Life & Society
Diary - Wendy Holden
Published 03 February 2003
I resolve to stop listening to Radio 4's ever-more-hysterical Today programme. Much as I love Sarah Montague's dominatrix style, the rest either terrifies or irritates me
A grey Derbyshire Monday dawns, drizzly and utterly magnificent. Magnificent because - let joy be unconfined! - I have finally finished my fifth novel, Azur Like It, a romantic comedy set in the south of France and coming to a bookstore near you this August.
It's been a hell of a job, mostly because my first baby, Andrew, was delivered around about the time the novel was supposed to be. Progress was interrupted a smidgen; and the final few chapters were written in snatched gaps between nappy-changing, posset-mopping and wielding either breast or bottle, depending on the state of my nipples. Andrew - bless him - has gums of steel, the lungs of Pavarotti and a bottom like a cannon.
So now my New Year can finally begin, a month after everyone else's. My first resolution is to stop listening to Radio 4's ever-more-hysterical Today programme. Much as I love Sarah Montague's thrilling dominatrix style - like Charlotte Green in jackboots - all that the rest of the programme does for me is either terrify (impending nuclear meltdown, any-minute-now biological attack) or irritate (bombastically self-important male inquisitors). None of which helps so early in the morning, particularly when one is wrestling with a fretful five-week-old, a still-sore bottom and a bruised breast.
My affections are transferred to Radio 2, for which I developed a lasting passion during labour. It seemed to go on for weeks. At least three midwife shifts came and went while Andrew struggled towards the light at the end of the tunnel. My husband Jon and I spent the time playing Scrabble ("My letters," he grumbled, "are even worse than your contractions") while, in the background, a sequence of weird and wonderful programmes rolled through the air. Your Hundred Best Tunes were never better than when savoured alongside a narcotic cocktail of 15 top-up epidurals.
These days, Friday Night is definitely Music Night in our house, following which we Listen To The Band. The combination of melancholy show tunes followed by rousing brass is not only stirring stuff, but softens the occasional bark from the baby monitor. Jeremy Vine, meanwhile, presides over the lunchtime making-up of the afternoon feeds.
I will, however, be tuning back to Radio 4 for favourites like I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue (the gloriously obscene Humphrey Lyttelton) and The Archers (the magnificent Brian'n'Siobhan hoo-ha having justified 15 teeth-grindingly dull years of listening to the desperate likes of Bert Fry, Ruth and the infuriating Grundys). Years to which, now that said hoo-ha has died down somewhat, we seem to be returning, Jill-Heather grandma wars notwithstanding.
The worst thing about staying in with a baby is neither the screaming nor the nappy-changing, it's the envious contemplation of his wardrobe. Practically every post since Andrew was born has brought with it exciting parcels from generous friends containing sartorial splendours, from velour mini-tracksuits to cashmere everything. He has comfortably more and infinitely nicer, trendier clothes than we do.
One of the best things about staying in with a baby, on the other hand, is that you can watch all the videos you meant to but never had the time. It was on a whim that I grabbed, two days before Andrew was born, the complete series of I Claudius off the shelf of a video shop in Islington. Having completely missed it in the 1970s (my Yorkshire Methodist parents possibly disapproving both of the paganism and the priapism), I was instantly hooked on all that Augustan back-stabbing and, over the week we watched it, spent every day desperate for that night's episode to start. Especially the ones with John Hurt as a blond, bitchy and camp Caligula ("The Praetorian Guard want the watchword for tonight." "Tell them it's 'bottoms up'!")
I met John Hurt once when appearing on another Radio 4 favourite, Loose Ends. In the dinner-party-style table arrangement favoured by Ned Sherrin (albeit with a large red mike in place of a large glass of red wine), I sat opposite the lovely Mr Hurt and we all set off for the pub afterwards. Outside Broadcasting House, we passed a knot of autograph hunters who, to my delight, pressed me for mine. "I wouldn't get too excited," sniffed one of the other guests. "They wait outside every week and there are even fewer of them than usual."
A somewhat stranger Loose Ends connection was one on a beach in Cannes many years ago. A French friend brought along the student staying with him on one of those notorious exchanges that, like InterRailing, brought such misery to millions and between them are probably entirely responsible for Euroscepticism among the thirtysomething generation. The name of the student was Sherrin, because, as she told us, her mother was such a fan of the great man. I wonder if he knows this. Hopefully, he will now.
Wendy Holden's latest novel is Fame Fatale (Headline, £5.99)
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