Diary

2 April 2011

Jenny McCarthy opens her Diary

Fortunately, there is already one event to look forward to: the chance to vote No to AV on 5 May. My polling card is poised on the mantelpiece. There are many reasons to shun AV, which compels the voter to grade parliamentary candidates according to the intensity of one’s dislike (like forcing a child to rate, in order of preference, liver, chicken gizzards and tripe). But its worst aspect is the threat of more coalition governments. People think of coalitions as a recipe for sensible compromise, when really they are full of surly brinkmanship and diffused responsibility. Nick Clegg traded the chance to take a stand on university tuition fees for an AV referendum, thereby exchanging the exercise of power for the promise of additional clout in the future. Judging from the resulting dog’s dinner of policy on fees, one Cleggalition is more than enough.

Up, and out in the spring sunshine to the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly, to peer with my pink eyes at Watteau’s drawings. I am struck, not just by the vivid exactness of his execution, but the pleasing humility of his materials: red, black and white chalk on paper. There is one appealingly casual drawing of a semi-nude woman on a day-bed, examining her left foot. It calls to mind the difference between pornography and eroticism: pornography imposes the uniform of desire upon its faceless subject; eroticism teases out the particular allure of the person already there.

Across the road in Fortnum & Mason, the air is delicately scented with tea and cologne. Just the next day, it is ‘occupied’ by a group called UK Uncut, which was founded by a 22-year-old Oxford graduate, Thom Costello, who looks as though he would be more at ease tucking into a Fortnum’s hamper than most. Their headline pretext was alleged tax avoidance, but on their press release a supporter, one Sally Mason from Manchester, stridently described the store as ‘a symbol of wealth and greed. It is where the royal family and the super-rich do their weekly shop.’ Only someone very young could manage to sound quite so ludicrously self-righteous.

Yet for most visitors, Fortnum’s is not really a shop at all, but a free form of London theatre. People of all incomes go there to pass a pleasant hour exclaiming softly among the biscuit tins, and generally leave clutching a £5.75 packet of fudge, which isn’t bad value for a bit of fun, and less than the UK Uncut squad no doubt splashed out on beers on the way home. It reminds me of the time my granny returned to Belfast after a trip to London in the late 1970s, triumphantly brandishing the green and gold Harrods bag which at the time signalled the height of English refinement. ‘What did you buy?’ we all squealed in excitement. Her gaze took on a dreamy aspect, as if remembering the grandeur she had witnessed. ‘A pound of sausages,’ she said.