, June 4, 1999

Rang Janet, & asked after The Matrix. She didn’t seem to mind it. It sounded torture, like an extended computer game. Frances came. Her symptoms get more worrying. Two brain scans, many doctor’s visits, & a perceptible weight loss, are bad enough. She now tells J. that she has lost two stone in the last ten days. We cheered up when J. told me Mr Schneer is back, in his four-storey Melbury Rd. house, that he only lives in from May to Sept. J. says it’s crammed with antiques, statues, paintings, & heated like a sauna right through the winter, when it’s empty! ‘Doesn’t that daughter lived there?’ ‘No she’s forbidden to go anywhere near it, & I have to make some excuse if she asks me for the key’. Really what these people put on their secretaries. Still, you can’t expect much from the producer of ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’. He’s just had a knee operation too, aged 80. Janet said, ‘well, let’s have a look’. There was no one in the 20th Century Fox foyer, so he pulled up his trouser leg. As she bent to look at the scar, a little electronic refrain rang out. It was his watch, marking the hour. ‘But for a moment, as I bent to look, I thought Mr. S. had had a chime put into his knee’.

Saturday, June 5, 1999

Dream about being in The Two Gents – the note I made says ‘ingenious subconscious’. Now, in the evening I have no idea what that means. It isn’t often ingenious.

In the p.m. to Earls Court Waterstone’s, to pick up the big new Methuen Edition of Noel’s lyrics, which I ordered last week. So I bought the new biography of Tony Hancock, reviewed to make me think it was at least thoroughly researched, so far as such an amorphous & dis- organized life can be, – When The Wind Changed, jejune title, and a Margaret Yorke detective story.

The Noel is a large ‘coffee table’ style affair, but at a short glance, it is full of new material & is in collaboration with the C. estate. I wonder how Graham P. is holding out, & how much he really has to do with it. He always seemed to me everything that was as un-academic as anyone could be. Tho’ none the worse for that.

Sent a note to S. that Tom Williams TV thing was on again – Killer Net. Watched a bit of it again, & was confirmed again that he is dim. Tam Dim – a Chinese dish.

Sunday, June 6, 1999

Well, well. I’m back home & it’s 10.30. It began so well, & it ended with me leaving after the main course.

He asked me to get there by five. Neither of my keys would work, – the Chubb wouldn’t even go in. Eventually I got through his headphones, & he calmly told me the Yale was broken, & ‘the keys in the Chubb the other side….’ So he fiddled about with all the machines, apologising for not being ready, but it wasn’t very long & I was sitting down. I conned my bit of Horace, the start of the Aeneid, & purged with pity & terror’ from Aristotle, I recorded them au naturel, using such lower registers as I possess, slower, & finally whispered. He played me back the sort of web of sound it’ll be melded with, early Church music – white soprano, counter tenor – with a strong beat … which set my mind at rest that nobody would be actually listening to me. He is very considerate to his artists, I remember. He brought me a gin & tonic the moment I finished, at quarter to seven.

Arlete emerged from the chrysalis of the bathroom, in a gorgeous crimson velvet décolleté blouse & matching skirt, skyscraper heeled sandals, lovely. He went off to start the dinner, & I got to grips with her course. I was concerned to find that it is a business course in the simplest sense, – she will go into The City, she will be a stockbroker, she will be…..Well, he doesn’t seem to be repelled by John thing, & he might say it’s a pity I wasn’t more of a ….. So we settlde down to dinner, all my favourites, prawns en cocotte & guinea fowl & Pouilly- Fuissé. She’d had two gin & t’s, which she doesn’t always do, but when she started on the possible move to the country she got more animated, – he said ‘Don’t bang the table’. She banged more. He mildly pointed out the facts – the time it takes her to get to college now, the time it might take from, say, Sussex. She went on more wildly about her difficulties. Over the prawns I’d said, ‘Do you know we’ll have been friends for 20 years next year?’ He’d yelped. So, when, as her voice got more shrill & she said, ‘I’m not 30 or 40, I’m 25,’ it was not happy. And he should not have said, more than once, that the obstacles to Greenwood farm, were, first, not being able to get the planning permission for converting a barn into the studio, & second, the difficulties of her commuting, twenty minutes now, an hour & a half then. Still, she should not have gone on. And on. And on. I tried a mild resolution, but on she went. I went for a diplomatic pee, & stood pee’less hearing her voice go on mounting, instead of perhaps realising that my rather prolonged absence was a signal. After I could wait no longer, I went back, tried another solving remark & on she went, getting up to get a cigarette. (She told me before dinner that K. has given up again, four weeks ago now’. Good.) I turned to him, his face wooden. ‘I’m speechless’. I got up & said, ‘well, you must work it out between yourselves’. & left, still in daylight & no strawberries.

All the odder as she had chatted so charmingly, telling me that her mother might be coming over to stay, a great responsibility as she has never left Portugal before & speaks no word of English. While K was still getting the dinner she had said, ‘he has the biggest heart in the world’. And about to the house, ‘this can never be our home’. So she does want to move…. So off I walked, my only comfort that he’d given me £100 in cash for the recording. No whiskey at home, so stopped off at E. Court to find ci – derant Smeeds still open after 10. So here I am.

Later: But what I find difficult to forgive is that my evening was half ruined. He is so precious to me & I see him so comparatively seldom & need to talk to him & tell him everything & unload my worries. She has 350 nights a year for that row. Still couples sometimes can only start a row with someone else there is a cloak. But I feel badly – it’s not fair.

Monday, June 7, 1999

Salmon are really back in the Thames, & they are the fussiest of all fish. The man mainly responsible is Sir Hugh Fish.

Again how curious, I was up & out by 10 a.m. & on my way to Ealing.

Who would be famous now? Tabloid persecution, endless repetitions of the clichés of one’s life on TV, Etc, Etc. Which is why most ‘celebrities’ are clods nowadays.

K rang, so warm & sweet, saying they’d made up, & he was sorry, tho’ it wasn’t his fault, & she was so sorry. I said about missing precious time with him. He said, ‘I know’, as only he can. But oh dear even he is too young to feel the pressure of time running out. I shan’t say to him, but I feel there was more to it than muddle-headedness & drink on her part – a protest at not being consulted enough? A feeling of being swamped by him? I just register it. I’ve already decided that, if they ever split up, I think this time it’s he who will be left.

H. rang, ankle no better, going back to consultant, but spirits lifted by a dozen carnations from Violet Powell.

A programme about the Rembrandt self-portrait exhibition. A tracking shot through the pictures was accompanied by a sprightly Chopin etude. Well, it’s all before 1900, right?

Tuesday, June 8, 1999

I have now finished the Hancock biography. Only serviceably written, & rather over researched. One appendix is a list of every actor who appeared in the various radio & TV shows. The author is un-experienced & on the naïf side, but a portrait does emerge. And oh dear, what a melancholy one it is! Intensely egotistic, selfish, self absorbed, depressed & depressing, endlessly self-indulgent, overlaid with the whingeing chippiness of the semi- educated. How I groaned when he took to Nietsche! – can’t be bothered to look it up – in later life.

Now all this could be swallowed up in his genius, if he possessed it. Unhappily, although I would guess it mightn’t alter my first impression, I haven’t seen enough of him to judge. Worse than that, I never saw or heard him at the time, & like so many radio & TV shows, – ITMA, for instance – I’m sure that they were very much tied to their time. I haven’t heard any of the radio shows, & I think only seen the Blood Donor, which I found a bit funny, tho’ rather clumsily drawn out. I had no television set until 1978, ten years after his death, & I have never listened to the radio since the war. He seems to me the apotheosis of the polytechnic student. His favourite character was Eeyore – very funny, but I have as little of that sort of fatalism as it is possible to have.

An amusing few parallels. I wish I had been a famous comic so that someone could draw erroneous conclusions from them. He two, was born in Birmingham, & and his family moved to Bournemouth in the same year as mine, 1927. His prep school, Darlston Court, played ours at games, tho’ without me in any of the teams. Then he had, at various times, two bedsits & a flat in Barons Court.

Poor wretched man, he knew himself so little. For instance, thought he was a visual comic, repudiated radio, & welcomed television. But in fact, his first reading is always his best work, he hated rehearsal, & had great difficulty learning lines, even before alcoholism. So he was ideally suited to radio. He’s contradictory qualities as an artist might be summed up, as a perfectionist without technique.

Cardiff song contest. Was Hvorostovsky really 1983?

Wednesday, June 9, 1999

Hazel rang to say that her letter about P. Otoole’s Macbeth was in the Telegraph. She told me she’d written to say it was a wonderful but out of fashion perf. & that ‘it would have been recognised as such by the immediately post-war critics’. I don’t quite believe this. Yes, I can see that his acting might have been more in fashion then. But if it had any real quality, it would impose itself at any time. I can’t imagine P O’T giving a great poetic perf. – No more ear then Olivier, tho’ something of the magnetism. The magnetism alone has never interested me.

The Stella Artois reigns. So funny, all these well dressed people flooding out of our little station, quite sure that no one has the right to walk-in.

As I went out a young man hung round with backpacks & rucksacks & hold all’s came up the steps. We said hallo. As I walked off, I glanced back to see if anyone was in. No, he settled down on the step. I wondered what I should do if he was still there when I got back. But he’d gone. I pondered on the great change in attitudes to travel. When I was his age, a journey was an ordeal that you were acknowledged to need cossetting to recover from.

Thursday, June 10, 1999

Rang Mary L. ‘You have rung at just the right moment. I am lying on my bed exhausted from spending £25 at the chemist’. She revealed a bit more of her mad hypochondriacal life. ‘Well, I bought a year’s supply of chamomile & peppermint teas – it’s cheaper than in a health shop. Then a year’s supply of garlic tablets, so wonderful for the heart, £15. And, of course my vitamins, & mineral supplements’. She has never confessed before to taking all this rubbish. I can just imagine what she would say to me in a mut muta situation. I was quite surprised, at her being so superstitious, at her urge to preserve her not very estimable self, & at her telling me.

Derrick M. rang in a depressed rage because he needs a cook…..First time I realised he had one. I thought he had Meals on Wheels, as he is on income support like me, & Ronnie W. told me he only had £4000. It seems he has had someone to cook, two days a week, £6 an hour, three hours each day, for a backlog of meals in the ‘fridge. What torture! The only thing I could suggest was that he advertised in The Stage for an out of work actor…. So I could just send him The Stage.

The Cardiff Singer of the World is on again. So curious, Chinese & Korean tenors singing Verdi. One called Yi Ding, I think, had the most wonderfully even voice. All the same, it’s odd. I mean, Ken Branagh in No Theatre ….

Oh, the obituary of Charles someone, who I did register as a would-be serious female impersonator, as opposed to a drag queen or Danny La Rue or whatever. His Mae West began, ‘I didn’t know what to wear so I wore everything’.

Roy rang. We are to get to Grano or Kew next week. Well. I do hope they can really afford it. I know what his pride is.

The war in Serbia is supposed to be over. I hope so. I can’t write about it. Who can?

Friday, June 11, 1999

On blue Peter, one of the girls introduced us to a 3000 yr-old Chinese art, not just 3000 yr old, but an ancient art form’, which reveals to us that your face, properly examined, can show what sort of person you are…..

S’s invitation arrived. Oh dear, I do hate jokey invitations. The front is densely printed with the main events of 1949, & S’s birth in the appropriate place, in red. I’m afraid that will look like ‘luvvie vanity’ to most people. The party is from four to ten. Odd. I’m still in three minds as to whether I can go.

The Cardiff comp. A fascinating Russian woman, Nadezhda Serdiuk.

Saturday, June 12, 1999

Reading The Nouveau Riches book, intermittently fascinating, but rather too much a series of lists. Riveted by the escape of Hengistbury Head. It seems that, in 1919, Gordon Selfridge was going to build a large country house on it. As I suppose he’d bought at least the site, if not the whole headland, & then, I also suppose sold it to some other tasteless tycoon. I should be grateful it’s still not built on.

As for the Honours List, I don’t know on what scale of value’s Julie Walters only gets an OBE, while Juliet Stevenson gets a CBE. On the scale of po-faced solemnity, no doubt. A sports commentator, Helen R. something, gets an MBE for having cancer…

The Old Tarts Cottage goes on growing. If the new owner has any wit, that’s what he’ll call it, like the old Rectory. The Old Tarts Cottage – Cream Teas.

Hazel rang, as more cousins were coming round to garden. I do admire her. I don’t know how she lives that life. I couldn’t any more, even if I could afford to.

The Cardiff Singer of The Year final included one maddening, & two excellent singers. I didn’t catch the name of the winner, a big dark good-looking girl – Anja hateros, half German, half Greek, a very good combination for a singer – Anja Hateros. Bright, ringing, big voice, plenty of potential. The maddening one was a plump Canadian baritone, James Westman, ‘the audiences choice’. I suppose because he was the sort of big man that appeals to the middle aged women, the vast majority of the audience. He is what D. pilloried in her audition notes as ‘Singer’, ie. unemployable. There were all the signs, perfect complaisance that the sacred noise coming out of his mouth makes everything else irrelevant, thus accounting for the meaningless gestures & tiresome facetiousness. His lips stuck out when he’s singing, like an awkward youth, & his general expression did not rise much above that of someone having a poor quality orgasm.

The best singer to my taste, tho’ he may show to more advantage in Opera, was a young Pole, Mariusz Kwiecien. He is sensitive & responsive to everything, both on & off the platform. I’m sure he connects, & he is not in the least complacent, nor does he lack humour. Oddly enough he sang Roderigo’s aria from Don Carlo, just like Hvorostovsky years ago. He deserves the same advancement.

Sherrill Milnes offered an authentic bit of wisdom, that ‘young singers sing for themselves – later they learn to sing for the audience’. This is just as good advice for young actors, & not only young…..

Sunday, June 13, 1999

Finished the Nouveau Riches book. Comprehensively researched, & as far as I can tell, accurate. The illustrations are lavish & fascinating – I have a culte for theatres or rooms caught in minute photographic detail, when they have long since been dust. For myself, I would have liked more discursive gossip – a different book, I suppose. More letters & diary entries like the one about Escrick, Nigel F.A’s ancestral home. By the time I knew him in 1951, it had been a girl’s school for? years, & they were living in the Dower House, I suppose it was, tho’ it wasn’t called that. What was it called? The diary oddly described Escrick as ‘roomy’. I wonder where is the country house with twenty or thirty bedrooms which could be described as cramped.

I am glad to see that Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph agreed with me entirely on every competitor at Cardiff, picking out the Pole.

Gracious, ‘Notting Hill’ is a smash. It’s not perhaps surprising that it should be on at both The Gate & The Coronet, for obvious reasons. I don’t suppose that will happen again. But it is also on at two or more cinemas in each multiplex (sic), I haven’t seen that before.

Monday, June 14, 1999

Got a bailiff type account from the electric bill I asked K. to pay. I rang him, he looked it up, & thinks he must have mislaid the bill. Sent it straight to him but worrying. I hate disturbing him, but what can I do?

Out shopping, sudden increase in crowds & traffic. So odd that it varies in somewhere like London, an international city – you’d think there would be an average, but there isn’t, any more than there is in theatre audience.

On the way back, got stuck in one of the lifts at H’smith tube. Interesting. It wasn’t long enough for me to repent of my sins or shit in the not very far corner of the lift. But, at twenty minutes, I did start to think it was getting rather warm & a bit airless, & to be grateful that I had food & drink. There is a double consciousness, being an actor, I suppose. After about five minutes, & pressing every bottom including alarm without effect, I started to bang & shout, & I think I shout quite loudly. There is a tiny slit of a window about an inch wide if that, I peered through, & the world passed by; quarter of an hour later, someone stopped & said ‘I’ll get help, alright’. Five minutes later a jolly cleaning girl & a ticket inspector, both black, let me out with loud genial cries. I suppose they were expecting rage, but I couldn’t summon the rage, especially when they pointed out a large notice saying ‘Out of Service’ ….. Well, – the door had shut after a voice had said, ‘Mind the Doors’….

Kenneth B. on Clive James TV show, on film of Loves Labours Lost, ‘it’s to try to release what’s in that play’.

In one of the evangelical churches, a series of startling new miracles is taking place. At the climax of the fervor the fillings in their teeth turn to gold. What it is to have no sense of humour.

Tuesday, June 15, 1999

Kosovo is freed. At last I can watch at least some of it. But how nauseating journalists are! How they look even now for any sign of any kind of continuing conflict, for anything pessimistic.

More crowds today, odd. In the p.m. to see Notting Hill, at the Gate, N. H. Well, it duly charmed me, I laughed & more than once shed a joyful tear. Is that a quotation? From Alfred Austin perhaps? Julia Roberts does as well as I’ve ever seen her. Not that I joined in the generalized abuse of her since Pretty Woman. She has a touching vulnerable quality; comparisons with Audrey Hepburn are not misplaced. This part, whether written for her or not, must have hit the spot when she read it. Hugh Grant gives his familiar light comedy perf. which, by the way, I am also far from despising in these light touch starved days. All the same, if I knew him, I would say that he has a brilliantly natural touch with dialogue, but he must watch that he doesn’t pause or search for a word in every sentence. Also one or two close-ups gave me a suggestion of a certain blankness behind the eyes. But none of this contributed to the slowness Janet complained of. There is a certain astringency in J. that doesn’t really understand romantic love. The pauses were full of it.

An American bumped into me in the gents – I knew he was an American because he said excuse me instead of sorry – & I thought of him going back to Yankland & saying, ‘I saw Notting Hill in Notting Hill. The theatre (sic) is a real museum piece’. By the way, the Coronet appears in the film, more of a collectors peice for him.

Europa supermarket so rejigged I came out again to be sure….

Wednesday, June 16, 1999

Watched, as I always do the carriage procession to Ascot. I was struck, all over again, by the huge scale of Ascot, & racing in general. (I don’t count the royal part.) In the Nouveau Riches book – did I note that before? – It cost £2000 a minute, Ascot alone, in 1914. Now it costs £120,000 a minute. Isn’t it amazing? That there is enough interest & money to support such a crushingly tedious triviality. Pretty to look at for a minute once. At last a possible antidote to graffiti. It’s always been amazing to me that all-powerful science hasn’t had the wit or ingenuity to invent a surface from which anything could be wiped, and/or a paint that water will wash off. It seems there is now a laser-gun that will vaporise the graffiti into dust leaving the surface beneath untouched. Two stumbling blocks. Inventor, a professor, which is something, hasn’t got any backing, & the thing itself is not just a gun, but a gun attached to something the size of a large washing machine on four wheels. So I hope I’ll live to see the nice old brick wall by the railway on Margravine cleared of its depressing mindless mess.

Thursday, June 17, 1999

Poor old Derrick M. rang up more or less in tears. He’s got bad toothache, the dentist’s recep. was short with him, ‘come at 4.0’. – the taxi firm refused to take his wheelchair or help him…… ‘Are you my friend?’

I fear I took all this with a pinch of salt. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that people are always short with him, that he always gets bad service, & that he never wonders why or draws the conclusion. He rang back later, that he did get a taxi & did get to the dentist. How good Rex Stout is! How very well he writes! D. wrote him a fan letter saying she felt ‘a kind of love’. He wrote back & said a kind of love was fine.

Now they’re starting to measure different bits of the brain, to account for talents. Another horror I shall escape.

Friday, June 18, 1999

Cardinal Hume has died. He was obviously a decent man, but I find I feel uneasy with his trimming. As with all churchmen now, they are painfully eager to hold onto diminishing believers at more or less any cost. More with Canterbury, less with Hume, but still. There are so many matters religious which do not admit compromise. That is why I cannot be religious. But still I find that I admire the Pope, whose beliefs are fairly repugnant, more than Basil H., whose beliefs are rather less so. And certain sorts of humility get up my nose. In a homeless shelter a ‘bright’ middle-aged female worker said, he wouldn’t have the cup & saucer we’d got for him, he insisted on one of the plastic cups like everyone else’. But then Jesus in certain of his moods, gets up my nose.

Saturday, June 19, 1999

Thought I’d leave last night till today. A bit delightfully tight, I was. It was a perfect evening. I had arranged to meet Roy at Gunnersbury Station. I hoped they wouldn’t be long, as I can’t stand much, & the Chiswick High Rd just there is an inhospitable mini motorway. They were of course, late, about quarter of an hour. I found a bit of shade fortunately, & I was just standing in it, hoping, when a strange little young man in T-shirt & short shorts, came up & said ‘Here’, ‘Yes’, I said. ‘See that bus stop?’ ‘Yes’. ‘I’m just going for a slash round that corner’, pointing to a private road, at the side of the tube station entrance, ‘if my bus comes along, give me a shout’. He turned away, & just as I was saying which bus? Roy arrived & released me. There was, as one might expect, a faintly dotty look in the young man’s eye.

In the car with Marian in the back for my greater comfort, he told me she was tired. But darling Marian tells you she’s tired in a way to set the evening off to a lively start. We swished around a number of quiet streets – I had no idea which way we were facing, tho’ I knew where the restaurant more or less was. I think, in hindsight, we went to & fro in the small streets above Strand on the Green, until we drew up in a pleasant little street, a step away from the restaurant. It’s not in a terraced house, it’s on the corner of a terraced street, & is obviously an ex-corner-shop. As we turned into it, I felt an immediate warmth of welcome & pleasure. Plain wood in walls & floor with certain narrow plump panels of polished wood on the walls. Quite large for nowadays, round tables, covered with large white linen cloths, with white napkins, plain cutlery. The young man who came to take our order was one of the two Italian cousins who own it. Personable, about thirty, in a royal blue shirt & black trousers, his manner alone would make a restaurant successful. By manner, I mean quiet confidence & sureness of touch, perfect manners.

The menu at first glance slightly put me off. There were no plats du jour or today’s dishes, but a rather long list in the usual Italian gala program format, and all printed. I thought can John Dory & red Mullet be on every day? An amuse-bouche arrived, & I knew it was all right – a little parcel of s. salmon wrapped in leaf spinach. I ordered langoustines with diced toms & wild rice, & mayonnaise. It came enticingly arranged on a very large, very dark blue almost black, glass plate. The diced toms were pieces as big as your little fingernail. My main course was fillets of Red Mullet (triviglia) & grilled vegetables. The fashion for piling everything one on top of another in the middle of the plate with the sauce or the dressing or whatever, encircling it, is more tempting than it sounds. The fillets were about four inches long & an inch wide, tasting intensely of themselves, & saving one the bother of a red mullet. The vegetables, starting from the bottom, were two sorts of pepper, courgette, aubergine, & chicory, memorably delicious. I didn’t have a pudding as I was attracted by Taleggio, with Italian fruit mustard, Taleggio, one of my favourite cheeses, & Italian fruit must. because I didn’t know what it was. The Taleggio was only reasonable, & they’d cut the rind off, which I enjoy eating. (Even quite cultivated English people even now have little taste for cheese, or knowledge of it.) Still, it was good, & the little thumbnail size pieces of fruit – possibly grape? were delicately touched with mustard, memorable.

Marian had Sea Bass with similar vegs to mine, main course, duck breast, with truffles & sage & onion. It looked strange, as the duck breasts had been cut in half across, not through, & were set on end ^^. Roy, whose appetite has always been lively, started with a whole bowl of stuffed gnocchi, went on to calves liver cut in three-quarter inch slices, & had to decline a water ice. Still it’s better than the wolf, crouched over his food, shooting savage glances at possible predators of twenty years ago. White wine on the fruity side, which I like, never got round to asking what it was – it was in hock-type bottles, so… but Italian. I suppose, Soave? Roy little more forthcoming about his work than before, but something seems to be happening. But I don’t like to pursue him. Marian is doing ‘Grafters’ till September. Good talk animated & good – I was on form, I think, & what came out of my mouth was as good, I hope, as what went into it. They said we’d walk down to the river. I realised Eileen A’s place was along to the left, & Roy said his writing room was next-door to her. There are only a couple of buildings between Grano’s & the river, so after only a few yards we were on the bank near to a pub all lit up with tables outside, & all under the shadow of Kew Bridge. The river still looked black & mysterious. Suddenly we realised that against it, catching a bit of the light from the pub, was a heron. Nothing stands so still as a heron. Nothing has so many oblique angles as a heron. Nothing can pounce so quickly as a heron. Which it did after about five minutes. They drove me to Turnham Green, rather than brutalist Gunnersbury. The dear people, how much it cost them.

Watched the Royal wedding. Good crowds, & I still wholeheartedly support the royal family. Prince William looked a bit rough. Well, a normal boy of 17 should look a bit rough & Bolshy.

Saw that Morris Perry has had really good notices for a play at The Bush? Hampstead? A name from the past. At Cambridge he was older than the average, & seemed better as a result. But he has had v. limited success, &, for all I know, v. limited work. We once met about 25 years ago. Did D. work with his wife, & was his wife Margaret Wolfit or Margaret Ashcroft? In any case, amiable enough woman. So going to dinner was rather a surprise, as Morris was so bitter & chippy & never stopped getting at his wife, to a certain extent us, & more or less everybody else. I’m afraid this little success is too late.

Sunday, June 20, 1999

Apart from any other quality, how stupidly people behave. In Kosovo, Albanians are now in command, & they are burning Serb houses. Idiots. Why don’t they just live in them? They are only harming themselves.

Rang Paul R. to say I couldn’t lunch tomorrow. Left a message at about 3.30, having really expected P. R. to have rung by then himself. It’s now eleven’ish, & he ought to have rung even if I hadn’t left a message….

Noticed, on the Antiques Roadshow yet again, the tendency of upper middle & middle-class women to laugh at the ends of sentences, their own or others, regardless of the context of the sentence. Rather comparable for men, is that meaningless gesture, both hands at waist level, right-angled elbow, hands going out to the side, palms inward, fingers spread. The hands move once or twice in that same plane, no relation to the words. Used quite often in a TV interview, from the Prince of Wales & the Prime Minister downloads.

Monday, June 21, 1999

Paul R. hasn’t rung at all! Strange. I can’t suppose he can have taken umbrage at my message, as my knee is the reason. In which case he ought to have rung to confirm his invitation. And, by the way, Tim W. hasn’t rung to suggest his. Ah well.

My knee is no better, but just usable when I get going.

Cannot believe I’ve had to send the ‘phone bill to K., again. I hate it.

Tuesday, June 22, 1999

Wimbledon again. A girl – American, of course – had a red flower in the middle of the back of her waistband. I thought it was a rather ridiculous ornament. Then she pushed a spare ball into it, & it stayed there. You can’t count on anything now, – a young Brazilian player, bright blonde. Name Kuerten. German?

Saw a re-run of a seagull at a golf course, swooping off with a golf ball, & dropping it in the lake.

Reading Life of Mahler. My German is sketchy. I read Die lustigen weiber von Windsor, & thought, heavens, someone’s written an opera about the sexual excesses of Queen Victoria, then I realized it was by Nikolai….

No money again, no cinema therefore, & altogether this curious isolation. I am surprised I am not unhappy. But I’m not at all.

Wednesday, June 23, 1999

No Janet at office or flat. Odd.

Excellent article about the new Covent Garden man. He’s turned it round & all seems well for the reopening & the future. The two things I’ve carried away, are that he sacked two of his own office staff, but now has only one secretary, & when she’s not there, he answers the ‘phone himself. Even more encouraging, there has been no mention of The Garden in the papers for the last six months. He’s American, I wish we could have found someone English, but I wish him very well.

Neil rang, to my surprise, over again. I’d just got in so he’s ringing tomorrow. I hope he takes me out to dinner again.

K rang. Never mentioned the ‘phone bill, & just carefully & quietly into what arrangements I wanted for Sunday. He is so thoughtful. Says my tape is ‘very well thought of, – they love your voice’. He hopes to find time to play it me on Sunday. ‘I was going to suggest we came back here for dinner, but I will to stay to talk to people like Snoo’. ‘And I must leave so as not to talk to people like Snoo’.

Thursday, June 24, 1999

That little creature who beat the leading Wimbledon woman, has done nothing ever but play tennis. She has a ghastly father, who was turned out of Edgbaston courts, for protesting about a line decision. He says, ‘I hate England. I can’t wait to get out of it’. Well, we can’t wait either. Another cross little face, & no doubt a nervous breakdown a few years ahead. Agassi is my choice, – he brings a smile to every face, including his own.

Talking of cross little faces, I thought again of Morris Perry & his poor wife. What must it be to live with that sort of sourness for so many years. If they’re still together, that is.

An interesting item on the news. The virtual collapse of heavy industry in, for instance, Sheffield, has meant not only an increasing exodus to the south-east, but also a great deal of not very desirable housing becoming not just hard to sell, but literally valueless. So there were some sixties tower blocks grouped hopefully on a sloping site, ‘landscaped’ originally I dare say. Then they said they were being knocked down, & named it The Norfolk Park Estate. Isn’t the name the same as that house I stayed at in Sheffield in 1958? It certainly belonged to the Norfolk’s, & it was a sloping site. A strange survival, a small country house in a park, but surrounded by railway lines, derelict buildings, & so on. I can’t remember how I got a room there, but it was splendid. I also remember I had to move out only a fortnight before I was leaving S. forever, & take a room in a small house on a busy road rather far out. (Oh, the torture of Sheffield people, yes, they are so welcoming ie. crudely intrusive). And I think it was because the Norfolk place was to be knocked down…..

Oh, the sixties. They might as well have left it there, when now it would be a pleasant green oasis in one of the most hideous uncivilized cities in the country.

Another acute illustration of idiocy in Kosovo. A victim of the Serbs being brought out in a body bag, found in the basement of the university or college in Pristina, – a professor of computer studies. He could have helped in regeneration for either side.

Nostradamus is looming up again. The world to end on July 4, 1999. Before my birthday, too. Still, we miss the millennium.

Friday, June 25, 1999

Silly little Cameron Mackintosh is taking Miss Saigon off, not before time. Speaking somewhere or other, he said artlessly, ‘whenever I pass the library, I think of all those classic books waiting to be turned into musicals’. I don’t think one needs any further evidence of the tiny brain filling theatres with rubbish. Just as I thought that Holmes a Court Woman was holding the fort, she’s sold The Queens, & The Gielgud to him. What’s on at The Gielgud? ‘Boy Band’. And at the Queens? Peter Barnes’ ‘Dreaming’. A modern play with an unusually large cast, by a distinguished living playwright. Good? Er, no. Obviously a fill-in for just a few weeks, because Eddie Izzard, ‘a stand-up comic’ is due to open in a few weeks. And, even worse, Janet tells me, as his secretary, that Peter Barnes put it on himself. Look at The Avenue – another stand-up, Mark Little at the Apollo, Tango Passion at The Lyric, ‘celebrated Argentine dance musical’, & a tepid half success musical, ‘Rent’ at the Shaftesbury. At The Criterion one of the very best intimate theatres for a concentrated straight play, has had a threesome doing Shakespeare Abridged. – Julius Caesar in five minutes – that sort of thing. For all I know, they may have a degree of some accomplishment, & might be acceptable as a review turn, but they have been there for months – no, they haven’t, they’ve been there for four years, & they call themselves The Reduced Shakespeare Company. I take it most of the tourists take it for real Shakespeare, as it’s the Complete Works in an evening. Reduced, indeed.

All this combined with the grotesqueries of fifteen year-old runs, makes nonsense of a healthy theatre. The midgets who are Theatre managements, now, starting with Peter Saunders, & continuing with the sorry procession of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cameron Mackintosh & Bill Kenwright, betray their total lack of interest in anything but power & money. Well, the theatre will hit back at them, if only by collapsing.

Talking of collapsing, Judi Dench has left Amy’s View on Broadway to fly home to Michael W. ill with pleurisy. His agent says he will be out of hospital in a few days. But Judi leaving a hugely successful run is very uncharacteristic I would have thought, unless he’s nearly dying. I did hear from where? – that he drinks very heavily, which might account for the danger. But then they say that about most well-known actors at one time or another. I don’t think J. would come unless it was fairly desperate.

J. read me hilarious plug for a theatre group sent hopefully to Julie Walters, claiming influences from every known form of theatre in the last three thousand years.

Neil rang to arrange revealing that he’s broke, – so any nice meal will have to be provided by darling K.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 162

June 25th 1999 – August 6th 1999.

Paul R. rang back. He’s getting married, & claims he told me months ago. He didn’t. What’s more it’s six months since he rang. Thank God I don’t have to go.

S’s Karen rang to say she hopes to meet me tomorrow.’ I shall be wearing a long black beaded dress’, in that inimitable Jewish- Essex drawl. She has a dodgy knee, & is having a cartilage operation soon. She tells me S will be back from the US & jet-lagged, & is starting rehearsals the following morning. Really he is mad. One day he will screw that screw so tight the thread will break.

Saturday, June 26, 1999

Much busier crowds on the tube, more even than the usual holiday rush. When I got home, I realised why – duty-free finishes next Wednesday.

Still watching Wimbledon. When players make rows over line calls etc., do they never think that, as it’s the same for everyone, it averages out? No, they don’t.

A poem from prison by Jonathan Aitken in The Spectator. Really the man is such a creep never-mind anything else. He’s only been there five minutes. The poem itself is a worthy companion to his ‘sword of whatever-it-was so be it’ speech. Favourite phrases, ‘russet down’, ‘dew caressed grass’, ‘gentle zephyrs’, ‘Gods beauty’. Oh, dear.

Caught Harriet Walter as a Scots wife in a humdrum detective-story. Now that’s her mark. Ordinarily rep. work.

Bill Deedes chose The Endless Adventure by F.S. Oliver as his book of the century. Haven’t thought of its three vols with labels in the school library. Never read it, of course.

Sunday, June 27, 1999

9.30

Well, I’m back – at eight o’clock & I’ve had my own dinner & it hasn’t been hot & I’ve survived. All due to darling K. He rang at lunchtime to see how I was & to tell me all was arranged. Did more or less nothing all day. Had a shower as I can’t get in the bath safely at the moment, & thought shall I wash my hair? & decided I couldn’t be bothered, just washed my scalp. Glad I didn’t bother. Got myself to Elfort Rd. – I couldn’t let K. in for two expensive taxis, even if he does get them off his tax. It’s as well to move a bit, too. He was wearing that lovely white silk shirt, & the trousers of that brocade suit he wore the Savoy night. His skin looked particularly clear. Giving up smoking? Took me down to the studio to hear the shipping forecast etc track. Fascinating, my voice weaving in & out of an extraordinary web of sound like huge swelling waves. He doesn’t know what it will be used for or fit into. He just wrote it.

Back upstairs I produced the porridge pan – double boiler – with oats already in – for Arlete, who the other day told me she was into oats, which are of course dangerously exotic to her. The Adam Nicolson book for him, & the pliers he left behind while pluming. He offered me a g & t but I thought not. The car arrived on time, a cut above the ordinary minicab. I got in first, in the front, of course, & went over the map with the driver. That finished, he drove off, thinking it was just me. They came out looking so smart, A. with her hair just below the jaw line, a white shirred blouse & and black silk miniskirt. He in that very well cut black coat, a bit frock-coaty, a bit Regency. A’s make up striking, paler than usual, eyes & mouth very dark plum, striking. I was v. proud of them both & wished I could still look like something for them.

So there we were sweeping through the very empty city, Old St., Shoreditch High St., (‘Shoreditch is mentioned in Shakespeare,’ Arlete.) Leman St., (where dear Ada was company secretary of a firm, & left us in Highgate in Dec ’41 to pick her way thro’ the rubble & the fire’s because the companies safe was her responsibility) & finally a small side street with a wide cobbled passage leading off it in front of a row of buildings. Was this it? At the furthest of buildings were one or two smart’ish – at that distance – looking people, – I said, ‘well, that looks alright, let’s go there even if it isn’t Simon’s party’. K. was arranging my car back thro’ the driver & his mobile. As A. & I we’re waiting, the first wiff of the party came up, spoke briefly to K. & came, to me, saying ‘Angus!’ Black sprigged material, rather dry curly hair, about forty-five. We started to walk in, I introduced Arlete as K.’s girlfriend, – K. seemed to know her. She said, ‘where are you living now?’ I said, & we were inside, & I never saw her again. Who is she K?’ ‘No idea’. I did have a faint trace of memory of her face, but only on an encounter like this. All too often it’s the bore’s who remember you & all about you.

The bouncers at the door inspected our tickets. As soon as we were inside, there was Karen, & her long black beaded dress & her husband. Small & plump, short hair, a genial air. Little husband looks as if he leaves all the Boo to a goose saying to her. I fell immediately into parson’s son mood, & there were some good jocular remarks back & forth. ‘Ha-ha’. ‘So what are you going on to?’ ‘A very nice function in North Pinner’.

And there was S. looking a bit bemused, as he well might. K had produced a card at home of three polar bears which we signed, so we put that in the large carrier bag. I murmured that I’d bring my present to Mon Plaisir. I didn’t like to say Plaishur so soon after meeting Karen. And we were into the party thro’ a bead curtain. We came into the middle of the long narrow auditorium. The drinks table, to the right, manned by two waiters in un-matching clothes, was covered in a rather tacky crumpled black cloth, just red & white, not very tempting-looking. No sign of spirits. Rather reluctantly took a glass of white wine, & turned to the room wondering why I was rather uncomfortable. That blanket of tiny little stars that flicker endlessly round ballrooms during the last waltz, were rushing & swishing & flashing over ceiling walls, floor, & the hundred or so people standing about drinking. The band was playing, so I couldn’t see & I couldn’t hear…. I noticed no sign of stalls having been removed, so I suppose they haven’t got round to them yet. Darling K. led me to sort of church pew on the other side of the place. I sat down to observe & never moved till I left half an hour later.

The table between the two pews was of a twin with the drinks table, covered with the same black cloth, not even crisp cotton, more like blackout material. ‘Mind where you put your drink, I think its two benches put together’. There were two little dishes on the table with rather grey wrapped sweets, & a little flag saying how wonderful it was that sweets were no longer rationed. 1949, you see. That was the only period touch I saw. (Oh, perhaps they were blackout curtains.) I started spotting famous faces. (So wonderful not to care to anyone! I had K & A. That was enough.) Pauline Collins & John Alderton, Zoe Wanamaker, Anthony Sher, Harriet Walter, did I see Peter Scheffer? Probably others I couldn’t see or are too changed to recognise. A. went out to have a cigarette – no smoking, you see, at an actors party? really – & came back & said did I want any food. I said I was eating at home, salad Nicoise. ‘Ooh’ she said, ‘my favourite’. ‘Well’, I said, ‘K. hates it, but if I took the anchovies out, it might be better’. A gloomy little voice came from the other end of the bench, ‘and the olives’. I caught a glimpse of food table, – I hope it was more tempting than the drinks. Why were there no ‘snacks’ on the drinks table for those of us who weren’t eating?

It was a dull scene, a lot of middle-aged people standing about & drinking. K rang & the car was there. I started to get up, my stick one side & groped for K’s arm the other. In the darkness I hadn’t seen him turn away, & I groped along his back & couldn’t find his arm, as in a dream. ‘Where is your arm?’

On our way out, I had three satisfactory encounters. The first was Vernon Dobtcheff, that legendary figure whom I must describe sometime. Perhaps I have, but it’s too good to be missed. Better twice then never. He has, among many, an unattractive habit, of opening a conversation on any unexpected encounter, with a snap of his card index mind, keeping tabs. ‘Still at 32 Manchurian Rd?’ I stopped at his group & said, ‘Hullo Vernon. I’m still at 12, St. Dunstan’s Rd.’ I didn’t bother with the postal code. We went to say goodbye to S. a little way away, I caught sight of Snoo Wilson. He started to smile, and so I took great pleasure in not recognising him, as he has done so many times to me. So we said goodbye to S., still bemused, who said ‘I’ve exchanged one sentence with everyone in this room’. I felt like saying, ‘what the hell do you expect?’ but didn’t. In the hall there was Harry again – did I say that ghastly old queen was in the foyer when we arrived & bearded me trying to get introduced to K?! – Who is he, was he a schoolteacher, always a blatant attempt to picker- upper – K said, when I was groping for his arm, he said, ‘really, I shall get enough of that when you’ve gone’. & sure enough there was Harry – K. same with me to the car. Just outside was a little group – Chris Woods detached himself to say hello & goodbye. I was touched that he thought to mention Sheekey’s. But he is a curiously anodyne young man. The final coda of the party was a little vignette of Anna Carteret in a smart long black dress & gold necklace, an outfit that might find the ambience ahead of it a bit of a disappointment. She turned to snap at Christopher Morahan, back at the car with his mobile phone, & with real venom, ‘aren’t you coming?’ Good. I thought she was very pleasant when I worked with her, & many of us wondered how she could marry such a crass bore. So it is nice to see that she can stand up to him. Neither of them recognised me.

At the car, a nice solid middle-aged driver, who turned out to be an ex-policeman, emphasised the difference from the usual cab firm. K. gave me a huge hug, helped me in.

The driver was Irish & we talked of course. I thought it a good chance to ask him his professional opinion on the Dando murder. He was totally convinced that it was a professional hit man. He showed me the point between ‘jaw & skull when the bullet goes straight into the motor-neurone area, & that’s it’. So intense was he to show me the exact spot that he stopped the car. He was quite sharp & funny, so I was slightly disappointed that he got out of the car here to tell me a joke. Not only was it an Englishman, Irishman & Scotsman, there were a Chinese & Japanese as well…

Back here, I’ve enjoyed my dinner & sitting back & wondering at an intelligent person like S. giving such a pointless ‘entertainment’ at which one of my closest friends only has time for two sentences.

And I am thanking my stars for dear darling K. & his loving care of me.

Monday, June 28, 1999

One or two more glimpses of last night. On the stage, either side of the little band were two huge stylised chargers, pseudo-classical, somebody, hoped. The lighting was pretty crude. I suddenly saw that it was probably all arranged by Chris, as S. is just back. That would figure. Oh the swags of cheap white muslin at the Earls Court flat years ago. K rang & we mulled it over. He said Harry swooped the moment I’d gone, saying, ‘I saw you in your film a fortnight ago & you were wonderful’…. Well, I told him Harry was blatant. He also said how curiously nothing Chris W. is. ‘I have two favours to ask you. Can you get Pauline Collins address from Karen? I don’t know her well enough. And about upholstering the chairs – ‘could you ask about that, & find someone to do it?’ During the talk, he called to Arlete to see if she’d had her porridge. (Did I say I took over my double boiler with oats & salt all ready in, so that she could make porridge.) She’s quite sold on oats. I don’t think they have them in Portugal, so I suppose they are perilously exotic to her. So dear of him to remember while I could hear.

Karen rang to say how nice it had been to meet me, & that some more stamped envelopes are on their way.

Told the story to Mary L. & J. Roy rang, & I told him.

I’m rather sad Lord Sutch has killed himself. He was a genuine eccentric, very English, mild, & never did anyone any harm. I wonder if politicians would be surprised if they knew I thought him no sillier than they.

Knee more painful today, tho’ I am not clear whether yesterday’s exertions have anything to do with it.

Tuesday, June 29, 1999

Quite sensational fall in property values in the North. Vide Sheffield. Terraced houses, two for the price of one. They’re moving south, oh dear. I suppose they have no idea how repellent their towns & habits & manners are. Anyone with any sort of standards leaves.

J. rang & asked me to lunch at Café Pasta in Ken H. Street, again, & I can buy books after. Good.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find those wretched space rockets are the cause of the holes in the ozone layer.

No Wimbledon, tho’ very little rain here.

Wednesday, June 30, 1999

Neil rang, & I cancelled our drink at 5:30. Poor idea for me, never mind no money & perhaps nowhere to sit. I’d rung K & arranged dinner, Sat or Sun. Neil can do Sat. So I’m out to lunch & dinner. Bother. Despite having no money, N. has been to Mamma Mia, & lunched with Jim Courier’s parents in the CNN hospitality tent at Wimbledon. Henman beat C. I’m glad to say. I hate Americans like C. Apart from the absurd baseball cap crammed down on his head like a pudding basin, the red hair & dank red flesh, he obviously has absolutely no interest in anything, but winning at whatever cost. So I hope he suffered when he lost, stupid childish ass.

One of the Spice Girls is getting married in a white dress etc. after who knows what affairs & a baby, not to mention a footballer. She says she is not so much religious as spiritual.

The Old Tarts House goes on apace. They’ve raised the roof on one side, & the conservation area rules have obliged them to echo the rows of stepped bricks on the other side. Good. New window frames, the big studio window completely restored. That’s what it was, a studio.

Ha, ha again. Manchester united isn’t to play in the F. A. Cup, for suspicious reasons. Just as I thought.

On safety shutter at Curry’s in King St. ‘Car trap behind shutters’. A huge dragon baited with petrol?

Thursday, July 1, 1999

Neil rang & I told him about Saturday. He’s seeing Julian Sands who’s staying with J. Slade. ‘Don’t mention me’. Rang K & confirmed Sat. He queried part of the John Lewis thing. He wondered whether the choosing of the material meant you had to buy it, suspicious little thing. I said I didn’t think so, & went on to say that I must ask about the basic covering. ‘How do you spell penchant?’ ‘p-e-n-c-h-a-n-t’. ‘Oh, I got it right. And is forthcoming two words?’ ‘No’.

Again W’bledon completely rained off, but certainly not that much rain here. Odd.

Friday, July 2, 1999

Leg as bad as it was at first. I wish I could chart why & how it gets better. I bet there’ll be a thunderstorm or something on the 4th, so that the idiots can say, ‘Well’… Watched two or three minutes of Coronation Street where a character called Ashley was taken home by his girlfriend to meet her parents. I have noted once before that he is a good actor, despite a really ridiculous thin little Yorkshire or Lancashire quack. It wasn’t the acting I’d fault. Both sides were, I am sure, meant to be delightfully quirky & charming. That I expect they are perceived to be so by their huge audience, only makes it worse that I perceived them as hopeless emotional cripples.

The Beaumont Society, for transvestites, says they ‘have a twenty-four hour helpline’ – no, I’ve spoilt it. ‘A helpline for transvestites manned twenty-four hours a day’.

Saturday, July 3, 1999 Sunday, July 4, 1999

A wild social whirl.

Leg as bad as ever. So stiff when I first stand up, I wonder how I get out at all! Struggled to Ken High St. – thankfully the southern pavement was in full shade, & even more thankfully, J. was already there. By the end of the week, I only have a few pence, so meeting someone at a restaurant makes me nervous. I run a whole scene thro’ my mind, going minute by minute, ordering a drink to keep the table, more minutes, they’re not coming, & how can I pay for the drink, let alone the table, even if I order nothing else? J. didn’t want to drink but let me have a half bottle of house white, which was rather better than I expected, possibly because of being a half. I’ve noticed, in the chains, when there is a half, it’s often not bad. I had the dish of the day, Spag Carbonara, in essence not unlike a bacon omelette. Oh, how I love my chats with J. Delightful, malice free gossip, & little snippets about her clients, but discreet. She tells me that her friend, Christine, the high-class tart, is having a b’day party on July 25th, & it was to be her & was it? Trevor Bentham, Nigel Hawthorne’s boyfriend & A. N. other. Suddenly Christine announces that the fourth member of the partie carrée was to be S. one thing for J. & S. to meet casually, but a whole b’day evening? Still, perhaps it’ll be good, because they must get over this. But they won’t until S. show’s some real comprehension of what he put her through.

She was sympathetic about my limp, & said ‘there is a painkiller that’s very good, I think, & Paul tried it, & it worked’. ‘What did you get them for?’ ‘Period pains’. ‘Janet, where will the pain-killer go when it can’t find a womb?’

Afterwards I went to Waterstone’s, & found only two books, the new one volume life of Siegfried Sassoon & a new Robert Barnard. There is a massive two-volume affair, – only vol 1 as yet – which is too much for me & to my mind, too much for such a figure. The Robert Barnard revealed to me that there are a Chinese & and Indian takeaway in Haworth, & no doubt much else.

I had just enough time to cool down & rest before setting out for K’s. The walk to the house was painful, but worth it. A delightful & quite unclouded evening. Dear Neil, what a big, loving & sometimes rather tasteless baby he is.

K. greeted me in a rather crumpled grey singlet & a pair of crumpled shorts, no shoes. ‘I must go & change’. Arlete came down in that Chinese red silk embroidered dress & those hideous deformed Westwood surgical shoes. K. came down wearing a crumpled grey sweatshirt & – ‘Are those the same shorts?’ Scornfully, ‘can’t you see they’re textured?’ He got me a gin & t straight away, just as well as N. was half an hour late. Poor sweet chap, how humiliating his life in L. A. must really be, for all his whistling to keep his courage up. He told a tale of the film he was making when he went to the Isle of Man, that no amount of whistling could conceal, was a sleazy soft porn version of the story of O. An interview he’s had here, he thinks he probably didn’t get, ‘because I made them laugh too much’. I fear his desperate need to be liked & ‘keep things going’ showed even with us. There is a certain need to be the centre of attention, when he is. He showed us a lot of family photos. Lucy still looks whingy & sulky, & Coco (what is the proper name?) at only 13, is already confirming my prophecy of a femme fatale. He says they’re completely American. A pity, as they’re not. Over a photo of Lynda in a swimsuit, he said ‘I still fancy her after nineteen years, I can’t believe it’. I do wish he wouldn’t say of coarse things like that, but of course it’s part of his naivete, just as telling me to do to my bad knee what he had done to his bad knee is. That his was a football injury in his thirties, & mine is no doubt degenerative in my seventies, & that he recommended dreaded Grisogono, forgetting I’d been to her & rejected her, doesn’t help. He told K. I wrote every month, & he’s kept ‘every single word’, not having got rid of every other word, as one might expect.

So interesting that you find out things even about yr nearest & dearest when an outsider is there. K. & N. had quite an animated discussion of music in Hollywood. I couldn’t follow most of it, never having heard most of the names. Someone called Hans Zwimmer? Zimmer? loomed large, almost as if he were in charge of every LA musicians destiny, which can hardly be the case. Still, he doesn’t seem to be going just yet, nor are they going to the country. It’s no use pretending I’m not relieved. If only I weren’t getting old.

Altogether Neil has such a good heart & so obviously loves us that that swallows up his little shortcomings. Delicious dinner, chicken casserole. Arlete said artlessly, ‘he did it out of that recipe book you wrote out for him’. I think he must have looked it up because of Neil, but he’s been making it for ten or fifteen years. Really good really ripe straws. And the whole delicious cheese from La Fromagerie. I could have eaten it all, tho’ it was bigger than this open book.

The car was ordered for eleven. The phone rang at ten to, to say it would be late, because the whole area was gridlocked with the gay & lesbian affair in Finsbury Park. We got off by eleven thirty. I’d seen N’s eyes on stalks watching A in her tight dress, dreading the infelicities that might emerge. They didn’t, but he made up for it in the car. Said K. was so much more relaxed. Wishful thinking on dear N’s part. I fear he has very little perceptiveness about people.

Today Hazel said she doesn’t like Agassi – ‘he’s a show off’. I don’t think he is. I think he’s quite genuine. But he is an Italian-American. As for Sampras, like the West End long runs, he should win three times & retire. Chris Evert, when told by Sue Barker that Sampras said that being great friends with Tim H. made no difference when we have to play a match, we just put on her shorts & play’, ‘well, I’m glad they put their shorts on’.

Nick Leeson out of prison. Oh, that awful foolish smile. There’s something wrong there, mentally, I’d say.

There now. It’s past twelve & I never noticed the end of the world. I thought it would be noisier.

Monday, July 5, 1999

The sort of idiots who believe ends of worlds are never asked ‘well?’, when it hasn’t happened. Or not by anybody with any vestige of ratiocinative equipment, which should tell them something. But of course it doesn’t. I think I glimpsed a feeble little attempt at – well, Nostradamus calendar was different, & times, so it won’t be safe till after twelve midday today, but nobody pursued that either.

John N. rang up for Granos, a bit drunk? Janet told me the painkillers were called Feminax, & she’d bring me some, just as well.

Tuesday, July 6, 1999

Derrick M. rang up more or less in tears again. Some recklessly silly & sentimental person has given him a six weeks old un-trained kitten. He once had a cat for sixteen years, & found it ‘v. restful’. But an untrained kitten – really how grown-up people can be so silly. Revealed the RSPCA to him. Rang back later to say that he’d only got answer machines…..

A woman has left the rat-race & moved from a flat in Tooting Bec to entirely isolated rural Wales, without mains water, electricity, gas, & therefore no TV microwave or central heating, but happily an entire TV crew with, no doubt generators & a catering van, not to mention a few monitors, mini-TV’s, & mobile phones.

I love that because the big public simply looks & believes her.

How vitriolic K & Neil were, by the way, about Jeremy Paxman, surprisingly so. He is abrasive & aggressive & so on, but only like an arrogant academic or schoolmaster. Oh, I see, I suppose they never learnt to deal with that – no university, of course.

Have now finished the Siegfried Sassoon. The usual shallow coasting from superficial affair to shallow crisis & back to affair. An unappealing character, and, although not, to put it mildly, remotely northern, yet another emotional cripple, & self-centred! Well, yes, his war poetry & autobiogs have merit. All of the later poetry strikes me as rather sedentary hymns. Crime in a petrol station in Bognor Regis – what are we coming to? As a matter of fact, with the decline of the English resorts, more or less since the war, they have become hot beds or rather tepid beds of rather squalid crime.

Wednesday, July 7, 1999

A would-be documentary about Star Wars, publicity, of course; I thought I would give it a sidelong glance as I am quite incapable of sitting thro’ a second of any of the films. Even the sidelong glance only lasted two or three minutes. The author & Director of these films is George Lucas. In clothes & looks & speech & lack of personality he resembles someone running a rather passé & unsuccessful youth club. Possibly that’s his secret. Despite the biggest publicity campaign ever, I believe the film has not been quite what they expected commercially. Though initially taking huge sums, it has been knocked off number one already. Even some fans have said it’s a bit boring, & it’s got a fair critical drubbing. I’m getting something tomorrow that has also been much-publicised – the new Harry Potter book. But in this case, a majority of the publicity is natural. There have been articles & allusions that cannot be bought, Principally because no ‘PR’ is clever enough to think of them. Not to mention the notices.

Trailed painfully to Ealing to pay the Alliance £37.11, leaving me just under £7 for the rest of the week till Monday. No drink, just enough food.

Thursday, July 8, 1999

Very hot. For the first time this year, I was forced into the book room, where I now keep the curtains drawn. It’s surprisingly ten or more degrees cooler than here, which gets all the afternoon sun.

I was going to the film, a high school ‘version’ of The Taming of the Shrew, & possibly supper. I couldn’t face it. It’s partly my knee, but also the sweating. On my way back from Ealing, there were great patches of black beneath each of the pockets on the front of my shirt, on my shoulders, in the crooks my elbows. The pocket stains are despite wearing a vest. It’s not pleasant for me or for passers-by.

Still, I felt a bit shut in, not to say poor. After the careful food shopping yesterday, & after buying a Standard – because of the film criticisms –today, I had 2p to last till Monday. Well, I thought no drink, no film, at least I can buy some books. So I limped to the E. Court Waterstone’s, and bought the Henry James Life in Letters, a thriller & the new Harry Potter. Took them to the desk to find the poor feeble young man, only an assistant, who hadn’t the skill to find the account on the computer, or, failing that, the authority to key it anyway. So I had to go away with no books. And no drink.

Friday, July 9, 1999

So I went back this morning, & a rather more austere young man puts the order through. Nobody apologised. Really one sometimes feels one is victimised for having an account. Outside Earls Court station, an elderly man, ordinary shirt & trousers, took a drink from a can of beer. As he lowered the can, a Japanese tourist bustled past, & put a coin in it. Read & finished Ink by John Preston, which I bought some weeks ago. Impressive. I shall keep it. Started the new Harry Potter. Just as good as the other two, which is saying something. Her imagination is unfailing & she is exact & logical. You can now see the next book bodied forth in each one, a little world that she has already charted. For instance, Ron & Hermione are going to get together when they’re old enough – they react to each other so crossly already. Exceptional.

About 6.30 these very sunny days, as the sun gets low enough, & almost horizontal, three shadows appear on the blinds, six or eight feet tall, big, menacing, wide heads on wide shoulders, like the Furies in The Family Reunion. Quite frightening even though you know what they are, as they are so exactly as if they were looming backwards & forwards on the balcony. Thus do ghosts etc…..

‘Phone rang, answered it after two rings, & it rang off before I could answer. Rang 1471 & found it was his mobile. There are two alternatives. Either he rang & decided he didn’t want to speak to me in which case I’m cut to the quick. Or, mine was the first number in his subconscious, in which case I’m thrilled to the core.

Saturday, July 10, 1999

Finished Harry Potter. First class. And a great treat for a half sleepless night. Hideously hot again.

A lovely post at last. Confirmation of Grano’s on Tues. from John N., accompanied by four TS pages, the details of a lunch for the Queen Mother. His covering letter included her standing for ½ an hour before lunch & an hour round the exhibition. ‘Never stops talking & appeared to relish every second.’

A card from S. saying he knew the party was hell for me but Mon Plea. looms. Not strictly true, as darling K’s care meant I could almost sit at home & watch it. And – at last, a cheque from Only Fools and Horses & One Foot, £233. My bacon is saved, or rather bought. How unlike life that it should come on cue, after the thinnest week.

Sunday, July 11, 1999

Sitting up reading & sleepless, – at 3:45 a.m. A car alarm went off. I listened for a possible thief to drive it away. There was the sound of an engine, tho’ it sounded further away than the alarm. The alarm carries further of course. However, what sounded like the same alarm went off at 9:30 this morning. Neither time did anyone pay the slightest attention, so what’s the point?

Watched a few scenes from A Room With a View film, & became impatient as before. Really abominably inept perfs. from Helena Bonham C. & Julian Sands. He is completely miscast & can hardly render dialogue as recognisable human speech. She is not ill-cast, but absurdly amateurish. Her walk in those skirts, her sulky little spoilt Sloaney speech. Oh dear. Sleeplessness has its compensation. I went down & got the book, one of dear D’s pocket Arnold edition bought on her b’day in 1948, before I met her & when I was still in the army. I read it for the first time for – oh, fifteen years, and still found it admirable. It took up a couple of satisfying hours. The passage I marked on the betrayal of love on pg 214 is as true as ever, & will become recognised again as the wretched ‘60s pass further & further away.

S. much better then lately, – he isn’t forcing at all, or only very slightly. Of course there’s Rosemary Leach. Rupert G. excellent, a real leap into the past, reminds one of, for instance – oh, dear, what was his name? Philip Tree? Who played ‘Freddie’ in the Pygmalion film & the same’ish part in the M. Barbara film. The poor chap lost a hand in the war, & I don’t think he acted again. David Tree.

Mary L. rang, delighted to be able to tell me some bad news. She has heard thro’ someone or other that the free travel card for pensioners will not be free if & when the tube is privatised. There will be a £5 annual charge, & pay half each fare. I took care to be equally pessimistic, as that’s what she wants to hear. It’s fascinating, this is the third time she’s prophesised the pass being cancelled or reduced in some way. Her tone is exactly as if she has a duty to stop my stupid wishful thinking, apparently forgetting that she would suffer just as much as me. All three times it has been rumour.

So the four days without drinking have gone by, – they have been rather long, but I don’t think it’s mainly the drink. It’s no money, so I didn’t go out at all, as there was no reason. Rereading the first two H. Potter books. She has worked out the little world very thoroughly. The only passages I skip are, as always, the descriptions of games. My only complaint, no, not a complaint, just an observation, is that, when she includes any verses, instructions on the music box, that sort of thing, they don’t scan properly. And I don’t think it’s deliberate, or it wouldn’t affect every bit of doggerel.

Monday, July 12, 1999

Read & finished in the night of the detective story, Cops & Their Robbers, by I. K. Watson. Very readable, pretty authentic, I’d say, but unpleasant. Not, of course, because it’s about a paedophile serial killer, but because I’m not sure the author is disinterested enough. A bit ugh.

K rang, saying when’s yr b’day, but he knew. He can’t manage this week, well, he could, but it is pointless, as if D or I or any artist would ever mind. Dear thing. Put the ‘phone down, & read that the Beatles first concert in The Cavern was in Feb. ‘61. Must check the date.

Mary L rang to give me some good news. The couple next door went off to Portugal as usual, & left her not only all their leftover food, – some smoked ham, a pineapple, & ‘some black fruit that I don’t recognise, with no stone, & like an apple with a stalk’ – and four £50 notes, ‘for being so helpful during some difficult months’!

A photograph in The Standard of a new 155 mph car that will appear in the new Bond film. No text, just the headline, ‘Licensed To Thrill’. Until the idea that any car is thrilling is finally knocked on the head, we will not be anywhere near a rational view of ’transport. Waiting in the supermarket checkout queue is often a little illustration of human nature if not life. A tallish slimmish woman, forty-five or fifty, ‘60’s feel, dyed black hair tied back, T- shirt under nothing – coloured jacket, black small sprig pattern skirt to mid-calf, ankle socks, flat shoes. She had one small bottle of some flavouring, I think. There were four of us besides, the other three had three objects or less, which is why I joined that queue. This Woman took over five minutes. She talked to the assistant, with that completely self- absorbed air of the slightly mad, having, I suppose a subdued sort of row. The two young girls in front of me, & the young woman in front of them, each had a single bottle, & starting to snigger. When the assistant was speaking, the woman looked away, chewing nothing with a sideways movement. Eventually it turned out she wanted a bottle of still water, the cheapest own brand kind. The assistant ‘phoned for someone to go & get it. Eventually it arrived. Then she opened her bag. Then she unzipped a compartment inside it. Then she took out a purse & unzipped a compartment inside it. She was still arranging her purchases in bags by the time I was at the bags. It really was meat axe stuff. Most pathetic.

Mary L. rang again to say she’d bring the goodies over for lunch tomorrow, as I had done for her. I couldn’t let her come here, so I skillfully revealed the badness of my knee, ‘only go downstairs once a day’ etc. Serves her right for saying this was no flat to grow old in. To my surprise tho’, she said she’d bring them over & leave them on the downstairs doorstep. Now I feel guilty. Typical.

Tuesday, July 13, 1999

Rang Roy, because I never believe cards arrive. Turns out they’re going to Grano too, for his b’day. A little while later, Marian rang to say she’d booked them in upstairs, & checked we were down. Quite right.

Mary L. did turn up, & did go away unseen….. I took in the carrier bag later – I hadn’t heard her ring or knock – & found she’d given me everything she’d mentioned. But so like her, the plums were weeping through their burst paper bag, the pineapple looking distinctly tired, & the smoked ham had a July 8 sell-by-date, too much even for me. One nice touch, an iris stuck in the bag.

So dear John N. picked me up, rather early, I always like that, in his equally dear little Ka, because it reminds me of K. I noticed this time it was dark green, unlike K’s silver. I think this is only the third or fourth time I’ve been in a car this year. John lost his way slightly, & I was glad he did. The maze of little streets between the motorway & the river are really charming, quiet, no thro’ traffic, completely ‘gentrified’, Edwardian houses.

Down by the river, it’s cooler, anyway, but thank goodness it went decidedly cooler overnight. All the same I was glad we were put at a table for two, right between the louvered doors. Despite it being a printed menu, it was quite different. We both had a similar dish to last time, tho’ with some variation, a good dollop of wild rice, glistening black, with langoustines, small clams, & a little vinaigrette, balsamic.

There were three or four entrees I would have liked, pink bream, pigeon & so on, but I felt I must have a fillet of beef as I haven’t been able to afford any proper beef for some months. I was glad I did, for it was three beautiful thick circles of meat, tender enough to be cut with a spoon, chanterelles & truffle between them, wonderful. Pancotta & summer berries after. John was very taken, & proved it by clearing every plate to its juices. The young maître, or rather padrone, was as impressive as before, not least when John asked him to describe his first choice of wine at the expensive (£3’s) end of the list. He did so in expert detail, John told him what he liked, I discussed it a little more, & the padrone recommended another wine at about half the price. John had the tuna. I never quite liked the look of it, & have never had the freedom to risk it.

We got thoroughly up-to-date with his extraordinary family. His mother was 80 a while ago, & has a hopefully fairly fatal heart ailment. An aunt died & left some money, £15,000 to John, but £30,000 to his awful brother, David, who told his mother, ‘for God’s sake, don’t tell John’. His two sons seem to have turned dull rather than rebellious. Joyce & what’s-his-name have sold their large Hackney house, bought a smaller one nearby, & partially solved their financial problems with the profit. Even dear John has no idea how well off he is. Just imagine getting £15,000, at a stroke. Or £100 pounds if you’re me. Ah well.

Told me more of the Queen Mother’s lunch. She knew who he was. He asked Philip Dowson what they talked about, & P.D. Said they swapped Norfolk stories, – ‘she does a great Norfolk accent’.

The lunch was for the Hugh & Margaret Casson fund & it’s American associates. ‘So what were the three daughters like, with all those foreign husbands?’ ‘Rather bohemian’. ‘You mean kaftans & djibbah’s & things?’ ‘Yes. Hugh is quite gaga now, & deaf. They were quite close friends of the Queen Mum. When she left, she took Margaret’s hand & talked to her slowly & carefully for four or five minutes, & then said goodbye & kissed her. And the Bohemian daughters shed a tear’.

Dear John said how sorry he was he hadn’t seen more of me, that he hadn’t been home before 10.30 since Christmas.

Roy arrived & had a word or two on his way upstairs, & both of them stopped for a few minutes on their way out & I felt proud of all my friends. Held Marian’s hand thro’ the talk with comfort.

Wednesday, July 14, 1999

How little I understand business. For instance, why have all the ship yards closed? It can’t be just the rise of the aeroplane, can it? Or just the shrinking navies of the world? Isn’t there a mass of fruits, but to mention oil, has to go by sea? Perhaps it’s only our ship-yards.

Irish woman on a news program kept using the locution ‘so they do’ or whatever ‘they seemed to be fine, so they do’. I thought it was only said in Abbey Theatre plays before the Great War, & I didn’t believe it then.

The news & clips about the dreary Star Wars thing, show it to be unmistakably without imagination or creativity, not even of the coarsest and most humdrum kind.

Card from K. Love as ever & separate message from Arlete. xxox; as he explained years ago, o means hug.

Thursday, July 15, 1999

73 today. As nothing else was in prospect, & I only had 30p left, when Janet said there would be food & drink, & a film directed by Stephen Frears, I thought I might as well enjoy the only b’day treat available to me. I should have turned tail when I got to Waterstone’s in C. Garden & found the whole drama section ‘closed for refurbishment’. I’d gone there because it’s the best drama section, for obvious reasons, & to get a couple of copies of the first Harry Potter for Janet & K, who said he could take it on holiday. So I arrived rather early, but just as well to have first go at the groaning buffet, saving me a skimpy meal. The g b consisted of three plates of very dry biscuits impregnated with hideous chilly & such awful, probably chemical tastes. Red & White wine & lager rather more acceptable. The large man who was catering, was attentive & kept filling my glass. I must have had the best part of a bottle in the thirty- five minutes. About thirty people came in, & after a bit, I took care to watch, & found that I was the only one who had anything alcoholic. Most people had a difficult choice between sparkling & still water. One or two dashing souls sank a half-cupful of thick orange concentrate. We were in the smallest cinema holding thirty. In the usual one there was – Star Wars. So the ‘party’ was in a basement room. J. announced that the usual loo was out of order, & we needed a special electronic card to animate the lift to the first-floor. At 7:20 ish I used it. Even with J’s help it only eventually worked. On the first floor I found myself in an open plan office stretching over the whole large floor. As seems usual now, all the lights were still on. This makes me feel I’ll find someone round any corner. I worked out where the stairs & loo must be, went, tried to come back to the lift & found the door had locked behind me. Down the stairs, gave the card back to the idiot Australian boy on the door, & settled in to the film. Again I should have known it was a Western. But this was a western mad by an English director presumably fascinated by the genre, so it included everything that should be in a western, &, I suppose, felt that was enough. I seldom remember being so acutely, so keenly, so deeply bored. After about three quarters of an hour, plunged out. J. had to help me with the door…. Felt badly about it as a guest, but the boredom was sharp.

Friday, July 16, 1999

George Sands’ real name was Amandine-Aurore-Lucille Dupin. No wonder.

Pat Routledge had her OBE on her credit for The Two Ronnies Show.

