by Alan Coren
Now, quiz most filmgoers about James Bond’s motor and they will begin rabbiting on about the Aston Martin which could deploy greater firepower than Nato while catapulting undesirable hitch-hikers through its roof. That is because they have forgotten 007’s first car. It was a Sunbeam Alpine. I have not forgotten, because I had one, too. I had driven to Dr No in it in 1962, but it was getting on for 1963 by the time I got there, because the Swiss Cottage Odeon was at the top of Belsize Road, a 1 in 45 gradient, and the Alpine was the slowest sports car in the world. Which was why, a scant few minutes into the film, my old trouble came on: when Bond got into his Alpine, I did not see the exemplar of butch chic which product placement wanted me to see. I saw a gullible dork who had recently driven out of his local Rootes showroom leaving cackling salesmen rolling about on the floor. Things grew worse when, a little later, Bond effortlessly eluded the doctor’s thugs in a highspeed car chase: an Alpinist myself, I knew that, had the arch-villain been not Dr No but United Dairies, their milk-float would have caught Bond within 50 yards. This was a bogus film, with a bogus hero, and, for the remainder of it, I could concentrate on nothing else: when Ursula Andress splashed out of the surf, it might as well have been Thora Hird.
I flogged my doddering Alpine soon after that to some Bondabee sucker, and bought an Austin-Healey 3000. A true sports car: had weedy Bond got in and turned the engine on, he would probably have fainted at the thunder. And every film it appeared in got the casting right: it was always driven by a raffish cove with wrists of steel and a bulldog briar. Never a twinge of my old trouble there. Offscreen, I drove mine with joy until 1969, when I sold it with grief, and bought the car which, last night, did bring on the old trouble again. I had to do that because in 1969 Mrs Coren gave birth to a Times columnist, and when I went to collect the pair of them from Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, we could squeeze The Times columnist’s carrycot into the little slot behind the seats only by shoving the seats so far forward that our knees covered our ears. Nor, when it began to rain at Shepherds Bush, could we shut the roof because The Times columnist was in the way, so he got wet. It didn’t bother him, because he knew he would get at least three paragraphs out of it some day, but it bothered us.
The next day I chopped the Healey in for a secondhand Mercedes 220SEb cabriolet. It was not only the biggest convertible in the world, it was the safest: conceived out of postwar nostalgia for the Tiger tank, it was two tons of iron and walnut, with a three-ply reinforced hood able to protect The Times columnist from anything the heavens could chuck at him. For Jerry, it was a snook cocked at the shade of Bomber Harris, but for me it was a rite of passage: I was a family man now, tasked not to boy-race, but to trundle and protect. And that is why, last night, the old trouble came back.
In Bridget Jones’s Diary, Hugh Grant plays a cad. We do not know he is a cad, though, until he takes the cuddly eponym off for a lively weekend; and the egregious signifier of his caddishness is his car. An autobuff ’s veteran one-off that gives the finger to the common Ferrari or Porsche, it is patently a Flash Harry’s car; for that is what 30 years have done to the Mercedes 220SEb cabriolet. It irritated me no end; it ruined the film; it left the second half unnoticed. I just sat there thinking: this car was not put on earth so that smirking jerks could pull dippy women, it was given to us so that solid men could poddle invulnerably through the traffic with The Times columnist and his sister the Observer poker correspondent on the back seat, punching one another and shouting: ‘Dad, Dad, are we there yet, Dad?’
80
Southern Discomfort
Most Times readers, I suspect, will not have been nearly as excited as I to spot a tiddly paragraph tucked away in a page 11 cranny of the newspaper’s Monday edition. That is because most Times readers spend fruitful lives in worthwhile employment, instead of frittering away their brief span staring out of a window and wondering whether they will ever write a blockbuster novel. I, on the other hand, have spent 40 years busting my block in the effort to do exactly that, to no good end: because I cannot come up with a novel, in either sense, plot. On those infrequent occasions when I think I have thought of one, second thoughts serve only to make me think of who thought of it first. Bloody Tolstoy, I think, bloody Smollett.
