January 2020
On 27 January we remembered the Holocaust, on the date that Auschwitz was liberated and the world discovered the worst crime in human history – a factory for genocide, the largest of many camps set up to methodically strip, gas and cremate fellow human beings identified only by numbers tattooed on their arms. I still try to get my head around the fact that this happened in my lifetime. Recent surveys reveal that many people worldwide do not know what Auschwitz, or even the Holocaust, is. I have twice taken part in ceremonies of commemoration and met survivors. Their testimonies are horrific. One said that, when the Nazis knew of the advancing Allies, they gave up bothering to put the gas pellets down the tube in the so-called shower room and just hurled them through the windows, and when they ran out of gas they herded the victims towards prepared mass graves, shooting or kicking them into the lime, still alive. One woman who survived remembers, as a child, putting out a trusting hand, expecting an adult to hold it as she tottered along, only to be violently pushed over into the pit by the guard.
As the witnesses die off, our memory of this evidence of man’s ability to descend into bestial behaviour will fade even more. For me, it clarifies the reason for my visceral fear about what is happening now, all round the world. Walls, metaphorical and real, are going up, borders closed, refugees reviled, prejudice expressed proudly as patriotism, heads down, take care of number one.
Our youngsters have never been more aware of the world at large as they travel around visa-less, and study in European universities, in a way unthinkable when I was young. We are about to put a stop to all that. Why is it that so many of my fellow countrymen consider this idea something to celebrate? Why do they continually trumpet a pride in being an island race that ‘stood alone’? Actually, we didn’t. We had a lot of help. The Poles, for instance, were much-admired airmen during the Battle of Britain, people from the Commonwealth served in the forces, millions of Russians died, and the Americans, albeit to begin with reluctantly, joined us. The war is long over, but jokes about Germany being super-militant, and France cowardly, still get a laugh. We are stuck in some mythical past. I, too, am obsessed with the past, but the one that has haunted my life is hideously real.
January 2020
I have spent 31 January, the actual day of our departure from Europe, on my own, unable to face the wakes organised by my like-minded friends. I ventured to watch the television only to see the triumphant Farage making a hate-filled speech in the European Parliament, and leading out his ludicrous army of supporters, headed by Ann Widdecombe, that cheap travesty of a politician, waving tiny paper Union Jacks. The rest of the Parliament looked on in dignified sadness, and gently sang, ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot’, although I would imagine many were thinking, ‘Good riddance.’ In merciful contrast to the loutish behaviour of Farage and his tribe, Led By Donkeys, a protest group that has bravely tried to drive home proven facts with its poster campaigns, organised a video that was projected onto the White Cliffs of Dover – a potent symbol for our island during the war – of two veterans telling the Europeans on the other side of the Channel how sad they were to leave them. It ended with a picture of one star falling from the European flag, with the message ‘This is our star. Look after it for us.’
I eventually switched off the television, and listened to some Beethoven into the small hours to remind myself that cultural ties can never be destroyed by fanatical idiots. The following day Hammersmith and Fulham council sent out an email to the 70 per cent who voted Remain in the area, telling us that the town hall will still fly the European flag, we will twin with every capital city in Europe, and have a European Fair every year. A lovely, futile gesture that made me chuckle.
Arguments about the validity of the referendum vote are over; we must move on. There have been upheavals all through our history, not least the Troubles in Ireland. The wounds I witnessed there were precariously healed, and we must make sure that Brexit doesn’t open them up again. We have an enormous task to see our country through this change and make it into something as good as the Leavers have promised.
Me, I feel weary. The thought of a new start is daunting. The political party that I have supported and been proud of all my life is in ruins. I believe our political system is redundant. It is out of date and has failed us. I no longer trust it to function on behalf of everyone. I need to gather my strength to work out what to do next. What to believe in.
February 2020
I was privileged to open a new wing of St Luke’s primary in Rochdale. The young headteacher, Kim Farrall, supported by the local bishop, Mark Davies, the mayor and mayoress of Rochdale, Billy and Lynn Sheerin, and an inspirational, totally dedicated staff of teachers, caretakers, cleaners and parents, have combined to build the school into an imaginative, happy place where children from all backgrounds thrive. They work a lot outdoors using the Forest School teaching method, which is proving conducive to a good response, and is especially successful with troubled youngsters. The pupils learn about their local history and community, as well as the wider world.
St Luke’s is a neighbourhood school, based on knowledge of the needs of the area. Music, drama and art are embedded in the whole curriculum. Their latest Ofsted report was good, but one of the comments reflected the problem innovative teachers are up against when dealing with edicts on methodology from government. The kids read me their recent stories and poems. They were stunningly original. Yet the report said
‘Leaders should ensure that pupils are provided with a more structural curriculum to strengthen their knowledge of spelling, grammar and punctuation. In addition, leaders need to ensure that pupils can apply their knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar in all areas of the curriculum.’
Did they not see the brilliant invention of the youngsters’ work? The teachers’ clever linking of subjects such as a history lesson incorporating art, storytelling, film and music? There was no comment about that. Or about the children’s delight in language, even if misspelled, usually because they were bravely using an unfamiliar word. Have the officials not heard about mechanical spelling and grammar checks? I suspect they are old, like me, and stuck in a world where these aids did not exist, making English grammar lessons necessary, but they are less so now, especially if they impede creativity. Just as calculators have lessened the need for all those boring times tables we recited, we have magic tools to help with the basics. Thank God for the spelling and grammar check, I say.
February 2020
With my eighty-seventh birthday done and dusted, I flew off to the haven of my French home. I have decisions to make. Am I getting too old to drive the necessary car, to climb the dangerous stairs? Can I move on from this limbo of indecision and make some plans for the probably-quite-short rest of my life?
When I picked up my newspaper, Karim looked genuinely sorry for me, EU outcast as I now am. Even my mysterious Arab friend shook his head sadly as he passed me.
Walking through Apt, I was drawn into the dark interior of the cathedral by the sounds of the organ. A young man was practising an elaborate bit of Bach with some difficulty, feet and hands going like the clappers. I was attracted by a blaze of light in a side chapel, which was filled with a model of the Nativity. It had been put there for the Christmas celebrations and was now being packed away. Curiously, the setting is a recreation of a Provençal hilltop village with churches, ancient washing pools, fountains and little figures dressed in national costumes – these clay santons being a local tradition made in the area. It depicts people working and sitting in the sun, and in the centre is the stable with a few people standing around idly watching the couple attending to their baby. It was a touching reminder of life continuing for the ordinary folk, despite some kings and shepherds having told them this was a big event that would make their town famous. It was an aspect of that story that I hadn’t considered. What did the locals think of this refugee couple taking up space from hard-working animals? Those foreigners causing a stir, bringing weirdos into the town with their gifts for the layabouts of gold and exquisite spices.
I asked a lady packing up the installation why it was set locally when we know the birth took place in Bethlehem. I didn’t want to equivocate for some political-correctness-gone-mad stance but I wanted to hear this obviously devout woman’s take on it – presuming she might see it as a story for all places and all times. Instead she explained that our cathedral, St Anne’s, was named after the Virgin’s mother who lived in Apt, so it was possible it happened here. I did not express my scepticism as, over the years I have lived in the region, more and more revelations of prehistoric, medieval and Roman activities have been dug up, so I suppose anything is possible. ‘There were no Arab outfits for the santons. And the white baby Jesus est très joli, non?’ Fair enough. There was no point in letting rationality get in the way of her shining faith.
For me, listening to music, contemplating a painting or watching ballet dancers doing superhuman things is when I get close to the awareness of something that could be called God. I wish with all my heart I could have a more tangible access to somebody who will answer my prayers and maybe even welcome me in heaven when I leave this world. Sadly, until I have solid evidence to the contrary, I do not believe there is a life beyond this. Mind you, I also have no evidence that there isn’t. It doesn’t worry me a lot anyway – I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. As far as God is concerned, I will settle for the feeling of unity and something Other that can occur in the silence of a gathered Quaker meeting for worship. Or the ecstasy I feel at the genius of Beethoven, a man who was stone-deaf yet nearing the end of his life could write the transcendent ‘Cavatina’ string quartet. We are all equal and, as we Quakers say, there is ‘that of God in everyone’. But perhaps there’s a little bit more of God in the likes of Nureyev and Beethoven. Hush my mouth.
I find I am contemplating religion, and especially the life of Christ, quite often lately. At a time when our moral compass seems to have gone out of kilter, I yearn for Christianity to get its act together. That anarchic, wise, gentle, angry, utterly honest man is such an example of how we could make the world work for everyone. Christ, we need someone like Jesus to come and rescue us. Put us straight. Instead of which we’ve got Trump, Farage and Boris Johnson.
The seasons, as in England, have gone awry here in France. Floods, extreme cold and midsummer heat are running amok. The weather is confusing even Denis. Spring is arriving much too early. There are buds on the fig tree, butterflies and lizards have woken from their sleep too soon, and the sun is providing unseasonable, if welcome, warmth.
As I lie in bed with my morning cup of tea, I can see a fir tree that has, over the years, grown far too tall. I keep expecting it to keel over, but it continues to reach for the sky, although its last spurt of growth is a feeble, unfirlike wisp that whirls around in the wind. The rest of the tree remembers it is a fir, and behaves properly in a dignified, evergreen way. The top bit will have to learn to settle down and conform or it will snap off and die.
March 2020
Well. Deep breath. Here goes. Um – um – er . . .
After suffering several weeks of inability to think coherently, I must write something.
Well. Today I—
Last week we—
No, I don’t know where to begin.
For heaven’s sake, you asked for this, woman. Moaning about the state of the world – this is what you wanted, isn’t it? You wanted a revolution, didn’t you? You wanted the world to be united? You wanted the frenetic, mindless way you live your life to change?
As my mum would say, ‘Sheila, be careful what you wish for.’
I didn’t want this.
In a matter of days, the world has been plunged into a crisis which makes it look as though the end of my life is going to be engulfed in a catastrophe as great as the one that engulfed my childhood.
Here is what happened.
In February and the beginning of March 2020, my diary was the usual kaleidoscope of events.
In February I enjoyed working on a television programme, Unforgotten, with a brilliant cast and crew, relishing playing a thoroughly unpleasant woman. Then I went to Rochdale, to participate with the locals in the joyous celebration of the extension of their primary school. In the same month, I made the decision that, even if they build a housing estate in my hameau in France, and I have to hire taxis when I’m too blind to drive, I’m staying. So, I made the positive step of asking a builder to put in handrails to steady the inevitable encroaching dodderiness. On 3 March I went to the fabulous comprehensive Holland Park School to hear Dame Janet Baker explaining to transfixed schoolkids that exquisite artistry such as hers involves utter dedication and damned hard work. On 5 March Martin and I went to the oddly empty Curzon cinema to see the Oscar-winning film Parasite, which blew our minds, and we discussed it intensely over a wonderful meal in a restaurant where you can’t usually get a table – bit strange, but we put it down to the torrential rain. On 12 March I spent a riotous night in Soho with my twenty-two-year-old grandchild, Lola. We drank in a packed gay pub, exchanging warm greetings with the raucous customers, all outlandishly dressed and coiffed for a night out. We then went to a crowded comedy club to hear women stand-ups riffing on masturbation, horrible children, godawful men and incontinence, the event having been sponsored by a firm making special knickers. Lola, who is quite a sophisticated theatregoer, her father being an eminent producer, declared it the best night she had ever spent in the theatre. We did literally cry with mascara-smudging laughter.
Not guessing for a moment that it was probably the last time we would experience such cathartic hilarity for a very long time.
Within a few days of that outing, all theatres, cinemas and restaurants were closed down. As was St Luke’s, Holland Park, and every other school in the country. All my future work in television and on stage was cancelled. Airports are now closed and flights suspended, so I cannot go to France or anywhere else for the foreseeable future.
Everything has ground to a halt.
At the beginning of January there was talk of some virus in China, but we had been there before with Ebola and SARS and they hadn’t affected us much, so this news created only a minor disquiet. On 10 March the Cheltenham Festival went ahead, and on 11 March 3,000 football fans from Spain, where all matches had already been cancelled, were allowed to pack into Anfield to see Atlético Madrid play Liverpool. On 3 March some committee or other was supposed to have said we should stop shaking hands and hugging one another. But we’re British, we won the war, and good old Boris went to a hospital and matily shook hands with everybody, so there. And he was jolly well going to see his mother for Mother’s Day the next weekend. Poor Boris Johnson, who needs so desperately to be loved, said that we should just wash our hands while singing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice, and we would be all right. Three weeks later he went down with the virus himself, and nearly died. I wonder how many lives were lost as a result of his jokey defiance?
When I came home from my outing with Lola on 12 March, I switched on the late-night news to see Boris Johnson announcing it was ‘the worst public health crisis for a generation’ and that ‘many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time’.
What? Hello? Excuse me?
By 18 March they were trying to rally us with slogans, the same technique used by Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Svengali Cummings, to win Brexit, including a similar lot of lying, misrepresenting of statistics and invoking the wartime spirit.
Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.
This mantra is dinned in to us day in, day out. Along with ‘Get it done’, which was first applied to Brexit and is now being invoked to rid the world of a virus even more lethal than the European Union. We are asked to stay indoors, to only commune in person with the people we live with, and only go out for one brief exercise session a day, making sure we keep a distance of two metres from anyone passing.
Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.
This from the government that has done its level best to privatise the NHS, as I discovered from personal experience when my National Health hearing aid was suddenly provided by a private company set up within Charing Cross Hospital, only bog-standard ones now being available free on the NHS. Johnson himself voted against a rise in salary for the nurses he now sanctifies, and actually cheered in the Commons when the vote against them was won.
