Three vignettes from a Life of Malcolm:
An elderly lady, heavily bejewelled, speaking impeccable [©] Queen’s English, in cut-glass RP, attempts the Irish language: A Uachtaráin agus a chairde ... Blink and you missed it. Still, beta plus for effort and chutzpah, not quite as much for enunciation. The Union flag hangs again, if limply, in Dublin Castle.
Mid morning: loud thump, then shriek from sitting room. A pigeon has piled into the plate glass of the patio door. Pigeon lies prostrate, but visibly winking, breathing and twitching, on patio deck. Within a minute pigeon has departed. The Lady in Malcolm’s Life seems unperturbed.
Re-run of last night’s BBC TV news. Ken Clarke is being monstered — no other word quite fits — by three of the most terrifying sights, all telegenic blondes, in British journalism: Laura Kuenssberg (BBC); Cathy Newman (Channel 4 News) and Alex Forrest (ITV News). The last of those three may have broken the sisterhood’s pecking-order, because Laura can be seen giving her the sharpest elbow in political reporting.
By the way, those commentators maintaining that Ed Miliband somehow “got it wrong” by calling for Clarke’s head on a charger are sadly mistaken. The more Cameron is seen to side with Clarke, the more both are increasingly damaged goods. And Wednesday was a truly dreadful day for the ConDems. Thursday isn’t looking much better. Meanwhile the Huhne business, and his highly-complex life-style, limps along, with another lady now dragged into the frame… Heh, heh!
And so Malcolm is happily back in London, back to gossip, porridge and old clothes.
