The Pursuit of Laughter (28 page)

‘…
but not on us, the oysters cried
…’

The English love for dumb creatures is famous, and also their fondness for oysters. There was an outcry during the dock strike when it was feared that several hundred thousand oysters might die of thirst unless they were unloaded and given a refreshing drink of sea water. Like the Walrus and the Carpenter, people began shedding bitter tears over them. The dockers relented; the oysters were saved. For what? To be swallowed alive by fat
business
-men?

England ought to have a ‘Day’ like America’s Fourth and France’s Fourteenth of July. Like them, it should be in the summer, a whole holiday for everyone with fireworks and
dancing
in the streets.

It is true we have got Guy Fawkes Day, but it is a bit grim when you come to think of it—gunpowder, treason and plot, ending in hanging, drawing and quartering. In fact it is a wonder Guy Fawkes Day has not been forbidden by the life-peeresses; I expect
delinquents
galore result from this concentration of minds on horrors, and the burning of the guy is anti-social.

In any case, November is a hopeless month for a Day. Last Guy Fawkes I drove round Trafalgar Square at midnight to see the fun. Through a fairly dense fog it looked as though a sporadic fight was going on between boys armed with fire crackers and police armed with batons, and although this is some people’s idea of an amusing evening, the Day I envisage would have a more universal appeal.

What date to choose? It must commemorate something unchanging. ‘Empire Day’ would never do; it would upset people right and left, as well as laying us open to ridicule. Oak Apple Day would not commend itself to Cromwellians, nor the anniversary of Waterloo to enthusiasts for united Europe. The safest choice would probably be Midsummer Day, at present celebrated only by lunatics at Stonehenge.

What has become of Mr Kennedy’s brother-in-law’s Peace Corps? There was news six months or so ago of idealistic young Americans who were to be sent to countries all over the world where they planned to speak the same language, eat the same food, and live the same lives as the natives.

It is very strange that they have faded out of the news. Two explanations occur to me: either they are stuck at the language fence, or else they have arrived at their under-developed and under-privileged destinations and have all been eaten by their hungry hosts. One never knows. If the latter, they will have made their contribution to solving the world’s problem of under-nourishment, particularly in respect of protein.

Unfortunately, in the present state of affairs people seem to be more concerned with Mr Kennedy’s War Corps in Vietnam, and this, as far as one knows, is not being run by any of his relations.

To smile or not to smile? American politicians treat us to miles and miles of smiles. On the whole, I am in favour of less smiling; we got very tired of poor Ike’s gums, and we have had just about enough of Mr Kennedy’s teeth. Public figures who do not smile are rare and precious; Queen Mary, for example, was delightfully glum.

When the world is in such deadly danger from its politicians as it is at the moment, they might at least pretend to be serious. At a cinema recently I saw a news-reel of Mr Kennedy conferring with his advisers on the world crisis. It would be comforting if they could be persuaded to confer without being filmed at all, but this is too much to ask, I suppose. Did they settle down in a quiet room for their momentous conference? Of course not, because that would not seem a modern and young way to behave; the image
is so important. The film showed them all climbing self-consciously into a little boat belonging to the President, while Mr Kennedy gave a fine tooth-display. I am not at all sure that this boat is a good exchange for last year’s golf course.

All through the summer holidays, while the Berlin crisis has loomed, the politicians have indulged in their habitual fantasies. Mr Macmillan pretended to believe the whole thing has been invented by the newspapers. I was surprised at the intense irritation, not to say fury, caused by his Gleneagles utterance, for it is exactly in line with his usual fatuity, just the sort of thing he has taught us to expect. Life may or may not be better with the Tories, but when it comes to being fatuous they certainly beat all.

Hurricane Debbie interfered with the unilateralist anti-American demonstration at the Holy Loch. The anti-German demonstrators in Wales were pelted by the locals. And in London hordes of actors and actresses and clergymen sat in the streets and were carried away by the police.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have sitting-streets, like the play-streets in populous areas of London which are reserved for the children to play in? If the sitters were shepherded into specially reserved streets, they could be left to sit quietly until their beards grew down to the ground, or until they got bored with sitting.

