Goodness, how I am enjoying Matt Hancock’s inadvertent lockdown memoirs in the august Daily Telegraph this week, probably more than he is, at any rate, although on reflection it does look rather as though fame was one of the things he was craving, so maybe he is not suffering too badly.
I am going to write to Rishi Sunak and suggest a return to the ancient custom of tarring and feathering individuals who prove themselves to be especially brainless nuisances. I expect Mr. Sunak will agree with me, given the unflattering nature of his own occasional cameo appearances in the messages. Certainly brainless seems to be the word, it seems hardly credible that for months on end we were all being ordered about by a chap who ultimately handed over an unedited collection of his private telephone messages to a very pretty blonde journalist, already universally known to be no fan of his, with the recommendation: Here, knock yourself out, babe.
Still, it takes all sorts, and if it wasn’t for his sort the rest of us would have had nobody in our class at school whose head could be flushed down the third year lavatories, safe in the knowledge that any passing teacher would happily look the other way.
He wasn’t in my class at school. He is far too young. His generation must have been more merciful, and look where it has got us all.
These pages are not a political commentary, however, and so I shall move on. Oliver telephoned today, on the subject of schools. He has not had his head flushed down the lavatory. He, and a handful of the others, has had lunch with Joanna Lumley and he says she is very lovely and charming and interesting. Obviously I am quite sure she left with the same opinion of him.
He will be home in a couple of weeks, it is rushing past like the racehorses on the exciting roundabout at Blackpool.
I would like to go to Blackpool. It is a sad moment when one has no children any more and an all-summer pass for the Pleasure Beach is no longer a vital purchase for the holidays, maybe Number One Daughter will lend us Ritalin Boy when it all reopens. I do not know what Lucy’s holiday arrangements are, but Oliver is planning a trip to Korea, and even if Lucy did come home she would be unlikely to want to go paddling and build a sand-taxi any more.
I have not had any exciting adventures to report to you. I have been very busy flapping and writing my assignment, being the play about nuns. I will not be sorry when it is over and I do not have to think about nuns any more. I have thought and read about them so much that I could have written half an encyclopaedia about the Grand Silence and the Little Office and the difference between Compline and Vespers.
I will be dispatching it first thing in the morning.
Thank goodness.
Mark has spent today mooching about in his shed. He has fixed his chainsaw. It has not been working properly for ages. This is a very serious problem when you heat your house with firewood. Fortunately, as luck would have it, he had a couple of not-working chainsaws stuffed under the bench in his shed, probably where I would not see them and tell him to throw them away, so he has taken them apart and used the bits to fix it. This is a huge relief. He is working all week next week but after that we are going to go up to the farm and cut up firewood. I don’t much like sawing up tree trunks but I can tell you that at this stage it will be better than nuns.
It will be over in the morning and I will be able to restore the house to a state of dignity once more. It has been sadly neglected whilst I have been in retreat.
I am going to go and think about nuns for almost the last time.
