House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries

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Nicola Sturgeon has insisted she has “nothing to hide” but repeatedly refused to say whether she deleted messages sought by the UK Covid inquiry. The former first minister was challenged over reports that she destroyed communications that have been requested by the investigation. The Scottish... Nicola Sturgeon has insisted she has “nothing to hide” but repeatedly refused to say whether she deleted messages sought by the UK Covid inquiry. The former first minister was challenged over reports that she destroyed communications that have been requested by the investigation. The Scottish... Nicola Sturgeon has insisted she has “nothing to hide” but repeatedly refused to say whether she deleted messages sought by the... Our national treasure at work during the pandemic – sharing his everyday thoughts, alongside his increasing physical infirmities, in his own inimitable way. Warm, human and open, usually with a nonchalant air. As captivating as always. Something in the day sparks a reminiscence and he wanders off tangentially – how I relate to that! January 2022. Sent a brochure for Venice, as we regularly are, in which the Orient Express figures prominently, emphasising the luxury side of the journey (and its huge cost). What it isn’t any more is an adventure. Venice by train used to feel like Life, crossing the Channel and boarding the Paris train at Boulogne, getting a seat in the dining car before going round Paris on the ceinture and finding one’s sleeping car. It was an international train, headed, I think, for Istanbul, but overnight transformed in certain sections into something much more domestic. I went First, thinking, rightly, that this meant luxury, but venturing further down the train one found humbler passengers spilling out into the corridor along with their belongings in bulging cardboard boxes, hens and on one occasion a goat. When one eventually arrived in Venice, where I’d never been, in the late afternoon it did seem like an achievement: one came out of the station to find the canals not sequestered away in some tourist area but there on the steps of the station itself, Venice the only place that lived up to its publicity. On the vaporetto one passed the fire station, the gleaming boats ready arrayed, and that seemed wondrous too, that here even the fire engines were in boat form. We are en route down the A65 for the funeral of a close friend, Michael Hindle, my solicitor. Almost at Skipton we are in a traffic jam. There has been a fatal accident, with an ambulance already here, a police car and what looks like a body bag. We wait, and as we wait a herd of cows in a field overlooking the road slowly lines up and observes the scene. There is something about this early lesson in the danger that other people pose that contributes to the impression Alan Bennett always gives of having been primed for apartness. He recounts a telling anecdote from 1941 in which the whole family went on a Sunday fishing expedition in the country. Bennett and his brother wore their school caps, his mother her swagger coat, and his father the suit with the good trousers. Having failed to catch anything – were they even in the right place? – the unlikely sportsmen take themselves stoically home. “We never joined in, got the gear, looked the part,” recalls Bennett and it is clear that he is thinking of more than just fishing.

9781800811928: House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries - AbeBooks

I’ve never been that fond of my hands. Now, much washed as we are told, they scarcely bear looking at: shiny, veinous and as transparent as an anatomical illustration. Far from the matt, solid, sensible instruments one has always hankered after. More “artistic”, I suppose. An old lady’s hands, lying idle in a lap somewhere. There is inevitably family history and talk about life in both Camden Town and Yorkshire, combined with reminiscences of old friends and colleagues adorned by the kind of memorable quotes that would naturally find their way into a commonplace book. One of the pleasures and indeed consolations of a memorial service is in looking round to see who’s there, not something that’s possible on Zoom. So, ideally it should be a roving Zoom. Not, I’m sure, that Geoffrey would have thought he was worth the trouble. October. One casualty of Covid (and I don’t think it’s age) has been chronology. These days I’m often confused by what day it is, not to mention the date. Keeping the diary has been a different sort of casualty as politics became difficult to ignore and Boris Johnson tedious to chronicle. By the time I’d got round to Liz Truss she’d gone. Though this annual bulletin has never tried to be other than serendipitous, this year’s instalment seems particularly patchy while being a fair representation of my routine. The largest segment is occasioned by the death of HM the Queen. Some years ago I was one of several writers asked by Radio 4 to record their thoughts on Her Majesty’s eventual death. When earlier this year the broadcast became relevant I didn’t hear it, leading me to think it might not have been considered appropriate. Happily, I was wrong and the talk did go out but I thought it was worth repeating here. Brian Eno has just won the Golden Lion for music at the Venice Biennale, which obliged him to perform with an orchestra. Anyone expecting classical conformity from this boffin of sound, however, hasn’t been paying attention for the past... ★★★★☆One phone call today, a woman inquiring if I’ve made arrangements for my funeral yet. At least it isn’t a recorded voice. There is a proper process to these things, it is an independent inquiry, it has the resources it needs, it has the powers it needs, and what we should do in this house is to let them get on and do their job.” It’s always been assumed that the late queen didn’t much like the theatre, which can’t be said of her successor, who’s often to be found at plays, and if it’s a comedy, far from dampening down an audience, Charles’s presence and his loud laughter help to get them going. Although he refused the former honour 25 years ago, given the quality of many recent elevations to the peerage including one bemoaned in this book, the House of Lords could certainly benefit from both his wit and wisdom. Venice is the only city I’ve been in, with the possible exception of Cambridge, where there was nothing to offend the eye, and going in winter as I did in those days one would find the Piazza San Marco empty. It was at the Accademia with its thin walls that I first overheard sexual intercourse, and the shout of a man coming, ‘Vengo! Vengo!’

