Diary

Monday Dave opened the nine o’clock by paying tribute to a great former shadow home secretary whose place in history, and on the back benches, was now assured. ‘We will give him all the space he needs to fulfil his brave quest of being re-elected to his own constituency.’ Then we proceeded to Options For Handling/Briefing Plans. One — Personal crisis. Our thoughts are with his family at this difficult time etc. Two — This is all part of a cunning plan to damage ourselves enough to Shore Up Gordon, and Stop Miliband. Three — It is part of a plan for all Tory MPs to resign and put themselves up for re-election this summer in order to force a general election. Four — We support him fully, and Dave is looking forward to helping him campaign.

Another Ark fundraising dinner has come and gone and I can finally get back to running my business. More importantly I can focus on the programmes that the dinner paid for. The stress started in January as Ian Wace (my partner in Ark) and I planned a thousand details for Europe’s largest charity event. It was worth it. Not only was this year’s dinner at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich the most magnificent and magical to date but we managed to raise £25.8 million in one night. It is a fabulous sum considering that most of our donors come from the financial sector and have been witnessing torrid events in the past few months. In the end it is only marginally less than the £26.6 million we raised in 2007 when everything was riding so high.

Venetia Thompson contends with a broken Blackberry, teeth-whitening kits and cyclists Last weekend I discovered what it is like to be a small furry animal in its burrow, when in an effort to catch up on some sleep and do some work, I had refused to go out and instead sat steadfast in my living-room. I was subsequently hissed at through the window and then smoked out when a tramp decided to set fire to himself and my rubbish under the building late one night while banging maniacally on my bedroom window. Whether it was that same mischievous Romanian tramp Sarah Standing was troubled by last week I do not know, but I wouldn’t be surprised as Ebury Street is well within staggering distance. Thankfully the Met Police’s response time was superman fast.

I co-own a rather jolly children’s shop on Ebury Street and my stock has recently expanded to include a Romanian tramp. I discovered him sleeping on my doorstep after returning to collect a laptop charger I’d left behind. As it was physically impossible to get into the shop without first crushing him, I found myself in the frankly ludicrous position of waking him up and asking his permission to enter my own premises. After this initial nocturnal ‘lady and the tramp’ encounter our paths have crossed several times. Some mornings when I arrive at work I discover he’s succumbed to a lie-in. I feel strangely awkward waking him up, so tend to go to Starbucks for a coffee. A double espresso for me and a latte-to-go for him.

The day after my arrival in Harare I attended Evensong at St Mary Magdalene’s Anglican church. The congregation was in a state of shock. Almost every church in Harare had been raided by riot police that morning. In some cases the police blocked worshippers from entering as they arrived, beating up those who tried to object. In other cases the police only made their appearance once the service had already begun. At St Francis Waterfalls the police charged into the church and dragged people from the communion rail as they took the Eucharist, reportedly beating at least one woman senseless. Robert Mugabe accuses the churches of consorting with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The problem is inflamed by the fact that there are two bishops of Harare.

Dennis Sewell on the state of Lebanon and the charm of Guto Harri My earliest childhood memory is of machine-gun rounds coming through the bedroom wall. There were no loud bangs — the cacophony is almost all at the shooter’s end. Incoming, each successive bullet breathed only the softest hiss, of a kind an exotic insect might make, and left in its trail an enchanting shaft of silvery moonlight. Too young to recognise the danger, I rather enjoyed it. The gunmen back then (this was the late 1950s) were Syrian-sponsored insurgents, who targeted our family’s villa in the Bekaa Valley because we were Brits associated with a pro-Western government in Beirut. Such gunmen are the perennial curse of Lebanon.

On Monday morning I am outwitted by my four-year-old daughter, who manages to leave for school in a light cotton dress on a phenomenally cold and wet spring day. That night I therefore take myself to Chelsea Town Hall for the launch of The Seven Secrets of Parenting: Or How to Achieve the Almost Impossible. I pick up a copy and read ‘Ditch the guilt’. Sold. On to the Getty Images Gallery for a campaign to find adoptive parents for thousands of British children. The photographer Cambridge Jones, himself adopted at the age of two, has joined forces with Barnardo’s and a host of celebrities to put together portraits of some of their smiling, laughing faces. At the launch party, photographers are crowded around a group of well-built and fit-looking young men.