TV advert selling the joys of living in Swindon…

Made peace with J. Talked longer than usual. Lunch, rice & fresh peas. Dinner salad Nicoise. Every coolish day is a help.

Saturday, July 17, 1999

Hazel rang today, as her friend, Jan, is coming to stay. I don’t know how she can do it with her bad knee, & all the housework & cooking.

To Brompton Rd. Waterstone’s in the p.m. & had some luck. The one volume of the Lees Milne I haven’t got has been reprinted. Two detectives by authors I like, & the new British Theatre since The War, published by Yale. Not encouraged by the authors blurb which tells me that the author is head of the Drama Dept. at Sheffield University & has written a book entitled Harold Hobson: Witness & Judge. Still, I suppose someone had better read it.

On my way back saw winged ants all over the platform at B. Court; outside they were still thick. But to my surprise, they continued all down Margravine & into St Dunstan’s. Now that is interesting on two counts. First, this is a bit early for the flights, which I associate with August in B’mouth, where it might be expected to be warmer earlier. Second, this was a big area for ants to cover & it was obviously not all from one nest. So do they have a radio controlled flight programme? Perhaps they were flying over the whole of London. By the way, they stopped walking up & down the backdoor a week or two ago.

Sunday, July 18, 1999

More evidence of the extraordinary tastes of the multitude. The two most bruited films of the moment, & the two most boring, I’d swear, are Star Wars, 2 hours & 39 minutes, & Eyes Wide Shut, 2 hours & 12 minutes.

At the British Open Golf affair at Carnoustie, there were 200,000 spectators strung out along a golf course in East Scotland, in wind, rain & more acute boredom.

Monday, July 19, 1999

D. Parker writing captions for American Vogue. ‘There was a little girl & she had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead, & when she was good she was very very good, & when she was bad, she wore this divine night dress of rose coloured mousse-line de soie, trimmed with frothy Valenciennes lace’.

I read in my new Lees–Milne that his great grandfather was given the deeds of many acres of Manhattan in payment of a debt, & burned them because then he felt them to be worthless, & he wanted the money. Shall I tell Roy? I take it this story is apocryphal, & told of many families & dates.

I suppose there’s no wine from John this year, as the Grano meal must have cost as much. A pity, as it’s such a thing to my finances & my arms.

Two calls from K. yesterday. Why didn’t I write about them yesterday? Because I noted them down on Hazel’s list, & that made me think…. And they were so delightful. First one was to say that Arlete had at last got round to making the oats I left with them in my double boiler, into porridge. ‘She wants to know do you put water in the top part, too?’ ‘Yes’, I said, bravely trying to keep my voice straight. Then he rang & said ‘is this Gardeners Question Time?’ And a little discussion of the possible pruning, and/or putting outside of the scented geranium & ‘that bulbous plants – would they get scorched?’ They’d had the porridge & it was delicious, but rather filling & they put what’s left over in the ‘fridge. I had to be brave over that too, & didn’t tell them I ate that amount all by myself.

Tuesday, July 20, 1999

Opened the Yale drama book, & in the first paragraph of the introduction, found ‘modularisation’, ‘prioritise’, & ‘A’ debate about the advisability of such centralisation’. So I closed it until I felt stronger.

In the p.m. to new film at Whiteley’s, Ten Things I Hate About You. Yesterday I started out, but at Barons Court station, found The Picc. line train very full, waited for ten minutes for the next – usually every two or three – & just didn’t dare to take, or wait, for the next, as I can’t risk even the chance of having to walk too far. In just the same way today, after the cinema, I was going to skip to Russell Sq. to shop at the Safeway’s there, coming home after the rush hour. Then I remembered that the escalators at Holborn were being rebuilt, & I couldn’t risk that either. Then I was going onto H’smith to do some shopping as that’s nice cheque is cleared today. But I got off & came home.

As to the film, it was based, very loosely on The Shrew, & was comparatively, literate. Entertaining, & both leads to be watched, especially Heath Ledger. But the film didn’t touch me as She’s All That did, though in some ways a superior product. The usual, revolting fat Indian teenagers, going in & out continually for more food.

In the Gents I heard someone talking. They were in a locked cubicle on the mobile ‘phone. When I got home, a note from Haynes, Hanson & Clarke’s. John’s wine tomorrow. So there.

Wednesday, July 21, 1999

Leafed through Gaudy Night. Some authentic wisdom: ‘if you’ve learned how to tackle one subject, any subject, you’ve learnt how to tackle all subjects’.

Later. The usual exhilarating evening with S. at the redecorated Mon Plaisir. I think the fire was only cosmetic as all the usual props are still there. But gone is our solitary table by the bar. However, he’d found another at the end of the balcony, good for my ear. S. was looking rather thin & rather tired. I was determined to ask him a few questions all the same. I brought up Cameron Mackintosh buying up some theatres. He told me rather gloomily that the Alderbury, Wyndhams, Criterion group is being sold to a consortium headed by Howard Hunter. Oh dear. ‘How is Patrick Garland?’ Much better, & has regained some weight’. Now what about that dog?’ ‘Well, it’s not really mine, it’s Chris’, & there is a dog minder the dog loves, when we go away’. (Well, that’ll set Hazel’s mind at rest.) ‘What about the Orson Welles?’ A tired little spasm across his face, & I knew he was doing nothing about it.

I asked whether D’s photo could go up in Sheekey’s. He said he thought the subject had to be thirty years dead but he’d asked. Described Jeremy Kings manner, that he would come to yr table & chat, as a good restauranteur might, but he seemed to need a good exit line, & the chat might last for quarter of an hour while he waited for it….. I brought up the partie carrée with Christine the Tart, & Janet. He saw C. on Sunday, he knows nothing of this Sunday & C. never mentioned it. So J’s apprehensions are all wasted.

We talked of the party. He said sweetly how glad he was I’d come, because it wouldn’t have been the same without me. Sweet, no doubt, but as I only sat on a bench at the side of the room & only talked to Arlete & K., I don’t really think…. He asked if I’d like to know the going rate for party giving now. Remembering the tacky nothingness of such ‘arrangements’ as had been cobbled together. I was prepared to be annoyed at what he’d spent. But nothing prepared me for the reality. ‘I paid the designer £500, & the man who lit it, £500, & then the overall cost, for 400 people, was £10,000’. I think I concealed my shock & contempt for his foolishness in being taken for a ride by some firm which someone recommended, I suppose. But did you get quotes from three or four firms? Of course he didn’t. Red & White wine & a buffet, half a dozen ‘waiters’ – they see him coming.

A more interesting bit of news was that he’d seen Sharron. She’s working in the box office at the Barbican, has given up jewellery, & is training to be a physiotherapist. Tam Williams is getting married to his girlfriend. She had an abortion six months ago. S. doesn’t think they have any money to speak of. His generally immature behavior – only as reported by S – I have excused to myself, or accounted for, by his age. But now I find he’s 28, & I judge him more harshly.

I postponed the P. Game till the pudding. None of the news was good. (I was amused that he hadn’t heard of the competition all over the E. Standard last night a trip to Toronto & see The Pyjama Game. He was puzzled as the show closes this Saturday. They’ll have to be quick awarding the prize.) Ulrika Jonsson wasn’t doing Toronto anyway, but decided to leave for good at the end of B’ham. He feels well rid of her. Not only was her perf. inadequate, & she was getting £7000 a week for it, but she was seen opening her pay packet in front of the rest of the cast, & referring to it as ‘peanuts’. Anita Dobson only gets £500 a week.

Leslie Ash has taken over from Ulrika, and will do after the show closes on Sat., after a holiday till the middle of August when they start five more weeks of reh before the opening at The Vic. Palace. S. says there is no company feeling. One of the dancers was heard to say, ‘what do you mean, eight performances a week?’

I can’t say I think the food is really first-rate. My tomato & anchovy salad had real little silver anch. but the tomato was v. ordinarily & tasteless. The salmon fillets with scallops on top, was a little dried up from being kept hot. Cheeseboard still terrific tho’, at least twenty cheeses.

S. actually said he couldn’t have a row as a director, ‘& perhaps that means I shouldn’t be a director’. I rather agree. I have never known or worked for a director who wasn’t capable of a really sharp word in season. He’s doing a movie in Toronto, & some perf. of the Sonnets etc. etc. I really think he’s running himself into the ground. Five more weeks of rehearsal of something he’s already sick of and I wouldn’t have thought Leslie Ash was his type. At least she’s a pro, & an actress. I hope she may give a bit of leadership.

Thursday, July 22, 1999

Two or three points from last night. He gave me a CD of Elizabeth Schumann. The main section consists of some lecture recitals she gave in 1950 & ’51. (on the CD itself, the subject is announced as ‘on the art of leader interpretation’.) The rest of it is made up of recordings from 1930 to ’45. Most interesting. I was surprised therefore when S. said none of his older friends would be interested, ‘except Peggy’. And by the way, the Peggy book got awful notices in the States. It sounded as if they said all the things Hazel and I thought. At another point I told him about the porridge & he confessed that he had an absolute horror of anything like that, of semolina, blancmange & so on. Another interesting phobia cotton wool. He can’t bear even to think of touching.

I had the bottle of Pouilly-Fumé all to myself, but still got up & found myself going to the shops at 9:30. How odd ones metabolism is. So good to be able to shop – the kitchen shelves were entirely empty. I don’t like that at my age.

Rang K. to tell him about the price of the party & Sharron. Said he knew all about Sharron & that he’d told me. He hadn’t. It was some other tall bald man.

Friday, July 23, 1999

To West End to get fresh copies of this diary. J. lets me get a discount on them – I bought seven this time, & got over £3 off, not to be sneezed at. Really, I think there are more tourists than ever. I forgot to say, on Wednesday, that at seven o’clock, the train was as full as at rush hour, tho’ only round about the tourist stations. When I got out at Leicester Sq., – & I timed it – there was an almost unmoving mass of people in front of me, held back, I guessed, by an equal number of people coming on to the platform, & it took me 3 ½ minutes to get to the exit. It’s worrying, because the platforms at Leicester Sq. are quite narrow.

Today I got out at Piccadilly C., & gazed at the huge tidal wave of tourist doing – nothing but gloom about looking harassed. They never look up. If they’re American of course, they look for something American.

Went to the Halifax & hobbled across to Clark Davis in New Row for the diaries – & met J. on the way. She is short & square & round, & dresses to make the best & the least & the most of the lack of shape. Met her in Irving St., now cobbled & closed to traffic. We had a good gossip between two banks of tourists eating & drinking as they do, at extraordinary times of the day, such as quarter to four. They watched & listen. We parted, & I daresay they thought they’d taken part in an ancient mediaeval ceremony.

Bought the diaries, commiserating with Maggie for her unpleasant experience.

Extraordinary Romany funeral on the news. Six plumed horses drawing the hearse, twelve limousines, countless horses & carts, with as elaborate a selection of wreaths & floral emblems as I’d ever seen. Celia Chapman, in her fifties. Didn’t know the Romany community was organised (or as rich) as that.

Saturday, July 24, 1999

Rather hung over. Why? I drink exactly the same every night. More odd metabolism. The peas in the supermarket rather better this year, possibly because of the rain earlier on. J. rang & wanted to call in, but lied. The flat is too dusty. I must do a bit of housework. I could now.

Another vast concert in Hyde Park yesterday. I must have been on the edge of the fall-out of the crowds.

Read a page more of the Shellard. Says Charley’s Aunt was revived during the war. I couldn’t remember that, & when he said it ran four 1,466 perfs., it jogged my memory. As I thought the original production ran 1,466 perfs in 1892 onwards.

Depressing. Inaccuracies as well as gobbledy gook.

Sunday, July 25, 1999 Monday, July 26, 1999

The last two days my knee & leg have been rather better, as I noticed when I walked to K’s from the station. Hurting much less tho’ still a little stiff behind my knee.

Arlete let me in, in the same white blouse that she wore at the party, & a very mini pale mint green skirt. He came up from the studio looking a bit blurred at the edges. It turned out they had been up till two – or was it five? – When John Warnaby came to dinner. Even K. saying ‘he asked after you’, doesn’t affect my adverse opinion of him. I only let myself say that he, K., wouldn’t work at something else while looking for musical work; not, at least, something as revolting & deadening to creativity as The City. I shall leave it to time.

He went back to the studio to finish a CD that he wants me to deliver from my taxi on the way home in Kingly St. A. doing the dinner, brought me a g & t at once. I read for a bit, & K. came back up with the packet. We talked of S’s party. He is contemptuous. So before I got too drunk to write, I got the details of their rather complicated holiday arrangements. On August 1, they go to Derbyshire for a family wedding. ‘Of course you know Ernie comes from Derby……’ Never. (Every family wedding he’s gone to has made him furious, not least because of the cost. So he’s a chump.) They then go on to Alton Towers for a night, because Portugal not only has no oats, but no rollercoasters. Then they go on, more understandably to Aldeburgh, to stay with Pete Seinfield. I think he’s finished working with him – rather like John W., I hope he’ll finish with him in other ways. Unfair, as I’ve never met him, & he may be a good friend. They’re back from Aldeburgh on the 4th. On the 10th they go to France to see the eclipse. Asked me to investigate safe viewing of same. Hm. They come back v. late on the 11th. Then he gets really stuck into a v. big job till the middle of Sept. Meanwhile A. goes to Portugal on the 26th for a week to see all her friends & on 2nd Sept brings her mother back with her, & she stays till the 14th. On the 18th K & A go to Sardinia for their proper holiday.

So we discussed her possible treats. She’s a dressmaker, so she’s certainly going to Liberty, & John Lewis, & can I think of anywhere else? A. says the V&A, & Harrods, of course, – the V&A for Fashion Hall. I wonder if my suit is still there, wrongly displayed, despite my letter of complaint. They’re taking her to Wales for a few days at some point. All this with never having been out of England before, with no English not long after a knee operation, & on crutches.

We must see. They want me to help at certain points. I don’t think they thought she’d like to see someone of her own age, even without Portuguese, but I think she would.

So to dinner, Guinea-fowl, straws & rasp, more delicious cheese from the Fromagerie. I brought a bottle of John N’s Sancerre. I think it was a bit fruity for them. He got a bit stroppy over the cheese. First, I said perhaps Julia Roberts really didn’t always like flashing bulbs every time she set foot outside, – he jeered. Later, I revealed that there was an academic assumption – a bit of a cliché really – that there were only seven plots. He rose in his wrath & demanded whether Shakespeare – whether the Greek plays – a little handicapped in an academic argument by more or less complete ignorance of his source – tho’ I am continually amazed by the amount he retains-catches by perception from me & no doubt many others – & really the whole unsatisfactory idea was all my fault. Oh the mad angry thing. The rest of the evening was ‘sunshine all the way’. When the taxi came, he instructed the driver about the packet, & I went off with love all round.

The driver was older than is usual now, white hair, well into his sixties. Kept scratching in various places. I was sympathetic, as I am itchy myself, but I do manage to scratch every minute or two only when I’m alone, sitting up in bed.

All round the one-way’s led us eventually to Kingly St. The packets destination was two or three doors past no.12. It looks just the same. It’s still strange to be able to remember forty- five years ago. As we turned back into Regent St., I saw straight ahead, the English Teddy Bear Co. shop, 153. Unimaginable, then.

How I love him.

Today, Monday. I never forget it’s Shaw’s b’day – not that he’d think anything of that.

Another frightfulness that I’ve escaped by age, is the horror of counseling, or worse, ‘being helped to get in touch with my feelings’.

The evening with ‘Christine, the superior Tart’, that S. knew nothing of, came off. J. told me S. sent Christine a bottle of her favourite, her only, Champagne, Kristall – is that how you spell it? I’ve only heard of it in Christine’s context. I was again shocked that S. had sent her a bottle of it, £85, & she had ordered another for herself.

A news item about Soho had a couple of irresistibly funny drunken episodes. A white constable & a black policewoman affably checked a staggering black drunk. She said mildly, ‘Watch how you go’, ‘What’s your name?’ She pointed to her shoulder flash, & said ‘465’. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘465’. ‘I like tall women’

A tall tousled man lurched towards the screen, with a nearly empty beer glass, & slurred ‘I’ve had a few. And now I’m going to have one more few’.

Tuesday, July 27, 1999

My knee is that much better that I can get about more. Went to new film Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss. A fair old mess, with a few unexpectedly truthful moments & phrases. So good to get to an air-conditioned cinema for these baking afternoons. It’s well over eighty in here for some hours. Went to Simply Sausages – it seems to be failing. Less choice of sausages, – only one girl instead of three hearty young men. Cumberland sausages, just as good. On my way back past the Apollo, saw the comedian Mark Little announced – oh dear – & it was directed by David Gilmour. It seems a time since he had anything good, & this –!

Wednesday, July 28, 1999

Janet tells me that Joan Plowright is writing her memoirs. She could tell a few tales if she wanted but I hope she won’t. I have never thought so highly of L.O.’s acting as his legend suggests. Still I don’t want that legend destroyed, for the good of the theatre. It would not be her intention, but a widow’s praise can sometimes be destructive, especially of a character like L.O’s viewed with calculation, rather inferior brains, poor’ish education, & on certain matters, a mean-ness of spirit. Can Joan write at all? Well, she comes of a family of journalists. Didn’t her he father own & edit the Scunthorpe paper? And there’s her brother at Granada. Is he still there? The practical reason J. rung was because Joan wants a volume of criticism by James Agate called Brief something’. I told her I’d got it, but I wouldn’t lend it, because well off people never return books. And don’t tell her I’ve got it, or she’ll remember how well she used to know me’. Still, J can borrow mine & photocopy it, if she can’t get it elsewhere. I don’t quite know why J.P. want’s it, except for four or five lengthy critiques of L.O from the thirties. Or possibly J. thought, she wants to read notices of productions of plays she’s been in herself years after. In which case she wants a much wider reference area. Brief C. was published in 1943.

Amused by a review of The National ‘Look Back In Anger’ with phrases, ‘It’s all so long ago’, & ‘old fogies’ ‘as dead as the second Mrs. Tanquaray’, etc. etc. Very satisfying to an old fogey of an earlier vintage. Not that I disapproved of anything about LBIA except that it wasn’t a very good play. J.O had a gift for writing, abundantly, but not specifically deeply, for plays.

Stayed in all day. Getting hotter. Wanked twice.

Thursday, July 29, 1999

Ray J to see if she had any luck with B. Chron at the library. No. So she was going to ring the director of Mander & Mitchman. I don’t know the theatrical booksellers if any, now, except hideous David Drummond in Cecil Court.

Mary Kerridge has died at 85. There was always something faintly ludicrous about them both. Her obituary doesn’t let one down. There is a distinctly rosy view of her career & his direction & the general achievement of the Windsor Royal. But I particularly liked, ‘The Lord Chamberlain was a great friend’, from the last people who might have come under his disapproval.

In the p.m. to the dear Renoir again, one of the last homes of new French films. ‘Ça commence aujourd'hui’, is about a primary school head in a deprived area of northern France, round Valenciennes oddly enough – 34% unemployment, no lace, you see, & all the unhappiness & difficulty that comes with it. If I described the incidents & story of the film, it would sound like a string of clichés, but, as it’s French, there isn’t a cliché or a trace of sentimentality in sight. The film hangs on a splendid central performance from Philippe Torreton, a thirty something I haven’t seen before. It doesn’t seem like acting – you simply accept him. I notice he’s a sociétaires de la Comédie-Française & has, I presume, been mostly on the stage. He is most accomplished. For example, he obviously worked a great deal with the children. Their teacher behind the camera could not have made such young children respond to him. A wonderfully good film.

I suppose I should allow for the usual suspension of disbelief. I don’t know any of the actors, & I can only tell to a certain point how good the acting is. Nevertheless –.

In the tube on the way back, a girl sitting next to me was reading Aldous Huxley. I didn’t know anyone did any more. But why are people so dismissive about him?

The absurd thing – another one – about Mary Kerridge, is that I think first of the Lilian Baylis story. Can I convey in print (sic)? I’ll try. Lilian B. had a secretary, not Clarkey, I fancy, who was adopted, as many people from humble backgrounds did in those days, a pinched approximation of the accent of ladies & gentlemen. One of the most obvious of its affectations, is to pronounce ‘a’ as a pinched ‘e’, thus ‘carriage’ would sound like ‘cerridge’. So when the secretary said to Lilian, ‘oh Miss. Bayliss, there is a Miss. Kerridge in the stalls’, Lilian said, ‘Well, clear it up & get ready for the matinée’.

I fear M.K. did take herself rather seriously & perhaps deserved this. Hideously hot.

Friday, July 13, 1999

Going to be so hot. I rushed out at ten, meaning to go to Ken. High St. When I got to Earls Court the Edgware Rd. train was stationary, & crammed like the rush–hour with all sorts of ghastly tourists. So I went to the Earls Court W. A goodish haul. The new Jill McGown detective story, a first novel by Jake Arnott, – John Preston’s notice caught me – The Long Firm, & ordered the book of Glyn Philpot & his art.

Hazel rang today, as Sat she has some cousins or something coming, & she’s looking after Natalie on Sunday. Her knee is still very painful, she does all cooking & cleaning, the shopping, not to mention correcting the proofs of her new book, & writing the next. And she says she’s tired. Geoffrey has just got over shingles, & losing a stone, – now all his potatoes have blight. Oh dear.

J. rang & said Mander & Mitchman had recommended creep David Drummond. God knows what he’ll charge.

Another shooting in America, nineteen dead or dying. The reporter said it was a drop in the ocean, except that they’d all been killed at once. There were 30,000 murders by gun alone, last year in America. And even now, after this last one, the gun lobby, said sharply ‘if only someone had had a gun he could have been stopped’. What a hellish country!

I suddenly realise that I could, under certain circumstances, – after all, he’s out there, in the silliest part – imagine Neil doing something like that. After all, Jeremy R. nearly did & I knew him pretty well & wasn’t ready for it.

Saturday, July 31, 1999

Miserably hot. Rang K. to wish him a good journey & got Arlete. Warned her that family weddings usually made him very cross. A few minutes later he rang to say he was already cross…. (oh, God, it’s so hot I have to keep my left hand off the page, or it’ll blur the ink.) Whole evening on that Withnail film, which has become a cult among polytechnic students. Interview with its author & director, Bruce Robinson. He played the coward in that Journeys End when Peter Egan played the lead. B.R. was quite excellent, & when I went around I met him in the passage & congratulated him. He gave me the ‘sixties silent stare. I must look when we got the first stare. Was it possibly thingummy Korda & that girl who was ‘in’ for a bit. At Cheltenham, that was.

Sunday, August 1, 1999

Both my Sunday papers have a feature which rather pre-empts judgement. Various people choose the most over-rated writer of the century. One Gilbert Adair, a few weeks ago, chose Shaw! ‘No, it’s more than over-rated, it’s due for oblivion’. This week both papers chose poor old A.E. Housman. Well, he was over-rated, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t write at least a handful of wonderful poems. Interested that they quote Henry R’s parody. I remember a quatrain D. quoted me, but I’m not sure it was Henry’s. I have a sort of memory that it might the Georgia Painter’s. I also remember that she said they were rather proud of the change of tense. ‘The cow let’s fall at even’. ‘A steaming pile of shit’. And Tom is lying under’. And oh he hated it’.

Never mind me & the seven plots, the pop impresario, Pete Waterman says there are only four themes for pop songs, ‘I’m going’, ‘I’m coming back’, ‘I love you’, ‘I hate you’. He also said that you should become an accountant or a lawyer if you wanted to make real money. I’d like to hear his client’s views on that.

Oh, the heat. It’s 10:30 & it’s still 84° in here. And K. & A are on & off motorways till Wed. I shan’t rest till then.

Monday, August 2, 1999

Beastly hot, – just as far as H’smith & a little shopping, & there were great rings of sweat up & down the arms of my shirt.

Dear J. has proposed a series of visits to the NFT starting tomorrow with the silent version of Easy Virtue, starring Isabel Jeans, no less. Mostly attached to the Hitchcock season, so I’ll see Lord Camber’s Ladies again, in my memory, the nearest to get a bit of Gertie’s quality, not to mention Gerald du Maurier. Then there are a couple starring Ivor, ‘No. 17’ for instance. So very kind for she knows I couldn’t afford to go on my own.

As for dear Noel, there is a lot of silliness going on, but then what can you expect, when the executors giving permission for revivals, are Graham Payne & Sheridan Morley? Anyone might think the estate was poverty stricken. The National ‘Private Lives’, & the West End ‘Hay Fever’ are fair old disasters in their different ways. ‘Easy Virtue’ at Chichester has at least got a director, Maria Aitken, who understands Coward. She is one of the very few left to know how to play him, as high comedy, without caricature or exaggeration, as obviously ruined Hay F. Unfortunately it sounds as if some of the smaller parts in E.V. are broad to the point of all vulgarity. In addition, I would say that Greta Schacchi is miscast. If she were a bit younger, Maria A. would have been ideal. Larita must be attractive, of course, rather exotically so possibly, but is not someone as straightforwardly glamorous as Greta S. I don’t think Larita would be the type to appeal to a big film audience, not at least in the pin-up way. By chance, I shall be seeing the silent film version tomorrow. And who is playing Larita? Isabel Jeans directed by Hitchcock. Noel never mentioned it in Present Indic., the Diaries, or the Letters.

Oh, the negativity of TV watching. No sport. No Bruce Forsyth, etc I can’t bother to list the No’s.

Reading Jake Arnott’s The Long Firm. Impressive in its fluency & detail, v. promising. Two thirds through, but can he draw it together? Technically dazzling for a first novel.

Painfully hot, went to shops, soaked.

I didn’t know there was a Anti-Prostitute League. Is that a good idea? Especially as its protagonist announces himself as Angus. J. Huck.

Tuesday, August 3, 1999

A series of films about dyslexia. They tested fifty juvenile delinquents, & found that twenty- five of them were dyslexic, ‘a much higher percentage than anyone expected’. They feel it proves that being dyslexic somehow accounts for, & part excuses, anti-social & criminal behaviour. So it’s linked to crime, is it? Well, and so is being dim, & they all seemed pretty dim to me. Another programme, favourable to dyslexia, nevertheless announced that dyslexic’s brains process visual material such as print, more slowly, then ‘normal’ brains. Er – yes.

To the first of the NFT films, rather dreading it because of the heat. I left at 4:30, for 6:15, hoping to avoid the rush hour. I did as far as L. Square, but although it was only 4:45 or so, the northern line trains were already crammed – tourists, of course – I was already so hot. I went upstairs & took a taxi. The first one I’ve taken for years, & only now because it was a fairly short journey, even shorter if it hadn’t been for the one-ways. But mainly because there were already wide bands of sweat showing thro’ my shirt on both arms & all over my back. I really think I’d have had to come home if I’d gone on that crowded tube. I was right to be early. I could sit on a chair in the air-conditioned foyer for an hour & at least begin to dry out. Nobody else looked as wet. So what about the film? Well, it bears very little resemblance to the play – there is no dialogue that I recognise, & only the barest bones of the plot. A rather overlong exposition in the Old Bailey & on the Riviera, & some fairly dodgy perfs., notably from Franklin Dyall as a drunken abusive husband, whose ridiculous mugging made one grateful it was silent. But Isabel Jeans rose above him & the crude melodrama that was all the film could offer. I was able to tell J. that I. J. was a real artist in dress, & that she might take it that if I. J. was supposed to be wearing the best high-fashion, it would be the best high- fashion. Back in an empty tube. Naked now.

Wednesday, August 4, 1999

Rang Sony help-line at last for advice about the video. The girl I spoke to, after waiting for at least five minutes, couldn’t find the manual, & the manager ‘would ring me later’. How I hate that, so rang back after some hours, to say I was going out. Which I wasn’t. Though I did. Oh, the heat is so uncomfortable.

I don’t think I said that the Southbank quite disorientated me, when my taxi dropped me at the back of Museum of The Moving Image. They have started taking down the hideous walkways that no one has ever liked. Cannot their architects be pursued to the grave & beyond?

The Sony manager rang, gave me advice which I followed exactly since it only entailed pressing one button & holding it down for three seconds. It dashed into ‘set-up’ at the end of which I still couldn’t record, & now I couldn’t play videos…. Rang him back with some trouble & he told me to get a service engineer. Ah well.

Thursday, August 5, 1999

K & A. back, but ‘phone engaged. Still engaged over four hours, so reported it & it is out of order. Less worrying than them not answering.

Friday, August 6, 1999

A less irritating day. Rang & got K. & in the p.m. to Hitchcock silent ‘Dawn Hill’, written by Ivor N & Constance Collier. Less hot, & I spent the waiting time, leaning on the rail & watching the Thames tide turn, eating an egg sandwich. Film interesting. Ivor rather common & bad.

K. found the terrible fall-thing at Alton Towers ‘amazing’ & the wedding hideous of course. Liebframuilch.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 163

August 7th 1999 – September 16th 1999.

Saturday, August 7, 1999

Oh, the wedding, poor boy. It was the hottest day, 89°, the marquee was roasting & so was the chicken. They started with hot asparagus & something soup, & went on to the chicken with gravy & so on, – he didn’t say the pudding was hot – a pity if it wasn’t. Even worse, all they were offered to drink, was Liebfraumilch. Ugh. ‘There was another champagne type of glass, so I hoped…. but it was Liebfraumilch again’. ‘Was it properly cold, at least?’ ‘No’. Couldn’t write more last night, as I went to another film with J. It was longer & there was some hold up on the tube, so I didn’t eat till after ten.

The film was ‘Downhill’ from a script by Ivor N. & Constance Collier. As the copy was borrowed from the Dutch NFT, all the titles had to be translated by someone as we went along. (I don’t know whether the Dutch titles had been added, or whether this was the Dutch version of 1927. It was announced as in our archive, so I suppose it is a Dutch original, & rigorous scholarship might suggest one should preserve the Dutch titles. A bit silly, as it’s an English film to start with. The woman intoning the translation, amused me by pronouncing Ivor N, & .C.C’s pen name, David L’estrange a la Francaise.) As for the film, it was the most threadbare little problem play that Pinero & H.A Jones would have been ashamed of in 1890. I’ve always thought Ivor a bit gruesome, & now I can see it. As a writer or dramatist, he reminds me, of Julian, refusing to examine anything, to admit any application of logic or consistency. As an actor, well – he was 34 & playing a rugger playing school prefect, with a blazer too small for him & other absurdities. Curiously his Welshness & commonness came out more obviously in a silent film, not to mention his campness. He wasn’t an actor in any sense that I can respect. Odd that a public-school boy, for good or ill, has an expression instantly recognizable to another. I.N’s great friend in the film, played by Robin Irvine, had that look, I thought. I looked him up & there he was, Aldenham & Mill Hill…. A good thing it was silent – Ivor had only one downward sentimental inflection.

Not quite so sticky & impossible, but I still had to take a taxi from L. Square. Not so wet, & varied the dose by going out through the café, as hot as an oven & onto the river embankment. There was a large & rather dodgy book sale, & lots of tables for people who’d managed to get food & drink from a blonde girl who brooded over the cash register for some minutes to search for ten pence. I went & leant on the railings & watched the tide come in. Oh, I’d forgotten how fast it came in, & how riveting it was, & how I love water – at a safe distance.

J. said her niece’s visit had been a great success. How old is she? Sixteen? Clearly she’s the one like J., in a certain community of tastes, tho’ she did want the blinds drawn & the windows shut. Which is a symptom of something or other.

Sunday, April 8, 1999

Extract from a Churchill speech telling of a shipwreck, ‘when I was swimming about, a door from the ship providentially floated towards me – &, do you know, it was inscribed with my initials.’

Finally discovered that I could record & play videos. A relief. J. had finally delivered A Simple Plan, after we had missed out at least a dozen times. Impressive, tho’ at times, almost too painful to watch. Full of violence, but it did not disgust me as so often, because they were driven from violence to violence inevitably, after the first sin. Impressive acting, too, from three actors, not stars, tho’ they should be. Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton & Bridget Fonda. Quite by chance I caught some fidgety programme, describing the frightful thing K. went on at Alton Towers, a huge cylinder crashing down at the speed of sound into a huge hole in the ground. I’m glad I hadn’t seen it before, or I wouldn’t have slept a wink. How mysterious that he should want to do it!

Unexpectedly enjoyed a programme about Amelia Earhart. I just remember the fuss, but didn’t register her. Rather attractive gap toothed blonde, who married Putnam the publisher. That was news to me, as I only just thought of the publisher as at all American. The English side of it was rather distinguished & minority – wasn’t L.P. Hartley Putnam? But I had no apprehension of the person. Perhaps as well. When Amelia asked her close friend Elinore Smith, whether she should marry him after a three-year affair, E.S. a now 80-year-old Eve Arden, told her, ‘I’d take Genghis Khan instead’, & later, ‘No, she wasn’t a flirt, unlike some women who would flirt with a chair leg if it was handy’. She courted danger a la Alton Towers. Equally mysterious!

St. Augustine’s mother was called Monica. Perhaps we should pursue this, – I mean, if Judas mother was called Doreen…. It’s not like Mary, is it?

Monday, August 9, 1999

The Christmas dept. has opened at Harrods, last Sat. One of the tree decorations made of whatever it is, very breakable, that such decorations are made of, was flourished & announced as being £59.99.

I see they’re using dogs as therapy in hospitals now, as well as old peoples homes. Well, it gives me a pretty certain death from shock.

Hazel rang. She’s having Natalie from Friday to Sun night, & I’m setting myself against having Mary L. round. She is brave – I couldn’t do what she does. And her knee is still on & off. As for mine, I walked to my shopping for the first time for months – how many? – without limping.

That riot in the City was organized by a young millionaire member of the Vesty family, – a pinpoint photo of him in a baseball-cap, & a mobile ‘phone. This is, mutatis mutandis, just how Mosley started. As for the ‘millions’ going to Cornwall, that seems rather to have collapsed as it’s going to be cloudy. Still, the soap operas are setting some episodes there, which is all that matters. I mean, we don’t want any boring reality, do we? Rang Roy, & got him for once. And some more definite good news about the work at last. The director of the Spanish Civil War thing, Pe Danquart, as well as Victoria D’Avril, has cast Vincent Perez & Vincent D’Onofrio. Just as I thought, because he said that’s when we could go out…..Rang K & A & wished them a safe journey, to see the eclipse. Can’t wait for them to be safely back.

Tuesday, August 10, 1999

Mulling over it, I think S’s letter is slightly more beside itself than I first thought. The PS about giving up ‘booze’ – whether for good or not doesn’t appear – & revealing that he has never drunk when alone, not to mention the decision in the main part of the letter to give up directing, smacks to me of 50.. it is. I do hope he doesn’t turn ascetic on me. Mind you, he probably will as it’s about the only appetite he’s left unexplored.

Set out to see Place Vendôme at the Renoir, but got off at K’bridge, having that old stifled- sick feeling. It must be psychological, as it goes off the moment I get off. I haven’t had it for a long time. I suppose it wasn’t helped by the crammed platform at K’bridge. And I was going to do quite a bit beside, down to C.G Waterstone’s & Tesco’s. However, I went to Earls Court instead, & was quite lucky, one-way & a trivial other. First in W’stones’ got the rather gloomy young assistant of few words but knows where the invoice pad is. Then there was the latest Sue Grafton detec. in p.b., two more possibles, the novel by Patrick Redmond that I read a notice of, & when I enquired about the Glyn Philpot book I’d ordered, there it was, & they’d sent me a letter last Thursday. (Now that’s what I’d always wondered – perhaps two or three times a month I get a letter from some other address, perhaps nearby, perhaps in Margravine, perhaps some similar address in London. If it is tricky, I look up the name in the ‘phone directory, & try to trace it. For instance, over the last twenty years or so, I have had a good few letters for 12 Margravine, & have put them thro’ the letterbox there. I don’t think I have ever been able to be sure I’ve had anything going the other way. Still, I have to say, no-one has ever enquired why I haven’t cashed a cheque.) The Philpot was priced at £39 in the notice I read, at £25 on the computer when I ordered it, & now he said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was £45’. A good investment. As for the trivial, the bit of shopping in the very cramped Somerfield’s, I found one of my favourite potatoes, Charlotte, reduced to 69p a punnet.

Heard from a social worker: ‘Unless you know the whole truth about human nature’….

Wednesday, August 11, 1999

Watched the clips in a desultory way on television, & what I saw out of the window in here; of course, I couldn’t see the sun, as this room faces west. Still, I could see the sunshine & the shadows it threw on the house opposite. It was a bit cloudy, & sometimes I thought it was the eclipse, when it was a cloud. London was supposed to have 95% or so of totality, at nineteen past eleven rather later than Devon & Cornwall. Even at 11:19, it was no darker than before a bad storm, & I don’t think the shadows ever completely vanished. On TV there were one or two striking images. The aeroplane up above the clouds produced the clearest images, tho’ I didn’t understand why those pictures were dead black sky & the sun dark gold. Nobody explained that, – I took it to be some sort of filter. Nobody much explained anything, except a lot of silly little girls & boys only intent on not being stuffy. So a great natural event took place to a wearisome yammering accompaniment. The only attempt to any serious approach, on BBC1, was presented by Michael Burke, who is hangdog enough himself, and an unnamed ‘scientist’ of such crushingly commonplace manner & boringness, that I had to turn the sound off whenever he appeared. Film of Paris crowds on news. Looked for K., though he wasn’t going to Paris.

No sign of the letter from W’stones yet – I quite often readdress letters. I fear I don’t get the same treatment in return.

Good gracious, there was Maggie Jones playing Deirdre’s mother in Coronation Street. Paper-thin which can’t be right for a plump girl, & no doubt exactly like the mother she used to despise.

I had no idea that ants raided termites, & ate them.

Thursday, August 12, 1999

J. rang about this evening, & we talked again about Brief Chronicles. David ‘Creep’ Drummond had said he’d got it at £38, but that turned out be someone’s mistake. He had the Kirkegaard, at £38, but not the Agate. She is now going to encourage Joan to join, or rejoin, the London Library. I have told her there were only a couple of thousand printed, & during the war, too. However, she is relying on my copy as a last resort. I wonder how much deserved is the bad word Joan seems to get now. Certainly she has been rather cavalier with J. at times in the past. I always found her absolutely straightforward.

Read new novel The Wishing Game by Andrew? Redmond – I’ve already given it to Oxfam which was well reviewed somewhere or other. Set in a public school in the 1950s’, it is stuffed with infelicities & inaccuracies & a painful naivete. I ought to have known from the authors photograph, plainly with only bone between his ears.

In the p.m. to the film, for the first time for how many weeks? The film ‘Rushmore’ was intriguing. I said to J & Frances that I was in the unusual position of not being quite sure what I thought about. It’s certainly & as so often with interesting work, it is written & directed by the same man, Wes Anderson. Bill Murray, who obviously has an eye for a script, & an English girl, lovely Olivia Williams, & the lead a twenty-year-old Jason? some very Jewish name, I can’t check it yet. Witty, yet often leaving you in doubt at the eventual tone of the film. I must see it again. After to La Perla, with Francis R. Spending some time with her, I can’t see anything deeply wrong with her, despite all the scans & lumbar punctures. As for the weight loss, it is not extreme, & she was very big. I had their grilled trout. Its not haute c., but workmanlike.

Friday, August 13, 1999

How pleased Hitchcock must be to know that this is the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Rang K. Safe. Comically they drove to a possibly better position, and it clouded over. They came back to their original position to be told that everyone had seen it beautifully. Dear thing.

My determination not to have Mary L, has led me not to ring her, & to keep having imaginary & acrimonious exchanges with her. ‘It should be enough that….’ Etc. She is so intrusive, & of course has no idea.

I see Oliver Dodds has died at 83, in Denville. I would have thought her older. When, I think, Daddy got me an interview with her because of Rank, in 1952? I wouldn’t have thought her only ten years older than my 26. But ‘business’ women dressed older then, she was not obviously attractive, thin, dark, sharp featured, she also had lost a hand, whether at birth or not, I never knew. I can see this might have contributed to the older image, partly as a refuge. Had a cheque from Jewel in Crown, & delighted to find it £75 odd. When I paid it in, I found the wretched computer figure one looked to me quite like a 7. Sad. And the electric – bill is £116, which will take more than half my little pile.

Saturday, August 14, 1999

I never like this time of year much – war’s start, people behave badly, football begins again… Henry Cecil, the Queens racing trainer, – is he still? – is divorcing his wife for having it off with one of his jockeys in the shower.(I wonder what he stood on?) Philip Oakley’s racing column in the spectator opened, ‘Two luminaries overheard at Newmarket: ‘I didn’t sleep with my wife before we were married, did you?’ I’m not quite sure, what was her maiden name?’

Caught a flash of a really tacky soft-porn film on C5., starring David Warner. I never liked him, or admired his work as much as others did. Why? All the same.

To the NFT again with J. To see ‘Murder’, a very early (1930) Hitchcock, starring Herbert Marshall. Pretty poor affair in itself, tho’ fascinating to me for the acting. H. Marshall was wise to go to Hollywood not long after. He is decidedly in the second or third class. His delivery almost entirely lacks variety, especially of pace. And he leaves curiously empty, curiously regular pauses, which brings things to frequent halts. Some of the action was set in the wings at a weekly rep. J. & I agreed afterwards that the sequences backstage during a perf., were rather a torment, as I kept on tenterhooks thinking they were going to be off, & J. kept worrying that the policeman wouldn’t get his uniform jacket done up in time. The policeman in the stage farce was played by Esme Percy. Fairly unlikely, but even more so was his double career as a weekly rep. actor & a trapeze artist, not to mention the murderer. For his entry into the circus-ring, he had borrowed a costume from Mistinguette, ostrich feather headdress, twenty-foot train, edged with marabout & all. However, it wasn’t funny to see his face before the accident. Photographs had not prepared me. As well as the eye & the scars he must have lost half his nose. Had those claustrophobic not- exactly-sick feelings on the tube. Had to get off at Victoria & again at St. J. Park. If I go one station at a time, it’s all right, which, like avoiding a full carriage, more or less proves its claustrophobia. But why it happens when, I’ve no clue.

Quite witty tonight, I thought. I hope J. thought so too.

Sunday, August 15, 1999

Now they think child leukaemia is caused by a virus, so they can’t go on saying it’s caused by nuclear leaks. I never saw how they got that idea in the first place, as leukaemia existed for years before nuclear plants. But then doctors & scientists are seldom rational, let alone the man in the street.

A series of programmes about London called City Heat. Today it followed three Texan women, a hairdresser aged about fifty, her sister & her daughter, on a sight seeing & shopping trip. She advertised her professional skills with a two-foot topknot, & sported a black dress, at eleven in the morning, which was backless & more or less frontless. All three had had their scripts written by Ruth Draper, more or less unchanged since 1914. The sister told us she’d ‘read all my life’. Passing the House of Commons, the hairdresser said, ‘Oh, you can see it’s Royal’. I don’t think she was referring to the subtleties of the Palace of Westminster.

Two trouvailles from the Philpot life. A remark of Sir Thomas Lawrence with a modern ring, ‘A portrait is a painting with something not quite right about the mouth’. And an obscure, not surprisingly, painter of the early 1900’s, Rembrandt Bugatti.

Had a lighter dinner than usual, this time before the film at 8:30, one fillet of haddock, some peas & potatoes, in case. But I felt nothing on the tube, probably a gin or two & the wine insulating me from the claustrophobia, so it isn’t physical, I’d say. But why?

‘Lord Camber’s Ladies’ was just as fascinating as twenty-five years ago. It’s interesting that, as a screenplay, it was so much clumsier & more primitive than a comparable West End play. But the stars – Gerald, du Maurier was a major actor, & seeing him the night after Herbert Marshall, he proved it. His weight, his variety, his stillness, his authourity, still impress. As for Gertie, well, what can you say? All the bits of the perf. don’t hang together, but who wants them to? She lives in the minute. I shed a tear for both of them.

Much cooler & rain, thank goodness.

Monday, August 16, 1999

Someone said hair had been used in forensic science for thirty years. Surely for longer? It’s the turning point of D. Sayers, ‘Strong Poison’ in 1930?

Rang Mary L. at last. Lied, of course. She didn’t mention coming over. Good. Quite jovial. J. told me Judi Dench, Maggie S., & Michael Williams on holiday in Scotland. M.W. all right again.

Often heard in popular television series, but never by me in real life, ‘Can I have a word?’ At last the thermometer in here has left 80°, & is down to 68° at twelve.

Tuesday, August 17, 1999

‘English Theatre Since the War’, Peter Cheeseman of Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent. A theatre I’ve always known about but in forty-years, I’ve never known anyone who played there, or wrote for work there, let alone any transfer anywhere. I think Arnold Bennett would be sardonically please. A further miss print, if that’s what it can be called. I’ve now got to Amadeus, & a new paragraph began, ‘Paul Schofield’s brilliant performance as Michael Billington’. When I rang Mary to talk about other things but told of the inaccuracies as a safe subject, she swooped in to say that Quiet Weekend had ‘been inaccurately reported, –it opened in 1940, when we know the theatres were closed, they got the sister-in-law wrong’ – it’s a pity Mastermind has finished.

What a stupid age it is in many ways. A poor young girl was raped by four boys, black, I’m afraid. But she was described as a choir-girl. Now I’m all for equality, that not when it undermines aesthetic standards. Boys voices have a different quality that girls voices spoil. Odd that people can’t hear that. Talking of young girls certainly their pronunciation of words is more ugly these days. One that especially grates on me is ‘hospitul’ with an equal emphasis on each syllable.

Trying to struggle through ‘Blood Wedding’. I didn’t realise so much of it was in song. I suppose its song & not verse, because short versus, quatrains with no rhyme, in translation, are rather impossible. I am allowing for translation & American academic translation at that, but it’s all too Cold Comfort Farm for me. I am persevering but it does require perseverance. Bathos never dies. Frightful earthquake in Turkey, 2000 dead, 10,000 injured & that’s merely the beginning. English tourist arriving back: ‘It was such a surprise – we weren’t expecting it’.

Wednesday, August 18, 1999

Stayed in again all day unexpectedly. Pouring. Spoke to no one except a brisk girl from London Transport wanting my views. I might as well have ticked one of those forms.

Thursday, August 19, 1999

Someone pick pocketed a man, & ran off with his spoils. Unfortunately his victim was Martin Greene, the 100 meters Champion of the world……

Over 4000 are dead in Turkey, & it may be 20,000.

Rail Track makes £1.2 millions a day, & has had a record number of complaints.

At last got Roy & told him a string of funny things, tho’ they would be better told one by one in more frequent chats. He hasn’t sent the kilt to the cleaners yet. Good, so I was able to warn him about the silver buttons. They went to the Isle of Wight. Odd choice.

In the p.m. at last to film Place Vendome at the Renoir. Streets & tube perceptibly empty of parked cars & people. Can it be the effect of holidays? If so, I haven’t noticed it before to anything like this extent. Shocked afterwards, thinking it would be a bit early to avoid the rush-hour with all my shopping. But at 6:30 there were only two or three people in my bit of the carriage &, although a few more people got on here & there, I never had to move my bags off the seat next to me. Never done that before at this time.

As for the film, it was a bit long & a bit muddled, & the directors seem to have a rooted an objection to either person keeping still in a scene together, but, if you like Catherine Deneuve, none of this mattered. And I do. Her clothes alone would hold me. Her expression of fastidious distaste is one of her mysterious charms.

She came down steps wearing a close fitting fine white wool long-sleeved sweater, with a lowish neck & little close set buttons down the front, not practical I think. Over it a straight cut waistcoat worn open, in dark brown gold. Over that a trench-coat also open, & a straight skirt in a brown so dark it was almost black. Plain brown court shoes. Wonderful.

Rather fascinated to see two English actors playing Englishmen but speaking mainly in French, Larry Lamb & Julian Fellowes. I didn’t notice their names among the cast at the beginning, which I think I would have done. Could they be acting under pseudonyms? Larry L. has always been a bit of an enigma to me. Perhaps I mistook my first impression of him as a working-class actor finding himself at the R. Court due to their careful inverted snobbery, twenty or so years since then, he has always attempted good work in a way which suggests a different background, perhaps he can speak French – I couldn’t tell. J. Fellowes was speaking his, I fancy, to justify his being husband to Lady Mary Fellowes, or whatever her name is. I wish they would take a note from the great days of filmmaking, that one & a half-hours is better than two.

Friday, August 20, 1999

Dream this morning about Prim & an elephant, I can’t remember why, but the striking thing was that I woke (sic) &, terrified, couldn’t slide my legs sideways, couldn’t move at all, only a few seconds before I really woke up. Very primitive, I presume. Was one of my ancestors nearly trampled by a mammoth?

In the p.m., at last to new film ‘The Mummy’. Bought a Standard with the headline, ‘35,000 dead’. There is already talk of cholera, dysentery etc. How quickly such terrors appear from broken sewers & dead bodies! I suppose it’s the awful concentration of cities, so that you are never far from a body live or dead. In nature you shit or die in one spot & move swiftly to another. That is, if you’ve only shat. A sobering headline to take into The Mummy. Brendan Fraser has just the dash & humour to be a perfect adventure hero, & was when he had the opportunity.

The trouble with this film was that it was infected with that senseless ‘action’, which as D. so rightly said, prevents anything from happening. The donné - I always liked in the old mummy films were the arbitrary rules & rituals that were invented to serve the idiotic plot. There is always an apparently invincible enemy because he has The Book of The Dead, but then…..often the love-interest male or female, is an expert, Egyptologist/ archaeologist etc., who can say in various provocative ways, ‘oh well, if you can find the Gold Book’. It’s naturally preferable because it’s actually intrinsically valuable, as well as virtuous. This film had a 12 certificate, preventing children under 12 seeing it. Odd, in that far too large proportion of the film would only appeal to the under 12’s.

Film at Whiteleys through Bayswater. What a motley crowd to push through, even nowadays. Shades of Gibbon. I must do it again.

Saturday, August 21, 1999.

Watched Balanchine’s Midsummer Nights Dream, to my slight surprise, to Mendelssohn’s music. As always with his ballets, I was never really caught up or moved or excited. It was cool and academic & correct, it wasn’t badly danced but there was nobody special. The men were rather poor quality, with little personality. The costumes (I presume these weren’t the originals) were also poor quality, with someone having a poor colour sense. The corps had tutus’ of bright hard orange with bright blue panels.

The mechanical appeared only enough to make the ass’s head possible. Not that I blame him for that. Their quality it’s almost entirely contained in the words, not to mention that American actors, let alone dancers, are awful at those sort of parts, & I would say Balanchine had no sense of humour at all. If he had I have never seen any sign of it. I think he is over- valued by Americans wanting a genius of their own. The ballet didn’t hold me, but I shall watch Suzanne Farrell, tomorrow.

Stayed in all day.

Sunday, August 22, 1999

Hazel rang as usual. Her knee is still a trouble, & her anti-inflammatory & other drugs are upsetting her stomach. I mentioned mine in passing, simply to illustrate a point about hers. And even dear Hazel, not knowing she was doing it, said, ‘have you seen a doctor? I forget’. As she has had a knee op., which became infected, a lot of drugs, which really upset her, she had a bit of a struggle & a change to get some different treatments, & she is still in difficulties. I cannot honestly see that she's any further on than I am, with a lot more trouble & expense. Nevertheless she had a faintly censorious tone in her voice. They want you to be conventional & suffer what they suffer.

In Turkey they are starting to run down the recovery of survivors, who will obviously be very few, in favour of the hundreds of thousands who maybe threatened by disease. The thousands of dead bodies, the garbage, the lack of lavatories, & the broken sewers, mean typhoid, cholera, goodness knows what else. It always surprises me how quickly these diseases appear.

Watched a little of a programme about Charles Lindbergh. His wife, still alive & talking in 1993, I think it was, I remember liking as presented in W. Graham Robertson’s letters from his acquaintanceship in the ‘30s. But Lindbergh, oh dear. Dim for a start, bigoted for a going- on, & like so many ‘heroes’, totally without imagination. If you can’t imagine danger, you’re naturally not afraid.

Final Summer Dance about Suzanne Farrell, Balanchine’s ‘muse’. I liked her & found what one saw of her dancing, more inspiring. (By the way, a clip from the original Dream suggested that the dress designs were perfectly possible, so it was Seattle.) She is the best thing I’ve heard about B., but goodness, doesn’t he sound hell, & she was presumably presenting his best face.

Our language is English, not Yank English, whatever .. s think. Curiously long-winded – they always say ’Eighty years old’.

Monday, August 23, 1999

A girl, who chewed her hair, has died with a hairball the size of a rugger ball in her stomach. J. very funny describing her visit to Chichester to see The Man Who Came To Dinner. Janet Brown has said do come & stay with me, as she lives near. J. made some definite excuse, I don’t know quite on what lines, but left the impression no doubt that she could never come to Chichester under any circumstances…. so Janet B’s face was a study as she saw J. & Frances at the next table in the theatre restaurant. Which is run by Leith’s now, by the way, & is ‘very good’. As for the play, she was disappointed. I could have told her before she went that she would be, but I didn’t. Those people who trumpet that Shakespeare should be played on the sort of stage he wrote for, never seem to realise that in that case, Shaw, Coward & Rattigan, not to mention Kaufman & Hart should have the sort of stage they wrote for. Any sensible unprejudiced actor would say – I would – that a crisp light comedy is more or less ruined by an open stage. Just one difficulty alone would make it very unsatisfactory. On an open stage you cannot make a clean exit. I can just imagine how many of those crisp exit lines were blunted by either tramping to the exit & delivering them, or delivering them & tramping to the exit, which is precisely why Shakespeare finishes his scenes with a rhyming couplet. Another point that made me dubious was the size of the cast. As so often with that period there are always seven or eight more characters than one remembered, & in this play particularly, more or less every part needs to be played to the hilt, as each one is a ‘turn’ to keep the farcical complexities moving forwards. I think only The National could afford to cast the play as it should be cast: even then it might be difficult, in these television-ridden days, to get first-class people for each part, as was possible in the thirties. Not that I’m at all hopeful that The National can recognise a first-class actor when it sees one. And sadly, Richard Griffiths, who is a good actor, was uncertain of his lines, had no edge, & was possibly miscast.

Tuesday, August 24, 1999

Spent the afternoon in the West End, doing various little errands, & was glad to find I could. Walking is almost normal again, & it’s only a bit stiff & painful when I first stand-up.

First went to the Charing X Post Office, expecting to find it crammed with tourists sending unnecessary postcards everywhere. Not at all, there were only three people in front of me. I paid the £112 electric bill & sent Neil & Lynda’s letter. Then to the National Portrait Gallery for a fresh supply of p.c.’s for me to send unnecessarily to friends. Coward, Vivien, J. Austen, Shaw shockingly has been discontinued. Charles Shannon, god save the mark, in his place. £5 worth, six of Austen, three of the other two. I need some picture-cord, as the Fitton etching fell off the dining-room wall, happily without damage. I went into the picture framers in C. X Rd just before Cambridge Circus. I must remember not to talk naturally to shop assistants. ‘Have you a bit of picture cord?’ Tepid assistant, female: ‘We don’t sell it by the piece’. ‘Well, do you have a packet of cord?’ ‘We have that pack, £1.25’. ‘Right’. A picture fell down. ‘Do you know that’s supposed to mean a death?’ ‘Pardon?’

Then to Murder One, who claim, with some truth, to stock all the English detective stories in print. Got a second Veronica Stallwood, insomnia fodder. On to L. Regent Street through the motley rag-tag & bob-tail not to say squalid, crowds. Which volume of Gibbon describes the detritus of empire in Rome? We are in that volume now. I must read him again.

Then to the ABC Piccadilly, to see ‘Le Dîner de Cons’, well reviewed enough to interest me, though the cinema is a bit suspect. As usual, I had aimed to avoid the rush hour, but usually that is combined with a good film. Oh, dear, oh, dear, it was dire. A farce centring round an intensely irritating man, who actually was intensely irritating, a series of situations that nobody had made convincing or probable, in fact rather distasteful, & all set in the same drawing room so I take it to be a stage play originally. Left as early as I could, & bought Good Will Hunting at Tower Records. Still has Swan and Edgar doors.

Wednesday, August 25, 1999

I don’t know how anyone can argue that violent films etc. don’t cause violence. At the very least, it blunts peoples susceptibilities & gives them ideas.

At the athletics meeting in Seville, there were dragonflies swooping round the award ceremony. A woman sprinter carried off on a stretcher in agony, followed by her whale-like husband. Not an athletic injury, I take it.

How depressing to be American. Imitation language, imitation literature, architecture, manners….

So many accusations of racism are thrown about these days. I don’t think I’m racist; tho’ I have known so few black people, that has not been anything but chance. Kelvin Omard was the nearest to a friend & a dear chap. We’ve lost touch but only as with many others. But I do judge. I could not be a close friend of a devout Catholic, and Orthodox Jew or a bad actor. There would be an insuparable basic difference that I couldn’t come to terms with. Or rather that I had come to terms with before I ever met them.

Moving interview with David Mamet, who is making a film version of The Winslow Boy. Stupid journalists chunter on about how surprising that the author of The Savage etc. etc. should like the mild etc. etc. He said how wonderfully constructed it was, & how well written, & said firmly that good writing simply needed to be respected & followed for the work to succeed. Wonderful, but you have to be able to recognise good writing when you read it, & there are so many people who can’t, – the vast majority in fact.

Thursday, August 26, 1999

So Tony Church’s visit, according to his letter – I could read that much – was over yesterday & I suppose I am safe. I have to keep reminding myself that I have not told even a white lie over this. I couldn’t read Tony’s address, not often one can say that literally, & wrote to Tim W., to ask. He didn’t answer. Then I realised I couldn’t even buy T.C. a drink let alone have him here. So I wrote to Tim again, & told him that, hoping he wouldn’t encourage T.C. He didn’t answer. Oh dear.

A John Harvey detective story from 1991 talks of a ‘portable ‘phone’ – this from a novelist remarkable for his accurate detail & realism, so I suppose it was then.

If only politicians would keep their mouth shut on subjects of which they plainly know nothing. William Hague says that, ‘the Notting-Hill Carnival is the greatest cultural event in Europe’. Tony Blair at least has the sense simply to wish it well.

I picked up a little slip in the hall saying that some florist had tried to deliver a bouquet to Katrina H., &, getting no answer, had left it in the area. And there it was, a large & costly bunch, lilies roses & so on, in the now fashionable tight wide bouquet, the stems in plastic wrapping thick & wide enough to be full of water. It was standing on one of the dustbins in full view of the road. I brought it into the hall, it is disgraceful the way deliveries are left outside these days. It isn’t as if people are getting more honest.

Poured part of my iced whiskey over my foot.

Friday, August 27, 1999

To NFT for the last of J.’s treat films, Young & Innocent. I was struck by how much better my knee was, walking across Hungerford Bridge & along the terrace, & how much more tolerable it was at 72° instead of 85°. The film was entertaining, as long as you forgot Josephine Tey’s excellent & delicately written A Shilling For Candles. The stupid film-buff writing the programme was rude about it & detective stories in general. The Film abandon everything back to the barest bones of the book & a few names. I can’t imagine her books would ever appeal to someone as comparatively coarse textured as Hitchcock.

Nora Pilbeam had a delightful quality, & would have pleased J. Pey in another part, but nothing like her Erica. At least NP was a lady, a much endangered species now. Dennis De Marney would actually not be bad casting for the original Tisdale because there was something weak & self-regarding in him that he hadn’t enough talent & courage to exploit. As it is, he insists on his ‘personal charm’ in the way all second & third-rate actors do, who can’t bear to be disliked by the audience for an instant. Lots of interest in the actors, – two of the cast of the 1943 Heartbreak House, George Marriot, & J.H Roberts, – Boss Mangan & Mazzini Dunn.

How difficult it is to describe a funny exchange between close friends that isn’t a joke. We were sitting in the cinema, looking at the programme, in the subdude indirect lighting from the ceiling. She was at the end of the row, next to the wall, rather out of the light, & I was in the direct beam of a light. ‘I can’t read this’. ‘Have mine’.

We walked across the bridge in amused amity, & she went back to the office to deal with some unexpected work for Stefanie Powers.

Saturday, August 28, 1999

In the H J letters came across one to Julian Hawthorne, N H’s son. At the time he was in great destitution & distress. But what struck me, thinking of the Scarlet Letter in 1840 something, was that he didn’t die till 1934. N H is one of those authors clung to by Americans as an early classic, poor things. Not even minor.

Really I don’t know where common sense goes nowadays. There has been that collision at sea – I thought radar had rendered that impossible, & after all, the sea’s a big place, & sailors have eyes – & there was the east coast with the collision marked with an X. All very well, but the land was blue, & the sea was white. It seemed like a mad West Coast for a bit.

Poor old Channel 4 who has taken over cricket broadcasts, were, in their inexperience, faced with 8 ½ hours to kill, with the collapse of some match or other. Interesting that all sport has no idea that its troubles & its success are based on a misunderstanding of theatre. As in many other walks of life. I find it impossible to watch most ordinary television programmes, the news & so on, because ordinary people try to act, & act abominably as a result. For instance, a doctor in Turkey told us of the terrible dangers of broken sewers, rotting bodies, decaying garbage, typhoid & cholera, with a warm delightful smile flashing on & off. A Cabinet Minister, Nick Raynsford, has a nervous smile that comes & goes with disastrous results.

In the p.m. to Ken-High St. to buy books, guessing that nowadays shopping on Bank Holidays is not as crowded as it used to be, & I was right. Bought the new book about Iris M., a mistake, I think, on John M’s part, but I’d better read it. An evening with I M is a little experience of her real self. A new biography of Winifred Holtby by a female professor of English at Loughborough University. Oh, dear. Thinking of the probable feminism & its predictable boredom. Still anything for a biff at Vera Brittain.

Three detective stories, & a new little book, a sort of spin-off from H. Spurling’s brilliant Matisse. I am delighted that she has told, at novella or possibly pamphlet length, the full story of the Humbert scandal & fraud, which had such an effect at a certain stage of M’s life. Dipped into it on High St. Ken station at once & fascinating. I suppose I like really Titanic conmen, because they have to be actors.

Once again, a practical difficulty with my lovely card. I didn’t realize that the shop was just closing, & one little girl had to ask another how to put it thro’ the machine, & another little girl to look for the invoice pad, & yet another to be appealed to for advice while holding the door to stop any more customers coming in. And an account is supposed to make it easier to ……

Sunday, August 29, 1999

Rang J. Wanted K. But I know he’ll be cramming the work in to be as free as possible for next week. As I suppose it still is.

Monday, August 30, 1999

Interview with Clarissa Dickson Wright, The remaining Fat Lady of a television cooking series. Her father was a famous surgeon & obviously a monster. She said her full name was Clarissa Theresa Philomena Eileen Josephine Agnes Elsie Trilby Louise Esmeralda Dickson Wright. ‘Why?’ ‘Oh, I think they probably got pissed on the way to the church’. Typical nurse to the other fat lady, Jennifer Peterson: ‘Feeling better, dear?’ ‘Don’t be silly, dear. I’m dying’. And did, the next morning. About the funeral, ‘Even A.N. Wilson cried’.

Needing whiskey, gin, tonic & wine, & with only £20, went to Earls Court, the pavements tinged with a little detritus of the Notting Hill carnival. The shops were all open, of course, a great improvement on the past. I am amused at myself. I went to Thresher’s & because there was nobody in there, I couldn’t look long enough to add up, & said feebly, ‘I’ll go & ask them what they want’. I find it difficult to say I mightn’t have enough money & asking for the cheapest. At the Victoria Wine there was a little more leeway, & I got a half of F. Grouse, a half of Gordon’s, & a small tonic & a £2.99 bot. of Chardonnay.

All the more ironic as Thresher’s is Smeed’s from the old days. We had a weekly order from ’58 – ’61.

Finished the W. Holtby biog. Yes, as I thought V. Brittain was self regarding, manipulative, humourless, – after all, nobody suffered in the Great War as she did – & she can see Winifred more clearly than she can see herself. As for W.H., I think she would probably be all right without her pash for V.B. (Imagine living with VB & her husband till more or less the end.) Interested to read of her close connection with Time & Tide & Lady Rhondda. She was a director & wrote for it from the beginning, Notes On The Way, reviews & so on. I liked Time & Tide. I wrote a couple of reviews for it myself, & once cooked lunch for Lady R. & Theodora Bosanquet, L. R. a mountain in a black velvet marquee. A badly put together book, ponderous, pedestrian, only just got through it. I rather liked Shirley William’s appearance. W.H. left in charge of the Brittain children, wrote that the servants were being difficult, the boys being noisy, ‘……& Shirley has been sick on the nursery floor’. After that how could she go on to abolish most grammar schools, & start comprehensive schools?

My right-hand little toenail is deformed & claw-like, caught in the crocheted bed-spread, & nearly measured my length.

Tuesday, August 31, 1999

Hazel rang & read me a letter from Lady Violet P., enclosing a photo of A.P. in his wheelchair, wearing a straw hat. John P. wheels him down the drive most days for an outing. He can’t be easy. A lead statue was stolen from the grounds last week, – I think it was last week. It’s heavy enough to have needed lifting gear & a lorry. Ugh.

At last I could have my haircut. Giovanni back from holiday – stayed at home, so sensible. And, rather un-Italianate, hates the heat as much as I do. Once again I thought to buy some books, do some shopping, go to a film. But it was hot & there’s the rush-hour…. & I went home. As it happened, I was quite glad I did. J. rang, & needed to talk. That friend & part- time employee Shirley?, was found dead by her neighbour in Worcester Park. S. used to come in & do typing & filing & answer the telephone, in between being more or less an alcoholic, & a while ago, having a foot amputated. She has never mentioned any family, but of course, an aunt & a cousin have come out of the woodwork, & asked for the keys. And J. has known her getting on for twenty years. J. told a neighbour to go in & take all papers. S. ‘wrote a lot of stuff she wouldn’t want anyone else to see’. Drunken maunderings? I’m not clear, but I quite understand her concern for stuff about L.O. of which there may be quite a lot as she worked to him for some time – I think that’s how J. & she met years ago – & of course one doesn’t know whether the aunt & cousin might either destroy it or sell it to the wrong people. And what would Joan say?

Caught the English Premier on the Proms of a new song cycle, Natural History written for Dawn Up – show by Judith Weir. Lovely. And D.U just my sort of singer, serious without being solemn, never moves without meaning, a voice entirely spontaneous & entirely in control. Satisfying. From Taoist poems. When you listen carefully to an American classical singer, it is striking that their heart, if they are artists, obliges them to drop the worst excesses of the accent, as it is incompatible with fineness of execution.

I’ve never known anybody who has benefited from a charity.

Wednesday, September 1, 1999

Item on news presented only as if it was charming & delightful – a dog in Australia left a mansion, staff & six million dollars. A white miniature poodle, of course. Not a word of anything but approval.

I wonder what young people would say if people of my age said what they really thought of rock & roll & pop concerts. The abandoned screaming, the mechanical clapping, the absence, indeed of mind, are exactly the conditions that the Nazis & Fascists & Communists exploited with, at first such complete success.

K rang in answer to my p.c. Offering my services, keeping the whole ten days free. Seemed to think I expected to be with them every day…….Dinner Sat or Sun., V & A on Mon or Tues., according. Good.

Thursday, September 2, 1999

Roy rang at five to eight. As it happens, I was having dinner half an hour later. I am always amused that even Roy doesn’t really believe I have dinner at 8. Obviously more cheerful. Wants me to come to dinner, so money is looking up, poor darling.

Ella kept interrupting, & when stopped turned the TV louder. I wonder more children aren’t murdered.

To H’smith to shop. Terrific traffic jam as far as one can see at the junction. It was still there when I came back with the shopping tho’ I suppose it had moved a bit. It is satisfying walking between stationary cars & looking amused at all the selfish motorists. It was even more selfish than usual, as the traffic had not left the crossing clear. The bus was between me & the traffic light, so I could not tell when the lights went green. I didn’t like to risk crossing if I didn’t know, so I was held up for a bit. Disgraceful. But then motorists are.

Trout fillets £1.95, a pound cheaper then cod or haddock. Farmed of course, & I suppose the next food scandal will be devoted to exposing what they’re being fed on. I also got some perfectly good rasps. Reduced. It always amazes me that any rasps. are left unsold.

