ANOTHER HERO

Eating My Words

You will have noticed my scepticism about the outdoor gym equipment being installed on the Green; well, I am happy to eat my words. Most of the equipment was in frequent use on the warm evenings ten days ago, and even in the cold people are out there. Lots of muscular young men seem to know what to do with the bars which, to me, are completely mystifying. This is very good to see. Clearly the contractors installing the equipment didn't regard it as their job to "make good" (as builders say) afterwards, as the grass remains badly churned up by their vehicles, and there are some very sharp concrete kerbs, which I imagine are intended to be mitigated by turf. Presumably the Parks Department will eventually do this, though it remains a hazard just now. Perhaps they feel they shouldn't do anything before the local elections on Thursday, in case the work gives a boost to the sitting councillors; Westminster applies the notion of "purdah" rather strictly.


On the Subject of Elections

The excitement caused by the poll putting Labour in the lead in Westminster has subsided somewhat. There seems to be a feeling that Labour may pile up votes in wards like ours but not manage to win the wards that could change hands. Outside Waitrose a couple of weeks ago, there were the Conservatives one side of the door, and the Lib Dems the other; the Big Issue seller had positioned herself beside the Tories, providing a pleasing vignette of contemporary London. Next door in K & C, although the enormous Conservative preponderance in the south of the borough is expected to return a Conservative council, I can't help feeling that the really appalling behaviour of Conservative councillors over the past years might yet come home to roost, now that it has been exposed by Grenfell. Anyway, I shall watch with interest. Vote early, vote often! (As we used to say at University).


On my Travels

I left warm, sunny London for a week in warm, sunny Tunisia. It ended up raining there too, but it was never cold like this. I foolishly turned my heating off and forgot to tell the house-sitter how to turn it on again. I was (perhaps a bit pretentiously) reading the "Confessions" of St Augustine, because a good deal of that is about his time living in Carthage, and I'd never read it before. Helen and I went to Tunisia ten years ago, so I had seen some of the places this tour was going, but it also got me to places that were impossible by public transport back then. Anyway, reading Augustine made Carthage (which is still rather underwhelming) more worthwhile, and we went to the Amphitheatre, (which we hadn't last time) which is where Perpetua and Felicity were martyred, which was moving. This time I got into the Cathedral in Tunis (which I remember being closed when we tried before) and saw the magnificent reliquary of St Louis (nineteenth century neo-gothic nonsense, but terrific). The big highlight, though, was Kairouan, which is very evocative, with a terrific early mosque, and a delightful shrine. I took far too many pictures, and bought incense at the shrine.


Meeting Your Heroes, Part 2

As I walked down the aisle of the plane at Tunis Airport, I was working out where my seat was, as you do, with particular anxiety as I had been stuck in the middle of a row. As I identified my place, I instantly recognised the man in the adjoining seat as Joe Mercer (champion jockey in 1979). I considered various cheesy opening gambits, but settled on leaning over and saying, "You signed a picture of Brigadier Gerard for me in 1972." He responded that I had a good memory, and we began a very pleasant series of chats. It really is difficult not to be in awe of a boyhood idol, whose autograph you once collected, but equally you don't want to be a bore. Still, he seemed very happy to chat, though we both read our books from time to time (his James Patterson, mine Mick Herron). He wisely avoided the lunch tray: I'm not sure how they made the ravioli that dry. They wouldn't give him a second glass of Coke, though. I wanted to shout at them, "Give the man anything he wants! This is not just some random old gent, this is one of the finest flat race jockeys of my lifetime! This is the man who rode the Brigadier!" but of course I didn't. We talked about Brigadier Gerard, and he (like me) regards him as a freak. I had no idea he had ridden the Brigadier's (rather ordinary) sire, Queen's Hussar, but he did. He expressed the view that the Brigadier's stud career was so undistinguished because it was mismanaged by the formidable Lady Macdonald-Buchanan, at whose stud he stood. It occurs to me that Royal Palace, another boyhood favourite of mine, also stood at her stud and was also a failure (this had never struck me before). I tentatively asked him how he could bear to go on riding when his elder brother was killed (that was in 1959 at Ascot, and led to crash helmets being made compulsory, though concrete fence posts weren't removed for another thirty years or so); he responded that you just had to go on. That was a response that spoke a lot about his generation; he is rising 84. A great jockey, and a fine man.