(Above) the Empire State Building from Madison Square. 

By subway Downtown, and then we walked to Madison Square, the Empire State Building impressive in the middle distance. Lunch in Tabla, on the ground floor of the Credit Suisse Building. We had a table upstairs, by the central round gallery where you can look down on the lunchtime diners below. Mushroom soup, followed by Hudson Bay Duck. The Head Pastry Chef at Tabla is Olga Lusin, and in a city full of celebrities she can best be described as a celebrity Pastry Chef. We ordered four of the pastries, and two extra complimentary ones were sent through for us to sample. They were extremely good, and we praised them so highly that Olga Lusin herself came out from the kitchen to talk to us about the ingredients and how she put them together.

(Above) statue on top of the fountain outside the Plaza Hotel. 

Fifth Avenue, and the Plaza Hotel (where Dorothy Parker was fired from her job on the New Yorker magazine, where Scott Fitzgerald fell into the fountain when he was drunk, where Cary Grant played Roger Thornhill in the film North by North West). Into Tiffany’s (associated with Truman Capote’s novel) where Robert Leiper asked to see some of the diamond jewellery, intending to send a gift to “CW” (I advised against this, since he had already sent two expensive arrangements of flowers, with no real result).

(Above) Prometheus at the Rockerfeller Center. 

Past the Rockerfeller Center, where a skating rink had been installed beneath the golden statue of Prometheus (the model for the statue later became a postman in Sacramento, and recently died). We finished at the Algonquin Hotel (too many literary associations to mention – the Hotel has mocked up a replica of Dorothy Parker’s famous Round Table, but I think they’ve got it in the wrong place). Gin and tonics and Scotch and water. As the alcohol took effect I knocked over one of the drinks and an extremely helpful member of staff helped mop it all up (it was a very large drink). Robert Leiper described how neighbourhoods in New York were divided up into different ethnic areas, before launching into a complete account of how he had first met “CW” and what she meant to him.

(Above) The hotel has mocked up Dorothy Parker's "Round Table". 

Washington Heights

Flying out. The British Airways experience was good – they were polite, efficient, civilised. They have recognised that flying is, for most people, a stressful undertaking, and have (to their commercial profit) countered this by building a brand image that is substantial, permanent, reassuring. With British Airways you feel safe – not least safe in the knowledge that the extra cost was justified.

Terminal Four at Heathrow, not sure who the architect is. On one side an immensely long line of check-in desks, a series of functional facilities (cafes, bureau de change, information kiosks), long orderly queues of anxious-looking people. Through a central Departures portal and you enter a spacious concourse where the mood is more relaxed, the people informally grouped, the sense of expectation palpable. Along one side of this concourse are the departure gates, punctuated by shops selling big iconic brand names – Chanel, Hackett, Burberry (free of chavs). If the British Airports Authority were to be given the commission to run the Pearly Gates to the Afterlife, it would probably resemble Terminal Four at Heathrow.

Very prominent, and occupying a considerable amount of space, were a series of Harrods pavilions. Not sure if Harrods has made the right decision to dilute their brand in this way. By allowing the chavisceration (if I can invent a word) of their name they may be undermining the very foundation that sustains their premium pricing policies.

The flight (BA115) took seven hours. Of the cabin crew, the older women were prettier and seemed nicer than the younger women and men. I gave myself a headache by trying to read The Economist in a bad light.

At Kennedy Airport I had been warned (by several people) that US Customs and Immigration would be rude and aggressive, but actually they were polite, and the questions were sensible and straightforward. There was no unreasonable behaviour that I could see. My fingerprints and eye irises were scanned, which I was uneasy about, but I suppose life must include compromises.

By yellow taxi into Manhattan – the route we took included a view to the left of a large body of water with in the distance the brightly-lit skyline of downtown Manhattan (a view that I was familiar with from endless reproductions, but which still managed to impress me with its 1920s modernity – like the opening scenes of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis).

