DIARY
JOHN MORTIMER
or at least 15 years of my adult life I was concerned in divorcing people, not per- sonally, but as a barrister. Warring hus- bands and wives would drag up every pos- sible and wounding accusation against each other, and no holds appeared to be barred. They would charge each other with talking too much (`nagging'), or too little (Indulging in long periods of sullen silence'), of being uninterested in sex ('wil- ful refusal of conjugal rights'), or being over-amorous (`excessive sexual demands'). Every form of love-making, apart from the missionary position, could be stigmatised as `perverse practices', and we spent many days in court trying to decide exactly who threw the fish-slice at whom in 1946. When the bottom of the barrel was being scraped for matrimonial misdemeanours and sexual habits were being described in detail, I find it hard to believe that child abuse, had it happened, would not have figured in some hundreds of cases, and yet I cannot remem- ber it doing so. Now, it seems, the divorce courts hear of little else, and American cus- tody cases, including Woody Allen's, are filled with these allegations. As Judge Katherine McDonald of the New York Family Court has complained, such issues are almost impossible to try and possibly `spurious claims' are extremely hard to sub- stantiate. I can't make up my mind if child abuse, like sex, only came in around the time of the Beatles' first LP, or if it's the allegations that started then.
Afor Woody Allen and Mia, I hope the world can soon return to enjoying their talents and ignoring their private lives. I wrote a film with Mia Farrow in it long ago and I thought her enchanting. She did have, in the Sixties, a tendency to sit on the floor wrapped in some ethnic garment and, look- ing up to the ceiling, say things like, `Mozart, wherever you are, I love you, Mozart.' But she could be extremely funny, especially about Frank Sinatra's bedroom floor, which was apparently covered with an elaborate model railway. Woody Allen I found enormously gloomy, despite the fact that he had enjoyed a lifetime of success and some of the most beautiful women in the world. I disagreed with him when he said comedy was less important than tragedy. Comedy, he thought, didn't deal with the big background. 'What's the "big background" like?' I remember asking him. He answered, perhaps after an appalled glimpse into the future, 'Horrible!'
In all that has been said and written about the events in what was Yugoslavia, one sentence has dropped out of current usage. No one says nowadays, 'It's the
Bomb that's kept peace in Europe for the last 47 years.' We are armed to the teeth with bombs and one of Europe's most hor- rible and merciless wars is taking place before our eyes, at which we remain con- fused and helpless spectators. It's been clear for some time that our world is not going to explode in a nuclear holocaust, as the old-time CND marchers feared, but in a gradual Lebanonisation of all civilised countries, and the splitting up of nations into small groups, liberally supplied with mutual hatred, mortar bombs and kalash- nikov rifles. The guilt will be attributable not to nuclear scientists but to small-arms dealers and racial bigots. As events occur in European holiday resorts which we once thought only possible in Cambodia or Abyssinia, we can remember that great civilisations were destroyed with the most primitive weapons, and the Bomb, which we either hated or valued so much, has become an expensive irrelevance.
We have just come back from Chi- antishire, where there seemed to be fewer British holidaymakers, although Mr Lam- ont was apparently seeking political asylum there until very recently. This came as a relief to me as I have been accused of flooding Tuscany with Brits, just as Peter Mayle is now charged with having diverted them all to Provence because he wrote a book about it. I'm inclined to think that the power of writers is absurdly overestimated: my most recent novel was largely set in Muswell Hill and I have heard no reports of an army of tourists besieging Alexandra Palace. We do, however, come in for the most unlikely blame. I was having dinner 'It's very like the home life of our own dear Queen.'
with my family outside a restaurant in Radda when a couple came up to our table with their clearly pregnant daughter. 'This,' the mother said in a prosecuting counsel's voice, 'is entirely your fault!' When seemed somewhat taken aback she said, `You should never have written that book about a summer holiday in Italy.'
The BBC has a contest to discover the greatest eco-villain, or despoiler of the environment. Obvious choices such as motor-car manufacturers and property developers seem to be in the lead, but I had already selected the League Against Cruel Sports, aided and abetted by the RSPCA. The countryside is preserved largely due to hunting, shooting and fishing, which last is, second to gardening, our most popular occupation. These organisations and those like them would seek to end the traditional way of life in the country, and the RSPCA now seems prepared to threaten livestock farming in the South of England and banish sheep and cows from our fields. A young farmer near here, running 700 sheep and trying desperately to make a living, was invaded by RSPCA officials who had heard rumours of one sick and perhaps neglected sheep. Instead of issuing a gentle warning, they hauled him up before the magistrates in a local town, a process which set him back thousands of pounds in fines and costs. Such institutions are now extremely wealthy, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare has spent £200,000 to enable a clergyman at Oxford to resolve the ethical and theological rights of animals. This study has apparently led him to the conclusion that animals have souls, and the Bible is in error when it suggests that Jesus cast devils into swine. Meanwhile, fishing saboteurs plan to make loud noises and canoe violently to disrupt the occupation which has soothed so many human souls since the days of Izaak Walton, and hunt saboteurs get paid £40 a day plus a free packed lunch and the use of a Dormobile. The story of a girl who went protesting two days a week so she could afford to hunt on the third is no doubt apocryphal.
One of the most admirable qualities of Australians is that they speak their minds on these matters. I heard from a judge's wife how on one chilly winter night in the occasionally draughty Sydney Opera House an attractive middle-aged lady was wrapped in a fur coat. 'Do you realise how many ani- mals had to die for that coat on your back?' a politically correct young person asked her. 'Yes,' she said. 'And do you realise how many animals I had to sleep with to get it there?'
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