I look back now at one of the acts Lola and I saw in the Soho Theatre the day before the world turned upside down, which at the time was a comic turn but now feels like a metaphor for what was about to happen. A middle-aged woman came onto the stage carrying a shopping basket and wandered about nattering inconsequentially. She was called Mrs Barbara Nice (actually actor Janice Connolly). After a few amiable exchanges with people in the audience, Mrs Nice suddenly told us that she had seen someone called Iggy Pop throw himself off the stage into the audience and she was going to do the same. She gave the audience vague instructions as to how she was going to jump from the back of the auditorium and how we should catch her with our hands above our heads, and transport her, in the air, through the crowd, back onto the stage. Everybody laughed uncertainly, wondering what the payoff to the gag was going to be. When she insisted, one or two audience members jokingly got up and held their hands above their heads. As Mrs Nice continued to direct them, others joined in, still thinking it wasn’t going to happen and there was going to be a joke ending. When she took off her green mac, ‘my Apple Mac’, and wended her way to the back of the auditorium to a raised platform, they began to look a bit nervous, especially as the audience was mainly made up of women, none of them looking overly strong, and most having had quite a few drinks. She continued to instruct the audience as to how they should hold her, and still everybody laughed. Then suddenly she threw herself off the platform, into the now panicking crowd, who, shouting and sweating, man- or rather woman-handled her, legs akimbo, exposing passion-killer drawers, right across the audience and dumped her on stage, where she thanked them briefly and wandered off, leaving an exhausted and still-disbelieving crowd wondering what had just happened.
It was a surreal experience. Her obsessional gabbling about Iggy Pop, a name not overly familiar to me or many of the young audience, had all the mystery of the new words now endlessly repeated to us: coronavirus, Covid-19, Wuhan, Rishi Sunak, PPE, social distancing. I had never heard of stage-diving or -surfing, or lockdown, or sheltering-in-place, until this month. The way everyone in the audience rallied and, in a rather rough, amateurish way, actually did come together and evolved a method to protect and guide this dotty woman, who trusted them in a dangerous situation, was strangely empowering and touching. A bit far-fetched, but I do keep remembering it as I watch how, as a country, we are uniting to clumsily deal with a lethal threat, particularly for the old, weak and vulnerable.
23 March 2020
I am scared and appalled by the situation we are in but, strangely, despite being such a cry-baby, I haven’t cried yet. I just wander about my empty house doing that thing of going up three flights of stairs and then, when I get there, not knowing what I want. I open cupboards and drawers and stand staring at them, wondering what I am looking for. I perform this old-lady behaviour not occasionally, but all the time. My brain seems to have splintered, incapable of a whole thought. Like dementia, I suppose. It’s quite frightening. I can’t discuss it with anybody. My medical team are unavailable, several of them having contracted the virus. I can’t master social media so I can only speak to people on the phone, and it doesn’t seem appropriate, when everyone is in turmoil, to tell friends and family I am going mad. Anyway, I am okay. Despite awful stories about the illness, and ominous predictions about the future, I am fine. Fine. I haven’t shed a single tear.
24 March 2020
I am glad my sister went before all this confusion and fear. I would no longer be able to go and see her. Actually, if I think about it, she would have been in her element. Making sure that all the old folk in the home obeyed the rules. Keeping them amused.
When she was sixteen, she toured the wilds of Africa with ENSA, entertaining troops in isolated places. Bright yellow from anti-malaria drugs, she still suffered from malaria, as well as dysentery, sandfly fever and, once, a mild case of smallpox from a vaccination. She also had to have painful injections in her stomach, having come into contact with bubonic plague. So, I don’t think Covid-19 would have daunted her.
Rereading her diary:
Me 91 years old
Me
Me young woman
Who me
has given me pause for thought.
It has been troubling to ask myself: ‘Who am I?’
But, lucky me, I have now received three letters, one from Boris Johnson and two from the NHS, that have saved me any more agonising, because they tell me they have categorically identified me as ‘extremely vulnerable’.
What is more, they have the solution for my existential angst. It is simple.
‘The safest course of action is for you to stay at home at all times and avoid all face-to-face contact for at least twelve weeks.’
Yes, that should do the trick. Forget about Brexit. All of that now seems so irrelevant. The despair I felt about leaving Europe is nothing compared with the thought of the thousands of people already dying of a virulent virus, and masses more threatened, as it spreads its evil throughout the whole world. With three months shut up on my own I can worry about something other than populism and Donald Trump. It will make a nice change.
29 March 2020
I still have not shed a tear.
When I was a student, and early in my working career, I found it difficult to cry real tears when a part demanded it. Maybe a childhood spent repressing them was behaviour hard to change, even in pretence. Playing scenes with a married actor whom I lusted after, who led me into tortured temptation, then rejection, first released the flow for me. I brought my private agony into the performance of any scenes I had with him – which made for some inappropriate over-acting in a jolly farce like Ma’s Bit o’ Brass. I later discovered this cat-and-mouse seduction routine was something he did with all the new ingénue actors, presumably to relieve the boredom of being trapped in weekly repertory, doing dreadful plays to indifferent audiences. Poor disappointed soul that he was, he was a much better actor off-stage than on. But he taught me to cry real tears. And probably lots of other actresses as well. So, his career was not a complete failure.
Strangely, now, as practised by John, I have learned that trying to restrain tears, fighting not to cry, is ten times more moving to an audience than gushing water all over the stage or screen. That is certainly true when watching real-life interviews. Directors and interviewers on news programmes and documentaries don’t seem to realise that, so they strive to make people cry: ‘Tell me’ – sad, sympathetic, face – ‘how did you feel when you watched your baby die in agony?’
I was doing some preparation work for my edition of Who Do You Think You Are? when Jeremy Paxman passed by and shouted, ‘Be careful, they’ll try to make you cry.’ As, to his fury, they did him. I swore I wouldn’t but, of course, ended up blubbing snot and tears over the grave of a woman I had not even known existed. I was genuinely upset, fortunately. They would have been very let down if I had not been. It was perfectly staged – graveyard, lonely tombstone and even, to their delight, depressing rain. ‘A moving interview’ is considered a success, and that means people crying, breaking down, suffering.
I once saw a remarkable old Jewish woman telling of her ordeal as a member of one of the orchestras that were forced to play in concentration camps. She recounted her experience with searing calm and restraint, and I was sobbing watching her until the desperate interviewer, obviously frustrated that this dignified woman was not fulfilling the ‘moving interview’ criteria, actually asked, ‘I mean, you’re a musician – did you perhaps enjoy playing there?’ Only then did the woman’s astonished eyes moisten, confronted by such crass ignorance.
In real life I usually have no trouble with tears. If you searched this book for the words ‘tears’ and ‘wept’, I dread to think how many times they would come up.
Maybe lachrymosity is inherited. My father wept all the time, even when he laughed. He would bend double, with his eyes streaming, muttering, ‘Oh Christ! Don’t, that’s so funny!’ But since the coronavirus appeared on the scene, I have been a model of stoicism.
Like my mother. I only remember seeing her cry twice. The first time was when we all sat round the wireless listening to Neville Chamberlain saying, ‘This country is at war with Germany.’ Her tears frightened me much more than the air-raid warning that followed the broadcast. The second time was when I received a phone call from the manager of the caravan park where she lived in a mobile home, and I rushed down to find her sitting holding my father’s body, on the floor, where he had died of a heart attack. She wept violently as we insisted on taking him away from her. At the funeral and for the next few years, coming to live near me in a flat on her own, she never cried again. At least not in front of anyone. Since the arrival of the virus I have shown the same restraint.
2 April 2020
Last week Ellie Jane left a bunch of flowers on the doorstep, in which were two pink antirrhinums. Because my parents worked in pubs and hotels we lived above the shop, usually in a couple of rooms, and never with a garden. When they stopped this gypsy existence and moved to Bexleyheath in Kent, for the first time we lived in a house with a garden, front and back. The back was mainly vegetables but in the front I aided my father in constructing on this small plot a maverick Italianate concoction of crazy paving, different levels, steps, and an ancient stone birdbath stolen from a bomb-damaged mansion. It caused a sensation amidst our neighbours’ neat lawns and hedges. The flower beds were irregular shapes and the blooms of choice, not following the Mediterranean theme, were a joyous mix of English catmint, pinks, cornflowers, daisies, poppies, foxgloves and antirrhinums – or bunny rabbits, as we called them, because if you pinch the blossom it opens like the mouth of a rabbit.
The two antirrhinums in my daughter’s bouquet were a bit poncy and cultivated-looking, rather than the sturdy rough-and-ready ones at 58 Latham Road, but they gave me a childish pang of delight. After a couple of days one of them started to wilt. I was out-of-proportionally upset. I snipped off a bit of the stalk and took off two dead flowers to let water and strength go up to the buds above. It worked for a day or two, then the top began to droop. I propped it up against a sturdy iris. It seemed to rally and I rejoiced. Then the next day, as I tenderly took it out of the vase to change the water, the unopened buds gently curled over and hung limply. Again, I cut off some of its stalk and propped it against the iris, telling it, ‘Come on, please, open just one more bud before you die, make the effort. There are people surviving a horrid virus – surely you can get better. Look at your sister there, look how she’s enjoying the sun.’ Out loud. I said it out loud, with serious intensity. Desperation. But the flower gave up the ghost.
As I put it in the bin, the floodgates opened. I sobbed my heart out.
I am on my own, so do not have to hide my tears. I am fine, my tears are not for myself, but for the thousands of people worldwide whom this virus is causing such pain. And a dead flower.
8 April 2020
The deaths in England from this virus have risen to 1,461 in one day.
One of the awful sadnesses is the way the virus has forced us to deal with death. As vice president of St Christopher’s Hospice, I have watched many people die feeling genuinely happy, surrounded by their nearest and dearest, hugging and holding hands, and saying their goodbyes and thank yous – laughing, even. Now people are often on ventilators with wires and tubes all over them, alone but for nurses in plastic gowns, masks and visors. Even a thirteen-year-old boy died like that. The ultimate cruelty.
Old people in rest homes are not allowed visitors for fear of bringing in the virus, so they lose touch with the family that they have spent their lives caring for, and are left bewildered and alone. They deserve to be cherished in their last years rather than forced to stay in their rooms, and if they have any form of dementia they must be so frightened to be suddenly surrounded by people whose faces they cannot see properly. In some homes the virus has taken hold and the elderly are dying, cared for only by distraught staff ill-equipped to deal with complicated medical treatment. This is truly a sort of Armageddon. Each day produces yet another horror story of what this virus is causing. How long can we bear it?
10 April 2020
Today I reached my nadir of misery. I always have found Good Friday disturbing. As a very young child, after I left my first horrible school in King’s Cross, I found myself at yet another convent school down the road in Ely Place, Holborn, being taught by nuns and attending services in St Etheldreda’s Roman Catholic Church. Every year we would go through the ritual of the Stations of the Cross, following the final journey of Jesus towards his crucifixion, stumbling along the Via Dolorosa, carrying his own cross, falling under it three times, being helped for a while by a man in the crowd, Simon of Cyrene, his brow wiped by a saddened woman stranger, seeing his distraught mother in the jeering mob, comforting a group of grieving women, being stripped naked and flogged, a crown of brambles and thorn forced on his head, nails driven through his hands and feet, and hoisted to hang for hours of agony before he died crying, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Not exactly the Easter Bunny whimsy that kids associate with the spring bank holiday these days.
Good Friday used to be the only day off in the year for actors, apart from Christmas Day. All theatres, shops and businesses closed down. Now it is scarcely marked, apart from consumption of buns displaying a cross. It has taken a little virus to shut us up for a while and maybe, just maybe, give a passing thought to what the day represents.
This Good Friday evening I sat and listened to Bach’s St Matthew Passion on Radio 3. Early in our relationship, John and I had one of the most profound musical experiences of our lives listening to this oratorio performed at the Royal Festival Hall. From the first pounding double-orchestra introduction we were open-mouthed, and when the two choirs joined in, the tears began to flow and seldom stopped for the several hours of the performance. The story of the relentless betrayal and torture of this innocent man had both of us aghast, yet enraptured by Bach’s vision of it. John and I had a turbulent relationship, but the one thing over which we were never divided was our love of classical music.
So, there I was on Good Friday 2020, sitting alone, feeling deeply sorrowful as the St Matthew Passion embraced me from the four speakers of my ancient Bang & Olufsen. Eighteen years since his death, I still ache for the pressure of John’s hand tightening and his elbow pressing against mine, as it always did at thrilling concerts. There is one phrase in the Passion that I think is the most agonising expression of sorrow that I know of in any art form. The Evangelist narrator tells us of the promise that Peter makes to Jesus that he will never desert him. Jesus wryly replies that he will do so three times before the cock crows. Inevitably, in terror for his life, Peter does three times tell people he didn’t know Jesus, and when the cock crows, the Evangelist tells us, Peter went out and ‘wept bitterly’. I defy anyone hearing what Bach does with that phrase not to join Peter. For me, no one interprets it more heartbreakingly than Peter Pears, probably because, having to conceal his love for Benjamin Britten in those dark days, he knew all about denial.
So, another day of uncontrolled weeping. And it helped. No one sees my tears so I upset no one. But it achieved nothing either. If I really want resurrection, revolution, then I will have to contribute. I must dry my eyes, pull myself together and get on with it.
11 April 2020
I spent most of the day on my laptop. Hurrah for the internet, with its cornucopia of information. Not as lovely an experience as sitting in the stacks of the now closed London Library surrounded by piles of books, but nevertheless full of enthralling knowledge.
My greatest progress during the pandemic has been in my mastery of social media. After several unsatisfactory phone calls, my three daughters and eight grandchildren decided I had to move into the twenty-first century so that we could see each other’s faces whilst I was in isolation. We started big, with them talking me through the process of joining a family Zoom meeting. I did just about manage it, but was bewildered by them all shouting instructions at me.
‘Unmute! Unmute!’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Oh, Nana, for heaven’s sake.’
After insisting on one-to-one coaching, rather than them all trying to teach me together, I have gradually mastered WhatsApp, Zoom, FaceTime, YouTube – in fact I will have a go at anything. It takes a bit of time and patience on the part of my instructors but I get there in the end, and it is saving my sanity. I actually went on the television and advised other older isolated folk to do the same.
I have a relationship with a charming young man called Craig, who works for my service provider, and comes into my screen and sorts it out when I get really hysterical.
‘Sheila, Sheila, just listen to me. Do what I tell you.’
I’ve never met him, or even seen him, but I love his masterful approach.
If I have to phone a call centre I always ask the people where they are based and try to have a chat. It must be a soul-destroying job. I’ve met people in Ireland, Malta, India and all over Britain. When I was trying to sort out a problem with a new phone, I had a long session with a lady in South Carolina who was working from home. We talked for a full hour, with me relishing her perfect Southern accent and both of us having a right go about Trump. We ended up great friends. A young man in India told me of the rapid spread of the virus where he lived long before I read about it in our papers. He was very frightened and I tried to give him advice based on our experience.
