The bottle of House of Commons champagne went for £100, bidding was brisk for Margaret Hodge’s new book, but one item at my constituency Labour Party’s Christmas auction was greeted with silence. Our Dear Leader had sent a photo of himself, text of a speech and a signed copy of his apology for the Iraq war.
Not that we expected Jeremy Corbyn — an atheist, teetotal, vegetarian ascetic who doesn’t even eat biscuits — to provide festive fun. But the virtue-signalling and politicking evident in that signed apology was quite magnificent: “Momentum will lap it up — and the Blairites will choke on their turkey.” Certainly the woman who paid £90 — bidders were few — handled her prizes like holy relics.
Fair enough, maybe: Corbyn is a lifelong pacifist, a Cenotaph-muttering mainstay of Stop The War. Surprising therefore during the debate on genocide in Aleppo to see him slip out of the Commons rather than have to condemn Russia. “Sorry” isn’t always the hardest word.
PS: A bottle of Scotch signed by Keir Starmer went for £180.
Books I have loved~
A hundred or so old children’s books: which ones go to the charity shop, which do I save for my theoretical and very far distant grandchildren?
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All of Roald Dahl stayed: he always blessed the bored bedtime adult with some linguistic joke or dark brilliance or sudden gulp of emotion. Danny, the Champion of the World is the greatest children’s book ever written. But apart from Just William and Paddington, I chucked the authors I loved myself when growing up. Compared to modern children’s writing they are tripe. Enid Blyton, who I devoured, is atrocious and HE Todd’s Bobby Brewster (now out of print) seems clunking.
The hardest task was sorting through the picture books, the ones you’d read night after night, words and images burned into your brain. The “swishy-swashy, swishy-swashy” of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Raymond Briggs’s The Elephant and the Bad Baby “who never once said please”, the cosy wartime scenes of the Ahlbergs’ Peek-a-Boo!.
I had to stop: the memories were making me cry. So I texted my younger son, now 19: “Do you remember The Bear Under the Stairs?” There was no reply.
Bags for life
In light of shock news that Nicky Morgan owns a £950 Mulberry tote, let me share my only fashion tip: never buy a mid-priced handbag. By which I mean one costing about £70 to £100. Instead carry a cheap thing — a straw basket, a hemp sack or even a Sainsbury bag-for-life — you can bin when it breaks. And save up for a decent one.
Men don’t get handbags: they don’t appreciate their reassuring presence. But I have a red Fendi bag I take to scary interviews which feels like a protective shield. It is hand-tooled by Italian artisans, strong and very beautiful.
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A mid-priced bag will look fine, but soon the handle will snap, the lining rip and repairs will be half the original cost, so you may decide not to bother and chuck it away. That is a waste of money, not buying one pricey but indestructible bag, which also gives you joy.
Woman of no importance
Lists are always nonsense, but the Woman’s Hour Power List is particularly asinine. Mrs Thatcher is controversial but, regardless of your politics, who can doubt her influence over the last 70 years? Beyoncé is a bit random but at least she’s an actual human being. Unlike Bridget Jones, who is a fictional character and a dreary, needy, hopeless baby-woman at that.
Could the judges honestly not find a seventh real woman to fill the slot? Not even clever, witty Helen Fielding, the writer who invented Bridget Jones and monetised the very worst aspects of modern womanhood into an empire? Or did the judges feel that airheads who fixate about calories and are crap at their jobs needed representing too?