DIARY
DOMINIC LAWSON The obituarist's art has been enjoying a period of high fashion. Now, not just the Times but also the Telegraph and the Independent offer a whole page of notices every day. But sometimes I wonder if the struggle to fill such an expanse of space has not resulted in a lowering of standards. Here, for example, is the heart of an obituary which appeared the other day in the Independent: 'He was educated at Millfield and Southampton University and went on to serve in the Merchant Navy for five years, an experience which he once said made it difficult for him to settle down. He then stumbled into the public relations business. He was an assistant public relations officer for British Rail's Southern Region at Waterloo from 1970 to 1976 and was upset when he was made redundant. After losing his job he worked as a jewellery salesman but was not very successful. He later ran his own public relations business. He had an inventive mind and unsuccessfully tried to market an idea to prevent paint solidifying when the tin had been opened. In 1988 he tried to get elected to the European Parliament without success.' And then, three years later, obiit. It is the sort of obituary which one might read in a particularly desperate parish magazine, and which, for some reason, would give one uncontrollable giggles. But what was all this doing across two columns in a national newspaper? Was it because the dead man was an earl? But such a fact could surely never weigh with the intensely meritocratic and republican Independent.
It seems that an inquiry will be held into how Lambeth council permitted a 14-year- old called Norbert McCootie to stay in an insecure children's home, even though he had a long list of serious convictions and was on bail, accused of rape. On his fifth escape from the children's home, McCootie raped, at the point of a knife, a 53-year-old grandmother. Only a month after that did Lambeth social services put the young man into secure accommoda- tion. One might think from this that Lambeth council does not adequately pro- tect its residents from the danger of vio- lence; but a document has come into my possession which suggests that the council cares desperately, and I feel it should be made available to the forthcoming enquiry into l'affaire McCootie. It is in fact a letter from a Mr Strong, the 'Principal Librarian (Adult and Specialist Services)' in the borough, to Barbara Powrie, who happens to be a reader of The Spectator. Miss Powrie wanted to take out a copy of the best-selling book by Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs. 'Dear Miss Lowrie,' wrote Mr Strong, slightly inaccurately, 'I am writing to you about your reservation for this title. As you may know, Silence of the Lambs concerns the investigation of the brutal murder of a number of women. The librarians who assessed the book were concerned at the general use of graphic and horrific violence by the author, including scenes in which the injuries of female and male victims of the killer are described in detail. In addition, the murderer, Gumb, is portrayed in a very stereotyped way as a homosexual who is also a transsexual, and whose obsession with his mother is used to explain his disturbed fantasy of flaying his women victims and wearing their skins. This negative use of a gay character for shocking effect would certainly be offen- sive to many readers. For this reason, the book will not be purchased for stock in Lambeth's libraries.' One suspects that if Thomas Harris had portrayed Gumb as a rampant heterosexual the book would have passed the Lambeth Board of Censors. Somehow I don't believe that Mr Strong would then have written to Miss Powrie that 'This negative use of a straight charac- ter for shocking effect would certainly be offensive to many readers.' But the mes- sage is clear. The streets of Lambeth may not be safe, but its library shelves certainly are.
`If my opinion were to be polled next week, what would it be?' Athe weekend, while flicking, as almost everyone does, through the classi- fied property advertisements of the Sunday papers, my eye was drawn to a boxed ad for something called 'Video Wills'. The idea, presumably, is to set up a scene in which the bereaved but expectant relatives have to sit around a television and hear the worst, or the best, from the lips of the deceased. It is the sort of thing which used to happen only in television programmes like The Avengers, but now apparently is common practice. Still, I suppose it means that solicitors will be spared some of the dirty work. I recall a wonderful cartoon from the New Yorker in which an evil- looking dying man says to a shocked solicitor at his bedside: 'And when you get to the bit where I disinherit them all, I want you to give a low, mean, little laugh.'
Ican safely predict the result of the row over boxing, stemming from the brain injuries inflicted on the world title challen- ger Michael Watson: that after the noise has died down, the fight business will carry on exactly as before. The only surprise is that the fuss has been so great. Surely everyone knew that professional boxing leads to brain damage. Consider the three greatest champions of the past: Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali. All ended up as shambling, mumbling wrecks. Muhammad Ali at least knew what he was doing: after all, it was he who described professional boxing as 'a crowd of white guys paying to watch two black guys killing each other'.
In the little village where we spend the weekends, a large number of the most prominent and elegant trees have, almost overnight, been disfigured by a new blight. These are shiny yellow 'Neighbourhood Watch' signs. The placards show a hel- meted policeman having a discussion with a black man, something which I don't think is seen very often in Gloucestershire. The idea of these signs, some nationwide job lot from the Department of the Environ- ment, is presumably to encourage every- one to keep a careful eye on what is going on. This is faintly insulting. The whole point of village life is that everyone knows what everyone else is up to. When nosiness is second nature, there is absolutely no need for official encouragement. And the signs have had another bad effect, apart from defiling the trees. They have so terrified one of the three townee house- holds in the village (yes, I admit, we are one) that they have installed a searchlight which automatically and dazzlingly comes on whenever anyone passes their house. Oh well, there goes the neighbourhood.
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