Spectator Life

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted a steam engine. When I was five my parents promised that I could have one when I was 12: I think they thought I’d forget. I didn’t, and seven Christmases later I unwrapped a model traction engine made by the Birmingham firm of Mamod. It was chunky and basic, and its bright green and red paint gave it a toy-like appearance. But its brass valves and copper pipes were unquestionably the real thing. Out in the garden, Dad and I lit it up. The engine grew warm, it hissed; its flywheel whirred into life. And a glorious aroma filled the morning air: a blend of hot metal, WD40 and the sweet, chemical fragrance of burning fuel tablets. One breath and I was hooked.

Picture the scene; you’re Kate Middleton and it’s Saturday lunchtime. You’re out enjoying suburban Windsor. The Audi is safely stowed – along with hundreds of other cars mostly produced in Germany, the Czech Republic or the West Midlands – in a nearby car park the size of the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman and about as eco-friendly. The farm shop is a kind of Peppa Pig World for adults There’s a faux 1950s Citroen van-lookalike with corrugated panels from which a pair of stressed teens in brown aprons are selling overpriced macchiatos, almond lattes and stone-cold hot chocolates, to a lengthening queue of gilet-wearing mums and dads. Most of them are too busy pretending not to watch their children tormenting each other to notice they are being royally ripped off.

Earlier this week I read that, from the moment of pulling into the car park to exiting it, the average supermarket shopper reads just seven words. Seven words. My initial reaction was: who are these Neanderthals? So, for want of something to talk about over supper after nearly 20 years of shackles, I ran this random fact past my husband. He was amazed anyone read as many as seven. My reaction this time was more fulsome: who is this Neanderthal, and why am I having dinner with him? When I was home from boarding school, I was positively relieved when she reached for an M&S carbonara rather than Delia These seven words are all the more stark when you know the average length of time spent in a supermarket: 37 mins.

As a young man I sought out the company of much older people in the arts, feeling they had some secret to life, often the same one in different guises, which I wanted, needed to discover. In the let-it-all-hang-out youth culture of the 1990s I felt awash, and the elderly (which to a 20-year-old meant anyone over 60) were also kinder, less threatening, more generous with their time. Two people who influenced me most were Daniel Farson – roistering Soho writer and broadcaster, a kind of modern-day Toby Belch – and Karin Jonzen, a septuagenarian Swedish sculptress with a studio off the King’s Road. It was all pure gold, a kind of heightened life you swore you’d always strive for Dan I met by design.

One of China’s most famous poems was penned by a teenager with a killer hangover. ‘Heavy sleep can’t get rid of the dregs of alcohol,’ she grumbles, sequestered in her darkened room after a night of boozing and bad weather. She has to ask a maid to open her curtains. Here comes one of the quintessential images of classical Chinese poetry: a crab-apple tree stands in the drenched earth, wrecked by the storm. Her maid, who hasn’t been drinking, sees nothing wrong. The poet is full of sorrow. Spring has faded. To her, drunkenness was always beautiful, even when it led to disaster Li Qingzhao grew up in 12th-century Shandong, an eastern province around four hours from Beijing.

‘I’m used to going deep into narratives, and I just loved the story of this house,’ says actress and director Sara Sugarman, who is selling her Grade II* listed Georgian home in a historic Kentish dockyard. Her roles include TV series Grange Hill and Juliet Bravo, movies Sid & Nancy and Mr Nice, and she has also directed Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and Jonathan Pryce in Very Annie Mary, earning the Sundance Film Maker’s prize along the way. ‘I wanted pure authenticity, so I researched everything I could about the history of the house and 1830s design and got a real hunger for it.

‘PUNK’S NOT DEAD!’ I will sometimes write as a sign-off on emails to mates when I’ve said something particularly ‘bad’. It’s something of a joke with me; although I was around the scene early on (1976) and started my career off as a 17-year-old writing about punk, I didn’t much like it. I liked black music – disco, Motown, soul; I thought that most white music was just a nasty old racket. The establishment has moved from right to left but remains sexist, snobbish and racist But I do like the phrase, implying as it does a refusal to bow down to the establishment. Although we had a Labour government from 1974, it’s fair to say that the establishment of the 1970s was a fusty right-wing thing, sexist and racist and snobbish.

There is much to bemoan about the NHS, from the cruel entitlement of its junior doctors to its zest for hiring diversity and inclusion staff when many people can’t even see a GP. I have been a harsh and consistent critic for years. I don’t like the cultish, Big Brother vibes, the gawping black hole for funds that seem mismanaged, and I don’t like the socialism.  I had a caesarian section less than a fortnight ago. I’d have one again just for fun I still don’t like those things, but I have now seen the charm of the rackety NHS. Having a baby, I discovered the it’s generosity. I had a caesarian section less than a fortnight ago at UCLH in central London. I’d have one again just for fun.

When you play a game – cards, backgammon, chess – should you listen to your head or your heart? Do you sit there coldly calculating the odds, or do you go with a hunch, gut instinct, your sixth sense? It’s a question I’m discussing with Marcus du Sautoy as we sit in the Beaumont Hotel in Mayfair, enjoying one of their regular games evenings. Even if our subconscious picks up on someone’s body language without us registering that that’s what we’ve done, it’s still reason Marcus laughs when I mention the head or heart choice. ‘Head, of course! I’m a mathematician.’ His latest book, Around the World in 80 Games (which I reviewed for the magazine) examines the games he’s encountered on his travels.