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| Version 4 | Version 5 |
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| At my age, birthdays have become a memento mori | At my age, birthdays have become a memento mori |
| (11 days later) | |
| Monday | Monday |
| My birthday. At 61, increasingly a memento mori rather than cause of much celebration, though I did have a lovely dinner with friends at the weekend. But even then I was just as aware of those who weren’t – and never would again be – there as those who could make it. Rather than go out on the day itself, I chose to remain at home and treat myself to several episodes of Ken Burns’s remarkable documentary on the Vietnam war. Quite why this series has not had bigger plaudits and been given a more primetime billing is beyond me. Some of the footage, such as Ho Chi Minh in Moscow during the 1930s, is just sensational. As are the interviews from survivors on both sides. I guess that to many people it is now just a forgotten American sideshow from 50 years ago, but to me it feels part of my childhood as I can still remember the news bulletins being dominated by horrific images of the war in the late 60s and the early 70s. Having got to bed by about 11, I was woken up by my phone ringing. It was my son. “Just how asleep are you, Dad?” he asked. Not as much as I had been. Or wanted to be. | My birthday. At 61, increasingly a memento mori rather than cause of much celebration, though I did have a lovely dinner with friends at the weekend. But even then I was just as aware of those who weren’t – and never would again be – there as those who could make it. Rather than go out on the day itself, I chose to remain at home and treat myself to several episodes of Ken Burns’s remarkable documentary on the Vietnam war. Quite why this series has not had bigger plaudits and been given a more primetime billing is beyond me. Some of the footage, such as Ho Chi Minh in Moscow during the 1930s, is just sensational. As are the interviews from survivors on both sides. I guess that to many people it is now just a forgotten American sideshow from 50 years ago, but to me it feels part of my childhood as I can still remember the news bulletins being dominated by horrific images of the war in the late 60s and the early 70s. Having got to bed by about 11, I was woken up by my phone ringing. It was my son. “Just how asleep are you, Dad?” he asked. Not as much as I had been. Or wanted to be. |
| Tuesday | Tuesday |
| It was hard to know which bit of Theresa May’s interview was most disturbing. The revelation that not even she believes in the government’s Brexit strategy or the news that the cabinet minister she would most like to take with her to a desert island was Liam Fox – the one person who almost everyone in the country could agree was a bit useless. The Financial Times had an interesting insight into the minister for international trade’s incompetence this week. On a trip to the US this summer, Fox took a team of 27 departmental officials with him, none of whom knew anything about trade negotiations. Their previous experience amounted to working for the British Film Council, the Better Regulation Executive and Enfield council. By contrast, the US came to the table mob-handed with 77 delegates, most of whom were old hands at trade talks. Predictably, no progress was made. Still at least the EU can’t accuse us of negotiating with the US behind their backs. | It was hard to know which bit of Theresa May’s interview was most disturbing. The revelation that not even she believes in the government’s Brexit strategy or the news that the cabinet minister she would most like to take with her to a desert island was Liam Fox – the one person who almost everyone in the country could agree was a bit useless. The Financial Times had an interesting insight into the minister for international trade’s incompetence this week. On a trip to the US this summer, Fox took a team of 27 departmental officials with him, none of whom knew anything about trade negotiations. Their previous experience amounted to working for the British Film Council, the Better Regulation Executive and Enfield council. By contrast, the US came to the table mob-handed with 77 delegates, most of whom were old hands at trade talks. Predictably, no progress was made. Still at least the EU can’t accuse us of negotiating with the US behind their backs. |
| Wednesday | Wednesday |
| The metal barricades have been removed and the police guards have been stood down so I went to Tooting Bec Common to see what damage Wandsworth council had managed to do by chopping down a much loved avenue of chestnut trees, only a few of which were diseased and needed to be removed. It was worse than I had feared. The avenue looks like a Paul Nash first world war painting and almost everyone who lives in the neighbourhood is experiencing the loss of the trees as some kind of bereavement. It’s too late to do anything about it now, but the anger shows no signs of diminishing. All the council’s notices explaining why chopping down an entire avenue of trees was the right thing to do have been defaced with the word “lies”. One of Wandsworth’s more imaginative explanations was that it had sent round a survey to a small sample of people asking if they would like an avenue of trees. To which the answer was unsurprisingly yes. Because they already had one. To add insult to injury the council’s promised 20ft replacement lime trees are only about 15ft tall. My