There is this book ‘Sapiens’ going round, being perused by a range of self-important folk in the tube and elsewhere. Sapiens, as in homo sapiens, man. It is one of those total titles. It covers the world for you. I don’t know who wrote it. It is surely a Professor of Something with a Chair in something somewhere. We live in an era of short cuts to learning and wisdom. Of course, there are the self-help books that cover most of the ground floor of any bookshop now, but also there are these more learned volumes that claim to take us through from bottom to top of the enterprise that is us. Then the reader goes off knowing everything. Job done. They can get back on Instagram. Totalising is, of course, a valid enough enterprise. You cut through to the essential. The danger is that in any business of this nature there are generalisations, short cuts. The writer will mention Rousseau for one little reference to a movement in the 18th Century but will never have read him. It reminds me of a friend at university who was once telling me about Rabelais. He had read a chapter in a book on literary theory about the Russian critic Bakhtin’s book about Rabelais. so, having read no Rabelais (no 16th Century French literature at all, not even in English translation) and having read no Bakhtin at all, he was spewing out the opinion of a writer, who perhaps himself had never really read them. In the process, ideas are coarsened. A couple of little generalisations emerge. This is a phenomenon you get a lot of in contemporary art. You read the accompanying text to a piece of conceptual art and it cites Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida et al. You know this guy hasn’t read any of these people. Lots of short cuts. When everyone reads Sapiens and depends on their view of a whole range of thinkers on this digest, they are opening themselves up to all kinds of potential manipulation, intentional or unintentional.

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The search for a toilet is fraught with difficulty these days. I was in the cafe of the Royal Court theatre looking for one. There were two doors. One said Cubicles and one said Cubicles and Urinals. This is the new way forward. That way intermediate genders can find their true home. Earlier in the day when I had been looking for a toilet on the street at the other end of King’s Road. I stopped a policeman. He and his co-constable did not know of any public toilets around. Have they all been made into executive flats? I quipped. They responded with half smiles, feeling no doubt tainted by the ways the streets are going. The Bishop of London was also confused by the evolution of the common-or-garden toilet. On arriving to give a talk he was told that G and T’s were available downstairs before the talk. Being a bishop he hurried down for some dutch courage. G and T’s? he nervously asked the lone official figure in an empty basement. The official showed him across the floor to the Gender Neutral Toilets. But don’t worry. If you ask me for the nearest toilets on the street I will willingly help you out. Turn left. Go a hundred yeards along and off in the sidestreet there is a low-roofed building. You’ll see the word Gentlemen on one of the doors. Don’t be put off by that, I’ll say. Go straight in.

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The papaya fruit is known as the queen of fruits. Why not? They are very nice and do no end of good to my digestive system. After a papaya my transit runs free. I remember years ago my Auntie Molly telling me without a hint of irony that James Michener was the king or was it the prince of novelists. I was a teenager. I nodded, as though to take at face value the objective truth of such an assertion. Is Paris the queen of cities? I think it probably is. In such a configuration Boris Johnson would be the knave or jack of all politicians or the Two of Spades of all diplomats; Theresa May would be the rook’s pawn of all communicators and Jeremy Corbyn the farthing or maybe the groat of all leaders of the Opposition.

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I was in the café in Peter Jones department store queueing for a coffee and I heard the woman in front of me ordering her cappuccino, extra strong, she insisted. But I mean really strong, she said. They agreed she would have two shots of coffee in her cappuccino. Then the woman behind the counter said, would you like chocolate on that? The customer, who was probably about sixty, a smallish woman with maybe some Lebanese or middle eastern heritage somewhere, said: do I look like I want chocolate on that? This was not said aggressively, more as though to start a playful conversation, but the woman who was serving her did not answer. The customer repeated her question, as though it was a good quip that had gone unnoticed. She said it again: do I look like I want chocolate? Again the serving woman chose not to respond. The customer went to a seat with her double shot coffee. I tried to understand the exchange. At first I thought the chocolate thing was because she was dark of skin and the serving woman did not want to be a drawn on such a contentious topic. Then, as I looked at the customer across the café, I thought that she wasn’t particularly dark. Maybe it was that her desire to have a double shot coffee was a macho signal and, following the same line, she had wanted to publicly poo-poo the idea of having a sprinkle of chocolate on the top of some frothy milk. I wrestled with the correct interpretation of the exchange for the ten minutes it took me to drink my black americano (pretty macho I reckon). Then I went down to use the toilets on the first floor.

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Am I alone in viewing the proposal for marriage as a strange primitive left-over from earlier times? In the days of nth wave feminism and metoo culture surely the etiquettes of this ritual could do with a make-over. Even in the most forward thinking of couples the business of a bended leg and a prize ring, sometimes hidden in a chocolate cream or strawberry blancmange, the sacred formula of the proposal itself, the high-kitsch setting (some fairy castle or secret bower) persist. The stellar confusion reveals itself most when the groom decides to enact the ritual in front of a Super Bowl crowd and the bride considers this to be romantic, or respectful, or something.
If somebody will pay me I will accept to draw up a procedure more in line with modern society and contemporary gender roles. Spoiler alert: what I might come up with for the two parties is something resembling a conversation.

