I'm trolley-raged at M&S, road-raged on Blackfriars Bridge, mail-raged at the Post Office. It's Christmas
Published 25 December 2000
Christmas. You can tell. Road-raged and threatened with death on Blackfriars Bridge on the way to the Express Newspapers party, trolley-raged in Marks & Spencer over the last mince pies, whose expiry date, oddly enough, was 23 December, and mail-raged at the Post Office, where doubts set in as to whether, after all that standing in line, anything would actually get to its destination, and customers start shoving and protesting. Very un-English. But it's good to feel that the nation has a common mood, even though it is a little tense. London, in particular, with its 25 per cent increase in road traffic following a 20 per cent national decrease in rail journeys (how do they work that one out?) seemed to be rather enjoying its predicament. The lavishness of this year's street lights betokens good cheer, folly and prosperity. By Monday midday, all hysteria suddenly evaporated, the shops and streets emptied, and you could even find a parking space outside your own house - and still a week to go. Where have "they" all gone? To warmer climes? Cowards.
The party at the Express was to meet its new owner, Richard Desmond, famous for his publication of Asian Babes and other top-shelf magazines. It was a good party, if subdued. Wine was drunk and modest crackers, meant for decoration, were pulled. Staff, of the new breed of young journalist, not in the least cynical or hard-boiled, seemed worried not just for their own futures but the nation's, aghast that the destiny of a major newspaper was in the hands of someone who could so ruthlessly pander to popular taste. My murmuring that a noble employer is always hard to find failed to console. The more so when Desmond didn't show up. Rosie Boycott, the current editor, looked particularly pale and handsome at this turn of events, which was seen to bode ill for the future. But the view, from the top floor of Ludgate House, was spectacular; St Paul's in the moonlight, from this angle, still dominating all that stands around; Canary Wharf, winking away; road rage left far below; the Thames itself at its most glittery, timeless and indifferent. The river has seen worse than Desmond. Boudicca invading from East Anglia must have been really something.
To Nottingham, to read from Rhode Island Blues, my latest novel, in the public library there. Another good city, reached by an even more languid train journey than usual, and through a countryside made dramatic by its own dampness. Nottingham council gave me a form by which I can claim £100 for the event but I first have to present a certificate from my local tax office to confirm that I am self-employed, and also details of the second-class fare, and I know that a dense bureaucracy and walls of voicemail stand between me and fulfilling both requirements. I will try after Christmas. I am president of the Nottingham Subscription Library down the road, but my word alone is not enough. Proper procedure has to be observed.
To the British Library to apply for a reader's ticket. I fill in the forms, but the computer has crashed and they can't issue one. It's the first time it's happened in two years, they tell me, distressed. The library is a blissful place, quiet and yet lively. I wheeled my 93-year-old mother there and back from the St Pancras Hospital, where she is currently in a state-of-the-art geriatric rehabilitation unit, having had a hip replacement; down St Pancras way, with its protected Victorian gasometers, its under-the-arches workshops, the falling-down stretches where Gilbert Scott's stunning station wall has escaped improvement or removal; bump, bump, bump along broken pavements. Impossible this city is: dull, never.
Another party. This one fielded by the Institute of Ideas, formerly Living Marxism (but unable to change its name because of a pending lawsuit fielded by ITN), obliged to close when it lost its case, about to resurface in the new year on a website, spikes-online.com. This party is in a basement called the Asylum Club, lit hellfire red, packed, noisy and full of ideas. Guests are shouting at one another across a crowded room about the soft underbelly of global capitalism and suchlike. People had moved on from the Demos party and swore this one was better. Cold mulled wine in hot glasses. A decided feeling of the Fifties, that the old order is about to change, and there are duffel-coated people around with the energy to do it.
To St Michael's, Cornhill, for the carol service. This is where the Reverend Peter Mullen, Yorkshireman, traditionalist and chaplain to the Stock Exchange, officiates. All services stick to the 1662 Prayer Book. The old language is best, as Peter's recent book, The Real Common Worship, forcefully points out. One of his predecessors at his other church at Newgate was burnt at Smithfield for helping Tyndale. You have to be careful. The house is packed, the congregation sings vigorously, the choir is magnificent. Alastair Clark, an executive director of the Bank of England, reads the lesson with feeling - Isaiah 11:6-9 - a passage of particular interest to vegetarians. "The leopard shall lie down with the kid . . . the lion shall eat straw like the ox . . ."
A likely tale, but here's hoping. And a merry Christmas to us all.
Fay Weldon's Rhode Island Blues is published by Flamingo at £16.99
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