To Washington Heights, and a nine-floor 1930s brick apartment block on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River. Greeted by Robert Leiper who lives on the second floor. Robert Leiper and I first met when we were both in the Young Members section of the ESU (he was on the New York Young Members Council, I was on the London Young Members Council). The ESU is an educational charity which promotes the English language as an international medium of communication.

Robert Leiper showed me round his apartment (which he owns outright). It was much bigger than I expected. The furniture was very good quality, traditional in style (old world I suppose the Americans would say). Books were everywhere – it was like entering a library. The only room in which books were not prominent was the bathroom. Along one side of the main living room were a series of built-in bookshelves, supported by classical columns (hybrid capitals). Books were scattered on every available surface, and heaped in piles on the chairs. As we talked books were taken down from the bookshelves and consulted.

The other theme of the flat was fencing – Robert Leiper is a keen fencer and actually holds fencing parties in his apartment (intervals of food and drink interspersed with bouts of fencing). Foils, epées and fencing masks formed the chief decoration on the walls, along with a very good eighteenth-century portrait of a negro Robert Leiper had bought at Sothebys (the New York branch).

Of indeterminate age (I would guess late twenties / early thirties), Robert Leiper is taller than average, slim build, short hair (very slightly receding, as if nature intended to emphasise the prominent forehead and the formidable intellect contained within). He is of mixed race (mulatto is the word he uses) – in white company he appears completely white, in black company he is referred to as a nigger (not a derogatory comment when used by one black person to describe another). He is one of those people who do everything well – a keen sportsman (fencing in downtown Manhattan, riding in Brooklyn, running in Fort Tryon Park), a writer and intellectual (hundreds of articles and one book published), a person with a complex social life (including several complicated love affairs with women who seem to be as fascinating as they are demanding). Originally from the West Coast, he had spent several years working in eastern Europe as an academic teaching English and American literature before settling in New York. He is easily the cleverest person I know.

He made some tea (for my benefit – normally he would not drink tea) and we talked for an hour about the new book he is writing. Gradually my hearing, which had had been affected by the flight, returned. We went up onto the roof of the building where there was a good view of the Hudson River and the northern half of Manhattan. Over to the east he pointed out the route that Jay Gatsby would have taken (in The Great Gatsby) on his fateful drive into New York.

It’s all the usual fudge…

At ten o’clock this morning Tony Blair, so-called first among equals, drove to Buckingham Palace to ask the monarch to dissolve Parliament. The general election has been called (as everyone already knows) for Thursday 5th May. The election campaign itself began weeks ago, and has exhibited the usual name-calling, dirty tricks, outraged accusations (and hysterical counter-accusations with veiled threats of legal action if retractions are not forthcoming).

One side announces a plan of spending increases. The other side denounces these “increases” as cuts. The first side protests that they are merely cuts in planned increases (it’s all the usual fudge).

One side holds a confidential briefing meeting for a roomful of zealots. The other side infiltrates this meeting, asks leading questions (recorded on hidden equipment) and then blabs to the press about a secret agenda. The first side denies any secret agenda, denies any improper statements, turns on and destroys its own supporter(s) for allowing the enemy to wriggle out of its electoral clutch.

One side proclaims its economic competence, hoping we have forgotten that they originally pledged themselves to following the other side’s spending plans. The other side hints at black holes and looming crises, but says it will more or less follow the same course. The first side stifles its chief economic spokesman, as part of an internal feud, then wheels him out again to talk magisterially about the British economic miracle (just at the point when the ordinary people’s voice had begun to be heard, and the press had begun to focus on some of the unconstitutional actions - crimes - that have been committed).

Probably ninety per cent of politicians are bad people. They are not bad to start with – the party system conspires, through innumerable deals and compromises, to make party politicians infinitely pliable and (let’s not beat about the bush) corrupt. The ten per cent who are noble and sincere are dismissed as cranks, loners, people who are loose cannons.

