On such a night

15st 5lb, 4.0 units. I have spent a fair bit of time on the Internet recently researching “most painless way to commit suicide”. Which is a depressing waste of time, so far as I can see, as every site appears to have been got at by anti-suicide activists keen to point out that (a) even the apparently quick ways really hurt, and (b) nearly everyone changes their mind (citing the late braking of cars, claw marks on the neck where hanging victims have tried to free themselves etc etc), and (c) there are often gruesome side-effects, though the appearance of your corpse after you have topped yourself is not exactly going to be of direct concern to you, is it? And, of course, (d) it’s the most horribly selfish thing to do and surely we can work this out together?

Yeah, yeah, I know all that. And I’ve got a lovely wife and son. It’s just that the responsibility seems like a bit of a mountain sometimes, and I start hankering for an easy way out (always my default setting).

So I felt a certain amount of “You lucky sod” when Joe McIntyre finally gurgled beneath the waters of Lake Whereveritwas on last night’s Coronation Street. My belief that I could make a cracking job of writing the script for this was confirmed by the facts that (a) the plot line was simply borrowed from the real-life case of the Hartlepool canoeist, a bit of plagiarism of which even I would be capable; and (b) even more tellingly, I managed to deliver most of the lines before the actors did. Word perfect I was, too.

Still, I cheered up a bit afterwards when we watched a DVD that a friend had kindly sent us in the post, a period piece called On Such A Night telling the unlikely story of how some young American taking a look at the South Downs found himself irresistibly drawn to Glyndebourne. What was more unlikely? That John Christie himself would find this ticketless young chap a place in the auditorium? That he would cheerfully walk the eight miles to his hotel in Alfriston after the show? Or that the haughty Lady Falconbridge would befriend this total stranger to the extent of sharing her picnic with him and, at the end, handing over her ticket to Don Giovanni so that he could make a return visit with her pretty niece, giving him a wink and warning him that she would not like it up the wrong way (actually, I just made that bit up).

Four specifics troubled me. First, I struggled to identify the year in which the film was set. I plumped for 1954 because the carriages on the train from Victoria still had big number 1s and 3s on their doors (which is, after all, surely better than big number 2s) and I am sad enough to know that third class on British Railways was renamed second class in 1956. But of course I did not want to admit that that was my key piece of evidence, so I had to waffle a fair bit. And then, as it happened, 1956 turned out to be the year in which the film was released.

Secondly, the ample picnic hamper brought by Lady Falconbridge and her niece allegedly contained a feast comprising “ham sandwiches and a flask of tea”. Word of this must never, ever get out as the fiancée who responded to my request to prepare a picnic for Glyndebourne by buying a pork pie and a packet of crisps has never heard the end of it, and I would hate her to be able to claim that she was actually aiming for period authenticity.

Thirdly, Mrs H now wants to go to Glyndebourne dressed as they did in 1956, viz in a Big Ball Gown. We have already overcome the obvious first hurdle, in that I do actually have some Glyndebourne tickets for the coming summer. And the second, in that Mrs H has a large wardrobe bursting at the seams with Big Ball Gowns. So now we just have to brace ourselves for looking horribly conspicuous because the male dress code at Glyndebourne has not changed at all in 54 years, but most of the ladies these days seem to have flung on something from M&S that would look equally at home in a reasonably smart office.

Lastly, I still can't work out why the film was made. Glyndebourne has surely never needed that sort of publicity to fill its houses, and would they really want to attract more dumb Americans hoping to blag a free ticket and a spot of legover with some aristocratic piece of crumpet?

A puzzle, then. But some marvellous period images and dialogue to be enjoyed along the way.

Proper poorly

15st 5lb, 4.5 units. My goodness I feel poorly. Sore throat, blocked nose, aching limbs. It just keeps getting worse. So this is the illness from which Mrs H started really suffering when we were in London last week, and which she picked up from The Baby. But then I thought that she had given it to The Baby after I gave it to her, having picked it up in Northumberland immediately before Christmas. Surely if it is coming back to have a second crack at me I should have built up some immunity by now? But Mrs H has a theory that it is, in fact, another respiratory infection, picked up by The Baby when she foolishly set him down next to an infant with a runny nose, on her recent tour of potentially suitable nurseries in the Chester area.