It is difficult for youngsters who have grown up with technology to understand someone who was middle-aged before she ever used a keyboard, never mind attempting to understand the mysteries of the Amstrad computer. I remember spending days on end with my then PA, Paulette, trying to decipher a huge, complicated book of directions. It was incomprehensible. We then heard of some geek in Devon who had written a simplified version, and that helped. Since those early attempts I have progressed steadily to having a working knowledge of the web. I have given social media a miss until now for the same reason that I never watch my own films or tellies – I don’t want to hear or see things that will lower my self-esteem even further – although I do have a website. A young man called Norbert Bakos, who travels over from Hungary to see every show I appear in, has set up what I am told is a wonderful site about me, delving into the archives to find old photos and programmes. He knows more about me than I do. People leave messages on the site and my PA lets me see the nice ones, which are heart-warming. Norbie always brings me delicious chocolate, and I have watched him progress from a rather shy lad into a successful, artistic, colourful personality.
12 April 2020 – Easter Sunday
This morning a few of us had a Zoomed meeting for worship. Quakers are not meant to observe the Church festivals such as Easter, because every day should be holy and sacred, not just a few inaccurate dates, so there was only one reference to the Easter story in our virtual gathering. It was a bit weird sitting in silence in front of a laptop, but there were several deeply felt ministries of the blessings to be had in our enforced slowing-down, relishing Nature and silence. Easy if you live in a nice house with a balcony, like me, not so good if you are jobless, trapped in a high-rise flat with no access to fresh air, with a couple of bored over-active children. Nevertheless, I find it comforting to see the Hammersmith Friends as we say ‘gathered’, even if only on a laptop.
I am frequently asked, ‘What do Quakers stand for?’
Every Friend will give a different answer. There are no rules. Indeed, some Friends verge on the anarchic. There is a structure, but there is no one in charge, no fierce nun or man in a frock telling us how to behave, or what to believe.
Although most will maintain that ‘there is that of God in everyone’.
We will then agonise about the definition of the word ‘God’.
We have an insightful book called Quaker Faith & Practice, in which there are wise statements from members of the society since its foundation in the seventeenth century. It is updated regularly to reflect changing times. The nearest to commandments is a section called Advice and Queries. No catechisms or creeds, just more or less: Here is some advice, it is up to you if you take it. And here are some queries, but you have to provide the answers.
I welcome the lack of certainty. I am fearful of people who think they know best.
The downside of this vagueness is the length of time it takes Quakers to make a decision. There are no votes – everyone must be in accord. The discussions go on for ever, interspersed by periods of silence to calm people down if it gets heated. My meeting house is being knocked down and rebuilt elsewhere and it took us months just to decide on the chairs. Not only do we all have to approve the choice, we are also obliged to check that the firm making them is ethically sound. The people involved with us start by thinking our processes are weird, but usually end up agreeing that they are powerfully successful. Witness the businesses set up by the confectioners John Cadbury, Joseph Rowntree and Joseph Fry, as well as shoe manufacturer Clarks, and banks Lloyds and Barclays, all originally based on Quaker values of caring for their workforces and trading honestly, even if it was less profitable.
Our form of worship is a silent meeting in which anyone can say something if they feel moved to speak from the heart, as opposed to a debate, but in the main it is an hour of potent, sometimes ecstatic, silence, ‘a gathered stillness’.
I find that silence much more meaningful than the ritualistic hymns and prayer routines in churches, some of it feeling unacceptable to my modern ears. Despite knowing them all by heart from my childhood, I can no longer join in with the passages about being meek and humble and sinful; they seem so paternalistic and undermining. Putting us in our place.
Oh dear. Advice 17:
‘Do not allow the strength of your convictions to betray you into making statements or allegations that are unfair or untrue.’
We do take seriously the guidance of what we call our Testimonies of Truth, Equality, Simplicity and Peace. The Truth Testimony has to be handled with subtlety. I try to be honest, even though it is not a quality universally admired, especially in a woman. If I hear it being said that I am ‘a strong woman’, I know it is because I have been too brutal in my honesty. Quakerism is not an easy path for a loudmouth like me.
As an example, I got a lot of stick in 2014 when I suggested the beautiful poppy installation at the Tower of London commemorating the two world wars was sentimentalising our grief. Making us feel good because we were moved by its beauty. There was a discussion on The Andrew Marr Show about what should happen to the skilfully crafted flowers when the display closed. Should they be sold for charity? Used in exhibitions round the country? I ventured that perhaps a tank should roll through the moat destroying and mutilating all the lovely poppies, as had been the young men and women by the two world wars. That didn’t go down well with the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, not to mention the man who tweeted ‘Stupid woman.’ Not sure what he found more offensive, the fact that I was stupid, or that I was a woman. Still, Advice 38:
‘Do not let the desire to be sociable, or the fear of seeming peculiar, determine your decisions.’
That is a recipe for trouble for any luvvie making their voice heard.
‘Speak truth to power’ is a Quaker saying, and one that they have stood by all through their proud history, at great cost. Sometimes it calls for more courage than I can muster. Minding your own business is much easier. There can be no doubt that it would be infinitely easier for people if our politicians and communicators could tell the Truth and put aside the current fashion for lying.
I am proud of Quaker history and the work that today’s Friends are doing to fulfil the Equality Testimony. Since Quakers maintain that ‘there is that of God in everyone’, it behoves them to treat everyone with equal respect. This duty of respect is regardless of who a person is, or what they have done. The voluntary work that Quakers do is often with the rejected members of society. A classic example of the modern Quakers’ work is the mentoring of sex offenders when they leave prison to help them settle into society and not reoffend. Nowadays they also provide support for reviled refugees.
The Simplicity Testimony has particular resonance in this materialistic age. If we all kept our lives simple and fulfilled our needs rather than our wants, the planet – and we ourselves – would, I suggest, be happier. Is a dirt-cheap dress made by an underpaid child in India, worn once and then added to landfill, really worth the few hours of superficial pleasure it gives? I actually relish the bargains I buy in charity shops, and recycling old outfits when they come into fashion again, as they inevitably do. Greed is never ultimately fulfilling. Stuffing myself with food that I barely taste at Christmas does not give me as much satisfaction as a queued-for, unforgettable Crunchie bar, licked very slowly, during wartime sweet rationing.
I was accepted into membership of the Society of Friends in 1993 by ‘convincement’, as it is called – a certainty that I want to try to follow the Quaker path. It is challenging sometimes. For an angry old woman like me, the Peace Testimony is especially difficult, but Advice 27 – ‘Live adventurously’ – guides me in my old age. I have tried Catholicism, Buddhism, Congregationalism, Atheism and Humanism, eventually finding a home in Quakerism for which, especially in these troubled times, I am truly grateful.
13 April 2020
Well, that didn’t last long. So much for Quaker silence. The rage keeps returning. I find myself yelling at celebrities on television, all being jolly and saying how wonderful it is that we are all united and helping one another. What really irritates me are the comparisons that are being made with the wartime spirit by people who were not there and have no idea what it was really like. I want us to be looking forward, not back to some mythical past.
During the war people were already planning for a better future. The Beveridge Report, proposing reforms for a more equal world, was published in 1942. We wanted, and came out of the war prepared to fight for, change. I feel we should be using this enforced hiatus to envision better ways of handling the environment and inequality in the way that we are finding possible during this emergency. To use the situation for a cleansing of the Brexit toxicity, an Easter resurrection.
People are seeing things differently. There is an impressive feeling of unity. Some have resented the police breaking up their barbecues in the park, but others have public-spiritedly quietened down, and stayed indoors, in an effort to rid the community of the threat that has suddenly engulfed us. On the path beside my house on the river, cycling and running has been banned, so people are walking calmly, two metres apart in the sun, noticing the scent of the blossom and the sound of the birds, as opposed to the usual aeroplanes piling into Heathrow. We have united, partly out of self-preservation, but also through acts of discipline and regard and gratitude towards others, in a mass movement.
Someone sent me this poem, which apparently has been doing the rounds on social media recently.
and then the whole world
walked inside and shut their doors
and said we will stop it all, everything,
to protect our weaker ones
our sicker ones, our older ones,
and nothing, nothing in the history of humankind
ever felt more like love than this.
But I am troubled as to whether we older, weaker ones have the right to ask this of our young.
15 April 2020
Louis, my twelve-year-old grandchild, is struggling with this strange new world. He had just started at a new school when he was forced to study virtually at home, and could not pursue the fledgling friendships he had begun. Suddenly the past looks different, the present insecure, the future completely unpredictable. Not allowed to take part in sport, or meet up with his new pals, his world is encompassed in his iPad. He does his lessons, and then communicates with other children via online gaming and social media. It is no life for a child to be huddled over a screen all day, every day.
I have suggested that he should keep a diary. Get the nasty thoughts out of his head and onto a bit of paper, which he can then tear up or burn if he likes.
He is living through an historic time and it is worth recording it. But in ink, so it won’t disappear into the ether. Something that he and maybe one day his grandchildren can hold in their hands. I showed him a battered notebook in which I kept a diary of my first visit to France. It catalogues my teenage attitude to the war that had not long ended, and, more fascinating to Louis, an account of my first proper kiss. I suggested that, if he is feeling upset and doesn’t want to discuss it with grown-ups, it helps to scribble it down. Tell it to a diary.
Which is what I appear to be doing.
Despite my recommendation to Louis, I am rather nervous of diaries. Whenever I had a row with Kenneth Williams, which was often, he would mutter darkly, ‘I am going to put that in my diary.’ I never dared read them when they were published.
I am intending to destroy mine. But how? It is not an easy task burning flame-resistant, bulky, page-a-day booklets – as I discovered in one of my rows with John when I packed my bag to leave him, and on the way out attempted to dramatically destroy all evidence of our life together, in preparation for the new start I told him I was making. He sat chuckling in his armchair as I flung my diaries onto the log fire, only to see them curl and char slightly as they put out the flames.
I must get rid of them, though, in the process of trying to tidy up my life before I die. I have always used diaries to pour out my feelings at the end of each day. As a sort of therapy. After any particularly suicidal entry I would flick back and see if I had ever felt so desolate before. In the course of doing this I incidentally discovered that some of these days of inexplicable blackness recurred annually on the same date, and could be traced back to a genuine traumatic experience: the death of a loved one, serious illness, or a forgotten accident sometime in the past. I know friends that have discovered this too. I wonder if anyone has ever done research into it.
I am appalled by the content of my old diaries. Maybe this vicious, moaning, frightened, lustful, verging-on-insane woman is the real me, but if it is, I don’t want my daughters to know. If ever they read the diatribe against them for forgetting to phone me, I would hate them to think I really felt that. So, into the fire the diaries will go. But not till this current nightmare is over.
I need to get my mind in some sort of order. At the moment my thoughts are like the shrapnel fragments I collected as a child after a bomb explosion. They are littered all over the place. I was hoping that writing a book about old age and a long life would lead me to a kind of uplifting, philosophical conclusion. Some neat, positive outcome. That journey is now aborted. No new route is revealing itself. I have no idea where I am going. Take it a day at a time.
5 May 2020
There are a lot of wartime phrases flying about. We are urged to celebrate the anniversary of VE Day this coming weekend with bunting and socially distanced street tea parties. It all feels a bit ‘opium for the people’ to me, so I have refused two invitations to go on popular television shows that stipulated that I should be ‘upbeat’. There is a lot of forcing us to be upbeat going on. I did manage to let rip on one live show, when they could not edit me, saying that it is all very well clapping for the NHS every Thursday, but we need to make sure that they, and all the other public servants that are keeping us going – care workers, dustmen, shopkeepers, postmen, teachers – should not only be respected, but paid properly in future. Even if it means higher taxes for some of us. I pointed out that, after the war with which this pandemic is being constantly compared, the welfare state and the NHS were born – a miracle for families like mine.
In 1945 there were not a lot of parties with cream teas like we are being urged to recreate in our front gardens in 2020 – if we have one. In Latham Road in Bexleyheath we did have a rather sad little street party. The banquet was tinned fruit with evaporated milk. My mother conjured up some blancmanges, made with condensed milk and set in her glass rabbit moulds, one mummy rabbit and one baby, and she daringly put some currants round their bums. Our next-door neighbour’s son was still in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, so it was hard for everyone to really enjoy ourselves until the war in Japan was over. Everybody’s fears about his treatment there were proved horrifyingly true when he eventually returned, his mind and body destroyed.
In those days people did not drink at home, or certainly not people from my background, and even though my family had lived mainly above pubs, excessive drunkenness in public was rare, so we children watched from the bedroom windows that night, fascinated to see our parents getting a bit tipsy and dancing in the street. I remember seeing my mum and dad doing a rather sedate waltz to the thin music coming from the wind-up gramophone balanced on the garden wall. I had never seen them in one another’s arms before. I would imagine the grown-ups were feeling hugely relieved, but exhausted. We heard on the radio that crowds were going mad in the West End, which sounded fun, and of course we listened to the King’s speech.
10 May 2020
My mother’s birthday. Lots of people seem to have enjoyed today, dressing up and putting out flags. I think everyone is desperate for a party and to see, albeit at two metres’ distance, another human being. Children, for whom the Second World War is something they learned in a history lesson, must have wondered why we are making such a fuss about this particular event, but they enjoyed the cakes. They are going through such an unnatural experience. No school, no sport, no playing with friends. I worry about the long-term effect of this unnatural episode in their childhood, but I suppose we had five years of massive disruption before the original VE Day, yet we survived. But damaged, I think. Judging by my grandchildren, the biggest harm will be to their eyes, which are glued to iPads and computers for virtual lessons and games. God knows what is happening to the children who cannot afford these technical supports.
The Queen did a broadcast at the same time as her much-beloved father had done seventy-five years earlier, urging us to be strong. It was lovely to see her in her sitting room being her usual unperturbed self. In her speech she quoted from a song by Vera Lynn that was very popular during the war. She finished by saying, ‘We’ll meet again.’ I remembered another song that Vera Lynn sang, supposedly to cheer up us evacuees. It made us all so miserable that it was banned, but the lyric is etched on my brain:
Goodnight, children everywhere
Your mummy thinks of you tonight
Lay your head upon your pillow
Don’t be a kid or a weeping willow
So now this eighty-seven-year-old vulnerable old bird must try not to be a weeping willow.