Re-reading N. Marsh, In Death of a Fool ‘practice’ occurs again and again for ‘practice’ for ‘practise’ .

Thinking of K. expecting Arlete’s mother tonight, for ten days. How odd it all is.

Friday, September 3, 1999

The main headline in The Standard in three inch caps., ‘Actors Flea West End Fire’. We don’t often get into the headlines these days. A fire in Earlham St., above Belgo’s, & The Cambridge & The Shaftesbury had to be evacuated – I don’t quite know why. By the time I’d come back, the headline at 12:45 was ‘Diana Driver Blamed’. Much more comfortable for the papers.

Another 12-year old girl is pregnant. Her 14-year old ‘lover’ says he has had 11 ‘lovers’, & blames explicit sex education at school. Both cases in Sheffield & Rotherham. That doesn’t surprise. If anything crude is going to happen, that is one of the first parts of the country in which I would expect to find it.

In the p.m. to Old Brompton Rd. & some books. A proper biography of Marie Lloyd, Tim Rice’s autobiog’, Nijinsky’s diary in full at last & probably unreadable. The new John Harvey, I believe the last of the Resnick series, – he seems to be sticking to it – & also the first, reprinted. Read quite a chunk of the Rice, which is v. readable, not to mention full of veiled, put-downs of A. L-W. in itself enough to turn the pages. TR is very charming, very self-deprecating, very toast of a public school. How well I know the type. The self- deprecation hides bottomless smugness, the charm masks an overbearing need to be liked at almost any cost, & certainly doesn’t at all preclude the stiletto being inserted frequently. A quite extraordinary not say obsessive need to ‘keep in touch’ appears so often that I marked it in the fly-leaf. More or less everyone he was at school with, everyone he’s ever worked with, he either is trying to ‘get in touch’, or is regretting he isn’t in ‘touch’. He starts a private cricket club to have lots more mates to keep in touch with. Over twenty refs. I’ve never seen the three shows he wrote with A L-W. So the lavish quotations from his lyrics came as rather a shock. He quoted some adverse notices as if laughable or prejudiced. Well – lame, land, vapid, with little or no hear – take your pick.

K. rang to arrange Sunday dinner. Wed. V & A etc. Lovely.

Saturday, September 4, 1999 Sunday, September 5, 1999

Arrived promptly at seven. He let me in, & as usual nobody in the sitting room. Gave him the books for his holiday, the first Harry Potter, & The Big Sleep. Then Arlete rushed at me, bringing her mother with her. Quite unassuming, smaller than Arlete, square of figure & face, smiling & pleasant – if you saw her behind the counter as you walked into a café you’d know you’d have a pleasant welcome & the cooking would be good. Button thro’ dress to mid calf, off-white dralon with small black pattern, flat shoes. They stayed standing by the open door until K. told them to sit down. I think she has little idea of conventional manners without being in the least rude – that’s where the unassuming comes in. She does not impose herself at all. He brought in a bottle of Moet & Chandon, & said to me, ‘I know’, & brought a g & t. We clinked glasses. Shortly after A.’s brother rang, & K. said, ‘tell him she can ring back’, but was somehow ignored. He turned to me & said quietly, ‘oh dear, it costs about 2p a minute ringing from here, & costs him about £1 a minute’. Silly of K. not to see that the man wanted to pay for it, with K. paying for everything else. I put in my notes ‘feckless’. I don’t quite know why. But they did say he was 35 & his wife mothers him…..His mother laughed a lot of that. Talking of paying for things, there was the newly done chair, in an excellent gold & cream finely figured brocade. As K said, done to a very high standard. Cost: £650. Reasonable these days. K. a bit doubtful about sinking into it too much. That’s good for the future. Perhaps it needs a back cushion for now. To my surprise the two Arletes – her mother is Arlete too – suddenly got up to look out of the window. K. said, ‘she wants to see the ice cream van’. Arlete said, ‘yes I took her to the Holloway Road & we had a cappuccino. She’d never seen such a thing before’. Shortly after Arlete went out to look at the dinner, her mother went, too, & didn’t come back till dinner was served. (That’s what I meant by conventional manners.) K. started laying the table, & said ‘I may collapse later. I’ve got a really bad cold’, & I could see he was pretty tired. So I said ‘I should go upstairs & die now’. He lasted all right. I suddenly realised there was subdued music outside. K. said it had been on for a bit. Too rough looking young men had been fiddling around a small car when I arrived, & sitting in it, completely ignoring them, a pale girl with that insolent closed face of an alienated working-class girl. The radio or whatever, on full blast. Half an hour or so later, the boys had gone, but the girl & the music was still there. Poor K., it would be exactly outside, probably the only house, where anyone would mind. He went out & asked her to turn the music down, & she quite meekly turned it off. You never know these days. K came back in, saying, to my amusement, ‘typical working-class’.

So K. & I had a useful twenty minutes or so. I asked about Aldeburgh. It seems to have gone all right as a little break, but I noticed a further disillusionment with Pete Sinfield – is that how you spell it? I forget – he had an argument with him about the justice of the BBC licence fee, – on which I was rather more on Pete’s side then on K’s, tho’ this wasn’t the moment to go into it, the words ‘arrogant’ & ‘he doesn’t listen – not as you’re listening now’ – & so on. Interesting.

So we had dinner. I was quite surprised at how little she ate, a small slice of breast (chicken) a leg, a head of broccoli, a few peas & one roast potato, no rasps or straws or cheese – but even more surprised at no wine. One always thinks natives of wine producing countries…..Arlete brought in a dish of black olives & we talked of K not liking olives & I ate three or four, Arlete sen. said, thro’ A jun, that she couldn’t understand K. not liking olives. And then didn’t eat any herself. When K went out to get more wine – we drank – A. said earnestly, ‘the two people I love most in the world can’t talk to each other’. It was a bit difficult, but sweet. I wonder what character might be revealed if we could speak to each other? She seems fairly mild & bland.

I went off with a monster bottle of gin and five delicious bottles of wine, Chablis Premier Cru. Etc. No one like him.

Today, Sunday. I stayed in all day. And discovered that the Vikings, from whom we are descended, liked privacy, the archaeologists tell me. I mean of course, and very Northern Scots are directly descended from Vikings not just Britain.

Oh, one last thing. A deep need can bestow the gift of tongues. Early in dinner with Arlete still in the kitchen, K. lent towards Arlete sen & said, ‘Batutas’.

Monday, September 6, 1999

Announcement that ‘Jill Dando laid down for fourteen minutes before the alarm was raised’. Oh, journalists. They make it sound as if something criminal or negligent had happened by this delay. Absurd. In a quiet smart street in the morning, most people would be at work. The few passers-by, with the hedges & the fences, & the body only available if you looked sharply at right angles towards the front door, might easily not have seen. And English people are first in the world to allow someone to be dead drunk on their front step if they want to be. New play for four old people at an old peoples home for opera singers at The Albery. Donald Sinden, Stephen Cole, Angela Thorne, and – Alec McGowen. He looked just as usual, tho’ I didn’t hear him speak. Possibly a silent part?

Tuesday, September 7, 1999

K. rang at eleven. Got musicians here, so…. ‘Plans changed. Think we’ll go to Brighton tomorrow & do the V&A – Harrods thing on Friday. The weather is changing, & it’d be silly to go to Brighton on a wet day & the V&A on a sunny’. ‘All right. So now you know why I said I was keeping the whole ten days free’. Later, after waiting for the forecasts to be sure, rang Arlete & fixed it. Talked a bit about Brighton. Odd place for them to like. Although it could physically be very beautiful, it has an ineradicably tacky air, even, I always feel, a certain evil in the air, as if a criminal is never far away.

Rang Harrods restaurants. The operator was surprisingly rough, pleasant but quite homely. As she spoke I half remembered that there were cafés actually in & around the food halls. That’ll do.

Finished the Marie Lloyd biog. quite well done, with a difficult subject, as, not surprisingly, there is little documentation besides posters, programmes & reviews. A largely sad story, except onstage. Of course I see the reason for the sort of popularity she had – of Garland. Some interesting snippets – ‘Virginia Wolf called her a ‘complete artist’, Arnold B. thought her overrated. As for Belle Elmore, whom she knew, no wonder she adopted a pseudonym, as her real name was Kunegunde Mackamotski.

A whole programme about allergies, which are apparently widespread now. Peanuts, for instance, that I commented on before. I’ve never known anyone with an allergy, except Donald & his asthma which we moved to B’mouth to cure. He did grow out of it.

Wednesday, September 8, 1999

9.9.99. I suppose it’ll be the end of the world again.

Started the Nijinsky diary. With full academic trimmings & just as well, considering Romola’s finagling, & the silliness generally in the ballet world about facts, not to mention him being a ‘gay icon’. A couple of pages of footnotes just for the introduction. I imagine Nijinsky was the same age as Daddy.

Rang Roy about dinner this week & got him. Oh what hell answering machines are. Told him about the plans changing. Now I know perfectly well that R thinks nothing of change of such arrangements – I mean, he won’t have done anything about Friday. Not that I knew he was considering Friday, as he never rang back, ‘we were in the Isle of Wight’ – Bembridge, good gracious. But, as always happens when K. is involved, I really don’t think I imagined it, but there was a bit of a withdrawal, as if K. isn’t worthy of me, or some such thing. But it’s so delicate. After all, it was his place to say Arlete’s mother is only here till Tuesday.

Thursday, September 9, 1999

(Later. No, today is 9.9.99)

Rang J. to hear about yesterday. She was with Stephanie P. & then Maggie S. & then Stephanie P. ‘Oh, I feel humble’. Maggie S’s gardner had to be overlooked. She is down in Salisbury playing Betsy Trotwood. She should be good as that grotesque figure – her style is rather Dickensian, which is why I don’t really like it.

Michael Portillo about to put himself up for Alan Clarke’s safe seat at Kensington & Chelsea, & possible follow-through to challenge W. Hague, has ‘confessed’ to homosexual affairs at Peter house in the early ‘70s. There have been very heavy rumours for years of what he gets up to so I suppose he had to confess to something. Really where will it end?

In my upper ten dormy at school only one boy didn’t join in the communal wank, & he was a caricature of a nerd with pebble glasses & a thorough weed. Probably became an international nuclear scientist. And at Cambridge, it wasn’t much different. Both school & College were still strictly one sex. I was so amused to see Anna Ford on the news questioning Harvey Thomas about the confession, with all the air of it being a rare occurrence. Her late husband, Mark Boxer, was up in my last year. I knew him well, & acted with him at least once, perhaps more, notably in Julian S’s Lady May, as the Cecil Beaton’ish figures assistance, camper than Beaton. My last vision of him was during a party at Kings, where I glimpsed him in a back room being ardently kissed by Dadie Rylands. I remember being impressed by Dadie R’s courage. There was no one there to expose him, & he knew it. I wonder if Anna knew it. I was sad about Mark’s early death. He was so full of life, & must have been furious at leaving it. Well, and he was very ambitious. I wish I’d met Anna Ford, so that I could see why they married. I can’t tell at all from just seeing her read the news. Except obviously hidden fires. Were they his children, in which case they may start being interesting about now? I don’t mean her children aren’t going to be interesting, but didn’t she have a bit of a boring first, you might have told the genes? Not that you can ever tell.

Finished Ex Libris by Anne Fodiman. One of the most charming & touching books I have ever red, & I can see it will go with me down the years.

Rang Arlete to see about tomorrow. She says her mother has a bit of a cough, which she contributes to pollution. Possibly. Brighton should have blown that sort of cough away. They went to an Italian restaurant where ‘the waiters were very vague’. They went on the pier, & she & K. ‘had to go on the rollercoaster’. Oh, they’re real tourists. No mention of the Pavilion or the Lanes.

Read an enticing notice of a couple of young Indian dancers at Edinburgh. They are classically trained but are now combining elements of traditional Indian dancing into an individual programme. Good & fruitful. So I was delighted to see one of them, Akram Khan given five minutes between programmes on Channel 4. Personable, which is always a help, & most interesting. Visibly trying to make sense & shape out of the ugliness of modern life.

Friday, September 10, 1999

Phew! A tiring day.

The trouble is, that nowadays I don’t sleep without a whiskey, but if I have one, I’m afraid of oversleeping. So a poor night. Although it was quite a bit less hot, it wasn’t cool, so I knew I would have to wear a jacket, or the sweat would show v. badly. This makes me sweat much more, but what can you do? And a tie …… so I got to Harrods at about ten to twelve. The usual ghastly strings of wandering dowdy trippers. What would May Slade say? The first little surprise, – how long is it since I was there? – a great hump in the road outside the tube exit, some sort of works to do with the tube, I take it. The next surprise was the traffic railing along the whole length of the front. So I had to shuttle between the main entrance & Hans Rd corner where taxis now drop. Happily A. called from their car. Arlete sen. had one arm crutch, but walked well, & quite as far as me. We walked through the handbags, the costume jewellery, the stockings, into the food halls. We came in at the fish display. Rather more minimal than I remembered. The elaborate Edwardian Fountain used to be smothered in whorls & whirls & pyramids & piles of fish. Now there is just a tasteful catherine wheel in the middle. Otherwise it all seemed much as usual, a little flashier with sit up bars in corners for tapas & shellfish & so on, no use to us. I’d said Grouse to A before, but they only had old grouse, or young grouse, the size of a rather small poussin, so we decided not, as even they were £12. I regret to say that A. took photos of the fish display & other things. I said, ‘I’m not standing in & pointing’. Arlete sen. was most interested in the fruit, which happily was by the Caffé Espresso, up some marble steps to a half floor. Too familiar waiters. ‘Enjoy’. We ordered toasted sandwiches – ciabatta bread, rather tough, – mine with a kind of Italian croque monsieur, cheese & ham, they had a seafood, some salad in a nice enough dressing, a fairly generous glass of wine for Arlete & me, fresh orange juice for A sen., & three coffees – bill, £55. Goodness they eat slowly. We were there getting on for an hour. Then we wandered round the shop. Advancing into the fashion floor, A. saw the magic name Chanel, & advanced towards it with glee, saying, ‘I’ve got Kevin’s credit card’. I saw one or two things, a very well cut suede skirt, not easy. colours, all browns & grey, mid mostly. Another floor up we went through lighting & into haberdashery, shading into gifts, a lot of rubbish. We found the pet dept., no dogs, for some reason, their cages were empty, only one Persian kitten, the rest being macaws & parrots. There was a careful (permanent) notice that all parrots etc were bred in Britain, & none were wild. One large cockatoo, I think a Moluccan cockatoo was in very fine feather, of a most delicate subtle pink. And cost £3,500. We caught a glimpse of the Christmas decoration dept., which has been open since the beginning of Aug. Ugh. The book dept is Waterstones now, so is much bigger but not so civilized. Out of it there is a gracious red carpeted lobby, & out of it, open to gracious marble doorways with gracious marble steps, & gracious brass legends reading respectively, Ladies & Gentlemen’s washroom. (We had been given three washing room vouchers with the cafe bill.) There is a charge of £1 just to go in, & goodness knows what more in the way of other charges, tipping & so on. I waited for the V&A where it’s free. Mrs. C. bought nothing & never seemed even to consider doing so. She decided to walk to the V & A, & I was able to guide them quite well through a street I once knew so well. The silversmiths, The Bunch of Grapes, the Slade’s old flat over the International Stores, D’s old flat in Brompton Square, Felton’s, Holy Trinity, & Brompton Oratory.

At the V&A the voluntary payment has long gone. A got in free on her student card – good, – & we paid £3 as OAP’s. It should of course be entirely free. I went to the loo. We tottered along the Indian Gallery & there was Dress. That was very exciting for me, as I can talk about & identify clothes without having to think about it. I was amused that, by another little surprised, section where my suit is on show, was ‘No Entrance’d’. Fortunately it was well in view, & we slipped through the barrier for a closer look. My name is spelt wrong on the display card, – of course.

We went upstairs to the modern galleries. They’re being added to all the time, so, for someone of my age, there’s the eerie feeling of one’s everyday life vanishing into a museum. I was intermittently interested, but I find it very exhausting to go around a gallery or mus. with anyone else, even Edna, because of the stopping & starting & standing not at your own pace, not to mention having to stop & look at many objects you don’t want necessarily to look at. They couldn’t have been sweeter, but nevertheless…… of course it’s wearing having to be translated all the time, but that’s nobodies fault. The only difficulty with A. sen. is that she almost never says anything to be translated back; tho’ she laughs & responds charmingly with her face, she never asks a question or offers any comment. So I wasn’t surprised when A. rang K. towards the end, & she handed me the ‘phone. ‘Hullo’ he said in a hollow voice, knowing how I’d be feeling by this time. ‘Huluuuu’, I said. ‘Well, go home’. ‘No, no, I’m enjoying’ it & I was. And then he said, in a wistful voice, ‘I don’t suppose you want to come to dinner?’ He was doing venison casserole. I couldn’t.

I put them in a taxi & went home – only four stations from Harrods – & found myself walking home with my shirt cuffs dripping, literally down in my hands. My shirt was black all over, through my vest. I had to hold my jacket together to hide my wet shirt on the tube. When I undress I found the part of my tie round my neck was wet through a layer of shirt. That’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t just go on with them to K’s. Imagine sitting there as wet & uncomfortable as that for four hours – until eight, still with that laboured conversation. Imagine going home, bathing & changing & occupying an hour and a half – how? – & setting out again. Yes, if I were K’s age. I think he’s possibly a bit beleaguered.

By the way, the shop at the V&A was doing the usual buzzing business, about three times what the museum was doing. The things on sale were possibly marginally better than at the other museums, but not enough for ‘the greatest Museum of the decorative arts in the world’.

Saturday, September 11, 1999

East Timor. The town, Dili, ‘trashed’ – as usual complete idiocy as both sides have to live in it afterwards.

Curious, almost unconscious gesture of young girls under stress of surprise allied with emotion covering their mouth with one or both hands. It is plainly almost involuntarily & equally plainly, is essential. I associate it with simple, more or less stupid school & shop girls. Which is why many of us found it so repellent that Princess Diana was obliged to do it. It is certainly something that I have never seen anybody with even the most rudimentary intellectual equipment needing to do. It’s almost as if they’re frightened of something rushing down their throats. Or as if they mouth may reveal something perhaps faithful to the outside world…. And boys don’t do it.

Rang D. Marr, said he was ‘very ill’. He’d been sick all week. I’ve never known anyone have so many symptoms without developing a decisive illness. Still, this time he did say he couldn’t talk any more, which he hasn’t done before.

Watched The Last Night of the Proms. Willard White sang Some Enchanted Evening as exquisitely as it’s possible to sing a rather sentimental song. He raised it to the highest points possible without overvaluing it, as Bryn Terfel does on that CD S. gave me. Old Man River equally good. Jeremy Irons sang five Noel songs, for the centenary, & it was combined with Poulenc’s centenary, too, & his organ Concerto. Wouldn’t Noel be pleased? Legitimate, at last? The songs were 1) Mad Dogs, 2)Nina, 3)2Oth Century Blues, 4) Mrs. Worthington 5)London Pride. J. Irons was an excellent choice, the right type, the right voice, the right frame. Unless he had been a real star, known to everyone, who knows what the Prom audience mightn’t have done, in face of a doubtful musical perf? Tho’ not much more doubtful than Noel’s own, despite N. having perfect pitch.

Have I said about Alan Clark? In the dim world of politics, he is called a wit & a personality. When I got my lovely card, I bought his much praised diaries, & found them so clumsy & bland I didn’t keep them. Compare them with his father’s work, his memoirs, for instance, – there is no comparison. No doubt in the tiny rather illiterate political world, his tepid gossip seems exciting. Interesting.

Sunday, September 12, 1999

No answer from J. Away again, I suppose.

Hazel mentioned an old schoolfellow of hers who’d died, had been an actress, & did I know her? Rosemary Towler. It struck a chord, but I can’t remember the tune. ‘She had long black hair, & a hare-lip, but quite an attractive harelip’. She might have been someone who came for a special week or play somewhere. Noone to ask.

Monday, September 13, 1999

J. rang, & we had a long talk, in her lunch hour, about the Thursday film night. The film is Eyes Wide Shut, the sort of film whose snob value, as opposed to its actual merit, drives The Academy audience wild. She was dreading them bringing extra guests without having noticed a letter saying nobody would be admitted without a membership card owing to demand. Poor J., she has no real authority, being only that poor little idiot Charlie Schneers secretary. And of course he & Bill Thing don’t keep the rules themselves. In the end there were 10 empty seats, the only person who suffered was J., & ‘I’ll give it all up, except that I want to see the films’.

It’s wonderful to find that I can go out & walk & go to a film & not worry about getting back. To Never Been Kissed at Whiteleys. I’ve always liked Drew Barrymore, & been sad to hear of her rackety life. Her name has a sentimental attachment to me, not surprisingly. I wonder how many people in London, no Britain have heard of John Drew. Or probably even the Three Barrymore’s. This could have been a charming romantic comedy. But neither the scripts nor the direction are right, or good enough. Again & again a possibly funny line was blurred by badly timed cutting. As D.B. was executive director, some of the blame must go to her, & also to her performance. Sometimes she is enchanting, & a smile breaking across her face can catch your heart. But equally sometimes, she has a sort of laugh snuffle, & one or two other gaucheries which are not as charming as she thinks them now, & will become less so as the years go by. Perhaps she can’t take criticism, because she certainly need someone to tell her of her faults & her many merits. One of the faults is building up her brother’s part, played by David Arquette, who gets second billing. In a romantic comedy, the hero and heroine should be top billing. A disappointment.

On the way home, there was a typically showy sunset, with long bars – scarlet & orange, in between sheets of turquoise & bluey-green. I remember my thrill at fifteen, reading a modern novel, where the young man of the house joined his to be girlfriend on the terrace, blows out a cloud of cigarette smoke, & throws away, ‘another hideous sunset’. Well I was in reaction against a father who started a poem, Over a sapphire sea’……

Further down Margravine, I passed the young black man, with that velvety very black skin that I have realized is ‘youthful bloom’; he was carrying two huge bouquets of white lilies. I could still smell them when I was three houses passed him.

Tuesday, September 14, 1999

Rang last night to wish Arlete’s mother a good journey. I expect darling K. will be a bit relieved.

That eighty-seven year old spy reminds me mutatis mutandis of Mary L. Made up her mind on everything too early, & stuck to those opinions with remarkably narrow-minded obstinacy. Long dream, at the cottage again. 11-year old burglar, W.1 deputation boiler blew up. Tho’ there was no boiler at the cottage. I say ‘long’ because it seemed to last some hours. Since the discovery of REM, I suppose you can tell how long a dream lasts.

Hazel sent back the ‘Coppelia’ tape, & I played it again with much pleasure. More or less perfect. Peter Wright just lets the ballet be itself without forcing.

In the p.m. to new film ‘Go’ at T. Court Rd. Delighted to find that part of the building site on the left hand side where those pre-fab looking shops were, has opened up as a Sainsbury’s. (I suppose those shops were temporary structures on a bombsite, only they were there for fifty years!) This makes the T. C. Rd. cinema as convenient as The Renoir, where I can do my shopping on the way home. I do hate having to go off somewhere else to shop, or trailing to H’smith & back.

A really amusing little film, lively dialogue, a lot of talented young American actors, some with names I knew, who were obviously in the film because they liked the script & the director, Doug Liman, as they have played much bigger parts elsewhere. What I liked about it as well, is that nobody got away with wickedness. Cleverly, one of the sort of gang, was a cockney boy I remember seeing in Grange Hill. I was struck by his strangeness in the middle of the crowd of young Americans. For instance, he smiled in a way no American would. He is ‘chirpy’ in a way no American’s. Odd looking boy. The film was sharp & quick, so I was glad to see an audience of about forty, good for a matinee.

Patricia Hodge said, on a travel programme, that you are a mountain person or not. How true. I can see them in a film, & see that they are beautiful. But I would never choose to live near them. Much too overbearing, like skyscrapers.

Wednesday, September 15, 1999

Saw Patricia Cornwell interviewed. A really ugly voice, nasal, harsh, & worse, almost completely uninflected, & complete vulgarity of pace. She told the interviewer that her ‘mentors, surrogate parents almost’ were Billy Graham & his wife. No wonder I find her novels unreadable.

‘Modern technology’ rushes ahead. I hope I will die before it’s ridiculous excesses takeover. Internet shopping, for instance. I suppose we will finish up never leaving the house for anything. Imagine not being able to choose the exact lemon you want. It’s summed up to me by more & more channels of communication, & less & less people with anything worth saying. Already the digital TV box will become compulsory in five or six years time.

Caught five minutes of Hollyoaks. A villain had trapped four young people in a closed tank of water, to swim until they drown. One man let off about it, & a girl snapped, ‘Get a hold on yourself. Where are all in the same boat….’

Oddly, a specially subtle & beautiful sunset, an even wash of the palest most delicate pink over the whole sky.

Thursday September 16 1999

Another shooting in America. This time in a church, by an unreligious fanatic for a change. English reporter said that there were 87 deaths from shooting every day in the US. And the gun people still reacts by saying if only they’d been guns there, they could have stopped him. What a country! I cannot believe it will not come to grief, their young people are now so totally ignorant. Even more shocking, ‘hand-guns’, as they call them, do not have to be registered in any way.

Friday, September 17, 1999

Picked up the James letters & got into them again. The Aspern Papers was real – a Boston scholar had a hard time with Claire Claremont. Vernon Lee’s Brother told him about it.

Long chat to Derrick M. reminiscing. Pleasant. Left a message for darling K to wish him a safe journey & a restful time.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 164

September 18th 1999 – November 1st 1999.

Saturday, September 18, 1999

He didn’t ring back so I suppose they’ve gone. I know I’m silly, but I can’t get over the need to say goodbye in case. You can’t expect a young man to see that except as a useless courtesy. Oh, I hope that week will rest him. He needs it.

A £50 pound cheque for When The Boat Comes In on Sky Gold. A relief, as I think I can now not ask K. for the ‘phone bill. And my tax return is a worry, but I suppose it will pass like the other worries.

Forgot to record a change of address card from Ian Targett, with ‘long time no talk’, & ‘hope all is well’ on it. An address in S.E.5. Actors always move in first. It must be five or six years? more since that play at Croydon. I realised that I.T. was a calculating boy. He looked down an address book, remembered my connections, & thought at least I might ask them to supper. I expect he’s got a new girlfriend. I shan’t forget having a drink after the show with K & him, & he, adding up our relationship to see what could be made of it. And K saying in response to ‘you know one another well’, – ‘we go back a long way’.

Still on the James. He describes the Sargent portrait of E.T as Lady M. in deservedly glowing terms, but says of her ‘beautiful as an image, but abominable as an actress’. By her own witness, E.T was not good as Lady M., though she had enough technique to make something of it, especially the sleep-walk scene, always the easiest, like Ophelia’s mad scene. I hope he meant her ‘abominability’ was only sparked off by Lady M., even so it shows the wrong sort of fastidiousness, not to say ignorance, in dealing with the theatre. He never came to terms with the gifts that are necessary for the theatre, in particular the immediacy of it, the necessity for action & dialogue to be caught now at one once, without explanation or qualification. Conversely, he also didn’t understand enough, the equal necessity for feed lines & so on, in a medium when you can’t turn the page back. Heavens, he didn’t in his later work, pay enough attention to it in his fiction. Most of his plays are adaptations of his own stories or novels. It is significant that he never adapted The Turn of the Screw or The Aspern Papers, the two works that have been very successful in later years. He couldn’t tell of course, there are all the TV adaptations & films, one or two of which I’ve been obliged to be in. My verdict on them all would be my pronouncement on The Golden Bowl, one of the ones I was in. If you could read the G. B & understand it, you couldn’t possibly want to adapt it for TV.

Mary L. showed her pleasanter side today. She had mentioned a series about Keats, in quarter of an hour episodes on radio. The young actor playing Keats was David Tennant, & had I heard of him, because he was so good. The well-known rule that once a name is pronounced, you meet it again almost at once, was working overtime. The next day I saw his photo on a film poster, starring in a new Hollywood film ‘LA Without a Map’. I opened the paper on a notice of him playing Edgar in Tom Courtenay’s Lear at Manchester, – Tom C playing Lear, good heavens – & finally being interviewed on London Today. Good-looking, big eyes straight features, Scots accent, very charming. Asked how he would cope with stardom, he said ‘manfully’. I rang to tell her, & she was quite touchingly pleased. She hasn’t been born again, of course. She told me how wonderful the letters were, ‘the last few especially are very moving’. ‘Oh?’

What to do bit of ‘Basketball Diaries’. The young hero, in the classroom, had a waking fantasy of machine-gunning his master & the rest of the class. And they say film violence has no effect.

I think I must try & note my meals more. Like Woodforde. Tonight for instance, dinner was almost entirely phallic. Sausages, courgettes, followed by bananas. Even the potatoes were rather elongated.

Sunday, September 19, 1999

The Guy Domville fiasco only underlines James’ mis-judgement of the theatre, mis- judgement in every direction. He spent a fairly prolonged apprenticeship to writing, but it never occurred to him to do it with playwriting. Intelligent theatergoing is no preparation. Even then his judgement of acting was narrow & finicky. I can test his judgement as I saw quite enough of the same actors to be able to tell. If you can call an actress abominable, who impressed Shaw as one of the three or four greatest actresses of the century, he has clearly lost the scale of his judgement. Or never found it.

Mary L. rang to say she was going to ‘Gabrielle Blunt’ as she irritatingly & coyly calls her, for the inside of a week. I said to Hazel that I wonder if they have a Quiet Weekend theme week, with only the costumes & dialogue of QW allowed, & lectures on The Place of Quiet Weekend in World Literature.

Hazel tells of Natalie’s sense of the dramatic. She told me, to my surprise, that it might be in the genes. Her father was on the Halls for some years…. Kim’s parents, – I’m not clear which way round – are respectively, cousins, or related to Dan Leno & Marie Lloyd.

I wish there wasn’t so much denigration of England & the English these days. I know there were so many years of repellent jingoism, but isn’t that long past? I find it unhealthy that favourable statistics never seem to become headlines. There was one today. We have the lowest road death rate in Europe. There the figures were – 22 per 1000, 12 per 1000, & others in between. Ours are six per 1000. Why isn’t that splashed on The Sun? Mean little envious minds.

Monday, September 20, 1999

Picked up my Aspern Papers, a dear little edition by Martin Seeker, published in 1915, as part of a series of his novellas: Turn of the Screw, Figure in the Carpet, Daisy Miller, Lesson of the Master & so on. Very good, of course. (How intriguing to think I met Martin Seeker – yes, he was a real person, I can hear myself saying to some idiot.)

All the spy stuff – I’ve never been able to be even momentarily interested in spies. People without a centre leave me cold.

Raisa Gorbachev has died. I always liked the sight & sound of her, & counted it one of her merits that she was so unpopular in Russia. When he said ‘we can’t go on living like this’, I bet she said it first. And anyone who can get right up Nancy Reagan’s nose, must be on the right track.

In the p.m. to see new film ‘A la Place du Coeur’ at The Renoir. In Margravine Gardens, past a boy who struck me as a possible burglar. About 14? pointed face, walking slowly, taking out cigarette, gave me a rather shifty glance, possibly expecting a reproof, truanting? – it was five to three – he made me suspicious enough for me to watch, without him seeing, whether he turned into my bit of the road or not. It was the slow looking around walk that made me think I’m right, & his eyes. I memorised his face.

The film was good, not as good as the one about the primary school head, but that was exceptional. One of the idiot critics gave it as a compliment but it was like Ken Loach. No French man could be like that prejudiced dishonest self-conscious poseur.

J. rang with long talk of Mr. Scheers shortcomings. Nothing much to say, except comforting noises. When someone intelligent is obliged to work for someone stupid…..

Tuesday, September 21, 1999

More H. James. Many letters of dissection & praise to fellow authors, not a single one of whom is first-class. Well this is a strongly selective book, & it may not be a true picture of his judgement, but surely he would include a critical letter to Hardy, say, if there were one? Interested that Edith Wharton received an ardent thank you for a letter on The Sacred Fount, but privately she declared ‘I could cry over the ruins of such a talent’.

Card from Portugal from Arlete on behalf of her mother, although she has come back & going to Sardinia since. I am amused that she spelt my name wrongly, Mckay. You might have thought me pointing out the incorrect card at the V&A might have fixed the right spelling in her mind.

Lovely to see the UN soldiers cheered in East Timor in a relieved reception nothing could counterfeit.

Wednesday, September 22, 1999

A great relief a card from S. quite clearly in good spirits. The show is better, even a hit, in very small letters. The only reason he has room for on a postcard, is the absence of the composer of 78, Adler. But I think another help would have been Leslie Ash, instead of Ulrike Jonsson. L.A. may not be a particularly distinguished artist, she is a commonsense pro. She was Italia Conti, she’s acted ever since, she understands work, & she’s practical. So I think she’s been a help. Right on cue, she was interviewed on London Today. Did all that was needed, but the excerpts from the show were ill chosen. There was a chorus number at the beginning of the whole programme, but they are always just a snatch. There was a little seen between Leslie Ash & the man, obviously in the middle of a number, but of a dryish recitative sort, with no sweep of music or scene. The other was a snatch of a patter song hung on Anita Dobson. Odd, I should have pushed Steam Heat, Hey There, and/or a big chorus scene with a set or two. Still, a relief to feel that it may be more successful than I feared.

Disaster film – how many of them there are, based on simple people being glad it’s not them – I watched one bit because it was in 1953. Floods & winds swamped Canvey Island & some of the East Coast, quite a few deaths, masses of homeless, & damage. I was in Torquay, out of work & miserable, we had no television, so it was as if I’d heard of it for the first time. Wasn’t that better?

K rang, bathed four times today, villa on the beach, sea bass & bream, warm, living, loving, vivid.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

A chunk of the loo fell out as I sat on it, part of the edge. I thought it was safe to pull the plug. But know. It seems the water is projected around the edge & down. As part of the edge was missing, a jet of water shot across the room. I was fascinated. I think I can learn to contain it. I can’t pay for it, & I can’t ask him for any more.

Excellent interview with Mark Morris. I love his work & the sound of him. There was a chance of him taking over Scottish Ballet, but he quite regretfully decided against it. If only he could take over the Royal Ballet. He said of it, very sensibly, ‘I know plenty of people who shouldn’t take it on, but I don’t know who should’.

So I got myself to Gunnersbury Station & Roy arrived almost on time. We went first to the house, so that I could look at the garden. He’s made some excellent basic changes. The shady shed in one corner has gone, & as always the extra space seems more than the size of the shed. There is a generous circle of newly turfed lawn, with an attractive path of variegated brick round it, leaving four sizeable & attractive triangular beds at each corner all joined together of course. I must look at my roses, as there must be many new varieties.

Indoors I saw the children. How quickly they change! The little round head in the cot, is now on a little fat body in a highchair. I’m not much of a one for babies after the first glance, but I have to say he seems a really genial character. I was greeted by a broad toothless smile, which seems to be a fixture. Charming.

I wonder if I shall live long enough to see whether he turns out a happy boy & man. Marian said it was ‘an easy pregnancy & an easy birth, & here he is, making me take twice as long in the supermarket, because of the oohs and aahs’. Ella, on the other hand, simply stares & hardly responds. Except to try & interrupt Roy’s & my talk in the garden. Roy drew my attention to a banana skin on the path & Ella with her hands over her mouth hoping we’d slip on it. They both said later that Tom was simple, as in uncomplicated, & that Ella was ‘complex’. That is parents speak for ‘difficult’. Well, perhaps it’s temporary. Goodness, how do people live with children.

So off we drove to Kew. The glasshouse is more or less the first shop on the left, mostly glass, as you might expect, & very plain &very sparkling. Polished wooden floors, cloths & napkins White, graceful glasses & silver, & that’s all. Delightful waiter, who talked a bit too long, but only in his enthusiasm to describe the dishes. I had the warm wood pigeon salad with truffled egg, little beans somewhere, & tiny croutons. The egg had been deep-fried so was golden outside & deliciously runny inside. Wood pigeon a trifle firm. For me it always needs a long slow cooking. Main course red mullet over some German pasta – can it be German? – & some clear soup that needed a spoon at the end. Not entirely successful. Pudding iced banana & chocolate parfait. Alternate circles of chocolate & ice cream with little bands of perforated chocolate around & about. No sniff of banana, & the whole a little on the hard side. We had to leave the table at 9:30, as they have that detestable double shift system. Actually we had finished & didn’t feel hurried, but then we don’t usually eat at 7. I don’t think K. would put up with it. I said to them that K. did mean to have them over, but he really had been so busy. Roy made a not entirely humorous scornful noise. I did not like to go on to say that K. was so busy because he had deadlines, five or six jobs all at the same time, and C4 people coming round to push & decide. That faint resistance to K is there – I don’t think I imagine it.

I was able to get straight on the tube, & was home before ten. The interesting thing is that I decided not to mention his work to Roy, as so often it seems to go wrong, & it is depressing for to have to say. So I didn’t, & Marian didn’t, & rather to my surprise he didn’t.

Friday, September 24, 1999

Shambhala Healing Centre, Faith healers. Suitable name.

The Prime Minister’s son’s school is short of money due to government cuts, & has asked every parent to pay £30 a term. Comic. It’s only ten minutes or so away. Is there scope for a kidney & ransom scheme.

Oh, audiences at sport. Oh well, I suppose a football match is still better than Christians & lions.

Saturday, September 25, 1999

Hazel rang today instead of tomorrow, & could only talk briefly, because she had to clean, & prepare the spare room & Cook all the meals for the weekend, because the children are coming over tomorrow & then a friend is staying for the week. She talked a little above herself, & more intimately as one does, a bit above oneself. I admire her for still living that conventional life, – so many things she has to do, I’m sure, are against the grain, & making her more strained. But I could say nothing. She is very conscientious.

I wish Yanks had been the original inhabitants of America. Their ridiculous hysteria would account for the poker face of red Indians.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

K rang twice! First to say they were back, & sorry not to have rung before. We talked of Sardinia, villa in a sort of complex with bar, pool, & so on, came with flights & car hire £800 odd. Rather cheap, I suppose. ‘Food better than Portugal’. Rather sweeping to dismiss a whole country, but I dare say true. So loving & sweet. Rang an hour or two later, after going through his letter file & finding the letter I wrote about my will. I’ve seen something about intestate pensioners being buried in a mass grave – I forget details, & I’d found the solicitors had moved, so I thought we ought to get it back, so that K. could always put his hand on it. Hilarious. Told him about Kew, & he reminded me he had particular association with that road, because he stayed in it the first time he came to London with Jenny Sheppard, at the age of 14. ‘One of those big houses on the road that leads to Kew Gardens’.

Monday, September 27, 1999

Paid telephone bill by emptying the Halifax of all but 14p., & taking a bite out of my pension. A difficult week.

Roy rang in answer to my message about a gardening book. Told me his father’s ‘great thing was roses’. So I have something to live up to. It’s strange that I am a sort of father to K & so on. I don’t mind being that sort of father, but I never wanted to be a real one.

K rang again to tell me he’d forgotten what he was ringing about, then told me about a mouse that had eaten a hole in that loaf that’s always on the sideboard. ‘What do we do?’ I said a trap was surest. ‘But aren’t they cruel?’ ‘They’re quick. With poison they go away & you don’t have to pick them up, but they die more slowly’. ‘Oh’. ‘You can get poison at a supermarket’. ‘I don’t think Waitrose admit the possibility of mice’. ‘An ironmonger, then’. I reminded him of a bit of a plague of mice when he was living here, & how he stood on one of the dining room chairs & screamed. I told him our two mouse stories, which I’m sure I didn’t write down at the time. Long ago, at our first flat, in Earls Court Square, a wartime conversion, the bathroom was a pokey place, the bath in a niche in the wall, so you had to get in over the taps, a basin with a gas meter underneath, & a loo next to it, angled across the corner, a small space of floor & a door opening off, directly into the kitchen. This wouldn’t be allowed nowadays.

D. was sitting on the loo, when a mouse crawled wearily out from under the gas meter & died between her & the door. She gave a squawk for me, & when I got there, pulled up her knickers & lept over it to get behind me & look over my shoulder, like the heroine of a horror picture looking over the heroes shoulder at the yet unconquered monster. I scooped up the mouse with the fire shovel, & was about to put it down the loo, when she screamed, ‘if you put it down there and I shall never go again’. So I had to go down two floors to the dustbin…. And again at the cottage this time – & I must repeat, D was really frightened of mice – a mouse was running round, & I said jovially, ‘of course, I quite see why women are frightened of mice. Look at their shape, the mice, I mean. They’re frightened that they’ll run up you know where. That’s why men aren’t frightened. Now if there was a mouse hole running round the room…..’

K finally remembered that he had rung to say Saturday was no good, but Sunday? Thinking of asking Roy & M a fortnight on Sunday. Wonder if I should say anything.

Tuesday, September 28, 1999

Another long talk with J. She’s worried about Trevor thing, the novice agent using her office. She had offered two days a week, for no charge – he’s a friend – but it has stretched to four, & it’s interfering with her work. She’s nerving herself to tell him. What a good thing she didn’t charge. Poor J she’s having to nerve herself a lot these days, with idiot Schneer & all. Watched & listened to Tony Blair’s main speech at the Labour conference. He seems to talk a lot of sense, to have done a lot of good things & intending to do more, & to be a man of considerable capacity. I don’t think there’s anyone I could tell that to. Hazel because he’s Labour, Mary L. because he’s not Labour enough, K. & everyone else because they don’t believe in any politician at all. How exhausting it must be to go to a political conference – all that mechanical typing.

In the p.m. to buy books. Really the gap between the review – pages & the bookshops gets no better. They’re mad. Bought the Sutherland diaries about Callas – no, not Joan – the new Magnus Mills novel, two detectives, & two copies of Ann Fadiman’s lovely little book, tho’ I’ve no money to send it to either of them. Money even tighter. I wonder I’m not more depressed. But I’m not.

Wednesday, September 29, 1999

H. James impresses me more & more as a poorish judge of contemporary literature, nearly always preferring, say, Compton Mackenzie to D.H. Lawrence. On Conrad’s Chance which he praised as a success in comparison with his recent novels, said recent novels being Nostromo, The Secret Agent & Under Western Eyes, even Hugh Walpole wrote in private, to Pinker that he thought James misjudged in his ‘Novels & Novelists’. H. W. couldn’t talk. He took care to praise anyone who he sensed would be famous & successful, which naturally included some writers with actual merit. What is interesting is that tho’ James was obviously attracted to H.W. – His letters begin Darling Hugh – but wrote about his writing quite accurately rather on the lines of Agate in Ego. I doubt if H.W. would for instance, have praised hardy in such extravagant terms, if Hardy had started out in H.W.’s time. How surprised they’d both be that H.W.’s work has sunk without trace, & as far as I know, not one of his novels is in print, knighthood or no knighthood. And they don’t even rate bad television adaptations. Oh dear, I shouldn’t say that, or they’ll be everywhere.

So sweet, J. rang to say she was passing Robert Dyas in St. Martin’s Lane, & bought some rat poison for K. and she’s sending it to him ‘in a jiffy bag’.

I am annoyed to find that I wrote nothing about Marian after our evening at Kew. She is as perceptive & sensitive as anyone I’ve ever known. We talked of marriage or partnership, as theirs is, – the simple fact that both of you have to be, in more or less degree, selfless enough to change, is unrevealed to all too many people. She is so funny & responsive, & takes two young children in her early middle age apparently in her stride.

If I’m short of whiskey, I don’t sleep. A certain sort of author is essential – Conan Doyle, for instance. A combination of a master storyteller and a simple & rather absurd provincial Doctor, – & I don’t mean Dr. Watson – results in a delicious bathos. Arthur Marshall quoted this in one of his articles in the S. telegraph or the New Statesman, I remembered later, after coming across it fresh in The Sign of Four. ‘As we drove away, I stole a glance back, & I still seem to see that little group on the step, – the two graceful, clinging, figures, the half opened door, the hall light shining through stained-glass, the barometer, & the bright stair rods. It was soothing to catch even that passing glimpse of a tranquil English home’. Insomnia’s reading demands no necessity for concentration.

Thursday, September 13, 1999

Rather touched that a rather second rate Noel remark of the audience on Call My Bluff, a television programme. I need hardly say they got the provenance wrong. It was told me, fairly circumstantially, in N’s lifetime, & the remark was made to his godson, Richard Olivier, then almost nine or ten, on the Downs at Brighton. (I mean, of course, the two dogs fucking.)

Mysterious. I was checking through my possibly blank videos, & came across the Queer as Folk tapes. I had kept them up here because by some mistake, the tape with the last four episodes on it had turned out to be showing something quite other. I played it through to see exactly how many episodes I’d missed – & found all four of them there. I must have been drunk.

Someone rang the bell at 8.0 a.m., & and then at 11.0 ‘ish again. I did not answer because I never do, except in the very rare exception when I’m expecting someone. In any case, it was probably for Katrina H., – her visitors are always ringing my bell, goodness knows why. This bell ringing happens comparatively often, but no one ever leaves a message or a card. I suppose that means it’s only hawkers.

J.G. being dead. Latest bulletin, Donald Sinden, being interviewed, said he’d been given a dinner at the Garrick, & was in good form. Naughty S.

Friday, October 1, 1999

No daily papers, just The Stage, which so often doesn’t come. Rang Martin’s, ‘the papers were late arriving they’ll be round soon. People are ringing every two minutes’. Er – yes. The papers eventually arrived about 1.130, with another copy of the stage. No drink at all. Not much food.

Saturday, October 2, 1999

Sent letter to S. for Monday, & from K & A with his permission. Had to use one of Karen’s stamped envelopes, because I hadn’t the money to buy even one stamp.

At this time of year, the low sun sends shadows of the chimneys onto the blinds enough to start a ghost story, or be a perfect backdrop for The Family Reunion.

While I was getting my lunch – a combination of the last two bits left in the fridge – an egg & half a courgette, a tastier omelette than I expected – I half heard the blurb of a trailer – ‘specially if you fall for an umpire’.

Football looms so absurdly large now, I thought, – there’s a new series. Turned round & caught the title, Shivers of a Vampire’.

In the p.m. to buy forty or fifty pounds worth of books with thirty-two p. in my pocket till Monday. Went to Earls Court, & bought a few more books. Three detective stories & Cleansed, a play by Sarah Kane. Her three plays have been much praised, tho’ they sound awful. She was treated for a severe mental illness for some years, & committed suicide three or four days after she was saved by medical staff from her first attempt. Unbalanced & self- defeating, she has un-impeachable credentials for an authentic Royal Court success.

On the way back, went to look at the old tarts refurbished house & saw that there are now three estate agents boards outside, one of them from the agents next to the butcher. Went to see if it was up there, & it was – £450,000…..

Sunday, October 3, 1999

Awake till 6.0 a.m. Dozed off & woke up at 11.0 The Tory conference is opening on a bright note. J. Archer up for London Mayor, & forbidding all questions at his press conference. How even they can be taken in by him, I don’t know. Yes, I do, he’s a millionaire. Then there are the memoirs, Major & Lamont, Major stabbing Lamont, Major stabbing Thatcher, Lamont stabbing Major. Comic.

Hazel rang after having someone to stay for the week. But the call could only be short because of someone or something coming round, next week it’s Natalie for the w. end & so on. It makes me feel quite tired myself.

Monday, October 4, 1999

Awake till 5.0. Up at 8.0, read the papers, & slept till 1.10. Probably the espresso at K’s didn’t help, but I do love it & love that he can make it.

An altogether heavenly evening, not a cloud in sight. He’s taking a year off from the sort of stuff he’s been doing, & concentrating entirely on songwriting. ‘I’ve made enough money not to have to bother for a year. Anyway I’ll probably be offered a couple of Survival Specials. They take a fortnight & I get £5 or £6,000, so I’ll probably do them’. ‘With Pete Sinfield’? ‘Yes, but not exclusively. I’ve five or six lyrics of his, I’ll work on them. But I might start with a nonsense song for a group like the one who did Barbie Girl. The boy-bands seem to write their own stuff now’. While he was in the kitchen, I asked A about P. S. & she obviously doesn’t like him. ‘He’s so cynical & bitter, & he doesn’t listen’. An entrancing trio of qualities. I told him later of the money difficulties. He gave me a cheque for Katrina upstairs & £10 besides the money for the taxi & said, ‘you only have to ask’. Well, I do, as often as I can bring myself to. And I may have to. Hoping for a cheque this morning, I got the TV licence, which is now over £100. I might have something come in to pay it, – if not, K. J. rang to chat, & told me she’d been to Chichester for the weekend, killing birds with stones by staying with Janet Brown, & seeing the last night of Easy Virtue, starring one of her clients, Greta Schacchi. She has now seen Janet B. fairly clearly, I’m glad to say. She has noticed how dim she is. As for the play, it was pretty dreadful. Apart from the casting & acting & directing. There is the same wretched disadvantage as more or less crippled The Man Who Came to Dinner – a proscenium player on an open stage, the exit–tramp–line thing all over again. As for the acting, all sounded too inferior to bother to comment on. A play built on quite subtle class & personality distinctions, combined with it being a noticeably inferior example of Noel’s work, for old-fashioned at the time, needs very careful treatment. In fact, it needs such careful treatment, that the idiots who run Chichester shouldn’t have revived the play at all.

The evening was diversified with a few extraneous amusements. During the interval, J. heard a woman saying to her friend, as she caught sight of Geraldine McEwan, ‘look there’s Maggie Smith’. When she went back to see Greta, she was given two full carrier bags, & an old wine box, full of fan mail. I hope she knew J. had a friend’s car to go. I was amused that she said, judiciously, ‘I don’t think Greta can act’. As she was coming out, she listened for the audiences comments. Out of the little silence, she heard a woman say, ‘when was sellotape invented?’

Tuesday, October 5, 1999

One of the E. Standard sellers at the tube station has retired. He was my sort of age, & had obviously retired from something else before taking up The Standard job. He was of the old sort. I dare say a NCO in the war, always cheerful, always called me ‘Sir’; once he’d seen me throw away the pink financial section, he’d take it out of the paper before he sold it to me. Two or three times a year he’d have a holiday abroad. I don’t think he needed the paper job, he just liked people. The last few weeks he seemed to shrink a little. I think he was losing weight. I hope he was only tired. I never knew his name.

Notices of The Pyjama Game in both papers. I quote: Telegraph, ‘crude caricature’ ‘Leslie Ash not much of a voice’, ‘Graham Bickley… all the personality of a paperclip’. ‘John Hegley – ‘sheer dismal unfunniness’. Independent. ‘when the fourth lead is the best thing in the show, you know it is in trouble’. Etc., etc. Poor S. after all his work & all the mess. If only he were better at casting, if only he didn’t like caricature, over the top-ness, whatever you like to call it. Look at his production team. They are distinguished people on the page, but David Bintley has nothing but ballet experience, and an obvious inability to use anything but first-rate ballet-dancers. Frank Stella is a distinguished artist, but has never before designed a theatre set. S. said he didn’t want to direct again – will he be asked to direct again? I don’t know the possibilities any more. I can’t see it being a success on any level – after all, the subject is not attractive to start with, & these notices make it less so. I can’t think the others will be much better. ‘Steam Heat’ made little impact. It made Elizabeth Seal a star (sic) forty years ago. I thought nothing of it then, & I can certainly not see S. thinking anything of it either, or having any natural feeling for how to stage yet. But then he has no natural feeling for the big audience, & should stay away from it. But oh I feel for the poor little human being, the dear warm friend.

A sizeable chunk of the bathroom ceiling has come down, unfortunately almost entirely into the bath, which makes it easier to clean up. Glad I wasn’t there.

Hazel rang to thank me for the Ann Fadiman book. She apologised for being slow in going to get something to read me, not her knee, ‘but the cat had clawed my leg so badly that the blood ran down, & I had to stop it in case Geoffrey saw it’. Really, pet lovers are odd.

On a children’s series, some boxes of fancy dress were brought in for a party, with the name Walter Plinge: Costumier on them. I haven’t seen that name for years, but then I’ve scarcely seen a rep. programme for years, & it’s a name hardly likely to turn up in the West End. From time fairly immemorial, it’s the name that’s been used for various reasons on a programme. For instance, if the programme goes to press before you know who’s playing some pretty small part, or, if an actor is playing to different parts & wants to conceal it from the audience or if there’s a character who doesn’t actually come on, but you want to persuade the audience to believe he might. I wonder who thought of using the name.

Among all the failure of safety measures on the railway, some of it can be accounted for by great expense, – billions have been mentioned, accounted for, but not excused. But I was amazed to find that the two-way radios so strongly recommended after Clapham, have still not being fitted to all trains. Surely they aren’t prohibitively expensive? You would have thought such radios would have been fitted as soon as they became available.

Rather startled by a commercial voice-over beginning, ‘my hair is alive’ – it turned out, with colour. Striking, the way these absurdities get through so many checks.

Wednesday, October 6, 1999

The death toll in the crash may be 170. Certainly the worst since the war. But an interesting statistic, there are 3000 deaths on the road every year; that is more in one year, then all the rail deaths, since & including the Tay Bridge disaster 120 years ago.

Saw Annette Crosby & Tristram Jellinek passionately kissing. An Unlikely coupling if you know them both. Perhaps its ‘knew’. Didn’t Tristram die? I think he did. Aids?

Thursday, October 7, 1999

A broken backed day. I told J. I would come & see the film. She rang to say she wasn’t seeing it, as she had to do some shopping for Maggie S., & would therefore have to work tonight. She has talked to Trevor Thing, & made some sort of way against him. Goodness, he’ll be a successful agent, he’s such a creep.

Rang Hazel because the stair-basket she said she sent me on Monday, hasn’t come. Turned out I’d got it wrong, – she asked the firm to send it me. It’s for putting things in that are going up or down stairs. I don’t at all know what it’ll be like. She had already read the Anna Fadiman, & we had a good old rave over it again. She’s going to read it again at once, & lend it to her friend, Joy. I said Lady Violet might like it.

Friday, October 8, 1999

The unpleasing cant phrases used in the continuing coverage of the rail crash, stick in my throat. ‘Loved ones’ used to be thought ludicrous, & still is to me. I don’t want to hear again, ‘they are trying to come to terms with’ – a euphemism presumably coined by ‘councilors’. Hazel & I were congratulating each other on being too old to have come in for the counseling lark. As H. said, ‘what would they have done in the blitz?’

The new management at the paper shop delivered The Daily Mail instead of The Independent. Amazing as one was a tabloid & the other a broadsheet. However, I was glad of it, as it had in notice of the PG, which I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. Bad of course, as was the one in The Stage. I think the worst thing is that all the notices I’ve seen so far, leave one with the impression of a rather flat first night. More sinister, a little gossipy column described a new musical on tour, &, in some ghastly jokey phrase suggested that it had its eye on the Victoria Palace. I have no wish to see it. I shall wait to see what happens before talking to K. I don’t want to see it just to tear it to shreds with S., as it seems I would have to. If it came off I could say K. had been too busy to take me, which might be true.

Saturday, October 9, 1999

Dream. I was in vaguely criminal company fleeing from justice, in a Rolls-Royce fortunately. But the fleeing turned into a rather difficult walk-through hilly country to – a football stadium. Not much of a reward. No D or K. but no Lalla or Mummy or Daddy, either, – a great treat. How odd dreams are. I don’t think I’ve been in a Rolls since before the war. I’ve never been in a football stadium – no, I’ve never even seen one. And I’ve never been in a Rolls, or anywhere else, with criminals. As far as I know.

An interview with Angharad Rees in The Telegraph. Her eldest son, 25, what has been killed on the motorway. Very sad, as he seems to have been a boy of some capacity, a first in philosophy & about to start a small theatre in Glasgow. A. Rees looks about ten in a savagely airbrushed photo on the balcony above the little jewellery shop she’s opening in Belgravia. Now I'm sure she is wretched about her son, but the reporter’s description, ‘a sort of absence, the not-quite-there-look of someone in shock’, amused me. That’s the only way I have ever seen A. Rees look.

Hazel rang because she can’t do tomorrow – again. Geoffrey has to see the doctor about his hiatus hernia & inflamed oesophagus, first I’ve heard of either. He’s going to have that awful thing pushed down his throat. Another friend has something put down ‘to stretch his oesophagus’. Oh dear. The cat had come in with quite bad gashes on his back legs, ‘perhaps the barbed wire, perhaps just caught by a car’. Vet, collar cuts down collar till he can still lick, more vet, more trouble, cat very troubled, H. very troubled, ‘I took tranquillisers’, – (I think she was serious) & so on. She certainly talked longer & more emotionally about the cat. Oh dear. My first oh dear was for Geoffrey. She did say, ‘well, you never know what they may find’. About Geoffrey

Woke at four this a.m., read till eight or so, dozed off & woke at twelve thirty. Good, so that I can get to Monday. Feeling vaguely off-colour, but I think that’s no money, boredom & no drink, see no money.

Sunday, October 10, 1999

Dream of a car crash, a red car into a blue car, on the other side of the road. Ran away so as not to be involved. Rail crash?

Lovely article by dear Tom Stoppard about his Czech relations, his Jewishness, his Czechness, & his Englishness. It finishes ‘I was still Tommy Straussler, but English was my only language when Ken gave me his name, three weeks later & long before he asked for it back, Englishness had won & Czechoslovakia had lost’. I was moved by many things in the article, his balance, common sense, exquisite sense of justice. I cried over this phrase, ‘my half-sister (but I never call her that.)’ Beautiful.

It’s curious, in these latter years I often have to turn modern cartoons off, as much for huge pictures, as it were, coming too close, & awful violent sounds. I can’t quite decide whether its got worse or I’ve got older. Probably both.

K rang to say ‘it’s a minute to 8 & you’re probably dishing up & watching something’, ‘yes, otherwise its perfect timing’. ‘Well, just to tell you, Roy & Marian are off, – Marian didn’t write the date down & they’re off – ‘to Sicily’. So much for the get together. Interesting – was it really Marian’s mistake? Told about the P. Game, & he agreed we’d wait to see. Work going well.

Just made the food last, with a S. Nicoise, & a bit of stale bread, the last two bananas, & a half glass of wine. A nice shot of Laphroig, but not enough to sleep. Woke at 1:30, read till five, dozed, woke at 8., read papers, dozed & woke at 12:30, so it’s Monday in a rollover….

Monday, October 11, 1999

So. I might as well have written all thro’ the night.

Dream around 7:30 a.m. Crinolined figure in room, paralysed with terror. Me, I mean. Although the figure was only trying on clothes in front of the mirror on top of the white little chest of drawers, & was momentarily joined by two similar figures, I finally overcame the paralysis, & rose to sitting position, whereupon the three figures vanished like a cut in a film. The extraordinary thing is that I suppose some idiots would think that those figures have some actual existence. I suppose it comes from the same need as religion, – you don’t have to decide yourself.

So this morning when I was a bit hot, I came in here & turned on the television set about four thirty & caught an ITV announcement about a series of Shakespearean (sic) plays. ‘Andrew Davies of Pride & Prejudice fame is developing Othello’. Producer is sure they’ll bring ‘something new to Shakespeare’. It’s inspired by the success of Leonardo Di Caprio’s Romeo & Juliet.

Katrina upstairs caught me just back from shopping, & said the council want the front hedge cut back, – well, that’s all right, tho’ I rather regret the hips. She also said her mother was worried about the tree & the house. I don’t care much about the tree – I didn’t plant it & it is killing the plants under it. She was very polite & mild about it. I am lucky in her. She even said she’d go half with the cost. I’ll see what K. says. He’s quite capable of coming over & doing it himself. Yes, I am lucky. Is this the third thing after the ceiling & the lav?

Tuesday, October 12, 1999

In one of Deborah Crombie’s detective stories, which I’ve been reading in my insomnia, there’s a character called Paul Grisham. Turn the page & it’s John Grisham. Which is the name of the sort of bestseller author none of us can read. It just shows how fallible authors, proofreaders & publishers editors can be. D.C. is American & lives in Texas to prove it. But her books are set in England. They are pretty accurate – she has lived here, in England & Scotland – but with curious lapses, only a few, but still surprising. It’s perhaps to be expected that she keeps ‘color’ & ‘theater’ but I don’t understand why a character saying she was going to wash-up when she was going to wash & repair her make-up, wasn’t picked up by her, or someone.

I suppose Tony Blair is so unpopular because he is so successful & went to a public school & he is a happy family man. He doesn’t seem two faced to me.

Cut the hedge or rather the huge white rose, back with secateurs at about 11:45, in the dark.

Wednesday, October 13, 1999

On the principle of telling about my meals, I had no lunch at lunchtime, as I had again slept badly. I had two cold potatoes & a cup of coffee at three thirty. In the evening, two young small haddocks with a poached egg, haddocks grilled, courgette, pots.

The copy of The Provincial Lady in Wartime that Hazel promised me, arrived, & was uniform in its good prewar buckram with my others. Unlike my own vanished copy, which was in un pleasing blue rexine. It was the second book I ever ordered by myself, at school in 1944 or 5. The first was the King’s English. Read it in one delicious gollop, even tho’ the tone changes towards Nov 1939, & you can quite see she couldn’t have gone on with it. I wouldn’t expect most people would be able to read the diaries who are too young to remember before the war.

Jane Laportaire on an interview programme, exhibited a dyed head & a little bald crown, as well as ‘I’m turning into a nutty old woman’. Now the hair might be accounted for by being on tour with a one-woman show about Maria Callas. ‘The nutty old woman’ was, & is, her own creation. Goodness, she is a silly girl.

Further to Tom S’s article, I wonder if there is a difference between half siblings who are from the mother or the father. Coming from the same woman seems to be closer, more complete than from the same sperm. But perhaps not.

BT called again, ostensibly to explain some new scheme, really to sell something. Bit her head off. Rang 1471 back for interest, & found she’d rung at 13:13. Unlucky for her.

In the p.m. to Whiteley’s to meet J. to see new film Election, her treat. Gave her the Ann Fadiman book, & she lent me some more of the Cat ‘tec stories. & a novel by a writer new to me, Anne Fine. Glowing notices from everywhere, including one or two people I’d actually believe.

The film excellent. How curious is this development of films set in American high schools turning out to be more or less the most interesting yank films of the year. This is the most distinguished example. This is an artificial comedy, in the proper sense of those words. Subtle stylised dialogue, delicately heightened acting, & as perfectly cast in every part as you could wish. Written & directed by the same man, Alexander Payne. The leading girl, Reese Witherspoon, is to be watched. She is married to Ryan Philippe. From what I’ve seen of him, & now her, she picked him in her jaws & worried him to the altar.

Thursday, October 14, 1999

Economy & saving the environment. Picked up one of those disposable cigarette lighters in Margravine, it lit. I am using it to light my gas fire, by lighting those long matches-stubs left over from last year.

Interesting little survivals in speech, in this case, two suffixes. I heard a man say, ‘I couldn’t stop him like’. The ‘check girl in Safeway’s said ‘bye bye now’. They’re demotic – no educated person would use either of these locutions. The first is, I think, Northern, tho’ I can’t chart how it originated, or what it is a vestigial form of. Second is Southern, I’d say, & ditto.

Some BBC office has complained of, ‘pin drop syndrome’, – they want more noise. They are being provided with tapes suggesting human movement & laughter & voices in the distance. Before I die, I’m hoping to find a tape or CD, which will create a little cone of silence around me. In a hospital ward for instance.

£24 for everything till Monday.

Friday, October 15, 1999

Ian Ashpole. Interestingly unmodified name. Why hasn’t it become Spole or Aspool or something? Of course it may not be a pole of ash at all.

Oh I do love politicians looking as silly as they are. Summit meeting, all at the usual desks round a square. In the middle of the square, rows & rows of large pebbles. Finland, you see.

Saturday, October 16, 1999

£50 cheque from The Sweeney. A temporary relief tho’ I can’t use it till a week on Tuesday. Saw someone called Bill Geraghty, a genial young Irishman, with a typical Irish appearance, curly black hair, rather blurred features, uneven teeth, interviewed. He is playing Jerry Lee Lewis, the rock & roll star in Great Balls of Fire at The Cambridge. He said how hard it was to be at The Cambridge the first theatre where he ever went backstage. He was five. His mother was in a play with Ingrid B. & Michael Redgrave. ‘Ingrid gave me some toys. I don’t remember her or the play, but I remember the toys’. Now that interested me, always on the lookout for something pleasant & innocuous to talk to Mary L. about. Obviously it was ‘A Month in the Country’, when she was understudying Faye Compton. Or possibly ‘Captain B’ Bounds Conversion’ which MR wasn’t in……however, she said immediately that it must be Joanna Dunham, as always didactic to a degree. Joanna Dunham was a pale contained classically featured blonde – think Grace Kelly – & difficult to see as the mother of the Irishman I described unless she had a taste for rough trade, – well, I did say Grace Kelly. Still, she did marry someone called Harry Osborn. ‘Yes, it must have been Joanna Dunham’. I foolishly described the young man as being an unlikely….. I got a blast for snobbery. When I say she’s half educated, I mean, like Malk, she’s quite incapable of examining evidence disinterestedly.

What’s the difference between morals & ethics?

Just as I was thinking I’d write a note to John N. to say I don’t want to be taken to smart restaurants but I would like a chat every now & then, he rang up. Lovely. Much cosy chat, when he revealed that he’d just prised £3 million (or possibly 3 million dollars) out of Walter Annenberg, & he has to find £15 million more. For which I presume, he goes to America for a week at the beginning of November, & then we meet. Much talk of his awful brother & my awful brother. Very sweet about my poverty, ‘don’t hesitate to ask, you mustn’t be in extremis’. If K. is a son, John is a brother.

Two contrasting interviews on television. Barbara Streisand came over as intelligent, funny, responded to the accusation of control freak by saying, ‘I am an artist. A painter controls what goes on his canvas completely. So do I’. A perfectly respectable reply. All the same, Clive James, the interviewer, revealed before the programme, that B.S. had insisted on overseeing everything, the flowers, and the lighting, all very well perhaps, but – she kept him & his crew waiting for five hours, before the interview could begin.

Then, in the Heroes of Comedy series, there was Thora Hird. I worked with her once, & the near-saintly smiling old lady between clips, is as much of a performance as they are. I have very seldom met such a ceaseless avalanche of completely self-absorbed monologues, such a mountain of egotism. Not that I deny her great gifts. It’s just that it’s a little dispiriting such gifted practitioners of my profession can be such contemptible human beings.

By the way, to my surprise, Felix appeared on it. Looks older, – his clothes are beginning to look too big for him. He spoke fluently. He believes in Thora because she’s his biggest & very valuable, client. Don’t speak to me, Thora.

Sunday, October 17, 1999

Big interview on the front of the S. Telegraph with Big Van & Corin R. They’re doing Song at Twilight at The Gielgud. You would think that Noel’s views & what passed for his philosophy would be inimitable to three very lefties – Kika Markham, C’s wife is the third – but perhaps your political views can be put aside for your father’s lover. To be fair, V. has much more sense about the theatre than about politics. Not that it stopped her cutting off the interviewer’s ‘I believe the play is based on Somerset Maugham –’ ‘I know nothing about Maugham’, – goodness it’s thin. It was then, what must it be like now?

Finished the Book of Revelation, reluctantly. It is very fluently written, but rather repellent. I do not at all mean the subject – well, I do – or the overt sexual or sadistic details. I mean the poor little narrow mind behind it. Thomson his name is. I also read at a sitting, a vividly done picture of four sisters, Tell Liddy by Anne Fine, given me, as I now know, by Janet. Good. Leafing through the Delafield biog. again, I smiled at the photo of Lady Rhonddha. She was in a black suit – a white trion at the neck only – against a jet black b’ground, so that her scale couldn’t be seen. She is the largest woman I’ve not quite been able to get into the same room with.

The extraordinary pointlessness & conspicuous waste of motorcar racing is neatly symbolized by the squirting waste of expensive champagne, as an expression of celebration.