Given the Strict Blame Culture operating in our household, it is of course of supreme importance to establish exactly where any germs originated. I can sense that this may become a bit of a challenge when nurseries and schools do become involved in our lives. I wonder whether it will be enough to overcome my fierce and rigid objections to DNA testing?

The noise of teething and the taste of death

15st 7lb, 4.5 units. The Baby has been screaming virtually all night. Teething, apparently. He has a couple of razor-sharp little toothy-pegs poking out of his bottom gum, which rather take the pleasure out of him using my fingers as a makeshift teething ring, but I guess the pain must be coming from somewhere else. His pain, not mine, that is. It’s definitely not a lot of fun, for him or for anyone else in the house. I’m writing this at 10 in the morning, having been up for more than three hours, and The Dog is still in our bed, under the duvet, with a paw pressed over his ears. And the mice have started throwing themselves onto the traps, as Les Dawson used to claim that they did in anticipation of his mother-in-law’s visits.

Well, not exactly. I haven’t actually found any traps. But there is the most appalling smell in the spare bedroom above the garage, and an investigation of the cupboards under the eaves this morning showed all the usual signs of mouse activity, viz lots of chewed-up pipe lagging and some bait laid either by our landlords or the previous tenants. Unfortunately they have chosen that poison-soaked grain which the mice are expected to ingest over a period of days, and which still leaves them with the time and energy to wander off and die somewhere completely inaccessible, where the smell of their decomposition can be expected to linger for weeks.

Long experience of this sort of thing in Northumberland has taught me that the only answers are traps and a fast-acting poison called Alphakil. By traps, I mean the old-fashioned snapping sort that ideally come down hard on the victim’s neck. There is no point pussy-footing (maybe not the most appropriate words, come to think of it) around with “humane” traps unless you are going to drive several miles to release their contents after capture. If you are just going to let the mouse out in your garden, it will be back in your house before you are.

That’s assuming that the “trap” holds the mouse for long enough for you carry it outside in the first place. A soft-hearted colleague told me a couple of weeks ago how he had invested in one to deal with a recurrent mouse nuisance, baited it with chocolate and gone to bed. Where he had been woken, after an hour or so, by a munching noise and turned on the light to observe a mouse sitting on his bedroom carpet staring at him, with the chocolate clamped in its little fist. He said that the only surprise was that it wasn’t using its other forepaw to give him the two fingers.

I don’t know what Rentokil put in their Alphakil, but you tear open a sachet and put the bright green granules into a bait tray, and the mice seem to die within about a foot of it. It’s a wonder it hasn’t been banned. Thank God Saddam Hussein never got his hands on it, or where would we be?

One peculiarity struck me very forcibly this morning, as I was swallowing another couple of my Lemsip Max Strength Day & Night Cold & Flu Relief capsules: they taste exactly like the spare bedroom above the garage smells. Dead mouse flavouring, anyone?

The Queen's English

15st 5lb, zero units. The 58th anniversary of Her Majesty’s accession to the throne. Which reminds me that I have been a bit worried about Her Majesty ever since I read the Court Circular for 2 February, which revealed that she had spent the day at Royal Air Force Marham, Norfolk, where she “witnessed a flypast of aircraft and met service and civilian personnel to mark the one hundredth aircraft from the Combined Maintenance and Upgrade Unit.” Huh?
She then “drove to the Alpha Dispersal and viewed simulated sortie exercises and a demonstration of a Tactical Imagery Intelligence Wing Cabin.” Eh?

Then, after a spot of lunch in the Officers’ Mess (the one bit I did understand) Her Majesty “visited the Primary Care Rehabilitation Facility and subsequently opened the Multi Use Games Area at the Community Support Hub.”

