I am ‘sharing’ what follows as a public service. Also, as self-care in the hope that publicly shaming myself might stop me from doing it again. What can she be on about, you must be thinking, this time?
My name is Rachel Johnson, and I have a chronic inability to leave the house on time, even for something I have been looking forward to for months. One example: heli-skiing in Italy with my son Oliver. All I had to do was catch a flight to Geneva whence we would be conveyed to a divine off-grid chalet via car and driver, then snowmobile.
I had one job. To get us to Heathrow for the breakfast-time flight.
Somehow, though, Ivo caught us both in flagrante in the kitchen eating Shreddies and slurping mugs of tea shortly before the gate would be closing (at this point I should confess that Ivo has elected not to travel with me as ‘every time we fly together it takes years off my life’).
Let’s leave this hanging and move on to the more recent and condign offence at the invitation-only memorial for Dame Jilly Cooper DBE last week.
Before we proceed, m’lud, I should ask for a further offence to be taken into consideration: a propensity to ignore attachments, directions and instructions, as if my brain has loftily ordained that such mundane details are for the little people (I am not proud of this either).
I had two details lodged in my brain. Jilly’s memorial was at Southwark Cathedral at 11 a.m. I had one job, I thought, and that was to get to the church on time.
Reader, you may not be surprised to hear that having left the house at 10.25 a.m., I was still on the Tube to London Bridge, strap-hanging on the Jubilee line, as the notifications appeared on my phone: ‘Stars of Rivals arrive at memorial for Jilly’ and then ‘Queen arrives for Dame Jilly Cooper’. I was in a red suit, sports bra and trainers, as if some sixth sense had warned me that I would soon be sprinting through the streets of south London.
You may not believe this (actions not words, I know), but I had desperately wanted to be there on time. Jilly Cooper was one of the women I admired most in the world. I’d never have written a word if I hadn’t read Octavia, Bella, Harriet etc as a schoolgirl under the bedclothes with a torch. As an undergraduate, I refused to visit the Colosseum and Forum – which I’d not seen – on a fam hol, as I far preferred staying by the pool in Porto Ercole, nose deep in a copy of Riders.
I exited the Tube as the clock struck 11 a.m. but then panicked and found myself doing laps of Borough Market in a muck sweat until I located the precinct. There was a police cordon and a phalanx of paps in front of the Cathedral’s iron gates, which were firmly closed, the Queen’s limo parked where the hearse should be.
‘10.55 Entrance of Her Majesty the Queen (please stand),’ I read. I had arrived after the Queen
Some kind soul took pity, and I was ushered in and shown to a seat at the back. At the lectern, in chic navy and hat, Dame Joanna Lumley was reading choice extracts from The Common Years, most of them containing the word ‘bugger’. To my right, Nick Coleridge, the provost of Eton, his wife Georgia, Nicky Haslam, Bunter Somerset, Charlie and Rebekah Brooks were chuckling away comfortably. Almost shaking, I opened the Order of Service: ‘9.30 Doors Open. 10.15 Organ Music. 10.40 All guests to be seated. 10.55 Entrance of Her Majesty the Queen (please stand),’ I read.
I had arrived after the Queen.
Such arrogance, such cockiness, such lèse-majesté. I debated with myself, miserably, whether I could ever admit this to Ivo (luckily away trout-fishing in Patagonia at the time). He has never forgiven me for leaving so late for the heli-skiing, managing to lose my passport in the car on the way, waiting a long eight minutes for the airport bus from the car park… and still making the flight, you see.
All’s well that ends well, and within no time the perfect purity of the occasion washed my soul clean. Jilly’s love of England and of Englishmen; her love of dogs, horses and family, her love of sex and poetry and champagne; her love of footballers, polo players and rotters, her love of music and books, and of filling the forgiving minute with fun and work filled us to the rafters.
I told myself that Jilly would tell me not to be so silly about being late and just hand me a huge drink – which she did. For at the end we stood, and the Queen filed out with the Dean. The bells rang out, a piece composed for the occasion called ‘Rutshire Surprise Maximus’, and then, as if by magic, the celebrants were plied with Moët & Chandon from 130 magnums.
Given that the Queen herself once paid tribute to her friend’s penchant for getting ‘plastered at parties’, I have no doubt this is just what Jilly would have wanted.
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