Monday, October 18, 1999

Obituary of Jerry Jarrett, whom I haven’t thought of for forty or so years. We were contemporaries at Cambridge, where he was rather on the fringes of the theatre set (‘Fringe’ hasn’t got the sense it has now!) For instance, I can’t remember anything I saw him act, if I ever did. He was tall & would-be suave, with a rather awkward round shouldered tense body. His delivery was sub George Sanders, & altogether his persona lacked suppleness & flexibility, so that I’m not surprised that he was only an actor for a moment or two. (One of the headlines was that he’d been in pantomime with Tony Hancock – Poor Jerry. That was probably a hideous humiliating experience.) But, against all this, he was a genial, kind, mild man whose only interest in being waspish was the tone of voice that he had nervously acquired.

I knew nothing of his life – were we ever alone? I don’t think so. So I was interested to see that he was of fairly humble origin. After the Hancock Panto’, he became a teacher, & after ten years or so somewhere, went to Eton, though too late to have a House. There was much about his encouragement of his boys to act, of his own assumption of Gilbert in his own – oh dear. But there was a further interest. ‘In 1985 Jarrett retired to Shropshire, living in a cottage beside the house of his old friend & colleague Raef Payne…. The hospitality which he & Payne dispensed together’. R. P. was a pleasant looking rather sleepy young Etonian, John Barton’s closest friend. Jerry was gay I think, but if Raef was I never heard of it. Perhaps he wasn’t & perhaps they weren’t a couple, & they don’t seem to have actually lived together. All I know of Raef’s career I rather despise. He was at Eton, at 19 he was at King’s, which is Eton-on-Cam & then he was back at Eton as a master. Heaven’s, like Michael Bishop…. As for Jerry, his obituary ends with the coded words, ‘He never married’.

Started the Magnus Mills, & have read the first seventy pages with great pleasure. He has brought off the second novel very well. All the same it is on much the same theme as the first one, & his third must move on. Perhaps he could tell us about the buses.

K. rang for J’s address. He’s thanking her for the rat poison. Funny about spelling her name, remembering my trouble, & getting it a bit wrong. The dear thing.

In the p.m. to new film Head On at Whiteley’s. It had goodish notices, & was the recommended film in The Independent. Poor stuff, without a single un-clichéd moment. The main young man, who was gay, seems to have a perfervidly perverted taste for very unattractive men, a large paunchy Oriental, a sixty-year old with a grizzled beard – when he did get into bed with a comparatively presentable man nearer his own age, he hit him in the stomach, possibly at the point of orgasm, & was turned out onto the landing, still stark. Possibly he had some kink that my boredom had made me miss. It was written & directed by a woman of course, & they sometimes have the strangest ideas of attractive men.

In the gents one of the cubicles had a notice on the door saying ‘this convenience is out of order. We are sorry for the inconvenience’. & in the half open door were three full size bright red traffic cones with Caution on them in big black caps.

Tuesday, October 19, 1999

Bought a bottle of South African wine. On the label explaining it, that we are treated to now, there was a further riotous development. ‘Do not overindulge for it may be harmful to you & those around you’. Fancy.

J. rang to ask me to ask K. if he knew a musician who could play at Joan Plowright’s b’day party. To be held in someone else’s house. She asked me ‘because’, she said, ‘it’s not my area of expertise’. She proved this at once by not knowing whether there was a piano or not, – ‘can’t we get a violinist or something?’ I pointed out that a violinist would need a pianist, whereas a pianist could manage alone, & was probably more use to not being listened to. Rang K. He said he didn’t know anyone himself any more, but Claire might, as she still played in an orchestra. Rang back later to say that she had a string quartet, hire £500 a night. Rang J. to tell. She countered with the disgraceful news that the academy committee’s findings were being completely ignored by Mr. Schneer & Bill thing. She’s going to give in her notice. Quite right. They are impossible. I think Mr. S. is getting a bit senile. Comic interlude when I asked if she’d got K’s card, & she said ‘oh, is that his? I thought it was Keith about the rats.’ He writes a good card. ‘Thank you for being my cat’.

The Chinese leader is being carried around to various places. One of today’s places is the Globe. (Isn’t it a bit new?) I’d like to have been a fly on the wall to see Mark Rylance’s face when he was obliged to meet the wicked Communist. Perhaps he had a diplomatic cold?

Wednesday, October 20, 1999 Thursday, October 21, 1999

Another plump envelope from S., with another lovely article by Tom Stoppard, a lecture he gave in the states on technique & interpretation in The Performing Arts’, a title he makes proper fun of. Delightful stuff. He rang up as I was shaving & said Karen was ill – that’s why I hadn’t heard from either of them. It seems she has little feeling for ‘the show must go on’, & takes to her bed at the drop of a phlegm, or the threat of diarrhea.

In the p.m. to take Mary L. some more books, a tiring chore, but I feel virtuous. As usual, her power stretches out to delay & overcrowd the tube, & to arrange that I get two cheques this morning that I have to get into the Halifax today. I waited ten mins at Picc. Circus just to get back to Green Park, & tramp down to the Jubilee line. I had to break my journey at Picc., to go to the Halifax in Lr regent St. When a train eventually came in, it was, at 3:15, as crowded as the rush-hour. I can’t stand for long, so by the time an empty train came along, it was well after 4:15 when I got to Mary’s Edwardian mansion block, quarter of an hour from Willesden Green station.

She let me in with the entry-phone, & I went up in the lift to the third, & top floor. Her front door was open an inch or two, & she called come in from the sitting room, also open only an inch. She is frightened of the cold (sic) even on the third floor of a centrally heated block. She was unusually amiable, & looking a bit older. Her cheeks are dropping. She gave me four of my paperbacks to take away, & only one was mine. One was even a Jeffrey Archer…..

The result of all this, was, after staying a proper half an hour, that I would have to avoid the rush-hour. So I thought I’d go on the bus to H’smith. I waited a quarter of an hour for it, & didn’t get to H’smith till 6:15…. Still, I always like driving through a fresh part of London, tho’ perhaps ‘fresh’ is not the word. Willesden high Road is typical of this depressing part of London, mean narrow shops, with only one window above them, mostly looking as if they might close tomorrow, not even having the drama of a decayed & dangerous slum district. Reading the full David Hare diary of his Via Dolorosa – ‘Unedited draft’. – would he be pleased – S. passed it onto me, I don’t think so, if he knew my opinion of him. What a curious little immature creature! A sulky public-school boy who is partly able to see himself, – no doubt what makes him a dramatist. But, on this evidence, self-centred to a repellent degree. His judgements on acting & actors, including his own, are sometimes perceptive, but more often arrogant & wrong. He has an odd gift for un-illuminating quotation. Some of them are really ludicrous in their banality or pointlessness.

He starts the second volume with the awful news of Sarah Kane’s suicide. He knows her & her work, of course, but it hits his stage staff much harder, as they are actually worked on her plays. One of them told suddenly, blushed rather than paled – how I know that sort of girl, I bet she was upper-middle-class, well, her name was Caroline – & then offered this epitaph, ‘Sarah wasn’t equipped for life she didn’t know what reality was’. But of course she was perfectly equipped to be a Royal Court playwright. What could be more perfect qualifications than manic depression & suicide? Really people don’t know what they say & other people don’t know what they’re listening to.

Further to suffix survivals: Standard seller; ‘Bye then’.

S. rang to cancel tomorrow, as he has to meet ‘The P. Game’ management. Sounds ominous, if it wipes out a meet. So it’s Wed. now.

Friday, October 22, 1999

In the p.m. & the rain to Brompton Rd. to spend the £40 left of this months book allowance. Got those two new detective stories from last weeks reviews, both first novels, & the new life of Collette, the first for many years as far as I know. There was a freestanding bookcase, on a sloping stand, with nothing in it but copies of the three Harry Potters. The top two shelffulls looked different. I found they were deluxe editions, with richly gilt edges & special cloth. Someone has heard that a first edition of the first one sold the other day for eight or nine hundred. This is doubly repellent, aiming at such a market so soon & so self-consciously for one thing, & for another, self-defeating, since the high price of children’s first editions is because so many are battered or destroyed. These deluxe’s, bought to be valuable, might not in the end, appreciate so much value as an ordinary one. But the whole first edition racket is repellent. I suppose I should be grateful they weren’t leather copies, & boxed vellum. A fresh hazard reared up, in my difficulties with my lovely card. I asked a very tall young man behind the counter, weather accounts were still paid downstairs, ‘I don’t know. It’s my first day.’

I’m running out of socks. Pulled out an old pair – but still quite new, as it were – & pulled them on, white with 1, 2, 3, up the side. It comes to something when you can feel like mutton dressed as lamb because of your socks.

When I came back, I saw the little wall at the side of the old tart’s cottage, was finished, & the whole area where the old garage was, has been turfed. Lovley. Anything for more green. Surprised it hasn’t been sold. Spent my last £1 till Monday on fresh little beans.

Saturday, October 23, 1999

Fireworks have started already. Depressing. Really this wretched generation is skillful at destroying it’s own pleasures & sense of occasion.

Hazel rang today, more social life. Geoffrey’s hideous bronchoscopy or whatever it’s called – a tube down the throat to look around, unexampled horror – didn’t show up anything sinister. But what a variety of things have been vaguely wrong with him! Of course he is a mass of neuroses & repressions.

The American soap opera actors are chosen in such a way that they all look rather alike, sometimes almost identical, with small photogenic retroussé noses, & sculpted cheekbones. I have actually mistaken one for another. It’s almost as if they’re being bred for the soaps, in just the same way as pedigree cats & dogs are bred by tasteless owners, who take each ‘desirable’ feature & think more is better until the poor animals are grotesque or actually deformed. I believe there are already in two or three species, the bulldog, for instance, that can’t give birth naturally. For all I know, that may be happening to Ali McBeal.

Watched a film about a film. This Blair Witch Project. I’m already fed up with it, there’s been so much publicity you begin to feel it’s all publicity. The half-hour programme tonight about the film, was dubiously factual. I hate the ‘blurring’ of fact & fiction. Youngsters don’t realize how dangerous it is, as dangerous as the Nazis. Anyone can impose on simple people by telling lies.

What to do more traditional horror film for a bit, & was amused to find all the conventions so firmly in place – for instance, the many deaths take place strictly in order of billing…. And of course, the evil one yields, albeit reluctantly, too good in the final reel. Satan isn’t always so easily routed.

Next week comparatively full. How odd that events do so often crowd together.

Sunday, October 24, 1999

A day to be got thro’. No drink at all, & the scrapings of the larder, till there was, literally, nothing left. I must try & get some stores together. How? It’s interesting about drink. I don’t think I’m in the least addicted to alcohol; the only physical effects of giving it up, is that I sometimes don’t sleep. But I am, as it were addicted, to the ritual of alcohol. A gin & tonic at seven, wine with dinner. A small whiskey at 10:30. Ah well.

Monday, October 25, 1999

Saw that Dylan Thomas & Peter O’Toole’s daughter’s were on a programme discussing the effect on children of being brought up with problem parents. The Thomas’ are dead, but will P & S be pleased? Still, it was rather fascinating. The Thomas daughter, small, neat featured with a lovely smile, was dressed in pale beigey colours, mild suburban chic, & said how difficult her childhood had been, – Caitlin was neglectful & angry when she was there. It really has been like Absolutely Fabulous. She has been as bland as her clothes, & so set against any sort of Bohemianism that only now, all these years later, is accepting invitations to parties, & for the first time, has painted a room in terracotta rather than the creams & greys. The O’toole girl is recognisably the child of her parents, but with all their charm & individuality wiped out. One way & another don’t have famous Bohemian parents. Talking of which, I do hope that somebody somewhere bears witness to D’s perception & wisdom. In print, I mean.

Rang Roy & M, for Ella’s b’day tomorrow. Heavens, they’re off to the Isle of Wight now, tho’ that’s because they have workmen in, doing some very necessary work on the staircase, boxing it in for instance, with Tom crawling.

Took John N. up on his sweet offer & sent him the renewal form for my Kew ticket. I told him that, apart from anything else, it was my only chance to walk on grass. My fear of dogs has always kept me out of any other park.

J. rang to cancel film tonight. As always these days, it was somehow pleasant not to be going. Aren’t little owls little?

Tuesday, October 26, 1999

Cheque thro’, went to Simply Sausages in Soho for a simple treat. It doesn’t run to grouse, I’m afraid. They’re £9.80 – surely that’s a big jump? On the way there, saw, written in white ink, on the rubber hand-rail of the escalator, ‘Smelly White Bastard by Paki Power’.

A train came in v. slowly, & stopped half in & half out of the tunnel. Five minutes later, it crawled forward, still leaving the last carriage & a half in the tunnel. Now this was the mark of a major delay. No doors opened, & I went to the District Line. What a fortunate thing it is to be a lifelong Londoner….

On the way back looked at the new patch of lawn, & for a second, thought, ‘oh, they’ve scattered a few leaves on it to make it more real.’

K rang. What I think about the copyright for the Shipping Forecast? He did get my cutting about the exhibition, & what’s her name – Valentine, that’s it – went to see it. They had checked the copyright so perhaps – and did I know what Her Majesty’s S.O. was? Yes, I did, & told him.

J. rang at 10.0. More Schneer trouble. Still, he goes to Florida this week.

Wednesday, October 27, 1999

New play by Snoo Wilson at the Everyman H’st. Accepted by Jenny Topper, directed by Simon Stokes, quite like the old days & just as much of a mess as ever. I am glad to see the critics read much more like me then they did in the ‘70s. It’s something when the headline is ‘Dreadful Play’. To me, muddled thinking is a sin, & botched workmanship little better. And Robin Soans is in it, too, – well, he can’t tell.

K rang, ‘is this Gardener’s Question Time?’ about some plant, we chatted for a bit, & then he said, ‘sorry, what – Arlete – I – Arlete thinks it’s really Gardener’s Question time’. A dear little silly domestic incident. Off to S. & mon Plaisir at 7.0

At Seven Dials saw S. on one of those triangular corners, chatting to someone who turned out today Jonathan Miller. I came up to them slowly, in case J.M. thought I was a mad assassin, & stood there quietly. J.M looked at me with wild surmise. I said, ‘it’s allright, where dining together’. ‘Are we?’ Rather more twittery than his public image & off to dinner at Stephen Bull’s down the road. As we walked away, S. said, despite his brilliance, he had very tiresome side – ‘I’ve never had a good notice for any of my work, nobody in the theatre or opera appreciates what I do’ – etc etc. I said tartly it was just another way of talking about yourself. S. look’s better, less tired, rather svelte. ‘that’s because, three mornings a week, a lovely man called Darren Braithwaite comes in & takes me through an exercise programme’. Is that the phrase he used? I was so stunned to be walking next to someone who has a personal trainer, & that one of my closest friends. It just shows how even an acute sense of humour can have its blind spots. I don’t think he noticed the stunning.

In the restaurant the little tucked away table had been taken, so we were upstairs at a table against the wall. Good. I put my good ear to the wall, & my deaf ear to the room. Place packed. He had sea bass & not much else. He is a martyr to his diet as well – his eyes were on stalks at the sight of the cheese tray, – twenty or so sorts – ‘I can’t, it makes mucus’.

He wasn’t full of projects this time, rather the reverse, in fact. Three big things collapsed during this last year, one £70,000, another similar, & a £50,000. This last he calls chicken – feed, I’m afraid. ‘I’ve been in danger of having my house repossessed’. ‘Why are you taking me out to dinner here then?’ ‘Because you deserve it.’ I thought briefly of mentioning my book account card, not to mention my newspapers, but remembered in time, first, that the amounts are so nugatory in comparison, & second that if he didn’t mention it, I have no right to. And I don’t think I just wanted to hang on to the account….

As for my food, I had a goat’s cheese salad, & skate with delicious little croutons & black butter & lumps of lemon Pouilly Fume.

The news of The Pyjama Game was no better. ‘It costs £92,000 per week to run, & we’re taking under £50,000. The Lion Kings advance was £3,000,000, ours was £12,000. Howard Panter has re-mortgaged his house.’

We talked of Anthony Sher – ‘you wouldn’t like his novels I think – they’re so visual’. They are fairly friends, now that AS. has got over his jealousy. He used the extraordinary phrase ‘I felt Simon Callow was stealing my career’. Odd, since in many ways, he’s had a much more varied and the effulgent career than S’s, especially with The National, RSC, & a range of classic parts. Well, a mean spirit is a mean-spirit.

At another point I discovered, to my amazement, that he had never heard of Violet Gordon- Woodhouse. I heard myself doing that thing I loathe, ‘you don’t mean you haven’t…..’ But it was absolutely genuine incredulity. He has such a huge record library that I thought he must have her records, if only by default. I told him of the new biog. & the chapter in Noble Essences. I forgot to tell him that she was Elizabeth David’s aunt….. He has curious holes in his knowledge & reading. Well, we all have holes, but not necessarily curious ones, (of my perhaps liking visual novels.) We finished early enough for me to go home on the tube, so I didn’t cost him a taxi fare. I noticed that he seemed to have nothing in prospect. Where are the six or seven projects of yesteryear? If he had asked me in time, I would have told him not to do the PG., but once someone started, it is useless to quench enthusiasm.

Thursday, October 28, 1999

Five Shaw letters, ridiculously described as ‘fiery’, were auctioned, & fetched £1800. They weren’t to anyone special, but they merited a sizeable news item & equally sizeable photo, & all at the top of a main page. So much for Mary L.

In the p.m. to Tott. Court Rd. to see new film ‘American Pie’. It sounds awful, but was actually quite sharp, & not entirely tasteless. Sketch-like & the better for it. I was more interested in the audience, uniformly young, as you might expect, & larger than usual for matinee, forty or fifty. There was a fair amount of ‘sexual frankness’, tho’ nothing is showing, but still a young man fucking an apple tart is a novelty to many. The amusing part to me was that there were the usual ooh-I-say squeals as if the sexual revolution, so-called, had never happened. But quite touching were the reactions to the ineptitude & failures of the young men. When one of them came before he’d touched the girl, at least two girls in the audience went ooh, a long drawn out ‘never-mind’ ooh. And that happened more than once. I need hardly say that the only person giving reliable sexual advice was a young woman.

Afterwards to the Sainsbury’s just down the road. It’s an up-market affair. The boxes of Charlotte pots are £1 – something, but pots of two rarer pots, Anya, which looked to me a close relative of Apple? Fir? & jancis? was it? Were only 99p. Huge section at the front for pickup office lunches. Sandwiches, salads, whole counter of sushi & another infinite delicatessen. What happens to all that infinitely perishable stuff at 7.0 on Thursday?

Friday, October 29, 1999

Rang K, to remind him that the clocks go back tonight. He never remembers, & seems surprised it’s going to happen again, and even then, ‘does it mean you get an extra hour or an hour less?’

To my surprise he then brought up Caerphilly, one of my favourite cheeses, completely ruined by supermarkets, not surviving at all. I’d asked him to see if Le Fromagerie has it, – he thought it was only French cheeses. But he’d remembered, as he always does, & they have. Indeed he was delighted to say, in a superior voice, which sort of Caerphilly I’d like. ‘Can I specify the farm?’ ‘Perhaps the field’. If I come next on a Saturday, early, he’d run me up there, as he thinks they close at seven.

The West End was so awful yesterday, because of half-term, that I decided to go up to C. Garden to buy books & shop at Tesco, after six-thirty. Waterstone’s has been re-done. I see Drama has been banished to the basement, & Film & Pop upstairs expanded. Signs of the times.

Bought some detective stories, and a new life of Rossetti, ‘The first for fifty years.’ Although it’s published by W & Nicolson, it sounds possible. Jan Marsh has written around the subject, & edited the poems. I’ve wanted a proper biog. for years, what with Graham Robertson & all. He’s not mentioned, except for his letters editor.

Told K about S. He couldn’t believe the personal trainer. I said ‘if you ever had a personal trainer, I take you to the psychiatrist, as suffering from demonic possession’. Oh dear, how silly S is sometimes.

Saturday, October 30, 1999

The first paragraph of The Standard notice of the Snoo Wilson Play I might have written myself. ‘Snoo Wilson’s latest play is unwatchable, a mad blather of ideas which connect & resound only in the teeming thickets of the authors mind’. There are equally savage notices for Nigel Hawthorne’s Lear, again, in my view, deserved. Every critic makes it plain that he is not up to the part & should never have attempted it. It is strange to me that he could ever have considered it. A suave light comedian, with a certain patronising charm, – that’s his mark, & he should have stuck to it. In similar vein, I can’t accept Michael Gambon as a leading actor, certainly not in the great classic parts.

Card to S. telling that V.G.W was Elizabeth David’s aunt.

A diary by Thelma Holt of the King Lear in Japan. It was a huge success in Japan….. it might have been wiser not to print it. I don’t know her, & was quite surprised at how chatty & superficial it was. She calls him Nige throughout.

Hazel rang today, because again she won’t be free on Sunday. And now she & Geoffrey both have quite bad stomach upsets, which have gone on for most of the week. They can hardly eat anything, – her only fancy, tomatoes on toast. Yet another minor ailment. I don’t think it’s a very good sign.

Almost nothing moves me as much as a careless young man being moved to care.

Sunday, October 31, 1999

When I went to bring in the Sunday papers there was a huge parcel in the hall, a box about 3’ x 1’6” x 1’. In it was the stair basket H. sent me, not expected till the 24th. It’s a well-made wicker shopping basket, with one side much deeper than the other to fit on the stairs. For objects on their way up or down stairs. Rang her to thank her, on the off chance they were back. She had never gone. She’d described her apprehension at possibly being caught in a traffic jam & feeling ill. She meant ‘am I going to be sick? am I going to shit myself’. But of course she can’t say it. She obviously feels rotten – it shouldn’t have gone on so long. Poor thing.

Monday, November 1, 1999

The three CD’s S. brought me are enticing: Music from Truffaut’s films; a Jacqueline Du Pre recital, including the Delius cello concerto; & Marie Luise Neunecker & Ian Bostridge, Stauss horn concerto, & Britten’s serenade for horn, tenor & strings.

A notice of the second full-scale biography of Elizabeth David, – the authorised one this time – is criticised in The Standard for not being harsh enough on a difficult personality. The Colette biog. is superb so far.

Going for the first time in my mac & cap, I thought how fortunate I am, my Macintosh with a warm lining from a dear John N., & my beautiful shoes from him. And in the market, chestnuts were back.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 165

November 2 1999 - December 10 1999.

Tuesday November 2 1999

How mysterious business is. Everyone says the economy is in splendid shape. How is it therefore that Marks & Spencer’s of all shops, have suffered a drop in profits for the first half of this year, from £300 million odd to £192 million? Does the public suddenly stop buying M&S? Most mysterious.

If ever I get round to my memoirs (sic) it will include as little as possible about my childhood. I’ve no doubt Lalla and Donald tell themselves I had a wonderful childhood – I was pretending, and I insist that I could usually be reasonably amusing. But for myself, I was either being bullied, being bored or having my teeth set on edge. Still, in my experience most people with happy childhoods are less able to cope with setback or emotion.

In the p.m. an uncertain afternoon. I went to see the new German film Run Lola Run at The Gate. I always like to look at the excellent fishmonger at Notting Hill, but I never see it except when I’m going to the pictures. It doesn’t improve fish to sit in a warm cinema for three hours before cooking it. A pity I didn’t buy any fish, as I walked out of the film after about quarter of an hour, and that was a pity, too, because I liked the idea of the film, and it’s use of all sorts of conventions and cartoon and so on, - not to mention time, Sliding Doors was mentioned – but alas I couldn’t take the cameras continuously jumping up and about, combined with a continuously deafening soundtrack. By ‘couldn’t take’ I mean it made me feel sick enough to leave as soon as I did.

So off I went to Waterstone’s for some more books. I did remember that it has been one of the more tiresome branches. Well, the young assistant asked a harpy for advice, who told her to ring Charing X. The call lasted six or seven minutes. When I protested, the harpy said repressively, ‘We have no way of finding out from here whether you are entitled to a discount.’ When the call finished, the young assistant handed me back my card, which I put back into my shirt-pocket under my sweater. She then fiddled about inexpertly with the computer – she did find the pad fairly soon and asked me for my card back. Altogether, the whole thing took getting on for ten minutes. Cash would have been thirty seconds. Using the card with two gay assistants in the Covent Garden branch a few days before had taken about two minutes at the most. I said mildly that S had given me the card to make my life easier. It didn’t occur to them that ringing Charing X makes me feel like a criminal, and that I’d been kept standing for the ten minutes. It left a sour taste, though I didn’t say I’d avoid that branch in future. But I will.

So now the books. Disgusting that they became secondary for the time. The biography of A.L. Rowse, and Michael Grade’s autobiog. Three Kinky Friedmans and a new author, Neil Gibb.

By the time he was writing, Turandot, Paccini had throat cancer and could only communicate by letter.

Wednesday November 3 1999

Stayed in all day, and good heavens, there was the electric bill again, £65. It can’t be that much, as I’ve had nothing but a few lights on,

J wants the Anne Fine/Liddy novel back to lend to Eileen A… film tomorrow is Ratcatcher, set in Glasgow. I smell ci-devant Loach.

Thursday November 4 1999

On the way to see the film, I sat opposite a very large girl. She was wearing a very large mob-cap in purple velvet, completely with floppy brim, a long-sleeved sweatshirt with a short sleeved one over it. On its front was printed a sunburst big enough to cover her entire chest. So it was a big sunburst… Everything was hung around her, like curtain round a wardrobe, and all in shades of shit brown and puke green. And on her face such a half-defiant half- resigned expression, - she hasn’t quite given up yet, but it’s not far off.

Film Ratcatcher was set in Glasgow Tenement, in the ‘70’s, I think. Relentlessly ‘realist,’ in the Loach mode, and equally relentlessly pessimistic, with some pretty ropey near-amateur perfs. But of course they never are realistic. To take one example alone, the main character, a boy of twelve, takes a bus, to get away from the slums, to, I take it, the edge of the city. He finds his way into a new block of flats, finished enough to have their bathrooms and kitchens in place, but no main services yet. Through the kitchen window he sees a cornfield filling the eye from the horizon. He clambers out into it, and throws himself about the corn, with all the physical delight of a twelve year old. All very well and good. But come the last shot of the film, we see the cornfield again, and over the horizon plod, in single file, all the members of the family and the neighbours, each carrying some item of furniture. They are obviously moving into a new life. That’s lovely, but why approach the back of the building from a considerable distance, and on foot, instead of bringing the furniture to the front door on the road provided. Not to mention that the neighbours had been all that one could wish of uncooperative up till then, and that I’d like to have heard the farmers views on his barley being extensively trampled. In fact, not realistic at all, but sentimental in a rather unpleasant inverted-snobbery way. The writer/director is thirty, old enough to know better, but probably past recall by now. Especially as she’s probably from Glasgow herself.

The old tart’s cottage is sold, by the way. They planted conically trimmed one-foot high box bushes to go with the carriage-lamps. Irredeemably suburban, I’m afraid. Wonder if they’ll do anything.

Friday November 5 1999

K and A are at Roy and Marian’s Bonfire Night party. He hoped I’d be there, but I wasn’t asked! Not that I’d have gone for every sort of reason, ‘not hearing a word, for instance, and how would I get back when I wanted to leave after about an hour?’ ‘I’d buy you a taxi home.’ ‘On Guy Fawkes night?’ Anyway, they meet at last, after years, - they’ve never met A. I’ve rang two or three times since the Isle of White, but I must stop wasting my money. They almost never answer, and with two young children, they must often be there, and all I want is a chat or to tell them something funny. Ah well.

Photo of S. in the Telegraph getting his CBE. I must remember to curtsey next time we meet.

How I love resonate names! Paul Raymond, of Raymond Revue Bar fame, nudes galore, has a PA called Claude Snitcher. TV programme on pornography, purporting to be serious, with attendant academic, Lawrence O’Toole.

Men on problem programme, ‘The turning point for me was having a heart-attack.’

Sunday November 6 1999

A half-page article by Ismail Merchant about Mon Plaisir. Very complementary, can he have had a back-hander? My skate was goodish but a touch overdone for a connoisseur, as I know very well from cooking it so often myself. Still nice to read about a familiar restaurant with loving associations.

There is a church in Jersey whose decorations are almost entirely Lalique glass. Lalique came out of retirement and had the glass-works re-opened to make it all, all the windows, the reredos and so on, commissioned by, of all the people, Florence Boot. The Boots lived on the island, and indeed were buried there. F was ‘artistic’ and also chose the royal blue for the carpets and furnishings – shades (or shade) of St. George’s. The whole thing cost £75,000 in 1932-ish. Jesse Boot, Jesse and Florence, I’ve always loved that. Rich couples giving money to churches in the ‘30’s, my childhood.

Rang Mary L who told me we’d ‘be getting all the gossip from The Lady in the Van, because Dianna Van Proosby is understudying Maggie and the other two women.’ D Van P has sat in many an understudy dressing room, with Mary, passing more or less continuous censorious judgment on players and productions with no idea that they have quite insufficient evidence of what is actually going on, or any experience of responsibility, either artistic or commercial. Having spent some time in the understudies’ room in Salad Days, while at the same time having an affair with the leading lady and co-author, having been best friend with the other author, I know of what I speak. Mary and D Van P have never talked on equal terms with anyone, except other understudies. And, over the years, she has not learned to adjust that viewpoint at all.

Derrick M’s friend, Ronnie Woods, rang tonight to say that Derrick M had fallen and broken his hip. The awful thing is, I felt almost relief, that he had something absolutely definitely wrong with him. R has intimated that doctors think his not walking is largely psychological, so what now? But there was another fascinating little element to the conversation. It seems Derrick’s fall was in the small hours and he eventually shouted loud enough to get the young man upstairs to wake up and call the ambulance. There were apparently a couple of glasses, and he was possibly a bit drunk. The fascination came in with R saying did I know someone called Chris? It turns out that some sort of an assistant to Derrick years ago, who I’ve never heard of, so can’t remember his name, was asked to find someone to take Derrick out in his wheelchair. This ‘someone’ had been drinking with Derrick, and happened to ring when R went round to see the flat was all right. R said he could hardly relate to him at all. He was so bolshy and abrupt. To cut a long story short, he said he’d known a friend of D’s years before, who was a friend of someone who was at music collage with him… It was Chris Parsons. Good heavens, he sounds just the same. What an odd coincidence that R was saying his name to the only person in his or D’s acquaintance, who would have recognised it, it seems Chris P has a girl-friend with cancer… no oboe mentioned.

Rang K in the middle of something but rang back twenty mins later. Riveted. Thought he remembered the girl-friend with cancer. Asked after fireworks night. But it somehow fell thro’ and Roy and M took them to Grano’s. ‘By the river, lovely.’ Lovely to think of them altogether.

Sunday November 7 1999

To the first of the London Film Festival films with J. A fairly disastrous expedition. I was a bit hung over but only a bit. The film seemed enchanting, Daniel Autcuil and a new girl, Vanessa Paradis. Witty, light as a feather, - as much as I saw of it. We were in the middle of the second row! Have I ever – I got a bad crick in my neck almost at once. The screen stretched up and round, so that I couldn’t take in the whole picture at a glance. The sound was loud beyond anything I’ve been subjected to; as so often in cinema, now, there were flashy fast-forward, whirly bits, like Run Lola Run, and there I was in the middle of the second row in a packed cinema, tortured, and a sort of sickness/claustrophobia set in, and I turned tail and ran. I thought if I sat quietly in a lavatory cubicle, resting my forehead against cold titles, for about a week, I might be all right. There were two ushers peeing. Someone else cleaning the basins, and there weren’t any cold tiles, only black centrally heated plastic. The crowd left, and I walked up and down, a bit, with Filipino usherttes passing by without a glance. Eventually I asked a European ushertte - well, she was blonde – if I could stand at the back, and I … she looked bemused as well as worried, and went away and came back with an imposingly serious superior, obviously dull of responsibility. Twenty two, in a sweat-shirt, he showed me to my favourite seat, the aisle seat in the back row. I think I had only missed about half an hour, no, quarter of an hour – it seemed forever. J was quite unruffled, not surprisingly, but I was troubled. I think part of the bother was a really bad night, no sleep till five and then too nervous to collapse in case I didn’t wake up. I really think I shall have to give up any date before about six. I went off to do some shopping and finished off really exhausted. I looked at all the tickets she’d given me for safety, and found all but two of the six were in rows C & B and one in A. I can’t, I just can’t.

Back here, I have to keep turning off reports of the Australian referendum for the monarchy and the dismantling of the House Of Lords. I can’t think about either without disgust and sadness.

J had passed on to me a novel she hadn’t been able to finish, about the Oscars, ‘Best Actress’, one of the nominations shooting the successful one. The only reason I opened it was because it was by someone called John Jane. An actor with that name was Puck on P. Brook’s famous Dream, and I worked with him, I think, met him certainly. I started to read it and the English bits were more or less accurate, despite his little biog, saying he was a journalist etc. However, I hope it wasn’t him, because the book was trash.

Monday November 8 1999

Decided to go in and give J the ticket for today, at least and, as if to back up my (part) lie, my travel-sickness-claustrophobia came back. I got off at South Ken, and rang J. I was able to say quite truly that I’d been up most of the night. I could have told her I didn’t sleep much on Sat. night either.

As usual, once I could get off, I felt perfectly all right. Later I went to Ealing and paid the Alliance. Perfectly all right. As for the sleeplessness, that is often the result of a midday appointment.

This Is Your Life’s subject was a Shetland lifeboatman, who has saved well over three hundred people. A man of great composure and good looks, with an equally good-looking wife, two beautiful daughters and a handsome son. The whole thing took place in Lerwick Town Hall, and was remarkable for the fluency of speech and distinction of phrasing shown by all the Scottish people. They were all working people, and imaging a similar show set in Essex say, called up a painful contrast. An old landlady of his from Aberdeen was in full command of her comic gifts and the soft warm hissing accent. Various seamen of various nationalities in various uniforms also appeared, and were strikingly alike in type, and as far as one can tell, in character. The landlady’s name, Sarah Findlay.

Tuesday November 9 1999

Forgot to say that the royal blue in the Jersey church, - Flo Boot’s favourite – can also be seen still in every branch of Boot’s.

Stayed in today, and started the A.L. Rowse biography. Poor creature.

Wednesday November 10 1999

Well, at last this government has come up with a belated but real little help for pensioners. When I’m seventy-five, they’ll pay my TV license. And any household with a seventy-five year old in it, will qualify for the free license. I must tell K that I’m coming to live with them after July 2001.

Passing Boots tonight, I saw a smart little make-up box by Estée Lander, like a paint-box, with six or eight little oblongs of colours and three or four little brushes. It was neatly and gleaming machine-made. But, all the same, I thought it would be recognised for what it was by any Greek or Roman lady.

Thursday November 11 1999

The two minute silence is being observed again, I also notice more people with poppies, especially young people on television. There is apparently ‘greatly increased’ interest in WWI. I think all such stuff is only the product of a sillier than usual silly season.

A Mr. Taft is being tried for the murder of a Mrs Bolshaw. ‘Mrs Bolshaw’s son, Christopher, said his mother was a ‘classy woman,’ and ‘a flirtatious type.’ He said that her male friends included a captain in the royal Sultan Of Oman’s army, an inspector in the Ugandan police, a customs officer, an oil rig worker and an American magician. Mr. Taft himself is a double- glazing salesman…

Forgot to say that, when I was coming back from not seeing the film on Monday, I got off at Gloucester Road to sample the newish Waitrose there. It’s a smart shopping arcade, and at last, lamb is a bit cheaper there. I got a half-shoulder about half the price at Tesco or Safeway, and billed as Welsh.

Just as I was wondering what to say to J, she rang to apologise for not ringing to see how I was… I felt guilty, but don’t know what else I could have done. I couldn’t ask her to re-book the tickets, and equally I couldn’t, really couldn’t, sit in the first three rows again.

Friday November 12 1999

At that office block on the site (sic) of Sherlock Holmes’ rooms in Baker Street, there is a permanent secretary to Sherlock H. to deal with the letters to S.H. Some of them imagine he is a real person, all of them require an answer. Unbelievable. No, just what I’d expect from flavourless idiots. It’s just those people who patronise ‘theme parks’. What false ugly hells they look.

Cliff Richard’s made a record for Christmas. It’s the Lord’s Prayer sung to Auld Lang Syne.

Saturday November 13 1999

Another bad night, awake at quarter-past three. Read the Rowse, but after a couple of hours, I felt tired and restless and came in here for a change and played a film I taped last night. ‘Dazed and Confused’ from 1991, is set in an American High-School, and might have been part of the present fashion, in that it tries to make a serious point. But, like so many American films, with their surface manners and their underlying assumptions, one wonders whether anyone concerned with them, has any idea how repulsive such manners and assumptions are to cultivated Europeans. Oh, the Eldritch shrieks and smacking of each other’s hands! Oh, the gulps of drink thro’ an already grossly full mouth! Oh, the jeering at anything approaching civilized speech!

At about 8.30, I went back to bed and read another Anne Fine novel, Cold Domain. Finished it in a gulp – as good as Liddy – by the time papers arrived at about ten.

Hazel rang today – again – more Sunday engagements. The poor darling poured out the horror of their water-supply. It comes from the stream coming down their garden from the hills, and was supposed to be particularly pure, until she and Geoffrey got ‘food poisoning.’ Now it seems E.Coli or some such may be responsible. Their landlords, the National Trust, are feeble and incompetent. Some time ago, they put chlorine in the tank, but only, for the quantity, with the help of someone they’d sacked for – incompetence. It rendered the water undrinkable. Now the water people have come round and said it was not to be solved quickly. Poor darling, she described the officials having to ask Geoffrey where the tank was, buried in the brambles etc. after the National Trust, who had installed it, were not able to tell them where it was. ‘Well, they can drink bottled water.’ Yes, but – ‘I had to walk yards with two huge bottles across the car-park, and go back for all the shopping, and all with my knee still bad.’ Torture. Have Tom and Kim helped? No mention, but she probably hasn’t made much of it to them, just as I made little of knee to K, not letting him know how bad my knee was, how near I came to saying ‘I can’t go on, like this, the pain.’ Without carrying the shopping.

Caught a bit of the lottery prog. and Sir! Paul McCartney. He’s dyeing his hair, and badly, the poor creature. ‘How can someone with, I presume, the choice of any expert in such things, end up with that terrible dead all-over black? But then vanity is blind, we know.

Watched, as I always do, the Remembrance Festival in the Albert Hall. The Queen was in S. Africa, and I was intrigued to note that the camera did not zoom in on the P.O.W. during the National Anthem, as it always does onto the Queen. Presumably on her instructions. The Whole thing was first organized by Ralph Reader – good gracious – of the Gang Show, all that marching, you see, and this one was the last organized by his grandson, who is now retiring. Even more good gracious, as I would be more expecting Ralph Render to be retiring. The grandson seems to have taken his name from his work, Corpe-Reader. I never thought of it before but I suppose I could belong to The British Legion. I suppose they don’t get in touch with you automatically when you’re demobilised. If so, they are about fifty-two years late. But how awful, to go to a reunion with my old army comrades. Les Thorley was quite enough.

I also watched a bit of the Dr. Who retrospective, in case l was getting a repeat fee. I’d half- forgotten how enchanting Tom Baker is ‘Did you like being famous, and giving autographs and everything?’ ‘Enjoy it? I was like St. Francis of Assisi, I healed lepers. I also caught lice from school-children.’ I’d write to him if I had any money.

The designer of the Daleks said he got the idea from the Georgian dancers, with their full skirts to the floor, and gliding steps, apparently without feet.

Finished the A.L.Rowse. It’s like an old friend, also a scholar, and there is something rather pleasantly amateurish about it. Although most of Rowse’s work came out in my time, I have read very little of it. To us, he was a ‘popular’ historian, that is, rather suspect, a cut below Arthur Bryant. Later on, when I realized he was a genuine scholar, a starred Double First and Fellow of All Soul’s at 25, he was starting out on the absurdities of his Sonnets Lark. The tone he took in rebutting his critics left him completely beyond the pale. This book portrays a singular character well enough to make fascinating reading, but goodness, he is an unsympathetic, at times repulsive, person. And by the way, such quotations as there are, seem just the loose textured chatty stuff I would expect.

Sunday November 14 1999

At last got myself to St. Mary’s, to see D. Marr. I hadn’t been to Paddington or Praed St. for untold centuries. I remember Praed St. as sleazy and dirty and obscure, with rather a lot of the sort of sex shop that could only run to a truss in the window. Still the rather dark, rather narrow Victorian street has been ‘opened up’ with hideous modern blocks, and isn’t even characteristic enough to be squalid. Behind the handsome Victorian hospital, there is a pre- war building and some way behind that, a modern building, to which D.M. had been transferred. When I got up to the eighth floor, Manvers Ward turned out to be a High Dependency ward, which I take to be something between an ordinary ward and an intensive care ward. The patients were not of a uniform age or, as far as I could see, of complaint. But plenty of grey-yellow faces. The whole too brightly lit, and polished and clinical and bare. And D. Marr wasn’t there.

* TWO PAGES CUT OUT.

(In the unlikely event of academic editing, will there be monographs written on the two pages cut out? Shameful secrets? Alas, no, just a muddle from writing unusually, a couple of days later and getting things in the wrong order. No doubt I shall soon be doing that without noticing. Meanwhile…)

He’d gone to X-Ray to have a tube put in. So I take it that there’s some infection and that’s why he’s been transferred to this ward. It was going to take a couple of hours, so I left a note and came away. With the best will in the world, I couldn’t have sat there so close to so many people’s beleaguered privacy, and in such awful heat. So I got back to Paddington, and took comfort, in the midst of change, that the loos are always in the same place, because of the drains, and even better, the turnstiles were out of order, so the monstrous charge of £20p was waived. (No wonder I put a £ sign by mistake.) So I was back here by five-ish, having one way or another, walked miles.

Why do so many people, almost invariably women, cover their mouths with their hands, when overcome by surprise or laughter. Apart from any reason it’s so common. You expect it of a Woolworth’s shop assistant or Princes Diana, but not anyone with any brains or taste.

I’ve never been anywhere where I could see the Red-Necked Phalarope, a fascinating bird. It displays the clearest case of role-reversal I’ve heard of. The female is brightly coloured, and slightly bigger than the dowdy male. She pursues him very aggressively, until she forces him to mate with her. She then promptly leaves him to incubate the eggs and feed the chicks, and goes off after another male. Perhaps Daddy saw one as a boy – that’s where they are, rarely even then.

Monday November 15 1999

Wretched night again. Went out briefly later, and did a little shopping, including a green pepper or two, and an onion. I made a rice dish with the left-over lamb. So delicious and simple and digestible.

Reading more of Kinky Friedman’s detective-stories. V. distinctive and amusing.

Tuesday November 16 1999

How mysterious the old constitution is. I had a good night, I’d finished the papers by nine- thirty, and felt well, and energetic. Before I knew where I was, I was up and dressed and on my way to Kew. It was a beautiful sunny sparking day. The sun is almost horizontal at this time of year, or its rays are, and strike the golden leaves at just the angle to make them glow more golden. One of God’s successes. I thought I’d make for the Evolution House, which I’ve never been to, since it stopped being the Australian House. On the way, I sat on a seat, and ate my egg and cress sandwiches. Through a shrubbery came six peacocks and three pea-hens – I didn’t know they had such things at Kew – don’t they eat berries and new shoots and seeds? One of the hens came quite aggressively towards me, not so pea-brained that she couldn’t associate seats and humans with food. When I got to the E. House, it was closed for maintenance. I thought I might go to the Queen’s Collage, as I love woods in the winter. But then I thought it might be a bit far for the first time. So I turned north to a part of the gardens I can’t have been to for forty or fifty years, the coniferous woods. I noticed the pond, that I’ll sit by another time. The sequoias and wellingtonias and so on, huge tho’ no doubt midgets compared to California. The bark had such delicate reds and browns. A new tree about three or four feet high, from Taiwan, with needles of the delicate pale yellow-green, not just the new growth but uniformly over the whole tree. When it’s fully grown, it will give out light. I walked back by the lake, and went through a gaggle of geese, one of whom hissed at me, showing a surprisingly long tongue, looking as if it were made of pink cardboard. A grove of larckes, reminding me that they are one of the few conifers that are deciduous. I walked through the wet grass, and breathed. I was there about an hour and a half.

Stopped off, in the road where my knee went last year, to get whisky at Oddbins, and at the supermarket, a Europa, bought two cartons of Covent Garden soup, of two sorts I haven’t seen in any of our supermarkets, asparagus and smoked haddock Chowder. I don’t know why it’s got that American name – why not S.H. soup, or – what’s that scots name for it? Skunk something, or something Skunk (Cullen Skink.) Baxter’s do a tin of it sometimes. Pleased to get off the train at Turnham Green and try the new cheese shop and the good fish- monger. Both were a bit of a disappointment. The cheese shop was promising-looking, run by a personable young French couple, they have separate cashier but the choice of cheese was only so–so and I felt that it was perhaps in decline. Bought a quarter of Tomme De Savoie, a real unpasteurised thick-rinded affair, which didn’t taste of much, and wasn’t quite at its peak. At the fish mongers, I was hoping for an Arbroath Smokey, which he said, a year or so ago, that he sometimes had, or, failing that, a Manx or Loch Fyne kipper, which he said he always had. Alas he had no Smokey, and only nameless kippers. I didn’t buy any fish, which seemed in good selection. But what a pity that as smart a suburb as Chiswick may not keep two such shops going. He said then that young people don’t know. Indeed they don’t.

In the tube a tall smartly dressed negress reading ‘Japanese Management’.

Wednesday November 17 1999

Survey of the best cup of tea in London in the E. Standard won by Richoux, near H’s club where we’ve been two or three times.

The opening of Parliament. I suppose they’ll get rid of that, too, sooner or later, as they seem to want to do, to anything thoroughly, formally, done.

My knee is a bit sore. Really cold for the first time.

S rang. Characteristically, he proposed some quick something to eat, because he’s going to Michael Kustow’s b’day party ‘at The Highgate Literary Institute’ or some such. I cried off. I can’t eat at 6.30. The concert is two hours. Very typical of him to say we didn’t have nearly long enough the other night, and then have something to go off to straight after the two hour concert. We’re meeting at 6.30 in the mezzanine bar-restaurant at the National. That means only half an hour. I suppose he can’t help it. How different with darling K, although he said he would ring last week and yet, I know it’s because he couldn’t, and then when he does, he gives his whole self.

Thursday November 18 1999

Ronny Woods rang to say Derrick M had pneumonia and was on oxygen, went in and out and kept falling sideways. Who knows? Doesn’t seem to have registered my note.

In the p.m. to Earl’s Court Waterstone’s to spend the last £37 of November’s ration. Immediately found the new Sue Grafton, O for Outlaw, and the new Artemis Cooper. Meant to order three or four things, but there were two or three people behind me, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to hold them up. One woman looked tired. Rang J and she asked me to look up who wrote that probably rather tiresome play Oh Dad etc. Rang back a minute later to tell her it was Arthur Kopit. She said, more or less seriously, that I should set up my own website for answering theatre questions. ‘Kevin could get you a computer.’ A compliment, but I don’t think I’d get enough queries. It also doesn’t occur to her that I’d have to reorganise everything to have all the necessary books in one place, and that’s just the beginning.

Poor Derrick, it might be better if he could die. R.W. says he’ll never go back to his flat.

Friday November 19 1999

A baby at no. 10 for the first time for a hundred and seventy odd years. Lord Liverpool must be surprised in Olympus or Hades at being on the front page of the papers again.

S rang to tell me the concert is at The Barbican, not the RFH. Unlike him. Suggested we meet in what I took to be Circe’s but turned out to be Searcy’s.

Started the E. David book, and finished it in one gulp without noticing, always a sign of good writing. Infinitely more informative than the first one, not surprisingly as she has had access to all diaries letters, family etc, but surprising in how much fresh material there is, about her husband, for instance. So much so that, if I’d been the first biographer, I wouldn’t have attempted it.

Saturday November 20 1999

S rang again. ‘Now I am entirely sane. We will meet in the coffee-shop opposite the Hippodrome, and then taxi to the Barbican.’ A relief, as the Barbican has infinite possibilities for losing one’s way and walking miles.

Hazel rang this p.m., again Sunday being social. Her prejudices are perfectly epitomised by her praise for Jeffery Archer. She would never praise either him or, heavens, his novels, if he weren’t a prominent Conservative. It’s like being a Catholic and taking a pill. She actually said the word ‘Integrity.’ I agreed without speaking, just as I do with Mary L about Ken Livingstone. Told her Rossetti was buried at Birchington-on-sea, that cheered her up.

K rang almost straightaway. Dinner tomorrow or Monday. Tomorrow. Future radiant. Sent me off to concert on Mercury feet.

Later. Back home by ten. Got myself to Leicester Square, and peered nervously into the café’s window, opposite the Hippodrome. There was S, smartly dressed, poised over a large book in, which he was writing an inscription, and looking as if he’d dropped from another world into the motley collection of Londoners and Tourists. It turned out that it was a copy of Robert Musil’s Dairies which he’d been given and didn’t want, so he was giving to Michael Kustow. A faint tussle with an idiot waitress, and we were off. Despite the waitress, I was struck by the design of the place, and the appetising salad and various dishes at the counter, and thought how infinitely more appealing it was compared to a similar place forty years ago.

In the taxi he told me a story Ralph Richardson, and Peggy Ashcroft in a lift in late middle age: RR. ‘Peggy, did we ever fuck?’ P.A. ‘No, Ralph, and we’re not going to start now.’ He also told me the less amusing dialogue between him and the Queen when he got his CBE. Q. ‘What are you doing now?’ S. ‘I’m writing a book, your majesty.’ Q. ‘Rather a change of tack.’ S. ‘I like to keep my options open, Ma’am.’ Q. ‘Very wise’, and gave him a push to get on to the next.

He was very impressed with the perfect organisation. With a few others, he was invited by the Lord Chamberlain, ‘To have a drink in that room they go out on the balcony from.’ ‘Called, I believe, The Balcony Room.’ ‘With that flair for the unexpected phrase….’

At the hideous Barbican, received by a graceless plastic tunnel, and decanted into arid measureless plains of foyers and stairs and ‘levels’, we arrived at Searcy’s. Completely characterless, and we waited so long to be served, that S went up to the bar to order. No excuse – when I went through to the main restaurant to the loo, there were not more than a dozen tables taken. Over a glass of champagne – I didn’t have gin because it’s diuretic and the champagne once more did nothing for me – he told me he’d had lunch with Ann Mitchell, chez her. ‘And she’s a poor cook tho’. That didn’t matter but she argued with him, obviously rather aggressively, to the point where he was still disturbed by it. She’s had very little work – he praised her acting warmly - and so tiresome were her protests, I would say that she was a bit beside herself. But I have to say that S rather more than most people, dislikes being disagreed with.

In the concert-hall he had a brief word with John Tusa, the managing director, and sat in row H, the second of the raised rows, perfect. One of the rather ugly modern halls, too wide. The stage is entirely lined with wood, with many crenellations and carvings, partly to screen the organ pipes, which had been painted to look like wood, and partly to be a good sounding- board. The point is, it is a much corrugated surface.

The first piece, ‘Almost my favorite piece of music, but I’ve never heard it live,’ said S – was Rachmaninov’s Isle of the dead. It’s explosive, violent, theatrical, poignant; the orchestra is dazzling, such strings, such ensemble, such fire. I can thoroughly endorse the praise in the programme. It is not exaggerated. Then the piano concerto in F sharp minor, the pianist was Pierre Laurent Aimard. Also terrific. In the second movement like water rippling over stones. Then it was Prometheus and colour, Well. The colour was projected over the whole stage, the pros arch and part of the ceiling. First, you couldn’t see the whole picture at a glance, being projected on said corrugated surface, and the batten boxes and the angles of the pros arch and the ceiling, was distorted and ridiculous. Third, the coloured drawings looked something like those oil patterns in sixties lamps. When the designer came out, she looked like a dodgy ASM. She studied lighting in Finland… S. speeded away to Highgate after dropping me at Leicester Sq. A lovely inspiring rare treat.

Sunday November 21 1999 Monday November 22 1999

So good to see him after so comparatively long. Unusually beforehand, table laid. Nobody can welcome me as he can. A. came down, beautifully dressed and made up, vivid emerald green rather décolleté jumper, and an ankle length skirt of black gauze over black silk, straight cut but quite full. A. and I talked of Roy and Marian, and K came back with the drinks and we talked some more and he said yes, Roy had at least told him, that the film begins in February. Well, he’s said something like that for the last eighteen months. Still, there is a slight difference – it’s always been six months or more ahead. A. had loved Grano’s. K, who halved the bill with Roy, through it was a bit expensive, and they didn’t go to the river. I wonder what or how they talk when I’m not there.

Dinner was two pheasants, endless vegetables – too many I must tell him, the cauliflower, for instance, none of us touched – he’d braised, and half roasted, and it was perfect, not too dry, not too tough, perfect. I was delighted to find that he hadn’t heard about Cliff Richard’s would-be Christmas No. 1 record. ‘The lord’s prayer to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.’ I loved his incredulity, and his immediate attempt to fit the words to the tune, and his equally immediate nausea. And there was the Caerphilly, - I ate most of the wodge. And the little sweet seedless grapes – ‘You like them, don’t you? – espresso?’ And over espresso we talked songs. He played three, which are not exactly in their final state, but finished enough to be listened to. The first was just the sort of thing that any of the boybands might sing, the second novelty song like that Barbie thing, and the third, words by Pete Sinfeld, sung by a friend of his, in such a fuzzy style that I couldn’t make out a word, nor could I imagine who would sing it. Happily K agreed with my judgment and my criticisms. The first is a bit monotonous even for a boy-band song. I note that he is quite consciously setting out to write a hit, but admits he doesn’t know anyone, even after all this time, in that particular pop world. Sending songs in without some personal contact would be, I’d say, like posting them into a hole.

Over the Laphroaig he said we must all go to the Millennium Dome. Touchingly he said, ‘You saw the Festival of Britain – I want to see you seeing this.’ I said I would have to keep it from my intellectual friends for my name will be mud. A. went halfway thro’ all this to go on with her revising, but came down to see me off. I got my porridge pan back, and borrowed his camera with six shots of a film left. Then he gave me a CD with thirteen tracks on it, The Voice. Kevin Malpass, and written on it, To Angus with love as ever, - Kevin. I can’t imagine a happier evening unless D came back. Goodness, I am lucky.

Today ‘Lord Archer destroyed.’ That odd little creature. How inadequate most people’s judgment of character must be. I only had to look at him once, and hear one sentence in that completely false ‘confident’ tone, the crashing throwaways, the apthetic stab at ‘wit’, not to mention the novels, of which none of us could finish a paragraph, to find this final debacle only remarkable in that it didn’t come fifteen years earlier. How nauseating that Rupert Brooke’s name is tied in with his in the news item.

Long talk with J about her sister. It seems she has a strong nostalgia for the Lincoln house, so strong that J thinks she doesn’t want to sell. In addition, she doesn’t think her sister and her husband will stay together after the children leave home, and she’ll probably go and live in it. Another parallel in our lives, of Donald and Bournemouth.

Poor Joanna Lumley. New thing on TV, but unfortunately it needs joined-up acting.

Tuesday November 23 1999

Woke twice, at 2.30 and at 5. Woke again at 8, still feeling tired. Went in here, as I was tired of bed. After lunch, still in my pyjamas, got back in bed to have a nap, and woke at 6.15 so I suppose I made up a proper night’s sleep.

Rang J and she told me more of her suffering with that idiot, Bill Beaumont. She can’t wait to leave. She is putting her notice in, in January, to give them time to replace her. Of course they may say all right, go now. I shall miss going there a bit, but not all that much. I often don’t go, and then see the only film I want to see for the next three months, or something I would never dream of seeing. It’s odd and revealing of my life in old age, that even when it’s a film I want to see and I know that all I have to do is get there, walk in, greet J, and watch the film, I still feel a bit oppressed as I walk to the tube and would quite like to cry off halfway up Margravine Gardens. And all I have to do is watch a film.

Rang Roy and Marian and got darling Marian. Despite the potatoes being on, we chatted for five minutes, and then passed me onto Roy. How I enjoy talking to both – I wish they rang more often. I was so touched and pleased that the dinner at Grano’s was a success, but even more, when I said I would love to be a fly on the wall to hear how differently they talk when I’m not there, four young people together, that she said, ‘No difference, but there was a lot of very loving talk about you.’

Neil rang, just as I got back from posting a letter to LA wishing him a happy birthday. A bit awkward, as he’s broke, and I can’t have him here, and…

Quentin Crisp has died at ninety. I thought him rather tiresome, with his rather suburban attempt at polished wit, and the self-conscious world-weariness of a provincial student. So I was not surprised to find his real name was Denis Pratt. The name is certainly the man in this case.

Wednesday November 24 1999

On Saturday night, S’s breath was really quite bad. Very odd, because he makes rather a point of cleanliness, not to mention fitness with his personal trainer, or perhaps he’s been overdoing it and upset some balance or other. Quiet strong. How he’d hate it. He described me as ‘one of his very closest friends.’ But I didn’t tell him.

J rang and asked me to bring Agate’s Brief Chronicles to the film tomorrow. It seems that it isn’t Larry O’s notices Joan P. wants, but Agate’s notices which ‘gave us the idea for our production.’ Skimmed thro’ them and can’t see it myself. J sensibly has no intention of lending it to Joan – we’d never get it back. That’s the trouble with rich people, they’re careless with objects, because they just assume they can buy a replacement.

In the p.m. to new film East is East. I was looking forward to it. Young Indians with broad regional accents between two cultures is a situation full of possibilities of comedy and drama. There were some good comic moments and some over-done, but they are rather weakened by an insecure grasp of characters. The father for instance, produced bullying or bumbling charm, as the plot required. A pity, as there was a lot of mileage to be squeezed from the situation. I stayed to the end all the same. Perhaps it was better as a stage play, where harsh changes of key can work better. There is talent there in the author, who wrote stage and screenplay.

To the new Sainsbury’s on the way home. Their profits are down by 20% and I can’t think why, they seem to me so much better than the other supermarkets, in design, and variety, and taste, both sorts.

Much warmer today, 52º or more.

Thursday November 25 1999

Bye-election in Kensington and Chelsea, with Michael Portillo, expected to be elected. The final turnout was only 27%-30%. At the general election the turnout was only 55%. I am shocked by that. K&C is surely fullest of ‘law-abiding trustworthy’ etc etc. citizens. I have voted in every election since I could vote. No-one could be less actively or interestedly political than I, but I always vote.

Before I went out to the film, I had a gin, but I’d run out of tonic, so I had gin and water. I’ve been re-reading Ayala’s Angel, and poor Reginald Dorset gives up his two glasses of port for gin and water. It is presented as the commonest meanest drink. I find it perfectly palatable, as long as the water is iced, too, and you squeeze a good quarter of lemon unto it.

It’s some months I think, since I’ve been to the film. I was struck by the difference time has made to the pedestrianism of parts of Soho. The café tables now cover most of the pavements and people are walking in the road without thinking. Perhaps global warming is having an effect. It was remarkable to see quite a lot of people dinning out in the last week of November. I also see that some of the restaurants are putting out odd-looking heaters that I suppose spread hot air over a fairly wide area.

As for the film The Straight Path, it was tediously goodhearted, tedious being the operative word. I could hardly keep my eyes open. The nadir of the evening, however, came at its beginning. The trailer of Mansfield Park, showed, just before I could close my eyes, Edmond cramming his tongue down Fanny’s throat from between chewing lips, but I couldn’t close my ears to the jocular American voice-over. J said delicately, ‘Will you be coming?’ ‘I’d rather shoot myself.’

Friday November 26 1999

Michael Portillo is back, - I bet that’ll put the cat among the pigeons.

More metabolism mystery. I was up, shaved and dressed by ten o’clock and on my way to buy books – at the new huge Waterstone’s, in Simpson’s old building in Piccadilly. Well. First of all, they have sensibly altered as little as possible of a handsome ‘30s building, one of the best of its kind. I saw at once that the brass ‘Simpson’s of Piccadilly’ set in the marble façade, had been left unchanged, except to have a brass W put above them, with formerly in between. I suppose it must have been comparatively cheap to convert. Clear it, re-carpet it, put up the shelves, and there you are, with lifts and restaurant areas already there. The main impression is space. Each floor is a hundred yards perhaps long. The fiction shelves cover most of the hundred yards. It will take a few visits to be able to save one’s legs.

As for the stock, it is fairly comprehensive even though I notice yet again that a number of books I’d noticed from reviews, are not yet there, but that’s publishers not booksellers. But, for instance, the Life of John Barrymore from the C.U.P., which I haven’t seen anywhere, and was on the point of ordering, was represented here in paperback and hardback. The review was only of the paperback. The hardback has more illustrations, and, other things being equal, I would have bought it, but I don’t go in for American theatre and one must stop somewhere. Again, Magnus Mill’s book of short stories wasn’t in any of the other branches, but here half a dozen copies were, a nicely got-up small booklet, all black, with a bright lemon-yellow book-mark looped over it. The crime section had nine of H’s books. So I made my way to the basement - Accounts – in the lift by way of the fifth floor – that’s the way the buttons worked – and left on my right the area called Events, already set out with lunch tables waiting to be addressed by a celebrity, and passed the coffee-shop and magazine dept, and went to the business-like looking double accounts desk. A pleasant young man and woman – yes, looked through all the cupboards and drawers for the account pad, and eventually the young man had to go off to get it from some more magisterial source. But the ‘space’ I mentioned meant that it took him much longer than in other branches. I don’t find it all that easy to stand these days, and he took so long, I could have gone to the café and had an espresso and read the first of Magnus Mills stories. But of course I didn’t know, so I didn’t.

Home again by twelve. On the back of the Magnus Mills, it said Restraint of Breast sold 30,000 copies. He’s given up bus-driving, so I hope he’s justified.

Dear Neil rang again. Oh, he is so pathetic, whistling to keep his courage up, in the most threadbare way. I can see so clearly why he doesn’t get work, because he puts himself over so absurdly in interviews, in a way that made Derrick M for instance, think him overbearing and conceited, when in fact he’s just the opposite.

Later, by an odd coincidence, John N rang, to say of course we could go to the Van Dyck, and he’d leave cards at the door. V. Tired, as he never gets a minute to himself.

Prices of meat are really coming down. Two generous duck legs for £1.90, reduced. Had one tonight, and the other cold for tomorrow.

Ronnie Woods rang to say that Derrick M. was dying. They’ve taken him off the medication, he’s on diamorphine, his eyes are turning up, and they think it’s a matter of days. Well, I hope it is. R was speaking from D’s flat again. How D would hate to be in a home, and how a home would hate to have him! A classic case of a fall, a broken hip, an operation, and a few days later, pneumonia and death. Of course, he wasn’t exactly healthy, but he was no way near dying before the fall. And now has he decided to die? Is that ever true? Goodness knows, because no-one can tell.

Saturday November 27 1999

Reading the E. Standard Hot Tickets supplement, I came across an odd little concatenation. In the restaurant section, there was an indictment of Highgate and Archway Road for having so few restaurants, as opposed to King Street, Hammersmith, where there are eighty restaurants between the Broadwick and Chiswick roundabout. A great surprise to me that there are any restaurants in the Archway Road besides that rather grubby depressed-looking hippy place, with food that was alarmingly healthy and that was ten years ago at least. It’s much worse than King St., being wider and dirtier, and fuller and a hill. The concatenation was completed by ‘Ever popular’ Maiden Lane, where, it seems, almost every street number is a restaurant, the deer old dowdy Bedford Head, which we went to after the show, was precious, because, even then, it had no atmosphere at all – just space and tables and chairs and drink. Now it’s called The Maple Leaf, is rampantly Canadian in food and drink, and we all know what that means.

A Dorothy Parker novelty, to me. Of Carl Van Vechten, a gifted if promiscuous bisexual author, she wrote, ‘Mr Van Vechten writes with his tongue in someone else’s cheek.’

Read Magnus Mills ‘Little book of short stories’. A tentative reaching out to other themes and classes, which is promising. His style is, as ever, limpid and beautiful, but he needs a lot more material. He must be marginally in the chattering classes by this time. We’ll see what he can make of it all.

Sunday November 29 1999

Toothache. Vicious. Obviously an abscess like the other, but the worst pain I’ve ever suffered, which isn’t saying much thinking of Derrick M dying, not to mention D Took Ibuprofen, which, unlike Aspirin and Paracetamol, does work on pain. First time for me. The Spectator and the Sundays are full of those little paras, Books This Year, or whatever. Alastair Forbes quotes the first Para of Morris Gleitzmen’s Bumface, a Puffin which I’d had on my list, but never got round to finding. But I must. ‘Angus Soloman’, sighed Mr Lowry, ‘Is that a penis you’ve drawn in your exercise book?’ ‘No Miss, it’s a submarine’ he admitted. Mrs Lowry nodded grimly. ‘I thought as much. Now stop wasting time and draw a penis like I asked you to.’ She pointed to the one she’d drawn on the blackboard.

Tried out K’s camera on the old tart’s cottage and couldn’t make it work as usual. Machines see me coming.

Rang Ronnie W. ‘Derrick s peaceful, though yesterday he was thrashing about, I thought is it going to be like my father all over again, twenty years ago. I said to the doctor, I thought they avoided this nowadays.’ This hints at frightening abysses of fear and pain and mismanagement. I do hope he doesn’t linger on. He is lucky to have Ronnie W. tho’ he never said so to me. ‘Yesterday he was really peaceful.’ To look at perhaps, but who knows what nightmares, claustrophobia and imprisonment was going on inside?

Monday November 29 1999

To the dentist, pouring. K had said he’d pay for my old dentist in Harley St, where I know there’s no hideous hygienist. As I went up the stairs to the loo, there, on a ledge at the side of the stairs, was a beautiful orchid in full bloom. I thought ruefully that’s what darling K is paying for.

I had forgotten how pleasant Peter Harvey is. He peered around and said it was too tender for him to pull the tooth, even with an anesthetic. So he gave me a prescription for some anti- biotics and a stronger pain killer. He kept going into an ante-room to deal with something and coming back and apologising. He is formal and casual at the same time, a good combination for fearsome dentists. I chatted away, as I do, not, as I suppose people might think, to distract, but because it was a pleasure to have a fresh audience, rare these days. At one point, while he was in the ante-room, I said to his attractive assistant – is that what you call it? – ‘It’s rally satisfying to be able to say it’s a real relief to come to the dentist.’ Meaning, quiet realistically, if a tooth is really painful, it’s a relief to be somewhere where the pain will be relieved. The assistant, slightly exotic in appearance, was brought up short by this, and said, with wild surmise, ‘I’ve never heard anyone say that before’.

Walked through the rain to Regent’s Park station and just got to Piccadilly before the real rush-hour. Even so I had to stand, and that is difficult now. I sometimes think wistfully of my upbringing, when I was told that I must always give up my seat for an elderly person. So I did. But now I’m still standing. Back home, I felt curiously exhausted. I’d had no lunch, in case of choking, and I suppose I’d nerved myself for the dentist. But I think I’ve got a bit of a temperature, so there’s a sort of nerviness and unease.

‘This Is Your Life’ was Martin Jarvis. They talked about his wonderful voice, and sense of chacterisation and craftsman-ship and so on. I suppose it’s not surprising, since he displays these accomplishments within inverted commas, - ‘Look how accomplished I am.’ His acting has a fatal self-conscious staleness. But then clichés have a very wide appeal. To my surprise Ian hislop testified. I don’t know why I still expect someone witty and intelligent and smart to be anything of a judge of acting as well. How they can be taken in. The one bright spot came from M.J. himself, tho’ not anything to do with him. He was doing a radio play about Milton, played by John G. Halfway thro’ John put his script down, and said ‘I shouldn’t be reading this, Milton was blind.’

Tuesday November 30 1999

So here I am waiting for my pain-killer stronger prescription. The local chemist hadn’t got ‘in’, but promised would be ‘in’ today. I’d picked up anti-biotics, but thought I’d start them together, and have one last drug-free night. But my tooth was hurting by now quite violently; I’d had to stop the Ibruprofen as Mr. Harvey said it mustn’t be combined with either of the two new drugs. I was still feeling a bit as if I’d already taken them, possibly as my mother, after a lifetime of temperance, felt faint at the distant smell of a glass of sherry. So I rang the chemist to see if it has arrived, at about 10.30. It hadn’t, the ‘driver of the morning van’ had reported problems. A polite voice said ‘Shall I ring you back?’ because, after all, one way or another, they should have been able to supply a drug a dentist had ordered for immediate pain. And from Harley St… J rang up, ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’m glad you’re there, I can tell you about my toothache.’ ‘Oh, all right then.’