Vanity thy name is Nikki Bedi. I’ve just been for one of my biannual visits to my ‘derm’ Dr Nick Lowe. The Times recently called him Dr Botox. I’ve been his patient for 13 years; the first seven in Santa Monica, where my skin had begun to resemble a chamois leather. Years of sun worship in India and overactive facial muscles had left me prematurely lined. Rather than spend money on expensive promises in pots, or facials, I treat myself to Botox. This visit, however, Dr Lowe felt I didn’t really need much of the injectable elixir of youth. It’s this restraint I admire. You won’t see his patients with their eyebrows halfway up their frozen foreheads.

It’s Powell week. I am due to speak at the site of his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech on Sunday, a rather clever idea dreamed up by my colleagues at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Kamal Ahmed and Patrick Diamond. I must admit I had initial reservations about the proposal. After all, I am a serious public official, and among our breed the idea of speaking in plain English to the Great British Public about things that actually bother them has never found much favour. However, I can see the value of trying to kick-start a new debate about immigration. We are no longer the country of colonial immigration into which I was born. The real migration issue today is economic — how we ride the tidal wave of talented people which is sweeping across the globe.

Monday Big panic. Some of our candidates in marginal seats have been ringing up asking why they can’t find any nice piccies of Dave standing next to a flag which they can use in their leaflets for St George’s Day. Jed says we’re to tell everyone that there are such pictures, they’ve just gone missing. On no account are we to tell anyone about The Flag Rule. As I had completely forgotten about it, I had to ask Wonky Tom what it was I was supposed not to be telling anyone. Thankfully, he remembered. It’s nearly as complicated as The Tie Guidelines. Roughly speaking — red, white and blue bad, red and white absolute disaster. Jed in the worst mood ever, storming round the office shouting: ‘We don’t do Britishness! ...

Monday Major pasta panic! Dispatched to Oxfordshire to help Sam find lasagne sheets for Dave’s Thinkers and Opinionators Supper this weekend which is in real danger of being cancelled for the first time in its history — due to food shortages! Isn’t this just the most damning indictment of Brown’s Britain? Emailed Jed a memo: ‘Recommend we put out press release blaming Gordon. Queuing for pasta like Soviet Russia. Outraged quotes from Jamie Oliver, Nigella et al. Suggested headline: The Penne Drops for Gordon.’ Thought that was pretty brilliant of me actually. He hasn’t replied yet, unless you count a one-line text saying ‘get back in your box’, which I don’t think he can have meant to send to me.

My dinner parties are an exercise in patience. People used to tell me how much money they’d made buying in Islington when they did. ‘Good for you,’ I’d say, hating them just a little. I’ve noticed that recently my friends have stopped telling me how much equity they’d managed to suck out and try to change the subject whenever I bring house prices up — which I do with increasing pleasure and regularity. The other day I woke up to shouting. ‘Sorry isn’t good enough.’ Her voice was shrill with hurt, anger and profound disappointment. ‘What good is saying sorry? You’re not sorry. Not as sorry as I am.’ Sara, my fiancée, is normally a kind and forgiving person. I wondered who had so grievously wronged her.

Over the last 20 years, gentlemen’s clubs have had to pay at least a token deference to modernity — equal rights, health and safety, inclusiveness. And then there is St Moritz Tobogganing Club, a British club with its own rules. Located in the middle of the Swiss Alps, it makes one uncomplicated demand of its members. Men must slide down a three-quarter-mile run of ice on a toboggan at speeds of up to 80 mph. The run finishes in the tiny hamlet of Cresta, so this happy, if eccentric, sport is called the ‘Cresta Run’. I am in St Moritz for the second time. Last year I was invited — as a last-minute replacement, I suspect — to join a friend’s army team.

Daphne Guinness on awards shows and the US elections  California is not the worst place in which to be stuck. In fact I love it! To view your world from a distance is interesting, hearing news slightly delayed, the anchors of life breaking until it is inevitable that your inner compass makes a paradigm shift. At least, that is what has happened to me. I missed all the fashion collections. All of the dates that are normally fixed in my year were suspended. Of course I followed my friends’ shows online, and it was actually some sort of experience to see it from far away. LA in January and February is punctuated by endless award ceremonies. The Globes, the Grammies, the Independent Spirit Awards etc, which culminate with the Oscars.