But perhaps their fines come in useful. One can never be sure of the motives of the Home Office.

I have been experiencing the joys of British Railways. I examined my train with interest, to see whether Dr Beeching is earning his keep. It was rather a horrid train. It went from Glasgow to Oban, stopping innumerable times. There was evidence that people had been smoking in the no-smoking carriage, and apart from that it was excessively grimy. The lavatory door not only had no lock: it would not even shut but swung about as the train lurched.

It is a good rule on British Railways to avoid luncheon and dinner and to eat breakfast and tea instead. They lavish a lot of thought and love on breakfast and tea, while the others are generally disgusting beyond belief. But even at tea a repressive spirit reigned in the dining car of my train. Two harmless ladies sat down at a table and were immediately ordered by the waiter to move. When they mildly asked why, he replied angrily: ‘It’s not laid up. You can see it’s not laid up.’ (Why ‘up’?) He spoke as though a
banquet was involved. The ladies moved. I should have felt inclined to stay and make enough fuss to get the table of my choice ‘laid up’—i.e., a plate and cup put upon it.

I experienced another example of tyranny in Glasgow. I climbed into the airport bus, and the driver came hurrying along and said furiously that no one was allowed to get in his bus until the flight was called. He was about to try and make me get out again when our argument was cut short by (to use BEA jargon) a flight being called. One of the most tiring things about travel in the British Isles is the strange and perverse delight the
employees
of the railways and airlines take in making everything as difficult as possible for the traveller.

Whether the Scotch are worse than the English in this respect I don’t know. I met some people who were loving a coach tour through Scotland because their Scotch driver was so amusing. They thought him perfection.

To go back to poor Dr Beeching and his Augean stables: of the two trains I travelled in, one was 35 minutes late and the other 25 minutes late. As a result I could not visit the Burrell pictures in Glasgow Art Gallery because it was already shut. I was sorry not to catch a glimpse of the wonderful pink Matisse which so unexpectedly hangs there.

Once on my journey I was obliged by hunger to forget my breakfast-and-tea rule, and eat some dinner. I had Crême Solferino, which turned out to be a tin of warm tomato soup, and Poires Duchesse, which was a pear in a wine glass smothered in frightening green jelly and false cream. I draw a veil over what came between. Where this repast was
perpetrated
is a secret, but it was not on a train.

A friend of mine took some foreigners to a noted and reputed restaurant in Gloucestershire (yes, there is such a restaurant and apparently the food is good). Because they arrived at three minutes past two, they were not allowed to have any lunch. The
sideboards
were loaded with delicious cold food, hors d’oeuvre, lobsters, hams, saddles of mutton. But a rule is a rule in the catering world. My friend took the astonished guests, who were not accustomed to such cruelty on the part of restaurant keepers—an obliging race elsewhere in Europe—back home and fed them on bread and cheese.

I love the description in
Time
of the Kennedys’ music party at the White House. Casals played Schumann and Mendelssohn. Those present included Aaron Copland, conductors Bernstein and Stokowski, Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg, and ‘the grandes dames… Rose Kennedy, Mrs Robert Woods Bliss.’ Then there were Walter Lippmann, George Meany and ‘a sprinkling of Puerto Ricans.’

Time
comments lyrically: ‘The evening was right out of the eighteenth century, it might
have been a concert led by Haydn at the court of the Esterhazys or a command
performance
by C.P.E. Bach for Frederick the Great.’

Except that in the unenlightened days of the ‘Aufklärung’ Frederick the Great and the Esterhazys would never have had the opportunity to get to know those exotic guests, and except that Schumann and Mendelssohn do not happen to be eighteenth-century
composers
, and except a few other things…. I suppose
Time
was being sarky, but who can tell?