What the f*** is all that about? As her consort of 62 years might well have put it, if she hadn’t had the presence of mind to leave him behind at Sandringham when she set out.

Not so long ago the Court Circular used to be full of delightfully old-fashioned flummery. No-one simply met the Queen; they “had the honour” of doing so. She “graced” events with her presence. Diplomatic guests would be described as “Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary”. And so forth. The last redoubt of this sort of thing were the announcements issued from Clarence House until that sad day at Easter 2002, on behalf of the late Empress of India and Queen of Ireland. It is bad enough missing the old ways, without having them replaced with the sort of language that the Plain English Society was founded to search and destroy.

The biometric nursery

15st 5lb, 9.0 units. I staggered into my office for the first time in days, then had to leave early to meet Mrs H, so that we might jointly review a couple of nurseries where she is thinking of parking The Baby when she returns to work. On the one hand this does not seem a bad idea in principle. Like the swimming lessons and music classes he has been attending, in an attempt to ensure that The Baby does not turn out like his father, learning to mix happily with other children would no doubt be a priceless asset and prevent me from passing the social cripple gene on to another generation.

Maybe it was the time of day when we called, viz tea-time, but what both nurseries mainly seemed to do with infants of The Baby’s age was sit them in rows of high chairs so that they could devote themselves to dismantling ham sandwiches and staring morosely at passing strangers. The rooms where they were sitting didn’t look particularly clean, either, but then our kitchen doesn’t look particularly clean any more, and it’s only got the one baby in it. The people in charge all had oodles of NVQs and stuff, and sounded good-natured if ever so slightly simple. Which is, I suppose, exactly what you need to be if you are going to spend your entire working day communing with beings less intelligent than a Border terrier.

Mrs H and I wandered around, nodding knowledgeably, and decided that we both preferred the one with the bouncy soft tarmac in the outdoor play area, and the vegetable plot and the rabbit that is inevitably going to die as soon as The Baby gets attached to it. Mrs H was impressed with the high level of security, too.

“You do realize,” I said, as we drove away, “That there is no way that I am ever going to agree to be fingerprinted so that I can use their biometric access pad?”

She grunted that she had foreseen some such objection, but surely I could see that it was a marvellous way of keeping passing paedophiles out of the place, and surely I would want to help by being equipped to pick The Baby up when necessary?

I repeated my line about fingerprinting being for criminals, and it being up to all of us to resist the insidious spread of these intrusions on our liberty, which would end up with us all being microchipped and scanned every time we wanted to buy a bottle of wine from the supermarket.

She clearly hopes I’m going to relent and be reasonable about it.

Which way would you care to bet?

Four and twenty gentlemen

15st 8lb, 4.5 units. I always used to say that I much preferred funerals to weddings and christenings, not least because I stood a sporting chance of eventually playing a leading role in one myself. (I am under no delusions that this is an entirely original thought, by the way, so there is no need to leave a comment to that effect unless you are helpfully going to provide chapter and verse on where it originated.)

The altogether surprising events of the last year have included my participation in both a marriage and a publick baptism, both conducted strictly in accordance with the Prayer Book of 1662, and I have left firm instructions that my funeral, when it comes, should also follow that form of service. I felt sure that Len, whose funeral I attended this afternoon, would have made a similar specification, since I had discovered in the course of our more recent conversations that he was a pretty dedicated reader of my newspaper columns and particularly enjoyed those in which I savaged ecclesiastical innovations. More importantly, he did so from the standpoint of a long-standing churchwarden and dedicated member of the congregation of Rothbury parish church, rather than a dilettante “atheist for Christ” like myself.

I knew that the funeral would attract a good turnout. Accordingly I arrived in Rothbury with the best part of half an hour to spare, allowing ample time to park in the car park across the river and pay a precautionary visit to the public lavatories as I walked back to the church, listening to the muffled bells ringing out across the village. I marched purposefully through the British Legion guard of honour and attempted to enter the church by the wrong door. Politely redirected, I found that virtually every seat was already occupied, but followed my instructions and took a place “at the front on the left” which left me only marginally worried that I might have usurped a seat intended for Great Aunt Mabel or some loyal family retainer.

