Diary
iwo days running last week I found myself watching public school dramas, first Marek Kanievska's film of Another Country then the Chichester production of Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On. Of the two, Forty Years On left our party in an awfully good mood, full of generous nostalgia for the peg-legged gym masters and sinister confirmation classes of our own resPective schools. Another Country left ellerYone feeling rather uncomfortable. le. It was not simply that the story is similar to Lindsay Anderson's film If. . . though there is an identical beating scene and what looked like an identical pretty-boy fag. Nor was it that the film stirred up any murky 1;43°1 of memories that I would rather have orgotten. On the contrary, although the press keeps insisting that Another Country is .based on Eton, since the boys are wearing tads, h didn't remind me of it at all. No doubt Eton in the Thirties was different to .t ton in the Seventies, but that doesn't ex- Plain vyny Alan Bennett's Albion House (set snortly after the second world war) rang such bells and Another Country didn't. Perhaps it is because Forty Years On depends on preposterous, trivial incidents w,nt large of the kind schools are so good at (r,N0 boy will go home for the holidays until 'Atwell's missing gym-shoe is found') and ilnother Country is peopled entirely by ray- iag, aimless, friendless homosexuals, ap- Patently without family. What I now remember about school was listening to re cords in my room and browsing through Magazines in W. H. Smith's. The best re- cwen. t. scene of life in a public school was 8 Illiarn Boyd's television play Good and Qt Games, in which six boys are seen Playing aying 'guitar' solos on tennis rackets to a record player. The music for this brilliant ,eene, 'Badge' by Cream, subsequently en- Yed something of a revival among fans of uormtt
orY Rock.
The dubious maxim that all publicity is , good publicity has never been more
than of the La Paesana restiurant in rtillgate Village. Until Viscount Althorp
Party attempted to remove the disc- Jpo_eek ey Tony Blackburn's trousers there, La. 4 sana was one of the pleasantest third division restaurants in Kensington, and one cl)f the few where main courses still retail at le than four pounds. It was a useful and tehc°110Inical place to pass time with friends „ar You didn't especially want to see. Now adiii that has changed. If you want a table for 1111.er at La Paesana you must book, 13_.reierably the day before. Groups of omghtseers press their noses to the window r wander between the tables to no obvious 0.nrPose. No
oubled by doubt the prices will have n. Althorp, it seems to me, is
given a rotten time by the press, but didn't do himself any favours with the 'exclusive' interview he gave to Paula Yates in The Mail on Sunday. In an attempt to shake off his 'Hooray Henry' image, he told Miss Yates: 'I was with a mixture of people that evening, East Enders, an American, friends from school and college.' Quite apart from the fact that I'm certain Charles Althorp doesn't refer to Magdalen College, Oxford, as 'college', he doth methinks protest too much over the street-credible 'East Ender' and the 'American'. I once met Althorp having lunch in Scotland and found him most genial and not in the least bit Hooray Henry. But it is still a shame about La Paesana.
LT ast week I parked tOmodest car behind Battersea Town Hall to attend a party (entrance five pounds) to launch The Dirty Weekend Book. When I returned in the early hours of the morning I was dismayed to find I had a flat tyre. I came back the next afternoon to repair it, and found that three tyres were now flat. Close inspection revealed that they had all been slashed with a Stanley knife in several places. A frustrating search along the Latchmere Road eventually led me to Budget Tyres, where I was informed that 'grudge slashings' are commonplace in the borough, and tyres a growth business to be in. If I drove a Ferrari or even a black Golf GTi, I would expect to have my tyres slash- ed as a matter of routine. But things must be at a low ebb if 'grudge' contracts are now out on Ford Fiestas. In a way my ex- perience has been salutary. Over the past 18 months I have regularly been branded 'unadventurous' for declining to move south of the river. Now I am pleased that my new house is to be in Chelham: estate agent-speak for the Chelsea-Fulham fron- tier.
Wishing to ring the publishers William Heinemann and not having their telephone number to hand, I dialled direc-
tory enquiries for help. After a good deal of laborious searching, in the course of which I had to spell `Heinemann' and repeat their address several times, I was informed that the firm did not exist. When I politely pointed out that it had certainly existed the day before, and furthermore had recently issued a luxurious Autumn-Winter catalo- gue containing two titles by me, the operator slammed down the receiver. When I rang her supervisor to register my displeasure, my complaint was met with disbelief. 'We only have two bloody- minded operators on this exchange,' I was told. 'Both are men and both are away on the sick.'
Waiting to conduct an interview at Claridge's last week, I witnessed a most extraordinary incident in the coffee lounge. The only other people there at 11 in the morning were a pair of businessmen rapt in conversation and a sheaf of com- pany reports. When one of them stepped outside for a few minutes, presumably to the loo, his colleague (until then slumped in an armchair) leapt up and crossed the room in one bound. Making straight for a rickety little writing desk he not only pilfered every sheet of headed writing paper and envelopes, but also six sheets of blotting paper (including the reserve supply in a drawer) and three biro pens. Having glanc- ed round to ensure he wasn't observed, he slipped the hoard into his briefcase. The in- stinct to steal stationery, especially headed stationery, is perfectly understandable. I do it myself. Club postcards are the greatest temptation; taken to lunch at the Reform Club or the Athenaeum I do not resist pocketing a handful. Since I am not a member of either club I cannot, of course, ever send them. In an emergency, however, they are invaluable for pinning 'Back in five minutes' notices to the front door. Another cache of pilfered stationery I dare not use is a pile of engraved At Home cards. Hiding under the bed of the wife of a newspaper proprietor on New Year's Eve 1981 (we were playing 'Sardines') I came across ten brown paper packages of blank invitations. The following morning several dozen of these tumbled out of my inside pocket. Since it seemed rather feckless to put them in the dustbin, they are still concealed, to my intermittent embarrassment, somewhere in my flat. Before I move house they will be shredded.
In common with other hay fever sufferers, I always find mid-June a particularly try- ing time, since it must mostly be spent cowering indoors. For the last three sum- mers, however, I have at least felt forewarn- ed by the daily pollen forecasts in the papers. This year they seem to have gone, so to spedk, haywire. In last Friday's Daily Mail London was given a low rating, while the Times predicted a medium to high count.
Nicholas Coleridge
Previous page