It was bad luck on Sir Martin Lindsay that the very day he tabled his motion deploring Lord Beaverbrook’s and the
Express
group’s alleged attacks on the royal family, the Duke of Edinburgh should have chosen to say to the press: ‘The
Daily Express
is a bloody awful newspaper. It is full of lies, scandal, and imagination. It is a vicious newspaper.’ Sir Martin Lindsay had just said that it was unfair to attack the royal family because royal persons are unable to answer back. The Duke’s counter attack rather spoilt Sir Martin’s knightly
gesture
.

I am an assiduous reader of many newspapers and periodicals. I nearly always disagree with the policies advocated by the
Daily Express
, which is notable for frivolous
xenophobia
, but I do not find it so scandalous, lying, or vicious as some others I could name, and furthermore I cannot recall a single word of criticism of the Queen in the
Daily Express
.

Sir Martin Lindsay says people can demonstrate their disapproval by cancelling the
Daily Express
and ordering a different newspaper, and so of course they can, all four
million
of them. Meanwhile, as the Duke of Edinburgh says, it is fun to be rude, and
particularly
so if nobody sues you for slander.

Next time Mr Harold Macmillan makes his countrymen feel embarrassed by wearing a white fur hat when he visits Moscow, or by saying, ‘There ain’t a’going to be no war,’ so that they begin to wish they, or he, had never been born, they might reflect that things could be a good deal worse. Take Camelot. Mr Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, and his wife gave a party at their home in Maclean, Virginia. Mrs Kennedy arranged a small table for three on planks across the swimming pool, and she invited a judge called Mr White and also Colonel Glenn, the astronaut, to sit with her there. She meant the judge and Colonel Glenn to fall into the pool, but according to a report of the party, ‘Mr White, being an old friend, knew what might happen so stayed away. Colonel Glenn managed to retain his balance and it was Mrs Kennedy who fell in. Later, Mr Arthur Schlesinger, the President’s adviser, clad in a light blue dinner jacket, and Mrs Spencer Davis, a personal friend of Mrs Ethel Kennedy, were pushed in.’

The Kennedys are so young that they and their personal friends have to push one
another into pools at parties. Don’t ask me what the difference is between a friend and a personal friend because I don’t know, but in they all go.

Only a young country can contain so much youth. Stuffy old European judges and colonels might not want to be pushed fully dressed into swimming pools, but the fact that most of the personal friends are aged between 40 and 50 is the reason for all the fun they have.

In the past, I have complained bitterly in this Diary of British Railways and their
degraded
and unpunctual trains; it is therefore only just to record that a recent journey to Newcastle and back was extremely comfortable.

The train was hot, in spite of snow outside, and the meals at least half as good as the meals on French trains, which, since they also cost half as much, seems about fair.

When the Channel tunnel is built the train journey between London and Paris will be roughly the same length as between London and Newcastle, and no doubt all
comfort-lovers
will choose to travel that way. Quite apart from the chancy weather in northern Europe, which has given rise to the adage:

Time to spare?

Go by air!        

it is not everyone who cares, even in perfect weather, for the tedious drive to London Airport and the numberless small irritations inflicted upon the traveller when he finally gets there. Up and down moving stairs which, as often as not, are stationary; herded into ‘channels,’ then being made, after a long walk through the channels, to clamber into a crowded charabanc in order to be driven a couple of hundred yards to the aeroplane—none of this is much fun. Once inside the aeroplane, a deafening roar heralds the
distorted
voice of the captain welcoming you aboard the aircraft and hoping you will
enjoy
the flight, in two languages. Does anyone enjoy the flight? One does not fly for enjoyment, but to get from A to B, it might be thought.

I often complain about the wrecking of the little that is left of beauty in London, but there are one or two items on the credit side. Chief among these is Apsley House, which, now that it stands alone, looks enormously better than ever it did when it was the end of an undistinguished row.

On the blank part, where its neighbour was amputated, windows and a cornice are being made. The usual mean grumbles at the cost of this highly necessary and
praise-worthy
effort makes it doubly meritorious.