Wednesday December 1 1999

Woke, and lay looking at the crack of sky tho’ the curtains, expecting it to get lighter, but it didn’t. I turned on the light and it was a quarter to three. Metabolism, again. I was quite unbleary, and felt perfectly fresh. Odd.

The Seattle riots confirm an unsavory development. Peaceful and more or less just protests establish themselves as such, but are taken over after a few hours, by a hundred or so hooligans intent only on violence, and with the shaven heads, Mohican or otherwise, tattoo’s and weapons to prove it. As the leading policewoman said, ‘You hardly bring this along to a peaceful protest’, holding a heavy spanner as long as my forearm.

Cliff’s exquisite carol or whatever it’s called, has reached No.1…

S sent me the Dorothy Warren/Ruth Draper biog. ‘hot from the press’, asking me to read it at once. Read a chunk of it, writing rises from the pedestrian to the almost serviceable, and it seems ill arranged. It doesn’t strike me as promising that she was a fairly obsessional fan when young and a friend of the family and from the same sort of upper class family, with all the possibilities for suppression and reserve. Still, she’s got the Draper family papers, as well as Ruth’s, so I suppose we’ll learn something new.

Started ringing round tree-felling firms, - all but one either had an answering machine, one had simply ‘This is Jason, ring back later’, without the chance to leave a message. As I wanted a verbal quote, this was all rather useless. The one I spoke to said £140 plus VAT. That seems a lot to me. I left messages with the others, and hoped for better.

Now the water-heater has failed. There seems no end to the expense and the difficulties.

There was a ‘phone call while I was cooking. Someone selling something, kitchen supplies, for fitted kitchens. I snapped ‘I am an old-age pensioner on income-support, and you were foolish to call.’

Watched the opening of the redone Covent Garden. It looks splendid. I wish the programme had been. The first, operatic, half was a decided dud. The orchestra on stage, raked as for a concert, the singers rather cramped at the front – it might have been a prom. The music was equally austere. Sieglinde’s and Sigmund’s duet from Dic Walkure, Deborah Polaski and Plácido Domingo, and the last act of Fidelio, well, the finale. Oh dear. A Weber overture. For a start, I don’t think Wagner arias stand alone at all well. To go on, Fedelio is a rather special taste. To go on further, should the whole Opera section have been only concert, and, even more so, only German? I am not specially susceptible to Wagner, but I notice that those who are, voiced the same concern. I mean, it is utterly ridiculous not to have a bit of Italian opera at Covent Garden, not to mention Mozart. I expect it was Bernard Haitink. The second ballet half was more successful, though not, to me, ideal. The back-drop photo of Dame Ninette and Margot and R. Helpman etc was good, and the short excerpts from the ballets, from the beginning till now, were on the right lines as far as length was concerned, and also as far as their having been choreographed originally for the R Ballet. But too many of them were too austere for such a celebration and an audience with a lot of ignoramuses. The only ballet sequence that moved me, and to tears, was Romeo and Juliet with Viviana Durante. She has something. And Margot could make me cry just by smiling.

Thursday December 2 1999

Finished Draper book. A missed opportunity. Goodness knows what apercus she’s missed in all the Draper family letters. More tree firms and more difficulties.

A letter from DSS wanting confirmation of the ground rent – odd, after all this time, and only for £50. Annoying, when I am in truck with Katrina already over the tree.

I am surprised that I had never heard of, or heard about Anne Fine. She is like her name, and I now have all four.

A strange little frisson in some magazine programme. A Phillips representative brought in some morie memorabilia, among them Vivien Leigh’s passport and Laurence Olivier’s gold cigarette-case, given to him by her. The passport was in the time when she left London for Hollywood, did Gone With The Wind, married L.O., darted about generally went back for Street Car, and goodness knows how far it goes, perhaps to the time when I worked with her. But the cigarette-case is a different matter. I have often wondered what had happened to it, and whether Joan P. had put it right in the back of some bottom-drawer. She’s gone further than that, both objects were put on sale by Tarquin Olivier. I should imagine he’s pretty hard-up. I never heard of him doing much, and I don’t suppose he had much share of the Olivier prosperity, such as it was. But, for me, one night during The Sleeping Prince, dressed as a footman, I was passing his quick change-room – and I’ve just remembered, it wasn’t a cigarette-case at all, it was a gold watch. On the back was engraved ‘Wuthering with the Wind: Vivie. Hollywood. 1939.’ Comic. Still, it doesn’t affect my point. Where is that watch now?

Idly mentioned Martin J to Mary L. She likes him, too. She always likes people who work a lot, and can do ‘different’ voices. J is not taken in.

Friday December 3 1999

No answer from the tree people, so I’m left with the £140.

In the p.m. to meet A at the R. Academy. A rainy, windy cold day. I see they have started on the transformation of the courtyard. The statue is being moved. I say ‘transformation’, but I don’t know what more they can do, as it’s all eighteen, or is it seventeenth century stuff? And why is it going to cost the three million John raised? I must look more carefully at the building. One doesn’t. You just walk across to get to the exhibition.

A arrived just after I’d picked up the tickets, looking beautiful, in a cloth coat, ankle length, smart boots, a little fur-collar. I was touched that her Mediterranean complexion has lightened, and has a little colour, with the rain on her cheek. Round we went, she leaning on my arm. I told her it was the first time I’d had a pretty girl on my arm for I don’t know how long. Not that D hung on my arm all that much, but did so purposefully on any formal occasion.

Well, the thing couldn’t be bettered. I was struck all over again what a great, as opposed to good, artist, he is. Lively, spontaneous, yet formal and painstaking with extraordinary gifts of just painting. The combination is rare, just as the ability to make our picture of Charles I and his court his, is rare.

Many old friends – especially the couples, always a favorite of mine. Endymion Porter and the artist, and poor Thomas Killingrew in mourning. I’m sure that, when I first saw that, fifty years or so ago, the other man was named. Now it says ‘not clearly identified’. I suppose they found it insufficiently authenticated. I wish I could remember who it was. The countess of Bedford just like a lot of plump fair girls I danced with a million years ago. The Charles I triptych, - he was certainly resigned and wistful even when things were going comparatively well. Some delicious little drawings in red ink, or is that sepia? Oh dear, I am almost entirely ignorant. Some of the heads piercingly modern.

We stayed something over half an hour. I was proud to have ‘a sort of daughter-in-law’ on my arm. We crossed over to the new Waterstones, and she came in with me to have a look around. She ‘looked around’ the business section. Gracious! The examinations she took the other week – in statistical information – good heavens! – she got 100%. Well, she can look after K’s fortune (sic).

Saturday December 4 1999

Ronnie Woods rang to say Derrick M. Died yesterday. We had an amiable chat. R said the flat’s lease had few years to run, ‘So I might be able to sell it for something, - if I did make anything out of it, Derrick would be so furious.’ Well, fairly impossible people like D and Mary L do contribute to the gaiety of nations. I shall miss our chats. He did not lose his sense of humour about, or relish for, gossip. It was only about himself that he lost humour. And he was one of the dwindling band of people to whom I don’t have to explain everything – D for instance.

Rang Roy, and got him. I don’t know on what principle they answer or leave machines on. We had a good chat. The film seems still to be on, for February. I wish he’d ring me sometimes.

The Royal Variety Perf. was at Birmingham Hippodrome this year. It is many years since I’ve been able to watch such a thing, but I did want to see what the Birmingham Royal Ballet was offering in its own theatre, and what position on the bill they would fill. I left it on with the sound turned off, and – missed it.

Sunday December 5 1999

An elderly man, a joiner, died in Doncaster. His family was at last able to go into the spare bedroom, which had always been locked, even to his wife. They found over a hundred ‘Old Master’ paintings and antique furniture, with just enough of a path to get a desk. But, unlike most stories of this kind, the ‘old masters’ were old masters, among them, for instance, a long-lost oil sketch of a well-known François Boucher picture. On the desk were many reference books, and meticulous notes, the Phillips man said he ‘must have had a very good eye.’ I suppose his family was philistine. It’s a novel by H.G. Well’s or Arnold Bennett. I expect the family will collect the money.

The Spectator reviews more than usually dispiriting, - the most sparkling, being a life of Jung, and a life of Stafford Cripps. At last one of the cartoons was faintly witty, that grotesque creature, Ann Widdecombe, surveyed by two woman at a party: ‘She’s looking for Mr. Extreme Right.’

Endless pages of ‘Books of the Year.’ Rather more interesting than usual in the S Telegraph in a gruesome sort of way, because they also had to name their books of the century. If some guidelines were laid down, such choices might be more coherent. But as it is, for instance, Alec G. has chosen The Cherry Orchard. It’s certainly one of the greatest achievements of the century, but it’s a play, which has many adventitious aids not enjoyed by a novel. And then can you choose only a novel? A biography? History? Einstein on Relativity? ‘Literary’ types predominate, so it is mostly novels. There is a large, and conscientious majority for Proust, of course, only one for Dance, - that was Chris Woodhead, the education Inspector – but some other choices are bizarre, not least in their odd lack of proportion. Ruth Rendell chose Animal Farm, Jonathan Bate Lolita, and Selina Hastings, a biographer I admire, Rosamond Lehmann’s Invitation to A Waltz. Lightweight indeed. Then someone called Conrad Black chose General De Gaulle’s Memoirs, certainly not lightweight, but well up to the boredom threshold, and joining it there, Douglas Hurd’s choice of the Foresyte Saga. Two choices I do warm to for different reasons, Helen Osborne cheerfully chooses the two volumes of her husband’s auto-biography, and even more cheerfully, recommends the cheaper two-in-one version ‘Just out’. Barry Humphries’ choice was Osbert Sitwell’s Left Hand Right Hand, one of my half dozen favourite books, a wonderfully sweeping affair, and one of the funniest books ever written.

K rang, having got the first ‘Harvey’ bill and rather concerned about further bills, not because he can’t afford them, ‘I’m being a cheapskate, really but because I could go to a perfectly good dentist – he has – for nothing.’ He’s right of course. He went on that he preferred to spend the money, or keep it, for when I was really ill. That’s what he meant, - I can’t remember his exact form of words. I was overcome by his clear intention to look after me. Then we talked of the tree, he thought £140 rather a lot for a small tree he could cut down himself if he had the time. But he said he’s wanted to do something about the back garden, ‘Better to pay a man £500 for a week, and get the tree done as part of it.’ There is no one like him.

Monday December 6 1999

I don’t often think of a traditional joke, but, ‘I’m just going through the motions’, as the nurse said to the mother of a small boy who’d swallowed a marble. Just the sort of joke I don’t like, especially as it’s so often preceded by five minutes of drivel.

Read Bumface, the usual nougat coating of a moral point. Perhaps necessary, but a pity.

Tuesday December 7 1999

In the p.m. to new French film at Renoir, ‘Alice Et Martin.’ Juliette Binoche, and an impassive young man. He became a successful model, where a certain amount of impassivity is desirable, but unfortunately he really is impassive. In close-up nothing happens. Juliette Binoche has to be worth the money alone. The film is at least half an hour too long, but she makes it worth seeing. Intelligent, feeling, she lives. Still incomparably better than a corresponding English or American picture.

To the Safeway’s after, and there were the Brillo pads I’d been looking for for weeks, and not found in the other Safeway’s I get to. An old product, but for the most savage in wrenching baked-on fat off any surface. Nobody has solidified fat any more.

Wednesday December 8 1999

Why are there caterpillars that will kill a man, not to mention, snakes and predators and plants, and not in England? What is God thinking of?

Still rather struggling through the Rossetti biog. mostly because of the rather pedestrian writing. Too many Americanisms, by the way, ‘sick’ for ‘ill’ – why? And, as usual, depriving us of a useful meaning, and ‘meet up with’ for ‘meet’, clumsier and longer, as so many Americanisms are, contrary to popular opinion, but there’s no doubt that I do rather resist Rossetti. The self conscious beefy slang, the stirring up of aggression, the, to me, messy emotions, the whole thing is ominously, mut.mut., like the sixties. I like Burne-Jones’ and Morris’ sound, but the others... And as for his poetry, I must look at it more closely than just a couple of verses every now and then in the text. I must have read some years ago, but unlike many others, none if it remains with me. Of course, it was very out of fashion then.

A poor little creature of fifteen or sixteen, called Charlotte Church, has now sung for the Queen, The Pope and President Clinton – I am not quite clear how – and sold two million albums. She is the very embodiment and deification of suburban chic and musical philistinism. Yes, she can produce some pleasant notes from a rather small voice (I can’t really say she’s a musician), but for how long? She’s singing anything and everything, with a ridiculously high tessitura. Her voice, even at sixteen, is showing signs of strain, and will be shrieked away all too soon. Oh that vibrating bottom jaw! She will put on weight. She is, of course, Welsh.

Later. I had no whisky tonight, and, as I can’t seem to sleep without it, I suddenly decided to go to bed just after nine, and take advantage of my after-dinner nap, if any. So I did, and I am now writing at 3.15, having woken up after six hours of good sleep.

Later still. Read and came in here about six, watched TV, and felt perfectly fresh.

Thursday December 9 1999

Have felt all day as if I’d had a perfectly good night’s sleep at the usual time. Good.

A letter very á propos from H’Smith Council about the tree. They set out my request, and then, in Council-speak, ‘If, by 17th Jan 2000, you have not been given a decision in writing then you may be proceed with the works as described in the notice.’ Their punctuation.

The captain of some football-team is to be paid £52,000 a week. Well, I just hope the Divine Catastrophe that must swallow all sportsmen will somehow miss me. Talking of which, there may be another to come down in seven plagues on Cliff Richard’s Lord’s Prayer, and now somebody’s statue, carved by Catholic hacks, of Diana as Madonna, on show at the Tate.

An unusual position for me, three obits in the Telegraph, and I knew, or was acquainted with all three. Hugo Phillips, a tall rangy breezy undergraduate was at Kings. Elegant country clothes and a half of a bit of a golden couple as he was engaged to, and after they went down, married Margaret Heathcote, the young woman of the time. She looked like one of the famous models of the time, Bronwen Pugh or Barbara Goalen. She had a brittle look, and a voice that sounded, as you approached a party across a court, like a typewriter meeting a deadline. One of the things I like about getting old, is that you see what happens to people. They split up after five years or so, because she went off with someone else, and is Lady something now. I bet she’s a hard-face creature. He was younger than me, I see – I suppose he came straight from school. He’s Lord Milford, or was; his father was a communist peer, and his mother was Rosamond Lehmann, an uneasy pedigree. Reading between the lines, he may have been tall and rangy, but I don’t think he was as breezy as all that.

The second was Angela Fox, Ed’s mother. She had a certain vague charm, but I thought she was also rather foolish. I found I wasn’t surprised that Robin treated her badly, not to say rather contemptuously. There was something irritatingly indefinite about her. Her maiden name was Worthington and I see that she claimed that Noel wrote the song about her. Well, it may be, but she certainly had a talent for inaccuracy. I remember a partie carrée with D and I and Godfrey Winn, and how triumphantly down to our expectations he came. I’ve always loved that quote of Arthur Marshall – did he hear G.W. say it? – ‘I don’t know why people are so against God, he’s always been very good to me.’

But the third was a real loss to me – Rupert Hart-Davis. I didn’t know him, but we met him when he came round after we did our Jane Austen at that charming tiny little theatre at Richmond, in Yorkshire near where he lived. But to my generation the funding of his publishing firm, his choice of authors, his work as editor, was first a reminder that beautiful books could be produced again, and then that their authors would be the highest quality, and then that his perfect taste and perfect balance of judgment, could be trusted to produce work of scholarship of the highest quality.

He was magisterial, yet with the lightest of touches, and possessed wit and humour. I didn’t know that I have the first book he published, Fourteen Stories by Henry James. I shall miss the thought of him being there, knowing what was right, I am glad I was able to walk through Soho Square and see his light on. Though he is long gone, I glance up there when I go to the Academy Film.

Friday December 10 1999

Thank god I’m too old to give or receive blood, or bone marrow or organs. (Well, perhaps not blood.) Apart from the physical fear, imagine wondering whether to sacrifice a kidney to keep Donald alive…

Advertisement in the E. Standard for Air Canada, with prices etc. Slogan ‘There’s never been a better time to fly Canada.’ Illustration, an untitled photo of Jeffery Archer.

Fascinating article on the Queen’s gardens at Buck. H. Extraordinary totals of birds and plants, showing that being left undisturbed is the vital thing. Good heavens they have kingfishers!

A Snail Race held in Marylebone. Organiser on radio: ‘Diet is important. I prefer English grown Lollo Rosso lettuce, which is very high in protein.’ ‘And how do you pick your sprinters?’ ‘Well, I find the snails whose shell patterns go anticlockwise are generally faster.’ All in an admirably straight voice.

So poor old Derrick M was cremated this afternoon. His own worst enemy and was shrinking into a little pile of selfish complaining. Sad. Still, he could laugh, and I shall miss talking over old prejudices. I’m so grateful I have darling K, for what’s left.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 166

December 11 1999 - January 29 2000.

Saturday December 11 1999

Decided to sell some unwanted books instead of giving them to Oxfam. I won’t bother again. He said they had to be selective about paperbacks because of space. All he took of those were three thrillers. The others included a dozen or so novels that had been very well reviewed in the papers, all in the last few weeks. He didn’t want any of those. Of the three hardbacks, he took the latest biog. of Keats by Andrew Motion and Nijinsky’s Diary, published last month. The other hardback was The Book of Revelation by ? Thompson, a nasty book, but was given an individual review in the Sundays, an indication of quality in the paper’s eyes. He didn’t want that. He gave me 80p each for the p. backs, and £4 for both the hardbacks together. So far, for three full carrier-bags, I came away with £4 odd. It isn’t the money, it’s finding that such a comparatively serious second-hand bookshop had no interest in sharply reviewed, newly published books. After all, there are plenty of cultivated people round Gloucester Road. I took them to Oxfam in Ken High St. Went on to Waterstones to buy books. Got the S Hutch biog., John Richardson’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and a new Gwendolyn Butler. Shop already starting to seethe. Noticed a very marked increase in the number of books out of place, a novel half-open on top of the biographies, the detritus of the sort of reader who can’t read a book holding it in his hand, and his little conception of the different sorts of book.

S has sent me another CD, of that Russian orchestra and Pletner, who also appears as a solo pianist. I am thrilled to have it if only for the Pathetique which brought the extraordinary ‘Should human beings be able to play like this?’ from the gramophone. I immediately played the first moment, and cried and cried. You feel the wonderful release they must have felt in being able to play in freedom, and whatever they like. The communists were quite illogical. I mean, Tchaikovsky seems to me the most uncommunist possible composer. I don’t know why, but the picture on the front of the CD is Watt’s Hope. How capricious the whirligigs of fashion are. Halfway down the stairs in the first house I remember, was a large framed (in a grey mount and oak frame) sepia print of it. In 1935 it was seismically out of fashion. Well, it wouldn’t be have been in my parent’s house if it hadn’t been. Tho’ I think they must have had a faint idea that it was not quite what it had been, or it would have hung over the drawing-room mantelpiece. Where is it described – Ian Hay? P.G. Wodehouse – as a blind lady sitting on an orange?

Sunday December 12 1999

Now that the Rossetti is getting into the ‘60’s, it’s getting better. Once we enter society and Chelsea and more people one knows, I enjoy it much more.

Article on panto. Lord Mayor to the Dame, with a rose in her cleavage:

If I kissed your rose, would you blush? If I pulled your chain would you flush?

Hazel told about taking Natalie to Toad of Toad Hall in Taunton, ‘She looked around and saw that clapping in time was what you did.’ I feel a bit sorry for N being brought up for a life that has almost vanished. And by the way, the weasels and ferrets and stoats, were presented as wide boys and spivs.

Monday December 13 1999

Wrote to John N in answer to his sweet card offering to pay for the water-heater and so on. Made it clear I just wanted some cash.

Brain Blessed as Captain Hook – one rears back, appalled and deafened. Dear Brain would deafen me as Little Miss Muppet. But you can only love him.

Wrote to S to thank him for the CD and had posted both, when John rang. Simon R has ‘flu as usual and he’s sickening for it, though I think he’s just tired. He said he could give me £100, ‘from time to time.’ He’s so good.

Once more I watched This is Your Life with fascinated repulsion. This time it was Rita Tushingham who, I was surprised to hear, ‘is an international star.’ That is one thing, and a rather uninteresting one, but the people who appear, supply the repulsion, not to say the amazement. I think the climax, or more, the nadir, was reached when it was announced that she’d been an ASM at Liverpool in 196-something, ‘and here are five members of that company.’ Through the sliding doors and down that undignified slope came some sheepish middle aged actors, a couple fairly dowdily dressed. The two known to me were Caroline Blakiston and Trevor Baxter. For all their individual shortcomings,- in CB’s case quite substantial – they are actors of reputation and of considerable bodies of work, in the theatre, particularly, and from the era when L’pool Rep. meant something. Trevor, I can imagine, appeared because he liked and approved of Rita T, who may quite possibly be a pleasant, even estimable woman. C.B. I would think, thought she might appear to remind someone of her, a sort of audition. Neither of them spoke, just stood with the others, while a spokesman, whom I didn’t recognise, reminisced. I’ve suddenly realised the spokesman was Ben Withrow, older. Good heavens, nothing would induce me, even for K. Think of D!

Tuesday December 14 1999

Really, women are so odd. Stephen Norris, one of the London Mayoral Candidates, has had a wife, five mistresses, and now a partner half his age, a pretty blonde. He is heavy and ‘bluff’ and quite intensely ordinary, yet women fall before him. Do they actually like coarse boars?

The ‘Rossetti’ author ‘analyses’ the poetry, and ties it in (sic) with the life. I find this very wearisome and unconvincing. Heavens, poems are not diaries or letters. I find the excerpts from the poems progressively unreadable, - the sense of words blunted and overblown, at the same time.

Felt chokey and faintly over-hung, and thought I would just cancel my hair-appointment. After all, I am at least in control of my barbers. And stayed in.

Wednesday December 15 1999

Very cold, only just above freezing.

Hitchcock’s Sabotage on TV. Saw the last half hour this p.m. Forty years since I saw it, sixty three years since it was made. I’m moved by watching it, because I think of D seeing it new, as a young actress in her first job at Cambridge. I’d forgotten that Martina had a small part, vivid, seventeen years before I worked with her in 1953. It’s sad that they don’t screen the cast-list at the end of old films now. Goodness, it’s just a few seconds to pay respect to actors. I was intrigued that I had no idea who was playing the pet shop proprietor. That’s unusual for me, in this period. Good, in a workmen-like sort of way, helped by being the villain, but roly-poly.

John N rang about Friday. ‘How mobile are you?’ Thinking of my knee no doubt. ‘Perfectly.’ ‘Would you mind coming here, I’m rather tired, it would be nice if you could.’ I don’t think he’s got home before ten for the last six months.

Cancelled hair again.

Thursday December 16 1999

Metric weights come in on Jan 1st. I thought they were in already. I deplore it all, and the money. Nobody seems to see, or to mind, that it will push so much of our literature into archaism and render it yet more incomprehensible to young people. Inches, feet, yards, pounds shillings and pence, means nothing to them, and so dulls the impact of so many metaphors and similes. What prices Pop Goes The Weasel? And poor old Half A Sixpence can’t be revived.

Dear Hazel sent me an M&S voucher for £10. Went out specially to spend it, as I only had about £16 cash. Bought a few little treats, and was surprised they left me short. Outside, I realised I hadn’t spent the token…

K rang at 7.0, half-thinking I might come round, but I didn’t think he really wanted it, nor did A, at such short notice. They’re going shopping tomorrow and to Portugal on Sun. for a week. So Fri and Sat are out. Thank goodness we both see things the same. He asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I said I wanted nothing, without saying he gave me so much already. He asked again, so I said ‘Something luxurious’, sensing, I hope rightly, that he was thinking of the dentist. So I said, ‘Floris Ormonde Toilet Water’. This was after forgetting the name ‘Floris’ and going into the bedroom to find the empty bottle of Ormonde.

Later, just as I was having a wank, he rang again, to check…

At last got my hair cut. Dear little Giovanni’s English is fairly accurate in vocabulary and grammar but his accent is often impenetrable, partly from poor diction.

A trailer for The Real Life Of Christ, was accompanied by someone singing Your Tiny Hand is Frozen. Hoping for White Crucifixion, I suppose.

Friday December 17 1999

Hazel rang, as again the weekend is full of people. I think they do too much, one way and another, as they are both run-down, with many minor ailments over the last year. The E-coli water disaster will not be put right till the spring, and they are still using bottled water for everything like washing and teeth, and boiling for everything else. Now another bit of bad luck, - the hot-water tank valve, or whatever it’s called, failed, which meant the Rayburn burning full tilt was in danger of exploding. Geoffrey was obliged to empty it by riddling and poking, kneeling and bending, and it took him an hour and a half. ‘When he was finished, he was grey.’ Some time after, - she didn’t say when – ‘there was rectal bleeding’ – so he’s got to have a barium enema on Wednesday. She tried to make something of the doctor settling for the NHS offer of a three month wait, and less for his being pleased they’ve gone private to a week’s wait. I’m worried, as Geoffrey has lost a stone and a half in the last few months, and is the very epitome of workaholic protestant guilt. I have to say, ruthlessly, that if he died in the next year, H. would have an Indian summer. She has been very loyal, not a word of complaint, but I am sure she would like a more metropolitan life than Geoffrey would ever enjoy.

K rang again, believe it or not, when I was again at the point, from Floris itself. He told me that Ormonde had been discontinued. Sad. He read out three or four of what was available. They sounded rather off to me and was one of them called ‘Lilac with herbs?’ – so settled for the one I knew, no.89. I expect Floris has been taken over by some horror, and rationalised, as so many others.

So off I go to dinner with John N. I am so blessed with friends.

Later. A lovely soothing comforting evening, with one surprising meeting. I’d forgotten how immaculate a gay couple’s flat can be! Dear John, the soul of hospitality and tact, gave me a large gin and t, and then fetched the £100 and said ‘Spend it!’ He didn’t look too tired, as I’d feared, - I think his holiday so near has helped. We started to get up to date, and after a couple of drinks, and him asking me if I liked brandy, because he’d been given an impossibly expensive bottle of Hine, and both of us agreeing we didn’t, we set off up Warwick Avenue, and turned off into a small side-street. In most parts of London it would be just a small side street. In one of the half-dozen richest bits of London, there was a chic little row of shops, the first one selling nothing but fossils with three foot and half ammonites in the window. A hair-dresser’s with delicate Christmas decorations, and there had been a bookshop till lately. We turned into the restaurant, plain, smart, pine kitchen chairs the table-linen white, - he apologised for us being downstairs. It was full, with just what you’d expect, some exotic foreigners, at least three later thirties married couples with a prep-school boy. Italian waitress. Our Italian waitress, what with the noise and her accent, remained impenetrable on the subject of the dishes of the day. (What was it called? The something Olive, but surely not the Stuffed Olive. It was not sensational, indeed John rather apologised for it, but I think that was because my main course was better than his.) We both had rocket salad, with pancetta, pine nuts and parmesan shavings. Old hat now, but delicious to me. Then I had breast of turkey, stuffed with tomato, aubergine, and mozzarella. Well, I wouldn’t have turkey anywhere else, and I thought it might make it taste of something. It was quite pleasant, but rather more tasteless than chicken. One has to remember it is a native American bird. A chocolate ice with bits of choc so hard they would only respond to sucking. A little aperitif, heavily doughy bread and a little dish of olive-oil to dip that tasted of olive-oil. Delicious wine, never saw what it was. J and the sommelier talked of the difficulty of getting good Italian wine in London. J told me of his tiresome family. I still regret Joyce, I told him of S and K, until somewhere after the main course I was aware of someone coming to the table, a balding stocky fiftyish man, standing there smiling. He said, ‘Nick Garland, Angus.’ It gave me a real shock, I stood up, and he took my hands and never let them go till he left. I don’t remember anything he said, but it was all said thro’ the broadcast of smiles – I remember his rather sideways smile. All I remember saying is ‘What a success you’ve made of your life… and your son…’

Perhaps the first thing I should say is that I haven’t seen him since 1961, before K was born. I wonder if I wrote anything about him at the time. Well, we were asked to do two plays at Cheltenham. It had recently been expensively and repellently modernised. A ‘modernistic’ frontage had been put onto the charming Opera house, to persuade non-theatre goers that going to the theatre was just as ordinary an experience as a pop-concert or a cinema or a shop. Peter Powell had been appointed as director, an interesting venal character. He had taste, intelligence and talent, but he hadn’t enough resolution to do nothing but the best work. He started out in the ‘highbrow’ theatre, worked with D at The Arts in the Alec Clunes days, was thought of as a coming man. But he was tempted by the good money and safety of one of the leading commercial reps, The Alexandra at Birmingham. Run by Derrick Salberg, it was prosperous, with good production values for rep, but an undistinguished choice of plays. Derrick had little dramatic taste himself, and just reproduced the latest West End success. The audience was much more homogenous, and this policy was surely profitable then. With his opinions, P.P should have been bored and ashamed by all this, but he stayed for twelve years. Possibly because the status quo started to fall apart, possibly as the last attempt to do something worthwhile – he was in his late forties, he took the job at Cheltenham. The theatre had been saved by a group of local people, most of them well-off and too self-opinionated humbly to take advice, not knowing enough about running a theatre to know whose advice to take.

I think they had enough financial prudence to have possible reserve, grants from the Council and the Arts Council, so there we were, doing out bit for a ‘new’ provincial theatre. Out first misgiving came when we found we were to rehearse at the Queen’s, the Queen’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, an absurd waste of money. With hindsight, I expect he had some girl in London that he liked to come and see for nothing. The first play was NOT in the book, a fairly successful light comedy that both of us could have played in our sleep, and almost had to. A matinee was so empty D passed me in the wing for her quick change and murmured ‘Didn’t even have time to light my cigarette.’ The other play was Epitaph For George Dillon.

The assistant director was a young man who had worked, or been, at the Royal Court, then still in its heyday. He was thin, dark, gaunt, brooding, combative, everything that an aspiring self-respecting artist should be. He took to us because he sensed we despised P. Powell as much as he did. (It just shows P. Powell’s poor judgment that he made N.G. his assistant, not seeing they were chalk and cheese. I can’t quite remember, but I think he made Nick do the light comedy and he did George Dillon, more foolishness if true.)

After the second show of the empty matinee day, the three of us were walking home in a quiet rage, Nick circling us as young impatient men do. He snarled ‘If I had this theatre, I’d wake this audience up, and threw at us his wake-up material, four or five Royal Court failures, ‘I’d wake this audience up.’ There was a pause and D said, ‘What audience? They’re not asleep, they’re not there.’ I think that’s when she decided to write something for the theatre. Everyone had said the publicity was poor, etc etc. The second night of Wildest Dreams, they had to paint a House Full board specially. They knew where the theatre was when they wanted to come. We got Nick to direct it, and I don’t think it was his fault that it was a failure in the West End. He was a bit careless later on, not coming to pull it together quite as often as he should have done. But then I’m sure he must have felt it a very unfashionable dowdy affair for a Royal Court ex. to be associated with the failure of a show tends to divide, rather than unite, and I can’t at all remember how, or if, we parted. (Did he stay with us at some point in London?) I thought he’d been relieved to find two reasonably intelligent people leading the company and prepared to be allies against P.Powell. Actors who can play light comedy and explain it, are rare. There are actors who simply despise it without seeing that their sense of humour is at fault, or there are actors who think it’s a matter of ‘Fuck on, get your laughs and fuck off again.’

So the warmth that came to me after forty years, was a real surprise and most touching. He obviously looked back at our association with love. He had the taste and tact not to mention D. How few would.

Saturday December 18 1999

A little vignette from 1960. Peter Powell was then married to the actress, Julia Lang. D had known her at The Arts, too, and remembered her as an independent and bright girl. Goodness knows what she had suffered from P. Powell over the years – everyone knew he had a mistress, not to mention the broken couch in the producers’ room at the Alex. When we went to dinner at the house they’d taken in Cheltenham, where she could be left with the children, we saw the situation immediately. He was sarcastic about the meal, which she’d obviously slaved over. He put her down constantly, worst of all D was shocked to see the girl she remembered, taking it all, looking older than her years, hair dry and thin, nails bitten and so on. I have a race-memory that they split up for good after Cheltenham crashed. Perhaps that is just what I hoped should happen. I also believe she recovered and worked again. After all, she’d been very well known for Listen With Mother on the Wireless, hadn’t she? I haven’t been aware of their dying, but they probably have. She was the same age as D. He would be 92 now, but I doubt it. I’ve just thought – odd that - to look him up in Who’s Who in the Theatre. Yes, there is the distinguished (sic) record. He was married to that admirable woman, Jean Anderson, first. Good God. Arts ’46. ‘Exercise Bowler’, ‘Don Juan in Hell’ Piccadilly ’47, ‘Othello’ and ‘Candida’ Arts ‘47-8, ‘Invitation To A Voyage’ ‘Rosmersholm’ ‘Tartuffe’ ‘Cherry Orchard.’ By 1949, he was at the Alex. You see? and stayed for ten years. I hope he was supported to the end by a very rich woman who despised him.

As for poor Julia, I saw her thro’s D eyes, - I had to. I hope she found someone to help her. Her children?

Amusing article by A.N. Wilson about Iris M. in the Spectator. Mentioned B. Pym to the extent that I was left with the impression that they were the only novelists in consideration. Suggested that Iris was very jealous of Barbara. Well, A.N. W. knew Iris and John B. Well, or says that he does. It’s certainly true that writers are, in my experience, much more subject to jealousy, contrary to ordinary assumption, than actors. I can only say that the woman I met and sat next to at dinner, seemed to me to be as free of such littleness as anyone I ever met. If you’ve looked into somebody’s eyes for three hours, you know something about them.

Set out for Mary L with two bags of books. At Green Park saw the up escalators jammed like a football-match with rampant Christmas crowd going to Oxford St. How lovely to be going the other way, except that, as I struggled along Chichele Road’s disgracefully uneven pavement, I thought, ‘I’m little Red Riding Hood.’ She gave me some books back, some of which didn’t belong to me. John Grisham, good heavens. Well, Edna outraged D by not being able to tell the difference in quality, of style if nothing else, between Erle Stanley Gardener and Rex Stout.

Out again to shop when I got back. I hate coming out twice.

Sunday December 19 1999

K and A to Portugal today. I don’t know what time, thank goodness.

Sent the A.N.W. article to Hazel. It might just distract her from her various worries, especially Geoffrey’s barium thing Wed.

An evening about R. Attenboro’s BAFTA award. He may be sincere. He never seems so to me. I cannot watch all that teeth-aching sentimentality.

Later. They may be flying now. I never get used to it. Never.

Monday December 20 1999

It hurts that I leave messages for Roy and M and they never directly ring me back, or, for the birthday messages, thank me. Oh well, people don’t, these days.

I am never sympathetic with characters in films or plays who aren’t sure who they leave. (Freud - love I meant)

A trying dry cough and a drier throat. It might turn into a cold or not.

Passed the house in Margravine where there’s a baby grand in the front window. Somebody was playing a duet? A cello sonata? with cellist. Comforting.

Tuesday December 21 1999

Really painful throat, and diaphragm hurts when I cough, as if I’ve been coughing all night, perhaps I have.

Went to pay the ‘phone bill in H’smith out of John N’s £100. Puddles still frozen in the middle of the day.

Started to stream, and felt lightheaded, or heavy headed.

Wednesday December 22 1999

Throat like a knife. It’s not just sore, it’s also completely dry, because of a completely blocked nose and sleeping, breathing thro’ my mouth. It wasn’t just my blocked nose, I felt stifled suddenly, quite nervously so, and had to get out. Odd. And sweating, of course. I knew I had to go to Soho for the pheasant and so on. It was ten o’clock, so I went, got some pork and chestnut sausages at Simply Sausages, and at the butcher’s a pheasant, a mallard, and two pigeons for just over £10. Felt rather peculiar. Called in at the Piccadilly Boots, and asked if they had a pill, not some footling inhaler, to unstop my nose. She asked me – a sweet Muslim girl in one of those wrap around-around head-dresses – whether I’d had various things, and was having other things, and I said, rather more sharply than I meant that I’d never been ill, and she gave me a packet called Decongestant Tablets. I tend slightly more to believe if it only claims to do one thing – has no brand name.

Roy rang to wish me a Happy Christmas – just in time! I told him about my cold. He said firmly that he had ‘flu. We parted amicably.

Pet idiots talk about the differences between dogs’ and cats’ personalities. Individuals, I mean, not as between dog and cats. Of course they have no personality, they are either savage or timid, lively or phlegmatic.

Only read in bed.

Thursday December 23 1999

I am amused at myself for my Freudian slip on Monday. People ‘Who aren’t sure who they leave.’ Indeed. I, who have never left anyone and have only worried if people might leave me.

Yes, I must be a bit light-headed or confused. I put on some chestnuts as usual, and on Tuesday and Wednesday, forgot them. The interesting thing is that, on the same grill at the height, at the same gas, they burnt quite differently. On Tuesday I found them to be charred, black, but still recognizably chestnuts, solid enough to be cut open like pieces of charcoal.

Yesterday they were striations of ash. Which fell apart into dust at a touch. If I could extrapolate anything from this evidence I would feel like Galileo or Newton.

A huge plane crashed out of Stansted, only cargo thank God, it just missed the nearest village Great Hallingbury. Described on some news as ‘Great Hallingbury was narrowly wiped out.’

Henry Williamson’s son appeared on some cheap antique prog. – Collectors Corner, it’s called – with his father’s relics. Hoping to up their value. Only for fascists.

Friday December 24 1999

Hazel rang, because again she will be swamped with people and Christmas. First question about Geoffrey’s barium thing. Everything is all right, thank goodness. The doctor emerged from examining the evidence saying, ‘A good working bowel.’

A note through my inner-door gave me a shiver in case it was landlord stuff. But it was a note saying they’d taken in some flowers for me. It was signed Katrina’s Mum. Even that class of woman has no dignity now. It only needed a glance to see that the flowers were from S. A huge bunch, ending in the crossed stems now the fashion, and too big for anything but a large bucket. I had to put them in the bathroom basin. A ‘festive season’ theme quite impersonal. Holly, ferns, narrow trumpet arum lilies, some stems of large deep-red flower, which I will recognise perhaps if and when they open, and some spires of tight-packed tight buds, like a nascent hyacinth. We’ll see. I put the lilies by K’s photo, and the pretty bunch under D’s on my desk. The whole not enlivened by a good many twirling thickish sliver wires, escaped from a link fence. It was so typical of him – I can’t help feeling he suddenly remembered, and with a florist, it really is no effort… but not at all typical was the message on the card.

Dearest A,

In memoriam rather than in celebration of the wretched 20th century, and wretched 1999, Love as ever. This from the hater of pessimism? I supposed the Pyjama Game might answer for the wretchedness of 1999, but I don’t think he should take on the whole twentieth-century as well.

I saw S on some musical quiz, and to my amazement, heard For Unto Us a Son Is Born played, and saw S shake his head. What would the other Face The Music people say? I told J this, and she responded with ‘I once said to him apropos some situation, ‘Of course, he’s a real Eeyore and you’re a real Tigger.’

He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Well, as I said, he isn’t English. Something made me go on to realise that, out of the four people who have been ruder to me than anyone in my life, three are friends of his, Adrian Noble, David Hare, Snoo Wilson. The fourth is Lloyd Webber…

Saturday December 25 1999

Dark rather stormy morning, with dramatic shafts of light thro’ the dark clouds. One of the shafts created the most extraordinary little natural lighting effect I’ve ever seen. On the left of the fire-place there hangs my life-mask of Keats, in white plaster of Paris, a copy, of course, of the one in NPG. The light caught it as exactly as a pinspot. (The fireplace is on the right, the window, taking up most of the wall, faces me.) The light spilled in a small circle round the mask, touching nothing else, and, horizontal like all winter sunlight, threw into sharpest relief, the planes and hollows of the face. Even I had to keep looking, to be sure it wasn’t lit up from inside. It happened at about midday and lasted about quarter of an hour. I daresay that, on lesser evidence, idiots invent the super natural. It would be, to them I imagine, an omen. Gracious, isn’t it bad enough to have bad things happen, without omens looming beforehand?

Frightful TV programmes, with ‘Christmas Cheer’ and ‘Festive season’ invading even quite unlikely programmes. Tried a bit of the Roberto Alagna and wife concert. Neither of them in good voice, and both need sharp reminders that they know nothing of gesture. Both of them are quite crude ‘milkers,’ – what D always called singers who reached forward with their hands as if they were milking a cow. Didn’t last long.

Saw a bit more of the Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel concert and Glynddourner, some superlative singing, but their comedy, and their behinds, too broad for me. C.B. in particular, with a yoke catching the broadest point of her hips, has to continue almost at forty-five degrees to flatter(sic) a really outstanding bum. Oh dear, singers. By the way, in the Alagna affair, one of the arias was from Il Travatore.

Someone announced with excitement, on Top Of The Pops, ‘The last Xmas No. 1 of the Millennium.’ As if there’d been a first one…

Later. He didn’t ring but I never mind now, because I know. Except that I worry he’s dead.

Sunday December 26 1999

Reading The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with keen appreciation and a certain detached disapproval. ‘What a set’ I keep saying to myself. Almost everyone in the book seems to be only half there, unfinished, not to mention rather boringly corrupt.

Later. K rang. So upset and contrite. And of course it wasn’t his fault. He muttered something about ‘Their Christmas started at midnight, and I sort of lost track of which day it was. What day is it today? It was the most horrible week of my life. And then I left my keyboard in the bus and we had to go back for it.’ He was really upset, poor child, and I said, I really didn’t mind. Tho’ the tears were running down my cheeks. Well, one cheek - that made him laugh, as he could tell I really didn’t mind, except for wondering.

Monday December 27 1999

Peter Jeffrey is dead. The first of my Cambridge acting contemporaries to die, I think, 70. Odd, as S worked with him earlier this year and didn’t say he was ill. Prostate cancer. Sometimes supposed to be due to lack of sex. Not in Peter’s case. I did not like his treatment of his first wife, Yvonne Bonnamy, during our season together at Bristol – we shared a d- room with Len Rossiter. They were v. hard-up, and the whole thing was messy. There were children, which I thought insane, and now I see from the obituary that they had one son and four daughters. I hope the poor girls didn’t look like him, as Michael Aldridge’s three girls so unfortunately did. Peter has a striking ugly face for a good character actor, with a larger bulbous nose, over a very short upper lip, striking for a man, awful for a woman. Yvonne was rather beautiful but irritatingly half and half, tentative, undecided. I wonder how she turned out. He did well later on, judging by the list in the obituary. I cannot say that I ever thought him more than solid and competent. Even the obituaries say that it took him more than twenty years to get leading parts at Stratford – even with Peter Hall. As standards have so lamentably fallen, he became more castable, tho’ a much better actor than me. Oh, dear, the sight of their marriage in the late fifties…. I’m afraid people’s sentimentality over children makes me very impatient. Ian and Helen and three children teetering on the edge of falling apart, and getting a dog to bind the marriage together? And all these people are alive, and D is dead.

Violent storms in France, like our ‘hurricane’ in 1987, was it? Three million without electricity, many Marie Antoinette trees down at Versailles. Notre Dame roof partly torn off, and goodness knows what else. Provence badly hit. I hope Patrick Woodcock is all right. Saw him in the Elizabeth David programme, like a dear caricature of the potato people. I suppose he’s late seventies.

Put one of the s. Sausages into the pigeon casserole. Curiously delicious, the fat more or less consumed, the outside not browned, of course.

Tuesday December 28 1999

Cricket headline in the Independent: ‘England is staring victory in the face.’

Roy rang to say Happy New Year and to tell me that, at wherever it was they spent Christmas, the oven blow up. Presumably neither they nor their hosts were blown up, too, as they went to neighbours to cook the dinner. They had to wait till the neighbours’ dinner had finished cooking… Told him Dan Leno’s joke, which he’d never heard, as the young haven’t, and it occurred to me that DL’s joke was in the cutting-edge of technology at the time, - 1900ish – when gas stoves were dangerously new. Weren’t they? Now they’re off to Padstow, or outside it, for the New Year. Of course, they’ve no idea of the energy they have even to think of two such excursions, with a six year old and a baby, two days apart! It makes me tired to think of it.

Wednesday December 29 1999

Oh, dear, the long holiday, though wonderfully quiet, is oddly disorientating.

To buy books today in Ken High Street. Got the Billy Wilder, and started galloping it already. Very funny. Probably too long, but still it’s all Wilder, not a stupid biography.

Thursday December 30 1999

Yes, it is very funny. Of his wife of fifty years, ‘She’s been absolutely – absolutely – eighty per cent perfect.’ Witty and an accurate picture of a really successful marriage, as I know from my own.

Seen on a studio ‘toilet’ wall: ‘Edith Head gives great wardrobe.’

Out to get pension, and a bit of shopping. Picked up a couple of millennium leaflets at the tube-station. As with childrens’ programmes, it is so essential to know where not to go.

Rang K and left a message to say even the treat of a million and a half visitors would make me shudder indoors till all was over. He rang back to say that was all right, because they were doing the same. I will ring tomorrow because K having a Happy New Year (and Century) is everything to me. He wants me to go to the dome, I don’t know whether I can, all those flashing lights. Friday

December 31 1999

Oh dear, you can’t dare turn the radio or television on. There was Australia celebrating the… before us! Disgraceful, but poor Australia, like the States, everything second-hand. In Australia’s case, bagpipes and Auld Lang Syne, not to mention fireworks. Well, they’re a Chinese invention.

The first sunshine and so on. In Sydney, I was struck again at the second-handness of their culture. A million people claiming independence, and singing Auld Lang Syne. Preceeded by bagpipes. (A million in Sydney today, I mean.)

Out at six to pick up a couple of C.G. soups and eggs. Across from the tube, two youngsters were half-carrying another eighteen year old, who was already legless, good heavens. I was slightly surprised to have my apprehensions so exactly confirmed – and so early.

Rang K at 10.30 and left a message saying A Happy New Year, for you to have a happy new year means everything.

About fifteen minutes later, he rang, not in answer but to say they had gone out after all – ‘I know’ – and were in Bishopsgate? And would I tape the BBC1 programme Round The World and the fireworks on the river.

Well, I shall go to bed after the Queen.

The Eiffel Tower fireworks – beautiful, of course.

So I said to him what I’d said on the ‘phone and he said ‘Ahh, and so do I, with knobs on.’ Thank goodness I have that boy to love.

11.30. Still waiting for the Queen and the opening.

Went down to do my water jug and so on, and found the mouse trap caught a plump one that’s been running about, first one since K lived here! Put some porridge on.

Saturday January 1 2000

‘If I were only Queen Victoria, I would have the appropriate wonder at the new date. When she first went to France, it was so strange to hear everyone speaking French.’

Mary L rather excelled herself. She heard the Maori’s greeting the first dawn on that uninhabited island. That’s all she heard, (radio only) and naturally because that were coloured and washed with important glamour, therefore, of sacred Africa, they were ‘the best’ despite being the only episode she heard. I said mildly that it was sad to think that,- owing to global warning, they think that those islands will be drowned in fifty or so years.

‘Oh, well, that’s perfectly natural, like the Ice Age.’ (If it hadn’t been the Maoris, there would have been wholesale condemnation of capitalists.) She went on to tell me that she thought very differently of Britain ‘The hypocrisy is awful, I never say I am English, I say ‘My nationality is actress.’ I restrain myself with difficulty from saying ‘And a very poor and almost entirely unsuccessful one.’ She takes a keen pleasure in negative pessimism. No wonder darling D parted company.

Hoped for some pleasure from a programme of Poulenc Songs. Set in his music-room, accompanied on his piano. I find so many singers painful to look at and Felicity Lott is no exception. Irredeemably suburban in look, gesture and clothes, she now has an uncertainty in some of her range as well. She has simply not paid enough for her clothes, her hair and her artistry. The only piece of luck she had was in the appearance, towards the end of the hour rather than the beginning, of Denise Duval, Poulenc’s close associate and muse. She had exactly the qualities that F.L. lacked and moved me very much, both by singing and talking about him.

The only other bearable programme was David Attenboro’s Natural History Night. I can always watch his films because they are so beautiful and so hopeful. He is an immense force for good.

J rang to wish, and to say she was gearing up to write the letter to Schaefer and Beaumont resigning her organisation of the Academy film shows.

Sunday January 2 2000

S’s flowers have now opened, and the lilies are deafening. Perhaps the red ones are a sort of lily.

I have now finished the Billy Wilder conversations. It’s too long, and not edited. On the other hand, it’s not an idiot biography, the ‘author’ had only asked questions, and though I might have asked other questions (but might not have got any answers) at least the book is more or less just Wilder. ‘People say you’re a misogynist.’ ‘I’m not.’ Voice from the other room ‘Yes, you are.’

To get gin in the p.m. in Earl’s court, where everything was open and full. It’s odd that some high Streets are always active – and I don’t mean shops open – whereas others, like Kings Street H’Smith are quite dead at night, so naturally the shops don’t open. I suppose E. Court is lively because of the gay clubs. There isn’t anything about the shops to pick it out. I think there are places that people like to gather, and places that they don’t. I don’t think it’s rational. Difficult for me to judge, as I’ve never been moved to gather.

A ‘new’ version of The Sleeping Beauty by a swede, Mats Ek. Not a single beautiful movement, ugly, angular, it’s only motive to subvert the classical vocabulary. Poor man.

Monday January 3 2000

Two dreams, one just before waking up, at about seven, and the second, after reading the papers at nine-thirty, and dozing off again. The first was pure pleasure, going to see dear Winnie and Ken in the little house in Purley. I was coming across the little lawn to the little French windows, and there they were, and some hours of sweet safety. The other, quite the reverse, found me arriving at the cottage, to find all but a bit of one room full of squatters, the door broken, with hanging panel and no door-knob. I quite see the point of the first but not the second, as I am always an optimist.

Because it’s a Bank Holiday, Lawrence Of Arabia is on. I caught one frame, and as usual, even one frame can lash out from the screen with instant deadly boredom. I’ve never seen it, and would go to the gallows rather than see another frame.

The Hutch biography is a fairly impossible affair. All that Hutch deserves, is a solid chapter in a book of minor characters in the ‘20s and the ‘30s. Here is a whole ponderous mass of references, no doubt a lot of work, but quite out of proportion, simply stuck on the pages and full of mistakes and repetitions. The author’s portrait shows a pleasant Home Counties sort of fifty year old, with four daughters living in London and Karachi. So I presume she has a girlish crush on poor Hutch. In the acknowledgements, there are names divided into years, with a half-page of names for each decade. Oh dear, straight to Oxfam.

Tuesday January 4 2000

Such dark days this winter. I’ve had to turn on the overhead light in here far more often than ever before. Unless it’s my age and my eyes. But I don’t think it is.

I rang Roy and Marian, and got them! She so sweet as ever, he still thick with cough etc. So it was worse than mine. M gave him the Billy Wilder for Christmas – great minds think alike. We shrieked. No blowing up in Padstow, but relations a certain difficulty. The film, guess what, is now April. Poor chap, it must be unbearable, this delayed orgasm. Vincent Perez etc are still on – but for how long? And ‘Jennifer Jason Leigh is reading for it.’ So etc perhaps doesn’t include Victoria Avril any more. Not that Jennifer J-L wouldn’t be a more certain certificate.

Left message on his machine to say that I was free for dinner for the three hundred and sixty five days, except Thursday. ‘Talented Mr. Ripley’ and La Perla.

Just as I had been thinking, dear little Tim had vanished without trace. I got a Christmas card today! Knackered by Woman in Black, as a two hander, eight or nine times a week. Says he won’t even apologise for being out of touch. Good. I’d hate to lose touch with him, he’s such a rare creature these days. That he doesn’t realise it, is much of the rarity.

To H’ smith at six-ish, hoping to find the shops back to normal. On the way I was struck by how few people were still about, by no means the usual stream of yuppies. So I should have been prepared for empty vegetable and fruit stands, little fresh bread, little fresh anything- tiresome after all this time.

Wednesday January 5 2000

Didn’t sleep at all. Read till seven, dozed off and woke at threeish. Rang J and doubted tomorrow. Feeling like a wrung out flannel, and letter from DS about the ground rent, some silly little civil servant.

Suddenly struck by historical evidence. Peter Jeffery dead, Len R dead ten? years ago, so only I know what we said to one another in that Bristol Old Vic dressing-room forty years ago. I don’t know that is was specially interesting, give and take a few of Len’s harmful whingeing, but I see, as I get older, the dangers of subject testimony. Of course I always tell the truth. Well, I do, but I don’t know the whole truth.

Card from S saying his flowercard was melodramatic. His Christmas in Copenhagen? was interesting, - he put (Yes), so I suppose he met someone, and the New Year ‘wasn’t hysterical’ - I thought that was supposed to be Cliveden – ‘When you get this, I shall be in Dallas.’

Dear funny little thing. Still thinks dashing about gives him some sort of ballast? credence? I don’t know. But I worry about him overtaxing himself.

Thursday January 6 2000

Another sleepless night. J. rang and I cancelled this evening. I am interested that it is perhaps because I have to do something. As when I never slept before filming. But that was a 6.0 a.m. start on something I disliked, and this is a leisurely evening with a film I want to see and a good dinner. Oh well, I’ll have to see.

No reply from Katrina about the DS query. Perhaps it’s that. One way or another, I must avoid it. ‘It was clear as soon as ‘Spoonface Steinberg’ aired on Radio 4 in 1997, that Lee Hall was a major talent. It is a monologue performed by an autistic Jewish girl with cancer. There are soliloquies from children of different religions all facing early death.’

There is discrimination here, - no agnostics, no atheists? No healthy people? It’s on the stage now. Let’s see.

Friday January 7 2000

Ah, headline for ‘S.S.’ ‘Mawkish rubbish’

K rang, dins on Sunday, lovely.

Still no word from Katrina. Rang DS man, seemed all right about it.

Saturday January 8 2000

Another poorish night, but determined to go out, see ‘Dogma’ at Whiteley’s, and go on to Covent Garden Waterstones and Tesco, for K and A present, and shopping.

Felt a bit lightheaded as I walked to the tube, was early enough to spend a little time in Books Etc, and went into the cinema. I was suddenly so sweaty and hot and claustrophobic that I realised I couldn’t dare to watch anything. Left. Felt vaguely sick, but knew it was the usual. Walked to Lancaster Gate, passing that J.M. Barrie House, (Where dear Wayland H-Y so kindly had me to supper after Porgy and Bess getting on for fifty years ago. I was so hungry with no work, and there was a delicious casserole left for us in the oven.) Felt by then, with a lot of cold air on the sweat, I could get on the tube. Bought the new Rattigan biog., praised in notices. Finally did get Holroyd’s Basil Street Blues. Got another Harry Potter as a token present for A and as a little inspiration, Alex Garland’s The Beach, knowing that I must tell them of my meeting with Nick Garland.

Back here looked out that old book of Music Hall Songs to add to his – he might as well have any bit of music – and, a bit at my wit’s end, looked out a picture-book for A. Country House Photos or some such title, pretty Edwardian photos, intro. by Nigel Nicolson. I haven’t opened it since I put it on the shelf after reading it ten? years ago. I wonder if I’ve mentioned a special funny little present I made up for K, a little collection of ‘potato’ in as many languages as I cloud shuffle together in bookshops. So today I bought, at last, a little book to put them in, a bright yellow - what do you call that wire binding? On the way down the escalator at Leicester Sq. saw two posters in the frames, for Tom Holt, ‘Only Human’. Rang H when I got back to tell her as I know she likes any praise or publicity for him, of course. And she was pleased, and said he would be, too.

The mouse I caught a week ago is lying uneaten and not yet decayed, at least externally, on the leaves in the yard. Now there is another much cleverer, so far it has eaten whatever is prised on the little spike without springing the trap.

Sunday January 9 2000 Monday January 10 2000

A beautiful, funny unclouded evening. I left at 1.30… He came up to open the door, the cloth was already on, the fire glowing, the dinner in the oven, proving that he isn’t working so hard. He got me a g&t and told me A was revising for her exams next week, ‘So I can tell you about the awful Christmas when she goes back to work after dinner.’ Naturally he doesn’t want to hit at her family in front of her, again, because I suppose they went through it and talked about it at the time, but he does want to ‘blow his top’ a bit to me. He called to A and said ‘Angus is here, don’t bother to dress up.’ ‘Yes, I do’ she called back. About twenty minutes later, she came down, beautifully made up, in black leather tank-top?, black skirt, and intensely elegant, almost perpendicular black sandals – just a handful of straps and two inch heels. They gave me their presents, No. 89, toilet water, talc (‘do you use talc?’) and soup, how beautiful to have something useless, and a litre and half of Gordon’s. She was sweet about her books and kept coming back to The Country House picture book off and on though the evening. He pored over the music hall book, - and was caught by, of all things, ‘I love a lassie.’ I sang a bit of it with him, and was so amused that he clearly thought it was one of my generation’s songs… but finally I gave him the Potato phrase-book, and I knew he would like it. He looked and was surprised and said where did I find them, and said ‘Oh Angus’, and got up to give me a special hug, because he has the imagination to picture me finding the definitions and writing them down and buying the book, thinking of him lovingly over the few days. He reminded me his favourite colour was yellow.

Dinner was pheasant Kev and only two vegetables, runner beans, undercooked for me, and carrots with a sprout or two. He said there wasn’t a pudding or cheese, but she brought in a big bowl of fruit and he said there was some Cathedral City if I wanted. He picked a rather large pale lemon with a leaf still attached to it, and said ‘I picked this in Arlete’s back garden.’ Delicious smell. Then A told me a bit of the difficultly over Christmas, and K joined in discreetly. It was the sister-in-law, of course, she is ‘a control freak’ that is obsessive about tidiness and cleanliness, and even worse, about her little boy of three, ‘Who is hyperactive because he isn’t allowed to go anywhere or do anything.’ I must have a boys own with him to get the facts. I can imagine that A’s mother does little to help – she is pretty passive, I fear. The sister-in-law slightly reminds me of Joan, and I can’t say worse than that.

Amused at their sweet simplicity over dinner. How they laugh at the simplest conversational tricks. To some rudery of mine, he said, ‘You’re getting home on your own.’ To another ‘You’re walking home.’ To a third, a jump later, when they’d forgotten, I said, ‘How am I going home now?’ and they shrieked. A simple joke, the running gag, in fact.

A really excellent driver from his account firm, not a mini-cab, not a word, not a jar, not a wrong turning.

When we were waiting for A to come down, he asked about The Voice. I really don’t know what to say about it, except one or two superficial comments. If he means to be more commercial, is it? If not, what? So I was glad when she came down before I’d said much, or little. I must listen to it a lot more.

Today I went and got my pension and sent the millennium tape to K with a note saying ‘Thank you for your continuing, not to say enduring love.’

Tuesday January 11 2000

Saw the trailer for one of those gritty realistic (sic) films which often star Robert Carlyle, set in Ireland, it rained throughout. The young woman losing babies in all directions, gritted to R. Carlyle that the dole was only 19/- a week, smoking and furiously stubbing out to mark the line, a quarter-smoked cigarette. I am not objecting to her smoking but to stubbing out such a long cigarette. No smoker I have ever known, let alone a really poor one, would do such a thing. They would carefully stub it out and keep it for later. That’s the trouble with so many of these films – they are not realistic, unrelieved gloom is not realistic, nor are long stubs.

Have now read the new Rattigan biog by Michael Darlow. Well done all thro’. He published the first version soon after Rattigan’s death, and had his full co-operation. Now he has been able to include a good deal more because of most of the principals having died. It is neither gossipy nor ponderous, the twin dangers of theatre biographies. And, as far as I can check them, the facts are accurate. (Well, my name is spelt properly in the cast-lists anyway.) Curious story, a curios phlegmatic, timid, poor judge of character who was yet one of the best creators of characters this century. His own feelings so pressed down and incapable of expression, yet that repression forces them through the engine of his talent to create creatures of great feeling. It is interesting that Margaret Leighton, one of his closest friends and associates – as his hostess, for instance – was, mut-mut and just such another. Both were gifted in choosing exactly the wrong partner, both, I think, like John G, had a need for a difficult, perhaps abusive partner. I was fascinated to see a photograph of the ‘little thing’ who came round with Rattigan on the first night of The Sleeping Prince. A small neat young man, with a dear little retrousé nose, piled up hair and eyes like hard marbles. I was young and inexperienced, but I am proud to say that one glance allowed me to sum him, just as he painted in the book, a kept boy, good at making scenes and not much else, - and guess what, like Martin H, an interior decorator. I was quite surprised to find that he was with Rattigan, more or less to the end. I think, as I said, like John G, R wanted someone who would behave unkindly. Darlow is quite rude about him, - ‘Some of Terry’s friends called him a prostitute’ – although his name appears in the acknowledgements. I wonder what he thought about it, and went on to read Out on Stage, an academic book on homosexual theatre, and came across R’s death at 66, when ‘Michael Franklin was about fifty’, and goes on to say that he died thirteen years later, in 1990, of AIDS, aged 63. Curiously, Darlow does not mention this. Oh, dear, who’d be a pretty little thing? They don’t age well. Still, I expect R left him more than enough to live on. A good biog., which can’t have been easy, as apart from his plays, R’s life, like his personality, to meet, was rather flat and bland. He gave me some Lear poems for the first night.

Read Basil St. Blues in one gulp. A perfect little book, exactly the right length for its material, with an equally perfect balance of pain and laughter. They were about the same sort of family as the Slades, with all the mess and repression and dishonesty, but with an honest man to write about them.

Going back to R for a minute, I felt there were many examples of disease arriving from tension, repression, hate, muddle, self-deception. R himself got leukemia, M. Leighton rheumatoid arthritis and cancer, at 42? Like Robin Fox, a nasty a calculating agent and corrupt human being as you could wish for, who got galloping cancerous tumours of the brain. L. Harvey, I’m sure, was consumed by his evil treatment of everyone he met, and his envy of everyone and everything. Ambition with little talent eats into you.

Wednesday January 12 2000

Had to pay Alliance and suddenly thought I could survive ! combine Alliance with cinema, with Waitrose at Gloucester Rd. I could manage the walk thro’ Drayron Gardens and along. Paid the Alliance in plenty of time for the film, and found myself walking away from the cinema. Part of it was money, but some of it was going to Waitrose. Although I would be sitting down in the pictures, I felt I couldn’t do both.

Thursday January 13 2000

How curious. On Tuesday I was writing about Rattigan. Today Stephen Mitchell is dead at 92. He was the manager who put on The Browning Version and Harlequinade, and Separate Tables. (Blinkie didn’t like one-act double bills).

A letter from the council with permission to cut down the tree.

Why do actresses want to be called actors now? Will they want to be called men next?

Friday January 14 2000

Reading an academic book, he hopes, on Lesbian and Gay Theatre, I was reminded of dear little Phillip King’s play Serious Charge. A conventional little man of the theatre, looking like a retired non-commissioned officer, he had written, I imagine, many humdrum plays, and suddenly a farce, ‘Sailor Beware’ took off and ran for five? years or so. On the strength of that success, and, I expect the promise of the sequel, somebody put on Serious Charge, at the Garrick, then a dodgy theatre. It ‘starred’ Patrick McGoohan and Olga Lindo. It was about a young vicar accused by a juvenile delinquent of a sexual assault, and his struggle to vindicate himself. The play was of predictable threadbare quality. We were still in Salad Days and went to it as we went then to everything we could get to. Their matinee wasn’t the same as ours and I think D knew Pat McGoohan and might have had to go round. So there we were. All I remember is the Vicar saying ‘passionately’ to a friend, ‘Just because I’m a vicar, and live alone with my mother, and am interested in antiques, people think I’m homosexual.’ D murmured in my ear, ‘Almost a hundred percent certainty, I’d have thought.’

Woke at 3 a.m. and didn’t sleep again. Dozed off this aft.

Saturday January 15 2000

Turned my bedside light on about 9.0, and got the papers, settled down with them and the light went out. It couldn’t be the bulb, - it was new last week, wasn’t it? Still… tried other switches and all were off. Deep depression. The bathroom ceiling down, the lavatory-basin broken, the water-heater not working, and now this. Could I ask K to come over? I just went back to bed and started to read the papers, saying to myself that it was six hours to darkness, and before that… but little hot flushes kept coming through, the food in the fridge, the radiator in here, oh and the telly. I knew it was another difficulty. Half an hour later, I forced myself to try the light again, knowing – and it came on. So did all the others. So it was a dear little power cut. I do like old-fashioned customs to be kept up. I wonder how long it went on. The funny thing is, that the lifting of the ‘difficulty’ gave me all the feeling of a treat.

In the late p.m. made one of my rather unlikely expeditions, and went to the Waterstone’s in Richmond. At one point, I thought I’d go to Kew and then on one station, but realised I couldn’t do both, - the walking, because there was a bit of shopping, too. Rather a small shop, got a couple of detective stories by the same (unknown) author, for the first time outside a supermarket, two for the price of one. I only had £30 odd left, and there was no obvious biography or criticism or novel, so I charted the biog. shelves and suddenly saw a paperback in two volumes of Lucy Norton’s translation of Saint Simon, which I’ve always meant to have by me, ten pounds a time. At the desk, the usual difficulties and delays took place, or rather the infinite variations of such d and ds. This time a pleasant girl said she was ‘not authorised’ and would ring someone who was. She kept getting no answer, I said ‘Do serve these people waiting’ which she did three or four times, while cradling the ‘phone, and trying the second and third floors repeatedly. (Fortunately there is no basement in this comparatively small branch.) It took at least ten minutes, with me standing all the time, for someone to come down, and an account is supposed to make things easier. Still, the two people were polite – it’s the management, not them – and I remained calm, not to say saintly. As I left, I heard myself saying in nauseatingly benevolent tones, and with memorable charm of diction. ‘Thank you so much, and is it too late to wish you a Happy New Year?’

Poor Janet Street Porter is narrating, and walking about in a series about cathedrals. The creature is ill-suited, and shows it in her awkward movement, and of course her voice. This week it was Winchester, and a quick half hour run through the centuries. I watched it with the sound off most of the time, because of the time we spent in it doing out Jane Austen on the 150th anniversary. Need I say she didn’t mention J.A? but I must remember that St. Swithin is buried there.

Another programme which I watched with the sound off, was a thousandth anniversary of This Is Your Life, to see whether they would commemorate the very few subjects of genuine interest. Sybil, for instance, for whom the programme might have been invented to demonstrate her extraordinary wide circle of friends and acquaintances, and her absolutely genuine respsonse to them all.

Rang Roy at tennish and got him. Quite pleased as he was writing a film script, had just had a g&t, and always likes to be distracted. Told him the Serious Charge dialogue. He shrieked.

Sunday January 16 2000

Went through the Stage Christmas show reviews for H, and the soaps. A few Trouvailles. The twenty seven or so Snow Whites are, I presume, from the same script, probably sent from Paul Elliott, as all of them seem to have a comic character called muddles. I don’t even know how he fits into the story. I do know I wouldn’t trust real-life dwarfs to supply any sort of reliable comedy. I rather love the mass of provincial notices, packed with every name in the cast, with a hope of everyone buying a copy. I love the thin veil of clumsy writing barely hiding a complete disaster. Few of the journalists know what they mean, or could say if they did. A cut above is the Brighton correspondent reviewing Aladdin: ‘Why is ancient Pekin celebrating the millennium?’ The true sprit of panto – a Robinson Crusoe, where the villain is Bluebeard.

‘Serious Charge’ reminds me of ‘Sailor Beware’ and an odd coincidence. Richard Coleman, who played the nice boring young bridegroom, was in a play with me, sharing a dressing- room when President Kennedy was shot. We didn’t tell the audience till the end of the show. It was such a feeble little 1930s four in hand, ‘Lovers Leap’, that the audience would probably have left anyway. Years later, I was doing a couple of days on ‘Secret Ceremony’. Robert Kennedy was shot, and E. Taylor stayed in the Dorchester. It turned out that Richard Coleman had supplied E.T’s Winnebago. I’m glad he diversified.

