Downers and uppers

New Year’s Eve parties cannot be described in lyrical terms, recalling perhaps the elegance of poetry by, say, Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde’s decadence being more like it. I am not among those who hate New Year’s parties; in fact, on the contrary. Let’s start with the bad news. The worst New Year’s ever was 31 December 1984, in Pentonville. Now that was a real downer. Talk about a party that never took off. On that particular night it never even got started. Everyone was locked up by 7 p.m., and most of the jailbirds were asleep by the time the clock struck 12. I stayed up by force of habit, but all it did was make me more miserable. Looking back at my description of that night in the immortal jail memoir Nothing to Declare, I see that particular New Year’s Eve was the first time I felt the worst was over. From then on it was only a matter of time and patience. There are certain psychological barriers while one’s doing bird, the obvious ones being birthdays of loved ones, holidays, and so on. For me that night was the penultimate barrier to the countdown, which begins after the halfway point has been reached.

I went to Palm Beach about one month ago to visit Conrad and Barbara Black with other friends of theirs, but was advised not to write about it until after the sentencing. As Andrew Roberts wrote in the Diary, it was ‘a masterclass in displaying dignity, good humour, hospitality and charm under pressure…’ If only the bums who so eagerly cast stones possessed a scintilla of Conrad’s courage, I might even force myself to consider their argument. But none of them even comes close. I wonder why that is? The idea that a rat like Radler can give state evidence and plea-bargain a tiny sentence in a country club shows how wrong the law is.