General musings

Being profoundly bored by scandal, which is the main feature of the news today, I thought I would write about small matters. I was dragged from sleep at 4.30 on Sunday morning when the TV set in my hotel room suddenly switched itself on. I have no idea why it did this. It had been on when I came into the room (this is often the case these days) and I had immediately switched it off. But this plainly wasn't enough.

I fumbled my way across the room and pulled out every plug I could find. The experience increased my feeling that we really are not in control of anything much - like those slightly sinister times when advanced computers start correcting your typing before you have time to do so, or the horrible moment when your phone switches to predictive text (mine does this without my asking it to) and tries to tell you what you want to say.

The actual phone has been known to switch itself on after I have quite definitely switched it off (once doing so in the middle of a Remembrance day service I happened to be attending). Not to mention the fact that the simple, hard-wearing phone I really liked, which did the few things I wanted and nothing else, is now no longer manufactured.

Nor is its charger, which always worked, and which has been replaced by a new model which often mysteriously stops charging if a hamster sneezes in the vicinity, so causing a tiny tremor which shakes the jack loose.

This is one of the many reasons for my doubts about the idea that 'market forces', left to themselves, will make us all free and happy. In fact, 'market forces' often seem to me to be rather like East Germany with a good PR company and more efficient distribution. East German cities used to have uniform high streets in which the same basic goods were available everywhere, or not available, in more or less identical shops. So do we, except that we have an illusion of variety. And before anyone goes on about fresh fruit and vegetables, I have been virtually unable to find a fresh Cox's Orange Pippin apple this season (a pulpy, smooth-skinned impostor which tastes as if it has been in a chiller for ten years and goes soft in a day, is offered under this name, but it is not a proper rough-skinned Cox) and only a very few decent Russets. Foreign varieties, often from the far side of the world, are sold here even during the English apple season.

You will have this. That razor that worked has been improved, and replaced by another one that is far more expensive and actually not as good. The marmalade that you like has been wiped off the stock list of all the (supposedly competitive) supermarket chains, and can now only be obtained by mail order via the United States, though it is made in Manchester.

Now I gather that Pears Soap has been utterly transformed, though it is still sold as if it were the same thing as before. Despite having a large nose, I have failed to notice that it smells quite different. What I have noticed is that it now comes sealed in an unnecessary plastic bag, and is a cloudy, almost milky brown instead of the old dark but translucent colour. And, though this is hard to measure, I don't think it lasts as long as it used to.

Nobody asked me about this. The free market couldn't give a curse about what I think or want but instead spends billions on trying to make me want what it makes. If I stop buying it, will anyone care? Keith Waterhouse used to expostulate, when told that there was 'no call' for some product that he wanted but which had been discontinued 'well, I am calling for it'. And, when some call centre claims that 'nobody's complained about this before', my brother always retorts 'Well, you won't be able to say that the next time, will you?' Such ripostes make us all feel good, but do they change anything?

I was in a hotel on Sunday night because I was appearing on the Andrew Marr show, to do the newspaper review. There is a story behind this, which I can now tell. A few weeks ago, as some of you noticed, the author Ken Follett appeared on the same programme, also reviewing the papers.

He chose to give an inaccurate account of an article I had written in my MoS column, about Keith Richards. And on the basis of this misrepresentation he continued, unchallenged, about what a generally stupid person I was. Now, if I had written what he'd said I had written, I would indeed have been stupid. But I didn't. Since Mr Follett had the offending article in his hand when he said what he said, viewers would have been entitled to assume he was quoting me correctly. Those who read my column would know he was incorrect. But what about the others?

And when I protested, the BBC offered me the chance to go on the programme to put the matter right. This is another step forward, and another sign that the Corporation is trying harder to be fair.

There was an unexpected bonus out of this. We were invited to breakfast afterwards (nothing specially grand) but I found myself sitting opposite Rosamund Pike, an actress I have long admired - especially for her superlative performance in the film 'An Education' - and who I think will get better and better as the years go by, so that I will be able to boast that I once met her.

And then I had to spend much of Monday morning (beginning before dawn) going through the final stage of the long procedure now needed to renew a US Visa. Now, I have no complaints at all about this in itself. I think all countries should be very careful who they let in. And my August 1969 arrest for being in possession of an offensive weapon (four plastic lavatory ballcocks, since you ask, and no, I didn't do anything with them and it's a long, not specially exciting story whose high point involves me trying to eat a fried egg with a spoon in Cannon Row police station) quite reasonably alarms US law-enforcement bodies. As I get closer and closer to qualifying for a senior citizen's railpass, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a straight face while trying to explain this moment to youthful consular officials. They look at me narrowly, as if I were trying to wind them up.

I just wish that Britain made it as tough for foreign passport-holders to get in here as the US does there. And that the US would do something about the vast illegal immigration (followed by amnesties) which it tolerates from Latin America. I don't at all mind filling in all those forms or even giving the USA my fingerprints, provided everyone else has to do the same.

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