On the stroke of 1.30 two priests entered, with a mitred bishop between them. One of the priests was distinctly female, and the white-haired and amply proportioned male one, while kicking off promisingly with “I am the resurrection and the life”, seemed then to diverge into some modern variant rather than the well-remembered words of 1662. I looked closely at the coffin for signs of protest.

Still, Len could have found no fault with the rest of the proceedings. We sang no fewer than five traditional hymns, all chosen by him (the priest in charge apologized for the resulting “bit of a singathon”) though only the last two (“Abide with me” and “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven”) featured in my repertoire from my schooldays, enabling me to belt them out with unabashed gusto from the start. With the others I had to mumble at least the first verse until I had got the hang of the tune, which is always a shame. There were a couple of fine, traditional readings from the King James Bible, and a lady sang an aria from the Messiah. Then there was a pair of entertaining and illuminating addresses remembering the man, one delivered by a retired local GP who had known Len since their schooldays, and the other by an Air-Vice-Marshal.

At many points in the proceedings I felt myself moved to tears. At some appropriate points in the GP’s reminiscences I laughed. And at one point I had to restrain myself, with the greatest of difficulty, because the doctor referred to Len’s membership of an ancient and no doubt honourable society known as “The Four and Twenty Gentlemen of Rothbury” and I am incapable of hearing the words “Four and Twenty” without assuming that the next one in the sequence is going to be “Virgins”, and giggling like a 14-year-old. At least Mrs H suffers from the same problem, as the music group to which she takes The Baby begins its little get-togethers with a “welcome song” to a tune which she knows only as “Four and Twenty Virgins”, giving her serious problems in (a) keeping a straight face and (b) not launching into its cheerfully obscene chorus at the end of every verse.

It came as news to me that Len was probably the largest private landlord in Rothbury. I had known him only as my builder for the last 20 years – and a builder whose men always turned up when they said he would, and did the job properly. A bit over a year ago, when I had a persistent leak in my bathroom roof, Len did not let the fact that he had lost a leg to diabetes prevent him from turning out in person to offer his assistance. He got someone to drive him over in a van and delivered a dehumidifier to keep the damp at bay until the problem was finally resolved. His only regret was that he was unable to climb up onto my roof in person to get to the bottom of it.

I was thinking of this as his eulogists made the essential points about the man: he would do anything for anyone, and he would do so because he was a devout Christian. I am sorry that I did not appreciate that more keenly while he was still alive, and that I did not get to know him better when I had the chance. Regrets are useless, but let us hope that the lessons they teach us may yet do a little good.

Good money after bad

15st 8lb, 2.25 units. I spent most of the day sitting at my desk in Northumberland, looking at the gatepost and my agent’s attached "Under Offer" sign waving gently in the breeze. On the one hand it does offer some entertainment and instruction as a weather vane, but on the other it has been over three months since I took the property off the market, so I suppose I ought to do something about getting it removed. A visitor the other day suggested that I should start charging the appropriate market rent for an advertising hoarding, since the fact that they had managed to obtain an offer for my house provided the most fantastic recommendation for my agents, suggesting that they could sell almost anything. This seemed a little unkind about my much-loved home of 22 years, I must say.

So far, since taking the house off the market, I have identified at least £10,000 worth of essential repairs to the place. I was blissfully unaware of the need for these when I cancelled the sale, but assumed that the prospective purchaser had spotted them, given that he is a qualified chartered surveyor and had pitched his offer well below my asking price. However, he has assured me that the need for them came as news to him, too. And how much will it add to the potential value of the place when I have repaired or replaced all the worn-out windows and collapsing shed roofs?

Yes, I am sure that is precisely right.

Absolutely nothing.