4April1994

London: 4 April 1994
My dear folks,

Cathy and daughters have taken themselves off to Cheshire to do their thing with friends for a few days. They are due back briefly at the end of the week to spend one more night with us before returning to Germany. I have, as always, exploited my waning position as favourite uncle. Already I can see Erica's eyes, though she scarcely knows it, focusing on a horizon beyond the powers of uncles to influence.

Cathy put the girls down in the study and herself in the couch in the lounge. This worked remarkably well, although the invasion did rather confuse Mavis. Initially he found himself overwhelmed with love and attention, being beckoned to lie on three welcoming laps and generally irritating the girls by settling on the more ample form of their mother. Mavis is not accustomed to taking into consideration preferences other than his own. The one time he got badly pissed off was when he was swamped with sympathetic attention by our visitors anxious to compensate him for my rude admonitions to him to stop snoring while he lay on my lap. This I found very amusing.

At night, the visiting trio would plan their tactics for the following day. I shall leave Cathy to provide details of their many conquests. Barbara and I joined them on Saturday night for a supper in Chinatown after they had attended a matinee performance of Cats. The meal was excellent. It's ages since Barbara and I have eaten Chinese food. From the restaurant we made our way through the night and a crowded Picadilly and hopped on to a timely No.6 bus. I joined the girls upstairs at the back while Cathy and Barbara seated themselves at the front. Anita (7) and I tried to sing Tom Dooley with a view to taking a collection among passengers. But Erica (10) sabotaged our attempts, deciding that the rendering was more than she and the other passengers could bear.

On Sunday, we went off for an amble along the Thames at Cookham. The day was cold and blustery with odd bursts of cheering sunshine. Two large icecreams helped to cement me in my nieces' affections, but not to prevent us arguing pleasurably about many things. Anita, in particular, does not recognise in superior age and experience any natural authority, and has views on all subjects. Adults were boring she explained because they were always urging children to be careful. Don't do this, don't do that, don't sit there, don't break that! I sympathised. Erica and I had a race. She has been aching to demonstrate her athletic superiority. In the event, she just won - as I generously let her have the advantage (that's my story anyhow).

She has fallen in love with a pair of short-heeled boots belong to Barbara. (Erica's holiday was made when Jones donated them to her.) Naturally, she longs to use make-up, something Mother resolutely forbids at this stage. My assurances that her time would come did not console her much. The future drags so at that age. (I wish it dragged now.) She did, however, recognise the irony that young women are as anxious to look older as older women (and uncles) to look young.

Both nieces took effortlessly to my Nintendo Gameboy and have spent long hours playing Tetris and testing their powers. On the subject of powers, I confess I was most impressed one afternoon when we were discussing the price of theatre tickets to get a demonstration of Anita's. The tickets in question cost £30 apiece. 'What's that in Marks?' Anita wanted to know. 'About 75,' we told her. There was a short silence. Then she announced: 'That's 225 Marks for three'. Clearly the German education system does not rely on calculators. I asked her to perform a couple of similar calculations, just to ensure there was no fluke. There wasn't.

If I needed further convincing, it came during a conversation in which I offered, if she set herself up as a lawyer, to invest money in her business. I would give her 1,000 Marks I explained, to pay for a secretary and office equipment and she could pay me back 100 Marks a year from the subsequent profits to support me in my dotage. 'Only for 10 years,' was the young lady's response. I explained that I wanted a return on my capital, outlining the principle involved and arguing my case for a modest profit. After taking this in, she extended her offer to eleven years. But that was her limit. You have to rise early in the morning to get the better of Anita.

There is a post-script to this conversation. Cathy and the girls returned on Good Friday and, after a splendid, chocolate-themed dinner from Jones, we settled down to play poker, using as a stake a pile of English coins I keep as a fallback. Anita's pleasure in winning and conservative betting were a picture and she mischievously kept suggesting that she should keep her winnings. I reminded her of my intention to invest in her business on the under¬standing that I would get a return for life. She would buy me lots of get-younger-potion, she told me, so that I would die quickly. I was as amused as I pretended to be shocked. The following day, I got another version, borne out by her sister. The get-younger-potion was not so that I would die sooner, but so that I would not remember whether she had paid me my due. I liked that too.

Her sister is just as bright but of quite different character. If Anita is to be the lawyer, Erica might be the child psychologist with the sensitivity for mood, suffering and nuance. Erica agonises over the world. Anita sails blithely along. I greatly enjoyed their company and conversation both. There is much to be said for being an uncle with the privileges of proxy parenthood without the burdens.

On their final morning here, while Cathy packed up, I took the two girls to Regent's Park to feed the squirrels, a postponed and much anticipated venture. After much searching, we found suitably hungry squirrels but they were rapidly outnumbered by the flocks of pigeons which descended like vultures around us and insisted on their share. This both intimidated the squirrels and greatly irritated the girls, the more so when shouts and gestures they aimed at the pigeons served only to frighten off the squirrels. From the park, we walked on to Hamley's to purchase a fluffy rabbit Anita had fallen in love with earlier.

