Late Spring Musing

The advantage of being old is that, even if you forget what day it is, you still remember some of your own mistakes, and you certainly remember other people's mistakes. That is why the teaching of history is so important in a democracy and why some politicians want to abolish it in state schools. More clever is to write the history books while you are in power.

The historical truth belongs to the victors. Tony Blair has therefore now spent millions and millions of the taxpayers' money with p.r. agencies to tell voters what a brilliant government he has. (Blair's Millennium Dome was a flop from the beginning, but his p.r. machine is brilliant.) Our Tony has learned how to spend taxpayers' money for election expenses from the commissioners of the European Union. They are also financing the publicity campaign to increase both their own powers and the size of the Union, from the tax payments of citizens of the member states.

(Socialist President Mitterrand of France upstaged his predecessors, Louis XIV and Napoleon, with his own pharaonic building projects. They are now crumbling, as there was never enough money in the kitty to pay for good buildings and kickbacks for the Socialist ministers.)

Now, I don't think Tony Blair is a bad fellow compared to Lenin, or indeed compared to English Marxists of earlier governments. But, Blair's government is particularly hostile to anything rural. Is it because farmers know that you judge a horse by its teeth and Mrs. Blair's equine smile is as winning as that of another left-wing first lady, the late Eleanor Roosevelt?

Blair would like the voters to be as placid and docile as sheep, but I don't think he really likes sheep, as he has killed some 2.5 million of them in the course of the recent foot-and-mouth panic. There hasn't been such enthusiasm for slaughter since the Massacre of the Innocents in the New Testament.

I suppose, though, some farmers get too fond of their sheep. I remember one in the North Country who was indicted for bestiality and the prosecutor at his trial opened his speech to the jurors with these moving words: "...On the 10th of June my client was grazing peacefully in a field."

The government's next target appears to be dogs and dog-lovers. A friend of mine owns a small whippet standing some 18 inches in its socks. One day it yapped at a mounted policewoman in the park. (In order to avoid misunderstanding I should make it clear that Constable Susan Taylor was mounted on a horse.) The police are now understandably frustrated because the new government instructions are that they must not question a suspect if the victim's description of the suspect indicates an ethnic minority. Since both the whippet (named Chester) and its owner were of a pallor consistent with centuries of exposure to the English climate, the police decided it would be politically correct to prosecute and they now both have criminal records! Those newspapers with a dog-loving readership had a field day. The dog owner's mum, Lady AnnabelGoldsmith, told the London Times that Chester has been off his food ever since the verdict. When Blair prepares the legislation to abolish the pound he will no doubt also abolish such canines as the English bulldog, the English setter and the Scottish sheepdog. Since he wants to be on good terms with the Queen he may leave the Welsh corgis alone. The destitute farmers' votes will never get rid of this government, but a mass rally at the next Cruft's Dog Show might do the trick.

I was told that there would be no point in plugging the theater and art shows this month, as pusillanimous American tourists were afraid of catching foot-and-mouth. I was told wrong. First of all, my kind of Americans are not pusillanimous (not even those who think the word has something to do with pussy). My kind of Americans are the kind who came over twice in the last century and saved Europe from krauts and pinkos. I spent a weekend seeing three plays in Stratford-on-Avon, and the place was as crammed with culture-hungry Yankees as Times Square on New Year's Eve. And they are not afraid of foreign food either. Huge Mamas and their Big Daddys went like locusts through the hotel's buffet breakfast.

The first play was Twelfth Night which Shakespeare wrote to confuse audiences, wherever they came from. Then I saw William Wycherley's Love in a Wood, a bawdy Restoration comedy, typical of the relief everyone felt at the end of Cromwell's Puritan Republic and the return of the philandering Charles II. Some years ago I was privileged to be at a dinner with that excellent actress Anna Massey, who is unfortunately a ferocious anti-monarchist. After her boring tirade, I could not resist saying that I could understand her bias as an actress, since the only time Britain had a republic, they closed the theaters for 13 years. Maybe she didn't know that.

On the last night I saw a splendidly funny play, the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore. A wonderful cast, hilarious, and yet with a deeply moving and pertinent political message. It is a Grand Guignol bloodbath with more corpses onstage than in the last scene of Hamlet. There has been enough killing, and, sadly, theater managements are reluctant to produce McDonagh's play in case some lunatic splinter-group terrorist dislikes it.