Five people I knew at college are standing as candidates in this election. None of them has any prospect of getting elected (except possibly one, who is standing in a marginal seat). Four of them I know only very slightly (they were active in the Students Union, or were larger-than-life figures in the Conservative Society or the Socialist Workers). One of them I know quite well – he is a friend of a friend, and could almost be called a friend himself.

This almost-friend, who is a candidate, has asked me (as he has asked everyone he knows) to help him in his election campaign in the constituency where he is standing. This means spending a week there delivering leaflets, putting up posters, knocking on doors and asking people to vote for him. He has asked me to be his Press Officer during the campaign, which might be quite interesting to do. The problem is: I don’t agree with anything he stands for. We get on very well as friends, and I enjoy his company, and we agree on the general things that everyone, left or right, agrees with. But on all the major specific issues of the day we disagree. Perhaps this doesn’t matter? He has no chance of getting elected, and nothing I could do (nothing anyone could do) would get him into Westminster this time round. And although I disagree with him so fundamentally, he is not a bad person – he is still at the noble, sincere and uncorrupted stage.

 

(Above): we will be fed on a diet of party political fudge until election day on May 5th. In addition, there is a papal funeral in Rome on Friday and a Royal Wedding in Windsor on Saturday. I will miss news coverage of these events as I will be in New York for a week (I know they have televisions in America, but I don’t intend to watch any of them). I do not know if I will be able to use the internet much.

 

(Above): the Prince of Wales originally planned to get married on Friday, but cancelled so that he could go to the Pope’s funeral in Rome. The Royal Wedding will now be held on Saturday. All the souvenirs that have been produced with Friday’s date on them have suddenly become collectors’ items (according to an item on the Today Programme). I don’t mind if the Prince of Wales marries Camilla Parker-Bowles, since divorce and remarriage has become a major feature of modern family life. I also don’t mind if she becomes Princess of Wales.

 

(Above): I support the monarchy because the alternative, to use a cliché, is too ghastly to contemplate. The political parties, both Labour and Conservative, are composed of super-egotistical people, inflated with self-importance. If they ever got their hands on the ceremonial functions of state, they would (I suspect) become unbearable. In any case, the political machine would soon reduce the post of non-executive President to a consolation prize for heavy-weight party nuisances who refuse to go quietly (for every poet such as Vaclav Havel we would have to put up with fifty President Portillos or President Mandelsons). The concept of an executive President is of even more concern. The prospect of President Blair or President Howard makes me say (fervently) God Save The Queen, God Save The Prince of Wales, Long Live The House of Windsor…

To them England is the promised land

The weekend was warm and sunny. On Saturday I visited a local town and wandered around the market, taking photographs. Now the weather has changed I feel reluctant to go abroad on holiday (I leave on Wednesday).

 

(Above): It was a day for meandering around the cobbled marketplace, the warm sun (after weeks of cold weather) dissipating any sense of urgency.

 

(Above): Flower stall. Isn’t there a saying (from one of those fraudulent self-help gurus) about “smelling the flowers on your journey through life”?

 

(Above): Cake stall. “Where do I pay for these mate?”

 

(Above): Trinket stall. A couple haggling over some cheap gold jewellery. The stall holder was very suspicious of my camera. The couple spoke to each other in a foreign language – it sounded like Russian. Net immigration into the United Kingdom over the past five years has been close to a hundred and sixty thousand migrants per year, higher than any other European Union country (making England the California of the EU). Many of the migrants come from eastern Europe. To them England is the promised land.

Magpies are generally unpopular, but I have grown to like them

Almost a week without access to a PC, until it was repaired (“ghosted” onto a new hard-drive). I was plunged into an unpleasant world of dislocation and isolation. It is surprising how dependant I have become on electronic communication.

Easter weekend. On Sunday the weather was dull and overcast, and the air felt extremely damp (it was not quite raining, but the high moisture content of the air made your face and hands feel wet if you stayed outside for any length of time). For lunch we had roast lamb followed by simnel cake (hot from the oven), and a very good Bordeaux (I drank almost the whole bottle, falling asleep in an armchair in the afternoon, an untouched cup of tea on a table at my side, the newspaper falling from my hands onto the floor).

