7September1997

7 September 1997
My dear folks,

The week is over, an extraordinary week the likes of which I’ve never known & one that stretched us taut in the coverage. I know you’ll have seen & heard all you need to & possibly a great deal more. It sparked a fair debate, not only in the media, but between Jones (very sceptical about the whole thing) & me (a little overawed by it). I cycled down on the Friday to Kensington Gardens where the hundreds of thousands of bouquets covering the lawn in front of the house filled the air with the scent of flowers. There was a great hush among the throngs of people there. Many of them had come armed with video cameras to record the scenes: I thought about Goldsmith’s line that “fools who came to scoff remained to pray”. Not that I prayed; I simply observed in utter, somewhat melancholic fascination.

Jones I hunted up the International Herald Tribune articles you referred to on the Internet & read them with interest. I thought the one about narcissism a little harsh. I think that willy-nilly Di left the world a better place than she found it, “more sinned against than sinning”. Anyhow, she’s history now. Having gone bananas about her all week, we are now trying to give a fit if belated obituary to Mother Teresa. Lesser luminaries like the conductor, Georg Solti, who chose the same week to pop off, had to be content with the briefest of references.

Elisa, my Portuguese maid rolled up on Friday p.m. 90 minutes late & out of breath. She’d spent two full days at the Portuguese consulate after discovering that the Portuguese ID card she’d been travelling on was expiring, endangering both a trip she’d booked to Portugal this week & any return to Britain. The good news was that they’d eventually issued her with a brand new passport, her first! She & her husband are apparently having a house built – very slowly by all accounts – in the town of Viseu & are making their annual trip to inspect progress. She had only an hour to clean the flat as she had to go to town to clean lawyers’ offices on behalf of an absent friend. We used it instead to translate a few generic letters of the kind I find myself writing to the bank in Portugal. Like Maria, our maid at the Quinta, she’s bright although poorly educated. She speaks reasonable English & is interested in acquiring a computer. We’ll see!

Saturday was wall to wall funeral day. I was put in charge of collating the “rest of world news”; it wasn’t particularly demanding in the circumstances. Still, I got together a dozen minor stories & a few packages for the incoming team to use later in the night. It was also the first nippy dawn of the season. I had to blow on my knuckles as I cycled to work at 0630. It’s now pitch dark by the time the shift finishes at 2000 - back to cycle lights & reflective bands. The sweaty humidity of the past few weeks has gone for the year - & good riddance. It’s not my kind of weather.

Sunday saw my brief return to Asia Today, a pleasant little diversion. I started early in order to talk to the necessary correspondents in good time. Having made suitable arrangements, I enjoyed a lunchtime excursion to the bar where I dallied over a couple of beers & a big TV monitor showing the Italian Grand Prix. I also bumped into one of the “suits” from BBC OnLine who said that no decision on further appointments was expected until at least the end of October. That’s fine by me. I’ve already organised a visit to Portugal for a week beginning next Saturday (13th) & I’ve got my eye on a suitable week in October. Thereafter, come what may!

This evening I watched a BBC documentary framed by Stephen Hawking on the origins of the universe, a favourite topic. It traced the arguments over Hoyle’s Steady State theory vs. the Big Bang. Most fascinating is how Einstein, having developed his theory of relativity, which implied the Big Bang, constructed his infamous cosmological constant to overcome the implication. Even he could not accept the logical conclusion of his own theory, not at least until Hubble & Lemaitre confronted him many years later with evidence to the contrary.

Thank you Mum & Jones & Cathy all for your faxes & Robbie, Bea & Jud for your email. Thanks too Cathy for the wedding photos. I shall take them down to the Quinta to show Jones. Jones, Michelle came along to say hi & “thanks for a lovely time”.

Blessings
T