Why are certain stupid actresses clamoring to be called actors? Will they want to be called men next? What was good enough for Mrs. Siddons and Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Peggy Ashcroft, Celia Johnson… what a lot of silly people there are about.

Monday January 17 2000

Felt light-headed, hungover? below par? Went to get pension and shopped, but sat the rest of the time.

Can’t be doing with Gormenghast and Mervyn Peake. Pretty pictures, but oh that faux- archaic ‘stylish’ dialogue.

Tuesday January 18 2000

Hazel rang as promised. The septic tank saga goes on. They’ve put a camera down some drain. Goodness knows what they’ll see. Her knee is still bad. A man offered to help her carry something in Minehead, ‘Raised his hat.’ I must ask Karen if she’s still limping, after the same operation, - which I haven’t had.

Rang Mary L. She kept referring to programmes ‘on the radio, Angus.’ She is so heavy handed, as always, part bad acting, part unworldliness. What if I said ‘on television’? She is a silly girl.

Wednesday January 19 2000

Quiet forgot to comment on John N and his dear generous gift of £100. Well, I did mention the £100, but did not mention that I didn’t get my usual case of wine as well. Now I am far from looking any gift horse in the mouth, let alone dear John with all his love and generosity. I simply record it, as an example of John’s background coming out in him, and the slight bossiness, which he laughs at himself. I can’t imagine D or K calculating the balance between the two sums of money.

The poor old BBC, deprived of so much sport, has been driven to send out the Australian Tennis Open. How utterly dreary and bleak other Tennis arenas are compared to Wimbledon. Caught bits of interviews. You can’t expect people who are prepared to do nothing but play tennis to be either intelligent or sane, and of course they’re not.

Thursday January 20 2000

Francis Haskell has died. We were passing acquaintances at Cambridge. Now I don’t want to be judged by what I was like as an undergraduate, so I won’t judge him, but I must record my irritation. He struck me as typical. He struck me as a typical cocksure spoilt old Etonian, I see that he has a distinguished career as an art historian, indeed a very distinguished one, writing several books which have taken art history in a new direction and become standard works. No doubt he was laying the foundations of this work when I knew him. But I remember he was one of the first people who irritated me by pronouncing on the theatre while having little feel for it, - and I do not mean my acting, he was rather a fan! It would never have occurred to me to pronounce on a question of art even then. Now I don’t mean that a humble member of the audience cannot have an opinion, but he was far from being humble. I had no meeting with him after Cambridge, and only one encounter, which neatly illustrates my point. We were at the Cherry Orchard in 196 something – I ought to look it up – the RSC, Michel St Denis, Peggy A, John G, and I was suddenly aware that Francis and his family were sitting in front of us in the circle. D was mildly interested because Arnold H had been an important figure at Sadler’s Wells in her youth, - and in mine later. (We all read Balletomania.) I hadn’t decided whether or not to say, when the curtain fell for the interval, and Francis turned eagerly to his parents, and said, with an indescribably – on paper, I could imitate it - self-satisfied rising inflection, ‘I don’t like Gielgud.’ He was glad he hadn’t.

And I know why he was glad, because he ‘knew’ he was in fashion. At this time, both Peggy and John were out of fashion. It was about this time that Michael and Barbara Barrington knew it was ‘beastly to Peggy’ year. (D saying when they left the house, ‘If only we could get hold of the Barringtons at the right moment, we could pass the right opinions round the West End instead of the wrong ones.’ How annoyed Francis H would be to think, that to us, his ‘pronouncement’ was no more than the sweepings of the understudies’ dressing-room. But it has always amazed me how ‘distinguished’ scholars and intellectuals can be taken in by the cheapest theatrical tricks and sentiment.

On the subject of that ‘Cherry Orchard’, it certainly was not a complete success, though John was. Peggy A not as good as we expected, but for an interesting reason. She had the power of being able to suggest deep and intense feeling. Now this is not quite right. Ranevsky is lighter, more shallow than that. As for the production, John and P.A. had a long and fruitful association with Michel Saint-Dennis. D saw the famous Three Sisters half a dozen times, and it was remarkable and lived with her and inspired her all her life. The work he did in the ‘thirties was so little matched by his later, that she and I came to think that he was very lucky to have such remarkable group of actors under John G’s management, and all their thirty- year-old powers. John and P.A gave him the benefit of the doubt, but this C.O. did not work. Curiously bare. Francis H put his disapproving finger on one of the few successful elements.

Another satisfying example of the whirligig of time. A description of a film on TV in the Radio Times, ‘The Singer, Not the Song’, - Dirk Bogarde as a Mexican bandit, good heavens, ‘as from the bestseller, by Audrey Erskine Lindop, ‘an author now totally forgotten.’ This was one of the books silly John Warner couldn’t ‘understand how we knew it was no good.’

Another silly name, which could only be American, - oh, perhaps Lindop is yank, too – a large, blonde woman, cooking fairly chicly the while, a democrat activist, in the American elections announced herself as Libby Slappy.

J keeps putting off retiring from the films. She dreads their reaction, I know. ‘Mr. Schneer will ask for two or three years filing, instead of one. I know.’

Friday January 21 2000

All the films this week, with the possible exception of Limbo, are awful.

Still no answer from Felix about the ‘Grave’ repeat fee. How difficult life is!

I suddenly see why Nick G recognised me. I was some distance away, under overhead lights, and probably in profile, of course, that’s how he’d mostly seen me, on stage. Less changed than some elderly people. Mouse on the dining table.

Saturday January 22 2000

Woke at 5.0 a.m. Read, and got up after the papers. Thought I’d have a little lie-down at 2.30 and woke at 7.0, just in time for my g&t.

Sunday January 23 2000

So of course, I didn’t sleep at all last night. Went to the shops this a.m. so as not to interfere with H’s call. Felt light-headed and low. Letter thro’ the door from no. 14, saying the damp has come tho’ there, badly. Deeply depressed for many reasons – the upheaval mainly. Rang K about six, and left a message. He rang back at 10, and in a long talk, made all right. I am the luckiest man in the world.

Monday January 24 2000

Wrote to Mrs. De Cock, tiptoed to the door, put it through the letter-box, and turned tail and ran, to Kew. I was dreading her bursting out and threatening me.

I got to Kew about one, brought a beef sandwich, and ‘headed’, as they say in travel films, for the Princess Diana conservatory. Some striking desert collections. The Amazon Lily isn’t showing at the moment. Went and sat on a seat yards from the north-east end of the conservatory, and ate my sandwich. Threw a crumb or two, hoping for the robin in the tree, but, a minute or two later, saw that the little clump of Canada geese on the lawn, at least thirty or forty yards away, were marching towards me, just like the peacocks last time.

What made them come? Just me sitting on the seat? Did they see me make the throwing gesture?

Walked back past a bank with some good patches of snowdrops, and one or two crocuses. The snowdrops in flower were all in the upper parts of the bank. Do they like it a bit drier? Then a border of winter flowering shrubs, the sort that touchingly flower without leaves. Smelt the Viburnuim Bodnantse, and was transported backwards to the Laurastinus over the water-tank at the cottage. It was now about three, and I came back to Victoria Gate, and saw the café was still open. I needed a drink so ordered a Cappu. It thought I might have another sandwich but was shocked to see that a ham sandwich of small tin two slices size, was £4.35. I had the cheapest thing, a slice of banana cake, with cream in the middle and icing on top. When did I last have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake in a café with other elderly people? Before I was elderly, I should think.

Interesting list in the Standard entitled ‘40 Most Common Mothers Tongues For Children.’ 2 is Bengali and Silheti, and 3,4, and 5 all Indian. 6 is surprisingly, Turkish and 8 English- based creole, whoever they may be. 1 = 40,400, 11, which is Cantonese, only 6,900. Italian doesn’t appear till 19. 2,500. Nigeria appears at 21, French-based Creole at 22! Japanese not till 33, just after Germans, both 800. 40 is Sinhala from Sri Lanka. English, 608,500. I fear many of them speak a strange dialect. The totals seem to me very odd.

Tuesday January 25 2000

Hideous day ringing plumbers. I couldn’t do it if it wasn’t for him and what he would think.

Wednesday January 26 2000

D’s b’day. 86. Not so many plumbers

H rang as promised, and read me the latest letter from Lady Violet P. Some sub-acid remarks about Graham Greene and Catherine W suggest that she shares our ‘despise.’ I must ask H to read it to me again. I’m glad she can’t read G.G., but then she doesn’t like and can’t read E.W. either. As she also told me how much she disliked Basil Street Blues ‘Because all the people were so awful. And I couldn’t get interested in them’, I am afraid the unpleasant and unsympathetic have no literary existence for her. I’m amused that Lady V, in telling H that she was re-reading H’s books, mentioned ‘The handsome actor’ as being the murderer of Lalla!

A lot of young people have been ‘ship wrecked’ on a desert island, for television. They are to support themselves, after an initial few stores. I love this sort of absurdity. There they are, suffering away, observed throughout by a large crew. And even funnier, one of the Castaways, a very fat girl, stole a tin of biscuits from the part of the Island that was forbidden – the crew’s quarters, where I am sure, if I know film crews, there is a Butlin’s, a MacDonald’s, a Pub – all specially built and costing two-thirds of the filming budget.

None inches of snow fell on Eastern America. I hope it doesn’t drift over here, it sometimes does. But the caption, ‘The most sophisticated nation on earth has grown to a halt.’ Oh, the hubris.

More Americana. I’d like Kevin Spacey’s comment on some praise for his film career, ‘Spacey had to work through endless theatre performances to…’

Two talks to K. Told him about the gardening-firm man, Jeremy Bevan, who came round on Tuesday. (Why didn’t I write about it on Tuesday? Because I was depressed, and frightened of pending change.) A firm in Shepard’s Bush, and he was in vaguely country clothes, tweeds and cap. Quite amiable, and fairly genuine. Climbed into the garden, and came back saying. ‘I’ve been in this business twenty-five years, and this is the most overgrown garden I’ve ever seen.’ As good sales pitch as any, I suppose. What with the garden, and the tree and the necessary skip, he came up with, ‘Between £600 and £700’. K was rather staggered, saying, ‘How have we got from cutting down the tree and filling in the day with a stint in the garden, to £700?’ ‘Well, when I told you about an estimate for the tree alone being £140 plus VAT, you said you’d rather get better value with £500 for the tree and the rest of the day in the garden.’ So we left it for the moment, - £600-£700 was for two people with two or three days in the garden.

Later we spoke again about the possible plumber and he said that he’d got a lump of spare money. He gave me great comfort.

Thursday January 27 2000

Grandfather, whose daughter vanished two months ago, and whose son-in-law and two grandchildren have just vanished also – with sight hinting of possible guilt of son-in-law – said, ‘I just stare at the door, hoping someone will come through it.’

The Green Room Club is in danger of being deprived of premises by the owners of the building. In fifty years on the stage, neither of us knew anyone, as far as I know, who was a member, and neither of us, or anyone we knew, was asked to be a member, or was asked to have a drink there. The little clip showed us part of the reason – Frank Windsor and Brian Murphy playing snooker. It’s clearly the home of terrific bores. I would imagine, as so often, there are no young members of E. Waugh.

J rang to ask me what the Christian name of the Author of Trilby was, Gerald? Such is double-barreled fame.

Friday January 28 2000

For all my efforts I’ve still only got one plumber for tomorrow. Rang K and told him. He was surprisingly meek, and only said ‘Well, you’ve done your utmost.’

Went to Kew, taking with me two muffins with fired eggs in them. Ate them surrounded by oak trees, and leaves in thick grass. Very gradually I felt better.

Saturday January 29 2000

A horrible day in some ways, wonderful in others. He arrived at about twelve. I took him to see all the troubles, and I saw his face go intent and concentrated, as he started to work out what had caused all the damp, and the collapse in the ceiling. Within minutes he was on the balcony, tackling the corner above the damp. He found that the wild Buddleia in the pot in which I used to grow tomatoes, had thrown a root thro’ the thick asphalt-like cladding covering the balcony. He said it wasn’t the rain-water pipe as I’d hoped, but thankfully it wasn’t the soil pipe. He worked away for an hour or so, and no plumber. I was in and out a bit and might not have heard. He never came and a ‘phone call or two did not produce him. So we had lunch, - he’d asked what he should bring and, as it was the end of the week, I had to say a bit of streaky bacon, a few mushrooms, and wine, as I only had eggs and bread, except that I had some left-over pots. He came in to wash, and called from the bath-room, ‘Try the hot-water now.’ He’d got the boiler going! So I turned off the big kettle. When he came, I told him the electric kettle had packed up. He said he’d get a new one. He saw and smelt the frying potatoes, and said, ‘Ooh, potatoes’ like a little boy. Over the coffee, he said he thought the damp might cost £10,000. I felt my face go numb, thinking immediately of the place being taken apart if it was that much. ‘Can you afford it?’ I said, meaning you can’t surely. ‘Yes, I can. I’ve been kept awake by thinking, I’ve got this money and Angus is really struggling.’

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 167

January 29 2000 cont. - March 5 2000.

Saturday January 29 2000 (cont.)

He made £140,000 last year, and has £100,000 around as spare money. I am glad he told me this at once after the £10,000. Then we discussed me moving again. I felt sick, but he persevered. ‘It’s the disruption for you I worry about with the damp.’ A move would be even more of a disruption, but it would leave me, one hopes, no problems, no overgrown garden, no worn out sink, proper heating and no damp. He settled into the pink armchair. I felt different. I said ‘Are you dropping off?’ ‘No, it’s this room. You’ll make it like this.’

The talk changed my feelings. He would pay £10,000 for me. He going to organise, and would help me right thro’ a move.

Out of my worry, I said Give me a bit of money to get some gin – I need it. In the bedroom, as I was putting on my overcoat to go shopping as I had little to eat, he ripped a £20 note from his case, and a beat later, a £5 note, all that was left.

Oh, I forgot to say that, when he arrived he looked at me meaningfully – but he was facing me, and – he’s cut his hair, and it looks wonderful. I’d forgotten what a charming hair-line he’s got, - it springs up and flops, which the Victorian matron never allowed. It seems they are going to some club, - Arlete wants him to go dressed as a sailor… He told about some costumiers – ‘They’ve got everything, real uniforms’ – perhaps but they hadn’t got bell bottoms, and only American sailor hats.

I saw him into that dear little Kar with a huge hug and ‘I’m not going to begin to thank you,’ and waved him away. I waited in Margravine to see him drive away into the little one way system. He waved. I walked a little way up Margravine and waited for him to come round. He came round and stopped in the queue, I waved. He wound the window down, ‘Is everything all right?’ I waved. The queue moved on. I walked on, the cars moved on, he turned the corner, and the lights changed. I walked on, and turned the corner by the tube station. He’d been caught by the red light for that huge pause, I went down and looked. I waved. He waved. And I felt the triumph of the pedestrian over the motorist.

Sunday January 30 2000

I sometimes imagine myself being cross-examined in court by an arrogant barrister. When they try to bulldoze a witness with ‘Please answer yes or no’, I am sure I would be obliged to say, on at least some occasions, perhaps to the judge, ‘I promised to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would not fulfil that promise.’

I see Concorde had to make a forced landing at Heathrow, I think it was probably the one I saw at Kew last week. Aren’t there only two a day?

Monday January 31 2000

I thought I would grasp the hand of fate before it grabbed me, and rang the Association of Estate Agents for agents in Hove, Rye and Margate. It’s supposed to be a seller’s market, and so it proved to be, at least for this little foray. A pleasant woman operator gave me four numbers in Hove – two turned out to be letting agencies, not selling, one was a wrong number, to the point of 192 telling me there was no Welback Agency in Hove, and the fourth didn’t answer. She only gave me one agent in Margate, where an apathetic girl said they had no two bedroom ground floor flats with a garden…. I didn’t try Rye.

Turned tail and ran to Kew again. I was there for about an hour and half, quite a bit of which I spent sitting in the seat by the pond in front of the museum. I watched a little crowd of duck, and found a little puzzle or two. At first-glance they seemed wild, wintering inland, mallard, a couple of swans, seagulls, coot, moorhens, the last two residents, I imagine. One of the mallard females was being hotly pursued all the time I was there, by a couple of tawny mottled drakes with black and white tail feathers, a Wigeon? I looked it up here, and it was. How far do such similar birds interbreed? Never perhaps, certainly not often, or there would be no true-breds by this time. Interesting that it was mating behaviour all the same. But the odd duck out was, (I would think, a drake) a bird not unlike a tufted duck, at a glance. But it has no tuft and is slightly bigger. It is marked in the same way, but the black is not so glossy, and the white is the grey of a pochard. Most striking of all, a brilliant scarlet beak. I consulted Birds of Europe, and found no sign of it. I suppose it’s an ornamental duck from somewhere.

A third letter from de Cock. She’s a fusspot obviously. ‘A “Mr Kevin” presented himself as a relative.’ I don’t think she meant to sound suspicious, it’s just her English. I must remember to ask him what relation he claimed to be, so that we tell the same story.

Tuesday February 1 2000

That doctor who murdered fifteen elderly women outside Manchester has been found guilty. Senior doctors keep being wheeled out say it was ‘a murderer who happened to be a doctor.’ And ‘It’s a unique case’. What do they mean unique? What about Bodkin Adams at Eastbourne? It seems there may be hundreds more, of his victims, I mean. In the p.m. to new film Dogma. Two angels and a female God in it. I should have known, but I wanted to see Mark Damon and Ben Affleck, two possibly interesting young American actors. I was not impressed with either, in a scene together in an underground car-park, B.A. was playing in a rage, could do nothing but shout on one monotonous level, high in his voice, with no husbandry whatever. As for the script – well, for a subject like this, you need a Shaw or a Bridie. What we got was a writer who thought it was piquant to have a theological discussion (sic) liberally sprinkled with piss, shit and fuck. Oh the darling! Oh the demotic street cred! I fear the poor creature had neither the intelligence or the wit, not to mention knowledge of theology to dare tackle it.

Went to Panton St. to J’s. Found her assistant – part-time – Paul, compiling press cuttings books, poor soul. A nice, mild gay, who dyes his rather thin dry hair an unlikely mid-brown. I suppose he’s in his fifties. Soon after I got there, the bell rang on the door, flush with the front window and the street. You never know. It turned out to be a pleasant young couple, come to show J their eight day baby. She met them when they were sleeping in one of the exit doors of the Panton St. cinema. They are now in some sort of homless accommodation in Barnet. Such a pretty girl, with a lovely open face, shapely features, dramatic black curls, a ready laugh. Oh, how foolishly people talk to babies, even when they’re asleep. J. gave me my Christmas present, and when I got home, it was a small tea-pot and matching cup in cream lustre. And I said that tea was a thing that never passed my lips… still, I don’t feel too bad, because I’m pretty sure that it was something that had been given to her by one of her clients, the price was on the bottom, £22, and I can’t believe… I rang to thank her, and told her a little of my troubles. She said why didn’t I try for the ground floor flat at hers? Well, it’s possible.

Rang K to ask him what relation he was. ‘Surrogate father.’ Coming with A on Fri and Sat. Tree, garden and seeing some damp people. Told me I must get a skip. Felt nervous about it, but I must do something. He was in buoyant and commanding mood. Good.

Wednesday February 2 2000

A Kurdish company, I suppose originally asylum-seekers, but now established enough for amateur dramatics, were rehearsing. Pinter’s Mountain Language in a Hackney community centre, and had carried in some replica machine-guns borrowed from the national. I also suppose some loaded dialogue, with perhaps pauses for torture, could be heard through the exit doors. Before they knew where they were, they were helicoptered and ambulance and raided and fire-engined, because ‘a terriorist hostage situation’ was in place. Of course I shrieked, because, it fits so exactly onto a burlesque of Pinter. Not to mention the dim police. But it’s painful.

Made tea in J’s teapot from that unopened and sealed F&M tin of Assam J gave me an age ago. The tea with lemon tasted harsh and drily raw, as it always does to me, though less so with milk and sugar. The tin was sealed in cellophane and a very air-tight tin. I can’t say the tea-pot was a complete success. The handle is shaped in such a way that when it is full and you pick it up, a very hot bit presses into your finger.

That funny little figure, Ken Waller, is dead. Wasn’t he an understudy at one point, or playing at another? Odd-looking, crudely exaggerated Northern acting, so of course he came into a bit of his own playing the bad-tempered Grandpa in Bread. Wasn’t he gay and didn’t he gossip? Whatever, he set our teeth on edge with his crude approach. I would have thought him ten years younger than me. D. was amazed when somebody suggested him. How times change.

How awful Africa looks on television, miles of dusty non-roads and nasty little bushes, or starving children. Oh dear, travel. If travel broadens the mind, what price Mary L?

This is Thursday. Written on Friday. Tired with damp. Heard nothing from him yesterday about the money for the skip. I braced myself for today.

Where was the money? Had I not heard the postman’s ring? Surly there’d be a pick –up card? When should I order the skip? What if there’s no skip available at such short notice?

Rang him at 12.0 and he decided not to have a skip.

‘Gormenghast’ is a failure. Ha! It’s part of the dreary humourless world of ‘fantasy’, ‘Lord of the Rings.’ ‘Star Wars.’ etc etc. The fodder of polytechnic students. I’ve seen trailers, and it’s epitomised for me by that ghastly creature, Fiona Shaw, holding her mouth in a ‘fantastic’ expression.

Friday February 4 2000 Saturday February 5 2000 Sunday February 6 2000

A rather terrible two days, but redeemed and made endurable by his thoughtfulness, his incredible hard work, and his love. He arrived with all his tools, and so on, with a rather wicked look, when I said ‘Where’s Arlete?’. They’re doing their ‘she’s-never-been-alone- for-a-night in her life’ stunt. The first damp man arrived, rather late and surprisingly apologetic, and almost elderly. (He left rather a good torch behind…) He took an hour. Another man took five minutes saying mysteriously that he didn’t give an opinion with the sitting tenant there… He worked in between, completely clearing the balcony, and finding more worrying signs. The first damp man was amazed to find roots down the bathroom wall. He said he’d only seen them during his instruction, some forty years ago. He was gloomy about the whole thing, and said it was serious. K said to me I’d better get some sandwiches rather than lunch, because of the succession of damp men. Off into a hazy limbo of apprehension, to Boots and Pret à Manger, and got him his ‘Ham and some salad but not cucumber if possible’. I had a chicken salad and egg and cress. He gave me a new £20 note, so I got a bottle of wine as well, and he wouldn’t take the change, a help, at the end of the week. Meanwhile he’d started on the tree, with a new saw. When I got back, he was already on the point of cutting the top off, and I watched as it fell across the garden and most of the steps. We had the sandwich in here, with the wine. He told me that the work needed would entail scraping off the plaster to the brickwork on more or less the whole of the bathroom wall, and quite a chunk of the wall up here. That was a nail in my heart. He kept addressing the horror of disruption for me, because he knew that was the worst thing for me. ‘Perhaps if I’m doing it, it will make it better for you.’ That is true, but I still felt disorientating despair at the falling to pieces of my life. By half-past four he’d got the tree down to a trunk about four feet high. He looked pretty tired. I felt guilty that I could do so little. Even as it was, with extra trips up and down stairs, and generally more moving about than usual, I was already stiff and tired. And the poor boy had to go off to Clapham Junction to meet Nigel. Sian had rung him to say that ‘She couldn’t get through to him.’ He didn’t say, but I suppose she was fairly upset. I didn’t know Nigel doesn’t know the reason for the meeting. He said he’d be back by eleven-thirty. I went to bed, and must have dozed off over my book, because I woke to find him sitting on the bed, holding my hand to wake me. He said he thought I’d worry if I didn’t know he was in – shade of twenty years ago. He was looking a bit liquid, he either gets truculent or soft when drunk. He got himself a scotch and said his talk with Nigel had been, ‘Well, you know Nigel.’ I said I thought his job might have something to do with it, as there was no progression or future in a Travel Agency, not even satisfaction, except making more money. I said, ‘Where did you eat? There are plenty of good restaurants there now.’ ‘Yes, well, we didn’t go to any of them. We went to Pizza Express.’ Nigel’s choice, I presume. By one of those imperceptible transitions endemic to slightly drunken conversation, I suddenly found myself defending my opinion of Jennifer Aniston as a good light comedienne. He found it difficult to leave the subject, finding it hard to understand how as good a judge of acting… I was finding it hard not to laugh. Twenty years ago we might have parted friends, but we have both grown up since then.

More damp men were due this morning. I took care to wake so as to wake him. But it isn’t twenty years ago, and he was up and dressed, having a cigarette and a cup of tea. He said he thought I ought to go and see estate-agents. I went up to shave, and when he came up, I said ‘I am going to move.’ I hadn’t made up my mind till then. He said, ‘You feel all right about this, don’t you?’ And I did. I suddenly realised that the only parts of the flat that didn’t worry, that I didn’t have to try to put out of my mind, were my own things, which I can surround myself with anywhere. So off I went to Goldhawk Rd. and saw four agents, and came away with five property descriptions. One of the golden-filter photos had four-foot square portrait of a dog close-up full-face. She saw my face, and said, ‘I know, and the dog isn’t dead.’ One of the others was more or less in the Uxbridge Road, and a flight of steps higher and steeper than mine.

When I got back, the rest of the tree was in the area like a slim-line Yule log, and he’d tided up the garden perfectly, knowing the plants and me. He’d taken all the plaster off half the bathroom wall back to the brick. About a dozen plastic sacks filled with that and the ceiling. The damp has got to the joists under here, so the sooner I get out of here the better. They’ll tear the place to pieces anyway, so strange to someone of my generation, depriving themselves of a room here, of privacy there. Ah well.

All through the two days, I kept hearing him talking so tenderly about me, to the damp men and on his mobile. Before he left, he read the de Cock letters, and said he would write to them and say they must write to him. ‘If you want to know my interest in this matter, I am Mr. Mackay’s heir.’

He left really tired and his hands sore. He worked so hard.

J rang at 7.30, and we had a long talk. Mr. Schneer had left messages on the machine. And there was Stephanie Power’s problems with a building site. Oh dear, this is all getting arse over tip. J rang on Friday, and we came and looked at the flat under her. As K said – this is Saturday! – there were no more damp men, we decided to go and ‘check out’ the five properties before J. After all, one might just cross off the road, and we did. Emyln Rd was too busy, sleeping policemen and factories. There is a large area of S. Bush which is quite off the beaten track and quiet streets like Clapham in the ‘60’s. I was amazed at the extent of gentrification – revolting word – Pennard Road, for instance, just behind the Bush. K said I’d better be the other side. We had our usual backseat driving over my map-reading. We drew up in Warbeck Rd. just as J was getting out of her taxi. I felt guilty, asking her to do anything extra after a hard day. We chatted delightedly for a bit, and J gave me three more Cat detective stories. Then we went down to the ground floor. Very narrow passages, first to a bedroom not much smaller than mine, looking out onto the back garden. Shoes scattered around, tho’ she’s been away for mouths, hideous louvered doors on the wardrobe cupboards, a squalid mattress on the floor. In the main room, a good square, with a bay window there are a few pieces of rubbishy furniture, for instance, a low sagging sofa covered with a large African blanket, with a typically hideous African design in bars of crude red and yellow and white on a mostly black background. The woman who owns it is a film director, at present in Ethiopia, and her striking lack of visual sense is carried out in the décor. Up to the rather low picture-rail, the wall is a virulent bright but somehow muddy green, above it a dirty mustard yellow. But it could be charming, with a pretty fireplace.

K got excited over the passage with the bathroom on one side and the loo on the other, because of the absurd waste of space. In spite of his tiring day, I could see knocking down was in the air. He doesn’t ‘knock down’ for its own sake – he just has to bottom a job. Then the kitchen, too big for me, as usual, and a glimpse of the dark back garden, very untidy. I tried to keep the whole thing as short as possible, thinking of J’s long day. On the way home, K was doubtful, and I said I was nervous about any alterations disturbing J and K got a bit narked, - I know it’s for me, thinking I shouldn’t be so squeamish.

We parted outside the house, on one of the more extraordinary two days of my life.

Today, Sunday at last into chronology, I sat exhausted. And yet I had done almost nothing, compared to him.

Something I forgot to record. I told him that S. had asked the three of us to dinner at Mon P on the 21st. He said, ‘Oh, right’ and then went back to work, throwing away quietly, ‘I wish it could be just you and I and Si!’ Odd, I left it, but will have to ask, I think.

Rang Mary L to tell her, and get it over. She said she’d told me that it was no flat to grow old in, and that I’d been shocked and annoyed. It’s interesting how often she imagines I and no doubt others, are shocked or whatever. All she arouses is faint distaste at her tactlessness, which, I think, she thinks is searing honesty, or even charming teasing. The only annoyance comes from her bland confidence that she’s annoyed you.

Tried a bit of the film ‘Fever Pitch’ about Arsenal football club and an obsessed fan. I admire Colin Firth, but I knew there might be longeurs. Good heavens. I lasted about five and half minutes. It was so unbelievably slow, and it hadn’t got on to the football, one of the slowest spectacles on earth.

Thank goodness I didn’t become famous, and that D didn’t live longer, to endure the indignity of fame today.

Monday February 7 2000

To Ealing for Alliance. When my knee was bad, the walk seemed endless. I don’t notice it now. I suppose I’ve said how glad I am I didn’t have the operation. H and Karen have, and are both still in pain.

K rang and read me the letter he’d written to Mr. and Mrs. de Cock telling them to go to him for information or complaint, - I hardly know what to say.

Tuesday February 8 2000

Decided to go out early to the estate agents in the Shepard’s Bush road. Had a couple of boiled eggs at twelve, and I was off, imagining a long afternoon, perhaps with a viewing or two today, and the afternoon completed on Thursday, and some dates on Saturday. I walked the length of the road, and visited five agents. At Marsh and Parsons, a fourty-ish would be mondaine, in an orange suit some way after Chanel, was polite but had nothing. I was sympathetic, as there was almost deafening pneumatic drills the other side of some hard- board between her and the other half of the office. I asked what they were doing, and she said they were putting in two bathrooms and a kitchen. Curious, I can imagine an E. Agents office, working late, but needing a shower before a house showing, and needing a toasted sandwich, but two bathrooms and a kitchen…

In Barnard Marcus, a demotic little thing showed me something for £285,000 with a 100 ft garden. Sturges’ girl had to write her own name on a card, and gave me a list of properties, most of which were off the Harrow Rd. or in North Kensington. Nothing in S Bush, tho’ the shop is on S Bush Green. I came away with no properties at all.

He sent me a copy of his letter, so I can read it again and again. And I will, especially the sentence ‘You might be wondering about my interest in all of this. It is simply that Mr. Mackay and I have been the greatest of friends since we met twenty years ago – you might say that I am the son he never had. More importantly, I am by law the heir to his estate.’

Wednesday February 7 2000

Hazel rang as promised. She has finished her book, her knee is still bad. She was very comforting about my move, and said nothing discomforting about it, as you-know-who would.

I tidied up a bit for tomorrow, and found the hoover was full, and I’d run out of hoover bags. I had to take the bag out of the dust-bin and empty it with rubber-gloved hands. How compressed and voluminous it was! The bag was a little torn, and I had to mend it with Sellotape. Happily it worked perfectly.

Read bits of his letter.

Thursday February 10 2000

Very tired but an extraordinary day. The first estate agent was due at twelve o’clock. Just before twelve the bell rang, I said ‘James Anthony’. No, it was a misplaced damp man. He had both our names in his diary, but on the wrong Thursday. A couple of minutes later, the first e.a., Marcel Zaidan, tallish black hair brushed forward, suit, faintly foreign-looking, Lebanese, born in Dublin, but he made a favourable impression, because he sat down, and talked, and showed some interest in me, which is after all, the point. He could see that he was in the middle of quite interesting and unusual surroundings. He offered a value of £250,000. Next e.a. was unforgivably nearly twenty minutes late. (I’d known fomr his voice that he was a bit slapdash.) He was short, heavyish, commonplace, ‘Oh, you have got a lot of memorabilia’, he said. £200,000, playing the flat down for some transparently commercial reason, but the third, Sebastian of Sebastian’s, also in the Fulham Rd., was repellent. Tall, very smartly yuppiely dressed, he was infinitely patronising and inattentive, making it very clear that I was very small beer. When I said I’d been quoted £250,000 he said, ‘That’s ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. He only said that to get the instruction.’ He also quoted £200,000, but did mention £225,000 …. The James A man realised what that nice young man realised all those years ago at the cottage, ‘Anyone who wanted this place, would need it a lot.’ The short commonplace man was from Shaw’s at the corner, Dennis R. Hallett – I like the R – the yuppie was revolting Sebastian Anduze, who couldn’t attend to a word I said. And I had the afternoon ahead of me, with two places to see which would neither do, and I hoped he wouldn’t be cross, as he gets sometimes when he thinks I’m not doing well enough for myself. He rang at twenty-five past two to say he was at Euston, and obviously thought Winkworth’s was 2.45. Off we went, and waited a bit and didn’t pick up ‘Suanne Cloherty’ as we’d been told, but, after the wait, she sped off ahead of us in her small green rover. (I didn’t know Rovers could be small.) We got to the house, and the cul-de-sac made a second fabourable impression. Front garden full of weeds, Mondaine estate-agent fiddled with the key in the flat-door, and I felt her faint female embarrassment before two ‘men’ that still absurdly happens. Inside was a avid little flat, the floors obviously pencil-thin, some modern imitation parquet flooring. There was a very little in it, tho’ they’re still living there. In the bedroom, a double bed with a white bedspread and white wardrobe. Down two steps to the kitchen, where obviously cookery was a scientific experiment, a good square bit of garden, also grown over with a thick-leaved tongued plant. We came back to the passage, and I was amazed to hear K explaining that we would prefer ‘somewhere not so high-tec, as this wouldn’t suit my father and his things at all’…. So we set off towards the next appointment, leaving Suzanne Cloherty, another would-be mondaine, considerably be-goggled by K. This was to be at 4.0, in a road not far away. We had time, ‘I need a sandwich.’ And I needed a coffee, so we went off up the Uxbridge Rd, passing a house at the corner where a maisonette had been sold. ‘Have you looked into that?’ ‘No, it’s a maisonette.’ We walked up the Uxbridge Road, eventually finding another sign of the times, the internet Café, full of young people and music and the smell of coffee and a large croissant-like object dribbled with chocolate. He bit into it with a child like groan, I patted him on the back. He moved me to an unsuitably high stool so we could watch the illegally parked car. The next flat was the Three-bedroom one. The tall thin thirtyish agent arrived, and let us in, reacting crossly to the ‘sold’ sign across the board of the other agent. It had its own front door, but the stairs, which might have reconciled it to the first floor, were very steep and narrow. Coming down, I was obliged to put my feet along the steps, laboriously. The flat itself was possible, a string of small and smallish rooms along the landing. Knocking the two front ones together would have made a good reception, the two small rooms nice little book departments, and a kitchen/dining-room at the back, with an even steeper narrower staircase to shared (ugh) garden. That I would never go into. Extraordinary what the young woman who’d left it after a fairly short occupation, left behind. A new bed in every bedroom – a huge double and two very good singles, two new armchairs in the kitchen, a set of glistening purple enamel saucepans and matching electric kettle, mugs, china. In the kitchen, K started quietly to grill John Richardson, - that was his name – saying that we ‘wouldn’t mind somewhere quite dilapidated, providing it was right for me.’ He repeated almost the same sentence again and again, as J.R dredged up one or two useless suggestions, until finally he told us of a garden flat in – Keith Grove, that his firm had had at one time, but didn’t now, ‘It’s rather scruffy, and there’s a couple of inches of water in the cellar.’ That doesn’t faze K, after Elfort Road. There were various ‘phonings and arrangements, and we drove to Keith Grove again, and there was an agent’s board down the on the left in the very quietest bit of the cul-de-sac, further down from the first one. It looked a nicely decorated house, the ordinary Victorian terrace, doorway, bay window, but another bit on the other side, with two windows, not built on, part of the original structure, extra spaces. He got leggily out of the car, and put his mobile in my hand, saying ‘Answer it, if it’s John R saying we can see it.’ At the end of the cul-de-sac there’s a small gate leading to the next road, between the block of flats and a pub. He reconnoitred, for possible noise, and then suddenly came back, grabbed the mobile, and went off with it, saying ‘I forgot it was mobile.’ He came back, and rang the bell, talked a while. He waved me over, - a small neat-featured woman, and a boy of ten or eleven. The first room on the right with the bay-window was the bedroom. An unusually-shaped room, the wall opposite the door made an obtuse angle, and she said there was a fireplace in it, opposite the door, - a blue-green paper, not impossible. The door facing the front door on to a very good sized square light room, with double French Doors opening onto a huge wide garden. At one side was a baseball net and exercise bars… Behind the bedroom, very unusual for a terrace house, a passage with a small room, more of a lobby, on the left, opening into quite a big kitchen, still in the throes of conversion, tho’ nothing major. At the end of the passage, another bedroom, pretty long and pretty narrow, lit by the two extra windows, an awkward shape for a bedroom, but an excellent one for a book-room. It seems it was not selling because the cellar had an inch or two of water, no problem for K. But someone had offered £200,000, five thousand more than the asking price.

It was more than possible. We went off to look, only from the outside, of one much nearer to the Green. The silly woman is insisting that nobody can see it till she’s decorated it. Silly, because her taste in décor must have a very low possibility of chiming with a prospective purchaser. An interesting angled corner house. At some point, - I was so moithered I can’t quiet remember the exact sequence of events, unbelievably – to get a sandwich. We trailed about and found, on a corner, the internet café, full of smart young people, another sign of a changing district, in a row of small mean shops. Cappuccinos and K had a large croissant- like affair dribbled with chocolate – I forget the name. He went back and offered £205,000. He drove me home, having driven the whole day as well as his car. He left about seven, and I sank exhausted into drink and dinner, and thought of ‘my father.’

Friday February 11 2000

Very tired. Took keys to the agent, and went to the shops. Came back and found him inside, measuring the rooms. I thought it unfortunate, and I shall not tell K as he would be cross and I can’t bear that.

K was in parley with the agent for the house we saw, and was told off for going to talk to the woman and not going to him first. Everything in flux. Just at the time I might have expected K to ring back, it rang and a cheery voice stopped whistling and said, ‘Is that Jim?’ It wasn’t.

Fifty thousand badgers are killed on the road every year.

What a colossal BORE northern Ireland is, among many other hideous qualities.

He didn’t ring, - it’s now eleven thirty and I wish he had, if only to say he had nothing to say.

Saturday February 12 2000

A play about Maria St Just. ‘She married a Lord, but she’s still neither a Lady or a Saint, nor indeed very just.’ She had Russian blood. ‘Grandmother always kept a hunchback for luck.’

Around lunch, a ring – K? – no, a wretched woman wanting to sell me a mobile phone.

K rang to say he’d raised £130,000 himself, and could raise the rest, but not in time for the twelve noon deadline on Monday. He’d asked various of his friends for the balance including Pete Sinfield, who had it, but couldn’t convert whatever-it-was in time, so he asked me to ask John N and S. I knew neither would have it. John because his family ties up all the money, and S because I’m certain he hasn’t that much available to him. Let alone me, and I was worried about ringing him in New York in the middle of his final week of rehearsal. And I was quite sure ‘the two minutes call to his bank, that’s all it needs’ that K suggested, was something S could not do. He lets the accountants do everything, - God only knows what his bills are like. In any case, the question is academic. How can I get his number in time? By 10.30 on Monday, it’ll be 4.30 in NY, by 12, 7.0

A detective programme, ‘Midsummer Murders’ must be run by a kindly nostalgic old producer. Every episode (which I can never watch) contains half a dozen, sometimes more, of my contemporaries, many of whom I haven’t seen off or on, for years. In the one, for instance, Jane Wymark, now as old as her mother was when we knew her (and both very silly), Gordon Gostekow, forty years ago a scarecrow with rubbishy opinions, and very ramshackle talent and technique – imagine him surviving – Anna Cropper, a perfectly respectable actress, who seems to have faded out, perhaps she wanted to, and she’s also someone’s mother, as it might be, Linus Roache, but I can’t remember quite who. Then there’s Vivian Pickles. Didn’t we see her at the R. Court first in something by John Osborne? Pretty poor, and never seen anything to change that.

Sunday February 12 2000

I left a message on J’s machine last night, and rang again this morning – another message.

Rang Karen at home, and got her husband, a dear, she was out shopping with her daughter for an hour. Rang back an hour or so later, and she’d rung to say they were having a bit of lunch, so she’d be back in another hour. (Interesting historical note, that I felt surprised at a wife leaving her husband alone for Sunday lunch. I cannot imagine D and I doing that either way, on any sort of casual basis, except for work. Not just a shopping expedition.) She rang back and said she’d got the number at the office, and would ring me tomorrow when she got in at 10.30. So that’s no use. I explained a bit.

K rang to tell me he’s offered £210,000. I got him to explain. It turns out that was the original price, and the other chap offered £200,000. Then K £205,000, and finally... It’s come down and up again.

Sam Mendes on the South Bank Show, was, like all the best people, quite commonsensical and straight forward. I liked his talk of actors and the way he works with them, and that he’s come back and is going on with the Donmar and theatre in general.

Monday February 14 2000

Karen didn’t ring till 12.30, half an hour after the dead line. Sarah Woodcock of the Theatre Museum, who was going to ring back at – was in a meeting. She’s going to look at my 78 records, mouldering away, and nothing to play them on. I couldn’t get up often enough now to put them on!

K rang, still no news. The young woman at the house seems to be incommunicado. I said she was perhaps in cahoots with the man who made the other offer. ‘She did call him Geoff.’ I also said perhaps she – what is her name? – was in cahoots to avoid agents fees as well as play one off against another. To my surprise, worldly-wise K said ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’

My estate agent rang to say that there were two people coming to view here tomorrow. I shall be out. I say again I want not to see strangers looking to D and K’s photographs.

Tuesday February 15 2000

The ‘Young Professional couple’ seeing the flat today, were coming at 6.15, so I went to the pictures. ‘American Beauty’ at the Gate, then to the Russell Square Safeway to be sure to miss it all.

‘American Beauty’ is not so good as the notices suggested, but by no means negligible in the Hollywood scene. It has some of the pretensions of a ‘serious’ film – nothing more fearful in America. Voice-over narration is dangerous. But the best bits of it are high comedy, and it is unusual – and lucky – in having two stars who are not only really good actors but demonstrably intelligent. Annette Benning has an intensity and control that gives her power. Kevin Spacey has many arrows to his bow. An appetizing conception of his own comic effects, a crisp exact speech, economy, quite plainly doing exactly what he means to do. To give one small example, when he is struck in lust with his daughter’s cheerleader friend, he knows that there is no expression on the face of a man in lust. All the expression has gone to his prick.

On the tube, on the way back, a large plump negress had chosen an enchanting ensemble. Big clumpy flat back shoes, skin tight lycra tights, in swirling large Paisley shapes in purple yellow, blue, scarlet, green, and a boxy jacket to mid-buttock in dirty polar bear.

K rang has offered £210,000 and a decision tomorrow. I said – something or other. ‘Aah’ he said.

Wednesday February 16 2000

K rang to say ‘We’ve got it.’

S rang from New York because silly Karen had sent him the message I’d left on the office machine before I spoke to her and told her all about it. We had a hilarious talk and agreed to meet for an hour before seeing K and A at Mon P. I told him of ‘That wouldn’t suit my father’ and he said ‘Ah. Heart-stopping.’

K rang at 10.0, one of the few times when he wanted reassurance. ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Ecstatic’. I’d been furnishing and arranging ever since we saw it – I couldn’t stop myself. He told me he’d put everything into it. ‘What about New York?’ ‘I’ve kept back £1000 for that.’ I was very troubled and very uplifted by this. He said ‘Don’t bother about the finance.’ Extraordinary.

Earlier I had had to get out of the house because the ‘Young professional couple’ were coming round again. I said I would be out, and decided to tube to Russell Sq. and do a bit of shopping in the Safeway’s there. The agents said ‘She’s bringing her brother this time.’ Delightful irrelevance.

Thursday February 17 2000

My 42nd wedding anniversary.

The Young professional couple have offered £205. Even hideous Sebastian said it would be worth £275, got up. So the YPC think it will cost £70,000 to get it up? Nauseating? Yes, greedy.

Put a letter to Katrina through her door, and went to Kew to escape. Took a banana and bought an egg and bacon sandwich there, and walked through brilliant spring sunshine and crocuses to a seat nearish to the Temperate House, and sat in the sun and ate and read the Standard. The sun went in, and I went in, and sat in a seat in the TH. Very pleasant and a bird I couldn’t quite identify, sang so sweetly and so suspiciously constantly that I at last started to wonder whether it wasn’t recorded… I must take a cushion next time, and choose a different bench. This was just by a plashing waterfall, and it’s a long enough walk to the loo not to bother to come back.

But it was a good idea to go, because Katrina telephoned soon after I got back, had knocked on the door, and I left a card. I’m glad she had the delicacy to ring. It seems she is very eager to buy, and kept saying Don’t sell it, even after I’d said of course we would… I suppose nobody is used anymore to people of their word. Later there was another card, saying they would pay £245,000, a reasonable offer as we would avoid agent’s fees. Rang K to say and was riveted. Said ‘Careful’ of course, but we go into it, equally of course.

Told Mary L of the new flat. ‘Which way does this flat face?’ ‘Well, the sitting-room and garden face south, so it’s north and south like Manchuria Rd.’ ‘Yes, that’s why your drawing-room was so hideously gloomy and cold.’ She waited twenty years to strike like a snake.

Friday February 18 2000

Another card from Katrina. Eager, but that’s not surprising since this is not just a flat she might like or take, but a unique flat, the bottom two floors of her freehold house.

Set out for the solicitor’s, in Onslow Gardens, no less. A converted town house nearly on the corner of Old Brompton Rd. A small room, probably the room the hostess stood receiving, the door open to the huge drawing-room, windows from floor to ceiling, polite plump young woman gave me an acceptably strong and hot cup and saucer-no-less, of instant coffee. Such a low chair that I couldn’t have got up from it with the cup in my hand at all, and even without it, only with K’s help. Good clear talk, both of us want to be sure things would be all right for the other if…. I might easily die. He is flying to New York next week. The consequences for me would be, just practically, utterly crippling. Impractically, mortal. The solicitor, tall, toothy, fortyish, and much made-up, was sensible. I could talk to her. She’s tying the two sales together, so that both will go through quickly, before the Budget….

K hadn’t brought the car. He’d had a meeting before in Soho, I think, and then S and Ken, and in neither place a chance of parking. So we taxi’d everywhere, and there we were. Nobody in, so he rang the agent. What an extraordinary blessing mobiles are in such circumstances! How long might it have taken to get to a ‘phone and it might have rained… He arrived and let us in, but not before I’d seen a little raised bed of compacted earth and decided to try lilies of the valley. The agent tactfully left us to eat his sandwiches in his car. So we had quarter of an hour’s blessed privacy, able to look without reacting to irrelevant owners or agents. The impression we took away was markedly better than we’d thought at first. She’d tidied up, so that we could see amazingly more than anyway I had seen before. The last sentence is not accurate. The tidying helped, but really it is the odd way at first glance at a possible flat, tidy or not, can leave out large objects, remember two sets of doors where there’s only one and so on. Or at least my memory. So I hadn’t seen the upright piano in what will be my bedroom. The garden isn’t quite as vast as I thought, the carpets in the bedroom and bookroom will do – pale green and coffee – and the sitting-room had a beautiful polished wood floor. She’s leaving the curtains poles, I hope the net-curtains, but when I asked her what she was leaving in the kitchen, and, giving me a puzzled look, she said, ‘Well, nothing!’ K explained to me later that people sold things now. I listened meekly, and didn’t bother to ask him why the complete hi-tech kitchens we’d see were being left. I see that her kitchen is a random collection of domestic appliances inadequately wired or plumbed somewhere near the wall. I would have thought that such a random collection would be so much more likely to be left. (Another rebuke that I received even more meekly, came from me saying to her when we left, that she was going to agree to the sale, and the girl upstairs here was going to….

He was cross because he thought she might say ‘Oh, perhaps they haven’t got the cash they said they had, if they’re getting the price from the girl upstairs.’ I don’t think anything like that – I expect she took it as a social remark, it’s going well here and it’s going well at home. I didn’t think there was any connection and I don’t think she did. This was as we were leaving, so back to going round the flat.) He went off into a thorough measuring and surveying and I wandered round, thinking we could live with the bluey-greeny paper in the bedroom, and the paper in the bookroom, as long as, this, I now see, 16’ doesn’t matter because almost none of it will be seen, the lobby ‘room’ before the kitchen must be devoted to cupboards. Some sixties idiot clearly tore out the original cupboards that must have been somewhere about. There is no linen cupboard, no china cupboards. I have four large kitchen cupboards full.

Then I wandered out into the garden, and took possession of it. I found it rather better planted up then I’d thought at a glance. There are a matureish apple and pear trees, more or less outside the kitchen French doors, and a grape-vine up beside the sitting room bay, ‘We get grapes from it.’ There’s nothing on the copious walls and trellis but forsythia and other not yet identifiable tall shrubs on the east wall. I think the north wall, which, K told me, had, on its other side, some garages, whose roofs were only stepping distance from the top of my trellis, needs a huge collection of thorns and prickles and barbs. And the forsythia etc. is not evergreen, a pity. A couple of tree-ferns, one a goodish umbrella, the other rather crumpled and withered looking, and an, as yet, unidentified also rather tropical looking plant, at the moment a narrow column of tightly furled light green leaves, fairly big ones, I think. (Are there two of this as well, - I rather think so.) These four are strangely placed, with little relation to each other or anything else, and I think they must be part of some arrangement from which the other plants have vanished. No use of the walls or trellis at any point. Extraordinary rubbish in the garden. Bed-sized pieces of yellow foam rubber piled in one corner, much assorted hardware, two bags of builders sand, a very old battered barbecue, with hideous cheap mosaic all over it, a waist-high curved brick back-ground for it. On one of the boarders a couple of records, a football or two, and I suddenly saw an eight inch kitchen- knife lying on the soil, worm-casts underneath, so it’s been there the whole winter. Since the last barbecue, I suppose. K is irritated by the bathroom and the loo, ‘Such a waste of space’ and I see ‘Knocking down walls’ in his eye. Hm. We went off at three to 21st Century to see a flat a few streets away. A jolly plump girl with a six-month old baby let us into a smart one bedroom flat. The bedroom was strong sulphur yellow, with brown, the living room, the black drawing room and dining room knocked into one with steps down between. A pretty little garden, very well cared for, very high walls. ‘Useless for me, as the place is too small. We were hungry. He said ‘Look, there’s a café in that side street’ and it was charming. It was yellow, too, but a pretty pale yellow and obviously brand new. A young Italian couple, with a baby, only sandwiches and coffee, but an excellent display cabinet of sandwich fillers, you choose any filing and they make it there and then. K, tuna and me, eggs and bacon. Delicious, as was the cappuccino. K said he’d do the Marsh and Parsons one. So I sat and read the Standard over another cappuccino and wondered whether the café would ‘go’. I would have thought lunches and dinners would extend their chances more. K was rather a long time. ‘Guess who was late.’ Taxi home. He collapsed in the armchair. He spent quite a physical hour at the new place. Later he hauled himself up to call on Katrina, I went to lie down, and heard him take her all over it. He came back and said, ‘You mustn’t be too hopeful. I think the expense is putting her off.’ Possible purchaser tomorrow at one.

I’m telling everyone that the real reason I’m buying it is the huge iron gibbet on which hangs a basketball net. Yet another garden infelicity.

Sunday February 20 2000

Rang K about solicitor’s letter. He asked for more measurements of the furniture, and some I got a bit wrong. He’s making a sort of small-scale model with the furniture to scale, too, So that we can decide what arrangement is best. The dear thing, - he must wonder how I did my three previous moves.

While I was shaving, I suddenly thought of two boys at school, who, unlike the rest of us, were already, at 15, shaving every day. They described such mysteries as, ‘Then you turn the razor the other way up.’ Wilde was short and very dark, swarthy even, with a shaven beard already a black half-mask. Wenyon, (name changed by social-climber father from Onions) on the other hand was large and fair (Probably not v, plump if not fat.) and, also 15, was covered more or less from head to foot in golden fluff, - it riveted and disgusted in the showers. Worse than adult feet. Hazel didn’t like Shakespeare in Love – only laughed three times… compared it unfavourably to No Bed For Bacon, good heavens, that painfully forced affair. Heaven knows what it reads like now. In some ways she’s caught in the past. It’s one thing to feel nostalgic about a favourite book of your youth, but not to be able to re-evaluate it now, not catch the comedy of someone as brilliant as T. Stoppard, shows a certain ossification.

Monday February 20 2000 Tuesday February 21 2000

Too drunk and elated to write last night. I found myself waking up with the light on, a rare happening. I had to go out, because Katrina’s mother was coming round with a survivor – what? I mean, a surveyor, so I went out to get my pension, and went on to see The Beach, about the only film I could bear to see, picking up a threesome sandwich and a bottle of orangeade at the newish Sainsbury’s in Tott. Court Rd., and on to the cinema. As for The Beach, I couldn’t bear to see it, and left after twenty minutes or so. I hope it isn’t Alex Garlands, but there is an intolerably commonplace mind behind the thing, the sort of best- seller with that heavily embossed cover, that none of us can read. As for Leonardo Di Caprio, I think he’s probably a character actor, and being ‘The Hero’ doesn’t extend his power, or specially suit him. Still, he has the sort of boyish looks that don’t age well, - he’s already a bit chubby – so the decision may be taken out of his hands. I did some shopping at Sainsbury’s and didn’t buy some books after all. Went home and rested and arrived at Peg’s, finding S in one of the underground caverns that open out of another, oddly configured making many cosy little alcoves to talk in. He chiefly wanted to tell me of the affair he had during the Rock and Roy workshop time – a fortnight. The stage manager, Daniel Kramer, 23, said he’d read the Peggy Book, and decided to have an affair with S. And did. Oh dear, I shan’t tell Hazel that. I gave him the rest of the encore run, two bounds vols. and about twenty loose copies including three or four, probably quite rare, of the mag. When it was just a college mag. He had three glasses of Champagne, I had two large g&t’s, and we went to Mon Plaisir. ‘Your friends are waiting in the bar.’ They were, and K said ‘There seems to be something going on’. There was, waiters rushing about rather fruitlessly, and one of them said our table wasn’t ready tho’ there were only two tables occupied in the room up a couple of stairs. It was as if there’d been some sort of disturbance just before K and A arrived. We settled in eventually, with a young French waitress with not a word of English, to the point that, after explaining that we wanted to put our own tonic in the gin in English and in his excellent French, he still had to hold her wrist from pouring tonic into the third gin, suggesting that she didn’t understand French either. Things got going eventually. Simon and I had duck salad, endive, substantial slivers of duck, a lemony dressing. K had no starter. A had ordered a salad with her main course, and the idiot waitress brought it as her first course. So A went on drinking – Pouilly Fumé – without eating. For our main course, S and I had Cuisse De Papin with celeriac and capers, creamed spinach and petit pois, bacony and creamy. K had sea bass, piled up in crisp triangular fillets. (I didn’t think he could eat fish anywhere but leaping on the beach in Portugal.) A had a sort of kebab of monkfish. I began to realise that A is either drunk or nervous, or both. (I don’t think A is nervous of ‘celebrities’). She began one of those clamping monologues, that go on and on, as if there is a suction tube between foreheads, and that’s what she was doing to S. I could see his eyes dulling. We had almost finished the main course, and A had not begun. (They may not eat till 11.0 in Portugal but this was ridiculous.) When S went to the loo, K leant over and took her hand and said, in that gentlest, most calming soothing voice, that he so seldom vouchsafes to me, ‘Angus dear’, that she must clam down and back off. Only I had a pudding, crème brulée, and K had a mouthful. I had been looking forward to the cheese board, but of course couldn’t chump through alone. Every now and again I made S and K and A laugh, and every now and again I had moments with K. Katrina had rung confirming the purchase. I love to make him laugh helplessly, which is not difficult, but it’s no use. I am frightened he’s going to the U.S. now.

Today, Tuesday, I have stayed in and done nothing, except sitting and reading. K rang and we exclaimed over A. ‘I know.’ Loaded talk over what we need to do, because of the flight.

Wednesday February 23 2000

K’s plans for the flat arrived, and when I say ‘plans’ I don’t mean his ideas, but ground plans of the whole flat, and of each room and for the one-room plans, a sheet of most of my furniture, to scale, to be cut out and arranged on the plans. A delightful game, and I was fiddling with the exciting extent of the book-room, designating fiction, biography and dramatic criticism sections as if it were a public library, when he rang and we had a jolly chat about it all. He mentioned a builder and a wall to be knocked down. I hope to avoid that.

Otherwise it was a quiet day, going back to my gardening books with delight. Since the garden got so bad, I had to forget about plants, or felt guilt when I read, or usually didn’t read a gardening column. Now I can read the old familiar pages of Graham Thomas and A.T. Johnson and V.S.W. and Notcutts and feel anticipatory pleasure and tomorrow dread.

Thursday February 24 2000

Antique quiz show, a French prisoner of war model made in 1810ish. Everyone said it was the largest and most elaborate of its kind they’d ever seen. A guillotine. Live audience. No one thought to say it must have been a long sentence.

K rang in car on his way to the Airport, gave me the number of the New York hotel, the Paramount. Tried not to say anything fearful, frightened. Spent a wretched evening, not able to stop my imagination, specially now, with all we have to do, and I would be lost without him.

K rang from NY. Thank god. Art Deco hotel, all well. Oh the relief.

Friday February 25 2000

Rang Roy and M and Roy rang back for once and talked of the garden. Would I go next Friday and advise? I would. ‘We’ll give you food.’ I don’t know about that, but it’ll take my mind off K’s flight back.

To the Halifax, and then to The Gate to see The Talented Mr. Ripley. I left the house at 2.15, for the Halifax at H’smith and the perf at 3.15. Waited for a train at H’Smith and again at Earl’s Court, so arrived at 3.25, just as ‘Paramount’ faded from the screen. Absurd, to go one station one way, and four the other and it take over an hour. At least I’ll avoid that in the new flat.

At the film, I was really bored. I haven’t seen any of A. Minghella’s work since the awful ‘Studio’, but I was surprised by the almost intolerably cheap imagination and relentless best- sellerdom of the whole thing. I hold no special brief for Patricia Highsmith, but at least she could write a bit, and had a sort of control of her own unpleasant personality. This reminded me of those films in the 50’s when innocent true Yanks were betrayed by wicked Europeans in beautiful locations. Jude Law had been much praised, and indeed Oscar-nominated, certainly he has at last found a part that suits his rather nasty personality, shallow manipulative, and selfish. But, just as with Alfred Douglas, he cannot give it an artistic character, and is actually sha., man and sel. Gwynneth Paltrow has some very touching and delicate moments, but she must have some quiet lessons in crying. Too often she was crumpling into her Oscar image of a scarlet crumpled face. So again, tho’ in a much less important way, she wasn’t controlling what she was expressing. The much trumpeted Cate Blanchet, certainly in an invented and rather marginal part, nevertheless made little impression on me, and her hair, for a very rich girl in 1958, and an American, was quite startlingly underdressed and untidy. As for Matt Damon, an actor I persist in having expectations for, he was quite miscast, and, as actors are apt to do, was forced to fall back on his mannerisms. Far too many times his lips kindled in an irresistible (sic) spontaneous (sic) smile and that he could ever have been mistaken for Jude Law, was absurd. I seem to remember in the novel, Ripley was interviewed by the same policeman, as Ripley and Tom. Went into Waterstone’s and brought Noel Annan’s The Dons. Read a few paras about Dadis and was rather electrified at the very odd behaviour, sick in R. Boothby’s car, gauche and intimidated by the great and the good in London etc etc. Well, age brings its enlightenments.

Saturday February 26 2000

Dearest K’s 39th b’day.

Lunch with J at Café Pasta. Told me more of the Stephanie Towers affair. The building work going on immediately next to her over-immaculate mews house, had made her hysterical from her first view of it last week. She can’t breathe, the dust is in her hair, the house is ‘filthy’, - always an emotive word to a pollution maniac. In fact, J said you couldn’t see any dust, scarcely a mark when you ran your fingers over it. When she arrived, she made the house-keeper hose down the cobbles outside, through they belong to the council, and would certainly be ‘dirtied’ by the builders seven or eight times a day. She instructed a firm of lawyers a while ago, who reported there was nothing to be done. She wrote (or J did) to another, who she’s never seen, and has now instructed another, a brash New Zealander, without dispensing with, or telling, the first two. J thinks that nothing can be done, because of the time that has gone by. J told her of this first in 1993, but S.P. is the sort who doesn’t learn anything but what she wants to hear. I urged J to take herself out of it, and just be secretary fodder. S.P. has asked for, or I think the NZ lawyer has, the letter files since ’93. ‘And do you think some letters will mysteriously disappear?’ J said, ‘Yes.’

Goodish risotto, house wine, a bot. Dear J said she’d had some little policy and she’d had £800, so, as well as my lunch, she’d looked at a CD player in the shop up Ken. High St., a nice chorus model ‘With the four bands of radio’. ‘50’s space module, but with a definite mark on the CD lid, partly enough to blur the brand name. She told them, got a discount of nearly £30, then it turned out that the display model was the only one they had. The poor young man searched under the counter for an aerosol cleaner and a cloth. That burnished the top to J’s restrained satisfaction. So he went away to get a box, and put it on the counter. J read, upside down, ‘No remote, written in marker on the lid, and said, ‘No remote?’ He searched among the bubble plastic. We came away. A lovely easy treat for me. I can talk to J.

Did a little shopping in Safeway. ‘Wafer thin ham? Who likes it? Why do people like it? Odd.

Have now read more of Dons, Dadie and the chapter on Bowra. I never like Noel Annan much, I found him bumptious and patronising, and am not surprised to find him taking the tone he does, apparently admiring and genial, but sticking some fairly grubby knives into each back.

Rang Mary L and idly mentioned the duck salad at Mon P, and received a tirade about the treatment of ducks worthy of Animal Liberation. I said meekly that I thought that it had been found impossible to raise battery ducks, and was she thinking of Strasbourg geese and paté de – ‘No, I heard it on the radio.’ No appeal from that.

Letter from solicitor containing the oddly louche name of Katrina’s solicitor, Rula Georghiou, in a suburban road off a main road in Haringey.

Sunday February 27 2000

Nothing shows me how much better my leg is than not struggling over to Mary L with two bags of books. She was in her mildest mood, fuelled by gratitude, perhaps. A cup of instant coffee, made from that cheaper, rather suspiciously bright-brown dust that isn’t a known sort. I kept the talk carefully to books, and there we’re generally all right. We have, after all, a common past. But, oh dear, always hanging in the air, for me, is D coming to me in tears, bitter tears, about her and it is always also a constant temptation to tell her how D despised her for some years for her sour and small minded judgments.

The Prime Minster, at a celebration of a hundred years of the Labour Party, at – the Old Vic.

Now we have reached the apogee, imagine the Victorians’ reaction if any political party had admitted the theatrical, not to say illusory element in politics.

Monday February 28 2000

Went shopping for S Woodcock’s for lunch. So strange to be entertaining again, even on this modest scale. I’d offered her an omelette and salad, and forgot the eggs.

Rang J and she rang back, the Stephanie ‘thing’ continues. I think S.P. according to J really believes she can charm the chairman of Cluttons into abandoning a very sizable building project. I suppose if you’re spoiled, your spoiled.

K rang from NY, to say they’d changed their room to 401, and how I must remember to bring the loo-seat with me. ‘It’s broken’. ‘Oh.’ ‘Robin stood on it.’ ‘It’s only £20. So fuck it.’

Curious view of this flat now that I’m leaving it, of course I’m seeing and admitting all the obvious disadvantages and outright breakdowns. But there is a more subtle and immaterial state of mind – I am in both places, and my mind works and works arranging and re- arranging rooms, books, the garden and plants, the move itself, possible disaster. Picturing living in the new place is valuable for someone like me, who finds it very difficult to feel I’m really there for some months, or years, which is why travel has little interest for me.

Tuesday February 29 2000

The day dominated by giving lunch to Sarah Woodcock from the Theatre Museum, coming to assess the 78 records. What keen delight I had collecting them, partly to listen to them, but mainly to preserve them, when few people were collecting them, and I was buying them in markets on tour for pennies. I rang her yesterday to ask her if there was anything she couldn’t eat. There wasn’t. ‘An omelette and some salad?’ ‘Lovely.’ A relief. As I said I had to go out to get the eggs. I opened the door, and on the traffic pole opposite, parking and so on, 9’ or 10’ feet tall, with two or three panels of information pointing different ways, were sitting two magpies, so perfectly disposed as for a bird encyclopedia photograph. So perhaps forgetting the eggs was two for joy.

Sarah W rang the bell at exactly twelve thirty. A tall large plump girl of fifty-five, with a ready laugh, and a fair knowledge of the theatre. She looked through the first piles of records, and will come back and take quite a good proportion. I felt nothing. We had quite jolly chats – she’s that sort of girl – as she likes hearing theatrical stories and I like telling them. We had a good clear talk about bequests after I die. I made it clear that anything and everything would be K’s to keep or sell, according to his circumstances then. I also pointed out that I didn’t think K would have any interest in much material, with the possible exception of D’s letters and certainly my diaries, neither of which would have any material value. I had said that I thought D’s letters might fetch some sort of bid on a specialist theatrical auction day, if there was such a thing. She told me there wasn’t such a thing anymore. ‘If there’s anything about Larry and Vivien, it’s always in a film sale about GWTW or Wuthering Heights.’ Sad. I asked about pictures, and books, ‘No, I don’t do books’. Periodicals, ‘No, we are generally all right with those, at least this century. Yes, we have sets of Who’s Who in the Theatre, more or less two sets.’ Of pictures I said they surely had hundreds of Irving and Ellen Terry and she said no, not as big as that one of mine in an Oxford frame. They’re also all right for plays and playbills, because of the British Drama League Library and the Gabrielle Einthoven collection, which formed two of the cornerstones of the museum. Still, by and large, I got it straight myself as to what they might accept and preserve. As for darling K, I just hope some of what I leave is worth something for him. But I do want D’s letters and on a lower level, my diaries, to be preserved. Oh dear, I’ll have to give K instruction in manuscript preservation.

So odd entertaining in the old way again, after – how many years? Coffee cups, the table completely transformed! The solicitors rang during the p.m. to say documents were going backwards and forwards for 55 Keith Grove. Sarah W stayed till 5.45, oh dear, so her mother never told her you must leave a luncheon engagement at five to three. Rather tired.

A six year old has shot a six year old in Yankland. How long and how many deaths?

Wednesday March 1 2000

RSPCA inspector putting some animal down, ‘you wouldn’t want to delay it’s suffering.’

At eleven-thirty to lunch with Tim Watson, dear Tim, at Brown’s, the restaurant next to the Albery in St. Martin’s Lane, where the Oriental Mrs. Ian Albery’s record shop used to be, opening onto the alleyway with the stage doors of the Albery (New) and Wyndham’s, so that she could rebuke her divorced husband with her presence. A popular bent-wood chair populist place with a kind of basic menu. I had baked cod, courgette, and some good chips, a rare treat. Tim was so familiar and dear, though looking rather tired and a bit gaunt, with shadows under his eyes, and rather hollow cheeks. (I can’t somehow imagine him making old bones.) First, we compared new flats. To my surprised, he has found somewhere to buy, tho’ the other day he was rather despondent that the prices were beyond a first time buyer. It’s in Crouch End, a ground-floor in a three-storey sizable house. The reception room is the front bay window and quite a good size, - the other rooms really small, presumably created out of the dining-room, - think of Talbort Road. £125,000, more that he wanted. I wonder how long he’ll keep it, especially as his girlfriend, an actress called Helen Grace, has just bought a house with five bedrooms in Muswell Hill for £495,000, and he may move in. Difficult. Not only has she been doing pretty well financially, but already had a flat in Belsize Park, brought by her mother, which she sold for £430,000 or something. How mad it all is. Dear Tim, I fear his love-affairs suffer from his indecision, a quality I can afford to tease him about. I know that indecisiveness comes from a delicate and fastidious mind, but it is no less poetically disastrous for that. Gave him the Oxford two-volume Otway, which I knew he’d treasure. He said ‘You lent me the two-volume St John Hankin, too.’ ‘I thought I gave it you.’ ‘No, lent.’ ‘Well, I give it you now.’ I must try to go to his play. How little I want to. I love him because I can see he tries to be good.

