The Spectator's Notes

13 June 2009

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

Last week, I attended a memorial meeting for Sir Nicholas Henderson. Nicko was not religious. For such people, meetings are much better than memorial services and this one, held in the auction room at Sotheby’s, was just right. Lord Carrington spoke charmingly and vigorously, despite being 90 later in the week. So did Tom Stoppard. He made much of Nicko’s physical presence — the large collar that strayed over the lapel of the suit, the unruly white hair, the elegant angle at which he stood. This was right. One’s friends are not disembodied. Their physical presence is a great part of what stays in the memory, and their physical absence is one of the saddest things about death.

My wife, who has a moth-trap which releases moths after inspection (no animals were injured or killed in the making of this column), was recently the first person in Sussex to record the presence of the rare Rannoch Looper in our county. It almost certainly came from the Continent, but before anyone shouts ‘climate change’, the Rannoch Looper, as its name suggests, is happy with the chill of the Scottish Highlands, where it likes to feed on bilberries, so we do not know what meteorological vagary brought it to us. No sooner did Caroline report it than sightings by local moth-eaten enthusiasts followed. So far, it is only a transitory migrant, but our Looper has laid eggs near our blueberry plant, and so, defying the BNP, we hope to create an ‘alien wedge’ in our English garden.