autumnal existential despair is almost complete. | The metal barricades have been removed and the police guards have been stood down so I went to Tooting Bec Common to see what damage Wandsworth council had managed to do by chopping down a much loved avenue of chestnut trees, only a few of which were diseased and needed to be removed. It was worse than I had feared. The avenue looks like a Paul Nash first world war painting and almost everyone who lives in the neighbourhood is experiencing the loss of the trees as some kind of bereavement. It’s too late to do anything about it now, but the anger shows no signs of diminishing. All the council’s notices explaining why chopping down an entire avenue of trees was the right thing to do have been defaced with the word “lies”. One of Wandsworth’s more imaginative explanations was that it had sent round a survey to a small sample of people asking if they would like an avenue of trees. To which the answer was unsurprisingly yes. Because they already had one. To add insult to injury the council’s promised 20ft replacement lime trees are only about 15ft tall. My autumnal existential despair is almost complete. |
| Thursday | Thursday |
| When I was trying to decide which novels to include in my 2010 book, Brideshead Abbreviated, I went through the US bestseller lists of the 1920s – the UK didn’t publish any bestseller lists till the 1970s as publishers and critics didn’t trust readers to make sound judgments about a book’s quality. The lists made sobering reading. In a decade of weekly Top 10 lists, there were only two books I recognised. Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. All the others, which had once been read and loved by hundreds and thousands of people, had been long since forgotten by almost everyone. Left to be pulped or gather dust. A metaphor for most of our lives. So it’s always heartening to hear of someone or something that beats the odds. Step forward then, Protoichthyosaurus applebyi, a fossil that for the last 50 years or so has been lying on a shelf unloved in the Nottingham University engineering collection. Someone has now come across it by accident and realised it is the first known fossil of its type anywhere in the world. Fame at last. There’s hope for us all. | When I was trying to decide which novels to include in my 2010 book, Brideshead Abbreviated, I went through the US bestseller lists of the 1920s – the UK didn’t publish any bestseller lists till the 1970s as publishers and critics didn’t trust readers to make sound judgments about a book’s quality. The lists made sobering reading. In a decade of weekly Top 10 lists, there were only two books I recognised. Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. All the others, which had once been read and loved by hundreds and thousands of people, had been long since forgotten by almost everyone. Left to be pulped or gather dust. A metaphor for most of our lives. So it’s always heartening to hear of someone or something that beats the odds. Step forward then, Protoichthyosaurus applebyi, a fossil that for the last 50 years or so has been lying on a shelf unloved in the Nottingham University engineering collection. Someone has now come across it by accident and realised it is the first known fossil of its type anywhere in the world. Fame at last. There’s hope for us all. |
| Friday | Friday |
| A new report from scientists at Imperial College that magic mushrooms can have a therapeutic role in treating people suffering from depression fills me with misgivings. Though the researchers do point out that people shouldn’t self-medicate, it seems to me that’s precisely what anyone desperate enough to want to give the mushrooms a go is liable to do given that they are unlikely to be able to get them on prescription from their GP. My own experience with psychedelics would also suggest some caution. Back in 1976, I rashly conducted my own one-man Summer of Love experiment – frequently when I was meant to be working as an ice-cream seller in Oxford Street. After a while, the pleasures of seeing people melt into the pavement turned into acute anxiety and I ended the summer a near paranoid wreck. I never dared take psychedelics again. One of the few good decisions I made at that time of my life. Just the thought of my shrink prescribing them to me in place of my usual medication is enough to send my stress levels rocketing. | A new report from scientists at Imperial College that magic mushrooms can have a therapeutic role in treating people suffering from depression fills me with misgivings. Though the researchers do point out that people shouldn’t self-medicate, it seems to me that’s precisely what anyone desperate enough to want to give the mushrooms a go is liable to do given that they are unlikely to be able to get them on prescription from their GP. My own experience with psychedelics would also suggest some caution. Back in 1976, I rashly conducted my own one-man Summer of Love experiment – frequently when I was meant to be working as an ice-cream seller in Oxford Street. After a while, the pleasures of seeing people melt into the pavement turned into acute anxiety and I ended the summer a near paranoid wreck. I never dared take psychedelics again. One of the few good decisions I made at that time of my life. Just the thought of my shrink prescribing them to me in place of my usual medication is enough to send my stress levels rocketing. |
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