When I woke up it was early evening, the sky still light (the first evening of British Summer Time). My brother had gone out, leaving me in the house alone. I felt very unwell – this was not just the after-effects of the Bordeaux, as the evening progressed I developed a cold (a result of going out in the damp weather over the bank holiday weekend).

On television I watched the comedy Joey, mainly to see the actress Kelly Preston (the show is a spin-off from the long-running American comedy series Friends – despite its popularity I never had much patience with Friends, which to me seemed repetitive and self-reverential. I don’t think I ever watched an episode all the way through. Joey is focussed on one main character, played by Matt Le Blanc, who tells jokes about himself, supported by several bland characters who don’t really add much to the overall structure. There is no narrative drive to the writing, the production values are low, the lighting is uninspired. And yet as light entertainment the show works. The arrival of Kelly Preston into such a weak format transformed the show completely, taking it to a new level of competence).

 

(Above): Kelly Preston on the show Joey. These photographs were taken from the television – not bad images considering.

Because of my cold I had an early night, but as soon as I laid down I began to struggle to breath. Sleep was impossible. I laid sleepless in bed for several hours, hearing my brother come in about two o’clock in the morning. Eventually I got up and went downstairs and sat in one of the armchairs – and breathing became much easier. Sleep was still impossible, so I watched television – BBC News 24, the feature film White Squall (overly-sentimental ending), African football matches on the OBE channel etc. Eventually, about six o’clock, I fell asleep for three hours.

Bank holiday Monday. For lunch we had cold lamb (there was plenty left from yesterday’s roast) with boiled potatoes and peas. Afterwards I watched part of Gone With The Wind, a faultless film (you could freeze the frame at any moment and have a perfect still composition). At two o’clock Helen Blakeman arrived, having managed to get away for the afternoon. We went out as planned, although I didn’t feel at all well. She drove my car, and we went off in a northerly direction, and after an hour and a half stopped in a tiny village on a ridge overlooking a plain. The hamlet consisted of a row of small houses, two or three bigger houses, and a very plain and uninteresting-looking church.

“I hope this is going to be worth it” I said as we got out the car and walked through the tiny graveyard to the church door. Pushing open the heavy wooden door, we stepped from the mild damp air of the churchyard into the chill damp air of the interior. So unhealthy was the atmosphere, that Housman took on a new meaning as I thought: into my heart an air that kills…

Inside the church was very plain – plain white-washed walls (turned grey with passage of time), clear leaded glass in the windows, plain pitch-pine seating. The architecture was functional – a nave without aisles, a roof of thick rafters, Victorian red and black tiles on the floor. The church seemed remarkable for being unremarkable. It was only when you walked to the eastern end and went behind the altar that the building opened up into an incredible sight – a rectangular chapel almost entirely filled with a sixteenth century tomb that resembled a four-poster bed, the lord and lady sleeping side-by-side surrounded by marble cushions and weeping angels. Above them, on the roof of the tester, knelt marble figures of their six children. Higher still, on a sort of pedestal, knelt their eldest son, represented in a golden suit of armour. All over this monument were heraldic devices, including representations of magpies – the first time I have seen magpies on a coat of arms.

 

(Above): The tomb was very decorative, being constructed of different coloured marbles and alabasters This is the first time I have seen magpies represented in medieval heraldry.

 

(Above): A stuffed magpie in a second-hand bookshop we visited on the way back. Magpies are generally unpopular, but I have grown to like them – in the field behind my house is a short stunted tree where I often see eight or ten magpies at a time. They seem friendly, sociable birds.

We had an early dinner in this restaurant, even though Helen risked being late back. The owner of this restaurant obviously considered himself to be very hip, and the music included DJ Sammy: Heaven (Candlelight Mix), Maroon 5: Sunday Morning, Mario: Let Me Love You. 

 

(Above) Country Life 1
Winter feed for the cows.

