Sunday reflections

Unless you're fearsomely disciplined, Sunday evenings aren't the combination of last rest and preparation for the week to come if you're self-employed. I don't work a five-day week, any more than I work an eight-hour day. But I do try to lever open some spaces in the weekend for quiet and reflection, and so I thought I'd present just a couple of passing pensées as Sunday night draws in.

The London Review of Books: passport to a million worlds

I used to be an LRB subscriber, until I realised that, after the ten seconds of joy when they arrived through the letterbox, the copies piled up with their antecedents, waiting to be read but in the knowledge that, often, they never would be. A subscription made no real sense, so I reluctantly cancelled it. Of late, however, I have started to buy it again, in hard copy, and I've tried to make time to browse the pages with some care.

The LRB is a wonderful publication. I am a pathological bibliophile, as my to-read pile (actually two shelves and overflow, below) will attest, and I wondered briefly if I should just be done with it and form a social bubble with the Amazon delivery man when the latest lockdown regulations were published.

The professed purpose of the LRB - to review books - is, in some ways, a secondary consideration for me. Yes, I will read with particular care the reviews of books I might buy, and two or three titles will usually be added to my wish list each week. The issue I'm currently reading has added Jonathan Kaufman's Kings of Shanghai and Greg Woolf's The Life and Death of Ancient Cities to the dozens of volumes I want to read. (Woolf was a distinctive presence when I was at St Andrews, always preceded by his boundless energy and his impressively bushy beard.)

The real treasures of the LRB, however, are the books I won't read, and wouldn't even have thought to stop at in a bookshop. These are so important because my magpie mind sees their title and wants to know more, to fill more of my brain with diverse and quirky bits of knowledge and argument. A few years ago, when I was bedridden at the parental home with a serious illness, my focus wasn't quite ready for a proper book, so I scoured the house for something shorter to read, and lighted upon my stepfather's copy of the LRB; I devoured reviews of books on the corruption at FIFA, and an Edwardian naturalist with a tragic private life. Fascinating but I would never have crossed their path otherwise.

So, for me, the LRB is a passport to other worlds, worlds I'd love to immerse myself in but simply can't while the day only has 24 hours and the week only seven days. Thanks to the current edition, I now know a little about photography in imperial Russia's declining years, the imprint of the Algerian wars on the French psyche and the cultural history of the cigarette. None of these were chosen, except insofar as I bought the magazine and gave 20 minutes to reading each review, but all have provoked thoughts in my mind, started intellectual hares running and provided what a dear friend used to call Things To Find Out About.

I'm a greedy dilettante, essentially. I scoop up nuggets of information and hoard them in my brain; fortunately, I have a good memory. I think it's one of the mottos to live by that learning new things is never a waste of time, and, however esoteric or obscure the facts, I will always find a satisfaction in knowing more rather than less (my late father and I could never agree on this). I don't think it makes me a better person, at least not in any kind of moral way, but I do think it adds to my understanding, my thought processes, and - this is the crucial thing professionally - my ability to look at issues from new angles and new perspectives. While I may disappoint the book trade in this, then, as I will buy relatively few actual books as a result of my readership, I cherish the LRB for expanding my horizons and telling me things I didn't know.

Vile bodies: life needs an injection of glamour sometimes

Tonight I watched (well, ? watched, really) Bright Young Things, Stephen Fry's gloriously silly, frivolous yet achingly sad and rather profound adaptation of Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh's 1930 none-too-gentle satire on the party scene of the previous decade and its leading lights.

(It's interesting to note that Waugh himself, at that stage not the splenetic old reactionary he would become, rejected the idea of calling the book Bright Young Things because he thought the phrase was too clichéd: this in 1930! To get a glimpse of the later Waugh, you must watch this interview on the brilliant John Freeman's Face to Face series, recorded in 1960. The remark about J.B. Priestley at the end is priceless.)

The opening scene of Bright Young Things is a raucous and riotous party, which introduces us to the main characters and the essential plot. It is dizzying to watch, as Fry intends, but it is particularly striking seen through the prism of a lockdown which has lasted now, on and off, for almost a full year. I can hardly remember the last time I was in a crowded room, jammed up against people in the full swing of revelry: and watching it on screen made me ache with longing.

Friends tell me I am gregarious, though I've never thought myself so. But I do like being out, and I like parties. Looking back, I am amazed how many dinner parties Frances and I managed to throw last year, weaving in an out of government regulations which sometimes made you long for the assistance of Bletchley Park. Perhaps we felt the shadow of further restrictions, because there was a frenetic quality of knowing time was short and gathering rosebuds while we had the chance, but every one was a delight.

Now that we are, we all hope, on the glide path towards freedom, with a genuine social engagement (albeit outside) in my diary for tomorrow with podcast guru Ollie Guillou, I am more desperate than ever to be out. I want to air my suits and shirts, pull on that corporate armour which is so comfortable to me and which is so superbly provided by Roderick Charles, and I want to stroll the streets of London, browse in shops and meet people.

More than anything else, I want parties. My black tie must feel abandoned and unloved (though I suspect some items will no longer quite fit after a lockdown which has involved more eating and less exercise than it should), but the costume which I pulled on once a week at least at university needs to make a comeback. Parties, launches, exhibitions, lectures, tastings: I'll take 'em all. Just as I have broadened my mind with webinars in lockdown, so I will in person when the shackles finally come off.

The pandemic has taught us that most of us are, as Aristotle averred, social animals (I do have some friends who really aren't). We need the contact of other humans, from our closest friends to the fleeting interaction with a salesperson or barista, and the pent-up energy is both exciting and daunting. I've seen several people remarking that they are anxious about re-entering society, and at first it will be new, frantic and overwhelming. But I crave it.

Many have written of the Roaring Twenties which followed the last pandemic of a similar scale, and predicted that this century, too, will see an explosion of spending, meeting, eating, drinking and laughing and loving as we hit the third decade. They have a point: I think there's a chance that London, at any rate, will thrum and resound to the clink of glasses and desperate, grateful, expansive "hellos" by the second half of this year. I'll be giving it my all; so, if you want some extras for a party, just drop me a line. My collars are starched and my shoes are shined. I'm ready.