Diary
When I last wrote this diary the final item was about Young Fogeys. It was intended as nothing more than a gentle tease of some friends and acquaintances on or around the Spectator. Suddenly every- one went mad. I was asked to write a book about them, to be called The Official Young Fogey Handbook. Naturally I de- clined, though those who claim to have my best interests at heart tell me I was mistaken to do so. ('You'd make far more money that way than by writing a lot of boring old stuff about boring politics.') At least three other people are writing books on these lines. Numerous articles have aPpeared. The phrase is bandied about on the feature pages of newspapers and in the glossy magazines. My daughter, who is 20, thinks it is monstrous that I am not drawing some whacking royalty. I tell her that we live in an unjust world, and that there is no copyright in phrases, or patent on ideas. I hope some lawyer will tell me I am in error about this — copyrights and patents, I mean, not the injustices of the world. But to get the facts right: the phrase may first have been used by Dornford Yates in 1928. I first heard it in conversation with Mr Terence Kilmartin (talking about Dr John Casey, as it happened). I then used it in print. It has produced at least one good publishing story. Mr Andre Deutsch said to his staff that he had read about Young Fogeys somewhere. Where was it? There might be a quick book there. `Pendennis' in the Observer, came the reply. `Penden- nis had indeed written about them, giving me due credit, as was only to be expected from a colleague. Let `Pendennis' be sum- moned to lunch, Mr Deutsch instructed. Mr Peter Hillmore accordingly had lunch With the publisher. Contracts were discus- sed. Returned to his office, Mr Deu,tsch discovered that the `Pendennis' item had been written not by Mr Hillmore, who had been on holiday at the time, but by Mr Simon Hoggart. Whereupon the diminu- tive publisher fell into a rage, claiming he had been deceived — though the fault was entirely his. Mr Hillmore tells us in his column that he is not writing a book about Fogeys. Mr Hoggart is in China, so I have not been able to ask him what he is up to. I remain flattered that the phrase caught on as it did. But, as an RAF Warrant Officer I Spent three unhappy months under used to say, 'joke over'.
Nevertheless I cannot resist adding that if there is one festival which no true Fogey should miss, it is the Handel Opera season at Sadler's Wells. Yet I failed to spot many specimens. Most of the audi- ence, for both Imeneo and Radamisto, seemed to be middle-aged or elderly, Which is, I suppose, exactly what one Would expect. My companion on these occasions is more a Covent Garden-and- Glyndebourne sort. She and I have an annual conversation as unchanging as the musical direction of Mr Charles Farn- combe. 'It's very nice,' she says, 'but why do., they have to get themselves up in tea cosies and old bedspreads?"Who, the singers or the audience?"Well, both of them, though I meant the cast. But the audience look pretty frumpish too if you ask me.' The Handel Opera hasn't got very much money, and the audience all come from the civil service, you see, so they haven't got very much money either, except their index-linked pensions.' No doubt this is all nonsense but it is what I always say — though the Society was in fact founded and is still largely supported by civil servants. I read Mr Tom Sutcliffe in the Guardian adversely criticising Mr Farn- combe for his staidness and calling for more glitter and excitement. He may be right about this — though glitter and excitement cost money, and Mr Farn- combe has done the state some service in his time. Mr Sutcliffe is wrong, I think, in nominating Mr Kim Begley in Radamisto as the season's outstanding singer. That distinction surely belongs to the Welsh mezzo Miss Penelope Walker in Imeneo, who excelled herself in one of those I-am- jolly-angry numbers at which the plausible old Hanoverian tunesmith was so adept. I may be guilty of cultural nationalism here but do not think so.
My journalist friends can be divided into those who regard themselves as public figures, even if in a small way of business, and those who husband their privacy. The first group will accept speak- ing engagements, while the second will not, unless a large fee happens to be involved and sometimes not even then. Mr Anthony Howard, Mr Donald Trelford and Mr Peregrine Worsthorne belong to the first group, Mr Frank Johnson and Mr
Geoffrey Wheatcroft to the second. I am a reluctant member of the first group. I accept invitations, regret my acceptance in succeeding months and, as the day approaches, become morose. I accept in- itially partly because of vanity, partly because of the satisfaction to be derived from the thought that, even in Mrs Thatch- er's Britain, there are still people prepared to do something for nothing. My latest expedition was to the University of Kent at Canterbury to give what has now become my standard all-purpose address entitled 'Politicians and the Press'. When Mr Wor- sthorne went to Blackpool recently to talk to a less decorous assembly he announced afterwards in this column that he had been a great success. Unhappily I do not possess either Mr Worsthorne's inner certainty or his confidence to proclaim it. I have no idea whether I was a success or not. At any rate I managed to keep going for an hour without a note or falling over. The audi- ence seemed reasonably happy. What I do know is that public speaking is, like most activities, largely a matter of practice: I am now a less convincing (anyway less facile) speaker than I was 30 years ago, when I used to perform regularly at the Cam- bridge Union. It was still pleasant to know I could do it at all.
As last Thursday was such a God-given autumn day, and Parliament was not sitting either, I took myself to Guildford
for a short walk westwards along the North Downs Way. Everyone locally seems to call it the Pilgrim's Way, though the map shows the two routes as separate but occasionally overlapping, with the Pilgrims
Way often lost. I walked back to Guildford from Compton along another old road just on the south of the Hog's Back which had huge thick hedges, small continuous woods almost, on both sides. The map marks this `trackway', but I should be surprised if it were not the original Pilgrims Way. There were quite a lot of toadstools about. I wish I knew more about them. Toadstool col; lecting — and eating — might seem a useful and harmless hobby. I should almost certainly do myself harm by poisoning myself, not to mention my nearest and dearest. A friend recently went for a walk in some woods near Blenheim with an expert on fungi, Dr Eric Christiansen, and came back to London with a quantity of the edible variety. He took them to a friend's for supper, carefully peeled them and retired briefly. When he returned to the kitchen he found that his hostess, unaware of his kind intentions, had ex- amined them briefly, not known what they were except that she did not like the look of them, and consigned them accordingly to the waste unit. My friend said it was a bad moment. He had been looking forward all day to his toadstools. He had to settle instead for cold meat preceded by a stiff drink to drown his disappointment.
Alan Watkins
Previous page
