SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

Two events took place this week for which followers of the great Technological Fantasy have been waiting a long time. The first, of course, was the much-heralded 'sonic boom' test run of the Concorde over the cathedrals, glass houses and old age pensioners of the West Coast.

Tara-ra-boom

Three years ago, it may be recalled, a preliminary series of 'test booms' was made over the West Country, and as luck would have it, the very first was made directly over the garden in Dorset where I happened to be sitting working at the time. At 10.52 on a_fine July morning, my summer house shook with a dull boom, birds flew up from the trees, horses panicked in a nearby field, and, as ad- vised by Mr Henn, I rushed to the telephone to register my protest. I got through to the Ministry of Technology, said that! wished to say a few well-chosen words about sonic booms, and was told to ring a MUSeum number. Here a very cagey lady refused to admit that any sonic booms had been made, but eventually, after two or three minutes of expensive telephone time, agreed, without prejudice as the lawyers say, to take note of my complaint.

I thus earned my small place in history as the first person in the country to make an official protest.

Flood of fantasy

Nevertheless I have long maintained that it would be foolish for the anti-technologists to place too much store by these 'tests'. If the cathedral at St Davids does not fall clowni and no one can actually be proved to have died of shock, it will be only too easy for the Concorde lobby to say that no harm has been done. One will only be playing into the hands of such teclmologues as the Alkali Inspector who, in his report last week, quite correctly pointed out that much of the present anti-technology feeling is simply neurotic, in its desire to paint the most hideous pictukes of imminent catastrophe which fantasy can devise—such as that the ice caps will melt as a result of all the carbon dioxide, and the world be deluged, as in Noah's time, with cold water.

Nemesis

In fact the increasingly self-destructive tendency of modern technology can be quite sanely demonstrated without resort to any such fantastic notions—as was shown, for instance, by the revelation that, if the supersonic airliner programme is maintained to schedule, it will probably bring about a grave world oil shortage by the middle of the next decade.

An even more convincing demonstration already with us was the second long-an- ticipated item—the eventual admission by a government report that intensive farming methods have in the past fifteen years so destroyed the fertility of the soil that arable farming on some of the richest clays of cen- tral England will have to be completely abandoned. -

Whether it be fertilizers or supersonics, the motor car or heart transplants, the technological dream always eventually brings about its own nemesis. It is pointless to

fret at the fact—but nevertheless to consider otherwise is pure wishful thinking.

Remember, remember, - 3 September

Why is it that some dates in the calendar are so prodigal in commemoration of great events, while 'others have none? As far as I have ever been able to discover, for instance, no event of the slightest historical im- portance has ever taken place on my birth. day, 7 October, unless exception be made for the death of Edgar Allan Poe. On the other hand, 3 September presents the almanac makers with a positive embarrassment, including not only 1939, the invasion and surrender of Italy in 1943, and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles by which we recognised the us in 1783, but also the galaxy in the life of that currently much discussed figure, 0. Cromwell. Out of curiosity I looked to see how John Evelyn had marked 3 September 1658 in his diary : 'Died that archrebell Oliver Cromwell, card Protector'. Which is slightly reminiscent of, though somewhat more restrained than, the joy with which Mozart wrote to his father on 3 July 1778: 'Now I have a piece of news which you may have heard already, namely that that godless arch-rascal Voltaire has pegged out like a dog!'

Front line reporter

The mass-media excitement over events on the Isle of Wight (from most of which I was mercifully preserved by being amid the peace and fuchsia hedges of Ireland) have reminded me of the only occasion on which I acted as a newspaper reporter.

In 1961, when I was the jazz critic of the Sunday Telegraph, I was sent down to cover the then-equivalent of the low jamboree, Lord Montagu's jazz festival at Beaulieu, across the water. The previous summer, it may be recalled, the festival had been broken up by riots between enthusiasts for rival schools of jazz, and Fleet Street's burning hope was that it might be repeated.

I found enormous difficulty in composing my 'story', but eventually entered Beaulieu's one telephone kiosk to ring through an account of how everything had gone off com- pletely peacefully. At the very moment I stepped from the kiosk, a brick flew through the window, and the trouble began—nothing as serious as the previous year, but enough to make headlines in every other paper.

I had not the courage to telephone an emendation to my story (anyway, it would have taken me another hour to write), and when a few months later I managed to write a review of a concert by Errol Garner which I only realised on the Sunday morning was not due to take place for another week, I thought it was time to leave the jazz world (and that of reporting) for ever.

Act of God

'It is obvious that Fiery Creations. . are going to make a profit out of this weekend unless an act of God of remarkable pro- portions befalls them'.

David Wilsworth, Times 26 August 'Fiery Creations . . . have serious doubts whether they will make a profit'.

David %%worth, Times 31 August