Diary

There are many things I’ll miss about my year with David Cameron, not least my regular visits to Portcullis House, the ugly upside-down cow’s udder opposite the Commons (it was designed by Michael Hopkins, although it looks as though he did this in the dark, possibly using Plasticine and some peat briquettes). After a while I began to think of its lobby as a current affairs version of the bar in Star Wars, the one peopled by a galaxy of freaks. It is also something of a research assistant catwalk, and while you couldn’t reasonably compare it to the lobby of Vogue House — which, predictably, has the most glamorous front of house in London — there are enough Tamzins, Tabithas and Tamaras here to put a spring in your John Lobbs.

The earthquake wakes me up. One moment I am sleeping and the next it feels as though I am on a waterbed with Hugh Hefner and four Playboy Bunnies. All I can do is hold on. There is an earthquake every day in Japan and most of them feel like mild indigestion. But then you get this kind, the scary kind, and you immediately wonder — is this the big one? When it is happening, you just don’t know. All you can do is go to the window and see if buildings are collapsing, roads buckling and the earth opening up. This isn’t the big one. On the Richter scale, it is only four Playboy Bunnies. But somewhere out there, people are dying. There is a bar in Tokyo for you. A mad, perfect bar with perhaps four seats in it. The bar of your dreams.

Sarah Standing battles to board a plane bound for Ibiza Needs must and I’ve become extremely skilled at booking cheap, credit-crunching flights on easyJet. The volume of hours, energy, blood, sweat and tears I’ve devoted to acquiring dream e-tickets for my family ought to qualify me for some sort of tenacious travel operator award. This summer I’ve truly gone for gold: four returns to Ibiza, singles to Nice, Corfu and Toulouse and a brace of cancellations to Gibraltar. I’ve come to the conclusion that making holiday arrangements in cyberspace requires real chutzpah. Getting the flights you want is a gamble and not dissimilar to playing the Las Vegas slot machines.

The fifth week of continuous downpour. Mouldiest summer ever. The children stay abed until lunchtime. I yell upstairs, Who wants to go for a massive walk? Who wants to come to Tesco in Minehead? Who wants to go to the Exmoor pony centre? There are never any takers. Exmoor pony centre was the scene of one of our many recent unsuccessful family outings, rivalling the lack of success of our visit to the Big Sheep ‘all-weather attraction’ outside Bideford. At the Big Sheep, we drove for two hours to watch a sheepdog herd three ewes.

An immediate rumour after the opening ceremony at the Beijing Games was that an emergency meeting of the British Olympic Committee was convened in order to find an excuse for cancelling London 2012. There might have been even greater panic because Britain is expected to produce a ‘performance’ of eight minutes as part of the closing ceremony in two weeks’ time. Beckham kicking a football was believed to be billed as the British climax, but if that’s all he would be doing, the meaning of ‘damp squib’ might well assume a new dimension.

One of the great adventures of being an actor is filming abroad, when suddenly you have the opportunity not only to visit, but actually to work somewhere else; to feel temporarily part of another city’s fabric rather than floating along its surface. This, then, comes to you from glorious, sweltering Rome, or more precisely from the Cavalieri Hilton, whose view over this ancient, unreal city, is quite breathtaking. I’m here doing costume fittings for The Red Priest, a movie shooting later this summer. Luca, my tailor at Farani, the historical costumiers, is clearly a genius but has perhaps something of the demonic about him.

Every six months the tabloid press shakes its pudgy fist in ecstatic indignation over some new film (usually French and about as offensive as a French actress’s unveiled breasts). Last week, it was a British film called Donkey Punch which prompted the ever-raging question ‘Is this the vilest film ever?’ The answer, as with all headlines ending in a question mark, is no, but it is quite possibly the worst. The title, for those of you who missed the disgusted though voluble explanations in the newspapers, is a term used to describe a mythical, sado-masochistic sexual act. The storyline?

From London to Bath to Manhattan, ten funerals or memorial services since October makes more than one a month, and attending them can seem a full-time occupation, as well as a sorrowful one. John Biffen, Bill Deedes and Ian Gilmour were full of years and had done the state some service. James Michie and Euan Graham had also reached fourscore years, and Jean Freas, a dear family friend in New York whom my father met at a party there on the night Truman won his dramatic victory in 1948, was almost 80, as was Anthony Blond. At their age death is sad rather than tragic, but too many Fleet Street chums have been clocking out before their time, Nigel Dempster at 65 or Miles Kington at 66.

We’re back in St Tropez after a whirlwind week in London. The party season is in full swing so I dipped my toes in a couple, and what a difference between two of the most high-profile events that week. One, an exhibition of paintings at a Dover Street Gallery, was given in a large airy room with a wide balcony and pretty garden, in which one could stroll. There was enough space and enough time to chat with groups of friends and acquaintances, who could wander around admiring the great pictures and eat the hors d’œuvres without getting jostled and poked.

Rebecca Newman gives a rundown of her week Rarely in my life have I enjoyed running. A tubby child and then a sickly teen, I spent games lessons hiding behind a piano with a book. Odd then, that this week I completed (half of) one of the toughest marathons in the world. Stranger still, I enjoyed it. The Lewa Marathon is a unique event, a challenge I was romantic and bloody-minded enough not to turn down. It snakes through the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in north-east Kenya, presenting a testing combination of dry heat, steep inclines and shingle descents. To top it off, Lewa is at 6,000 ft above sea level. But I couldn’t resist the idea of running through the African savannah, with spotter planes circling to keep rhino and cheetah at bay.

Penny Smith gives a rundown of her week  No matter what happens, Friday is always a big day for those of us who do five days of getting up at sparrow’s cough. The prospect of two days of lie-ins is so exciting it makes me feel giddy. My self-imposed rule of no drinking and no caffeine is broken at weekends. Friday is Clare Nasir’s birthday. She is our vastly overqualified weather presenter. I share a dressing-room with her (or Andrea McLean) and whoever is reading the news on the GMTV Newshour. Our room is barely big enough to hold a stag beetle wrestling match. Clare is very useful for site-specific forecasts. ‘The Opera House, this evening?’ I ask. ‘You’ll be fine without a coat,’ she says. She’s right.

Monday Hats off to the Major government — it’s not easy managing sleaze. Putting out endless statements explaining why some MP or other isn’t on the take. The reasons are so complicated. Plus it takes ages to calm them down. They ring in on the Helpline practically hysterical. Had one this morning. ‘Have you any idea how much money I could be fiddling? I haven’t put through a genuinely fraudulent expense claim for two years, and what thanks do I get? My local paper exposing me for claiming an iPod, that’s what. It’s a disgrace! I need that iPod for urgent constituency relaxation business. What’s David going to do about it? Hmm?’ Told him to stay calm and follow the instructions on the Sleaze Management PDF.

The summer solstice is upon us. Time to get out the woad, ramp up the chanting and perform some ancient pagan rituals involving fire, water, air and earth. It might be very cheering to get blue and naked in the countryside, and it would certainly take our minds off the current doom and gloom that is our daily news. So why not? ‘Because it’s idiotic,’ was my 19-year-old son’s response. My suggestion that he might like to celebrate the longest night with a bonfire and marshmallows on the wild heathland overlooking the sea in Norfolk was met with a withering look. ‘It’s probably illegal,’ he said. ‘And how old do you think I am anyway?’ London is now my home again after 15 years of living in Norfolk.