Or, rather, used to think. Because, since Monday, I have been unable to think of anything but. I am thicker with plots than a Cabinet sauna, thanks to Ms Alice Randall. Here is that paragraph in full: ‘The estate of Margaret Mitchell is seeking to block publication of a novel that tells Gone With The Wind from a slave’s perspective. Alice Randall said that her novel The Wind Done Gone is an antidote to a text that has hurt generations of Afro-Americans.’ The woman is a genius: though I do not know whether that genius extends to her writing – the book may be full of scenes showing mobs of enthusiastic spectators high-fiving one another and shouting ‘Yo!’ as Atlanta burns to a frazzle, or Rhett Butler being floored by an expertly swung banjo – frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn. For Alice’s true genius lies in the invention of the obverse plot: everything that has hitherto been written can henceforth be rewritten from the other side.
My only problem now is selection. Patently, revisionism will, these days, have to go hand in hand with political rectitude – no publisher would touch Sophie’s Choice written from Himmler’s point of view – but, if anything, that casts my net even wider. Should I take a crack at Lady Chatterley’s Husband, in which Mellors falls for the bloke in the wheelchair? Or Ahab the Fishmonger, written by a tragic hero (‘Call me Moby’) threatened with extinction at the hands of the catsmeat industry, a bestselling blubber from start to finish? What about Robinson’s Jam, in which the cannibals, gamely refusing to chuck in the sponge and give up their time-honoured ethnic cuisine, not only barbecue Man Friday but also imaginatively extend their diet to include white meat? Then again, could there ever have been a minor fictional figure more constantly abused, and therefore more deserving of his own 15 minutes, or perhaps seconds, of retributive fame than the eponymous hero of Portnoy’s ****?
I was juggling all these options and more – having somewhat regretfully rejected The Chumps of the Light Brigade, metrically recounted from the point of view of a Russian gun-crew laughing fit to bust, on the ground, that poetry was not my bag – when a little lightbulb suddenly appeared in a bubble above my head, to be replaced an instant later by the dustjacket of Snow White and the Seven Winners For Whom Stature Is No Impediment. Not the catchiest of titles perhaps, but if you’re looking for mega-sales nothing beats a book that does what it says on the tin, and here we have a community of dedicated but impoverished titchy mine-workers, living, through no fault of their own, a celibate life in a hole in the ground, who suddenly stumble upon a terrific-looking brunette, take her back to their pitiful premises, show her more caring concern than she would ever get from men twice their height, but – shrewdly thinking ahead – never lay a finger on her. And what is their reward for this impressive combination of kindness and restraint? She takes off with the first tall handsome horse-borne toff who catches her eye. Do the little guys take this lying down (admittedly not perceptibly different from their taking it standing up)? Not this time around, because they have figured it all out first. They have observed the loving couple for some time, disguised as shrubs (a boon of smallness), and they have photographs, they have tapes, they have tabloid contacts, they are sitting, wise to the irony, on a goldmine. They get to be as rich as Bernie Ecclestone or Paul Daniels. They live happily ever after.
Should I start typing it right now? Possibly, if I can just get this idea for a smash-hit play out of my head. I once saw something called, I think, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Might have been Deaf, but anyway, they were these two assassins, and I thought at the time how much better it would have been if the play had focused on their victim instead; so I might well take a crack at that first. Am I spoilt for choice, or what?
81
Poles Apart
There are some 12 million married coupl
es in Britain, and I am confident that Mrs Coren and I speak for all of them when I say we are flabbergasted at the hysterical adulation currently being lavished on Mr and Mrs Thornewill. We are flummoxed; we are gobsmacked; we are stumped; and, yes, we are not a little gutted. We cannot for the life of us understand what all the fuss is about. Why are Mr and Mrs Thornewill being lionised and feted, simply for becoming the first married couple to walk to the North Pole?
