True Confessions . . . by Sue Townsend (Penguin Books 1989)

We retreated back to Moscow. We arrived at 6.30 in the morning. Even at this early hour Russia was on the move; the station was jam-packed full. We passed through a massive waiting room where every plastic chair was occupied, yet nobody spoke. Christopher Hope was much affected by this. It was in complete contrast to the milling, shouting crowds outside with their ungainly luggage and wool-wrapped children in tow. There was one policeman at the door – could he alone have cowed hundreds of people into complete silence?

We went to the Bolshoi and saw the most exquisite dying swan, performed by Ms Larissa, the toast of Moscow, who was reputed to be rushing towards sixty years of age. Her arms vibrated like piano wires, they shimmered, then as the violins soared and swooned she sank to the floor in the final gesture – it was perfect and lovely and I shall always remember it.

I arranged to meet my translator, but he mixed up Tuesday with Thursday so it was not possible. He is translating a diary. As Mr Bennett said, ‘Friday: Got up, went to Sunday school.’

We were invited to Kim Philby’s funeral and said we’d go, but the day was changed and we’d flown to Lvov in the Ukraine. We met more writers and admired the beautiful town and visited the cathedral which was crowded with old women, many on their knees. The sadness was tangible. It was Ascension Day and a kindly old woman began to explain the story of the Ascension to Alan Bennett.

Alan listened as though the story were completely new to him. Then an unkind old woman intervened and ordered him to uncross his legs. She then turned on the kind old woman and berated her for talking to us. Later, strolling round the town, we saw the unkind woman praying at the locked gates of a church. She looked very unhappy. We met the mayor of Lvov, a big, handsome man, very conscious of his duty to preserve and renovate the many lovely buildings with which the town is blessed. Alan Bennett is thinking of retiring to Lvov. We met a dirty, ragged man who told us about the concentration camp which used to be situated to the west of the town. Hundreds of thousands of people died there. I asked our official guide about the old man. ‘He is a fanatic,’ she said. ‘He has spent his life since the war studying the fate of the Jews. He is a Jew himself,’ she added, ‘a professor of history.’ She disapproved of the ragged old man.

The writers of Lvov were particularly kind and hospitable, and we lunched in some style to the sounds of a string quartet – all girls who blushed when we applauded. The conversation at Messrs Raine, Bennett and Bailey’s end of the table had turned to sex. Their laughter attracted the attention of the wife of the chairman of the Lvov Writers’ Union. I said, ‘They are talking about sex.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘All say’s, little do’s.’

Quite a devastating remark from such a mild-looking woman.

Mr. Bevan's Dream: Why Britain Needs Its Welfare State by Sue Townsend (Chatto & Windus 1989)

I am told by my graduate friends that I haven't missed much. They go on to describe their last-minute cramming, their worthless thesis (button manufacturing 1797-1831), but they know and I know that, at the very least, they can write a standard essay, they can marshal their thoughts into some sort of order, and they can come up with a reasonable conclusion. Unfortunately I can't do this. I enjoy reading other people's essays (stumbling across Orwell's Inside the Whale and Other Essays was a particular teenage joy, it out Elvis'd Elvis), but I can't write a well-structured essay myself. So, in this pamphlet, I have fallen back on the traditional working class method for expressing ideas — the anecdote, or what is now called 'the oral tradition' (which is only a fancy term for working class people talking to each other but not bothering to record what they've heard). I'd better explain that my own background is working class. I use the term easily and unselfconsciously, although I am aware that in 1989 the very words 'working class' are buried in a mine-field over which we all have to tiptoe so very carefully.

Slowly, over the years, our language has been debased, so that terms like 'working class', 'socialism' and 'the Welfare State' have become pejorative and individuals using the words in conversation now tend to put them in parenthesis, either by a certain emphasis of tone or by wiggling the fingers in the air to denote that the speaker is aware of certain ironies — that the words are anachronistic in our technological age.

I am extremely proud of my background and the more I travel and read about history and the roots of what we call civilisation, the prouder I become of this huge international class. I know that they were the builders of the cathedrals, the carvers of furniture, the seamstresses of the gorgeous clothes in the family portraits. They grew the hothouse flowers, they wove the carpets, bound the books in the libraries and gilded the ceilings. They also built the roads, the railways, the bridges and the viaducts. And what is more they were fully capable of designing such marvels. No one class has a monopoly on vision and imagination. The only thing the working classes lacked was capital.

Off Side by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Melville International Crime 1989)

'Are you suggesting that we're going to start seeing irrational motiveless killings, like in the United States?'

'Why not? We already have psychiatrists and private detectives, so I don't see why we can't have mad murderers too. And here it could be even worse, because at least in the USA they still put up an appearance of believing in God. They go to church on Sundays, and feel themselves part of a chosen people. But you don't have that in Spain. Religion of any kind, whether political or otherwise, has disappeared. The only thing that we have left, by way of communion of the saints, is nationalism.'

'Is that what makes you a nationalist?'

