Breakfast with Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister and head of the army whom I had not seen for years. At 79, he still bubbles with energy, wit and ideas. Having taken an MSc at Stanford — “but for the Six Day War, I might have become a scientist” — he is now involved with a string of the tech start-ups for which Israel has become famous.
I asked if he thinks his country is acquiring friends or enemies more quickly: “Enemies”, he answered succinctly. He reckons it impossible for Israel to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities by air attack without the Americans being involved. In one of several memorable phrases, he said that he looks on Europe as “a dying paradise . . . all those Germans working harder and harder to keep Italy going”. In his young days, when I first met him, he commanded Israel’s equivalent of the SAS, which he led on several memorable operations.
Iron-tough but politically of the left, Ehud to me represents the best of Israel. I did not bother to invite him to comment on Bibi Netanyahu, an old special forces subordinate who has for decades been a political foe, because there was no fire extinguisher handy.
Fire alert
On Thursday we catch the Scottish sleeper train north, to escape motorways and airports with the dogs. When my son was nine, I took him on the same train, of which the engine caught fire ten miles short of Inverness. In those days I was a keen exponent of direct action. Reckoning that the train would be going nowhere for hours, we opened a door, jumped down on to the track, walked to a nearby roadbridge, and hitched a lift into the city from a friendly farmer. Today this would be impossible a) because train doors, and for that matter windows, no longer open, b) I am too old to jump and hump luggage, c) if we were wearing our WE LOVE BORIS badges we would have a long wait for a friendly Scot.
For son Harry, however, that memory was the most thrilling of our holiday. When we set off the following year, he demanded eagerly: “Will the train catch fire again, Daddy?”
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A job for Jeeves
Many familiar words have become unacceptable to cancel culture and to this Index should be added “servant”. The British recoil with ever more disgust from performing personal service. If Jeeves has modern counterparts caressing the yachting blazers of the super-rich, they are probably Portuguese or Ukrainian. Many young Brits are likewise unwilling to work in catering, because it is such hard work. Thus we can hardly be surprised that the exodus of European workers following Covid and the unmentionable B-word has caused a staffing crisis in pubs, hotels, restaurants.
There is a longer-term issue: millions more industrial and clerical jobs will be lost to robots. As economic inequality worsens, the only certainty is that there will be a huge demand for butlers, maids, nannies and suchlike, which is unlikely to be met by homegrown recruits from the new Blue Wall regions. I know only one terrific British butler, who works for a Tory elder statesman. Jeeves would be proud of him, not least because of his rarity value.
Brief encounter
I re-read favourites obsessively, most recently James Lees-Milne’s mid-20th-century diaries. In 1942 he recorded one of the more pathetic little war vignettes I have ever encountered: he met a woman friend whose daughter was getting married to an officer who could secure only one week of leave for wedding and honeymoon, between specified dates. The mother was sobbing because the virginal bride, such as then existed, was due to have the “curse”. I do hope the couple survived, likewise their marriage.