Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XIV (1996 – 1997)

Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XIV (1996 – 1997) ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 139 February 5 1996 - March 21 1996. Monday February 5 1996 (cont). Hazel sent me an interview with S. in the Telegraph. Not bad, and it helps me as all interviews do, to find out a bit more about his plans than he tells me… A cheque from Felix for the first time for a couple of months, only £48 but very welcome. And another little unexpected treat, £50 off my £71 electricity bill ‘a one- off National Grid discount…?’ Tuesday February 6 1996 A sprinkling of snow, but pretty bad elsewhere. Wrote to the tax-people at last. I hope I can forget it for a bit. I’m amused to see that ‘fashion’s girl of the moment’ is a model called Stella Tennant. Turned up wearing a nose and a navel ring, which she has since abandoned, carried her possessions in a carrier bag, and had a lot of what they now call ‘attitude.’ The amusement comes from the discovery that she is Debo Devonshire’s grand- daughter. As lady Redesdale said, long ago, ‘Whenever I see ‘peer’s daughter’ in a headline, I know it’s one of your girls.’ Rang Mary L. I think it was a little stroke. She doesn’t sound it, but she says she is a bit confused. “How does it declare itself?’ ‘Well, I suddenly can’t spell very well.’ Like B. Pym, M refuses to go to the doctor, unlike B.P, who was cured by anti high blood-pressure pills. Not that I blame her. Oh those travel programmes, all those beautiful places ruined or about to be ruined by this pathetic and terrible restlessness. And autism – another name for mental illness and what seems to me to be raging egotism. The programme about Covent Garden made me glad that I have never suffered the horror of being filmed in the dressing-room or the wings during a performance. Having to perform in the wings is the very negation of acting. Bad night, I am awake now at five o’clock, no discernible reason. Wednesday February 7 1996 Stayed in bed till lunch, dozing on and off, and rather dreading having to entertain even Sh. I was buoyed up by not having to clean much. I hoovered the dining-room for Curry’s delivery men… and not such a heavy shop as usual, as I had the pots., the vegs, and the soup. Bought two trout, farmed, of course, but they are now one of the cheaper fish at £1.74 each. Also two Bramley apples, by far the best for cooking. So the dinner was that good mushroom soup, the trout with little beans and sugar-snap peas, fried pots, and apples meringue, cheese, of course. She had two helpings of my despised over-cooked vegetables, and two of the apple meringue. I do love to see that. She is decidedly more tranquil, more humdrum, and rather disappointing me for my installment of Mills and Boon, with no lover at the moment. I was thankful to find that she could talk of K ordinarily, even getting reminiscent about him, and when I said he’d asked me to show her something, and it turned out to be a news-cutting about Bert and Ernie being snatched from the display case in Frankfurt, valued at £80,000 – ‘At least they’re still together.’ She shrieked as though, at once, her child had been abducted and as if she was seeing the funniest film of her life. She asked for two copies. But she did have two developments to interest me. The girl who had the big room at the flat is leaving and they had to audition her successor. From her account, it was exactly like the beginning of Shallow Grave. Even more so, if possible, as by the time the last few applicants turned up, they were rather pissed and teasing. Poor applicants. Alex has a new love, and tried Sh’s patience by laughing and playing music with her, too loudly… I was secretly amused, when she talked of her work, to find her using a couple of the phrases K used, when we talked of her and her future career last week. That’s an advance. Still awake at two, after a midnight feast of cold chicken, cheese and the last two spoonfuls of apple meringue… Thursday February 8 1996 What curious difficulty I have had this year in remembering to put 96. Just getting back to normal after Justin. It’s nice to have the new fridge to myself from the start, and not to suffer his unthinking selfishness in emptying the top shelf for his stuff. He certainly knows how to spoil himself. In the p.m. to see new German film, clumsily translated as ‘The Most Desired Man.’ I was curious to see the most successful German comedy ever – even perhaps film… in Germany. There had been some very snide comments about ‘German comedy’ being an oxymoronic idea. Now I am far from feeling that German comic talent is the supplest, all the same I felt it must have some merit. Well, it has, a bit. I have certainly seen worse, and it has a lighter touch than I expected. It’s a pity they chose a perfect blond for the man – he looked like one of those perfect models with impossibly smooth skin and no prick. Quite a few people there, I was just getting up to go out, as the credits rolled, when the three principal men suddenly appeared, sitting down and singing a twee little song about love. Now that was leaden German. My left arm is painful, just before the bicep, between it and the shoulder. It feels like a strain, from carrying heavy weights. The launderette? the shopping? They have to go on. Friday February 9 1996 Dream about lights being out and row with K. Then I woke up, and turned on the light on my right-hand bed table, and found it dead. Then woke up further to realise that my only lamp is on the left hand side. My first waking seemed perfectly rational. Well, they say toasted cheese… because I had another snack in the small hours. It’s better than not sleeping. This p.m. went to Eric Rohmer’s new film ‘Rendezvous in Paris.’ (That’s how it’s spelt in the papers, and I’m ashamed to say I can’t remember how it was spelt in the film.) The credits were rather ‘fifties, coloured capitals a bit skew wiff, and first shot was of a man in a beret and with a concertina, and a gravel voiced girl singing a chanson in a narrow old Paris street. All in inverted commas, and yet not, like all our generation. Three short stories, all of young love, all unobtrusively crafted to seem uncrafted. Most of the critics, being in their thirties or forties, were rather dismissive. Ah, that’s what they were like, but they don’t see it yet. E.R. is seventy, and sees a lot. It went in a flash. When I got there I was rather upset by seeing a portly silvered-haired man, as it might be me, push his way into the foyer rather impetuously, - the floor is, I suppose, vinyl, thick, black, ridged, and highly polished – and measured his length. A member of staff, and his wife, picked him up, and he limped bravely to the box office, bought the tickets, and tottered into the film. I just hope he could still limp when he got up after the film. To the Safeway’s nearby after. The subtitles were rather crudely translated again. I’m sure that no director has any influence over such subtitles. For instance, the district Palais Royal was translated as Royal Palace, which is just about as sensible as translating Royal Oak as Le Chême Royal, so that no French viewer would know it was a district. When I got back and was taking my shoes off for my bath, I realised the radio was bending to a crisis, a large black bomb on the Isle Of Dogs, by South Quays Station, breaking the eighteenth month IRA ceasefire. Sinn Fein said they knew nothing of it, did not condemn it and attributed it to the British Government’s selfishness. Whatever the issues or opinions, it is a strange way to go about seeking peace by letting off a large bomb instead of making concessions to get around a table of discussion. Wearisome. I’d found a reduced steak at Safeway – sirloin, but a bit tough. Saturday February 19 1996 Rang Justin in case he was thinking of coming to pick up stuff and disturb my weekend by being three hours later than he said. I asked him if he’d read and enjoyed the Simon Grey book on the Fry business. His answer is a good example of the silly little triviality that unfortunately is a sizable part of his character. ‘It was so full of hate, I couldn’t read more than a few pages, and I’ve always had a soft spot for Stephen Fry.’ And he wants to be a critic! R rang at last, and again had nothing to say, except that he can’t come next weekend. ‘Because of the car’ a cupboard door fell off of its own accord, and he hopes he can screw it back on again. Well, he is a stage carpenter… He saw Seven and thought it awful.

Load more