What kind of achievement is that? To walk to the North Pole, you point the compass at the horizon and put one foot after the other. There being neither roads nor car, one spouse does not have to read the map while the other spouse drives; there is no risk of yelling, grabbing, chucking maps out of windows while swerving dangerously, or turning this bloody thing round right now and going straight home, it wasn’t my idea to come in the first place. Nor, as night falls, is anybody sitting in the middle of nowhere interrogated as to why they didn’t have the sense to fill up when they had the chance, or invited to explain in words of one syllable why they won’t stop and ask someone the way, since there is no one to ask, unless you speak bear. As for finding mutually satisfactory overnight accommodation, transarctic spouses do not have to run in and out of a dozen hotels to find a room one of them neglected to book in advance, or end up sleeping foetally on the back seat while drunks widdle on their bumpers; transarctic spouses have a folding nylon hotel on their little sled, and when they are tucked up snugly inside it and fancy dinner, they do not go nuts trying to catch the waiter’s eye or ringing a room-service voicemail that never rings back, they simply pop a bubble-pack and chomp on a nourishing pellet that tastes of nothing requiring comment. Neither of them orders a second bottle when they know what it does to them, your father was the same, nor do they engage in stand-up rows about toenails in the bidet or hairs on the soap.
Upon arrival at the North Pole, no married couple will suffer recriminatory disappointment. Of course it is not finished. It is not even started. There is no lying ratbag of a manager to wave a brochure at, there are no rooms better than the one they thought they’d booked, and the swimming pool is a reproachless umpteen miles across, albeit solid. Neither spouse will find the place infuriatingly classier or tackier than the other had led them to believe: the clothes they stand up in will be absolutely perfect, because, if they try to change into anything else, they will not be standing up for much longer, they will turn blue, topple, and snap.
Polar couples do not bicker about what to do during the day, either: shopping, scuba-diving, sightseeing, paragliding, gambling, visiting the doll museum, lying by the pool staring at that woman, I wasn’t staring, and so forth, are unavailable for marital dispute. What polar couples do during the day is walk. They do not even have the option of standing still. If one of them stands still for more than a few seconds, he or she becomes a permanent topographical feature. Nor are they required to argue nightly about whose turn it is to get up at the crack of dawn and bag a lounger: any territorial claims that German couples might have entertained about the Arctic Riviera have so far proved to be atypically muted, and while there must always be a chance that, some day, Herr und Frau Jerry will be sprinting out six months before sun-up to begin oiling one another at minus 60 degrees, it was not, as I understand it, a problem for the Thornewills.
But did this first mould-breaking couple run, as so many of Britain’s other 12 million have run, the risk of holiday boredom? Unlikely: while there are, admittedly, precious few topics of Arctic conversation, all of them white, no couple can manage more than two seconds of speech before tugging their balaclavas back up, lest their lips go solid and chip off. Since most duologue therefore consists of waving mittens about, the likelihood of vacational chat occasioning marital ennui is remote; unless, of course, one of the Thornewills was a semaphore freak.
In short, their chilly stroll was a doddle from start to finish. I was not in the least surprised when Fiona hugged Mike and confided to the phalanx of goggling hacks that ‘the trip has brought us much closer together. I really want to encourage other couples so that they too can achieve their lifetime’s dreams.’ Bang on the money, Mrs Thornewill: look for me and Mrs Coren this very weekend, and you will find us shopping at Sleds ’R’ Us.
82
All Quiet On The Charity Front
As you know, many supermarkets, local authorities, and even some branches of the Royal British Legion have stopped issuing pins with poppies this year, lest people not merely prick their fingers, but also claim compensation for wounds. Understandable, given these poignant memoirs of one veteran Poppy Day survivor, which I make no excuse, on this special day, for quoting:
There was three of us up there that morning, in the thick of it as per usual, me, Chalky White and Nobby Clarke. The rain was coming down stair-rods, the wind went through you like a wossname, knife, but the mud was the worst. Slip off the pavement and you was done for; the lads do not call white vans whizz-bangs for nothing, you never hear the one that gets you.