Back here, John N, whom I’d rung to ask if he had paid the electric bill, because I’d got the red reminder, rang to say he’s having an operation tomorrow, that dental thing. There’s an infection in the jaw that antibiotics haven’t eradicated. Has to be there at 7.30. Says last time he felt ‘woozy’ and weak for some weeks from the general anesthetic. I can’t remember hearing any one else suffering that sort of effect. But then dear John with all his splendid qualities has a tiny touch of his family’s interest in illness.

S is away on the 4th. J under the knife. A letter from the de Cocks to me despite K’s letter, of which they clearly had not believed a word. Could not bear to keep it in the house, and put it in an envelope and posted it to K as he’d told me, and them.

So is he going to come back to me alive to see me through all this?

Thursday March 2 2000

The de Cocks sent me to Kew for refuge. I walked down to the left towards the pagoda, where there are a good many camellias. I notice that few of them are fully out, any more than my mathotianna alba in its pot is, which is a bit late, considering the exceptionally mild February, and winter overall. I walked over the soft yielding grass through the big trees to the Temperate House, and noticed a striking small bush in the border immediately by the door, a border facing south and backed by the house itself – about six feet wide and a perfect place for something tender, but let’s try. I’d read about it, coronilla, and it is in the catalogues, a beautiful mass of small pea flowers in a rich yellow. Next to the Ceanothus? Sat in a secluded seat to eat my sandwich – I am still true to my upbringing in not really liking to be seen eating in public – but I hadn’t been there long, when a nice thirtyish man asked me to move, because they wanted to put ‘some plants’ there. ‘Some plants’ turned out to be palm-like affairs with a bulbous root-stem, rather like a cinfused pineapple. He, and three others, two women, hoicked four foot pots about, all by themselves. In my replaced bench, I was sitting under an olive-tree, and the man-handled palms rattled among its branches and olive leaves fell on my book.

Later.

Rang Simon R and left a message. He didn’t ring back. I hope all’s well. S goes to Brazil in twenty-four hours. It all weighs on me. Of course it’s irrational, but so was finding D dead. All three might go. But not him. Not him.

Friday March 3 2000

John himself rang, all right ‘if a bit woozy’. They think they’ve got it, but he may have to have root canal work, ‘As I did the other side some years ago, £5000, they gut the teeth and fill them with concrete…’

In the p.m. to look at Roy and M’s garden, I chose today so that it would take my mind off waiting for K’s call. Marian picked me up at Kew Gardens station, in the middle of a building site, all in aid of a pedestrian precinct, or some such. Odd, it was flat and we walked over it already… It’s always a joy to see Marian, she understands and catches on to the slightest implications of what I say, and her suggestions for treats or solutions are always comforting and usually right. The car is too small for me, I fear, and the moment when I bend my head and my back at the same time is a bit painful, but, even worse, the headrest was fixed so far forward and downward, that my neck became really painful, and I was glad the journey was no longer that it was. But their lives cannot be expected to pamper an elderly arthritic who drives in their car twice a year. We were driving to pick up, as I first thought, little Tom from some nursery school or other. Sitting in the passenger seat turns my deaf ear to the driver, with all the accompanying noise to make things more impenetrable. It was Roy we were going to pick up, from his writing hidehole, - it is on the river, it looks like it, in a row of what would be mews if it was house, but are probably ex-boat houses. It is opposite a fairly young school, out of which mothers and prams were streaming, and I was riveted that M&R waved to quite a few. I sensed the, to me, extraordinary world they live in. (The ordinary world, of course, to most other people.) With children motored to and fro, the endless chores that children entail, the strain, the pain, and the enormities of present-day adolescence ahead, I feel humble in face of them both asking me to advise them about the garden.

How have they the interest or the energy for the garden, which the children will probably trample into mud in the next few years? But they have. Comically, their little garden, about the size of this room without the arch, is a copy of my new garden. A circle of lawn, with triangular beds at the corners. There is a eucalyptus tree to the left, a prunus to the right, fences all round, and a rosemary a foot from the eucalyptus. I gave him a framework of four or five reliable shrubs, more or less foolproof. He can fill in the gaps with his mistakes. Dear M produced the blue velvet curtain she’d mentioned, and it’s magnificent – as long as one of the red velvet ones, a lovely blue. Should do for the book-room. I don’t know what she’s leaving yet. R drove me to Chiswick Park Station, as he was going to the big Sainsbury’s. As a matter of fact, he drove me to Sainsbury’s, and I had to walk back across the car park and a major road, about a five minute walk. Odd, but I’m glad I don’t seem too decrepit to need coddling. R also gave me a pot of marmalade and another of crab-apple jelly of his own making.

K had rung while I was out, thank god. He will never know how my imagination worked over this week, imagining the move without him. He didn’t want to talk about NY – he never does, likes to tell me face to face. But it won’t be this Sunday, as planned. He’s had an explosion of work, one of the songs that he and Pete S have been working on for two years has become hot, and the Back Street Boys appear to be interested. ‘Two years, and he has to ring me in New York.’ Then that girl singer, ‘rather flaky’ wants two days with him on her showreel and finally, a Whiska Advert he put in for in October, has come up, ‘Got a budget of £92,000’. ‘How much would you get?’ ‘£35,000’. ‘Oh well, you could rub along on that.’ So it’s next weekend, ‘But ring if it’s something important.’ Thinking about the move, and perhaps K mightn’t want Pickford’s, and telling me off about the purely imaginary giveaway to Carrick, and protecting me from the de Cocks – his fears and mine - I really am going thro’ a father, son thing.

At 9.40 S rang from the airport. I knew it, he’s going on to New York – or is it Boston? Or perhaps Chicago? – for a few days, and bringing the young man over here for a fortnight. Apparently he was in Britain at fifteen in Scotland and Newcastle-Under-Lyme. Oh dear, he is impulsive. At last he did say that Darren wasn’t like his usual lovers, ‘Unlike any other.’ Well, that might be promising, in a negative sort of way. But I fear it’s late in his life to forge a lasting bond with someone, someone who can be with him for life. I daresay he doesn’t want that and that’s why he hasn’t got it. Poor S, so restless, and hot inside.

Saturday March 4 2000

Back Street Boys are 8th in Richest list in the paper, £38m last year.

To Whiteleys for last £20, and Alliance week next week. Odd to be poor, with thousands changing hands above my head.

Dear Marian rang to look at the house, and was very positive about it. Wants to give me a plant for the garden, told her a choisya ternate. Roy rang later to say ‘What plant?’ and to ask after his crab-apple jelly.

Perfect illustration of Mary L’s skewed perception of the world. She gave me a cup of coffee the other day, from a jar of bright red-brown dust. I drank it bravely, quiet awful. Today I happened to say on the ‘phone, apropos of something else, that I couldn’t see the point of ‘decaffeinated’ really. M said triumphantly, ‘You had some the other night.’ And she will go to her grave believing that I can’t tell decaff, from regular. Whereas I can tell disgusting for delicious, but didn’t tell her so.

Sunday March 5 2000

K rang to say it would have to be next Sunday. So I thought, the dear thoughtful thing, the move without him? Nightmare.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 168

March 6 2000 - April 21 2000.

Monday March 6 2000

Afternoon magazine programme centred on Sir John Mills’ 92nd b’day. A monster of self- conscious sentimentality in acting, and, on this evidence, in life. He was joined by various accomplices, Stephen Fry, his son, and daughter, all incontinent, and with no idea of the dignity of the profession, which used to pride themselves on not talking to layman except in the most general terms. John Mills is remarkable for longevity but culpable for sentimentality and a dreadful self-consciousness. I was ashamed of it all, but I can’t think who would agree with me except D and John G.

J rang and poured out irritation with her sister, a lawyer, who is obviously maddening, not least because, like their dead father, she believes to be capable du rien, if there is such an expression. Comical, considering J runs a secretarial agency with many stars on her books, for whom she organizes all sorts of things. Flattered by her confidence, even though it lasted over half an hour.

Tuesday March 7 2000

Now a letter from de Cock’s surveyor asking to make an appointment. Felt sick and expected them to come battering at the door. Rang K. He solved it all, and I wrote the de Cocks to say he was in complete control of my affairs. So I felt I could walk down the Uxbridge Rd and look at the new place. I was glad I did, though I didn’t discover anything new. The first stretch of the U Rd. is humdrumly useful, albeit without any of the big chains, no Boots, for instance. Then there are some dreary stretches of small mean one-storied shops, obviously jerry built on the front of the houses. Not a glimmer among them till the internet café more or less opposite J’s road, and a bit farther down, that dear little café we went to, which turns out to be in Oakland Grove, and we got a property from there, but never saw it. All the streets I’ve been down, are ‘improving’ with the majority of houses now ‘gentrified’. Awful words, to the point that I am a bit surprised that more signs of this are not showing in the U. Road. The Brackenbury bit has been smart for years, so perhaps Goldhawk shows more signs. I have little doubt it will happen. I don’t suppose anyone under forty would believe me, that Edna told me the Fulham Road was becoming smart, exclaimed, ‘But it’s the dreariest road in the world.’ It now has a dress shop that Princess Diana and American film stars have patronised.

Turned into Keith Grove, and was much struck by the silence that fell even before I turned the corner into the bottom bit where the house is. This time noticed that ivy was starting to grow over the book-room window from next door. Walked through the little iron gate to Becklow Road, and turned off into a narrow road on the left to look at the back wall of the garden and the garages K mentioned. A bit like a street in a village, with buildings at odd angles. The garages do indeed go along the whole wall, with only the trellis stopping anyone stepping over. The sooner very thorny climbers are planted the better. I’d forgotten how big the basket-ball stand is, twelve feet high and wide. The sooner that goes the better. Made my way to Askew Road, which I expected to be showing some signs of running through an up and coming district, but saw absolutely no sign of it, rather the reverse, with a gloomy little bistro having gone to shit by this time, and walked on to Stamford Brook, my knee holding up well. Got to Kew and had a shit in their clean loos, but didn’t risk anything else after my long walk. One good point, the nearest shops, as near as the corner ones here. A large Londis, an equally large Inter-Continental and a real butcher with English staff. So it may be a little more expensive, but they’re there. Just luck.

Did I say that, coming out after lunch with Tim, passed Sam Mendes, and later, Richard Eyre. S.M. pleasant and plump-looking.

Still struggling a bit with the S John biog. I find messy lives a strain. I mean the life itself of course. The book is far from messy, - Holryd had managed to impose his usual order on mess.

Wednesday March 8 2000

A bishop, black, I regret to say, says, if you’re married, it’s wrong not to have children. The nerve. Discussion later in which various people prowled round the subject, with various opinions and reasons offered one way and another. Nobody said they just didn’t like children.

K rang and asked if I’d spoken to our lawyer about the sale, and said that Katrina’s lawyer had complained of delay, and there was some difficulty about the purchase. He took hold of it, and said cheerfully, ‘Wait by the ’phone.’ Three hours later, I rang in agony of worry that the flat had fallen through, and the garden and the book-room had gone. He was apologetic as he well might be. I think there’d been musicians there, which had made him forget the time. But it would have been better if he hadn’t rung at all. My mind went round like a rat in a wheel, imagining the horror of starting all over again, and nothing coming up to Keith Grove.

Thursday March 9 2000

K rang at 12.0 in mild and placatory mood. As always, his imagination had told him what he’d put me through. He said more than once that the flat purchase was perfectly all right. He confirmed Sunday’s fate, and then hummed and ha’d, and said ‘What about tonight?’ and I said ‘Well, I was coming up to bring you a silver spoon for Nigel’s son’s christening, anyway.’ ‘Just for that? Aah.’ But still said Sunday, thinking of his fierce schedule. ‘Well, what if I come tonight about six, we have a little chat about the flat and then if dinner isn’t on, you can send me away again.’ That was a real possibility to me, but, when I got there, A was preparing dinner.

By the way, he had told me to burn any letter from or about de Cocks. Even his beautiful ‘I am the son he never had.’ And he caught that, too, tho’ I didn’t speak, and said ‘I’ll give you a copy later.’

So first of all, he told me that he was absolutely stuffed for work for the next fortnight. And I suddenly saw that he’d hemmed and haw’d uncharacteristically, about me coming to dinner tonight, because he really had no time to go thro’ everything with me, but sacrificed this night because nobody else was coming round for any sort of session, and on every other night, someone is, or might be. Then we started to go through his beautiful plans, bit by bit. I see why he’s successful, just for one quality, he is thorough. He won’t leave each point till it’s settled. All was easy till the kitchen and bathroom, where I knew he was irritated by the waste of space. This doesn’t bother me at all, in fact, I like the twists and turns of the bath and loo. Happily he thought my re-shaping of the kitchen/dining room with a bookshelf, as here, was better than his, or at least it’s position, for, after some thought, he suggested a proper wall, ‘If I didn’t mind’. I should much prefer it, from every point of view, particularly the books. They were only there in the kitchen, nearly, because I had to have another book- case, and had to have a divider, and it seemed a solution. Now, with proper book-room, I don’t need it, I hope. He’s got a little bit to knock down, and make a niche for the fridge freezer nearer to the sink. He only got cross twice, once wearily, when I said I hoped he wasn’t disappointed at me not taking some suggestions, ‘It’s your flat.’ And another, rather more passionate, when, after an hour and a half of conversation, I said ‘Could I have a drink now?’ and he seemed to think I meant ‘let’s stop,’ and reminded me how busy he was and how little time he had, which I quite see. It’s just that I’m 73 and hadn’t had lunch… We got as much as could be settled at this stage, settled. One of the things that’s such a strain about a move, is that all the work comes more or less at once, as little can be done in advance, so you’re in a limbo with your brain whizzing… So we finished, and A was being very submissive about getting dinner – I did wonder between them – I asked her about the books she wanted, and this time she actually produced a list, three months later! Perhaps she did that because of a confession she had to make, she’d left her wallet, or whatever they call it now, ‘In the computer room at college.’ ‘Her wallet’, containing all her credit cards… that are also K’s cards. I could see that he was restraining himself nobly. He might have been sharper if I hadn’t been there, because, if the cards were cancelled now, as Arlete suggested, he mightn’t get them back for a fortnight (Is that true? It seems a clumsily long time to me) at a fiercely busy few weeks of his life. He said firmly that he didn’t want to cancel them till tomorrow when A can go and see if the wallet is still there. And so to dinner, a delicious vegetable soup that A had made, and I drank as nectar. K didn’t have any. Then a chicken, put in front of me to carve, legs splayed apart, - I think the poor thing had been raped. (perhaps that’s why they truss them.)

After he told me of the work, all the three things I already knew, but more details. The girl he’s arranging for, and obviously influencing, is thought by her manager or whoever, to be the next ‘big thing’, and is called Maria E. (Yes, I know). Welsh. Got her head screwed on, tho’ young. Well, as for fame, she may have something since no less a fame fancier than Chris Evans, the ginger twat, rang up to ask her to lunch, and she refused. (At this point, A. murmured something of rudeness and mistaken ambitions and I said it would only make C.E. slaver more. K made an ‘I told you so’ face at her.) The Back Street Boys song seems to be roaring ahead with three or four names bandied about that I took to be seminal. The Wiskas thing will net him £18,000 if it’s UK and Europe, but a huge lot more if worldwide.

He said he knew I’d want a bit of cash, but he had none, tho’ he could send me back in an account cab. Still, he scrubbed round, and said he’d call in on Saturday with some money on the way to Nigel’s baby’s Christening. (Poor dear, wouldn’t it be now?) He’s asked for a driver I knew, a dear turbaned man about sixty, and rushed out to give me what cash he’d found, £3!, but saying with his own delicacy, because of the driver, ‘Here you are, I owe him some money and I’ve only got £3.’ He put it better than that.

Friday March 10 2000

Too tired last night to say the driver was a gentile turbaned soul, in his sixties, who says he’s been over here thirty years, and yet still has an accent so thick that what with that, and my deaf ear being on the driver’s side, I had to use all my divining powers. His ‘story’ had familiar overtones from other mini-cab drivers. He said he owned and rented out three or four houses in Walthamstow, and expanded at length about them and his family. I thought, as I’ve thought before, ‘then why are you driving a min-cab after midnight?’

This a.m.! out by eleven-thirty to get Janet’s book, Janet’s? Arlete’s book, and to do what shopping I can with £5. The three titles A gave me were the following: F. Mishkin, Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets. Harper/Collins.

Waldman D.E and Jenson E.J. Industrial Organisation: theory and practice. Longman. The third I bought and tore up the bit of paper. I went to the Charing X Waterstone’s as the source of my card and having a very big business-section. It took even longer than usual, after being escorted out into the street and up to the first floor of the next building to a nice girl who hasn’t been taught… secured? to do it on the ground floor. Eventually a person arrived to do it of the opposite sex of the one promised. It took at least twenty minutes. Still, the girl on the first floor was an intelligent dear, and shrieked when I said I would be prepared to go to the stake rather than read any of the books. I think ‘surpassing tedium’ passed my lips and she collapsed. Called in at J’s with my sandwich, but didn’t stay long. Partly because the dreaded Trevor was there, - and I can quite see, he has that blunt-ended all–purpose insensitivity that makes an agent, though not necessarily a successful one – but partly because it was a spring day and quite warm, and I was soaked, all down my arms, and chest, so I couldn’t open, let alone take off my coat.

Back here, rang Hilliers about plants and found they don’t deliver any more. Hilliers! ‘You have to drive to Sunningdale.’

Saturday March 11 2000

So K rang at one, and said they were stuck in traffic – spring you see – and they’d go to Pete S first. At two he rang again to say the traffic was still impossible, and they’d have to go on or they’d miss the christening. So it might be eight or nine. ‘Except that I worry you haven’t money for your dinner. I hardly had, but I was warmed to the backbone by his thoughtfulness. They eventually arrived at 10.30, but I hadn’t been in suspense. When he rang to say, I said ‘Good, just in time for me to go out, and buy some whisky.’ Of course, he brought some, and an envelope with £40 in, marked Angus Mackay… Stayed for two mins.

Lovely.

Sunday March 12 2000

Obituary of an actor in the Independent caught my eye, as I always read them. John Hall. Skimmed thro’ the last two paras and was riveted by the name of the author, John Holmstrom. I quickly read the rest. John Hall was in the Auntie Mame we saw, and the Member of the Wedding with Geraldine McE at The Court, and – he was, of course, a child, a boy actor… He certainly sticks to his subjects. A calm obsessive is more worrying.

Sunday March 12 2000

Clematis armandii is pouring forward over the top of the big bay-tree in bursts of pink, to say good bye. But I don’t mind, because I shall get another for the new garden, plant it north of the west bed shrubs and let it scramble to the south, perhaps.

Hazel rang as usual. Stomach more or less better, but her knee is still ‘pretty painful’ and she’s seeing her doctor on Tuesday. But talk is shot with fun and wit. Rather amazed to have my tale of K’s help countered by H saying they’d given the children, Tom and Kim, £5000 towards a new car. I fear H has that attitude to money of capitalists, as she often pleads poverty – obviously of a relative sort.

Monday March 13 2000

K rang to tell of the mortgage. The back-account, removal firms, carpenters etc. ‘Get on with it now, in advance.’ How I hate it all, but I must not put anything more on him.

Spent afternoon ringing round. Painfully boring.

Tuesday March 14 2000

Went to the Alliance in Ealing to talk about the mortgage. Nice little thing called Michelle, ‘A mortgage adviser.’ Provided with a limited set of formulae, but quite sweet when you get her off them. On them, more or less every sentence, - I began to count, - began with ‘basically.’ After all, not every sentence can begin with ‘basically’ by the laws of physics. It took two hours. Out at 10.15 and I wasn’t home till 2.15. Felt quite empty, as I expect K will tell me I did something wrong. So much of what business people say, means nothing to me as language, so I cannot judge whether it is good or ill. Rang K, re bank account etc. and he did demand more details, music in background, while I was with her, and again when I got home. I felt awful. Still he wasn’t exactly cross.

Yes, Michelle, her husband is a security officer, and is well paid enough to have a gold card – his previous job was not successful, and ‘He was a bit low. And we have a mortgage and so on.’ ‘Have you children?’ ‘Yes, a boy of six, and a girl of twenty? months.’ So we exchanged views on boys and girls. Guess what, she said ‘I have a very close relationship with my son.’ Oedipus, tho art alive in Ealing. And not so close with her daughter, tho’ she’s only twenty months… ‘I only work here from 10-2, and then pick him up from school, my husband or my mother fill in, and it works.’ Gallant little people, in a, to me, impossible life. Tired.

Wednesday March 15 2000

Solicitor says contract comes tomorrow with 10% deposit, as one of its later accompaniments. £24,500. Curious, to go from this to that.

Rang K, doesn’t seem to feel the urgency of getting a bank-account, for all sorts of reasons. Wants me to get more details from Alliance, so embarrassing and wearisome, Oh dear.

Forget to record that he told me, the night they came round from the christening, that Sian and Nigel hadn’t liked the spoon because they hadn’t opened it. And they haven’t thanked me for it yet.

I called down to him, ‘Oh, well, I come from the age when we sent silver spoons.’

Thursday March 16 2000

Another agonising morning between K and the Alliance. He made me ring back and back to get it all clarified and to my best advantage. Quiet right, but torturingly embarrassing to me for a start, and very hard for me to hold in my head, as my brain does not work in that way. ‘Important’ points pass me by. I find it so difficult to think only and first of my own advantage. But I must do it for him.

So it was quite a relief to greet Mr. Gunter, the representative of Bishop’s Removals. Tall, pale red-haired, with a South African accent so rabid that I often lost a word. He did not make an immediately sympathetic impression, I tried a mild quip, but it went down like a penny into wet mud. I fear we did not understand one another, and the hour went by without much weight one way or another.

Ian Oswald, all these years later, talking about sadism and masochism in a respectable academic context, but there’s still that mad look in his eye. Oh, dear, he was such a bad actor. So I suppose he still is, as he hasn’t been arrested in the last fifty years…

Friday March 17 2000

The boredom does not diminish. Solicitor wants K and me to talk over Keith Grove papers on Monday. Alliance wants proof my Halifax page and pension page are mine, tomorrow.

Saturday March 18 2000

Hungover, so rang Alliance to say I was ill. Which I was. Too drunk yesterday to get round to describing Pickford’s man. A tall genial fortyish chap. Very English except his name, which is something like Bracyczkez. *the name is Blaszczyk. Taking a degree in Eng. Lit, so warmed to the books. Everything was right, but K will be against it, I know. Too expensive, but it’s all my life.

K rang, writing the cheque for Alliance, ‘How do you spell Leicester?’ ‘l-e-i-c-e-s-t-e-r.’ ‘No h?’ ‘Well you can have an h if you like.’ Rang off.

Huge wodge of paper from solicitor like a book. It depresses me into the floor to think of having to read it, in all its calculating small-mindedness. K rang, and made me feel better.

Sunday March 19 2000

He was touchingly thoughtful. He has a week and a half solid and then free. He said twice that I must tell him the moment the completion/move day was fixed, ‘As a day would make all the difference.’

Hazel rang yesterday, as they are going tomorrow to see Geoffrey’s sister, pretty ill with cancer. It’s a salutary reminder to me not to have a life like theirs, where they have ‘kept up’ with everyone whether they like them or not. So that it is now a more or less permanent procession past them of tiresome, failing or dying. She also told me of their continual tussle with the National Trust. (It’s very interesting to me that Hazel and M.L., from their very different, completely opposed standpoints, both loathe the National Trust. I don’t). The N.T. and Geoffrey and H have had a long-running battle over the septic tank and drainage, to the point that they have just had to remind the NT that the last few years, they have spent £20,000 on the thatch alone. Geoffrey went to argue with them, and got a better deal than H expected. ‘But then he has a long experience of business discussions.’ Oh god, I cannot bring my mind to bear on such discussions. I mean, I literally don’t know what is important and is not important. She is going to have to have another scan on her expensive knee operation. She never mentions me not having an operation and getting better because… One of their oldest friends has died. An athlete, retired to make a wonderful woodland out of his six acres, worked like a maniac, developed cancer, I forget where, came back and worked like a maniac again, and popped off. The died-jogging syndrome or ‘my brother on his exercise-bicycle having heart-attacks.’ So one sees…

Cleared out the little woodshed. I don’t mind doing that a bit, and in fact I was fascinated to find a big carton of peat hardly used, that I had completely forgotten was there. Just what I need now. Read and dozed and dozed and read, dozing off enough to have a nightmare, in the morning, waiting for the Sunday papers. Thinking, I suppose, of the insecure doors at Keith Grove, I ‘saw’ a shortish man come through the balcony doors here and rush at me to attack me. I cried helplessly, ‘Don’t, don’t hurt me.’ He faded away fairly quickly, and I was then quite sure I was awake. But his hands, still gripping mine, were still gripping up through the crocheted bed-spread, I could feel and see them. And then I did wake up. I wonder if my cries of terror were audible.

Kept the Sunday papers till the p.m. to fill the day, but it was heavily overcast by having to face eventually the lawyer’s bumf and record of human greed and stupidity.

Monday March 20 2000

Solicitors rang, quite rightly forging ahead before the budget, but also alert because Carrick’s solicitors had claimed that the council decorations etc. would now be enjoyed by me as well, so I must pay part of… turned out, after five or six calls back and forth, that the decorations were completed after an estimate in Jan 1999, so. In the end, we ‘exchanged.’ How interesting, linguistically, that a number of the verbs current in these degraded and degrading, negotiations are transitive verbs used intransitively. ‘We have exchanged, we have completed’ etc.

Having promised solicitor to bring signed contract by hand, set off to get my pension, and then go to Onslow Gardens where the receptionist said ‘Miss Mann wants to speak to you.’ K had rung and wasn’t happy with the clause about taking up the carpets. So would I ring Katrina? I felt quite sick, and went off heavily to Ealing, and handed in the documents she wanted. I dived in and spoke to Katrina, who said we must take up the carpets etc. because the builders would charge £400 for an extra day. Ridiculous, but we have no choice.

Long talk this evening with J. She likes a good moan, and I like listening.

The big jump today was Completion Day – it’s April 7.

Tuesday March 21 2000

K rang and talked excitingly of his work. Went with Maria E to three record companies, Sony, Virgin, and ?, one of them the very room he went to fifteen years ago, without success. They were all thrilled with the song, ‘It’s a hit’ and he thought they were more interested in him rather than Maria. He seems to think she’ll ‘shoot herself in the foot before she’s finished’ as she’s already turned down three managers. Simon something is involved somewhere, the manager of the Spice Girls. The Back Street Boys’ manager sent that song back, telling Pete S that he wanted ‘One if those meaty ballads you wrote for Celine Dion.’ (was meaty the word?) K produced just such a tune that Pete had ignored a while ago, and he’s now taken it up with enthusiasm. All very promising. He was excited. We talked of the move. He thought it all out, and he’s going to do the clear out. Turns out he spoke to Katrina, so I needn’t have bothered! Not that he said that. Told me to ring again.

Rang J’s builder, Frank Anderson, and found him quite uncharacteristic of his profession, in being upbeat and yea-saying. He has carpenters, plumbers, electricians and painters. I liked the plurals. Engaged him.

Wednesday March 22 2000

On University Challenge on TV, I was riveted by Christchurch undergraduates who’d never heard of Leavis or Empson or I.A. Richards, indeed one of them guessed A. E. Housman when the answer was Leavis.

How healthy that those three culs-de-sac are almost forgotten!

Mind you, one of the boys thought a verse of Joan Hunter Dunn was by Shelley. But that’s a better way round.

K rang to spur me on. Rang the council about planning permission. At first, a dire all- purpose recorded voice, not the owner occupier, said that, ‘Owing to a computer failure, they were considerably behind, so, during the weeks 13 and 20 March, they were, through pressure of work, taking no new queries.’ My heart sank. However I did get through to the owner-occupier number, and a sensible man told me, in one sentence, that you needed no permission for internal alterations.

Marian rang, so sweet and sensible and thoughtful – she can pick up my feelings – and offered to drive me anywhere, anytime, ‘Don’t say, oh she’s got two children.’ I am v touched. The only trouble is the children would be in the back, probably where I wanted to put whatever it is I needed to bring over. And the car is so small, and the neck rest pushes my head forward and can’t be adjusted. So we must see. But it is very kind in the middle of her busy life.

I am reading the Mel Gussow biog. of Edward Albee, and enjoying it. Well enough written tho’ without distinction, and gives me a more interesting picture of American theatre than I’ve had so far, of the stage actors who stay in New York and so on, though it’s a sad picture in some ways. As for Albee himself, he sounds like someone from Oxford, taking pleasure in disconcerting. I must try and read his later plays. I have not found any of his earlier work more that rather showy and second-rate.

Not a word from S who is back here with Darren K for a lustful fortnight, but I never want to know who he is seeing instead of me. It wouldn’t upset me, but depress me at his superficialities.

Thursday March 23 2000

Interesting post. At last bank account forms, a letter from the Keith Grove estate agents, Pickford’s estimate, and a letter from S! The covering letter from the ‘personal banking manager’ said that ‘Kevin M. etc. had etc.’ Willmott’s, the estate-agents, was a pleasant surprise, finishing, as it did, with all the numbers I need to ring, gas, water, etc.

Pickford’s estimate confirmed all K’s strictures, and made me sad, as I would love to use them. Was nearly £3000.

The letter from S was a delicious riot. For a start, it was written on a letter from James C. Cairncross, - how long since I’ve written that name, - alternatively cringing and pompous, oh, how it brought it all back. Told S off for misspelling something in his second sentence, even worse, S enclosed a leaflet from the Theatre Museum, where they are having a series of Sunday in the Museum with… The Musical. I opened it gingerly, blood at the ready to find a series of blameless evenings with the American lyricists, Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Fields, Cole Porter, Alan J. Lerner, but turned over, to the British bit. I could see at once that the dead hand of the British musical fancier was apparent. A Girl Called Jo in concert perf., (only a tepid success), Ivor Nevello – a celebration, and follow that girl, for two nights, and there came the genuine curdle, one that was quite unsusceptible of recovery by being pushed through a sieve, ‘A 70th Birthday celebration for Julian Slade.’ Blurb calls him one of the most influentianl writers of English musicals. ‘Influential’ is a very poor choice of adhjective, since Julian’s small but genuine talent and the style he chose, were the end of something, and that end came well before the end of Salad Days’ run. Even more ominous, ‘Including interviews and music from the classic (sic) as well as lesser know work.’ That is, all those numbers Denis and D made him cut. Or, after Denis and D, no-one made him cut, so ‘The Mitford Girls’ ran for 3½ hours. And the last line explains all, ‘Compiled by Rex Bunnett (who?) and Julian Slade. Oh dear. Shall I go and brood over it? Poor creature, he knows I would disapprove, which is why he hasn’t asked my permission, at least for Free As Air.

Rang Wilmott’s. the Keith Grove agents, to ask what the ‘phone number there is, and, on an impulse, asked him if he knew a removal firm. I mentioned Pickford’s charge, and said it was all ‘front’. ‘Well’ he said, ‘Billy has no front.’ He didn’t know his other name…

K rang. Lunch tomorrow and then, ‘Go through the move really slowly, tho’ I know it drives you mad.’ He has to get it clear for him, so as to fill it in with his work.

S said he was trying to fit in Daniel – not Darren? I’m sure he said Darren before – ‘With the usual frantic rush.’ I never wonder, let alone ask, who he sees. It would only irritate me.

Friday March 24 2000

Lunch with K. He was a bit crumpled. ‘Have you been having late nights?’ ‘Early mornings.’ Very uncharacteristically, he had an angry spot in his right cheek near his nose. ‘I think it makes me look younger, don’t you?’ Not that he ever had spots when he was young. We chatted for a bit on or around the move, and then he said ‘What do you want for lunch?’ Well, I was a bit hungover, well, not really, but I always am if I have to do something, so I said ‘I’ll have a couple of boiled eggs, and a bit of bread and butter.’ I’d even half thought of taking an egg-cup and spoon in my pocket. But, having faced the tube journey, and chattered for an hour, I was all right, so, when he said, ‘I’ve got some ham and cheese, or fresh sardines, or - ’ so I said yes. He went off into the kitchen, and in a while came back with some delicious taramasalata fingers of crisp bread, a bottle of Golloped. Pouilly Fumé. Came back with plates of ham and scrambled eggs, and a little tom and lettuce salad, lovely. Then three hours of thorough arranging, so that I saw, even more clearly, that he is so beleaguered with work – ‘I told them I was taking a fortnight’s holiday, that was you.’ – that he has to find out exactly what he has t do, and how long it will take. I tried, but my mind doesn’t work that way, and I don’t want to ask, - well, only support, when it’s all over.

I told him of ringing ‘Billy’ and finding him warmly, Irish. ‘Is that Billy?’ ‘Yes, unfortunately’. He questioned me about him, and gave me a careful set of questions to ask him and get each one costed. He isn’t mean, as I have the best reasons for knowing, but he hates to be done, and determined to get true value for his money. The ‘phone rang a number of times, sometimes the bank, over some financial adjustment, and I heard him say, ‘It was for buying a flat for my father.’…. We talked of my new bank account, and my fear that I might not get it through in time to pay bills, if he were suddenly called away, especially as no money would come until after completion. ‘So could you put a bit of money in the account?’ He’d been talking to the man who signed my letter, David Floyd. To my amazement, I heard that you have to pay a fee to have a bank-manager, in the old sense, these days. It’s only £150 p.a. but still… He told me of his week of work and the obvious possibility of profit. ‘Don’t bother about money. I feel it in my bones.’ I said, ‘What about that money, then.’ He went off to the studio and came back, to my amazement, with a cheque for £5000. At the door he said ‘Are you all right for cash?’ I said I had £8 until Monday. He ran off to the studio again, in bare feet, and came back with £10. Mean eh?

I went off home to meet ‘Billy’ at seven. As well I left early enough to get home at about six, because Billy arrived at ten past. Six foot four, three feet wide, in black from head to foot, huge boots, and a black plastic crash-helmet dangling from one finger like a tea-cup. Spoke to K who obviously questioned him closely, until Billy, with some relief, said, ‘I’ll hand you back to your dad’… He’s good value, but, of course, I am wistful about Pickford’s.

Saturday March 25 2000

I was going round to J’s for supper, but principally to take the most precious bits and pieces to avoid the move, the Staffordshire Shakespeare, Kean as RIII and Mrs. Glover, and the Charley’s Aunt figure, the dappled green and white glass vase, (I must get it identified, it has a red splodge on the base) but she had to put if off, because she has squitters.

K rang to ask about storage, insurance, Billy, and Do you use just the yolk to bind meat?

Quiet day. I’d bought some whisky, otherwise I don’t sleep, so I had almost no money again, except for a £5000 cheque.

Sunday March 26 2000

Quiet day. Hazel is sending me her new detective, Anthony Powell has had another mini- stroke, and lady Violet is as grateful for Hazel’s book as a distraction as I am, for a happier reason.

Monday March 27 2000

Spent the morning ringing up Gas, Water, Electricity, etc to tell of the move, and get cut off and cut on again. An extraordinary experience. Nowadays you ring up and get a recorded voice telling you, in ghastly American commercial-traveller tones that they’re sorry etc., then they tell you to press buttons on the telephone that I haven’t got, and that I haven’t a counsellor free to speak to you, and then, horror of horrors, they play music. Every now and again, it cuts so decisively off that you expect someone to speak, and then, after just the right pause to make you think so, the music strikes up again. BT was the most inefficient, amusingly enough, shunting me from one person to another, and finally promising to put me through and then cutting me off so I had to go through the whole obstacle course over again. Comic. Like credit cards, the whole business takes four or five times longer.

BHS, a shop I have never entered has been taken over. Who would want it? A hundred and fifty shares for £200 million. Rather cheap.

Waiting, like a boil to burst, for the bank-account and the move, to get going with so many things.

Thursday March 28 2000

Hazel’s book arrived. ‘Lilies That Fester’ good. I shall save it for a sleepless night, of which I’m sure to have many. What with K’s and the move. They are soothing. Obviously Violet Powell finds them so, too. When I rang H to tell her it had arrived safely, she told me V.O. had rung to say A.P. had had another mini stroke, so it would be a help.

In the p.m. to the New Row Waterstone’s to buy books, and pick up John Whiting’s essay that had finally arrived. Poor J.W., I’ve never seen them in a bookshop, not even the big ones. ‘At Ease In A Bright Red Tie’ turns out to be Hugh Gaitskell at a socialist meeting. More soothers, some of those Cat detective stories that J lent me. More importantly I had read about the Plant Finder, and wasn’t quite sure whether it was a magazine or a book. It turns out it was after my gardening time, and is a splendid publication of the RHS, listing 70,000 plants and where you can get them! Wonderful browsing.

Hazel rang at twenty past eight to tell me Anthony Powell died at four o’clock this morning. I’m glad for Lady Violet, who told her. I gather he was not of the easiest, and she’s in her late eighties. Rang John N, and Roy and S. All on answer machines, sad.

I feel it very much, as I enjoy and value his work as among the half-dozen authors of my life. He has given me as much keen humourous pleasure as anyone.

Wednesday March 29 2000

Sarah Woodcock at 10.30 to go on sorting through the records. She is an easy-going creature, not complaining of the dirty dampness of them. She took all the boxes with handles, and a good pile of the others, but there are still two sizable piles of a very trying commodity to move, heavy and very skilful, at slipping and breaking. She got a colleague to come and pick her and them up, and she was off by twelve-thirty. I had various jobs to do, but I cannot work for long, and so many of them catch my back at just the wrong lean.

On a ‘isn’t it funny-when-things-go-wrong’ programme, I happened to catch one shot that was really quiet funny. An eighteen-month child sitting by a toy with a press-disc, pressed it and it made a loudish noise, the child considered, cried, and turned to the mother with her arms out. The tears were comforted, she became thoughtful. Turned to look at the disc consideringly, leaned carefully forward, and again the tears, and the mother’s arms. All this with the timing of a master comedian.

K rang and laid out the plan.

Tuesday: the men come and start packing the books, which will certainly take all day. I find it difficult to get over to him, as one who has never had any books to speak of, what an immense amount of room books take up when they are not on their shelves. Unlike almost any other commodity, books leave their shelves empty and useless, - they don’t make any useful space, as furniture does when you pile it up. Well, he’ll have to learn. Thank goodness it’s over three or four days. So we can get more boxes and put some full ones in store a little sooner. As usual, my Books and Small Necessaries move was regarded as an amusing line, instead of a strict necessity.

J rang for another long moan about her sister. Oh how it reminds me of Donald, and me, mutatis Mutandi. Only I got out much sooner, as soon as I could, in fact. I suppose I have seen as little of him in the last forty years as any pair of bros.

Thursday March 30 2000

K kept ringing about boxes, and the books and the move, and trying to inspire me to get packing. Oh, dear, it’s such a strain on the legs and back, especially back. And the darling seems to have no idea how much room the books take up. Nobody will be able to move. Billy is bringing the boxes tomorrow. I bet there aren’t enough. Thank goodness we’ve got three days.

Friday March 31 2000

Billy came round with the folded-flat boxes and started to fill one, and went on with three more, leaving the door wide open. A dear, but little capacity, and K will keep a sharp eye on him. Did I say B suggested string for the books?

J rang and said Sunday instead. Just all right, as I know it’ll be an effort to get there. Started packing the flat empty boxes, take up the lower hall except for just enough room to get through.

Sarah Woodcock at ten a.m. to pick up her record list she left behind. Providential, as Katrina had put through the door a document to be signed ‘Urgently, as soon as possible’, and my signature needed a witness. Normally, when I need a witness, I do not see a living human being for some months, and what we now aren’t allowed to the call working-class, are very suspicious of acting as such. Used the early start, and my hangover, to take the form to the solicitors, and go to the Brompton Rd. Waterstone’s on the way back. Angela Mann came down and amused me by sharing my doubts about Katrina’s solicitors. She pointed at the form, and said, ‘I don’t think she’s got a typewriter.’ I told her where the office was, and she was more amused.

At Waterstone’s, got four more Braun detective-stories, just the thing for now, almost no mind, and staying at K’s for three nights. (Glad I never told him on the car-boot weekend that I could hear every thrust of their bonking. Ear-plugs to the ready.)

Packed a dozen or so cases, from here, and now have only the Trollope b’case, and the garden books to do here, but already the boxes fill every available safe space, and there are only a handful of books here, and there are still the many plays and players binders which won’t fit in these boxes. Oh, also brought Jane Austen and Leisure.

Julie Goodyear on Pat Phoenix, both from the soap, ‘Coronation Street’, Many men have fallen into that cleavage and drowned, believe me!

Saturday April 1 2000

More packing. More or less cleared the greenhouse. The boxes have to be sellotaped across and across, both ends, and then it has to be lifted and piled somewhere. Not to mention the books lifted and dusted, backwards and forwards from the shelves. But I love them, and look keenly forward to unpacking, arranging and discovering. Thought I might be going to be ill, but just hectic.

Sunday April 2 2000

Have now packed seventeen boxes and that’s only up here, and I’m not quite finished. So we are underboxed.

Finally did my expedition to J’s with the Shakespeare Staffordshire, the Kean and little one Ada gave me, the green vase, and Charley’s Aunt. Did not include Mary L’s probably quite precious vase and one I love, in case it brought me back luck… Saw them safety disposed on her desk, against the wall, well away from casual brush offs, and of course poor Tiger is dead. Sat down for a good old chat. I said I’d get there by five-thirty and did fairly good time, and said I’d stay an hour, and would have done but J was in the middle of a necessary outpouring about Stephanie P. She told more of the tour she’s doing, starting rehearsals this week. An American three hander, which she wants to do, and she is an international television star, and will draw anywhere except a real theatrical capital. J says the management is considerably dicey. They have now presented S with the fait accompli that the American director she chose, has gone. ‘They can’t get in touch with him’ said J wryly, the touring dates are not the pits, but by no means the tops either. Why is she doing it? She certainly doesn’t need the money. I asked her to tell me frankly wheat sort of stage actress S was. J thought she had ‘presence’ and ‘came over’ as she started on stage. T doesn’t do the theatre any good. The two thieves either side of her possible cross are Michael Brandon and Tony Anholt. Both pretty passé matinees idols, or rather series idols, and both more or less know what they’re doing.

A new woman P.R. was interviewed. Alex something, immaculate, as J came into the room, ‘Oh this wonderful woman.’ Later rang J to ask feverishly what S thought of her. Little does she know what J thought of her… Also Vanessa, ex-wife to dear Jeremy Clyde. I’m glad to hear she’s ex, as she is utterly insensitive, me, me, me, and rings J at home, as if it’s the office. J certainly earns her money.

Oh, how I’d love him to talk it all over, but I know that all his calls earlier in the week means a huge effort now to put all the work in so that he’ll be free next week. How funny that sometimes he seems to think I don’t understand that.

Monday April 3 2000

Rang bank again after Saturday’s twenty minutes, and was told there could be no queries today as the computers were out of order… told K. He said ‘Leave it with me, I’ll ring back’ and did so, saying ‘They said within two days. Also told me to get on with packing, now, as we would be doing most of it. Goodbye to the shade of Pickford’s.

Various tiresome chores. P.O. hell. They took my book back, just change of address? So I hadn’t the right documents for the change of address form. To someone of my generation, I think one of the most repellent features of today is the constant suspicion in every department of life requiring documentary evidence. Shall I ever forget D’s face when in Selfridge’s, she was asked for a cheque by a coarse little assistant, a thing of which we had never heard? Went to the bank and put K’s cheque in. On to Curry’s and decided I could buy an electric kettle out of my pension, as I was tired of boiling water in a saucepan, and the money must kick in by the weekend. Chose dark green – perhaps the kitchen’s note had better be green, facing south. Assistant fetched it from the store, said it was green. When I got home it was white and with an open crack in the handle. I must look inside in future. Altogether not a bright day. Dreading tomorrow.

Tuesday April 4 2000

K’s.

Slept till 1 a.m. Read till 4.30, dozed and woke at 8.0 with quite a lot to do, and Billy and K arriving at 9.0. I was washing-up within seconds of waking. Just as well, as Billy and two taciturn youngish men, started in on the books. I attempted a little direction, ‘Spines uppermost’, as they were patently not real removal men, to be replied, ‘It’s all a question of time.’ K arrived at five to ten, started work on all sorts of packing at once, to save packing. He has been and is, throughout the day, supporting me completely, angelic, telling me to go and sit down and so on. Three men tolerable. I’m upstairs most of the time, sitting down jobs for the most part, and do I want to keep this?

Cheque book and card arrived, by K’s magic – and bank-balance. Later wrote some cheques for the first time for ? nine-years and will send them on Thursday. Satisfactory feelings.

Kept ringing Janet with hilarious results, like an unfolding farce. She finally went off into peals of laughter at the first syllable. Rang H in the middle of it all, and was glad not too self-absorbed to take in the result of her scan. Not too good – they can do nothing as it is osteo-arthritis. Well, thank you. I’m sure she would have been better without the operation. I know there will come a day when cutting open the skin and then fiddling about with bones and muscles and nerves as if they were parts of the internal combustion engine of which that sort of man is so enamoured will seem as primitive and ante-diluvian as operations without anaesthetic seem to us now.

Later. Five o’clock or so?

His sort of care and help is –

Fun in the middle of hard work and complete response to my feelings – and my legs. Under the stairs, in that big old white suitcase, a four foot Revelation, not seen since I moved in, and with an unremembered broken, i.e. no handle, he revealed a mass of linens, sheets? Pillowcases, and said yes, we should keep them and turned them aside – and I lost my breath there were all D’s shoes, beautiful tan black suede that she used for the readings – oh, he took my hand at once and said ‘That’s what moves can do.’ And the gold winkle-pickers. It went through me.

The men went with the second load of books at 6.0. He worked solidly at packing anything and everything, to save paying the men for their time. The linen cupboard stuff was interesting, a lot if it unfamiliar, far more Vaudeville velvet from the cottage and elsewhere, good pillows, etc. At one point he was getting together my skeleton kitchen equipment for the month? I went across the kitchen saying ‘I must have a fish knife.’ He gave me what, in old times would have been called ‘An old-fashioned look.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be the man I am without a fish knife.’ ‘Well, perhaps you could be for a fortnight.’

He took down all the pictures. I took down the pictures hooks. An unequal division of labour. He kept saying ‘Don’t – it’s all right, I’ll do it.’ He took down D’s ashes from the shelves, and I said ‘Well, we can’t put her into store, the poor darling.’ ‘Why not? Among all those books…’

We drove here and I had a bath, first for three or four months, and now I’m waiting for dinner. I didn’t take a lot of hot water, - the bath slopes inwards so sharply that it is very economical. But there wasn’t enough for him and A. was taking kettles upstairs. Comfy bed but not enough pillows for me to sleep upright. Had to use one of my holdalls.

Wednesday April 5 2000

Forgot to say that yesterday a.m. went to get ‘Pret a M sandwiches for K and me, and took back the electric kettle, which was not only the wrong colour but also had a half inch wide crack in the handle, nobody said sorry.

Another poor night. Woke at 3.30ish, read, and we were off to St. Dunstan’s for the move of the furniture. Worst yet, only place to sit was the top of the gas fire, clutching a few things to stop the wretched removal men from taking my coat! K a rock. Through there’s no doubt he sets me obstacles… the house clearance people tonight. An hour or two of back and fore, then he accepted Billy. Tonight he’s working on a track with one of the old Flying Pickets, a nice bland man with whom I had a talk. Exhausted, but cooked dinner, a poussin halved between us, buttered leeks. A. seems only to eat soup these days. On computer most of the time, she is very ambitious. I think, I hope all is well between them, I’m not sure.

Thursday April 6 2000

Got up at 10.0, lazed. Clearance day, but not till later. K said would I come with him. I said did I really need to as I was rather tired. He flared, so I went, because I knew he needed me. It’s just my legs. As we got into the car, without a reconciling word, he went back into the house to fetch a folding chair. For me. Felt sick on the journey but got there. Flat completely empty, but felt nothing! M. Rd was D, but BC is K, and he’s still here. Loaded car with plants etc., to the point that I came home on the tube. He said I’d be home before him because of rush-hour and I was, by half an hour.

Domestic evening. Persuaded me into Indian food. A firm brings it beautifully prepared in twenty minutes from phone call. True, and a charming deliveryman from the sound of it. K lay beside me on the sofa with his bare dirty feet on the wall, and he and I and A shrieked at ‘Frasier’

Friday April 7 2000

Twenty-three years without D. Curious limbo waiting for the keys with slightly tetchy ‘phone-calls back and forth. Drove to estate agents and got them, another set in the house for some reason. Went to Keith Grove, and found the house next door was being beaten to pulp. Poor man upstairs will have a bit of pulp beating below him as well. No wonder he’s quiet. There’s a wheelchair in the hall. Rather amazed to find quite a bit of stuff haphazardly about. A bicycle, a box of stuff with a handsome mirror, a Slazenger tennis-racket in a leather case and so on, not to mention a stack of rubbish filling the entire front-garden to waist height.

We walked around a little, and I saw far more what was available in the garden, much more planted up than I’d thought, mauve and white lilac, a bay tree, without fungus, an embathrium, a Fatsia Gerariums, and fish in the pond… exciting.

We drove to the storage place in Acton. Fascinating. Drew up behind the dreaded removal men. After some time, K came back and took me in alone, corridors empty and silent at certain intervals, padlocked doors, behind them dead furniture. As K says there is one labeled ‘cryogenic’, it’s not only dead furniture. He opened our two, and there was my life, the legs of the dining table sticking up like a dead sheep, - I wonder what’s happened to the surface. The book-room table looming from the top of a fifteen-foot pile… I can’t go on. Even he couldn’t understand how utterly repellent and upsetting I found it all. I hope I hid it.

When we got back, Melanie Carrick, that’s her name, was there, and we realised she was taking all those last things. She had hoovered the carpets, and left us, saying ‘I hope you’ll be happy here. I’ve had many happy times here.’

He went into the possible kitchen. He must find it unkind and irritating that I can little or no interest in how, only when. The only excuse I can offer is that I have no understanding of the alternatives, and cannot talk it over with him, any more than I could talk about a car with a mechanic. I know what I want my home to be like, but I came from the age when you have it done for you. Which he will, but he expects me to take part, to share his work and trouble. The trouble is I don’t know what to say.

We went out to the shops, as he said he’d stay to dinner, but when he told me A was going to Portugal for a week, and this was their goodbye dinner, and she’d got scallops, I said ‘Go.’ Went to the butcher’s, another Irish man, lamb chops, bacon, sausages, - ordered a half shoulder until I remembered there was no oven. To the newsagents to order my papers. Middle-aged Indian woman asked her daughter if Keith Grove was a viable venue. I ventured that it was opposite their shop.

He took me through the central heating and the television. The wretched removal men have broken the aerial off the top. He got it working well. His temper was fraying by this time from hard work and tiredness. He hadn’t hung my bedroom curtains, and I didn’t remind him because he was so tired and tomorrow there is a wedding and the strain of an intensely irritating day. Later he rang, having remembered, and said I was wrong not to say, ‘It’s more worrying, I love you and I know you need the curtains’.

Magical, all the same our two patches alone here, and now my first night and tomorrow the locksmith.

Saturday April 8 2000

Despite no curtains, I slept though till eight for the first time for some weeks, a good omen. The sun was shining, and I walked through the unexpected spaces of the place, with a feeling of familiarity, and amazement at how lovely it will be. The garden, it’s like coming out into a small pretty field. A lot of plants I haven’t noticed before. No roses, how odd.

Marian rang about coming over and was very sweet, as ever, recommending a place, or two places, one in ‘Ladbroke Grove and one in Westbourne Grove – Oh, the Groves of it all - ’ where you can get fridge-freezers, table top ovens, hobs and so on. Considerably cheaper than at John Lewis etc. ‘Some of them are shop-soiled or even second-hand, but you’d never know.’

Went to H’smith to shop and get some money. Felt like a ghost and hoped I wouldn’t go to St. D’s by mistake. Keyed in the Alliance no. by mistake on the machine, but got it right at the second chance, and came away with £100, more than I have had in my hand of my own money, for eight or ten years. Very odd feeling. Came home, with heavy shopping in a taxi! and found, to my annoyance, that R and Marian had called, and left the Choisya. R, when he rang a few days ago, talked of the afternoon as I did. Bother.

J was too tired to come, and I don’t wonder after an exhausting rushing about sort of day.

To the newsagents to order the papers. Middle-aged Indian lady, who asked her daughter whether Keith Grove was possible. I think it must be, as the street-sign can almost be read from behind the counter. Went to newsagents further up to buy Radio Times and Spectator for this week. Good to have another one to go to in case. To chemist’s, two plump fortyish blonde women presided over by large bland Indian. There is a decidedly more provincial air here than Hammersmith. But then there are no big shops or names or banks here.

The garden will be gorgeous. When? Quite simple weeding. Some height and colour needed.

Curiously Tranquil.

Sunday April 9 2000

K rang. Why didn’t I ring him about the locksmith? Because I didn’t want to bother him off to the wedding. He said he’d’ve told me off anyway.

J didn’t come, throat too sore, and it was pouring anyway.

Started serious weeding. Did an hour kneeling – the only way – with a rest of half an hour in between. Back and knees. Satisfying.

K rang again to say Frank A had put an estimate thro’ the door, for the whole job he thought. It turned out, when I read it out to him, to be for just the shelves, at £3,800. He couldn’t believe it. We can only assume he doesn’t want the job. Absurd. We went back and fore about it. Finally, he said we’d go out to shop around for all the many things we need, constructional and practical, like a bed. ‘So tomorrow, eleven and we confront the world!’

Monday April 10 2000

K rang to say, due to mortgage irritations, twelve. So here, at twelve, off in his dear little toy car, to Homebase etc. Huge echoing footsore cathedrals of materialism. More places for him to bargain and get good terms. He describes the jobs to be done in detail, and gets cross if I don’t appear to be listening properly or make a flippant remark. I must try and hide from him my total lack of interest in how a job is done, only when. And he is so good and working so hard to do it all for me. Exhausted.

Tuesday April 11 2000

Furious with me. I cried. We made it up, but I am upset. I don’t think I’m as bad or stupid as he made out.

Wednesday April 12 2000

We made all right. We both tired, and I am no doubt very irritating, being completely impractical. He is showing, even more than usual, his strong reaction to being interrupted at all, when he is explaining some practical point, even if it’s just agreement. Let alone flippancy. I’m afraid our generation has always interrupted each other and tossed comments and quotation around. I suppose it is irritating, tho’ not to us… I am not quite myself yet, with my old roots pulled up and the new ones not settled yet, - too many people about.

Great progress. The chimney-breast is more or less down and of course brick-dust everywhere, except, thank god, my bedroom. How lucky it needed nothing done. Bath and loo a delicate shirred grey. Had to wait in for the bed we bought, I think on Tuesday, in pretty blue and white stripes. A firm mattress, quite a jump higher, and four large drawers underneath. It arrived and we set off to B&Q and industrial estates, previously unrevealed to me. About as ugly an invention as you could want, hideous factory buildings in a desert of roads. I imagined the beautiful ruined country underneath. The artifacts inside were equally hideous. I tried to consider between them. He knows and will help me to mitigate the ugliness. B&Q, extraordinary, - larger than most cathedrals. Got the lawn mower I wanted, cylinder grass box but electric.

Back here, the chimney-breast has been fully excavated to the dimensions we need, - blackened rough bricks – and by this time, has been rendered, that is, cemented, and so have the brick areas round that the French windows, and the little casement-window at the sink. The bookshelves have been begun. There are twenty or so bags of rubble in the front garden. ‘Bob’, the sort of foreman of the builders next door, has put in a garden-tap for the hose, sprinkler and hose-holder we also got at B&Q, K got him to do it for a drink… He is incredible. How badly I feel that I have irritated him, although unconsciously. Very tired.

Thursday April 13 2000

Tuesday should have been the 13th.

K here by 12.0, two plasterers, no, three, all polish, without a word of English, two of them, and the main one not much better. I presume they were illegal.

Both sides of book-room shelves are in place, at least the uprights, extraordinary, so extraordinary that I can’t expand enough on it to him. ‘Wonderful’ and so on, mean little. His reward will come in my pleasure over the years. Garden-door key missing all day. K found it on the top of the large double redundant electric-point in the middle of the back wall of the dining-room. One of the Polish boys probably put it there and couldn’t tell us.

Gardened. More deliciously satisfied weeding. Found that little chrysanthemum fever few, yes, that was all over St. D’s when I got there. Planted R & M’s choisya, and moved buddleia seedling to block trellis, thro’ to next door right hand.

Made to leave but asked me to go to the pub two doors away, turning its side to the little iron gate at the bottom of the ‘sac’ or ‘cul’ just past my house. An odd experience, going back in time. We went in at the first doorway on the left. The public bar, god save the mark, quite plain, brown varnish, seven or eight men sitting at the bar, and as we walked in, every head turned as one to inspect us. I heard at once they were Irish. We walked through, turned right at a billiard-table, and were in the empty saloon-bar, more brown vanish, a bit more worn red upholstery. The barmaid about thirty something, nothing hair style and colour, tight-fitting thin knitted greyish jersey, big grin, girlish, brought two mechanical toys to show K after we got our drinks, just the sort of things that catch him, a large rose in a pot, when manipulated, eyes, nose and mouth appear and it sings Over The Rainbow. She had an artlessness that is fast vanishing. He had nothing difficult to ask me to do. It was a little time that will remain.

Friday April 14 2000

Plasterers came back and were still going on when K arrived, and he was a bit cross about it. There were many talks between him and Bob etc.

Later he came in and said ‘Bad news - sit down.’ It seems that the deal he’d struck with Bob etc. to do the kitchen had resulted in a much higher ‘quote’ that he’d expected of £2,700. He would have to do it himself, with a Robin, or Wendy. Later still, he’d persuaded them to do a more basic job, putting in the ‘carcasses’, - the basic ‘kitchen fitments’ that line the wall now- a-days, and then ‘we’ put our own fronts on, and paint them as we wish. He does it all, and makes the very best of whatever is happening. I understood little, and agree, of course, but it always means more work, and he’s already so tired, going home to lay down some track or other.

He gave me £800 in cash to pay the boys in the morning, ‘Give them £300. If they ask more, ring me.’

Did we go somewhere this p.m.? Very tired and footsore. Wendy came round to go over the decoration and painting. I’d forgotten how nice he is. Shoulder blade length hair dyed a ruby red. Amused. His face at the right-hand side of the garden. K asked me what my ideas for the utility room, bath-room and loo were. I said, on an impulse, and thinking Wendy might like it, ‘The utility-room primrose cowslip, the loo-lobby sulphur, and the loo orange.’ They liked it.

In the book room, where the shelves are finished, I was amused at K’s description of white gloss, to Wendy, as white, shiny, white gloss’

Missed bath again.

Saturday April 15 2000

K not coming, so had a day off, as I thought, from the rigours of building works. (K would be contemptuous, since my rigours consist of little beyond trips to the shops, and lying on my bed whenever I can.) I decided to have a day of little treats such as I have not enjoyed for years, at least not under my own steam and purse. Ordered a mini-cab, - it was still raining of course, and by the way, there had better be some may flowers – and sped to M&S in Oxford St… We passed on the way at least half a dozen quite serious and obstructive road-works. I believe half of Piccadilly will be up for some months. Certainly there was an RAC yellow sign in the Bayswater road, saying, ‘Avoid West End…’

In M&S, soon found some navy v. light trousers, good. Also some dark blue not quite navy shirts, three, but with one pocket, not two. Why? Also two more vests. Another why? There is now no household dept. there, so I couldn’t buy sheets now. In Selfridge’s the garden dept, once large, has shrunk, a space about twice as large as my old drawing-room – no, perhaps three times as large. I suppose everyone drives to garden-centres now. Had a cup of coffee in one of the cafes of which there are many now, a thing I haven’t done for years. Asked for new food-tongs in the Kitchen dept. A wry Irish-woman showed me a pair like large scissors, which did not open more than an inch or two, the clasping bits were round smooth metal, with as much grip in them as over-cooked spaghetti. She recommended John Lewis… I had to go to the Algerian Coffee shop to get a replacement glass for the cafetiere, which I broke yesterday. (He’s another who won’t drink instant). So I went on to Page’s and found the tongs I wanted straight away. One piece of sprung metal, with a grip from a clawed end, and plenty of spring between your fingers. Extremely slow assistant. To the Renoir to see new film L’Ennui and was indeed feeling a certain amount of its title, when I realized with horror, that the men were finishing at 2.0, and K had left me an envelope with £800 in, to pay them when they left. It was now five to three, and I hurled myself into a taxi, which hurled itself along the Westway, and spent the journey almost crying with rage at myself for not even remembering when I got up this morning and at the thought of K’s legitimate anger. Is this what it’s like to become forgetful in old age? Of really important matters like this? It all frizzled out. K was there, after all, the men had gone, he wasn’t angry. Everything was all right, but I was shaken, and a bit hysterical but then I’m tired and disorientated and long to get my life back from the pleasant but intensely alien workmen. It’s one of their basic tenants that, when engaged in extremely noisy, or extremely dirty, i.e. brick-dust occupations, every available door must be propped open, to ensure the maximum spread of maximum noise and dirt.

So I was doubly pleased when darling K said he was going to scrub the kitchen floor, ‘because the real dirt is over.’ But in the end, he hadn’t had time and there will be the sawdust from the setting up the kitchen, but that’s nothing compared with brick dust. We’re still waiting for the ‘phone and answering machine from J. As he was leaving, K said ‘That was the chimney-sweep. Afraid it’s tomorrow at 11.30’. Afraid because I’d said I was looking forward to being alone here and possessing it.

Later. J rang 9.45, later than she hoped. I hadn’t had dinner, as any moment after 8, she might ring and I’d have to go round. Ah, well, me and meals, I haven’t even him as an ally over that, except for thoughtfulness, if he can. She said she was in the office all tomorrow, she’d leave phone and machine in the dust-bin.

Sunday April 16 2000

The sweep arrived on time, a huge square almost incomprehensible Scott. At first, but as I pieced his speech together, he was certainty not without flavour. He had with him a much smaller cowed wife? girlfriend? employee? who ended up with a sooty and not surprisingly, unsmiling face. £70 for two chimneys, and a chat with K on the phone.

Gardened, weeded the centre of the left-hand border, quite a long stretch, more than big enough to transplant the camellia. I notice that there are a couple of clumps of that dwarf geranium with those magenta flowers I don’t much like, it doesn’t do much useful spreading so I think it’ll be banished to a corner. But there are other clumps of the bigger sorts that I’m fond of. I hope at least one of them is John’s son’s blue, that I can divide and multiply. Set the mower to its highest setting, and mowed. Divine. Work like a dream. Next time will be the one.

Monday April 17 2000

To the West End for various things, chiefly the Reader’s Digest DIY Manual for K. Got it at the Piccadilly Waterstone’s, and lunched there in the coffee-shop on an excellent egg- sandwich, very fresh, no mayonnaise, delicious coarse chunks of freshly-boiled egg. To Tesco in New Row at 12.0, quite quiet.

Back here, the kitchen-to-be in full swing. Workmen bringing in fitments but not seeming to do much with them, except a gas pipe and some plumbing.

The gas canister on K’s camping gas-burner ran out. Bob asked if he’d been a Boy Scout, and said he’d been a Scout Master. K left at four to greet A. back from Portugal.

Later, when I was alone, there was not only no gas, so I could have no pots or veg, K had not put back the kitchen scissors, and I couldn’t begin to turn the bottom bolt key on the French doors, so couldn’t go into the garden, or get air. For a minute or so, I was incandescent with rage. I couldn’t see to put key back even…

Tuesday April 18 2000

To Notting Hill to get electric kettle, a Russell & Hobbs which happily K approved. On the way carried out our plan of rewarding John Richardson of Scott’s estate-agent, who first told us of what is now my flat. It turned out his drink was vodka. I looked at the two anodyne girls on the other side of the shop and wondered what jocular office badinage winged heavily to and fro, what sexual breakthrough or disaster two surprise bottles of vodka brought about? There is something wry about him that may save him and lead him to respond to K in the first place. Just for a start, I was amazed he remembered me.

K doing electrics. Amusing that he was being instructed by nice workman, older plumber? not electrician, ‘If you…’ Shall not twit him.

Have now found out how to get rid of lime-scale. Harpic, Domestos, useless, made no impact at all. Bought some Viakal in Europa at Nothing Hill, and - it is working. I feel obscurely that it is something to do with the instructions being printed in English and Greek.

In p.m. to Sanderson’s the wallpaper place, for the Morris wall-paper. It’s big for such a firm, more like a small department store, with Sanderson in letters two or three feet high across the second floor. There were workmen about, all the doors were masked with paper. It’s being turned into a hotel! Spoke to a workman, who told me to turn right and right again ‘Where they’ve taken a small place.’ Very footsore, but looked about and nothing. Just wanted to get rid of me, no doubt. Found myself back in Oxford St. in horrendous crowds, more like moving queues five-wide of ghastly anoraked families under the illusion that they were enjoying themselves. Out of them in a taxi, no choice, my feet and legs were really painful and aching.

Back here, the ‘men’ have started putting in the oven – table-top – and the hob, but not in time for dinner, a cold dinner again, sardines, bread and butter, bananas and cheese. Scurvy looms. K here till six or so, taking out the fireplace in here, a huge sun-burst tiled surround in mottles purply-brown. Got it out in its reassemblabe? pieces. Reassemblabeble? Will anyone want to buy it? You’d think so, - it’s a vaguely Art Deco affair. How long ‘Bob’ etc work! Start at 8.0, leave at 7.0. Why? Rang Sanderson’s office, Uxbridge. A shop in Selfridge.

Wednesday April 19 2000

This a.m. after ‘men’ had arrived, K on answering-machine, saying Wendy at 2.0, him at 3.0, I had the morning. So I slept and dozed, and dozed and slept, and got a bit of the ache out of my legs and feet.

‘Men’ working on kitchen and sort of getting on, tho’ hour and a half pauses, tho’ no silences, as they talk non-stop, getting little said. Wendy arrived in long black coat, Jules et Jim peaked cap, long ruby-red hair, mild renegade public-school boy, with whom I feel quite at ease, despite tranny complications. Saw for the holes for sink etc., cutting thro’ my head by this time, so was glad of the distraction. Gave him the money for his taxi from Brockley, and a float of £40 – his suggestion of sum to oversee the decorations, and take the weight off K. What of his work? He doesn’t say, but seems to be here all the time. Wonderful for me, in every way. In the middle of all the tiresomeness, I shall look back on this time when he is always there, a saw sawing, a hammer hammering, ‘Can I have a coffee?’ ‘Angus, come and look at this, is this what you want?’ His love is unfailing, even when he’s telling me off.

He arrived at 4.0 with Arlete, he, rather serious and brooding and volcano-like, so that neither of us, in out different relations, could quite decide why, or how we would jump.

A and I were told to talk to one and another, and did so in here. She pleased me by quoting me on Andrew L.W. Tackled me about the colour in the book-room that I’d been discussing with Wendy. Seemed a bit peeved I’d change my mind, as if it were set in stone. He tired, of course, and I think there was trouble with the workmen and what they’d agreed to do for what price. At six we went to the pub for three quarters of an hour while they finish. Different barmaid, more up-to-date, not so much of a time-machine experience. A. sweet and intelligent. K went to Gents, commenting as he went in, that door looked as if it had been kicked in on more than one occasion. He came out saucer-eyed, ‘The urinals ate huge.’ And they were. Six feet high, obviously the originals. ‘Why are they so tall?’ ‘So you can be sick without bending down.’

