Kenneth Allsop

Kenneth Allsop

Kenneth Allsop look-alike

There was one of those recurring interviews on BBCR4 this morning about how to get off heroin or methodone addiction. Robert Redford look-alike Kenneth Allsop (pictured above - disregard the difference in hair colour and specs, believe me there is a craggy coolness in common) was a childhood pinup, from his regular appearances on the early evening BBCTV news magazine programme 'Tonight'. As a young journalist in Hertfordshire in the 1960's, I went to interview him in his home near St Albans and was surprised when he mentioned casually that he was addicted to morphine, as a result of continuing pain from the amputation of a leg - a WWII injury. Reading about him now on the web, I realise that he was also a notable writer about the countryside and friend of Henry 'Tarka the Otter ' Williamson. I remember him vividly. The impression I had was of someone whose experience of life so far transcended my own at that time that interviewing him was uphill work, but also a profound indifference to celebrity. Until today, I had buried in memory what I must have known at the time, that he committed suicide in 1973, three years after he had moved to Dorset and five or six years after I met him.

Baste in haste

Two yellow tubes

I packed two yellow tubes for my sailing holiday: one is travel wash and one is sun protection factor 20. On the first sunny day I went below, felt in my sponge bag in the dimly-lit cabin and pulled out a yellow tube. How very nice, I thought as I applied the contents liberally to my face and neck: a transparent gel. Far nicer than that other old white sun stuff that makes you look like the teenage member of an African tribe setting off for some initiation rite. It was only the following day that I realised my mistake. The odd thing is that the travel wash actually did seem to prevent me from burning.

Orca

Male orca

Comparative size of human to orca or killer whale

Excitement one day last week at sea in the Minches when a colossal black triangular fin was spotted off the port beam of Provident. It was an orca, circling lazily but purposively in the water. The fin was so large, so black and so regular in outline that to begin with we all wondered if it was some manmade bit of flotsam but no, there was no doubt as we watched - this belonged to something very big and very alive, probably feeding on a shoal of fish. Gannets continued to plummet like stones into the sea around it, presumably confident that they are not tasty enough to be a starter. Other wildlife we spotted included an otter in the bay where we anchored at Vatersay and several endearing harbour seals, particularly one at Barra that genuinely appeared to be seeking eye contact, and another that followed us out of our last anchorage on Thursday, Loch Kentra. We also saw herons, cormorants and other sea birds

At sea

Provident (Brixham trawler)

Just back from a week away without mobile or internet, sailing from Mallaig on Provident a Brixham trawler. It was brilliant. Lots of sailing, in fact we broke the season's record for least use of the motor. The company was pretty good, too. We ranged in age from Alexander aged 20 in his second year reading maths at Cambridge to Ken aged 83 who was at sea all his working life. There were, most unusually, two mother and son couples on board. Our skipper Ben's mother Hazel now spends most of her year in Australia so this was a way of spending a week with her frighteningly calm and efficient boy. I was brought up to sail accompanied by shouts and alarms. On this trip we actually moored under sail at Vatersay, in the Outer Hebrides, in a bay famous for its white sands, no-one's voice raised above a whisper. The other Mum on board was Alexander's, the ship's cook Anne who kept us supplied with excellent meals whatever the sea. Crossing the Minches westward was quite bumpy but the bacon butties kept coming. All in all, it was a wrench to say goodbye yesterday morning and board the train southward to Glasgow. The floor of my house is still rocking slightly and I am endeavouring to download the pictures I took off my new mobile so far with no success.

Society of Authors in Scotland (SOAiS)

One of the two Sir Chris Hoy gold- painted postboxes in Edinburgh

To Edinburgh yesterday for the AGM of the Society of Authors in Scotland. The room buzzed with the fury of those who by definition do not get out much (we're usually sitting on our own working to meet a deadline). I met a remarkable man, a former vet who started his writing career by publishing books on immunology but is now a world authority on London cutlers (makers of knives) and medals. Talking of knives, our new SOAiS chair is best-selling Scottish crime writer Lin Anderson, founder of the forthcoming 'Bloody Scotland' bonanza in Stirling Sept 14-16, who told me that her next book is set in Cannes where she and her husband have a flat in the old quarter  known as Le Suquet. The Russians love the south of France and have returned in force after a brief 70-year hiatus thanks to the revolution. The Russian language declines like Latin and Greek, and rather sweetly they treat 'Cannes' as a plural word because of the 's' at the end. I was also able to pass on to Lin the fact that in Tsarist times, a train left the south of France every day to take fresh melons and grapes and other Mediterranean produce to the tables of the aristos in St Petersburg. I can thank a London restaurateur for this information. As a child in the 1950's, our regular treat was to be taken to a place called, the Hungaria in Lower Regent St, run by a man who had gone in 1913 to work in St Petersburg, at the premier hotel in those days, The Astoria, and then as the private chef of a prince in the circle of the Grand Duke who murdered Rasputin. His memoir 'The Tavern is My Drum' (a quote from Shakepeare Henry IV)was published by Odhams in 1948, price 12/6d. Moffat Book Events is putting on a crime fiction event next year - see our website for a shocking retro illustration of a blonde with a smoking gun. Wonder who that might be?

On the train

A blast from the past

Changing trains at Carlisle yesterday afternoon, I found a vintage train on private charter standing at platform 3.

A last stroll round the neighbourhood

Bray Place SW3 - flat with Olympic 2012 decorations

Duke of York's Square with Olympic flags

'Trotters' on the King's Road

Peter Jones decorated for the Olympics 2012

'Trotters' Olympic 2012 window

I have lived in London, on and off,  for over 50 years of my life, starting as a schoolgirl in Mayfair, then as a young graduate in Knightsbridge, then for 35 years in Chelsea. I took a last stroll round the neighbourhood this morning, popped in to touch base with Johnny de Falbe at John Sandoe's bookshop before catching the train north. My daughter Abi worked at the children's shop 'Trotters' for a while. I did specialist training for a territorial army unit at the Duke of York's barracks. If I felt miserable or dislocated, Peter Jones's brand of sensible Middle English smartness usually cheered me up. Now I'm on the train, reading Philip Larkin and thinking 'Next year will be poetry year'.