I can hear my mother (‘For heaven’s sake, Sheila, pull yourself together’), who brought up two girls when polio, smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, TB, German measles, whooping cough and the like were constant threats, and did a lot of pulling-together of herself and her family. I must do the same for mine, in this unfolding worldwide tragedy.
With the increased threat of death to someone of my age, and taking dodgy immunosuppressant drugs, and being stuck at home with no work, no outings, no direct human contact, there never has been a more impossible time to ‘look my last on all things lovely’, as Walter de la Mare urged. In my personal morass of gloom, I am sick to death of people telling me how much they are enjoying being furloughed in their lovely homes and gardens in this extraordinary sunny spring. I, in contrast, am obsessed with, and riddled with guilt about, the many more people who are suffering terribly from the repercussions of this ghastly plague.
Enough is enough. Moping about is not helping anyone, not least myself. So, I must pay my ‘utmost blessing’ to things that bring me, if not ‘delight’, then comfort.
12 May 2020
I live under the flight path to Heathrow, and near a main road to the airport or, in the opposite direction, into central London. The roads are now completely empty, and the airport is closed. No planes, no cars – an uncanny peace. Nature is being kind to us with perfect sunshine in which to bask on the one outing a day that we are allowed to take, as long as we keep moving – no sitting on the grass, no cafés or pubs open in which to pass the time with friends. As a ‘highly vulnerable’ person I’m not even allowed to do that. I am supposed to be ‘sheltered’ for three months, not leaving my house at all, but I sometimes sneak out at about 5.30 a.m., before anyone else is about, and never has the air felt so fresh, the sky so clear, the sun so gentle, the honeysuckle so fragrant, the birds so happy to be heard, as in the eerily quiet atmosphere. I stand outside the home of William Morris, just along from my house, and wonder what he would make of a world that finds this calm so remarkable. This must be more or less what it was like when he lived here. Except his home would have been a hive of activity, designing Arts-and-Craftsy things, in his quest that you ‘have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’, and holding socialist meetings with Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Ruskin and the like. If only we could incorporate their idealistic philosophy in our rebuilding of society after this disaster. The William Morris Society still has meetings in his old home. Perhaps the revolution could be planned here? I cannot stop and think about it for long, though, because of some newcomers to the river path.
Probably because there is less pollution in the Thames, I notice there is a new carpet of green plants on the bank when the tide goes out. It looks quite nice, but it seems to have become home to clouds of small green flies that fortunately don’t bite, but do get in your eyes and mouth. That is my theory, having had time to observe them. I have started wearing elegant masks made by my friend Annie, not to defend myself and others from the virus, but to keep out the pesky flies. There are also many more birds around (it could be I have not noticed them before) and I am hoping that the balance of Nature has sent them to eat the bloody flies. If so, I could take some seagulls and whatever the other ones are up to Scotland during the midge season. With my new-found talent for biology I may have rescued the Scottish tourist trade.
13 May 2020
What with the flies, the joggers and the cyclists, the river path has started to become so crowded that social distancing of two metres is impossible. So today I cheekily took a walk inland from the river. I wandered through an area I have used as a back-double in my car but never really noticed. Bedford Park was the first garden suburb, designed in 1875 by Norman Shaw to accommodate the existing mature trees on the twenty-four-acre site, so it is now a verdant, elegant place to live and, as I discovered, to stroll around. Doubtless Norman popped down the road to chat about his plans with William Morris and co. Each house is different – the majestic fences and gates are the only common features – and the gardens now are full of roses and jasmine, making for a walk of sensory delights. The eyes and the nose are sated, as well as the ears. In the unaccustomed quiet I stood transfixed for about quarter of an hour listening to a blackbird, undisturbed by rat-runners, perched on a roof singing complex melodies that would have thrilled Stravinsky. These were then copied by another bird in the distance that I could not see. They were definitely mimicking one another. I did not know they did that. Or care, if I’m honest. But I do now. I rushed home to look up blackbirds on Wikipedia. They are amazing. And I have spent eighty-seven years ignoring them.
14 May 2020
Overdid it yesterday so my body is protesting. Today sat on the balcony in the sun. I am listening to and looking at the world around me more closely than I ever have. I have been blown away by dramatic landscapes like Suilven and Dancing Ledge, but now I am noticing the minutiae.
Every year two swans that live near us have cygnets. They are very much metropolitan birds, and previously when they took the new little ones for an outing they kept very close to the bank, to avoid the trip boats, rowers, yachts and general river business. This year the cygnets were born in April, and because of the virus rules banning rowing and sailing and motorboats, the river is completely unused by human beings. Today I watched the four little fluffy adventurers taking off from the adults and playing in the middle of the river, ignoring their angry parents who were trying to herd them to the side. Like all kids when told not to do something they deem unreasonable, the cygnets were squeaking: ‘Why?’ I watched this charade for about half an hour, something I would never have done BC. It gave me great pleasure. I will watch the cygnets’ development with trepidation. They seldom all survive, and whereas before I only vaguely cared, this time I feel a special new bond with them. If I am not careful it will become an antirrhinum situation. I am new to this naturalist stuff. I am apt to humanise animals and flowers – anthropomorphising, it is called. This is frowned upon by proper country folk. Which is why they can happily kill birds, and foxes, and deer, and cut down forests.
My ornithological discoveries have not been limited to swans. I have not encouraged birds to visit my balcony, as they seem to think of it as a lavatory, but now I am desperate for company of any sort. Two wood pigeons (I looked it up – they have white splodges on their necks) have taken to sitting on my balcony railings. They adore one another, billing and cooing and nuzzling their heads together. I am very jealous. I am touched to see that today they are perched with their bums over the river, after I told them off yesterday for making a mess. I’m slightly less friendly now, as I read that they carry a disease that is very dangerous to old people. Everyone is out to get us.
Just now a crow arrived, gave one squawk, and they flew off. Maybe the crow knows about the virus-carrying pigeons and he was protecting me? Maybe I should make friends with the crow? I’ve seen him around the area quite a lot. I rather like the way he swaggers around on the road outside, unafraid and cocky. I’m sorry that I don’t get more birds visiting. A blue-coloured bird (I didn’t have time to look him up) came and perched on my Sky television dish for about ten minutes. I sprinkled seed around, but he never came back. He probably returned to Dover. Despite my very expensive birdseed – or ‘world-class’, as Boris Johnson says about all his failures: apps, tests, second-rate Cabinet members. Where are the sparrows and robins? Why don’t they come and keep me company? Maybe the crow has seen them off too? I see him looking covetously through my French windows at my lounge. Maybe I’ll be the next to go? The survival of the fittest – and I am ‘extremely vulnerable’.
This is what two months in isolation does to you. I have gone from admiring a blackbird to an Alfred Hitchcock horror film.
15 May 2020
‘Stay alert, control the virus, save lives.’
That poses a bit of a mystical challenge to us all. I certainly feel incapable of alertly being so powerfully controlling, especially while stuck in my home forbidden to go out. In his televised press conference one could practically see Dominic Cummings’s gun in Boris Johnson’s back, as Boris tried to look stern – he had even combed his hair – whilst ordering continuing ‘lockdown’ and also loosening up. But it is all right because he has a ‘road map’ to get us back to normal. I wonder if the road map will be on Google Maps for those who have no idea what a road map is.
16 May 2020
Felt desperately lonely today. It is difficult not to slip into a dystopian-nightmare way of thinking when you have no one to use as a sounding board for your thoughts. I like solitude, but not enforced. For an indefinite period. Even in prison you have a release date. I wish John were here. I disapprove of attributing possible opinions and behaviour to dead people, but I can’t help thinking John would have quite liked this situation. Driven, as we both were, by the Protestant work ethic, he would have enjoyed an excuse not to do thirteen hours a day on a film set. He did not have friends, apart from those he worked with, so having people round for dinner or drinks never happened anyway. He liked it that way. For my part, I would love to hear his doubtless sardonic take on all the political shenanigans. I would sell my damaged soul to hear his comments on the daily briefings that we are receiving on television. Anxious medical puppets weakly trying to restrain Boris Johnson’s desperation to give good news, even when people are dying and our economy is collapsing. They want us to take it deeply seriously, but his apparent inability to resist a lie, especially if it gets a laugh, has forced many a U-turn or retraction, for which he tries to blame The Science – those helpless experts trapped behind rostra either side of him, aghast at his misjudged off-the-cuff remarks. The same thing happened in the US when Trump put forward his theory that injecting with disinfectant was a possible cure, to the visible horror of a woman scientist on the platform. One can’t help thinking there must have been some relief when Boris caught the virus and was whipped off to hospital, then down to Chequers to recover and play with his newborn son for several weeks. Not to mention be with his probably fed-up fiancée. John’s impersonation of Boris – as people still call him, albeit more derisively than chummily of late – would have been cherishable; upper-class twits were his speciality. He would have had even more fun with the wretched Matt Hancock – no relation, I hasten to add – chosen as secretary of state for health, one suspects more for his support of Brexit than any qualification for that or indeed any job in government, and unexpectedly confronted by a catastrophic problem way beyond his skill set to deal with. On days when the news is dire Boris does not appear at the daily briefing, lumbering Hancock with announcing all the bad stuff. To begin with he was quite perky as he read out manipulated statistics, but gradually his eyes have glazed over, and he is stiff with fear when confronted by questions from the press, as he tries desperately to stick to the party line, rehearsed with Cummings, and cunningly constructed to avoid answering any questions truthfully, or comprehensibly, or, when at a loss, at all, ignoring the question completely and rambling on with another random set piece.
I see that look in my mirror too. Rabbit in a headlight. A very shabby rabbit. I am not a pretty sight. My Social Services Outfits, which I favour in France, are positively Vogue front page compared to my London Lockdown Look. I wear tracksuit bottoms which are two sizes too big for me since I became a shrunken vegan, so I either roll them at the waist or, for a change, turn up the trouser legs, or, on particularly wizened days, both. With them I sport old, only occasionally washed T-shirts, one saying, ironically, ‘Funny Women’, coming from a goodie bag given to us at the show a few weeks ago when Lola and I were so happy.
People often say I look young for my age, an effect mainly achieved by having a good haircut. My hairdresser being closed, I now have to sport a cute headband to keep my growing thatch from obscuring my vision, and I look like a disturbing, ancient child. My body is brown thanks to extraordinary weather and having time to sunbathe, but my face is ashen, because I get cold sores if I expose it to sunlight, so when I go out I wear a big battered brown felt hat. It was actually a beautiful hat once, made for me by the very trendy George Malyard, whose revolutionary designs are now archived in the Victoria and Albert Museum. When I wore it in the sixties I was the height of chic. Now, worn over my wan face, a mask over my mouth and nose, and with straggly wisps of dead white hair escaping, I look as though I too should be in a museum. Maybe there is a History of Plagues Department somewhere in which I could feature as a 2020 Pandemic Victim.
18 May 2020
Conscious that my mind is ailing even if my body is not, today I broke all the rules, made a desperate break for it and drove into the West End. A journey that in rush hour can take forty-five minutes or more took me ten. Instead of sitting in the customary traffic jam, I only passed about three other cars. I parked easily behind John Lewis – it really is upsetting to see that stalwart national institution closed down – and I walked to Oxford Circus, half expecting to be arrested, but not only were there no police, there were hardly any people at all. I actually stood in the middle of the road on Oxford Circus and looked down Oxford Street. In the middle. Something that has probably never before been possible in daytime. No buses, taxis or cars, nobody on the pavements. For the first time I noticed that the street is lined with trees. Without all the usual tourists and out-of-towners – Londoners usually give Oxford Street a wide berth – the street is an impressive avenue; a sort of Champs-Élysées. Regent Street too was silent, some shops ominously boarded up in a way that suggested they are permanently closed. There was nowhere to have a coffee. I passed a fabulous Indian restaurant near Regent Street, and it had signs of life. I looked through the window and the waiters, who would usually be the acme of elegance, were lounging around in shirtsleeves. The manager came out and we chatted, at a distance, and I was upset at the awful calamity this is for people who have worked hard for years to build up a much-loved business. Ahmed told me that if they were not allowed to open soon, they would have to go bankrupt. The same thing is happening to my son-in-law, who recently celebrated ten years’ work to create a successful theatre production company, and now has to close down, there being insufficient support for the arts from the government. It is not even mentioned, despite being a huge earner for the revenue, providing thousands of jobs, attracting tourism, enhancing British reputation abroad, and especially helping disadvantaged children with all the outreach groups throughout the country, a few of which the John Thaw Foundation is proud to support. The theatre, music, museums and art galleries are vital to the well-being of our nation. For the Boris/Cummings lot, getting the pubs open takes priority over preserving our cultural life, or even our kids’ education. They think that is what the public wants. Their numerous focus groups have misjudged a lot of the public’s reaction to the situation so far, so they may be wrong. But I suppose our arts and entertainment institutions will remain some way down the list of priorities for a while.
It did me a lot of good to look at the architectural marvel of Regent Street and my beloved Broadcasting House, still trying to function to keep the news being communicated truthfully, as opposed to some of the dangerous stuff on the web. Sometimes I just have to stop watching and listening to the events as they occur. I turn to BBC Radio 3, where the music I cherish continues to soothe me, and all the presenters are carrying on calmly chatting to us, now from their various homes, in their usual gentle tones.
I had arranged to meet a friend of mine in Soho Square to pick up some masks she had made for me – a worthy reason, I felt, for breaking my sheltered status. It was a glowing sunny day. I walked, a bit tentatively, to the square. There, people were basking in the sun, reading papers, chatting, or just sitting, like me, looking around. The two permanent table-tennis tables were occupied by Chinese men, local waiters, judging by their outfits, playing with skill and courtesy; none of the shouts and squeals that happen when I play table tennis, just soft laughter. A group of five scruffy, shiny-eyed disciples were sitting on the grass, ringing bells and tinkling little cymbals, whilst tentatively chanting ‘Hare Krishna’, a cry that in the sixties echoed round London, when Hare Krishnas used to dance ecstatically, garbed in orange cloth, harmonising their mantra, totally ignored by the shoppers and office workers as they weaved around among them. I then wandered around the virtually deserted streets, smiling and greeting the other few strollers. The roads were closed to traffic. The friendly atmosphere was like it was when I was a young girl lodging in the Theatre Girls Club hostel in Greek Street, apart from the absence of the women stationed along the pavement politely selling their wares (who, as they got to know me, gave me advice on make-up, as long as I didn’t stand around too long on their pitch). I am probably romanticising the scene and their lives, but they weren’t the cowering, drugged-up, trafficked youngsters you see in shady hallways, nail bars and massage parlours nowadays.
