Andrew Gimson

On a Friday morning earlier this year I kept an appointment with Dr Mark Hamilton, a consultant physician and gastroenterologist at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, to ask him about a bowel complaint. I was in two minds about whether my symptoms were significant enough to justify taking up Dr Hamilton’s time. It seemed to me that if I went to see him, I might be yielding to hypochondria, but if I did nothing, and I turned out to have the early stages of a still curable cancer, my wife would be furious. She speaks very highly of Dr Hamilton, who has treated her for ulcerative colitis. About a year ago she had a colonoscopy, and I formed the distinct impression that she would not be satisfied until I had undergone the same procedure.

Lady Trumpington is on the warpath. At the age of 81, the author of the tremendous dictum ‘I’d rather be common than middle-class’ will deploy her formidable rhetorical powers to condemn a wretched piece of legislation. The ‘Bill to prohibit the smoking of tobacco by any person in Wales while in a public place’, as its long title runs, is now making its way through the House of Lords, and Lady Trumpington is one of the select band of peers who oppose it. For nearly 70 years she was herself a heavy smoker: ‘I started at the age of 11 and smoked 40 a day until two years ago. No doctor has ever gone at me, really, but I think a lot of them smoke anyway. I used to be a junior health minister [from 1985-87].

The inanity of minuting these conversations! The madness of putting on paper derogatory remarks about such very distinguished people! These were among the chief exclamations made at the Christmas party held by the Department of Constitutional Affairs, where much of the conversation concerned the leak of a paper in which the merits and demerits of 38 candidates for honours were ruled upon with extraordinary frankness by a committee of top civil servants, including the great Sir Hayden Phillips (profiled in this magazine on 16 August).

We got word that our house in London was infested with fleas as we drove north on holiday in glorious weather through the borders into Scotland. Sid, who very kindly and conscientiously looks after our cats while we are away, sent a series of increasingly alarmed text messages, in which he informed us that he was suffering flea attacks of unbridled savagery on his ankles every time he went into the kitchen or sitting-room. He is not the kind of man to take that sort of thing lying down, and he requested an immediate transfer of funds so that he could buy a full suit of protective clothing and launch all-out chemical warfare.

This name is seldom, if ever, on the lips of the man in the saloon bar. But mention Sir Hayden Phillips to men of affairs, men of a certain consequence in our public life, men who are members of his club, Brooks's, and you will find that they laugh, or smile at least, and say what an amusing fellow he is, besides being a brilliant operator. There is something about the mere thought of Sir Hayden that cheers people up. But should you ask, with a journalist's impertinence, for some example of Sir Hayden's wit, or some fuller idea of the man's charm, your distinguished informant will first reassure himself that he is speaking 'off the record', then repeat what he has already said – 'amusing', 'brilliant', etc.

They are among the most hated people in urban Britain and – because many of them are from west Africa – often the victims of racial abuse. But, says Andrew Gimson, without their bravery and dedication our civilisation might collapse Get a proper job, get a life, sod off back to Africa, black monkey, African prick, storm trooper, German scum. These are among the many insults thrown at parking wardens as they go about their daily work. The jibes about Africa reflect the curious fact that in London about 60 per cent of traffic wardens are from west Africa, while the jibes about Germany reflect the German ownership of Apcoa, one of the main companies in the parking business.

You are leaving the civilised sector. These words were pinned, in German and English, to the outside of the fence which protects the American embassy in Berlin. In order to get through that fence, you would have to persuade the gallant, bone-headed men of the Bundesgrenzschutz – Germany's frontier police, who also guard government buildings – that you are not intent on blowing up the Americans. Meanwhile you can take the chance to study the messages left by German peace protesters, of which the general drift is that George Bush is a mass murderer. It would be easy, on the basis not only of these messages but also of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's foreign policy, to dwell at some length on the anti-Americanism that has become so visible in Germany.

We could go and invade some country none of us has yet thought of and destroy the regime there while leaving the rest of the country intact. That is not quite how Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, put it when I interviewed him on Monday afternoon in the presence of three members of his staff, but it emerges clearly from what he said. Mr Hoon sees a world in which warfare has changed far more profoundly than most opponents of the Iraq campaign have yet understood, and in which amazing possibilities have opened up. Question to Mr Hoon: 'Can you reassure us that we won't be taking part in any action against Syria or Iran?