Monday

This was the fourth Queen’s speech that I have attended, but the first at which there have been plenty of empty seats on the Lords’ benches. As is customary, the press were in the gallery an hour or so before kick-off and I assumed the gaps on the Tory benches would fill up closer to the start. But there was one pocket of about 12 places that remained stubbornly unfilled, apart from a top hat that had been left in situ as if to reserve a space. But the hat never did get claimed and it could still be there now for all I know. This was also the first time I had seen the Queen look quite so frail and furious. Having already been embarrassed by Boris Johnson over the unlawful first prorogation, she now found herself being used as a frontwoman to launch the Tory party’s manifesto campaign as none of the measures brought forward have a hope of being delivered in the current parliament which is likely to last a matter of months at most. Rumour had it that trust between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street was so low that the Queen had demanded a copy of the speech five days in advance to make sure Johnson did not get the opportunity to sneak in anything untoward at the last minute. Throughout the 15-minute speech Her Majesty made sure her voice maintained a passive aggressive disgust, never once betraying a hint of enthusiasm for anything she was saying. I half expected her to end by ad-libbing that “my government will abolish the monarchy forthwith”. Just to save herself from going though the whole thing again within months.

Tuesday

The Booker prize was shared between Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, and many literary critics were outraged that the judges had been unable to decide on a single winner. Inevitably some muttered that Atwood was being rewarded with a long-service medal and Evaristo should have been given the nod, but both winners took the decision far more graciously than those who were angry on their behalf. But it struck me as an entirely reasonable decision by the judges, even if it was one that broke the rules of the competition that had been established to prevent a repeat of 1992 when Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth had shared the prize. Literary prizes have always been a matter of judgment. There is no VAR or goal difference on which to weigh the merits of two novels, and if the judges were genuinely unable to separate Atwood and Evaristo after several rounds of intense deliberation then a draw was the right outcome. Far better that than one judge saying ‘sod it, let’s just give it to Evaristo to get this thing over and done with so we can all go and get pissed’ or everyone – as has been rumoured in the past – settling on a compromise book that no one really liked as much as the two on which they were deadlocked. A draw may not have provided the headlines people wanted but it did have integrity. I also can’t help feeling it was within the finest traditions of the Booker prize itself. For more than 30 years between 1973 and 2006, Martyn Goff was responsible for administering the Booker and nothing used to upset him more than if the judges were in total agreement and chose a winner that received the unanimous applause of the critics. Goff loved the prize to generate controversy and relished the attendant publicity because he reckoned it boosted both book sales and the profile of the prize. This year’s judges have done him proud.

Wednesday

A team of psychologists from Warwick University have trawled through Google – really – and concluded that people in the UK were at their most unhappy during 1978. More unhappy even than they were during the two world wars. Not for the first time, I find myself completely out of step with the national mood because for me 1978 was one of the happiest years of my life. After a childhood during which I had frequently felt alienated, lost and insecure – out of step with both myself and my surroundings – I finally felt as if my life had started when I arrived at Exeter University. After a false start on the French course – I was genuinely amazed to find I was expected to read books in the language rather than in translation – I had taken a year out and swapped departments to enrol on the politics course in 1976. Two years later I was living what I felt was my best life in a cottage with no heating and slime trails up the bathroom and kitchen walls for a rent of £5 per week and doing just enough work to get by. The three-day week suited me just fine – though two and a half days might have been more convenient, the rubbish piling up in the streets was nothing compared to the state of my bedroom, my tuition fees were paid by the government and I even got a grant for living expenses. Best of all, I had made friends who shared my values. We could be simultaneously lost and found together. Of course, my life fell apart soon after as my mental health deteriorated and my drug use progressed into full-on addiction but just in those moments I had a glimpse of what might be possible. Those two years of 1977 and 78 were both the beginning and the end of my age of innocence.

Thursday

In the past it was weddings, but now it seems that large family gatherings take place at funerals. Today we all met up for the thanksgiving service of my cousin Simon, who died of a heart attack in the summer at the age of 64. Far too young. My lasting memory of Simon was of a holiday in Ireland with my parents, when I was about 14, when he sneaked me off to a pub to teach me how to drink insensibly. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t the best lesson for him to have taught me, but at the time I was immensely grateful for the introduction to unconsciousness. Then, he always was a far better and wiser drinker than me. As a general rule of thumb, the younger you die the better the turnout for a funeral – the dream is to die at the age of 98 with no one at the crematorium apart from a couple of stragglers who have turned up for the wrong person – but, even so, I was amazed at how many people had come to see Simon off. There was a crowd of hundreds and the church was packed. I wasn’t the only one to observe that I’d have to pay to get that many for my funeral. It was a tribute to just how well loved and respected he was. The service was both joyous and heartbreaking, with some lovely tributes from his children and family. One theme resonated throughout. That Simon was a man of immense fun and dependability, who never had a bad word to say about anyone. At which my sister nudged me and said: “We won’t be able to say that about you.”

Friday

The one upside to parliament sitting on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands war is that I get to miss Spurs vs Watford. Even if we should surprise ourselves with a win against the bottom club in the Premier league, I suspect I am still protecting myself from a world of pain. There will be pain of a different sort in the Commons though, where Boris Johnson will be hoping to win the vote on his new Brexit deal. He is certain to have to do so without the help of the DUP after he in effect created a border in the Irish sea less than a year after telling their party conference that was the one thing no Conservative prime minister could ever agree to do. The Northern Ireland temporary backstop has been replaced by a permanent full stop. Even so, my hunch is that Johnson will narrowly get his deal over the line. The ERG’s previously unwavering support for the DUP will evaporate as they eye up deregulated free trade deals for England rather than the whole of the UK: amazingly it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that Johnson will sell them out in a year’s time just as he sold out the DUP. But it will be Labour MPs with constituencies that voted leave who will see Johnson home. Though they are unlikely to be thanked for it as they will still probably lose their seats in the general election that will come in the next six months at which the Conservatives will probably romp home. Apart from the disastrous consequences for the country – 6% loss in earnings everyone – what really sticks in the throat is that a prime minister clearly unsuited to office, and who has made a career of serial dishonesty, will be allowed to rewrite his own history as a statesman and leader of Churchillian brilliance. Or rather it will be rewritten for him by Charles Moore, who will push himself forward to pen a three-volume triumphalist biography. It should be called Decline and Fail, though that is also the title of my new collection of sketches coming out at the end of this month.

Digested week digested: “You are the Mount Everest every man wants to climb.”