20 May 2020
Every Thursday at 8 p.m. many of the population go into the open air and clap for the NHS and care workers, who are courageously fighting this malignant virus. Those front-line workers are trying to do their usual job of healing and comforting, with a few ineffective weapons, and under threat of coming down with the disease themselves. In fact, many have died. The politicians make sure that they are filmed clapping along with what they interpret as public unity, but I detect in the applause a hint of anger that the NHS has been neglected by the government, along with all the care workers, dustmen, shopworkers and delivery people who are now keeping us going, and have been shockingly underappreciated. Captain Tom Moore, a one-hundred-year-old ex-soldier, is marching up and down his garden, and Margaret Payne, a woman of ninety, is going up and down her stairs to replicate a childhood memory of climbing my beloved Suilven, both of them raising huge sums of money for the NHS. They, like me, remember how awful it was before the availability of healthcare for all, and they are demonstrating that money can, and should, be found to fund that.
22 May 2020
My body is not happy. Idleness makes me aware of pain. Because I am not working – no new scripts to learn, no nightly performances plus two matinees, no singing lessons, or visits to the gym to keep fit – my engine is no longer throbbing and I am becalmed. I have persevered with practising mindfulness, living in the moment and accepting whatever is happening in an interested, unemotional way. Not easy for me, but using an app from the University of California, Los Angeles, which sounds suspiciously Hollywood, but seems medically sound and not New Agey, I have found it a help.
One of the main benefits of this enforced idleness is the discoveries I have made about my body. I was alarmed the other day when I climbed a flight of stairs and was breathless. Because I was not, as I normally would be, rushing off somewhere, I stopped and thought about it, and realised I had not been breathing. I had run up the whole staircase holding my breath. When I did it again, breathing normally, I was fine. From there, I went on to observe myself in other situations, and discovered I frequently held my breath, particularly when doing something tricky.
Another thing I have found time to work on is a long-term practice of tensing my body against life. The smallest undertaking will cause the muscles in my neck, across my back, in my arms and hands and my diaphragm, to clutch in apprehension. I have tried to relax by practising yoga, Pilates, tai chi – to no avail. In fact, the effort to get the practices right, in my perfectionist way, has made the condition worse. Now something very strange has happened.
My body is teaching me a lesson, sending me a message. It is using my illness to cure a lifetime’s destructive habit. With nothing better to do, I have had time here on my own to notice that every time I go into Clutch Mode a streak of pain goes through my body, and lo and behold my reaction, to stop it hurting, is to release the tension. This lifelong habit of living in constant preparation for fight or flight, in my body, and even my mind, is being driven away by pain. What an irony. I do not grasp this pen I am writing with like a last straw, as I was wont to do, because it hurts, whereas using just enough effort to hold and guide it does not. My poor body. All my life I have gripped it in an iron vice of unnecessary effort, and now, in the last lap, as a last resort, it is forcing me to relax. When I discovered I had rheumatoid arthritis, I thought my body had turned against me, allowing my immune system to attack me rather than defend me, but now I like to think it is trying to teach me a new approach to managing movement. If somewhat brutally.
23 May 2020
Another bloody letter from the NHS. In fact an email and a letter to make sure I don’t forget that I am Extremely Vulnerable. Although there is actually no clinical evidence yet to prove that people taking my medication are more at risk; it is just a supposition. When I suggested to my medical team that perhaps a drug that makes the immune system behave, like tocilizumab, might be useful in treating coronavirus, in which inflammation is a huge problem, I was surprised and a little gratified to be told that they were in fact doing clinical trials to see if it does. Epidemiology appears to be another talent I have acquired.
All in all, although resenting the ‘vulnerable’ label, I do now accept that I am old. I cannot avoid it, since we oldies are constantly in the news as being in need of protection. It still surprises me a bit when very old ladies tell me they were at school with me. I opened a wing of an old people’s home where ancient folk were mumbling to themselves, shuffling around on Zimmers, and the matron told me they were excited about my visit because ‘You’re their generation, aren’t you?’
One of the things that depresses me most about getting old is all the things I will not have time to learn. And this bloody virus is wasting what time I have left.
I curse it for forcing the cancellation of the canal series I was doing with Gyles, which was proving the most fulfilling job of my career. In the two episodes that we managed to complete I not only learned to handle a canal boat, but had a rowing lesson from the Olympic medal-winning crew, and did interviews with many intriguing people who live on or alongside these historic waterways. I was doing a job that satisfied my avid thirst for knowledge, and being paid for the privilege. Tempus is fugitting.
24 May 2020
Had a lovely email from Norbie, my Hungarian friend, telling me to take care of myself. I am thinking a lot, in my lonely, disconnected state, about how lucky I am, in normal life, to be the recipient of sometimes quite profound affection from strangers, who have been touched by something I have written or acted in. I am at the age when women are normally invisible, treated unkindly.
Coming back from a gig in Inverness in those days when we could travel around, there was a mistake in my booking and a uniformed official at the airport berated me loudly, in front of the crowd in the waiting area, rudely accusing me of daring to sit on some seats reserved for business class, which I had actually been booked in, but for which I had been given the wrong ticket. It was humiliating and upsetting, but then a woman from the ticket desk swooped on us, told the man off and apologised profusely, saying that she recognised me, and was really sorry that I had been treated so badly.
‘I know who you are.’
Had she not ‘known who I was’, I fear I would have just been a stupid old woman, fair game for humiliation. It was a salutary lesson, reminding me how fortunate I am to be treated so well. Because I pop up in people’s drawing rooms on their television screens they think they know me, and kindly share with me stories of their lives, pouring out their hearts, knowing I will not share them with their friends or family. That is why I got hundreds of letters from readers when The Two of Us was published, and still get many, some sixteen years later, discussing addiction and bereavement, saying things to a sympathetic stranger that they cannot to people close to them. The marine in the hotel, and Tom in the pub in Cornwall too, felt able to share with me the secret sorrow they had to withhold from colleagues and loved ones.
I remember feeling sad that Tom had lost out on a prosperous life that he was entitled to. Thinking of it now, with the pace of my life reduced to a standstill, and a new consciousness of the enjoyment to be found in small natural things, it was arrogant of me to think he would be missing out by rejecting what I deemed exciting new experiences.
Sitting here alone staring at four walls, I would give my eyeteeth to be in that pub with a plate of chips, a glass of cider and amusing company. That is Tom’s everyday life. Why on earth would he want to endure an airport, and flying, to be at a party with a lot of rich people he has nothing in common with, except a father who deserted him?
I will go to that pub again after this is all over. I bet he will still be there, smiling at his mates.
What’re you going to have, Tom? Oh, if only.
25 May 2020
Stay at home; protect the NHS; jobs, jobs, jobs; stay alert; control the virus; save the NHS; keep two metres apart; wear a mask; don’t cough; flatten the curve; whatever it takes; and now ‘Get it done’ – referring to ridding ourselves of the virus as well as Europe, which is still worryingly going on behind our backs, whilst we focus on this new government endeavour.
Slogans are still the order of the day. An approach that fills me with trepidation. Hitler recommended in Mein Kampf that short slogans should be used to appeal to ‘the primitive sentiments of the broad masses . . . These slogans should be repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that is being put forward.’ One of his favourites was ‘Germany first’, which I hope Trump is too stupid to have known about when he made his inaugural speech as president, otherwise he is even more dangerous than I thought. We have even endeavoured to obey our prime minister’s Delphic maxims to ‘whack a mole’ and ‘squash the sombrero’, though his classics tutors at Balliol may flinch.
The instructions have become ever more complicated and contradictory. The comedy actor Matt Lucas’s impersonation of Johnson dithering summed it up perfectly:
‘So, we are saying, don’t go to work, go to work, don’t take public transport, go to work, don’t go to work, stay indoors, if you can work from home, go to work, don’t go to work, go outside, don’t go outside, and then we will or won’t . . . er . . . something or other.’
I have always believed that the British sense of humour is one of our strongest weapons against extremism. The strutting absurdity of Hitler, Mussolini and the rest of his murderous gang, with its ludicrous goose-stepping soldiers, would surely have been laughed out of court in Britain. Indeed, they were, in the playgrounds in England during the war, which resonated with songs about the relative merits of the Nazi leadership’s balls.
But we mustn’t forget that these ludicrous cartoon figures ended up killing many millions.
Social media is, I’m glad to say, full of ridicule of our present leaders. Cabinet ministers are wont to say, of things they want us to believe, it is ‘the will of the people’ or ‘the country has spoken’. All I can say is they can’t be looking at social media, or chatting in the queue at Tesco.
25 May 2020
A distressed phone call from Joanna. My youngest daughter has a rental home in St Ives. After it was permitted to make a short journey, she drove the three children down from Devon to check on the house. She met no one, and went nowhere apart from her house. The work on the house went on till late in the evening, and the kids were tired, so she decided to stay the night, but at 9 p.m. a neighbour came to the door and threatened to report her to the police if she did, because overnight stays were not allowed. For God knows what reason. His belligerent visit felt a bit like the Stasi in East Berlin. She was no threat whatsoever to anyone. But her neighbour was drunk with the power of self-righteousness. My daughter was disobeying the rules. Never mind how pointless they were. And she must be punished.
I have always had a reluctance to obey rules. Maybe growing up in the shadow of the rise of the Nazis had some effect. My mother was reluctant to let me join the Brownies with their lovely brown uniform, and utterly refused to allow me to become a Girl Guide, because she had heard of, and been frightened by, the Hitler Youth movement in Germany.
It seems to me that, if you are going to obey rules, you have to double-check that they are necessary, and made by people with good motives, who know what they are doing. We do not seem to be controlling the virus as well as some other countries – 65,000 people have died so far. Despite numerous prior warnings of a potential pandemic by scientists and the likes of Bill Gates, we were not prepared at all. Johnson likes to think of himself as a Churchillian figure, but he has none of the honesty with which Churchill warned us of the inevitable tragedies of war, and it is hard to trust him after the lies of the Brexit campaign.
The new rules have come at us thick and fast, and to begin with we nearly all did as we were told. We locked ourselves away, trusting that the government was dealing with it. But the daily briefings, with multiple charts and facts and figures, have not inspired us. Schemes like the Test and Trace app, tried out on the Isle of Wight and hailed as ‘the cherry on the cake’ of getting the virus under control, have not filled us with confidence in our leaders. South Korea and Germany have effective systems up and running, but we were supposed to be getting our own ‘world-beating’ version. I personally never really understood it. It seemed to be a few operators waiting for people to phone them to tell them they had the virus, whereupon these observers would inform those people’s friends, telling them to quarantine for two weeks. I could not grasp what function the app had in the process. Anyway, it has disappeared without trace. Or track. Together with the millions it cost to invent and trial it.
Nevertheless, people are still loyally trying to abide by the rules, whilst not being sure they are sensible. The economy is inevitably going to be wrecked by the shutdown. The NHS is forced to delay all other life-saving treatment whilst it deals with the virus casualties. My profession faces ruination under the disastrous rules whereby no theatre, cinema or museum can operate. It seems young people just get a mild version of the infection. So is there not an argument for locking away and protecting just us vulnerable ones, and letting the rest of the population carry on as normal, apart from a few bouts of fluey illness, so that the economy continues to operate, avoiding the potential disaster of a massive recession?
Although I admire the way my fellow countrymen are obeying the rules, it makes me nervous. I have already confessed that I have disobeyed them. That is partly because of my reluctance to kowtow. I need to respect a person before I do as they say.
26 May 2020
There are rule-breakers even in their own ranks. Svengali Cummings has himself transgressed. As a rule-breaker myself, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt when he sat in the rose garden of 10 Downing Street – a setting usually reserved for major governmental announcements, not scruffy backroom advisers – and rambled on about why it was all right for him to go gallivanting up to his family estate in Durham, and then have a nice little drive, and a sit by the river with his wife and child, while the rest of us sweltered behind closed doors. The mockery of his excuses – driving over fifty miles to see if his eyes were good enough to drive, not having enough childcare – has been wonderfully funny, covering the profound anger at his hypocrisy for which ‘the will of the people’ was definitely that he should have been sacked. But, of course, he wasn’t. How on earth would Michael Gove, and the man Gove stabbed in the back during the leadership battle, our prime minister, know what to do without him?
27 May 2020
Went to Hammersmith Hospital, where I was five minutes late getting back to my parking meter. The attendant was already tapping into his machine and, remembering previous similar occasions when I have been told that, once started, the process of issuing a ticket has to continue, I was reduced, at the thought of yet another fine, to whimpering, ‘Oh, please.’ To my utter amazement the man tapped a few more keys and said, ‘All right, love, but don’t do it again.’ He abandoned the protocol, maybe risking getting into trouble with his boss, who presumably would be able to see evidence of his having given away the revenue. In the afterglow of his kindness, I decided we can and definitely should break rules.
In 2015 – God, that seems another world – I went to the magnificent Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A. From an apprenticeship in tailoring, this genius of haute couture soared into his own unique stratosphere, saying, ‘You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition.’ That is something that could be said by all creative people who have moved their particular Art forward – whether Stravinsky, Picasso, Pinter, Defoe or Sondheim. For humankind to survive there have to be laws and rules, but these must be constantly tested and challenged, and improved upon, and we are indebted to the individuals who do this on our behalf, sometimes at great cost to themselves – the suffragettes, the Peterloo martyrs, the conscientious objectors, the ordinary folk who sheltered Jewish families during the Nazi period.
Is the pandemic making us too compliant? Anxious to avoid risk? Should we just do as we are told? Maybe in this instance it is for the public good. But we must not lose the duty to question received opinions, and if, after examining them, we find them wanting in their contribution to the nurturing of humanity, we must reject them. We must refuse to toe the line. We must rebel. It is so difficult to avoid being seduced into prejudice by peer pressure, political jargon, religious dogma and press distortion or government edict.
