Читать книгу The Lost Diaries - Craig Brown, Craig Brown - Страница 74

England in March! What a horrid, class-ridden, snobbish nation, packed with the most ghastly common little low-brows.

Today I am forced to suffer a disgracefully expensive five-course luncheon at the Savoy with Arnold Wesker, who, I regret to say, certainly isn’t up to much, intellectually speaking: I ask him to name five plays I had personally directed in the past three years – and he doesn’t even know!

But we agree on the burning need for a truly savage and satirical film that skewers the fat-cats in our overblown, moribund, post-imperial society.

Suddenly, an impertinent suburban waiter interrupts us to ask if we would care for a sweet.

‘“Care for a sweet”?’ I complain bitterly. ‘“Care for a sweet”?!! What sort of a country are we living in when a functionary interrupts a highly serious discussion to ask if one would “care for a sweet”! Very well, I’ll have the Black Forest Gâteau – but only as a symbol of our overblown and tasteless age.’

Outside the Savoy, a pompous hotel functionary in a top hat and braid asks if he can hail me a cab.

I tell him in no uncertain terms that, as an anarchist, I am perfectly well equipped to hail one for myself. But the first cab drives straight past me with someone else in the back. I have never known such a kick in the teeth. I have been suppressed and disregarded in this country for decades – and now this! It’s really too much.

LINDSAY ANDERSON

I crave simplicity. What could be more satisfying than a simple boiled egg? Ever since, as a young man, I became the first Englishman to visit Europe, I have pursued a love affair with the boiled egg. A boiled egg is a feast for all the senses: the eyes amazed by the deep rich yellow contrasted with the stark, translucent, almost virginal white; the ears alive to the gentle knock-knock-knock on the warmly curvaceous and softly yielding shell; the mouth teased by expectations of the flowing yolk softly easing its way along the salivating contours of the tongue, and down, down, down into the throat; the penis quivering in readiness to be used as a spoon, diving deep, deep, deep, deep into the very nub and hollow of the ovoid, then rising up once more, now drenched in the brightest yellow. And it’s also very pleasant with toast.

SIR TERENCE CONRAN