DIARY
MAX HASTINGS
0 ur annual pilgrimage to the High- lands was as wonderful as ever, but we heard appalling tales about the persecu- tion of landowners by the new Scottish ruling class. Rival bureaucracies contend to harass estates. One friend is being pressured by the Deer Commission, under new and aggressive management, to shoot more deer. In that case, he asked, would the Commission write to Scottish Nation- al Heritage and tell them to stop demand- ing unlimited public access, because ram- blers in large numbers are incompatible with killing stags? Oh, no, said the Com- mission. Not their business. 'As far as I can see,' my friend told a local council access representative, 'the idea is that landowners go on paying the bills for everything so that everybody else can use the land as a playground.' SNH has rebuked him for using a mild herbicide to kill small trout in the burn above his loch, which he has been doing for years on the advice of the Freshwater Fish Laboratory, to encourage fewer and larger trout. Which institution is he to take orders from, he wants to know. Police harass- ment of estates on firearms issues is grow- ing. It is now more complex for a foreign sporting tourist to bring a gun into parts of Scotland than into Ireland. Tayside police are particularly notorious. A con- stable appeared at the gate recently, and announced that he was Tayside Police's Wildlife Officer', come to plant a surveil- lance camera on one of the estate's pere- grine nests. My friend inquired, why wasn't he off catching burglars?
Scotland is now densely populated with peregrines and other large raptors, yet the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds remains obsessed with promoting the pro- liferation of raptors at the expense of every other species, even since last year's Langholm Report conclusively demon- strated how an unchecked raptor popula- tion devastates not only grouse, but other prey species. One of the RSPB's busybod- ies disappeared on a cold night a few months ago, while poking around the estate of a friend. The owner was inclined to leave well alone, but his keeper said he had a good idea what might have hap- pened, and probed the darkness for hours until he found the RSPB man where he had fallen off a cliff and broken his leg. But for that keeper's humanity, the man Could have died out there. My friend remarked, 'The RSPB spend half their lives organising publicity about the wickedness of gamekeepers, but we haven't seen a word anywhere about one who saved their man's life.' It's all mad, of course, and the great question is whether sanity will return to Scottish life before the traditional sporting life of the country, and a very valuable part of its tourism, are destroyed by petty nationalism and a whol- ly suburban vision of conservation.
On one glorious evening in one glori- ous house, a piper played in the dining- room after dinner. I have always adored the pipes, even indoors. The only rich man's luxury worth coveting might be that of hav- ing a piper play before breakfast and after dinner every day. If one has dined wonder- fully and prodigiously, the pipes seem a perfect accompaniment. I deserved to feel terrible that night, since I had eaten four half lobsters for lunch, and watched a friend half my size eat five. In fact, of course, we felt simply marvellous. Enough is merely boring. A couple of evenings later, however, I paid the penalty for greed. `We're having beef tonight,' said our host. `We were going to have grouse, but then we read in the Spectator that you like to eat two or three, and we realised we simply didn't have enough.' I hung my head amid the reproachful glares of the rest of the party.
Iwrote to a friend to congratulate him on a terrific new biography he has pro- duced, but entered one niggle. Why did almost everybody he mentioned in the text have to be 'Charlie Jones, the designer' or `Bill Smith, the photographer'? I wage unremitting war in our own newspaper on promiscuous use of the definite article. It has become a tool of newspaper feature writers, to elevate obscure people to unde- served dignity. If you read on a book jack- et: 'The author is married to Stella McWoffle, the poet', you can bet your socks that Stella McWoffle's work is best known to readers of her parish magazine. Genuinely distinguished people don't need definite articles.
We caught JBIU before it finishes its sadly short run at the Old Vic. It seemed even more marvellous than at first visit almost a decade ago. We came out asking when any of us last saw a comedy in Lon- don which wholeheartedly carried its audi- ence all the way from first line to final cur- tain. I felt a momentary pang of regret that I never got to know Jeff Bernard, despite casual encounters and huge admi- ration for his Spec column. Yet in truth most monsters like Jeffrey are best known at secondhand, through their writing or Keith Waterhouse's genius, rather than face to face. Seeing the play made me reread Graham Lord's excellent Just the One. Almost all those who had to deal with Jeff at close quarters, especially the wives, paid a pretty ghastly price. A still, small voice murmured somewhere, 'Per- haps it's not just Jeff Bernard they say that about.'
Most pitiful modern times story of the week was that of the woman killed when she crashed her car swerving to avoid a baby rabbit on the road. Anybody who swerves in our part of the world is trying to hit the rabbit.
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