In talk with A, she told me her brother is moving out of her mother’s house, - five bedrooms – and building somewhere of his own. Her mother is near, very near, family and friends, and is loath to move, tho’ the house will now be much too big. Still, she’s pleased to be freer, - A. I mean, and of course K – ‘of the sister-in-law and the screaming kids.’ She seemed to like the flat.

First meal in new kitchen when all had gone. Grilled salmon, new pots, and courgettes.

Thursday April 20 2000

Richard Haggett is dead, and I can’t say I’m sorry. Poor little vulgar creature, at least he can do no more harm with his pathetic ‘Patrician’ manner, that emboldened him to do a one-man show as Evelyn Waugh, and write the authorised biography of Binkie. Authorised by who? I forget. Surely not John Perry. Goodness, B must have whirled in his grave at the mess of a book that resulted. No judgment, and his idea of research –

Out at nine to Peter Jones. K never remembers where it is! Took taxis everywhere, otherwise I would never have got through the day alive. P.J. doesn’t open till 9.30, Selfr. not till 10.0, P.J. hopeless for tiles, ‘Were re-fitting this part of the store…’ Self. don’t do tiles anymore, but John Lewis do. So went upstairs to the Sanderson shop within a department within a department. Nice insipid suburban girl coming down with a sore throat and loss of voice. They don’t do my paper anymore, ‘Oh, twenty-years ago, ha, ha.’ But they have a lot of his paper still and W.M. has been dead over a hundred years, so there’s no ha-ha about it. Chose the clearer of the willow leaves pattern. She pored over measurements and never managed to give me the number of rolls necessary, £21 a roll. Not bad. John Lewis had tiles, but all very down-market and dowdy. Got on ‘bus to H’smith. Kicked off at Albert Mem. A seat happily, so had a good look, of course it’s fascinatingly complicated and detailed. The three, or is it six, topmost groups for figures are also gilded. But I still find the whole thing poorly proportioned and the final little spire too small. To Tesco Metro for quite heavy enough shopping bags.

Back here, plasterer Mirak? Polish? Impenetrable, a dear. Wendy from two. Endless banging later from darling K. Wendy says polish plasterer and mate had lunch spread on kitchen-table, sausage, pate, cucumber, cheese, bread etc.

K working on dining half, skirting-board to put on, electric and telephone-points to be moved – banging to make channels for the wire – I look at the man bending over the wall on his knees and think of that boy at Les Sylphides spitting his contempt into the Sadler’s Wells foyer. Even now, 7.45, he’s putting in the skirting boards, or perhaps just measuring.

I’m longing to get it finished, but must try and be patient. It’s the miles you walk fetching yr nail-brush because you daren’t leave it in the bathroom, and to the shops twice. I’m very footsore.

Friday April 21 2000

A and K arrived at 8.30 instead of 10.0. Wendy at lunch. Brief appearance of ‘men’ to get £50 and take sink away, kicked it to pieces in front garden. Nasty. A has painted whole book-room, quietly, steadily, silently. A row and I lost my temper, with no justification, in front of the others, and he is so good.

I’m so tired.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 169

April 22 2000 - June 25 2000.

Saturday April 22 2000

He got here at 10.0 and said we must talk. He said he’d found it difficult to decide to come. No, it’s too painful and I am to blame. My only excuse is that I’m tired and get near to screaming at not being alone.

A long day. K doing the skirting-board in the kitchen. Wendy the bathroom, at least the filthy linoleum has gone.

No Arlete today. Out to get fireplace with a thin crust settling over our quarrel and pain, both offering delicate little intimacies to show willing and forgiving. Two junkyards, both in Willesden, but one in a rundown High Rd and the other in, or rather through, a leafy suburban stretch. The up-market one had Radio 3 on the tannoy and some dodgy statuary. The other, run by an Irish father and son, was more honest. We bought an Edwardian/classical wooden mantel, with delicate little swags and an urn. (K, in one of his suddenly surprising ignorances, thought the urn was of a sporting nature, and therefore possibly unsuitable.) And a conventional grate with reproduction tiles. They delivered the same day, ‘between 6.30 and 7.0’, at 5.45. On the side of their lorry, carefully painted adverts, ‘Fire places’, ‘brass-ware’, ‘stain glass.’ Can see already how my fireplace will look.

The chasm was covered over – we both did it. I think.

Sunday April 23 2000

No Wendy, but Polish plasterer. K and A arrived at 8.30 instead of 10.0. A. did book-room all day, again quietly and steadily putting in the blue I chose. K I found doing the lights in the kitchen, over the hob, and later will put them over the sink and the ‘preparation area’. Mavik, the plasterer, a dear creature, did the bath-room ceiling, the holes in the drawing room ceiling, the whole of the kitchen-wall. Had lunch with us, and turned out to have a wife and two children, the elder three, back in Poland. Poor chap, he must miss them badly. Asked for a glass of wine. How odd people are now. I’d have offered him one, but – K had to stop him taking one of the spoons next door for his lunch. It might not have come back at all, for a start, for a go on, it’s a dessert-spoon, and onion had never crossed its lips (one of the horrors of my childhood was eating porridge in an Ilfracombe boarding-house with an oniony spoon.) And it is sliver…

K and A worked ceaselessly in their different ways. I feel guilty all the time that he gets so tired, because he works so single-mindedly.

Monday April 24 2000

To Home Base with K where we are indeed father and son like all the others. Looked for tiles but found none. Brought a cheap lamp, in yellow, which goes on when you touch it. No possible wallpaper either. He impressed on me that I must get the tiles tomorrow. The book- room is finished. Amazing to go into it, and imagine my life with the books there.

Tuesday April 25 2000

Out by nine, walking up the Goldhawk Rd. looking for the first of the tile-shops I’d listed, and hoping it would do. Noted a smart little coffee shop where I later had a restorative espresso, and a small restaurant with Time Out notices.

Drove back with K, and he engaged in fairly lengthy talks with the proprietor, and we bought some largish black tiles which are already in place, with a smart wooden surround. As we drove away, K said of the man that he was ‘very docile’. I’m not altogether sure that he got the right word. The man was rather unresponsive, with not a flicker of the face at any remark, taciturn, perhaps. I must ask him when we are alone.

Tim did not arrive till p.m., and K tackled Bendy about it. I was glad he wasn’t being truculent with me for once. Left them to it. Tim eventually arrived, a mild public-schoolboy contemporary of Ben, big nose, looks about twenty-seven.

K started in the hearth. I had a tiresome truck with Selfridge’s, - K had insisted I settle the wall-paper. Got as far as the Food Halls, and was told the rest of the shop was out of bounds because of a power-cut. No one could tell me if the emergency generator had been brought into play… Went to M&S and bought twelve pairs of socks. At last. After subsisting on three, and my feet burning. Back here two walks to Londis for food and drink.

K had finished the hearth with a smart wood surround. He said it was pretty rough. I couldn’t see it, but said that if I did, it would remind me of him. Wendy and Tim left at 7.45 after tiresome wait for taxi. Alone at last.

Wednesday April 26 2000

How quickly it goes! No K today. It is frightful to me that that seems to me a release. He gives me tiring and embarrassing things to do, and I am almost too tired to do them. In fact, I can’t do most of them without a taxi or three. If I didn’t, my legs and arms would seize up. For example, I can’t get on a bus now with two full shopping bags. At Selfridge’s, got the same good lively girl, ordered the willow bough paper, and noted the promised delivery, Friday. Asked about hall paper, thinking it mightn’t be Sanderson’s thing, certainly not Morris’ thing. But she produced, after a couple of albums, a paper called Autumn, a deep muted red with a self-pattern of leaves and flowers. Perfect. I knew, of course at once, the moment she turned the page. I could see she was a bit surprised, and said, ‘I make up my mind quickly.’ ‘You certainly do.’ But I don’t, it’s just that I can see exactly what I want before it’s presented to me. But I saw all those myriad customers who don’t know what they want, and they are the ones who choose all those papers that are neither one thing or another. Had a long coffee again, a mild pleasure, Rang J. She seedy again, too many times, headache, tummy etc, perhaps just the change. Went to the office, she full of cold; gave me her flat key, a great gesture. Took myself to Café Pasta, my first real solo treat. Nizzarda salad, which turned out to be a rather large Nicoise. Good large dry flakes of tuna, egg, potato, olives, capers, salad good except large red cabbage-type leaves rather tough. Half bot. of house white. All very pleasant as it was before 12.30 until, two youngish, as it turned out, German women, looked at the menu, and came in to the next table, tho’ only one other table of the seven or eight was occupied with a child of nine or ten months in a chair, and nappies, and a boy of two or more who immediately started to clean the banquette so energetically that, if there had been anything breakable in my carrier-bag, it would have been broken. I don’t understand why we have to be ‘children-friendly’. How could I quietly go on enjoying my book and my espresso? The children were within six inches or a foot from me. To Waterstone’s and got a couple of thrillers, on to H’smith and taxi to Janet’s, rest, quiet, a bath! Wonderful.

In the p.m., late p.m., back to the flat to greet John N, who brought me a bottle of that blue gin, 47.0% proof. But, rather disappointedly, only the bottle is blue. I think he was really impressed by the flat, though he is not much into viewing a gutted room needing a conversion and decoration. The space.

So we drove off to the Brackenbury, past the tiles place, about five or ten minutes. It has been a ‘gentrified’ ‘come up’ and all of those revolting words, for certainly ten, perhaps fifteen years. A little ‘enclave’. Marian said it was a sister restaurant to the Chiswick. I see nothing of that. The initial impression was not favourable. It is small, crowed, noisy, four or five tables on street level, four or five steps up. Such a small interval added to the noise and claustrophobia. It had obviously been recently redecorated in rather hot dense colours, and there was a smell of paint, which John at first thought was me.

Menu so-so. I had asparagus with a balsamic vinaigrette, because I know it couldn’t be English, and a small piece of halibut, with some tasteless concomitants. However, John and I are such old familiar bedroom-slipper friends, that goes by. He poured out his family troubles. They are monsters. That his mother comes out as a victim proves something or other. It’s Jeremy of course. I am seldom really shocked, but I was, by J telling me Jeremy had written to his, J’s, Mother, saying, in passing, ‘and I hope one day to see your tits.’ I really believe he is becoming certifiable. Worse, Joyce is still supporting him, and attacking John therefore. This brought tears to J’s eyes, and no wonder. I see now that it was as well Joyce passed out of our lives. I have, I think, never before or since, met such keen perception combined with no judgement and deep self-hatred. Poor John, there is nothing to do but abandon them, and now I think he sees that. I wrote to him, saying ‘And to think we used to laugh at them. Well, we still can at Donald and Lalla. I think.’

Forgot to say, my cab-driver, in driving rain to Selfridges, ‘Do you like football?’ ‘No.’ Damp gloom.

In the dept., all the time I was there, two refined assistants, made up to the nines, were taking duvets, curtains and so on, out of their shelves and ticking them off on some big list. Am I, I thought, witnessing at last the awesome ceremony of stock-taking. I was. Collapse of not so refined assistants.

Thursday April 27 2000

To H’smith for shopping, K’s lunch etc.

K said ‘Phones and sofas in Tottenham Court Rd.’ So got myself there, and hobbled up and down, and found a willing girl in the shop K had most recommended, The Sofa Workshop. Saw a perfectly possible sofa which comes in sofa and sofa-bed from £700 odd. Saw two other shops, one with an assistant who let me walk down and up three flights without coming with me, and then said the sofas I’d picked out weren’t even sofa-beds. Another was more civilised, if that’s the word, with more suburban insipidity to the fore.

‘Phones were more difficult. The many technical shops in the Tott. C. Rd. are incomprehensible and forbidding to someone of my age, with little on show except in boxes, and you can’t see the picture – and you don’t even know what to ask for. ‘A ‘phone.’ Yes, but there are infinite varieties. I eventually found a matt white ‘phone to match the answering-machine. Exhausted by walking up and down Tott. C. Rd.

Back here, K left sixish, and the boys left before Roy and M arrived, later as usual, - well parents of small children are late – and we went round. They were really impressed, I think. M hugged me twice, and R went into the garden by himself also twice. I took them to the pub, and forgot my wallet. However, all was well, as they’d been meaning to take me out to dinner, and gave, me two delicious, I expect, bottles of wine. In the pub we again experienced the slow inspection in the public bar, and settled in the saloon. There was a clutch of about seven or eight locals, one or two I already knew. We chatted, and suddenly one of them, a small man not unlike Colin of the builders, was seen to be spraying everyone, including us, with champagne (sic) in that loathsome wasteful ‘convention’ popular with racing drivers and other savages. We cowered away, not exactly frightened, but not knowing what else might happen. I was amused that Roy, fearless writer of savage scripts, and w- class to his roots, was no more able to deal with it than me. It stopped. M said, ‘I’m glad I had my mac on.’ We bravely resumed our sophisticated gentrified conversation. The double doors of the saloon-bar were banged open, and a large blonde girl, in denims and shirt-tails under, stood monolith. She hadn’t been asked… Later the ci-devant Colin brought us another bottle, and gave us a glass of ci-devant champagne. Which we bravely drank in the middle of three or four gin and tonics.

Tim and Ben seem to have made little progress with the rooms to the lav except preparation and undercoats. They never get there till 10.30 or later.

Friday April 28 2000

Dream (nightmare) when dozing, in a company I was running, or someone favouring me, was running. I was cast as Freddy in The Deep Blue Sea. Co. mutterings, grotesquely old, - and I was out. Amused, as I would be ridiculous casting at any age, but even more amused that, in my dream, I presented myself to myself, as sixty-three, instead of seventy-three.

K furious with Wendy over postponed arrival of Tim, capable of paper-hanging. ‘You promised me etc…’ I don’t quite know why he gets so boiled up, it’s not just the money, he seems to need it to happen as he’s planned. I think perhaps he is too controlling. Tim a mild breaky-nosed superannuated public-schoolboy – ‘I’m forty’ - came from a chat saying, ‘We might be discussing nuclear fission.’

K got new gas-cooker from the shop and showed me how it worked. I hope. Yes, he is getting a bit beside himself, actually told me off about the rubbish in my kitchen.

After they’d all gone, went into the ‘book-room’, which they’d said was finished, to possess and inhabit it, and was utterly revolted and repelled by all their tools laid out on the shelves. Of course, they would never understand, not even darling K. Shall not go in till they’ve gone.

Forgot to note that last time I was in Notting Hill, there serving in the smart fishmongers, was John Tydeman. No, not the Erstwhile Head of Drama at B. House, but the owner of an independent fish-stall at H’smith Market, employing two middle-aged women and his own master. The fish stall going some months ago, was the last nail. It’ll all go soon.

Saturday April 29 2000

Had experimented with the oven as K said on the ‘phone, and, as so often happens, the experiments went perfectly. So I confidently put the chicken thighs under the grill, did exactly the same, came back twenty minutes later to find the chicken still raw and the gas out. Turned it on again, and the boys came to say there was a strange smell, and smoke.

Earlier today, decided to turn and run. Lying on the bed in here, all I seem to hear, apart from banging and the drilling, are feet thundering up and down the passage. You say to yourself ‘Why do they never stop moving?’ But I used to say that about people upstairs, - in continuous movement. I move when I cook, and that’s it. I certainly don’t tramp about all evening.

Asked K about paying the boys, as I had an envelope of money, and he would be gone till Thursday before I came back. He was dirty and struggling with the fire place, but what choice had I got, when he told me to ask? He snapped, ‘How can I tell you now?’ Well, I don’t know, but he might reproach me for not doing it all the same.

Defiantly and tired, taxi’d to Ken. High St., and Café Pasta for a lunch at 12.0. Place empty. Set out my book and my glasses (my distance ones to prop my book against,) and my spectacle-case and shopping list, and gloried in the order and space, and that nothing would be used or spoiled or broken. Ordered a half-bottle of the house white – perfectly acceptable – and Risotto Bracailo, pancetta, peas, beans, parmesan. Just what I needed. Espresso. Faye Kellermann thriller. Wrote a bit of this diary. In the p.m. to Les Carriers at the dear Renoir. A certain caricature quality around, but nevertheless I was constantly aware of the ghastly thought of an English version. Quiet delicate acting from the pigeon-fancier and the child and the mother. And the right length. Back to Ken. High St. for a few books, a baking-tin, taxi, bought wine in the Uxbridge Road, and got to the house – to find I’d lost my dear bunch of all-brass keys. Thank goodness the boys were still there and the doors open. I felt light- headed, but still rational in that I was in and could get the keys re-cut. Pulled myself together, went back up the road, looking to right and left, with the underlying panic of all the places I’d been. But – someone had handed them in at Londis. Back here, had hysterical chat with Tim and Ben from relief.

Sunday April 30 2000

Blissful empty quiet. K rang at 11.0, grasping at chores, but they’re tomorrow. So I have nothing to do but garden and live here.

Someone called out Hello, perhaps to me. No neighbours for me. I’m deaf.

Monday May 1 2000

Off to lunch at Café Pasta again, - it’s wonderful the way places are open on these dreary bank holidays now. Took bus to Piccadilly to call in on J to be sure her flat was free. She seems to like working over the holiday weekend and I don’t (Pen ran out in café Pasta), blame her. Other passengers on no.9 bus exclusively foreign, most of them pathetically unnoticing and uselessly disorientated except for two smart French women who got off decisively at Harvey Nicks. Went down to Regent St. and thro’ to Haymarket, Orange St, - and now I was conscious of a very intrusive helicopter-type noise. There it was hovering stationary just above, deafening. At J’s she said she had so much work she didn’t know how she was going to get thro’ it. She read me one of Stephanie’s Powers’ letters that she had taken down, and had to type. Really, Yanks are the thorough–going pollution–maniacs. If only dirt were the major enemy of civilization –

Came out and home to quite a bit of red Morris paper up the passage. ‘Quite a bit’, but not as much as I expected after a whole day’s work, not that either of them arrive much before eleven and don’t start work at once. Tim had papered the curved wall to the right of my bedroom door, nearly to the arch, and a couple of pieces of paper on the opposite wall. Ben had done the windows and the skirting-boards, over the last two or three days, nothing fresh that I could see for today. But I shan’t mention it in case I get my head bitten off again. But satisfying to see that the paper looks just as I thought it would.

Oh and hoping to get taxi at Notting Hill, I took the bus that offered, and went down to S. Bush Central line. Two or three other people on the platform, one of them an elderly lady on one of the same row of the seats. Usual hideously garbled radio announcement, - no one tells them to speak across the mike. We spoke. It was Susan Raven!! Coincidence! Square Eton crop, same rueful look. Amazing. She had a pair of boots in her bag with a bite out of the heel of one. I can’t imagine where she could be taking it to be mended on a Bank holiday… Parted without an intrusive invitation. Rang H from N. Hill Station. ‘Now listen, Lalla is dead and I’m living in the other flat under Donald.’ H. shrieked.

Tuesday May 2 2000

Rang Alliance. Will ring back. Didn’t.

Tim arrived after eleven, and when Ben arrived – they are leisurely – the papering of the passage in the red paper went on. Out as they got going. In the West End a little too early for lunch, so went to the N. Portrait Gallery for a pee, and dropped in on Princess of Victorian Bohemia photo exhibition. Fascinating collection of intensely obscure (even to me) and unsuccessful sub-artistic people of the 1860s. The photographers David Wynn Wilkie, or David W-W, goodness knows, took good photos, indeed Julia Cameron, no less, said he was her inspiration. Certainly the Pre-Raphaelites appear at one point, by default, but I should like their opinion on the majority of the others. The best known of them (the others) was Frederick Shields, one of the few I’ve heard of, despite my extensive reading in the period. I think most of them were amateur dabblers. After lunch, to Kilburn to begin the search for a wardrobe. Crossed over under the bridge to a junk/furniture shop and – found exactly what I wanted at once, a twenties (possibly Edwardian) wardrobe, billed as Victorian. Large, - 7.0 long – with good solid wood drawers with heavy brass handless, and a long oval mirror glass in the middle of the front. Good wood. Went to ring K, but both were on machine. Thought of waiting and then thought No, I’ll take the risk, it is so exactly what I want. Went back and bought it for £200. I think K will be pleased.

Back here the passage is finished, and gives just the handsome effect I meant. He was rather hurriedly putting up one strip of the willow paper in the s. room, and that’s as far as he got tonight, and again I couldn’t have told you anything that Ben’s done.

To J’s flat for wonderful restorative quiet.

Wednesday May 3 2000

Sent my London Mayor voting-paper. Tim witnessed my signature. Turns out his name is Jee. Not Gee. Tim is just the sort of person who might be the next Duke of Somerset or some such, working honestly as a paper hanger… is there a name Jee? I wonder.

Rang Hazel to confirm my rather animated call on Monday, as she left a message yesterday. Susan R had rung her, saying, ‘He looks very well, B’mouth obviously suits him.’ Little does she know.

To Café Pasta, and had risotto bracialo ‘as usual’. ‘As usual’ now. Deliciously empty until getting on for one-thirty. I get there at twelve or so, and have an hour and a half or so of silence. Did a bit of shop-wandering and no buying. To J’s, letting myself in to this haven of quiet and cleanliness and privacy that I can settle into.

Back home, found Tim still on the s-room, couldn’t look straightaway, went through to kitchen dining-room, and found K talking to Ben. K looking so much less tired and strained and as mild as milk. Kissed his forehead, and discussed with Ben painting of the niche. Even then he had to animadvert the proper, and possible ways, to do it. But he got the wrong end of the stick about what Ben and I, in our very different ways, wanted. A bit bronze, a bit green. Odd, his creativity is only musical. In other areas, he wants it set. Imagine in music.

He is away till Wednesday and sanding. Good. He was getting beside himself with tiredness and over-work. I mean, telling me I had too much rubbish in my kitchen…..

K left after dear talk about the garden, and Colin is taking the basket-ball effort on Saturday.

Tim and Ben finished work about twenty to eight, but stayed intolerably chatting and strumming on guitars for another twenty minutes. Why don’t they want to rush home?

Incomprehensible to me. Just like my having to get out of a place the moment I’ve said I’d go.

Thursday May 4 2000

K rang at 9.0! Troubled about the wardrobe getting into this flat – seven feet. Legitimate worry. ‘That is why you must always ask me first’ and ‘You hadn’t thought things through.’ So I rang back to the wardrobe people, and asked them to measure it. They couldn’t because, when it was sold, it was taken to ‘the warehouse’ for delivery. I said he was worried at getting it through the door. ‘Oh, but it takes apart into three pieces.’ Rang him back to tell him, and he was not so pleased as I expected, and took much more debatable ground. ‘Why do you want something so big? It will dwarf your nice bits of furniture’ etc. when I have already told him I bought it at once because it was just what I wanted. I said meekly that if it turned out to be unsuitable I would get rid of it. I think it’s partly wanting to decide, and partly wanting me to get rid of things I’m not going to get rid of.

Rang gas. Not till next Thursday now. Very abrupt K was when I rang, ‘just on my way out.’ I hope he doesn’t sound thus to people who don’t know him as I do. It’s another example of the focus and single-mindedness. He can’t switch quickly backwards and forwards between things. Even in casual conversation – ‘just wait till I finish.’ Happily he asked A. to ring back to say sorry.

Computer virus has raged almost world-wide, ‘I love you’ from supposedly embittered Filipino teenager. Done millions of pounds worth of damage, and has hit U.S. government depts.., B.T!, banks, businesses etc. Tee-hee! Thank goodness I shall never have to bother with it.

Friday May 5 2000

Sunny day. Taxi to Whiteley’s for new watch-strap. Had the same one repeated, and at £11.95, surely cheaper? I seem to remember being shocked at £19. Why is it cheaper? Then Café Pasta in Ken H S, and lingered over lunch. A thin dark youngish father, with two children, a boy of three or four, a girl of two. Dark, handsome, he must have a very pretty blonde wife. Both children were pretty beyond the dreams of avarice, very bright and comparatively well behaved. The little girl was Michelle Pfeiffer in miniature. At two. Happily they were far enough away to be of visual irritation only.

Went into Water. and got A’s book. Only a large paper-back, but £29… I would go to the stake sooner than read a word of it. Got some money out of those fearsome machines – I hate people watching. To Barker’s briefly, and, although it’s still there and full, I wouldn’t expect it eventually to survive. Crossed over to wait for a 9, in the hot sunshine. After twenty minutes got a taxi at five to two, and just got to Austin Reed in time for my two-thirty appointment. We went through ten or eleven road-works, including, as a final obstacle, the road by the side of AR, so that I had to make a detour. Dear Giovanni, one of the tiny permanent spots in my life, that I can count on.

Dropped in on J and Trevor was there. I still feel she must be careful, but will keep silent. She gave me a lemon-squash from the ‘fridge. Perfect. That’s what quenches my thirst. Tea – cools you? It makes me sweat.

Back here, Ben is just painting loo and going to do the tiles in bathroom that he went to buy just before I left. Grouting at six, so warned about splashing in the bath. Two messages from K on the machine, ‘Hello, it’s only me. Only me-he.’ K at his sweetest. Well, he was tired, and irritable, - exhausted.

The tiling is so perfect you can hardly see the joins, it seems almost luminous. All the same, what has Ben been doing all day?

Saturday May 6 2000

Nobody today or tomorrow. Alone.

Lazed, at last, till 11.30, and got ready for the wardrobe and Bob coming for the basket-ball effort. Both had been told between twelve and two, nobody arrived till two forty-five. It wasn’t Bob and part of his team trampling all over the garden, as I’d feared, it was a friend of Bob. ‘Oh, he told me it was a tree-house. It’s taken me over an hour to get here. I took a wrong turning, it’s no use to me. Sorry.’ And left.

Wardrobe Noel arrived at 4.45, having answered a call at 3.0, that he was having trouble with the traffic. But he’s a broken-nosed youngish Irishman, and beguiling. He and his sidekick took such pleasure in the house and garden, and he finished by saying he took away rubbish, and did I – The wardrobe is everything I hoped for and more. It’s a really handsome piece of furniture, and will hold a great deal.

Eventually I was free to go up to K’s with A’s book, tho’ it had put my day very much out. A. let me in and said they were having lunch. It was ten past five. I showed her the book. It turned out to be the study guide for the book, not the book itself. She hadn’t known there was such a thing, let alone me. We went out into the garden, greeted by a plump man, Nick, who said he hadn’t ‘seen me for a long time,’ - I wasn’t conscious of ever having seen him before. But then I’ve met so many musicians once in the studio, and naturally can’t tell one from another, as a rule. I can’t think why they remember me, except perhaps a father figure, if they want to flatter K, or just be polite. K was sitting eating chicken and creamed leeks, in what is now an encircling and beroofed bower of the buddleia I told him to leave in the cracks in the concrete. It looks really stylish – a photo spread in Vogue – and probably keeps out a light shower of rain.

Sunday May 7 2000

Heavenly quiet and emptiness, except for the children thundering about overhead once or twice.

Interesting notice of the collected Amis letters, and an article by their editor. Extracts attract and fascinate me, - and repel me. I note that only four of his novels are in print, and only 1800 or so copies were sold last year. I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve found most of his work unreadable. But I must get them. Who knows who one meets? A. Powell, for one.

Monday May 8 2000

I think this is more or less the last week of the real strain. I hope. Tim and Ben painting the sweep to the loo again. I watched and waited for them for ages, and by 11.30 I could wait no longer. If Tim got here before Ben with the keys, so. To Café Pasta in G. St. Taxi to Portugal St. Hideous Waterstone’s selling nothing but economics books. Got the right one. Walked away up Holborn in the heat, mid-seventies, tried two or three ‘phone boxes, where the money just wouldn’t go in. A bad reason. Out of order is one thing, machines needing emptying is another. At last got K, as it chanced, at Holborn tube, and said I’d come up at once. He said Come to the studio. As if I wouldn’t. As it was, he came straight up. We talked of the Alliance briefly. He said I’d got to fight for it. I don’t think fighting does much with mortgage societies!

Tuesday May 9 2000

Council tax credit book arrives! £106 a month. Rang Alliance yesterday p.m. Pettifogging impossible meanness. Left message for darling K. Too cross yesterday. Too irritating to describe in detail – I will not stoop to their level.

To café Pasta. Caesar salad. Rock hard un-cooked croutons. Books. Pages, but no dish- racks or glasses. To dear J’s – such a refuge.

Wednesday May 10 2000

K rang just as I was going out. ‘Now there’s no money…’ So it’s plan B, whatever that is. Oh, poor darling. And I know nothing to help. He said I must ring round loan services. How can I? I’ll be at J’s for the noise, but anyway, I don’t know what to say or even more important, what not to say.

Just for this difficult week I’m going on as if the money in my account was mine. To Ken H St. and Café Pasta, and to Waterst. to give back A’s book. Yes, they did charge me too much for the study guide. It should be £15. Alas, I hadn’t got the receipt or any proof of the over- payment. So I only got vouchers for £15. Better than nothing. And an indictment of modern shopping, in that you never get the same assistant twice.

To dear J’s, oh, what should I do without the quiet and alone… Here Ben and Tim quite funny about K’s temper. Tim ‘I thought these planks were just planks.’ They were.

Thursday May 11 2000

It’s quite hard and tiring this week, having to get out, dressed, shaved, and in the same shoes every day all day, which makes my feet so tired and sore. And deprived of all my books and cuttings and furniture and pictures. I am becoming seriously deprived, and light-headed. Even tho’ I can rest in J’s flat all afternoon, and still feel tired.

Taxi to Home Stores in Notting Hill. No ordinary glasses at all, except for an ‘ordinary’ wine-glass for £4.99. By tube to Tott. C. Rd. and walked to Borders and Waterst., and then to Café Pasta. Raining, and West End extraordinarily empty. No cars visible in St Martins Lane. After lunch to new French film ‘La Nouvelle Ève’ at Swiss Arts Centre. Unhappily tepid rubbish. Called in at J’s and found her flushed with overwork, and fury with some of her clients’ lack of consideration. Interesting, more formidable than I’ve seen her, and why she is a success. V. funny about Stephanie Powers’ play which is coming in to the Aldwych, The Albery, The Apollo, The Vaudeville and the Lyric… It sounds, ‘horrendously derivative’, but might do business. I mean Stephanie Powers and two other TV has-beens, Michael Brandon and Tony Anholt, in a ‘thriller’ and ‘Stephanie talks to the audience.’ Odd, J talking to Janey, who used to have the other office in New Row, mentioned the Albery, and laughed at the idea of SP coming in, in June. But the Michael Gambon thing is only on for six weeks, and J didn’t know, I suppose. Odd in her position. Came back here, to find Tim and Ben have still done much less than I expect. Ben was to clean the floor in the s. room, and so on, so that I could move back in tonight. At seven he had started filling in the cracks and gaps in the door. Tim had sort of sanded the kitchen-floor, but the big sander works poorly, T. says, and it is certainly not done yet, just lightly scraped. So it’s not tomorrow, but Saturday as well. Then Ben wants two days off, heaven, so I get two days off for my feet. But how beautifully he does tiles.

Friday May 12 2000

To Café Pasta, and straight back to J’s, not pretending to try anything except sitting down. There, as ever, for three of four hours. What would a non-reader have done these last weeks? A non-reader of 73, I mean.

Back here, K, looking v. glam in black, and hair washed - hair an extraordinary colour now, with silver and brown completely melded to a fascinating gun-metal, striking with his mass of hair. Going round with Ben with his loose-leaf binder marked ‘Angus’ more like a foreman. I worry a bit about his bossiness. I hear a note in his voice that is all right for me, but not for people we’re paying.

The sanding is finished, - the boards are good and interesting, with a quite startling pattern of apparently random nails scattered over part of it, like the sky at night, especially polished by the sander. Tim told me he preferred an oak stain to a pine, as I do myself.

I knew K would ask about the loan. I need advice. He said yet again, the Citizen’s Advice Bureau – but that’s always been hopeless. They’re never there. But he was quite mild about it. Ben and Tim have to be paid, and had I got enough to pay them? I said yes, and wondered if I had. Tim £350, Ben £50. There is £150 in the envelope. I can get £200 out of the bank tomorrow, and £40 in my wallet. Will leave me short for the w/e.

Still, freedom ahead. Ben and Tim tomorrow, Tim for the last time. Then Ben not till Tuesday, for only one day! Then he goes to house-sit and record something at K’s, while K and A. are in Ireland at a wedding. K apologises for going away, and Ben in his way. If only they knew – Wed. to Tues. alone. Divine.

Saturday May 13 2000

A bit of sad day. To Café Pasta, and back from J’s as usual, to find Ben and Tim, having done all the boards, beautifully varnished, a much better colour than K’s, for instance, which unhappily remind me of church pews. Little money ‘cos of paying them. Familiar feeling. They were washing and wiping the drawing room floor – at first I thought Oh heavens they’re varnishing that too…

Suddenly K rang, and I’m afraid, created trouble. He first told Ben at some length about, I suppose, various things, and then got me, to say ‘Now your old ‘fridge, (put out on the lawn by the boys during the varnishing) is rubbish, let everything in it go bad, if necessary.’ I said, ‘Necessary?’ He said, ‘I’ve told Ben and Tim to plug in the fridge-freezer and let it run for twenty-four hours.’ After the still-continuing difficulties with the oven, I quite see that he wants to test the f.f from the same source. ‘Ring back at this time tomorrow to tell me whether it’s flooded or whatever.’ ‘Well, can’t I put an ice-try in to be sure it’s working?’ ‘It’s frost-free.’ ‘Still’ ‘Trust me.’ He said that twice, and I did. I do. But I couldn’t see why I couldn’t go on with my old fridge while testing my new one. But I didn’t say so. ‘Trust me.’ He told me he’d told Ben to ring back when they’d done it. ‘Go and see.’ I did, and they were carrying the old ‘fridge back into the kitchen, and had no intention of doing anything about the new one. Ben said we could do it on Tuesday, his next visit ‘Otherwise you might be without a fridge till then.’ I was interested that Ben cried off ringing him back, ‘when he’s like this’, and asked me to. I did, and K was furious, ‘Why don’t they do as I say?’ I said, about needing the ‘fridge and he said crossly, ‘That’s the end of it’ and rang off. I didn’t tell him that Tim and Ben had been laughing at him and telling me the nicknames they had for him. I tried to stop them and left. But he had been wrong, and certainly spoken in a way that put them off so that they didn’t do what he wanted. It all upset me, of course, but less because he was wrong. And I had the old ‘fridge. But I have to remember that Ben and Tim are nearly middle-aged failures, and he isn’t.

Sunday May 14 2000

Comic. Ben, being thoughtful, said I could move back into the s-room. But he’d ‘tidied’ a lot of stuff into the corner outside my bedroom-door, including an immovable bag of rubble, so that I couldn’t get the armchair or TV-trolley past. The old fridge was in front of the garden doors, so I couldn’t get out there or get the mower past. But still it was a wonderful empty day.

Monday May 15 2000

K rang to ask about gas-man. I told him of difficulties, and started on Saturday. I only got to ‘I think you were a bit harsh on them,’ and he rang off again. And again I wasn’t agonised, because again he was wrong. And he is so good.

Tuesday May 16 2000

Ben did not arrive till after twelve. Well, a lot of the work is incidental. Repainting the bathroom, glossing skirting-boards and so on. We had quite jolly chats, and I said I’d rung the council about the great mass of rubbish in the front garden, and they’d quoted £15, or if we need a skip, ‘£40, as you’re a resident’ and ‘If you fill it yourself’ and I said I’d ring the Irishman who brought the wardrobe. He does rubbish, too. Ben was worrying about the move next week, as K has put him in charge of everything, and there is the very pressing question of space. No cupboards for the linen or china, and therefore where will all those boxes go? etc. etc. So I said I’d got a quote for the mass of rubbish etc. because that would be some space…

Ben was talking to K, later, about studio-sitting and so on. K rang shortly after, v. cross about rubbish, ‘I’ve got it all in hand,’ - ‘I only got a quote…’ ‘I’m in the middle of a session.’

Wednesday May 18 2000

Ben and Tim alone with me, mild and taking trouble about me, and not minding about my ‘quips’ at all, positively inviting them. So, K…

A real step forward after Tim went, for good this time. Ben cleared the book-room at last, and when he’d gone, I was able to posses it, and think about it, and see the dramatic criticism there, the letters and diaries here.

To H’smith for plimsolls – none - and a bath-thing from Habitat, to put my soap and flannel on.

Back here, Ben/Wendy asked me to watch him in Eurotrash, ‘as a comic nun.’ Oh dear, I can’t tell anyone I saw it. I think it’s supposed to be shocking, but it is feeble to the utmost shores of puerility.

Thursday May 18 2000

Civilized day.

Taxi’d to Notting Hill to buy some books, and bought a piece of skate from John Tydeman. I greeted him warmly, and was moved that he had lost all his joshing manner that he had with his own fish-stall. I hope it made it better that I didn’t say, ‘Come down in the world a bit, haven’t you?’ or even a delicate comment might have hurt him. I just bought my fish and said it was so nice to see him again. And it was. It was almost as if I felt that D had bought from him. I expect, in another twenty years, I’ll say she did. Dramatic thunderstorm kept me, despite an umbrella, in Notting Hill tube-station for a bit. When I say ‘dramatic’, I mean rain, and large hail-stones, pouring down the stairs and eventually driving me back down into the booking hall. English people still don’t talk. Good.

Friday May 19 2000

A quiet day, recovering for the move. I spent most of the day with my feet up, and they are at last beginning to stop burning.

Blair baby to arrive any moment.

I suppose they’re arranging for both to die, as a sure-fire way of winning the election. Wet.

Saturday May 20 2000

Out and got carpet quotes. It’s sad to think I have to have that inferior carpet that I said I’d never have, and that won’t see me out. Still, the shop I’ll go to probably, is smallish, but run by five middle-aged and elderly, white men. A rare thing in the Uxbridge Road.

Blair baby to be called Leo after his paternal grandfather, a surprisingly common little man, rather like Ernie. I say ‘surprisingly’ not because of any prejudice of mine, but because if Blair were the monster of manipulativeness they describe, he would surely have had him put down.

Sunday May 21 2000

A mysterious call for K from India, or it seemed to be for him. After all, if someone rings this number and asks for Kevin, when I’ve only been here since April 7, surely….? His name was Leon and he seems to be rather slow and dim, tho’ his English sounded all right. I made it clear many times that the name was Malpass, and he was a musician. ‘Yes, yes, and Kevin Slaney works at the London clinic and ‘Oh, but… But when I said Malpass again, he said ‘Yes, yes.’ So in the end I gave him K’s no in case it was a valuable contact.

Finished Martin Amis’ Experiment, which is more than I’ve done with nearly any of his novels. His lack of narrative gift doesn’t matter here. There is quite a lot to enjoy, wit, and crisp opinions, and a keen, if rather over-ingenious, sense of construction. But his self- regarding coldness has to come in. His literary skills cannot disguise your uneasy fear that his cousin’s murder by Frederick West came about simply to give those said literary skills an outing. He writes about feelings, but you don’t feel them.

Rain again.

Monday May 22 2000

Never got round to saying that K rang yesterday, because I was too upset. I hope, I think, he didn’t know. He has found such a mound of work that he can’t come tomorrow – and it’s now tomorrow – and it won’t be him and Ben and AN other. I was so hoping because of – the care and thoroughness. But it’ll be Billy, breaking things. So he said come to lunch tomorrow to talk over everything.

So I went, and he came to greet me and said, ‘I don’t know if you know but John’s dead.’ I didn’t know and my face must have told him, and he came and hugged me, and I shed a tear or two. But what else can one expect at 96? Now that I am alone and can think about it, I can feel a keen regret for the end of a wonderful age of acting, that nobody, who didn’t live through it, can understand. How I loved his acting, and when I was lucky enough to meet him, through darling Dorothy, and see something of him, I loved him.

As for his acting, he held the balance between the over-dramatic Victorian Shakespeare – I imagine – and the sad prose of today. The music and meaning of the verse melted together, thus getting Shakespeare’s effect in Shakespeare’s way.

We had smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, Pouilly Fumé, and he was very sweet and comforting about everything.

Tuesday May 23 2000 Wednesday May 24 2000 Thursday May 25 2000

Tuesday was a hellish day. Billy etc. came at about 8.50, and got the keys of the store. He said they’d be back at 10.30. It was actually 12.50. I rather rushed to H’smith to get the rest of their money, and some shopping. Walked most of the way, one way, I don’t know why, except that I was excited, I suppose. I also took the lucky opportunity, which I have often thought of, to buy all the main papers with John’s obituaries. More of them later, so that was the first period of waiting with no end-stop, than which I know nothing more exhausting. When they did come back, I was, of course, on tenterhooks and my feet, up and down, up and down, to direct the idiots to put the right piece in the right rooms. Utter torture for two or three hours. Then they went, leaving a jungle and said they’d be back in 3 hours. This was actually ten past eight, with a few pieces of furniture, and the books. Each box, smallish and square, held about twenty books, a dozen or so twice the size. The two men could carry three of the smalls each, and, doing so, they passed and re-passed my bedroom from ten past eight to half-past ten. I kept getting the giggles, and thinking how they must hate me. I tipped them £20, as well as £400. I had some dinner, turned the telephone off, and fell into bed.

Next day, Wednesday, I stayed in bed all day, except for meals, which I’d provided for ease – a joint. The answer-machine light was flashing, but I couldn’t get to it over all the furniture. K, I thought, and I should have rung but wanted bed more. Today, Thursday, by the late p.m., I’d recovered somewhat. It was a finer day with some sun, no rain, and, most important, a blustery wind. By now, I thought the lawn needed mowing, now, or – the rain! – so I did it, and survived, and – started on the books. Oh, what pleasure! Just half an hour.

Friday May 26 2000

J wants me to come to lunch on Bank Holiday Monday, and perhaps she’ll come round afterwards to see the flat.

Worked on books for two or three hours – well, which? three – made many discoveries, tho’ only about three duplicates, and they may have been just me saving a useful book. The Odell, for instance.

J rang to cancel Monday. Possibly because of Stephanie.

K rang to say Sunday, because he wants to help, the darling. Mentioned the books, but I’m afraid he would be a hindrance with the actual books, as opposed to moving the boxes to a better position etc. But heaps of other jobs.

Saturday May 27 2000

Darling K rang to say Monday instead. So I had to cancel J. She thinks Stephanie’s play will fold without coming in, and S is fairly difficult when working.

To H’smith for shopping, and taxi home!

Hazel rang - I suppose visitors tomorrow, poor dear, or family, no wonder she gets seedy – but she’s a bit better and up. I love our talks.

Sunday May 28 2000

Lunching in the large new dining-room-kitchen. I felt delight and a certain graciousness. There is more room here to see my good furniture. The 18th Century chair I bought at Angela Fox’s, is in the angled little foyer, out of the bathroom and into the loo, and looks terrific against the sulphur. The dining table and chairs can be seen, and look beautiful, or will when they’re properly polished.

Did a lot on the books, broke the back of the right-hand wall, by the luck of most of the boxes I opened had the books that go there. Stopped because the tallest pile started to sway.

Winged Words. American soap. Young woman to young man:

‘I’ve come to apologise.’ ‘For what?’ ‘For being careless with your heart.’

An admirable sentiment, but…

Monday May 29 2000

Bank Holiday, ridiculous. K arrived at twenty to twelve, and did a terrific lot of clearing up and rearranging, so that life became much more possible. I did a great deal on the books, even more because he was there, and because he said how well I’d done already. A little praise goes a long way with me. Lovely lunch, talking of John of course. Another stupid and insipid article, by Gyles Brandreth this time. Giving John lunch on his 94th b’day, said how good it was of John to come, and John said ‘It’s very good of you to ask me. All my real friends are dead.’ I don’t think G.B. got the full impact.

K works so hard, and all for me. ‘Remember not to bend too much.’ Hit my head on a tree branch, dazzled by the sun. He sawed it off, the branch I mean, at once.

Tuesday May 30 2000

When we had lunch yesterday, he said, ‘No, you sit there on my right, as you always have, I have to be here and you have to be there.’ I was moved to the core, this is childhood talk.

Later, I said I might put the red chairs in his loft if I decide I haven’t room. ‘The loft? I’ll have them in the sitting room. They’re my favourite thing.’ I’d no idea. I wonder if he liked them as much in 1981… I didn’t know he felt so strongly about his youth.

Also forgot to say, he went and washed and changed about 6.45, came back all in black, v. smart, going to the Comedy Store with A. Lovely.

Decided to have an idle day, rather tired, and felt I couldn’t do the books again, after four or five hours yesterday. So decided to go to a film and do a bit of shopping. Taxi’d to Whiteley’s, and wandered round Books Etc, and suddenly realised that I’d come to the wrong cinema. There was a film I wanted to see but it was at five to five, and it was quarter past three. So I taxi’d hurriedly to the ABC Shaftsbury Avenue, for ‘Stir of Echoes’ at three thirty-five. Gave my ticket to be torn to the Filipino usherette, she beckoned me forward. As there are two cinemas in the building, and I hadn’t checked, I thought I’d better ask the Filipino usherette actually in the cinema, already sitting down. ‘Is this Stir of Echoes?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ Although it was quarter to four, nothing was happening. The adverts and trailers didn’t start for another ten minutes. (Sitting in the lighted cinema, with anodyne music washing over you, you are confronted with your poor wretched soul.) When the adverts were over, and the film began, it wasn’t ‘Stir of Echoes’, so I went crossly into the foyer, and asked the two Filipino usherettes crouching over the ice-cream and snacks counter whether ‘Stir’ had begun. They said ‘Yes.’ And it had. I crumpled my ticket and left. They only say ‘Yes’, even when it’s to their disadvantage. It is depressing to see real stupidity stamped on three faces. Not that you can expect much from any usher or usherette as a rule. It’s also nothing to do with being Filipino.

But came home with pleasure.

Wednesday May 31 2000

Card from S, enclosing the two pages of the New York Times which were devoted to John. Dignified, greeting him as the greatest classical actor of the century. Three or four bricks told badly, and more or less wrong. Perhaps Americans don’t quite ‘catch’ them. He’d gone to see Daniel, of course, and says he can recommend fucking on the 39th floor overlooking Central Park. I wrote back and said why was he looking at the view?

Rang H to tell her of ‘Careless with your heart’, and got Geoffrey. He gave me vague disquiet. She was out, ‘having a blow’ on Minehead front, and he was just saying that she wasn’t better, and not really herself, when she came back. She sounded much as usual, but Geoffrey came back on, ostensibly to ask me ‘to do my imitation of Dadie’, but also to say she ‘came up to speak to you.’ (My imitation is very poor stuff.) I hope all is well, but I have been concerned at the number of minor complaints she has had, so often a presage of worse. Especially after a lifetime of repoession.

Thursday June 1 2000

Books, books, books. No film. Just to shops, where one of the mini-markets had asparagus, but I hadn’t brought enough money, but good – English asparagus. They need encouragement.

A bomb at H’smith bridge again. A number of witnesses were marched out on the news. Who are these people who are woken by an explosion half a mile away at 4.30 a.m.?

Friday June 2 2000

The Third programme is still itself, at least in the person of one announcer. Reading the news, he reported the near-escape in an air-crash, of ‘Mr. Frankie Détton.’ Presumably the Frankie Détton known to millions.

Knitwear shop has had white-washed message Only Three Weeks – to closing. Altered to Only One Weeks.

Quite repulsive report on wedding-lists at Harrods and Selfidges, probably elsewhere. A woman complained – and no wonder – that she had ordered a set of cups and saucers for her friends, and found that their account at the shop had been credited with the price of the c’s and s’s but no present. Disgusting. Not that I don’t think wedding lists fairly disgusting in the first place.

Artichokes in the mini-market at 49p. When I went to pay, the pleasant Indian assistant, who already recognizes me, as any good shop-keeper should, ‘What is this called?’ ‘Artichoke’, I said, ‘globe artichokes.’ The point is, it was there and cost 49p, and he’ll know it the next time. There is a transition, and, fascinating it is, in its mixture, a world away from Baron’s Court.

Saturday June 3 2000

Mostly books. John N rang, the dear thing, to see how I was getting on. He is smothered in work, with not only the summer exhibition, but a reception at Highgrove House for fifty or so possible sponsors, mostly U.S. I expect. He is not only mostly responsible for organising it, but also writing speeches for the President, Prince Charles, and one or two others, I can’t remember. I said ‘Haven’t they - or P.C. – got speechwriters of their own?’ ‘Oh, yes, but I’m the only one with the facts they want.’ They will be in the house itself for drinks and so on, and walking round the gardens ‘if fine’, and so on, but the actual reception will be in the Orchid Room! A private conference centre with a name straight out of Trust House Forte. Still, with all I’ve heard about P.C., I think there might actually be some Orchids somewhere.

Told me further fairly horrendous details of Joyce etc. She violently attacked Simon R in a letter, to which he had to respond with a letter saying such confrontations made him ill for months. A good counter to her attack for being cold. A sad story. She is probably certifiable by now. How odd that people get in these extraordinarily selfish corners. It’s like a little whirlpool and they go round and round in self, until there’s nothing left.

Sunday June 4 2000

J rang up and went on a bit about Stephanie P. She does tend to repeat herself about such difficulties, but I think it helps to listen. I wish, for her own sake, she could make her mind up about things, - Mr. Schneer, SP etc. – a bit quicker.

Monday June 5 2000

Decided to go out and truant. In the morning to H’smith for pension and some shopping treats. Asparagus, for instance.

Asparagus in the sun in my new dining-room, looking at the beautiful garden, with Rostropovich on the Third, I thought how lucky I am.

In the p.m. finally got myself to a film. Whiteleys, and ‘Final Destination.’ One of that group of films where teenagers get killed one by one. A twist in the cliché has its protagonist having a vision of them all being killed soon after take off on a flight to Paris. (I don’t think I’ve heard Paris not called Paris France, in a Yank film before.) This is strong enough for him to get off the ‘plane with the five others and then having visions of their murders one by one. Even such stock plots are bungled. The ‘star’, a new face, Devon Sawa. Much bruited, very young, I’d say. Still a bit acned, quite a bit of talent, but not very original. He looks rather like Steve McQueen at 19. And he’ll lose his youthful looks quickly, too. Oh, well, good luck.

On the way home to Notting Hill, and bought the new Joan Sims autobiog., the new Elizabeth George, and that beautiful Paeony book, by a Fearnley-Whittingstall. I was wondering whether she was a cousin or something of the F-W at Cambridge, but she’s probably a grand- daughter.

Tuesday June 8 2000

Stayed in bed till lunch. K rang, could come next Tuesday, but I said I might put him off if I wasn’t quite ready, and I wouldn’t be able to ‘use’ him fruitfully. He said he’d have plenty to get on with apart from me and the books.

Worked on the books. Getting more order and more idea of how little room there is.

Hazel rang. She sounded all right. Talked of the soaps. She revealed a greater obsession than I realised from our little surface jokes, as it is to me. Home and Away is finishing on ITV, and being shown on 5? Sky? Anyway, H has got Sky. ‘I’m really surprised and slightly repelled. Murdoch? Still, I’m glad we’ll only have one absurd thing to discuss. Well, intelligence is helpless against an unsatisfactory emotional life.

Wednesday June 7 2000

Wanted to mow the lawn, needed to mow the lawn, today, but a bit below par. The books tired me too much for anything else but I love doing them. Putting a finished shelf into alignment.

K rang. Can’t come on Tues. because he’s seeing the chief executive of BMG – do you know them? ‘No’, ‘Well, they’re one of the big four, Sony, Virgin, Something? and something? And it’ll mean half a million up-front, perhaps, ten million later.’ I could hardly take it in, knowing that he is not apt to exaggerate. He didn’t say what he was to be paid for, but I take it it’s his arranging and presentational skills, and not the songs. It gave me a feeling of comfort ever since he said over his dinner table, that I didn’t have to worry about money, he had a feeling.

Thursday June 8 2000

Rested and didn’t do books so as to mow tomorrow.

To H’smith by taxi with four bags of books for Oxfam. All round the Wreckin. Shopped.

Back here felt good. Mowed, clipped and had ideas.

Friday June 9 2000

Taxi to Piccadilly to film ‘Stir of Echoes.’ Another bout of boredom. Slow, full of stock horror film clichés and tampering with truth. Kevin Bacon, a good actor. I’d like to ask him whether he didn’t prefer that one, what was it called? With giant worms under the ground. Stayed until 5.30, because I could get to Waterstones and thus escape the rush hour. Bought Theatre Museum catalogue of paintings, curator died aged 39. Think I met him at the Garrick. Slim book £40. Quick glance showed even more inferior pictures than the Nat. Por. Gall. And rather too racy text. We’ll see.

Tired and stiff from yesterday. I enjoyed my jaunt, but wish the film had been better.

Saturday June 10 2000

At last a real difference with the books, and the reduction and repositioning of that huge wall of boxes. Still, there’s going to be a considerable shortfall.

H rang. Visitors tomorrow again, no wonder she’s gets ill. She says her back is better, - that is, not well - but, well, better - and it was muscular… Geoffrey’s sister has died. A few gruesome details, kidney failure etc. cf Mollie. Funeral on Friday. ‘Is it far away?’ ‘Oh, no, only twenty minutes.’ Well, that’s something. H does seem fixed on illness and difficulty, cf, Jan. But she has a long letter to read from Lady V.P.

Sunday June 11 2000

Another step forward with the books. Pulled out a couple to read myself to sleep. Ian Hay, for instance. Yes, he has some regrettable faults of style, all listed and named in Fowler, Elegant Variation and so on, but for some possible nostalgic reason I can still read them. But unlike so many people, I wouldn’t dream of recommending then to anyone else, as H with Yonge.

Monday June 12 2000

To H’smith for pension etc. Bought new biography of G. Mallory because plentifully scattered with references to Keynes, Stracheys etc.

Tired.

Tuesday June 13 2000

A bit of a tummy upset, or something, rather lethargic, so stayed in bed most of the day, and did a bit of books.

Wednesday June 14 2000

Couldn’t ring K, as the ‘phone was off, and I supposed that’s why he hadn’t rung me last night…

Pulled myself together and set out to ring BT from a booth. Found a note in the letterbox from the owner of the house next door saying that he was having a problem with the ‘phone etc. He wasn’t a BT customer and they wouldn’t take any instruction from him, and he needed to do something or other which would need the cables being… so I rushed into a letter, in my head. ‘I’ve just had the place redecorated’ etc. etc. Torture, because, of course, it can’t be coincidence that that’s why, - oh, bother, because one way or another, truck with the neighbour, and I want none. Thought I had better speak to BT first, not just doing what he wants, but found I couldn’t hear properly in one of the boxes on the Uxbridge Rd, even though it was one of the sort that still has a door. I had decided to go to the pictures anyway, and buy one or two things, - a kitchen paper holder, a fan – waiting for a taxi, I saw a good selection of fans in the electricians on the other side of the road. Asked in the picture-framers if they repaired pictures, and a beady-eyed Indian woman said grudgingly that they did. I was pleased to find it a much more prosperous and complicated shop than its sale of ‘mirrors’ at the front would lead one to expect.

So I taxi’d to Selfridge’s, determined to get a loo-brush, - I’d seen no possible ones anywhere – at Habitat they don’t seem to stoop to such things, other places have ghastly things with cartoon fish and shells on them mostly in turquoise, my least favourite colour. Found a plain holder and brush in quite pleasing nothing curves, easy to wipe. Found nothing else, and went off to Whiteley’s, where I knew I could find a telephone with a bit of quiet. Only a bit, as I’d forgotten the muzak, then I thought, oh, I must ring K. Because perhaps he has rung to tell me about the interview. He doesn’t always. Eventually got him on the mobile, and the line kept failing, most painful, as he told me he was at Keith Grove, where he was expecting lunch. He said that, when he cancelled Tuesday, he’d said he’d come to lunch, and help with the books etc. I’m sure he didn’t because I remember him saying did I want someone to come and help with the hard work of the books, and I said no, because I’d have to tell them about each book, and he said alright. But he’s sure he did, so I felt bad, as he’s been kicking his heels for a couple of hours without the car. So I abandoned the film, and rushed back. I had a taxi from H’smith, as it would have been so much longer and more exhausting. Happily he didn’t notice how quick I was, or if he did, he didn’t say. He was talking to the wretched workman next door, oh god. I can’t wait for them to go, for not the noise of the work, but their endless ghastly demotic talking, 12 hrs a day, outside my bedroom window. Not that I’m not grateful for him being able to talk to them. What would I have done without him, or them? It turned out that he’d read the note already, but didn’t seem to have caught on to its implication, or really to have registered how off the ‘phone was. My perhaps ‘forgetting’ our lunch muddled the issue. He read it again slowly and realised that the matter of the note and my ‘phone gone phut, could hardly be unconnected. He’d been talking to the builders next door, when I arrived, ‘Bob’, and the black ‘overseer’, like figures from a distant uncomfortable past. Characteristically he borrowed the overseer’s mobile phone and rang the number on the note. He put the situation forcibly, as he does, ‘My father is 73, and a bit deaf’ etc. with the result that the owner said he would come round tomorrow, but K made him come today, and he turned up about an hour and a half later, a tall pleasant-looking chap about 35, with a young black wife and baby. Public-school, carefully flattened accent, behaved v. well, offered me a mobile for the next two days, then rang BT and really battled them into coming as soon as possible. Altogether a favourable impression.

He was going to a gig at S.B. Empire at 7.0, so we settled down to talk over his interview. It is certainly a big opportunity, but, like all big opportunities, it can be a big failure, too. Imagine, a deal with an actor’s agent, who took 40% of yr. earnings, had exclusive rights on you and your work for five years, and so on. A music publisher, however, is more a mixture of manager, impresario and agent, and singers and singers’ managers are harder to ‘contact’ and interest, than any manager or playwright in the theatre. I tried, within my limited understanding of it all, to encourage, advise and warn, like the Queen with Tony Blair. I asked him more than once what the disadvantages were, so that we could weigh them up. I said more than once that such an offer mightn’t come again, and he ought to try it once, a big corporation, and a certain sacrifice of independence, and the disadvantages were measureable. I hope I helped. He said at one point, movingly, ‘Well, you’re the only one who knows my whole career.’ Providential that he was here for the telephone thing.

At one point he said ‘I had a barbecue party last week, and I didn’t ask you.’ ‘Oh?’ ‘Roy and Marian came.’ ‘Really?’ ‘It was for the England, Portugal match. Arlette was jumping up and down.’ Goodness, where would I have put myself if I’d gone? For either the football or the food. Left about seven, after carrying all the old books boxes outside and various other little jobs. Saw him on to the ‘bus, to the concert at S. Bush Empire – I suppose, - three young men, as alike as triplets, brothers of someone in the pop group Steps.

Forgot to note, that the other day, going over to B. Court like a time-traveller, because I needed some BQ ear-plugs, which I haven’t found anywhere else, as Boots don’t do them, I was most interested to see that the very suspect mini-market built into the tube-station had gone bust the moment my back was turned. Just as in so many changes. Think of the pine- tree at the cottage.

Going on with the Alfred Douglas book. Verdict later.

Thursday June 15 2000

Another day when I meant to go to a film, but circumstances…

He left his sunglasses on the dining-room table. I rang to let him know, and he obviously needed them for Denmark, which is tomorrow now. (Did I say he’s going over to see that ‘Novelty’ group Acqua?) So I said I’d bring them over. He always seems to see that as much more of what he calls ‘a big deal’ than it is. When I got there, he was out. But had a lovely chat to lovely A. She’s finished her exams. ‘I didn’t do so well in the last exam, as I was a bit tired, but I got Firsts in all the others, I know.’ And even then you don’t want to murder her. Rang H to reassure her, as she was ringing yesterday. Described the S. Dali – Mae West lips ‘phone to her, and was amused that A. made ‘No, don’t’ gestures.

Friday June 16 2000

Took the Godmersham engraving in to the shop round the corner. Offered to have it ready this p.m. Asked for deposit!

Script arrived from Paul Ryan, sent, of course, to St. D’s. Oh dear, I find it very difficult to believe the boy has the gifts for any writing, and the play is set in Brooklyn. What would I think of a young American actor writing a play set in the East End, only having seen English films, talent or no talent?

In the p.m. at last to film ‘Une Liason Pornographique.’ Nathalie Baye and a Spanish actor new to me, Sergi Lopez. I love her, excellent, ever since La Nuit Americaine. And he is a find. Lovely little film, with some passages actually like a love-affair between adults.

Saturday June 17 2000

Finding many half forgotten books, tho’ I am interested (and rather impressed) that I can recognise 95% of my books by their binding alone, before I take them out of their boxes. A pleasant little book, with an imitation vellum back, the Early Lives of Dante, with a good photo of the bust, and W.A. Reynolds, 1905 on the fly-leaf, D’s father. Poor young man, he didn’t know he had only eight years left.

Call from Karen. S. wants me to lunch on Monday, and see flat after. I suggested the Brackenbury, and K said S knew it and had been there.

A bicycle in the hall, rather selfishly placed. Put it like this, if my door opened outwards, I couldn’t have got out of the flat. I moved it so that I could get past. Later found it moved back. Hm.

Message on the machine from Felix’s office, inquiry for me for a one-off final episode of One Foot In The Grave. Shan’t do it, of course.

H rang as usual now, and I asked how Geoffrey’s sister’s funeral went. She said it was a perfect little country funeral – ‘two vicars’ – G was all right, ‘And I wasn’t moved until her dog came and sat by the grave.’ Oh dear, how little they know what they are saying!

Sunday June 18 2000

Beastly hot. Could do nothing but lie on the bed with the curtains drawn. Thank goodness for north facing rooms.

Martin Amis all over the place. Too calculated and studied for me, but then with those parents –

Why do fire engines and ambulances have their names printed backwards? What are they being reflected in?

Monday June 19 2000

Another hideously hot day. Last night was the hottest in London ‘since records began.’ But they said 1961. Surely longer than that? I thought it was at least 1870 or so when controlled records began. Or perhaps they didn’t start recording nights till then.

Lay on bed sweating behind the curtains again. Found hilarious section from ’87 diary by chance, and read it to Roy. Shrieked. How seldom he rings now!

Tuesday June 20 2000

Fifty-eight illegal Chinese immigrants suffocated in a refrigerator van at Dover. Horrible. I don’t, all the same, quite understand the fuss about asylum-seekers. Of course we must give oppressed people help, but I presume there must be some control for the sake of the people themselves. I mean, we still have over a million unemployed, a housing problem, a waiting- list at the NHS, and so on, and surely we have to protect them from that. As for the Chinese, I am sorry. All the same there’s something deeply depressing about their small expectations and frightful endurance.

The other day, in my taxi, I was behind a smartly painted white van, and my eye was caught by the address on it, Fisherton St. Salisbury, where the dear old Playhouse used to be. But I was rather staggered to find it was a solicitor’s van. Documents? Plaintiffs?

To H’smith for pension and shopping and taxi back, as will become, I hope, a routine. My taxi-driver, a retired boxer? with a very broken nose and a fairly deaf ear, - and I wasn’t sure about his eyes – had to be told three or four times my address.

I suddenly noticed that one of the cartons of cream had leaked, and little spots had even got through the bag onto the floor. As the floor of taxis are now a sort of woven door-mat of coarse fiber, it was not possible to wipe it. Told him when I got out, - there were only twelve or fifteen drops the size of my little finger nail, but he was quite sniffy and said he’d have to clean it now or it would smell. As if it were my fault and not Safeway’s. Gave him a big tip, and hared for the sink, leaving a trail of drops right thro’ the flat. I‘d turned the passage light on as it’s always a bit dark, although it was about five on a sunny day, and just as I got to the sink, the lights went off. At once you think it’s just you, and you run the tiresome scenario in your head, no hot water, the fridge-freezer off, no TV, very late to get an electrician. Somehow it coming on top of the cream threw me. I rang K he was mild and said ‘Well, find out a bit more, and then - ’ So I had to go to the shops, one or two neighbours about, and like the blitz, laughs and Is yours off too? Got to the shops and saw the traffic lights were off, and the shops dark and their tills not working. Relieved, as I knew it was a general power cut, and there was nothing I could do. I left the complaining to the shop-keepers.

Rang the emergency number and got a recorded announcement about power cuts, of which there seemed to be six or seven in London. Ours was all the w. postal districts, and the failure itself actually in Shepherds Bush, and was to be repaired by eight-thirty. Actually it was restored just before eight, in time for dinner. Could scarcely have come at a better time, nearly the longest day. All the same, I’m grateful for our many candlesticks.

Later still I was rather staggered to see just how big an affair it had been. Endless traffic- jams, and the six o’clock news being packed up and taken away from the TV Centre to be transmitted from somewhere else. It seems the BBC’s emergency generator chose that day to go up in flames…

Wednesday June 21 2000

Didn’t go out at all.

Read and enjoyed a detective-story, Luxury Amnesia, by a David Huggins. Struck by complimentary notices on back by no less than David Hare and Stephen Fry, unusual reviewers of thrillers. Then one or two things clicked. It was dedicated to Madeleine Christie, a distinguished, if not all that well known actress, - had some reclame years ago for playing Queen Victoria in something on the telly. Whether that was when D worked with her, I can’t remember, but she liked and admired her. She must be older than D, surely. So will be in her late eighties. Then I saw that his next book is to be about three generations of a theatrical family, and is to be called ‘Me! Me! Me!’ Then I remembered, Huggins was Jeremy B’s real name, and this is his and Anna M’s son, whom we knew something of when she was in Jean Brodie with D. I wonder if I wrote down at the time Anna’s tales of her mother, who, I think, even allowing for mother/daughter difficulties, was really a bit of a monster. For instance, when Raymond and Adrianne’s new house at H’stead had its house- warming, an immensely smart occasion, Daniel and Anne, aged, I suppose seven and four,- something like that – exquisitely dressed, were posed in their exquisitely decorated, packed- with-toys respective rooms, when the cream of ‘London’, theatre were shown round.

The book is good – lively, sharp, witty. I don’t know whether the new book is a murder story…

Thursday June 22 2000

To do some shopping – some glasses at last and new film ‘Driving Me Crazy’, a college film, two young people, next-door neighbours, child-hood brother and sister friends, and guess what? A very poor affair.

Have got as far with the books as I can get at the moment, until the rest of the boxes are brought down, and we get the extra shelves in the kitchen/dining-room and the utility-room. But I’m still glad I didn’t have the shelves made any taller.

Friday June 23 2000

Stayed in to cope with the Council Tax demand, and, I hope, clear it up and be exempted again. I didn’t realise that it is attached to the property and not the person, and that you had to apply again. It’s nice to know that I could pay it if I had to, and some idiot was slow. I was twenty minutes on the ‘phone trying to get through with a maddening recorded announcement saying every few seconds, ‘We remind you that you are paying for this call.’ Very gracious.

K rang to see if all was well, and if I minded that he couldn’t come for at least a week. I didn’t, I want his work and that business deal not to be interrupted.

Saturday June 24 2000

Decided to lunch at Café Pasta in Ken. H. St., as I had a £5 voucher, and I had to pick up the Siddons books. Also bought a new novel by someone, name of Amy Soha, and Footsteps by Richard Holmes. Has a new book out, but thought I’d better read this 1985 one first. Looked around ironmongers – no sign of a kitchen-paper holder. Long handled shears and turf- cutters reduced, but need the car to get them home.

Back here, the dear little kiddy grandchildren upstairs were thundering about, sounding as if they were coming thro’ the ceiling. I don’t know how anyone can bear the way children do things continuously for hours. Still, it is only for a bit on Saturday or Sunday. The rest of the time there’s absolute silence. No TV, no radio, at least audible.

The dear little Polish plasterer rang the bell suddenly, and needed water. And again, sweetly apologetic. So glad he felt he could. Why no water next door?

Sunday June 25 2000

No Sunday papers. Rang, eventually at two, ‘Oh, haven’t you had them? We’re closed now.’ Silvery laughter from middle-aged Indian woman.

For the first time I inhabited the book-room. Hovered, and took in that arm-chair of Mother’s, a little table, and had my gin in there. Plucked S Wilson’s memoirs out, and read them for the first time since I bought them in 7 something. Touching, and painful with the Broadway production and the film. All the same, I can’t quite believe in Sandy’s version. There was – perhaps there still is – a certain waspishness, but what a perfect minor achievement. ‘SD’ wasn’t even that.

I heard cocktail chatter next door – at first I thought it ‘noise’, but snobbery made me stop resenting it! When is K going to Denmark?