‘He manages to make me look like a blond Hitler’: Alan

There is a valedictory feel to these final entries. Rupert no longer edits The World of Interiors, so perhaps they will give up London and stay in Yorkshire? But as long as Bennett keeps writing, it doesn’t really matter. This is a mere fragment, but still precious.May. Remember as a child at Halliday Place in Armley when Dad was rubbing his face with a (sometimes) ill-smelling towel his face used to squeak. August, Yorkshire. Write it and it happens. In the monologue The Shrine I wrote for production during Covid, a biker travelling down the A65 dies in a crash and I imagined incurious sheep gathering to look at the scene of the accident. The most one can hope from a reader is that he or she should think: “Here is somebody who knows what it is like to be me.” It’s not what EM Forster meant by “only connect”, but it’s what I mean. February. One doubtful blessing of my new and sophisticated hearing aids is that I can hear every rumble and gurgle of my stomach as well as the children next door. There are many depressing items of news in today’s Observer but the most lowering is that, on account of his support for Brexit, Ian Botham is thought likely to be raised to the peerage.

House Arrest, Pandemic Diaries by Alan Bennett - Booktopia House Arrest, Pandemic Diaries by Alan Bennett - Booktopia

Some time in the afternoon Rupert shouts down that Joe Biden has passed the line and been declared the winner in the presidential election and that the scourge of Trump has been lifted. Though Trump does not agree. Lynn Wagenknecht [owner of the Odeon restaurant in New York] texts from New York saying there is dancing in the street and holds up the phone to let us hear the rejoicing. It should put a smile on people’s faces here but there are few people about. Such relief. Today’s barber is my partner, who manages to make me look like a blond Hitler March. HMQ pictured in the paper at an investiture wearing gloves, presumably as a precaution against Coronavirus. But not just gloves; these are almost gauntlets. I hope they're not the thin end of a precautionary wedge lest Her Majesty end up swathed in protective get-up such as is worn at the average crime scene. Neil Parish is the Tory who was caught watching porn in the Commons. Now he stars in Channel 4’s Banged Up Although this is a diary, Bennett doesn’t really say how he spends his days – staring out of the window, presumably, and remembering the past. He talks about the year his family spent in Guildford just after the war, where they noticed that the fish and chip shops used oil instead of beef dripping. “To us the oil smelled disgusting and was yet another score on which ‘down south’ proved a disappointment.”

Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth One has met and indeed entertained many visiting heads of state, some of them unspeakable crooks and their wives not much better … One has given one’s white-gloved hand to hands that were steeped in blood and conversed politely with men who have personally slaughtered children. One has waded through excrement and gore; to be queen, I have often thought, the one essential item of equipment a pair of thigh-length boots. One is often said to have a fund of common sense but that is another way of saying that one doesn’t have much else, and accordingly perhaps I have at the instance of my various governments been forced to participate if only passively in decisions I consider ill-advised and often shameful. Sometimes one has felt like a scented candle, sent in to perfume or aerate a policy, monarchy these days just a government-issue deodorant. New music can be a tough sell, as Birmingham Contemporary Music Group found when only a handful of... ★★★★☆ In one of the longest interviews he ever gave, the Friends actor confided that he was ‘a dark soul’ who dreamed of meeting the right woman and starting a family