'It's the most gratifying thing that a person can be, and the least concrete, particularly if you are, as I am, a non-independentist nationalist. Politics is a curious thing in Catalonia. We have a situation where power is shared between socialists who don't believe in socialism, and nationalists who don't believe in national independence. The whole thing's ripe for lone operators to take over, and when you look at the likes of young Camps O'Shea, the prospect becomes even more alarming. That man has no conscience, no epic memory, no life-project other than going out and winning, without even knowing what he wants to win at, or whom he wants to beat.'

'And how are we supposed to deal with these lone killers?'

'Arrest them while they've still got their guns in their holsters, or if they've got them out, shoot them before they get the chance to shoot first.'

'And what if they manage to do their killing?'

'Turn up for the funeral.'

'You're a big man in this city. Big men in big cities get there because they have more information at their fingertips than the rest of the population.'

'I gather you're implying that I haven't told you everything I know. Don't be naive. I know that you have to buy people and I know whom to buy. And that's the extent of it.'

March Violets by Philip Kerr (Viking 1989)

Driving west on Leipzigerstrasse, I met the torchlight parade of Brownshirt legions as it marched south down Wilhelmstrasse, and I was obliged to get out of my car and salute the passing standard. Not to have done so would have been to risk a beating. I guess there were others like me in that crowd, our right arms extended like so many traffic policemen, doing it just to avoid trouble and feeling a bit ridiculous. Who knows? But come to think of it, political parties were always big on salutes in Germany: the Social Democrats had their clenched fist raised high above the head; the Bolshies in the K P D had their clenched fist raised at shoulder level; the Centrists had their two-fingered, pistol-shaped hand signal, with the thumb cocked; and the Nazis had fingernail inspection. I can remember when we used to think it was all rather ridiculous and melodramatic, and maybe that's why none of us took it seriously. And here we all were now, saluting with the best of them. Crazy.

Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperback 1989)

He looked at the litter on his desk and wondered how he had come to be manacled to these invoices, how many years he had spent transferring days from the in-tray to the out-tray. It would be some time yet before he could go home, but the thought was merely a reflex, no longer carried any deep regret. Marie would be waiting there with a detailed report of how much hoovering she had done today and what the Brussels sprouts cost. Jennifer would be doing her usual impersonation of a foundling princess who can't understand how she has come to be unloaded on such a crass family and Robert, fruit of his loins and heir to his ulcers, would be playing songs in which the lyrics only surfaced intermittently and incomprehensibly.

From the short story 'Waving'.

Stone Over Water by Carl MacDougall (Minerva 1989)

Tuesday, Aprll 22:

Helen ls too attentive. I think she knows more than she pretends to know which would not be hard since she pretends to know nothing.

Miranda's eyes are everywhere. On Monday I phoned her and she phoned me today. The message is always the same.

Last night I went to the attic and found three pages typed on the Underwood. It's bad enough discovering your father was a closet radical without extra evidence arriving daily.

If I find more of my father's writings, I'll burn them.

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON SCOTTISH DEFINITIONS WITH A VIEW OF THE NATIVE PHILOSOPHY

The ensuing remarks are not intended to trespass upon the domain of such specialist publications as The Scottish National Dictionary or Dwelly's Gaelic-English Dlctionary. I merely wish to inform our English and foreign visitors of certain usages which are common throughout the Lowlands, Borders and most tracts of the English-speaking Highlands and Islands.

HOW SCOTSMEN DEFINE EACH OTHER

A Braw Bugger(1)

One who can shite(2) with the best of them.

A Dour Bugger

One who cannot shite yet refuses to take the medicine.

A Thrawn Bugger

One who can't shite, takes the medicine yet refuses to shite.

A Canny Bugger

One who can't shite, takes the medicine, still can't shite, returns the medicine and has his money refunded.

An Uncanny Bugger

One who can't shite, takes the medicine, won't shite, returns the medicine, has his money refunded, then shites.

Note that the Braw Bugger and the Uncanny Bugger, the alpha and omega of this spectrum, have one common characteristic - their bodily functions are unimpeded by normal imperatives.

1: The term bugger when applied by one Scotsman to another has no sexual significance, even even in sheep-rearing parishes. Since, to the Scot, a man is the highest form of created life, to call a man 'a man' is to overpraise him.

2: The male Scot prefers excretion ro sexuality because, although both are equally inevitable, the first is less expensive.

The Shoe by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1989)

They always had good rants, Mental and Richard. The miners' strike provided eighteen months of debating material. Mental was completely disillusioned with the Protestant work ethic and found the refusal to hold a ballot smug and disturbing. Richard blamed the miners' loss on their amateurish use of the media and the media's innate bias. He talked of camera angles, interview locations and distorted emphasis. A ballot was useless, Richard said, since the media determined the information supply and the media was biased. The miners had elected leaders to make decisions on their behalf. That's what Scargill's job was. But Mental was unimpressed. The miners represented everything he hated about the 'mince and tatties mentality': 'All these places are Hun cities. Take Bo'ness, for example, typical fucking mining community. Hun bastards. You've got all these fat bastards moaning about not having any food. And I hate the word "scab". People degrade themselves by using that kind of attack.' They all wanted to see the miners win and they all agreed that Leonard Parkin was a fascist. But mostly they wanted to see Margaret Hilda Thatcher melt.