Anyway, we was all keeping our heads down, because there was poppy-sellers all over; they’d moved up in the night and now they was in position everywhere, but you couldn’t hardly see most of them, they are crafty buggers, you got to give them that, you see an empty doorway, you reckon you’re all right, and suddenly they spring out from nowhere, they are on you before you know it. That is how they got Chalky that morning: we was creeping along, staying close to the wall, we was all but at the pub, we could hear blokes getting ’em in, we could smell roll-ups, and then Chalky only goes and sticks his head over the top for a shufti, and suddenly me and Nobby hears that terrible rattle what is like nothing else on God’s earth, and poor old Chalky finds hisself looking down the wrong end of a collecting tin.
Course, me and Nobby stood up as well, it is one for all and all for one in our mob, and we marched out, heads up, bags of swank, and Chalky shouts: ‘Wiffel ist es, Kamerad?’ because he has always been a bit of a wag, he does not let things get him down, nil carborundum, and this woman takes his ten pee and she gives him one of them looks they have, they are not like us, never will be, and hands him a poppy and a pin, and he says, ‘Aren’t you going to pin it on for me, Fraulein?’ and she says, ‘You want a lot for ten pee,’ so I say, ‘Leave it out, Chalky, it is not worth it, I’ll do it, come here,’ and I hold the poppy against his lapel and I take the pin and Chalky says, ‘Is this the Big Push they’re always going on about?’ and I laugh so much that the pin goes and sticks right in my finger.
Blood gushed out. I must have lost very nearly a blob. ‘Stone me!’ yells Nobby. ‘That is a Blighty one and no mistake. You will have to go straight home and put an Elastoplast on it.’ Chalky looks at the woman. ‘This is the bravest man I know,’ he says. ‘He has got his knees brown, he has done his bit, but that does not mean he likes the taste of cold steel up him. Look at that finger of his. It will not grow old as we that are left grow old. It may very well end up with a little scar on it. It might even turn sceptic and drop off into some corner of a foreign wossname, he will never be able to find it. So gimme my ten pee back.’
At this, despite the agony and spots before the eyes, I wade in, too; do not call me a hero, mind, I was just doing what any man would do in the circumstances, you would do the same. ‘As soon I get this finger seen to,’ I inform her, ‘I shall be using it to dial my brief!’
At this, she lets out a shriek, chucks the ten pee at us, and runs off. Typical or what? They do not have no bottle, poppy-sellers: oh, sure, they may look hot as mustard quartered safe behind their lines, parading up and down outside Harrods in their spotless Barbours and their cashmere twinsets, with the sun winking off of their diamand brooches, and all smelling of Channel 4, but it is a very different matter up the sharp end in Lewisham, there is more to poppying out here than bull and bloody blanco. Me and Nobby and Chalky watched her skedaddle, and we gave a bit of a cheer, and then Nobby took my feet and Chalky held me under the arms, and they carried me past a number of material witnesses i
nto the Rat and Cockle, and Chalky went off to get them in, and Nobby lit a fag and put it in my mouth, and he said: ‘Could have been worse, mate – suppose it had been her what had stuck it in Chalky? He would have been pushing up daisies by now.’
‘She might have got both of you,’ I said. Nobby shook his head. ‘No chance. One of ’em tried once, caught me off guard, took a quid off of me and before I could stop her she had shoved a pin straight through my lapel. It might have done me serious mischief if it wasn’t for the Bible I always keep in my breast-pocket. I found it in a hotel bedroom, you know.’
‘Bloody lucky,’ I said. ‘It could so easily have been a towel.’
‘Or a rubber shower-mat,’ said Chalky, setting down the drinks.
‘A man needs a bit of luck,’ said Nobby, ‘out here.’
83
Ah, Yes, I Remember It Well!
We had been watching happily for the best part of a bottle when my wife said: ‘Oh, blast, I think a dog’s going to come round the corner in a minute.’