Before the virus attacked us, we witnessed many acts of civil disobedience by the people involved in Extinction Rebellion. They are passionate in their battle against our headlong plunge into climate disaster. There are other groups and individuals engaged in obstructing the development of the HS2, a vastly expensive high-speed rail link from London to Birmingham, and eventually further north. Now that so many people are working at home and finding it possible, and maybe even preferable, spending £106 billion to take thirty minutes off a train trip to Birmingham, at the cost of destroying homes, woodland and wildlife, seems folly.
Like all peaceful protesters, the Extinction Rebellion campaigners are prepared to go to prison for us. If flouting the law is the only way to draw our attention to destructive developments that stand in the way of a greener lifestyle, they will do it. Now is the vital time to take action, when the country has had a taste of what life can be like without so many aeroplanes, cars and pollution of every kind. We have heard the blackbird sing. And we like it.
In my profession there are many rules. Punctuality is necessary. You can’t keep an audience or a film unit waiting by turning up late for work. The superstitions, like not whistling in the theatre or saying the name of the Scottish play, are too myriad to mention. Most of them are dying out anyway. Even ‘the show must go on’ is less abided by. I love the story that John was told by the lugubrious comic Max Wall, with whom he was appearing in a play at the Royal Court Theatre in Chelsea, about one old trooper who did break the rules. ‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray, as he was known, sported a huge moustache, glasses and an ill-fitting top hat, and spoke in Franglais. An expert juggler and slapstick comic, he was apparently an odd bloke who didn’t stand fools gladly. One matinee, when Max and Eddie were playing the Ugly Sisters at the notorious Glasgow Empire, Eddie, dressed to the nines in wig, bosoms, elaborate woman’s costume and absurd make-up, the full pantomime-dame drag, abruptly stopped struggling to make himself heard over rioting kids in the stalls, turned to Max and said calmly, ‘I’m not ’avin this, mate – I’m off.’ Whereupon he left the stage and drove back to London, leaving Max to adjust the plot for the rest of the show to involve only one Ugly Sister.
It is painfully obvious that my amateur theory is not scientifically or anthropologically sound, and must not be confused with Rees-Moggery, but I believe that, whereas other animals on the whole go with the herd, the propensity to break rules, disobey orders, question the norm and reject the accepted standards and beliefs is what makes us human. It could lead to anarchy, but without it you have slavery and stasis.
7 June 2020
One massive defiance of the rules has just taken place. People around the world are gathering despite the virus, marching in outcry at the death in Minnesota of a black man, George Floyd, who was slowly murdered by a policeman kneeling on his neck. He cried out for his mother, and said he could not breathe, but the murderer continued and his colleagues just stood and watched. A young girl, remonstrating all the while, filmed the nine minutes it took for George Floyd to die, as evidence. I confess that I have not been able to watch the whole nine minutes, it being so obscene, but suffice it to say that I was grateful that crowds of people, of all ethnicities, defied the lockdown rules and marched in protest. Worldwide. It could not wait, for memories are too short. The subsequent stories of racial harassment and injustice that have been told by people of colour have shocked me and I’m sure many others. I knew it existed but I’ve done nothing. If I look deep into my soul, I know that I too have questions to face.
I have not sufficiently considered the lack of people of colour in positions of power in all areas of society, including my own profession. On today’s news I watched the statue of a slave owner being felled in Bristol, and realised I really do not know about my own colonial history. I never learned it at school, and, like women’s history, it is grossly neglected to this day. My granddaughter has been involved in writing letters to schools, requesting them to change the curriculum into something more accurate. Great Britain has a proud history in many ways, and no harm will come to it by facing the bad bits. I was impressed, when I went to Berlin, to see so many schoolchildren being taken round the Holocaust Memorial and other museums illustrating their country’s Nazi past.
I honestly did not know what an appalling racist Winston Churchill was. In 1937 he told the Palestine Royal Commission:
‘I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.’
I cannot connect this white-supremacist garbage with the man I have long respected. I do not know how his brilliant brain could have overlooked the multiple flaws in this argument. I do know that he led us out of a terrifying war. I remember the comfort and inspiration his wonderful speeches gave to us. As a child I loved the pictures of Winnie in his siren suit, with his homburg hat and stick, a cigar in his mouth, stomping through the debris after a raid. Now I am sickened by some of the things he said in the past. I am forcing myself to examine the disturbing things my hero did and said, and yet I would hate to see his statue removed from Parliament Square. Let him stay, but let it be known that even heroes, like all of us, can be ignorant and cruel. He was a brilliant maverick with huge talent, and I like to think that, if he had been tackled about his earlier racism, he would think again. Just as, to a lesser degree, my mother would have regretted using the N-word to describe the colour of her coat if she knew how hurtful that description was, and I would have thrown my beloved golliwog into the rubbish if I had known what it symbolised.
Whilst we struggle towards equilibrium in this necessary balancing of our society, there will be excesses. The other night I watched a streaming of the National Theatre production of Les Blancs, a searingly honest play about colonisation and apartheid in South Africa. There was an after-show discussion of the production between three women of colour. They all concurred that this subject must only be directed by a person of colour. I wondered if they felt that all the many shows about white stories should only be directed by a person of that colour. In my opinion theatre and the arts as a whole should be free of all restrictions and rules. Just as we now have had a black Henry V, a female Hamlet, and are about to have an eighty-year-old interpretation of the same role, we should not categorise or limit our approach to art. However, because of the paucity of diversity in directors, perhaps it is time to positively discriminate for a while, as we have regarding women. When I was young it was unheard of for women of any colour to direct. I was always on my own at meetings of the belligerently male managerial team at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1980s.
I really believe that the Black Lives Matter movement, by breaking the pandemic rules and going on marches, awakened the awareness of many of us, and achieved a massive step forward towards a genuinely understanding, integrated, respectful and peaceful world. A world where everyone believes the Quaker faith that there is ‘that of God in everyone’. Everyone. Including Churchill.
14 June 2020
Tonight we had a Zoom book club meeting, a dozen women from disparate backgrounds meeting to discuss Elizabeth Bowen’s In the Heat of the Day, and I got unattractively angry about its obtuse description of life in wartime London. Everyone agreed that, despite it being acclaimed by the literati, we found the style impenetrable. I am always irritated by the gulf between a lowly but enjoyable read and literature, which often seems to demand obscurity and no satisfactory ending. This book is full of passages which a group of very intelligent women, all better educated than I, found impossible to understand. The others were calmly analytical, but I let fly with lots of highbrow critique along the line of: ‘It’s wanky and up itself.’
This was a study of a much more elegant wartime than I remember. Classy people continuing to smoke and chat on vaguely about their love affairs while an air raid is in full blast outside. Not an Anderson or crowded underground shelter in sight. A lover who is a fascist spy with no explanation as to why he should support a regime that he would have known by then was slaughtering millions, except that he has a slightly nasty mother and sister, and a vast home that he does not like much. Anyway, after my out-of-proportion Zoom tirade, causing, I noted in my gallery view, several raised eyebrows, I ended up feeling worried about my mental state. Being isolated for months with my own thoughts, and little face-to-face discussion, has addled my brain. Yet, like others, I am frightened of emerging from this exile. I cannot visualise what the future will be. How it will end. Mainly because it won’t. There will be none of the much-desired closure.
I am puzzled by our current fashion for bringing about closure. There is no such thing. If someone’s child is murdered, the punishment of the miscreant does not bring an end to the parents’ suffering. The severance of our link with Europe will not be over and done with on 1 January, when the Brexiteers will be rejoicing about the ‘closure’ of their fifty-year struggle to get away from unity with our neighbours. It is the ongoing adventure of living that nothing is irrevocably ended. Germany did not find closure on the Nazi period with the squalid death of Hitler; there followed a long struggle to reinvent itself. Today its chancellor, Angela Merkel, is one of the world’s most admirable leaders. (It is interesting that all the countries that have calmly acquitted themselves well through the pandemic, free from all the ‘we will fight this war’ rhetoric, have been led by women – Taiwan, New Zealand, Germany.)
18 June 2020
Strange that I was remembering Vera Lynn a few weeks ago. Her death has just been announced, at the age of 103. ‘She had a good innings,’ as my dad would say. Such a British, crickety tribute is right for her, because she truly was quintessentially English. She could not have been any other nationality, with her tall, slightly gawky body and toothy grin. Like my sister Billie, she worked all over the world with ENSA during the war, sleeping in mud huts or in the backs of cars, entertaining a handful of troops in a clearing, lit by jeep headlights, or on a makeshift platform somewhere, in front of hundreds of men, who sometimes hadn’t seen a woman for months. She was unthreatening and likeable. Her voice was pitch-perfect, unaffected, with that pure, resonant London simplicity. Every word was as clear as a bell, so that I discover that, eighty years later, I can remember all the words of every song she sang, not just ‘Goodnight, Children Everywhere’. They spoke of all the things we most longed for during the ugly conflict. Beautiful fantasies. There may never have been bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover, or a nightingale singing in Berkeley Square, and certainly not angels dining at the Ritz, but, sitting on a bunk down in the air-raid shelter, listening to a crackly radio, that was what she promised us. And, more realistically, that ‘Jimmy will go to sleep in his own little room again.’ Just what eight-year-old Sheila would have loved. Vera Lynn said it would happen – ‘Just you wait and see’ – and we believed her. She sounded so honest. And in the newsreels, we saw she meant it. She didn’t dance about and pull silly faces; she just stood there, and told us in her strong, unaffected voice that everything would be all right.
How important words were during the war. We only had the wireless, so we interpreted events through our ears. When Churchill made his poetic, vivid speeches, we were stirred; when the obviously ailing king struggled to master his heart-stopping stutter to address us, we wanted to be brave for him; and when the It’s That Man Again gang fooled around, it cheered us up. It was our ears that they had to appeal to. Maybe nowadays, if a woman stood, without a backing group, stock-still at a microphone, and made no attempt to be sexy or provocative, just sang the words and meant them, we would not be impressed. But that’s what Vera did. And we were impressed. More: she was our sweetheart – and we loved her.
I remember a poem that sums up the value of entertainers such as her. It is by Louis MacNeice, a neglected poet I used to see often with Dylan Thomas in the Soho dives I visited in the fifties and sixties with Alec. When I was appearing at the Garrick Theatre in 1963 in a play called Rattle of a Simple Man, he staggered into my dressing room one night, paralytically drunk, a sorry sight that made his death a few months later no surprise. This poem, ‘Death of an Actress’, which could’ve been written about Vera, expresses a love of performers that makes me proud to be in a profession that fulfils the need that he describes.
I see from the paper that Florrie Forde is dead –
Collapsed after singing to wounded soldiers,
At the age of sixty-five. The American notice
Says no doubt all that need be said
About this one-time chorus girl; whose rôle
For more than forty stifling years was giving
Sexual, sentimental, or comic entertainment,
A gaudy posy for the popular soul.
Vera was never knowingly sexual but, like Florrie,
She threw a trellis of Dorothy Perkins roses
Around an audience come from slum and suburb
And weary of the tea-leaves in the sink;
Who found her songs a rainbow leading west
To the home they never had, to the chocolate Sunday
Of boy and girl, to cowslip time, to the never-
Ending weekend Islands of the Blest.
Vera, like Florrie, had a potent song, ‘We’ll Meet Again’ – cherished by what Vera called her ‘boys’. As for Florrie,
. . . she made a ragtime favourite
Of ‘Tipperary’, which became the swan-song
Of troop-ships on a darkened shore . . .
But MacNeice’s Florrie died in a military hospital, whilst Vera lived happily to 103. Florrie took her last bow, as MacNeice put it,
Correctly. For she stood
For an older England, for children toddling
Hand in hand while the day was bright. Let the wren and robin
Gently with leaves cover the Babes in the Wood.
Maybe Florrie Forde’s particular style, like Vera’s, is now dated, and tea leaves in the sink are a rare occurrence, but there is still a need for entertainers who make us laugh and sing, and look forward to better times involving bluebirds, cowslips and rainbows.
19 June 2020
Last night I watched an episode of the television detective series Vera. I remembered meeting Brenda Blethyn many years ago after doing a broadcast in the old BBC Bush House studio. She was on the verge of giving up the profession because she seemed stuck in a casting rut. Her performance last night, in a well-directed episode, surrounded by top-notch actors, was faultless. The character she has created is odd, detailed and hypnotic to watch. Her walk up a bleak moorland road after the death of a colleague was as profoundly moving as any highly praised Shakespearean performance. I salute these members of my profession. Their expertise can be overlooked by critics, and some people in our industry, but the public embraces them with gratitude.
John always referred to himself, and was referred to by others, as ‘just a telly actor’. Television is more respected now than when John did The Sweeney, but I maintain, looking back at some of his work, he was a superlative actor, truthful, intelligent and charismatic. His portrayal of the old man in Goodnight Mister Tom would compare to many a much-lauded Lear.
I sometimes anguish about my eclectic career and my questionable contribution to the culture that I consider essential for our society. The Wildcats of St Trinian’s is one of the worst films ever made – I suppose that is a sort of distinction. Mercifully it seems to have got lost in the ether, so it does not pop up to bite me on some obscure satellite channel, but attempting to follow in the footsteps of the sublime Alastair Sim, and play the headmistress of the school with, for some unknown reason, a Dutch accent, cannot claim high status in the British film canon. My performances as Senna Pod in Carry On Cleo or my impersonation of Margaret Thatcher in a weird episode of Doctor Who will not get me listed on anyone’s roster of great performances. I did do some posh work at the National and the RSC – the British premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, classy bits and bobs – mixed with Just a Minute-type comedy shows. Altogether, a regular hotchpotch of a career. Difficult to categorise.
If asked about my future ambitions, I usually reply: ‘To pay the bills.’ I am a working actor. It is my job – just as yours may be plumbing, or nursing, or shopkeeping. In the middle of a twelve-month run of a strenuous musical, performing eight shows a week and doing morning class to keep my voice and body fresh so that I can keep the hundredth show still looking like the first, audience members often say, ‘You must have fun’, ‘You look as though you are enjoying yourself’, as though it is some kind of hobby. I have been known to snarl ungraciously, ‘It’s my job.’ The same reply applies to ‘How do you learn all those words?’, albeit with the addition, in old age, of ‘With a lot of difficulty.’ The actor and comedy performer Peter Jones would always solemnly say to me, ‘Better than working in a glue factory’, haunted as he was by a visit to one that he made for some obscure reason. Of course, he was right.
