Home > The Magazine > The Week

Thursday 20 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody

Tamzin Lightwater

Wednesday, 30th July 2008

Tamzin Lightwater's unique take on the week

Monday
V nerve-wracking weekend. Thought I was going to get the sack for leaving the mike on during Dave’s meeting with Mr Obama. Wrote a long email of apology to Gary cc Nigel for accidentally forgetting to tell the ABC cameraman that it was pictures only, but Gary sent me a memo back, cc’d every-one, saying that my actions were ‘inspired and brilliant’ and ‘a shining example of the sort of initiative you should all be taking’. He keeps winking at me saying ‘accidentally eh?’ Decided to go along with it, although am nervous about why no one has worked out what a huge blooper I made. Now Gary says I’m in charge of Holiday Management. This means all sorts of trouble, including going down to Cornwall to arrange photo ops and do wardrobe duties and refuse surveillance in case the kids throw away ice-cream wrappers. What a nightmare!

Tuesday
Up all night ripping realistic-looking holes in Dave’s T-shirts so he looks ‘properly relaxed and completely unselfconscious’.

Am running out of photo ideas. He’s walked down a beach, sat on a rock, chatted with locals and worn three different pairs of Villebrequins. Phoned Gary and floated the idea that as Gordon had now gone to ground and we had clearly won the War of the Holiday Photo maybe Dave could kick back a bit and have some down time. He went ballistic. ‘The Project doesn’t do down time!’

Am to deliver another two days of Positive Images or I’m not to come home. It wouldn’t be so bad but I’m not getting any help from Sam. She just sits at the kitchen table all day churning out page after page of conference speech drafts, while yours truly is left to ring round paparazzi and tip them off about Ice Cream Moments. I wish she’d think about someone else for a change.

1 | 2 Next page

More articles from: Tamzin Lightwater | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.