I have spent many, many years teaching people about compassion and self-sacrifice. From reading these diaries I know, deep in my heart, that this is a lesson the world is crying out to learn!
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
August 2010
January 1st
These cornflakes are real and they are everywhere. And I tell you this, Michelle, I say.
The packet may have been shaken, but the flakes will recover.
So it is with profound gratitude and great humility that I accept my breakfast cornflakes.
Michelle asks, do I want the milk? And to that I say this.
Our milk will come. Our milk will flow, and it will flow true. Our milk will flow smooth, and it will flow well-chilled.
But our milk will not flow if it is not poured.
So let me promise you this, Michelle. That milk will not pour itself over your flakes or my flakes. That milk will not pour itself over the flakes of the poor or the flakes of the rich, the flakes of the needy or the flakes of those folks who spend their lives in comfort. No, Michelle. To be poured, and, if the need has it, repoured, the jug in which that milk dwells must first be lifted by ourselves.
So, says Michelle, pour the milk any way you want, but I beg you, Barack, please get a move on.
I promise you this, Michelle, and this I promise you, I reply. I will indeed get a move on with pouring that milk. On the move to pour that milk, I shall ponder day and night. And I shall not rest until the day comes when that milk has, in truth, finally been poured.
BARACK OBAMA
The State of Britain, Part One: Just back from a New Year’s Eve party. I don’t often go to parties, because I’m not that kind of person, I’m a playwright, with more serious concerns. But I went to this one. By bus, of course. I’m not the sort of person who takes taxis. So I hailed a double-decker in the King’s Road and told the driver to take me to Islington. He was then to wait for me outside the party for an hour or two and take me back. The instructions were quite clear. But of course this is Thatcher’s Britain, so when I left the party – a party I didn’t particularly enjoy, by the way, it was hardly serious at all and full of ‘amusing’ people – the bus was nowhere to be seen (typical) and I was forced to hail, against all my instincts, a black cab. Out of sympathy with the driver I sat with him in the front, observing, observing, observing, my mind racing back to one of those rare defining moments, disproportionately significant but peculiarly illuminating, that had occurred back at the party.
I had been standing in the corner of the room with the dirty paper cup I had specially brought with me, when a man had come over –a tall, flashy type, with an easy smile, wearing a fashionable ‘tie’. He said: ‘You look a bit lonely, may I introduce myself?’ He then introduced himself. I didn’t reply, preferring to observe, as most serious playwrights do. He then said – again that fake smile – ‘And who are you?’
I was outraged, utterly outraged. And flabbergasted. Shocked, too. Shocked, outraged and flabbergasted. Not for me, of course, but for my profession, and the whole of British Theatre, from the lowest understudy right up to the most brilliant and dangerous playwright (whether that is me or not is beside the point). Why was this man –this man in his fashionable tie, with his promiscuous smile and his over-attentive handshake – pretending not to know who the hell I was? This was a sign of our inexorable national decline, as significant and painful in its way as the Miners’ Strike or the Falklands Conflict.
The State of Britain, Part Two: As the hurt and the horror surged within me, I felt driven to speak. ‘I’m David Hare,’ I said.
‘David Hare!’ he repeated. ‘Goodness! I really enjoy all your plays –you’re one of the greatest living playwrights, in my opinion!’
Note that patronising, biased and artfully demeaning tone in a statement riddled with the foul odour of ruling-class condescension: ‘ONE OF the greatest LIVING playwrights, IN MY OPINION’. Only in Britain – tired, sick, dislocated, dying Britain – in the 1980s could it be considered ‘fashionable’ to denigrate a serious playwright in this way. When I got home, I immediately wrote a cool letter to the host of the party, questioning his ethics in inviting me to a function at which there were people who openly hated me, roundly condemning his loathsome hypocrisy in not warning me of his treachery. He eventually replied with some sort of apology. Which all goes to show that here in Thatcher’s Britain, the national pastime – the national characteristic – is to apologise, apologise, apologise. When will we as a nation have the courage to stand up for ourselves?
SIR DAVID HARE
It’s now the Seventies. The Sixties – they seem like years ago, right? Years and years and years and years ago. Like literally ten years or even longer, right? But I remember them like they were yesterday, which was a Thursday, or was it a Monday? Can’t remember. Tuesday – that’s it. Or Sunday. Yesterday? Don’t talk to me about yesterday – I’m not into the whole tomorrow thing.
KEITH RICHARDS
It is now 1960, the very first year in the extraordinary decade that will, I feel sure, come to be known as the 1960s. Overnight, society has shaken off the starchy sexual mores of the 1950s. Suddenly, young men and women are casting aside their inhibitions and tapping their toes to the urgent, febrile rhythms of Lonnie Donegan. Among enlightened couples, cheese fondue is all the rage.
All the old barriers have suddenly come down. I find to my alarm that even men of the very greatest distinction can’t keep their hands to themselves. Last night, I had to fend off the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. I was interviewing him about the trade deficit on live television for New Year Late Night Love-In when suddenly he cast aside his red box, pulled down his trousers and leapt on top of me.
As I struggled to retain hold of my clipboard, veteran broadcaster Cliff Michelmore attempted to rectify the situation. ‘Let’s move swiftly on to the balance of payments, Chancellor,’ he said. ‘Any hope of an upturn come the autumn?’ But before the Chancellor had a chance to reply, the incoming governor of the Bank of England had barged into the studio, wearing nothing but a posing pouch. If this is how the Sixties begin, how on earth will they end?
JOAN BAKEWELL
January 2nd
Today I cook pasta. Pasta plain. But good. For those who come after, these directions I leave:
PASTA PLAIN – BUT GOOD
Ingredients: Pasta. And Salt. And Water. And Fire.
Directions:
Place the pasta in the water and the salt in the water and the water in the pot and the pot on the fire.
In the pot? The fire in the pot?
No. The water in the pot. The pot on the fire.
The pasta in the water?
Yes in the water.
And the salt in the fire?
No. The salt in the water.
And the water on the fire?
No.