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We were looking through old photos before the wedding. That was a nice one of Anna, the bride-to-be, a few years ago out in the garden with the tulips. I said that’s a nice one of her with the tulips. Jerry didn’t seem to be paying attention. Later at the wedding reception, across the table, I heard Jerry talking to Auntie Molly. I found this lovely picture of her with some tulips out in the garden a few years ago, he said. I felt a tinge of irritation. Actually, I was irked. I mean, that was my material and Jerry had run with it. That’s not fair. Soft skills like that, noticing things, constructing material for conversation, is one of the only things I can do. I have no actual skills to talk of. When the people with hard skills are showing you how the computer works or putting up the shelves or sorting out your shower head, you just stand or sit there and nod along. But that’s all right, because you know that you can walk into a room and say something that will open the conversation up. And now here’s someone getting credit for your material.
The soft skill people and the hard skill people face each other across a dark forest of incomprehension. The hard skill people, complete with their hard hats and overalls and terminology and acronyms are convinced of their superiority. After all, they can do stuff, problem solve. Soft skill folk know nothing. All they have is a certain magical conviction that when they open their mouths, lights come on. They allow themselves to take a conversation where they want, down into any thicket, knowing they can bring it back to the path. Your hard skill people have to keep trudging on the stony gravel thoroughfare. They would not want to stop off in a little copse over the way there. It would seem senseless to them.
So when I picked out that photo for special consideration, chose it as the emblematic one of the bunch, I was actually bringing to bear all the years of invisible training. All that reading of Proust and Thomas Mann, it was all crystalising in picking out the photo of Anna and the tulips, and when Jerry just picked it up and used it for his purposes I shot a dark look across the table. Without the Proust; without the Thomas Mann; without the Arthur Schnitzler. I ask you.

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An infallible law maintains that as you grow older certain treats of your younger years become the scourges of your autumnal self. Christmas gradually transforms from a present-laden period of grace to a dread feast where you buy the presents and don’t receive them. You avoid Birthdays which, once awaited with glee, are now another digit on an already listing abacus. This disgreeable graph would plot a distasteful big dipper; as age grows pleasure diminishes.
But might it be that the horrors of our greener years are metamorphised into delectation as we advance towards decrepitude? Sprouts I didn’t like but are now at least a mild source of satisfaction; the notion of boredom changes its complexion these days, an empty day being the ideal to which I most aspire; as things stand I must admit to liking cooking, washing-up, even ironing (if we can omit the business of getting the ironing board out of the cupboard). The pleasures of silence (increasingly difficult to find) have become an absolute, while many years ago, in the long days of childhood, it would have been an absolute purgatory. This graph, then, has its consolations. I look longingly back to the Christmases of old but eagerly forward to the washing-up awaiting me in tomorrow’s kitchen sink.

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I have now made my mind up about my last will and testament. I will find a suitable stately home for the weekend. My executor will have to do this. I will be dead. Ten chosen potential recipients of my great fortune will be invited to stay; chosen friends and family. Certain people will be surprised by their inclusion; others disappointed. The final choice will pay no heed to the conventional ties of kith and kin. Friday evening will be a formal dinner. It will be a long banqueting table. On the menu will be oysters, offal, cheese, meringue. A good bordeaux. No champagne. Water will be allowed. Each guest will come with a friend. That will make twenty people. At the head will be the executor tasked to guarantee the correct dress code for the occasion. Unwillingness or inability to respect the dress code will result in disqualification from the pool of potential recipients of the fortune. All guests will be made aware of these requirements. Saturday daytime will be a group ramble in the surrounding woodland. In the evening a drinks party in the ballroom. Dress will again be formal. At tea time on Sunday all guests will gather in the drawing room for the reading of the last will and testament. When the grandfather clock strikes four in the afternoon the envelope will be opened. I think I shall refrain form announcing the results via video from beyond the grave. This would smack too much of an eighties dramatisation of an Agatha Christie novel. The letter will be a sobre instrument. No, I am not looking for murders at the reading of my last will and testament, though who knows what people might resort to when the countdown begins.

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are you synchronic or diachronic? Synchronic is when you understand something at a particular moment in time; diachronic is when you see it in the context of history (your own history, for example). I am diachronic; I don’t change much; I don’t shift away from what I consider to be myself; I don’t forget easily; I am whole. Synchronic people may be able to move on quicker; change; they might not feel locked into one version of themselves or an event in their past. They forget better. Maybe this means they take more risks; they are not part of the continuity that has defined them. I suppose you need to have elements of both. The past is good to remember but you don’t want it to define you and you need to be able to move elsewhere nimbly. On the other hand, it might make you one of those people destined to forever make the same mistakes or leave a trail of wreckage in your wake because you never recognise the imprint of past experience, you never integrate it. Maybe, as they say on telly quite often, you might be willing to forgive but don’t want to forget. The key is to keep a memory on your recuperable periphery. Now there’s a phrase. I’ll try and remember that. Feel free to use it.

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After two years of hogging it, not just to her own party but sometimes even to her own chest, the arch control-freak Theresa May was finally forced to open up the debate to other parties. She said it, in public, in front of the House of Commons, in front of millions of television viewers. Jeremy Corbyn stands up. Time to make a moment. He will never have the world looking at him like this. And what do we get? More blether. The heart sinks. More blether. We’re not listening.
Here’s what you should have done, Jeremy.
You step forward. don’t rush it. Wait till the racket dies down. Do what Adolf Hitler used to do. Wait till people start to wonder what’s up. Then look at your wrist to your imaginary wristwatch. Look across to the speaker of the House. Say What time are we finishing here? John Bercow will say: At eight o’clock or in fifteen minutes or whatever he wants. Then Jeremy Corbyn says. How long has she had again? Two years? All right. Then look across the despatch box to her. I’ll see you at a quarter past eight out the back there. Then sit down. Say no more. No blether.
Imagine how remarkable that quiet business-like manner would be. It would be headlines all over the news. Instead we get more old rhetoric. You wonder who works with these politicians on their communications.

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