Diary

Last Monday I had a fax from Stephen, a Jewish friend: "I heard the Irish referred to on the radio as having a diaspora - is this usual among your compatriots and co-religionists, and has permission been obtained from the Chief Rabbi? There'll be an IRA Holocaust next, I shouldn't wonder. Watch it." I rang to explain he was way out of date: we annexed the word "diaspora" years ago. What's more, paranoid nationalists who claim the British deliberately caused the appalling death toll in Ireland 150 years ago refer to the Great Famine as a "Holocaust" or as "genocide". "Do you have to muscle in on everything?" wailed Stephen. "Can you not even allow us to think we have a monopoly of certain kinds of suffering?" "Certainly not," I said briskly. "Irish Catholics even aspire to suffer more from guilt than you lot do."

Then the mail arrived with a postcard relating to my recent query as to why Gerry Adams condemns discrimination but couldn't celebrate the defeat of the Nazis. (As is customary with such communications, it had no address - presumably lest I emulate the merry men of the IRA by turning up to break the writer's arms and legs with a baseball bat.) "I am surprised", it said, "that you do not see the blatant double standard involved in opposing discrimination and Auschwitz activities on mainland Europe, while supporting the same activities permanently in the north-east corner of Ireland. Gerry Adams is logical." Stephen, who was on the last train out of Poland in 1939, was entirely resigned when I rang to tell him that we have now snaffled the concentration camps. "All that is left now," he said, "is for you to teach compulsory Yiddish throughout the island."

I have thought and thought, but I still do not understand the last sentence of the Times obituary of the writer John Watney: "His marriage ended in divorce, and he leaves at least one son." I have been equally baffled by the information that the Aum Shinri Kyo cult leader, Shoko Asahara, though partially sighted, took a diploma in acupuncture. Is it discriminatory to think a prerequisite for an acupuncturist is excellent vision?

At the gathering last Thursday when old flower children launched Richard Neville's Hippie Hippie Shake, I knew only his relatives. How staid I had been in the late Sixties was further brought home to me by my sadness at the death of Eric Porter, for I was in Cambridge absorbed in The Forsyte Saga just around the time Mary Kenny was allegedly telling Neville to put a bomb under London by starting up Oz. She and I have changed a lot since then, but my admiration for Porter remains intact. I was cross when an Independent obituarist maligned his character, Soames Forsyte, as "brutal", a "monster" and "incredibly cruel" to his wife, Irene. Those of us who wept when Soames died had been intensely moved by Porter's genius at conveying the terrible emotional isolation of one who could give - but not attract - love.

I bought Hippie Hippie Shake mainly to read about the pre-Female Eunuch Germaine Greer in the hope of better understanding why she indulged in those daft tantrums last week about lipstick feminists. I was much enlightened, for it turns out that even in olden days she had a tendency to berate loudly and publicly women to whom she took exception. Neville describes arriving with her at a party, where, on catching sight of a successful rival in love, she opened hostilities by shrieking, "How I despise you." Still, there was her more gentle, feminine side. She was an accomplished sempstress, who created a bikini brief which brilliantly highlighted every intimate detail of the female genitalia and who also knitted a "multi- striped cocksock, plus scrotum pouch", which - modelled by Neville - graced the pages of Oz.

I complained to the novelist Jill Neville, Richard's sister, that my readers appear to be problem-solvers rather than setters. David Wolfe's too easy "There was a great poet named Nash/ Whose metres caused printers to gnash" and Alan Hardwood's probably too difficult "There was a young lady from Huntingford" deserve a mention, but no one has yet posed what I think to be the right kind of challenge on the verse front. Ever a loyal friend, Jill galloped to the rescue with a clutch of Limerick-openers (known in Ireland as Listowels, after the small neighbouring town) to keep you busy while we consider our versifying future at leisure. Here are my favourites: "A crazy old ratbag from Sydney/ Decided to sell off her kidney"; "A judge at the courts of Old Bailey/ Sentenced a whale to a Ceilidh"; "A poet who hailed from Thermopylae/ Was addicted to playing Monopoly"; "There was a young man from Dunfermlin/ Who tried to stop dervishes whirlin". Take your choice and do your worst.

A friend has rung from Ireland to tell me that planning permission is being sought to erect a second crematorium. Much black laughter has been provoked by the revelation that the place chosen in County Cork is called Ovens.

Like me, my newsagent, Kuku, has a romantic streak and we wanted to believe Imran Khan had married Jemima Goldsmith just for love. But having discussed the issue from all angles, we came back to the fact that, having raised enough money to build a huge cancer hospital, he cannot find the money to run it, and it is too much of a coincidence that Sir James Goldsmith has around pounds 790m. On Saturday we learnt that the bridegroom has a child by the daughter of Lord White, who, though a comparative pauper at around pounds 65m, has still been in a position to relieve Khan of any financial obligations, which does rather suggest he has an eye for money. "What do your customers think?" I asked Kuku. "Half of them have never heard of Goldsmith," he said. "They read the Sun." I found that puzzling, since Sir James seems a natural for "Bonking billionaire" coverage. But no, the Sun has covered the whole business with discretion, and the rare mentions of Sir James describe him simply as a tycoon. This couldn't, could it, have anything to do with Rupert Murdoch's need to keep on the right side of another global businessman?

I offer the following as evidence that the young are all deaf. Last week I was on an ancient tube train when the driver made a lengthy announcement. Unfortunately, his equipment was (a) faulty and (b) turned up to top volume. As the sound of chalk scraping on blackboard screeched into our carriage, all of us over 35 or so clapped hands to ears and our faces contorted into variations on Munch's The Scream. None of the dozen or so children and young adults showed any signs of distress at all.