We all went along one afternoon to see The Secret Garden. It was well done. I think we might have enjoyed it by ourselves. But it was sheer magic to see Anita enthralled beside me. I guess children are why we celebrate Christmas and Easter and other such moments. Catherine left her scarf behind at the cinema and, while fetching it in their absence, Barbara and I took the opportunity to see Philadelphia. Tom Hanks, you will recall, won an Oscar for his role as a lawyer dying of Aids. Well! It left the pair of us stone cold. We found it painfully didactic, contrived and manipulative, descending finally into such an ocean of sentiment as had us clutching for straws rather than tissues. The Oscar, we decided, had been awarded to a noble issue and Hanks merely happened to be the recipient. Richard, who had also been to seen the film, was more sympathetic. He felt it to be in tune with the America he had lived in for several years.

More recently, I joined Richard and Penny to see Schindler's List. I thought it vastly superior to Philadelphia although also partly a recipient of the Hollywood tendency to reward virtuous themes. I agree with the much expressed sentiment that it is a film people ought to see that "we do not forget". It was austere, convincing and impressive - and very long. My back ached. I did not find it moving but clearly from the sniffing on all sides I was the exception on this score. I did regret rather the romanticisation of Schindler himself but that's a price worth paying. Jones has decided that she doesn't need the film in her life. Fair enough.

With her new-found freedoms, she has taken to reading the paper (The Independent) from cover to cover each day to complement the radio and television coverage of current affairs we both habitually follow.

I have finally completed Jeremy Paxman's Who Rules Britain (interesting and well-written if not exactly full of insights) and then read Andrew Morton's Diana, Her True Story. I declined to read it when it first appeared but finding it going at half-price on a BBC book-sale I thought I should make it part of my education. I haven't regretted it. It rings sufficiently true to explain the collapse of the marriage if only a quarter of it were accurate. Charles is making strenuous efforts to improve his public image - which isn't very good and little wonder. Can't see the lad on the throne somehow; nor, it seems, can his mum.

There was a delightful little story in the papers this week about Charles and son, William, taking delivery of a brand new Aston Martin. They had barely crossed half of Lon¬don on their way to Highgrove when the beast broke down and refused to be restarted. The royals transferred to an accompanying car, with the royal air as blue as the royal blood. As a policeman explained, the royal nerves were somewhat frayed. Poor dears! The trials they have to undergo!

Johnny Major, you will gather, is in deep trouble - yet again - with more of his own MPs in a poll (41) apparently thinking he will not lead the party into the next election than those who do (40 - with 19 undecided). I cannot be surprised. I think half his troubles are on his own head. Jones does not. But, across the Channel, Balladur, feted a few months ago, is also deep in trouble, forced into making repeated u-turns of his own in the face of determined worker and student resistance to his plans. Cathy thinks Kohl and his Christian Democrats are facing similar problems in Germany. It could be an interesting summer.

My attachment to the Arab Department is over. My boss nipped out on Thursday afternoon and returned with two bottles of wine, a SA white and a Portuguese red, to mark (rather than celebrate) my departure. I appreciated the gesture. I had grown to like the job as well as the people I was working with - and told them so. I worked Good Friday; I have Easter Saturday, Sunday and Monday off (glorious!); attend a one-day course on Tuesday and begin overnight shifts in the newsroom on Wednesday.

The Easter weekend has coincided with some of the foulest weather of the year. The north and west of the country have taken a battering from gales and snowstorms. But even here, the wind has howled and the black clouds marching overhead have pounded us alternately with barrages of driving rain and sleet. Jones charged outside to rescue some newly acquired tulips. I recall TS Elliot's warning that April is the cruellest month. You come to understand why after living in Britain for a few years.

Jones has just received a call from Johannesburg to inform here that she will not be going to RSA for the elections after all. Our former SABC colleague, Heather (Jaws) Allan, now a bigshot with NBC, is running the operation down there. She said she had moved mountains to get Jones sent down, but the NBC finance people had looked at overspent budgets and refused point-blank. I am not sorry. Nor is Jones although she has mixed feelings. She, Jaws and I have travelled a long way together and she would have liked to close the circle, as she put it.

We have celebrated the Easter holiday, first with a dinner here for Fregs, Richard and Penny and then an Easter lunch with Ann-Christine and Julian over in south London. I fear I have undone in two days the hard work of two weeks. We had such a surfeit of chocolates and good things from Cathy and other visitors as tested even our powers. I don't suppose an annual binge does a great deal of harm. I envied Erica as we walked through the park the other day. She had her skipping rope with her and was doing a series of complicated steps, twirling the rope to the right and the left of her (and so did Anita) and burning calories a rate uncles can only dream about. Barbara and I had hoped to spend a bit more time out walking but the foul weather has put paid to that.

There, my letter has its chronology all over the place. If you do not bother it however it probably won't bother you either. All I have not yet told you about is the series of programmes of about France that Channel Four has been running. We have watched an hour or two a night, most especially a series about British families who have settled in France (Britons, not Britishers, Mother! That expression was reserved for dastardly Nazis and worse in ye olde British comics). All the families decided that, one way or another, they wanted to share the delights of the French countryside, which comes cheaper than the English countryside. And they all loved what they found. But they all ran into financial problems which nearly brought them down. We noted the lessons and compared their experiences with our own. So far, we think, we have got things more or less right.

No more for today. You are all in our thoughts this Eastertide.