On mortal coils
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
Are the political lives of Wendy Alexander and Harriet Harman drawing not so peacefully to a close? And if indeed they are on life support, will Gordon Brown be forced to flick the switch off? Or indeed others in the frame? It makes one reflect on the insecurities of politicians’ lives, a thought which must be running powerfully up and down Downing Street at present.
In the last two weeks I have been to two funerals. One was a very senior figure in the horseracing industry, a most cheerful and larger then life character, where the service took place in a beautiful arts and crafts church in south London. How movingly his children spoke. Another was a constituent, a true countryman, former master of the local hunt, a member of the Vestey family, whose fortune was founded on meat. The vicar observed amusingly that the Vesteys were to cholesterol what the Rockefellers were to oil. The funeral was for one of the kindest, most modest and understated people imaginable. This week is for the mother of two sons my age. She was born in what was then Austria, now Italy, to an elderly father, an extraordinary figure called Slatin Pasha, one of the most romantic characters of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was a link to a central European way of life now gone forever: she subsequently made her home in Suffolk.
They were respectively in their sixties, seventies and eighties. They were all exceptional people who brought friendship and laughter to those around them.
Life indeed, whether for politicians or anybody else, is certainly no dress rehearsal, but a frail gift indeed.