I think what I would like to be known as is a popular entertainer like, but nowhere near in the same class as, Vera Lynn. The thousands of letters and warm greetings in the street I have received during my working life are honestly more satisfying to me than the odd rusting awards I have on my lavatory shelf.
I hope I have, as they say, done my bit. I have always, as John put it, had to ‘earn a crust’. It was, and in my case still is, my job. I have done a hell of a lot of work, most of which I, and the public, have long forgotten – ‘Weren’t you Sheila Hancock?’ – most of it undistinguished, but over the years I have raised a few laughs, I have heard audiences having a good time, so when I feel a bit inadequate I remind myself of some advice Martha Graham gave to Agnes de Mille. It is valid for anyone attempting anything creative.
‘There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action . . . It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open . . . No artist is pleased . . . No satisfaction whatever at any time . . . There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.’
Come to think of it, that is a pretty good credo for life.
5 July 2020
We have been told that poetry will now become an optional subject in GCSEs. The powers that be have declared that it is hard for students ‘to get to grips with complex literary texts remotely’. It is tragic how we underestimate our children’s ability. People think Shakespeare has to be simplified, bowdlerised or cut, but when we did the RSC small-scale tour, after one workshop to prepare them, I never met a single child who didn’t comprehend the plays and the text. If they didn’t understand every word, they still liked the sound of it. In fact, nowadays, with rap and performance poetry, the younger generation are discovering a new delight in the use of language.
Some kids will never know about poetry, or hear classical music, unless they are introduced to it at school. That is just not fair. My existence would have been pretty barren if teachers had not opened up these worlds to me. A poem can crystallise a complex mindset and help you understand what you, and others, are grappling with. Coincidentally, today I received from a friend a poem by Jacqueline Saphra, one that helped me deal with my present unease.
Obviously worried about the economy, the government (or Boris, desperate to be loved) has relaxed a lot of the restrictions. So, of course, everyone is celebrating en masse. Except me. While the people in the pub down the road seem to be having a wonderful time, and my family are going on holiday, and the square I live in is empty with people away enjoying staycations, I am still quarantined and nervous at this sudden change of direction. Everyone is moving on, but I still feel guiltily wretched. As we Quakers say, this timely poem ‘spoke to my condition’.
The Sad is feeling it today, it’s had enough.
The Sad is feeling bad for being sad, but no,
don’t talk at the Sad and tell it to buck up
when the Sad is falling into its own shadow.
Don’t give the Sad the 3rd degree. It runs
with pain, it bonds with fear and faith, it gets
to grips, applies the balm of sorrow to its own
beleaguered eyes. The Sad will not accept
comparisons, knows only the soft strands
of itself, the briny reaches of the soul.
The Sad understands; it lies down in the hot land
of the heart and weeps: it keeps you whole,
it does the human work. Hold tight. Believe
the Sad, give it some air and let it breathe.
Spot on. How dare we deprive our children of lifelong comfort and revelation.
10 July 2020
The slogans have an air of desperation about them now.
‘Keep our distance, wash our hands, think of others and play our part. All together.’ This one has not had a lot of coverage – perhaps even the writer felt uneasy about its clumsiness. Is it still Dominic, I wonder, or is he too busy planning the destruction of the civil service and the BBC? I suppose the introduction of the word ‘our’ is intended to shift the effect from scary orders to a matey appeal to our finer feelings.
So, the slogans keep coming at us. This government has never been great at judging the mood of the country, despite all its focus groups. Now it appears to have lost its hold completely.
We are told that, at the start of the pandemic, ministers hesitated to lock down because they thought the British population would not comply, and certainly could not be trusted to sustain the discipline for long. Hence they were slow off the mark, compared with all the other more successful countries, in containing the virus, at the cost of thousands of lives. Far from not complying, we have taken to it like a bunch of ducks to water, staying in our nests for near on five months. Now they are panicking because we will not come out.
This latest one has really confused us. ‘Eat out to help out,’ they plead. Is that really a good idea after all the hiding away? We will pay half the bill. Get on public transport, get your hair done, have your eyebrows plucked, go to the pub, get tattoos, anything, anything, so long as you spend money. Richmond, Chiswick, and further afield, are all coming to rowdy life again. People are queuing at Primark to buy more landfill throwaway clothes. One pub open near me in Hammersmith is packed with customers certainly not observing any social distancing rules. Boris Johnson assures us now that he expects ‘a significant return to normality by Christmas’ and that he is ‘hoping for the best and planning for the worst’. So that’s all right, then.
1 August 2020
The deaths predictably are going up. Johnson is looking gloomily crumpled. The job, which he visualised as a child as being a beloved ‘world king’, signing a few papers that Dom put in front of him and playing cricket at Chequers, is actually no fun at all. He says he is now working on a complicated scheme that will pass the buck for keeping his subjects safe to local councils, bosses and us. Since when he is nowhere to be seen. The leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, struggled to discuss a paper about the threat of a deadly third surge with a vague Johnson. Eventually, in exasperation, he wailed, ‘Has the prime minister actually read this document’?
‘Waffle waffle – well, of course I am aware of – mm, mm . . .’
Starmer’s mouth actually dropped open, as the few people on the benches behind their flailing leader shifted uncomfortably on the green leather.
Prime Minister, we have had enough of your inexplicable changes of direction. You told us, in your early gung-ho days, that masks were a waste of time and we should not bother with them. At the time the medical profession was desperately ill-equipped and all the masks were needed for the NHS. Fair enough. We are grown-ups. If you had just told us that, we would have made our own. As we will now that you have admitted we need them.
Do we want the ‘normality’ back that you are promising? Some of us would prefer for the moment to be seized to make radical changes. Rather than try to shore up an outgrown retail sector, with shopping malls and superstores, we think we may prefer delivery, and smaller, more friendly shops. Perhaps we would like city centres to be rid of identical chain stores and cafés, and replaced by an eclectic mix of homes, clubs, libraries, specialist shops, family butchers and greengrocers, green spaces and no cars. Never has the public been more ready to rethink a stressful, greedy, crowded existence, and you are just trying to drag us back to the old ways. There are architects and visionaries who have ideas to bring about the way of life that we have tasted and still be commercially viable. Some of us don’t want to go back to your concept of normality – an unpleasant everyday normality that most of you have never experienced. There is not much overcrowding in Eton. So no. No go. Not yet. No fear.
3 August 2020
Martin is selling his beautiful estate, which has been a refuge of peace for many of his friends. The time has come for him to move on, so the house is on the market. I feel quite brave venturing out of London to stay with him for one last time. Today a woman came for a viewing. She recognised me, and by a curious coincidence she had, the night before, been watching John in Kavanagh, as well as at the same time reading one of my books. An auspicious start. The estate agent told us that she was moving from Hong Kong, so I tentatively asked if it was because of the current situation with China clamping down on Hong Kong democracy.
‘No,’ she said, ‘my daughter and son-in-law were killed in a car crash in January, and I’m going to bring up their three-year-old son. We need a fresh start.’
I was stunned. She had, in a few months, completely changed her life, and for the sake of her grandson was creating a new one with him. I asked if her husband was still in Hong Kong organising this upheaval, and she said, ‘No, he told me he didn’t want to look after a two-year-old child, and I haven’t seen him, nor do I want to, since that day.’ By this time I was distraught for her and in awe of her valour.
She did a tour of the elegant house, walked to the lake and through the woods, and came back ecstatic. She looked me in the eye and said, ‘I want it.’ I actually cried with delight. I knew that this house which has had so much love poured into it would be a healing place for her and a joyful adventure playground for a child to grow up in. We cracked open a bottle – several, actually – sitting by the swimming pool, to celebrate. As she mellowed, we discovered that she had worked in the law, but was mainly now an ideas woman, backed by Amazon. She had invented edible diamonds, but somebody stole the patent and she was now working on something with Liberty fabrics. In every way – for her work, her grandchild, her visiting daughters, her love of solitude – the house was perfect for her. We were very happy. I hadn’t quite grasped all the things she told us, but decided her talent for original inventions came from the sort of slightly eccentric brain that my boring rationality finds difficult to comprehend.
We sat around the pool for a couple of hours discussing how she would adapt one of the barns as a workplace, make the pool secure for Oliver, her three-year-old. Martin explained the quite onerous task of managing the estate – the woods needed managing well, as they supplied the woodchip for the heating system. The wildfowl in the lake have food left on an island that has to be rowed out to in all weathers, and the swimming pool is apt to go green without constant attention. All this she shrugged off, so deeply had she fallen in love with the place that would be her salvation from appalling tragedy. I felt such compassion for this gutsy woman. Notwithstanding coronavirus, I gave her a hug as we said our goodbyes.
After all the excitement we began to mull over the whirlwind three hours. Niggling inconsistencies were explained away. Was the grandchild two or three? Maybe he had had a birthday since January. Her interest in the CCTV cameras, which Martin dismissed as ‘not connected, just a deterrent’, and her seemingly strange enquiry about a gun room, were explained by a woman on her own in this isolated location needing good security. Again, close examination of the walk-in safe was natural for a rich woman with a Gucci handbag and nice jewellery.
When I went down for breakfast the next morning, my two friends were huddled over a mobile phone.
‘We have a problem.’
Philip, Martin’s partner, should start a new career as a private detective were he not infinitely more valuable as a paramedic. Through the internet he had discovered the full name of, and one or two pseudonyms for, our new friend, plus the fact that she had served a prison sentence for multiple crimes, ending in an open prison, from which she absconded and committed fifty-one more offences. She had indeed got a job in the law, by pretending to have been to university to get a non-existent law degree. We traced a history of what seemed like petty crime and deception.
So who was she? What was her motivation for spinning a web of lies? Was she staking out the joint for a future burglary? Did she really watch Kavanagh and read my book? Or did she just think that I would be flattered? I discovered that there had been an article in the Daily Mail property magazine, saying that I was a regular visitor to Martin’s home. Did she read that and gen up on me? But why? She didn’t know I was going to be there. Like all good fraudsters, had she prepared herself for a topic of conversation with the owner, who had declared in the article, ‘It is too big for one person’? Did she think she might woo a lonely, very rich man? If so, she was barking up the wrong tree; as Martin pointed out, ‘make-up man to the stars’ should have given her a clue.
I am haunted by a documentary in which a very intelligent young man seduced a much-respected teacher into thinking that he loved him. The teacher wrote a diary about this ‘great love’ that he had never dreamed he would have until this beautiful young man entered his world. For two years the teacher was radiantly happy, and then he started being ill. Having got him to change his will and go through a gay wedding ceremony, and convinced the teacher’s many ex-students and friends that it was a surprising but wonderful thing to see him so happy, the young man had then started to slowly poison him. He got away with the cruel murder of this deluded teacher until, a while later, he started the same performance with a lonely old woman living a few doors away.
I don’t think for a moment our visitor was that sort of evil. I think she was a fantasist. As someone who is brutally, sometimes harshly, honest, this is a mindset that I can’t begin to understand. She was with us for three hours, weaving a tragic story around herself. She was completely relaxed and seemed to be enjoying herself. We also traced a young woman, who could have been her daughter, who was involved in a road accident in January, the same time she said Oliver’s parents had been killed. In this accident a girl was killed and the young woman, possibly our visitor’s daughter, was sent to prison for negligence, leading to a manslaughter charge. From the newspaper report, the prison sentence seemed totally unjustified and counter-productive, but was this the true fact that had catapulted the woman into her invention of a tragic accident?
She said she was going to sort out the finance and would phone the estate agent the next day, but of course she didn’t. Nor did she respond to the agent’s calls. So we will never have the much-vaunted ‘closure’ on this.
My theory is that something dreadful happened to her, possibly as a child, that made her own life unbearable, so she invented a new one, and this became a habit. When I was evacuated I created a twin called Wendy, after Sheila had punched a girl and all the girl’s brothers were out to get her. ‘Don’t hit me, it wasn’t me – it was Sheila. I’m Wendy, her identical twin.’ Sheila became nasty but Wendy was gentle and sweet. I kept up this subterfuge for several months.
The encounter with this woman has affected me profoundly. As an actor I always need to know the character’s back story, and I fear I will never discover hers. Does she just like seeing how other people live? She has apparently viewed other houses. Does she hope to slip a watch or some cash into her pocket during the viewing? Nothing was missing after she left. Is she incredibly lonely and this is a way to meet people? I doubt if she often gets the welcome she got from us. Did that affect her? Does the fact that she hasn’t made an offer – which she has on other houses and then withdrawn – mean she felt a tiny bit touched by how deep-felt was the sympathy engendered by her lies? Or was she chuckling about how she got one over on the rich bastards?
She has probably forgotten all about the adventure, and moved on to another. But I will never forget her. Or cease, strangely, to care about her. Today I have the worst flare-up of my rheumatoid arthritis since it started three years ago. I actually can’t walk, as my knee is agony if I bend it even slightly. Mine is a systemic illness. It affects my whole being. I will one day get a lot of laughs when I tell the story of this woman, but for now, it hurts.
7 August 2020
I am in danger of losing touch with my grandchildren, so I assured Lola that, if we keep our distance and stay outdoors, we are quite safe to explore London. The centre of London is still deserted, so I have decided to luxuriate in this curious calm before the office workers storm back from their homes, and tourists flock to crowd the pavements and parks again. Lola decided we should start with an area she has passed through but never explored. The centre of government. The hub from which we trust our Members of Parliament, elected, as they keep reminding us, by a vast majority of us, and the prime minister whom they choose for themselves, are sorting out our salvation.
For the first time since lockdown I travelled in my car with a passenger. I wiped down the car with sanitiser, Lola sat in the back, both of us masked, and the windows open, hopefully blowing away any virus. If the virus actually does form globules that may, or may not, float in the air, or possibly land on a surface, which we might touch, and then touch our faces, unless you keep two metres, or maybe one metre, apart, and only meet in the fresh air, and then only facing forwards, and not going indoors, but forming a bubble of only family, or two households, or perhaps four households, or just two people, or maybe six, we should be all right. The blizzard of information about this nasty little killer is always changing, but that is where we are at the moment. I think.
There were even more parking spaces in Westminster than Soho. We started our tour at Victoria Tower Gardens. We had all the literature, and an audio guide, and the weather was perfect, but it did not start well.