 

(Above) Country Life 2
Harvesting a field of early daffodils. Most field work is now carried out by migrant workers from the new accession countries of the European Union. Their working conditions are not terribly good, and many of them are exploited by rough-and-ready gangmasters.

 

(Above) Country Life 3
Even metropolitan publications project the English rural romantic dream (as Jane Austen pointed out: “Virtue resides in rural surroundings”).

Actually it is unfair to describe Country Life magazine as metropolitan, even though most of its readership is in London and the south east. It has, over the century or so of its existence, become a national institution. Despite the potentially corrupting influence of its advertisers (the magazine carries a huge amount of top-end real estate advertising, and there must be pressure from the agents of this plutocratic sector to grant favours or run “advertorials”) Country Life has maintained some of the highest standards of journalistic integrity in the United Kingdom. The photography is very high quality. When I worked at an advertising agency in EC1, one of the clients I used to look after advertised in Country Life regularly, so I would get a free voucher copy every week (if someone else hadn’t stolen it from the post room). I still buy it occasionally – the features on architecture are especially good.

Everyone who works in marketing is obliged to read The Guardian each Monday – it is one of the ways you get to know what is going on (and what options might be available). The newspaper runs a Country Diary column on Mondays – the writing is always well-observed and has an entrancing quality that is very attractive. As well as The Guardian (left wing) I also try to read in an average week: The Times (right wing), The Telegraph (very right wing), The Independent (left wing pretending to be neutral) and The Financial Times (I only buy the FT on Saturdays – the FT Saturday edition is a wonderful newspaper full of well-written and intelligent news analysis, arts reviews and general features).

 

(Above) Two ducks were in the car park this morning waddling around the puddles formed by last nights rain.

Probably the best weather reports currently broadcast

As I drove to work this morning I listened to the Today Programme on Radio 4. The weather was presented by Alex Deakin from the BBC Weather Centre. He often appears on the BBC delivering the weather forecasts in a very smart suit and silk tie (choice of tie avoiding the garish broadcast-friendly colours of other TV presenters).

His are probably the best weather reports currently broadcast – informative, enthusiastic (but without seeming a nerd – this is very restrained delivery), hand movements precise and defined. He avoids the waffle and indistinct mumbling of other presenters. His accent is very good BBC English, but with a slight northern tinge (which came out this morning when he pronounced words such as “already” and “afternoon”). Not sure if he writes the broadcasts himself, the choice of language is very good.

Also on the Today Programme this morning was an item by Phil Mercer, one of the BBC’s reporters in Australia. I knew Phil Mercer slightly when he lived in the United Kingdom – he was a friend of a friend (not sure if we ever met one-to-one, we just knew the same people and he was always in the background of various gatherings). Not sure if I would recognise him now – his accent has completely changed. When I knew Phil Mercer he was very popular – it was probably his most distinguishing feature. He was someone who was popular with everyone. It’s strange to know people personally, then lose contact with them, then ten years later find they’ve written a book, or they’re appearing on television, or they come up on the news in an international diplomatic incident or something.

“But it’s hideous” I told her

I live in old brick farmhouse dating from the 1880s – plain facades, square rooms, a big front entrance that is hardly ever used. The house faces south, into the main part of the garden, and all the south-facing rooms are very warm. The back (north facing) side of the house is much colder, and the layout more complex, reflecting building alterations that have been made over the years.

One downstairs room, looking out to the east, seems to have been done up as a extra sitting room in the 1930s (big plate glass picture windows, built-in display cupboards with glass doors, a tiled fireplace), and these innovations are out of keeping with the rest of the house. I imagine that the family who used to own the farm put in a “modern” sitting room before the Second World War (rather like Brenda Last did at Hetton Abbey in A Handful of Dust) then abandoned it when they realised how cold it was to sit in.

My parents wanted to reverse this pre-war décor and make it more consistent with the rest of the house. In particular, the fireplace had to go. Helen Blakeman took a different view, and on one of her rare visits was adamant that it should be preserved.

“But it’s hideous” I told her.

