DIARY
0 n the beach this year, nudity was the pressing question. I was struck by how different our children's childhood is from our own in this respect. The seaside in my childhood meant the bracing North Sea, sand in the sandwiches and so on. Adults and children alike did a St Vitus's dance under the towels in order to undress. But on our Mediterranean island all ages and sexes went topless, and round the next secluded bay, nothing was worn at all. Last Year the younger daughter made a game of this: they ran along the beach counting willies. This year, at four and five, they were too blasé to notice, and neither stared nor made remarks as we of another genera- tion tended to. How, I wonder, will their indifference affect their lives? Already they are less ingenue than I was at 18. Will it dull their curiosity, blunt the excitement? It also posed a question for us. In a topless world, to cover up is an act of wilful defiance (or becoming modesty). My eldest daughter insisted on modesty on my behalf. Over dinner the family, nine of us, discussed it. The men were interested to see that so many women have terrifying bosoms (unaccustomed as they are). My elegant sister-in-law from Madrid wore a black one-piece suit which looked, in the midst of all the globulous flesh, sensation- al. As for the full frontal men lying stretched out, what poor bare fork'd things indeed. It was my mother-in-law who declared that the problem here is one of visibility. Perhaps some sort of magnifying glass could be provided, she suggests?
It is customary to feel a visceral fear and loathing on returning to grey London from the blue Mediterranean but it was fool- hardy to arrange to arrive at the start of a cold and windy bank holiday weekend. Clouds have never looked more lowering than over the stained grey concrete towers of Clapham Junction from the window of the Gatwick train. Each year the return home is more déjà vu. Boarding a Boeing 737 and then reading over someone's shoulder, 'Urgent checks ordered on all 737s'. Reading over another shoulder of the imminent sale of one's newspaper group (five times, over the years, our respective organs have changed owners or editors in our absence). Then the taxi at Victoria, whose tariff states that two chil- dren count as one adult. Ah, but that is for fare purposes only. Our family of six, with four children under ten, is still more than four persons and therefore too many for one cab. Back in England an hour and already locked in a bitter dispute! In the litter-strewn streets everyone looks ill and desperate and it is so cold I have to light a fire and use up all the fircones laid down for winter. An urgent expedition to Hamp- stead Heath will cheer us up, but what is VALERIE GROVE this? A GLC brownsuit rushes up to us on the deserted slopes of Kenwood and in- forms us that we cannot throw our boomer- ang here. Whatever next? The returning traveller feels like a stranger.
Ithink Bishop Tutu deserves some sort of prize for naming his son Trevor. 'Trevor Tutu' is a collector's item for those who enjoy inappropriate bondings of names (such as Adrian Mole's American pen- friend, Hamish Mancini). My husband is Trevor by name and he still smarts over it; his mother's excuse is that she happened to be stationed in wartime North Wales at the time. When paired with Valerie, of course, the names inevitably sound like a footbal- ler and his hairdresser wife, or a sequinned couple on Come Dancing. I used to long to ask other Valeries (Valerie Eliot, Valerie Minogue, Valerie Pakenham) how they liked it. Then, shortly after she played with Lennie Bruce's wife in the film Lennie, I met Valerie Perrine, the American actress, by chance. 'Don't you hate the name Valerie, isn't it ghastly?' said I. 'No!' she cried. 'I just love it! If I hadn't been baptised Valerie I'd have changed my name to Valerie!' Oh,' I said. I haven't felt so strongly about it since. As for Grove as a surname, the charm is that it sounds like an address, so we could have become Mr and Mrs Grove of The Grove if only we instead of Sting, the famous pop singer, had bought Yehudi Menuhin's house. Per- haps instead we shall snap up Grovelands, the stuccoed Nash villa in Southgate with its octagonal rooms and Ionic columns.
Peregrine Worsthorne, seduced by George Melly on the art room sofa at Stowe? This passing reference in a recent Spectator (Profile, 27 July) made me pon- der, not just on mysterious and picturesque deflowerings — I recently shared a bottle of finest Australian champagne with the film producer Margaret Fink, who ex- husband Leon Fink, as is often reported, deflowered Germaine herself — but on schools that throw quite disparate class- mates together. Who would imagine, for instance, that George Orwell was at school
with Cecil Beaton (St Cyprian's)? Ot Sir Roy Strong with Mr Norman Tebbit (Edmonton County Grammar)?
Mr Waldo Clatterway, a Victorian exile in A. N. Wilson's new novel, exclaims in horror at every return home 'about England's mores, ton, zeitgeist and risor- gimento. He took it as axiomatic that the French cooked better meals, the Italians were better musicians, the Prussians . . .' etc. Oh dear yes. At times like these, when we make the depressing rediscovery that a nectarine never tastes quite the same when bought in Crouch End, the solution is to leave London as quickly as possible for the greener pastures of the Thames Valley. Here peace and prosperity reign, 'in the more fortunate half of England', as John Mortimer describes it in his vastly enjoy- able forthcoming novel, Paradise Post- poned. His story unfolds in the entirely recognisable location of Henley-on- Thames and its environs, 'whose inhabi- tants have been spared,' as he writes, 'no doubt for longer than they deserve, the slow but inexorable march of civilisation.' Certainly everyone I know who lives in these parts enjoys a continuing optimism about mankind. They seem protected, even on regatta days when Bash the Rich oiks threaten. On this bank holiday Mon- day, four aged gents in their whites and straw hats played gentle croquet on the lawns of Phyllis Court Club, nothing but green all around and the Thames running softly by. The big house in Mr Mortimer's novel, we were told in Sunday's Observer profile, is Stonor Park. Passing by Stonor on Monday I found a craft fair in full swing, the deer park entirely given over to the parking of cars. These fairs, the accept- able face of Sunday trading, are to be found any weekend at some stately home. Here barrelmakers, wheelwrights, spin- ners, dry-stone wailers, thatchers, book- binders, lace-makers and those who fashion corn dollies perform their ancient skills for wonderfully up-to-the-minute prices, e.g. £6.50 for the very tiniest trug. Maintaining old England is a costly busi- ness. The latest threat, I heard, to Thames Valley tranquillity is not from the anarchist mob but from Waitrose, who have designs on the dear old Henley Regal cinema next door. Unthinkable! The Regal's mighty Wurlitzer, the very one upon which Mag- gie Smith rose in A Private Function, is played regularly by the top organists in the land. To queue outside the Regal on a Saturday night is to be reminded of a time when bingo was still called housey-housey. The Regal is the last cinema of its breed (none survives in Marlow or Maidenhead) and there is always an Intermission with a proper theatre bar and drinks. Something has got to be done.
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