There was no one around. Usually there would be workers from the various government offices enjoying a lunch break in the sun, but we were completely alone. We found the statue of the Burghers of Calais and were a little mystified as to why these French guys who defied the cruel English have pride of place next to our seat of government, but decided it was because we are good sports, and Rodin has done a lovely piece of sculpture.
We searched the entire gardens but could not find the memorial to Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst anywhere. There is a delightful children’s adventure playground up one end, but no sign of the militant feminists. Eventually we gave up and crossed over the road to see if we could get into either St Margaret’s Chapel or Westminster Abbey. Both were firmly closed. One would have thought they could have recruited a few odd Christians to supervise safe entry given that we are now officially allowed to worship. Primark has managed it. Mammon is obviously more efficient than God.
The Houses of Parliament are entirely enclosed in scaffolding, whilst they work on removing the asbestos, rot and rats from the decaying Palace of Westminster. Perhaps we should just turn it into a museum, and build a new circular House of Commons, where there is no nonsensical uncrossable symbolic line the length of a sword, though shouting and abuse now replace duelling in our adversarial chamber. Since lockdown, Prime Minister’s Question Time is being held with a few socially distanced members present, and the rest participating on Zoom. The speaker has said he misses the cut and thrust and fun of a crowded session, but I wonder if, like me, the rest of the electorate are enjoying the recent subdued debating, without all the schoolboy catcalls and infantile point-scoring. It certainly suits the new leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, whose quiet, methodical, facts-based arguments put poor Boris Johnson in a terrible tither of lies and incomprehensibility.
Lola and I were the only people on the grass of Parliament Square, apart from a few coppers chatting near Churchill’s statue, stationed to protect it from the Black Lives Matters supporters, who are attacking statues of slave owners and racists. The coppers were backed up by three very bedraggled men draped in Union Jacks, ready to stand up for Winnie, although, judging by the bottles around their feet, it was wiser to remain seated. I have never been close to the Churchill statue and Lola and I were staggered by its massive bulk. I think he would have liked it. Even his valiant, supportive wife, who destroyed a brutally truthful portrait of him by Graham Sutherland, might have approved. I wonder if she would have been so protective of him when, after he died, it was revealed he almost certainly had an affair with a woman he met in the South of France.
We wandered around the statues of impressive men, like Gandhi, Lloyd George and Mandela when – lo and behold – there was a woman.
Standing resolutely among the men, since 2018, is Millicent Fawcett, holding a banner quoting from the speech she gave after the death of Emily Davison at the 1913 Epsom Derby: ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere.’ Engraved on the plinth are a job lot of names of fifty-five women and four men who fought for the rights of women, showing every bit as much courage as any of the men standing grandly on the other plinths in the square. The courage to suffer imprisonment, verbal abuse and assault by the police and passers-by when arrested, being held down whilst a thick tube was thrust down their throats into their stomachs and choking liquid food poured down it. Courage to withstand prejudice and ridicule and the apathetic condescension of the political class of the time, including Asquith, the prime minister. Lloyd George’s statue raises its arm in protest at the presence of these women who actually bombed his house. Still no Pankhursts. Maybe the powers that be melted them down to make Millie? We should not be greedy. After all, 2.7 per cent of statues in this country are of women, not counting royalty. We must not get above ourselves.
Millicent Fawcett was known as a suffragist rather than a suffragette, as she rejected a violent approach. She did not go to Regent Street with an ice pick to break all the windows, or chain herself to railings, or throw herself under a horse, but quietly campaigned persistently, at the same time supporting her blind husband in his liberal political endeavours. I have sympathy, pacifist though I am, with the suffragettes, who were tired of this measured approach. They wanted ‘deeds not words’. Dogged Millicent Fawcett spent her whole life fighting in campaigns for many causes – against child abuse and the appalling concentration camps for families of the Boers, and in favour of higher education for women and fair treatment of prostitutes.
I have profound admiration for women like her, and her sisters. Well-educated, dedicated reformers, part of the now somewhat maligned middle class, which is behind much progress in the world. At the beginning of the pandemic, the television news featured a story on two hearty country women who were taking food to a row of cottages near their homes. The people who answered the door were astounded and grateful, and one of the women said, with touching honesty, that she was ashamed that only now did she realise how neglected these people were, and she would make sure in future that everyone knew each other better. She was the sort of woman who will do that with dedication. She will be called bossy, interfering, a busybody, a do-gooder and nowadays a virtue-signaller, but she will just get on with it, because she, and those of her ilk, are just kind and good.
Millicent Fawcett’s whole family of ten siblings were activists, relentlessly arguing and writing about their demands. One of their suffragist friends, Emily Davies, co-founder of Girton, the first women’s college in Cambridge, was once talking to Millicent Fawcett and her sister Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, who became the country’s first woman doctor. Emily is reported as saying to them both: ‘It is quite clear what has to be done. I must devote myself to securing higher education, while you, Lizzie, open up the medical profession to women. After these things are done, we must see about getting the vote’ – whereupon she turned to Millicent Fawcett: ‘You are younger than we are, Millie, so you must attend to that.’ All of which the three of them did.
Wonderful. Lola and I looked at Millicent’s statue, and read their names on the base, with pride and gratitude. Good on you, girls. A hundred years late, so about bloody time.
We then sauntered down Whitehall. The audio guide Lola found on her phone warned us it would be difficult to cross to the Cenotaph because of the mass of traffic. There was hardly a car or bus in sight.
We pressed our noses against the iron railings at the end of Downing Street and stared in at the grim men in full protective gear, carrying evil-looking guns. I reminisced about the days when the public could wander up to the famous front door and watch the comings and goings of famous folk and more lowly secretaries and other staff – even having a chat with them. Especially the one sole copper standing benignly by the front door.
I have several times been to grand functions inside. At one I chatted to Rudolf Nureyev, who proved to be wickedly mortal in real life but obviously took some magic elixir before going onto the stage and turning into a god. On another occasion I was invited to the fairly ordinary flat in which the prime minister actually lives, the rest of the house being for receptions and office work. Tony Blair was chatting up a few lefties before the next election campaign, and I was disturbed by what I thought was a policy to appease Rupert Murdoch. I voiced my unease, supported by Maureen Lipman and several others, and Tony was not best pleased. The sad truth was that he was right that the press could make or break a political party, certainly before social media, and in order to get anything done you have to be in office. It’s no good being highly principled and constantly in opposition, something I have argued about the disastrous Jeremy Corbyn. Despite this slight dispute, his much-criticised, admirable wife, Cherie, was gracious enough to attend John’s memorial. Lola and I hung around by the railings for some time, hoping Boris or someone recognisable would drive, or maybe cycle, through the gate, but like everyone else they had disappeared, and no one went through the hallowed door at all.
We wandered up the street, passing the Trafalgar Studios, as the Whitehall Theatre is now called, still with its stage photos outside but, like all of the London theatres, closed, or, as we say, ‘dark’. The situation regarding the theatre is dire, as it is impossible to make a show financially viable if social distancing in the auditorium means fewer bums on seats.
I imagined the desperate sadness the cast must have felt on the night the company manager told them to pack away their make-up and go home indefinitely. Actors are now trying to create things on phones and iPads and in pub gardens, but there is no paid work at all in the theatre, and many are packing shelves in supermarkets – if they are lucky.
I found the dusty deadness of this theatre particularly upsetting, as, when it was called the Whitehall, it was famous for its farces. Brian Rix led a superbly skilled company of actors in plays, often by Ray Cooney, that made this building shake with laughter. I myself did a TV play here with Dickie Henderson and Brian, from whom I learned the technique of not just a double but a triple take.
At the end of Whitehall we stopped to look at a deserted Trafalgar Square, and found it hard to believe that it was eighteen years ago that a four-year-old Lola, with her little brother Jack and cousin Molly-Mae, let off a host of balloons saying goodbye to their grandad, after a glorious remembrance ceremony in St Martin-in-the-Fields. We brought a crowded square to a standstill. I am pretty sure Lola does not really remember much about it. We talk of him often, though. And I feel his presence every day. Usually, as today in the square, with a smile on my face.
Lola and I felt our mood lift as we turned into St James’s Park. For many years I had only driven past it on the Mall and Birdcage Walk. In the past, when appearing in the West End in the summer, some of us would take a sandwich and go, between the matinee and the evening shows, to listen to the music playing on the bandstand in the park, but I have not walked round it in decades. Today it is ablaze with borders of summer flowers, and the fountains are cascading brilliance on the lakes, whilst the hundreds of birds make up for the lack of humans by crowding the shores, showing off their feathers. The park is renowned for its collection of rare waterfowl and don’t they know it, strutting and flapping right up to your feet, noisily demanding to know where everyone has gone with their titbits and admiration. Lola and I were a poor substitute for hundreds of tourists and government staff.
On a little island, Duck Island, is a rustic cottage with a perfect small country garden of flowers and vegetables. We were told the Birdman, one of the staff, lives there, in which case, I want that job. I will happily feed the pelicans and chase off the foxes. I would have a perfect view of any events on the Horse Guards Parade, and up the Mall at the Palace. Once it opens again, I could even do a play in the evening at the Trafalgar Studios, just round the corner. It would be the best digs ever. Except, of course, in normal times, there would be hundreds of people around, not just me and the birds. So perhaps not so ideal.
On our next stop, on the other hand, we found what really would be our perfect home. If you walk along Birdcage Walk towards the Palace, there is a little passageway on the left leading to heaven. Queen Anne’s Gate, particularly at the moment with no parked cars, all the owners being locked down in their country or overseas estates, looks just as it did when it was built in around 1700. Standing looking at the exquisite detail on the elegant houses, with no sound but birds, and a very distant low hum of traffic, it is breath-taking. Literally. We found ourselves talking in whispers. As we crept awestruck around this secret area, we decided that, of all places in our capital, this is where we want to live. We were in luck. Lola’s phone informed us that one of the houses overlooking Birdcage Walk and St James’s Park at the back is on the market. For £41,500,000. So, I hope some work turns up soon. The royalties of £57.38 on the DVD sales of Bleak House, which is all I’ve earned in the last months, falls somewhat short.
Lola said, ‘It’s all so close together.’
With no crowds to push through, or traffic to impede us, it is true that a short walk encompasses the majesty of the Gothic grandeur of State and Church, the wealth of treasures in art galleries and the site of public protest and celebration in Trafalgar Square, the horticultural beauty of a park with lakes and fountains and multitudinous rare birds, and an unspoiled architectural gem from the eighteenth century.
‘Isn’t London lovely?’ said Lola.
It is, it is, and it has taken an ugly virus to remind me how much I love it.
1 September 2020
Things are on the move. Fast. I drove into Chiswick this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks. Two of the roads that I drive down seemed strangely devoid of traffic. I had seen plenty of temporary barriers marking out cycle lanes before, but only when I parked in a back street and read the new signs at the end of these two roads did I discover that they are now closed to cars and motorcycles. No warning, no public meetings – not even on Zoom. Seemingly overnight, planters with green leaves have appeared, blocking all the parking places, and the road is open for cyclists and pedestrians only. The High Road, as a result, is at a standstill.
My first reaction was rage – I am used to feeling fury about idiots in Lycra who jump lights, and sneak up on the inside of your car, and then swear if you don’t see them – then delight. Must be the pandemic effect. There will be, is already, on social media, outrage from motorists, but I will put my money where my mouth is and force myself to use public transport or walk, whenever my unreliable joints will allow me. It is a great first step. Now the council has to choose carefully how they replace the empty shops and cafés in the streets that they have closed, so that people will go there to enjoy the ambience that a lack of cars can provide.
There has to be a major rethink of transport in our area. Hammersmith Bridge has now been closed to traffic for months, and a couple of weeks ago another dangerous crack in its ancient structure was caused by the heatwave, so it is now closed to bikes and pedestrians, and boats are even barred from going under it. The nearest crossable bridges either side are miles away, so just to get to the other side of the river, with the doubling-up of traffic, is a journey of about an hour. Just to cross the Thames. The water buses have stopped and people planning holiday boat trips to the City or the coast will have to make do with the upper reaches of the Thames. I have quite enjoyed watching posh yachts sailing by, the people on deck quaffing Champers, only to be stopped abruptly by the rude honk of the rusty old ship straddling the river by the bridge, barring their passage, then coming back past me again, the guests and crew shouting and gesticulating in disbelief. The closure is a terrible inconvenience for the locals. We will have to resort to swimming across, or reinstate the old tradition of the ferry man. Some lads were already running rickshaw rides across the bridge before the latest closure. Maybe this is taking slowing down our lifestyle too far.
The other big step forward for me is the decision to film two more episodes of our canal programme. It will be quite tricky to keep two metres apart on a narrowboat, but with strict testing, wearing masks when possible, and constant hand-washing, disinfecting and finger-crossing, Channel 4 have decided to take the risk. I am delighted. I need work. I need the creativity, the comradeship, the fun, the excitement of making a show. I am a bit nervous about it. It is a big jump from months of isolation to being crammed in a boat, and meeting and interviewing a wide variety of people, but the challenge of inventing a whole new approach to filming is exciting. I am proud that my industry is finding new and innovative ways of surviving.
11 October 2020
The most uplifting event for me is the opening of our new Quaker meeting house. Fourteen years ago we were told our place of worship was to be knocked down, first to be replaced by a Tesco store, and several revisions later to accommodate a car park for the new development of Hammersmith Town Hall (which I forgive, for they are still flying a European flag). We can sit in a silent gathering anywhere – a specific building is not necessary. Nevertheless, Quakers have a tradition of creating lovely homes for themselves, and we decided to erect one nearby that fitted our era. After endless discussion, and much dedication by a few, we now have a state-of-the-art, environmentally visionary place of great beauty, and we move in next week. It is sad that because of the coronavirus we cannot, as we planned, throw open our doors to everyone, and celebrate with our new neighbours, but we are determined to use this lovely home to serve and, maybe, help repair and progress our world. Quakers are good at supporting those in need, and I am sure our new meeting house will be a refuge, and an engine for change. We had a socially distanced last meeting for worship in our old premises, to say goodbye and thank you. I remembered nineteen years ago calling upon Friends to ‘hold in the light’ my four-year-old grandson Jack as he underwent a radical operation for a brain tumour at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He starts his first teaching job next week.