Harriet Harman is now the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and is thus about to be Deputy Prime Minister once Mr Blair hands over the keys. Assuming Mr Brown wants the position to continue, that is.
I can never quite disassociate her from an obscure fictional namesake. There is a Harriet Harman in Woody Allen’s 1992 film Husbands And Wives. She doesn’t have any dialogue, but is referred to off-screen by Mr Allen’s character as a former lover:
‘Harriet Harman… You know, we just made love everywhere…She was highly libidinous… She wanted to make love with other women… She got into dope for a while… I was getting a real education… And ultimately she wound up in an institution…’
File alongside the opening line of Girl Interrupted, where Winona Ryder’s character describes her madness by asking the viewer, ‘Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash?’ I saw this film while Ms Ryder was in the news for shoplifting.
Or James Fox saying to the young Mick Jagger in Performance, ‘You’re a comical little geezer. You’ll look funny when you’re fifty.’
***
Meet Victoria Mary Clarke in Highgate Wood Cafe on a curiously chilly and rainy day for late June. I wasn’t invited to go to Glastonbury (I wouldn’t turn it down), but from all accounts it once again resembled the trenches of WW1, with The Kaiser Chiefs as opposed to Kaiser Wilhelm.
In the news were the usual photos of loose children wallowing in e.coli (do they just use the same photos every year, as sunnier festivals do with the eternal girl in a bikini sitting on a boy’s shoulders?). Though Shirley Bassey is photographed backstage in diamante-encrusted wellington boots. That’s the way to do it.
At the cafe in Highgate Wood today, Ms Clarke buys me lunch, and I plump for grilled halloumi cheese and Earl Grey tea. Halloumi is a modish choice perhaps, but like iBooks and Moleskine notebooks I find some fashionable accessories of the day suit me so well that I can carry them off in my own style. They just happen to be fashionable, that’s all.
Ms Clarke is currently devising some kind of Celebrity Tarot Cards game, drawing on various self-help theories (from Florence Scovel Shinn to The Secret), but blending it with celebrity culture and one’s opinion (if any) on various famous names. It’s half-fun, and half-serious, and she tries the game out on me. The ladies at the next table in the cafe, Ms Pippa and Ms Cathy, are so intrigued by overhearing Ms Clarke’s questions where I have to compare myself to the likes of Bill Clinton, that we end up moving to their table and playing the game with them too. It’s the sort of thing that I imagine could be marketed rather well as the next Trivial Pursuit-style dinner party game, as apart from anything else it does get people chatting.
I should also mention that her excellent book is on sale here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Disguise-Victoria-Mary-Clarke/dp/1905172354
***
Claudia A is away in Germany for a week on Thursday, and has asked me to house-sit and cat-sit for her. Her cat Sevig (which means ‘small black thing’) hates being left with neighbours, and much prefers to stay in her quiet Archway flat while someone else is keeping house, preferably sleeping over. He already knows me, and hasn’t reacted adversely so far. I’ve said yes.
So from Thursday next I get to live in a whole flat for a week (as opposed to a bedsit), and within convenient walking distance of my usual home. For the first time in my life, I will find out what it’s like to have my own bathroom, and not have to share it with others. Hotel rooms don’t count.
Another first this year was the flight back from Tangier while Ms Clarke and Mr MacGowan stayed on. My first time flying alone.
***
Ms Clarke wants her wedding guests to wear old wedding dresses. Including the men.
