I meant to get this blog out on time but at Easter I fell on the stairs. Consternation. I was taken to Yeovil by kind neighbours and was dispatched home after being stitched up by the predictable skilled and friendly foreigners. Five stitches and a scar I shall pass off as the result of a student duel somewhere like Heidelberg. This in deference to Dr. Rudi who put them in and lives in Vienna. Otherwise nothing has changed – the outlook both personal and universal could scarcely be bloodier yet I feel…felt, (still do)… oddly content. Must be some mistake! This morning I turned on the radio and tuned in to hear us being beaten at cricket by Bangladesh. Had I stuck with Classic FM I would have got the blessed Nick Bailey. I wish I had done so in which case I would have described how it was in the small hours, how I leant over, turned on my trusty Roberts radio and taken it from there. I knew Dick Roberts incidentally. He was a former president of the Royal Warrant Holders and I met Dick researching the first of two official histories. I said I was a ‘footnote figure’ and you can’t get more footnote than that. I also knew Oswald Mosley who used to embark on apparently irrelevant thoughts only they turned out to be relevant after all and he would invariably return to the matter in hand most impressively. He also had a strange habit of making his eyes blaze just as you were getting bored. Question – was Sir Oswald battery operated or a mains man? That inevitably leads/led to a proper Parky sense of humour which is, on the whole, to be avoided. Too dangerous!
I would then have gone from a serious discussion of battery, mains and Sir Oswald to his wife Diana Mosley and thence to my near-miss with Nancy the novelist at home or the Duchess of Devonshire, Debo, whom I did meet. I would then have gone back to the radio and to Nick Bailey and Classic FM which would then…meanwhile in real life the first reunion lunch of the speech therapy group at the Pilgrims at Lovington, a speech to a P-group in Wincanton and Terry Pratchett died. I didn’t know Pratchett but the father of my editor Kate Lyall Grant has a shop of Discworld objects – he and his wife came to my first wedding and turned up when I spoke at last year’s Sherborne festival.
The Wincanton group is very whizzy and underwritten by Cameron Mackintosh but sadly they had no lapel microphones and Penny had to hold one for me. This meant that for once she had to sit alongside me and I’m afraid that I departed from the text and ad-libbed at her expense. Although I say it myself I did so humorously and quite well. Gratifyingly so apart from Penny who was doubly insulted – first by my going off-piste and second by the favourable reaction of the audience. It also raises the question of naming names.
I think I prefer fiction to fact. In my world of make believe people go on forever; in what passes for real life Ion Trewin and Richie Benaud just died. I knew Benaud through researching my book on Brian Johnston and Ion was my editor Needless to say I knew Ion better than Richie. He edited a number of my books including Prince Philip.
And I remember him sitting at a table at the palace defending me after we had our text back from the Duke liberally and predictably littered with peppery comments. When I had my disagreement it was resolved in Brian’s office and then Brian warned me not to sit alongside Ion as he was about to play one of his practical jokes, He then explained how I had stuck to my guns, we had had a row and I had gone home. I watched as Ion went white at the prospect of losing one of his authors and then rejoined them marveling at how quickly he reverted to fighting his corner – and mine – as normal. As I told his wife Ion was always a good person to have on your side. I am allowed, incidentally, to identify these people because they are dead. No matter that they have living friends and relations, they can’t answer back. That is the nub of the matter of naming of names. The other is the propensity of living names getting me into trouble .In vain do I protest that I am as sane as ever – not very. The experts insist that every time I do step out of line I am dementing. No matter of the fact that I feel the same, no matter that the initial questioning was perfunctory. No matter of the failure to read the novels, however bad, the tests prove that I’m dementing. QED.
End of rant. In real life we have just returned from a visit to the head shrink with the first post mortem of the Wincanton meeting. It transpires that Penny thought me embarrassingly bad. Ah well. Just goes to show. Work continues to divide as before. It depends who is prepared to pay. In the old days at moments such as this I’d usually hear a strangled cry demanding to be told about death, reunions and the CWA. I will pass rapidly over the reunion lunch because the most important item was that there should be absolutely no agenda. Which brings me to the annual conference of the Crime Writers’ Association held in Lincoln this year. The highest and holiest spot was in the cathedral on Palm Sunday. We arrived shortly before ten expecting matins but finding the choristers all lined up and waving ferns. They were about to process and we were invited to join in.
Me and my stick were ushered into a choir stall and we had the whole story of what happened in the garden of Gethsemane sung to us. Chanted rather than sung for there was no discernible tune
Unpaying work is not a problem. Odd if it were. The president of one club wants a chapter, a friend in California needs a piece but neither pays! Story of my life so far and story of the future. If so it’ a pity. Discuss…