“No it’s not. It’s a good example of an art deco focal point – inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. This is probably modelled on the entrance to the inner golden shrine which caused a sensation when it was brought out of the tomb.”

“But these sort of fireplaces are in thousands of homes. We were going to rip it out.”

“Keep it another twenty years and it will be a valuable period feature” she told me. “You could restore the whole room to its art deco appearance. It will look wonderful”.

I thought nothing more about this until last week when was in Berkeley Square. On the corner was a shop selling antiquities, and in the window was an Egyptian stone carving. “That looks like our fireplace” I told myself.

(Above) The hideous fireplace. Please excuse the plastic flowers. My sister took over the room during our mothers last illness and put in the flowers because she thought the place needed cheering up. My mother would have been mortified if she had known we had plastic flowers in the house. The picture on the mantlepiece is of my nephew Lewis (aged three). He was named after his mother Louise (not the actor Lewis Collins - even though my brother endlessly watches old reruns of The Professionals on Granada Plus).

(Above) Egyptian antiquity in a showroom on the corner of Berkeley Square. Gary Spencer called it an upmarket junk shop. There were no prices on any of the objects, so I guess they are all on the expensive side.  

Morale has been very low recently

This afternoon Frank Jarvis, south western Area Sales Manger, paid a visit to Marketing to discuss a direct mail campaign we have planned for his area. Frank is one of the most approachable of the sales managers, very relaxed in manner, unpretentious, genuinely interested in marketing. We went over the twenty-week campaign mailshot by mailshot and the increase in awareness it is likely to achieve.

It is always good for morale to have a big campaign of this kind running – we will also be running the same sequence of mailshots in the Midlands sales area so it will be interesting to compare the results (I am confident that both campaigns will achieve nearly a fifty per cent increase in awareness, but I am keeping this to myself for the time being, just in case something should go wrong).

Morale has been very low recently, particularly over the transfer of various functions to the Glasgow office. A new warehouse is being set up in the Glasgow area without the knowledge or involvement of the Logistics Manager (it made him look very silly when the news leaked out). Almost all the sales desk responsibilities have been transferred to Glasgow, leaving the sales desk staff in London with little to do. Wild rumours have been circulating that the London office is going to close (these rumours created a panic in my assistant Antony Fraser, but I managed to calm him down – the last thing I want is for him to find another job and leave halfway through the mailshot campaigns).

Personally I think it is unlikely the London end of the operation will close. The company is growing at such a rate that probably an expansion in facilities in the north is justified. A serious worry, however, is that the rumours deflate morale to such an extent that the sales staff lose enthusiasm and find they can’t sell. I’ve seen this happen in other companies – previously booming enterprises suddenly collapse because the sales personnel become confused and distracted. Just as an upward spiral in morale is energising and self-perpetuating, so a downward spiral can be almost impossible to stop.

Efforts have been made to address the problem:

Recently Marion Conway, Human Resources Director, went around the office drumming up support for a boat race on the river (in early May), and this has lifted the mood in the general office. The company will enter one or more teams into a race against twenty or so other teams. The company will have a marquee on the riverbank, and will organise a barbeque. It is the sort of thing Marion Conway does well.

Adam Russell, the most junior person on the London sales desk, has been given a heap of leaflets, a couple of weeks’ sales training, and sent out on the road in a hired car with a brief to make cold calls and bring in new customers. He has responded very positively to this new responsibility, and reinvented himself from mouthy sales desk assistant (caring only about the fortunes of soccer team ManU) into a dependable sales professional, determined to succeed. We may be seeing the emergence of a new potential area sales manager.

And the two big marketing campaigns will help convince people that the company remains focussed on expansion.

Memories become locked away, suddenly to be released

Writing about Fiona yesterday has made me think more about the two months I spent at the British School in Jerusalem and on the crusader castle excavation. It is funny the way in which memories become locked away, suddenly to be released by a chance reminder. Although I was in one of the world’s most controversial trouble-spots, I was completely oblivious to the political situation. The British School comprised it’s own little world – twenty or so students, and about ten professional archaeologists, with several British academics passing through at any one time. The accommodation was very good, and the way of life unchanged since the days of Kathleen Kenyon.

