Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Volume three of The Art of Coarse Journalism would be due for publication about now, but for one serious problem. I have never kept a diary, at least not since I was 11 years old and was given one of those little Letts diaries which every schoolboy — and schoolgirl — seemed to possess.
I have still got it somewhere. I mostly filled it with football scores of my favourite teams and a list of childhood illnesses to which I was particularly prone at the time. “Getting measles” was one brief and trenchant entry followed by a blank fortnight which proves long before Dr Google I was quite good at self-diagnosing.
My great regret is never having kept a diary as an adult. Without one I am lost for dates and times, the sort of factual information you need if you plan to write your memoirs. I think we should all write a diary, even just for personal reasons.
I do like a good political diary if it is spicy, like the late Alan Clark’s contribution to the genre. Gyles Brandreth’s diaries from his time as an MP are revealing. He once said: “Keep a diary and some day it’ll keep you.”
Like me, Gyles started writing a diary at 11. Only he kept it up, inspired by a copy of the “thoroughly expurgated” diaries of Samuel Pepys and subsequent meetings with Tony Benn, probably the most prolific political diarist of them all.
I get sudden bursts of memory about past events, but can never remember when and where. Too late now. The diaries of Ross Brewster age 11 and a half will never outdo Adrian Mole, let alone the fascinating real-life memoirs of interesting people.
Feeling groovy
If the column suddenly takes on a flower power, spaced out theme, don’t say you weren’t warned.
For it seems my two favourite beverages, ginger beer and elderflower, may soon be infused with a compound of the cannabinoid family. In other words, they might make me high.
I’m no boozer. Alcohol tends to make me unwell before it ever makes me drunk, which is not a good thing at all if one intends to make a mark in social circles at the rugger club.
There used to be a TV cowboy called Tom Brewster who ordered milk, or was it Sarsparilla, at the bar and was mocked by the whisky drinking tough guys. My ginger beer’s a bit like that.
Some drinks firms in America are putting this substance called THC in their soft drinks. Small amounts they claim replicate the effect of a couple of glasses of red wine with their “subtle loosening” properties.
Blimey, it will soon be Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds — or was that an LSD reference by The Beatles? — when I fancy a refreshing elderflower and apple cordial on a rare summer’s day before settling down to write my column.
Who knows, the hallucinatory effect of a second glass may help the words flow.
Bilking it
However did they think they would get away with it?
That family who made the news recently for bilking. Making off without payment for a series of slap up dinners in the best restaurants in their local area in Wales.
Bilking is an interesting word. Apparently it dates back to the 1600s when it was used to describe cribbage players defrauding their opponents.
A court case I covered in Cumbria stands out in my memory. This young chap, smart as a new pin, blazer with military badge on the breast pocket, wheedled nearly three months out of a hotel claiming he was the son of a Lord who would settle the account.
He was polite, cultured, everything the son of a toff would be. Except it was all false and when the trail got too hot he departed in the night owing thousands.
He was arrested at a hotel in Inverness. Wanted for bilking in Bude. He probably felt the eight-week “holiday” as a guest of Her Majesty was fair.
I wonder what became of him. I expect he carried on bilking. Criminal yes, but unlike those greedy guzzlers with their fat steaks, it was rather a sad story really.
Sunak’s career ending blunder
If the First World War was to be the conflict that ended all wars, then the Second World War was fought to save our freedom and lead to a better world.
I wonder what those 100-year-old veterans thought as they paid what is likely to be their final tribute to fallen comrades at the 80th anniversary of D-Day?
We are living closer to the disastrous consequences of countries and ideologies being further divided than ever before. They must think sometimes, is this what we fought for?
I don’t think Rishi Sunak was deliberately disrespectful when he left before the end of the celebrations. But it was poor judgment. Did he not understand that standing there he was representing each and every one of us.
A career ending blunder. And sad that the headlines took something away from the poignancy of the event and gave political opponents the chance to make pompous point-scoring denouncements of the PM.