We would get up at five o’clock each morning, and after a hurried cup of coffee set off in two battered old minibuses to the excavation site which was about ten miles outside the city on top of a small hill. The site was very complex – originally there had been a 6th century Byzantine structure on the hill, parts of which we uncovered (including a mosaic). Then the Knights of St John had built a castle there in the crusader period, mainly to guard the Marian shrine at nearby Aqua Bella. Finally an Arab village had been built among the castle ruins and this community lasted from the late medieval period until 1948. The mixture of Arab and crusader buildings was extremely picturesque, especially in the early morning when the sun was coming up and the vegetation was covered in thousands of small violet flowers (which shrivelled up each day at noon, only to come to life again the next morning).

We would work from 7 until 10, and then have breakfast (cups of tea, cornflakes, bread and cheese, yogurt mixed with jam). More work until 12.30 when, very grubby in appearance, we would return to the British School, have a shower, and sit down to a massive lunch. The temptation, after this lunch and several beers, to lie down and sleep away the afternoon was almost overwhelming. But as our time in the Middle East was limited, Fiona and I would leave the other archaeologists snoozing, and go out for a couple of hours to visit one of the historic sites (with a bias towards anything from the crusader period).

Visiting crusader ruins was a combination of romantic exploration and wild guesswork. Unlike historic sites in England where everything is tidied up and neatly labelled (and you can buy an illustrated guidebook and visit the tearooms on the way out), crusader sites in and around Jerusalem are mostly unregarded, and you have to identify and interpret them for yourself. This added to, rather than detracted from, the enjoyment of our expeditions – we felt we were making genuine discoveries (although in probability it was all surveyed years ago and filed away in the Library of the British School).

 

(Above) This is my team, in my trench at the excavation. The nearby kibbutz gave us the services of sixty or so teenagers, about to go into the Israeli army to do their national service. Left to right: Ori, Alon and Jonathan (I’m guessing at the spelling of the names). They were incredibly hard working (Ori especially) and interested in everything to do with the site. Occasionally Bedouin were hired to help with the digging (very polite and helpful – nothing was too much trouble for them).

 

(Above) We dug an enormous hole, about twenty feet square and forty feet deep, and uncovered this spectacular arch which formed one of the main gates to the castle (it was later filled in with boulders when the castle was abandoned, and later still became lost beneath the dust and dirt of the centuries). Unlike other areas of the site, we did not find anything valuable in our trench.

 

(Above) This is me on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, surrounded by the monuments of world history. Fiona took the photograph. We never had any trouble getting up onto the Temple Mount and went there several times (Fiona used to wear an Arab headdress as a sort of scarf, and I was so dark-tanned the guards probably thought I was an Arab). The Arab name for the Temple Mount is Haram al-Sharif. Behind me is the Dome of the Rock (which in the crusader period became the church of the Augustinian Canons). Each time we went there we had the place almost to ourselves – you would think it would be crowded with tourists or pilgrims. I suppose in retrospect we were taking a risk going about so much on our own. We thought that because we were archaeologists no-one would harm us.

The Israeli teenagers working on the site at Belmont used to sing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRijgRZmqvI&feature=related

Months later at home, out of the blue through the post, arrived a jiffy bag containing several books Fiona recommended... 

She was an (amateur and self-taught) expert

It is St Patrick’s Day, and in the phony Irish pub O’Neills on the Euston Road the juke box will be belting out the usual songs: Come On Eileen, The Irish Rover, The Sweetest Thing (they never play anyone like Sinead Quinn). For all it’s Oirish fakery, it is a characterless pub, and one you would only go into for a quick drink immediately after work, before colleagues head off to Kings Cross, and St Pancras and the commuter trains home. I guess it will be packed tonight.

Whenever I think of Ireland and the Irish I think of Fiona (forgotten her second name) who I met in Jerusalem when we were both working on a British excavation at a crusader castle, during the last summer I was at university (we were both at London University – she was at the Institute of Archaeology in Mallet Street, whereas I was studying medieval history). She was a mature student in her late twenties (or possibly even older), with a heavy matronly build, pale skin covered in freckles, and masses of bright orange hair (which she just combed the way it grew, being very proud of what she called her “celtic fringe” across her forehead). Although temperatures regularly reached 100ºF that summer, Fiona’s skin remained white (unlike my own, which grew so dark I was routinely mistaken for an Arab).

We worked together on one of the trenches (helped by some teenagers from a local kibbutz) and she covered up for me when I accidentally vandalised a mosaic we were uncovering (I poured water over it to try and clean the dust away, and washed out a great many of the tesserae – Fiona helped me fit them back again, in approximate position). Since we only worked on the castle excavation in the mornings, we had the afternoons to explore the country, and Fiona joined a small group of us that went out on expeditions to the Wadi Kelt or the Mediterranean coast.

Fiona was very self-contained, and seemed to enjoy being on her own. She originally came from Mallow in southern Ireland, and talked about a sugar beet factory which was the main employer – local people go to work at this factory and effectively become trapped there, spending whole lives processing sugar beet, generation after generation. Fiona was the first in her family to move away from the area, and was determined never to go back there. She was a great reader and was enthusiastic about the work of Elizabeth Bowen (an Irish writer). She had read almost everything written by Joshua Prawer, not just his history of the crusader period, but also the work he had done on the modern settlement of Israel, and the creation of the Israeli national identity. Fiona had also studied Irish nationalism, and she was an (amateur and self-taught) expert on the Irish nationalist leader Michael Collins.

Michael Collins was born in southern Ireland in 1890 and as a teenager came to London and worked for several years as a post office clerk in Kensington. It was here that he developed his ideas of Irish nationalism, returning to southern Ireland to help lead a rebellion against the Westminster government during the First World War. The rebels were defeated, but subsequent uprisings and unrest in the country led to self-government for southern Ireland in 1922. A subsequent civil war among various Irish nationalist factions led to the murder of Michael Collins and the emergence of Eamon de Valera as Irish nationalist leader and eventually President of the Irish Republic.

Eamon de Valera was a half-Spanish American of Irish descent who dedicated his life to the Irish nationalist cause. Fiona believed that because he was only half-Irish he constantly felt he had to prove he was more Irish than the Irish. This expressed itself in a negative policy to anything British, and an atmosphere of underlying paranoia where the United Kingdom was portrayed as an alien country (despite centuries of shared history and interaction) that threatened to overwhelm the new Irish Republic. His most infamous act was the sending of a telegram to Berlin in April 1945, regretting the death of the German Chancellor (I suppose he was thinking: my enemy’s enemy is my friend).

Had Michael Collins not been murdered he would almost certainly have led the Dublin government, and without Eamon de Valera’s insecurities, relations with the United Kingdom would have been normalised at a much earlier stage (he would have become a sort of Irish Jomo Kenyatta). As it was, British-Irish friendship only really emerged within the framework of the European Community (which later became the European Union).

Towards the end of the excavation at the crusader castle a group of us went on a trip to a kibbutz in the north of the country, travelling there in an Arab taxi. Fiona had a friend at this kibbutz, and so she disappeared soon after we arrived. Much later, in the early evening when an Arab taxi had arrived to take us back to the British School, we went to look for her and found her sitting alone, fast asleep. It was obvious she had been drinking heavily, and nothing we could do would wake her up (she was insensible). Eventually the others said they were going back in the taxi, and I had to leave with them or else be stranded on the kibbutz. I have always felt guilty about leaving Fiona there on her own.

She reappeared at the British School a couple of days later, and shortly afterwards I returned to the United Kingdom, so we never really re-established our friendship. Months later at home, out of the blue through the post arrived a jiffy bag containing several books Fiona recommended, including an old paperback about Michael Collins.