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Some people seem to think that, where babies are concerned, no behaviour is unacceptable
✒We came back from the US on Virgin, which was kind of all right except for the food. At least the crew were friendly, even to a woman in the row in front whose baby didn't just cry, but screeched through the night.
The mother did nothing about it. If this woman had stepped on my toe, I'm sure she would have apologised graciously. But apparently keeping us awake for seven hours is not worthy of a single "sorry". Some people seem to think that, where babies are concerned, no behaviour is unacceptable.
✒The last event I attended at the conference in Boulder, Colorado, was by Crosby and Nash, of Crosby, Stills and Nash. They weren't singing but preaching. Nash, who's lived in the US for ages, has a strange accent: American, suddenly veering back to Lancashire.
He had a collection of truisms which resonated with his audience – surprisingly young, considering that the singers' pointed out their combined age was 140. "Greed and selfishness do not bode well for our planet," Nash told us gravely. "It's just insane, what's going on." The listeners – 2,200 of them, with hundreds listening to the feed outside – whooped in agreement. "Me and my dear friend Dave Crosby have always believed in the power of the individual …"
I felt queasy. When he said, "killing people in the name of God sucks!" nobody contradicted this deep aperçu. I wanted to leave, but stayed for the end, and the inevitable song, wavery without accompaniment, in praise of – you guessed – peace.
✒Next week we say goodbye to my wife's stepfather, Nicholas Goodhart, who has just died, suddenly and peacefully, at the age of 91. He was an astonishing man. He ended his naval career as an admiral, though soon after the war he invented a way of using lights and mirrors so that jets could land safely on a pitching aircraft carrier; it saved hundreds of lives.
He held various world gliding records for many years, and even invented a man-powered plane, which worked, though didn't go very far. He also came up with the idea of box junctions, which he sent to the Ministry of Transport, a year or so before it adopted them. Did he get an acknowledgement? Don't be daft.
He was also a lovely, kind, and generous man, a role model for all stepfathers. I had a fondness for his inventions that failed. Just before he died, he was working on the hurricane buster, a plane with a 2km wingspan that would have dropped a lid on hurricanes as they were beginning to form. He was persuaded it wouldn't work, so he switched to making it put out forest fires.
He also wanted to make something that would keep the bubbles in two-litre bottles of pop. It used a wooden frame to crush the bottle as it emptied. He finally gave up when the prototype was roughly the size of an iron maiden. The funeral is at Exeter Cathedral, on Wednesday afternoon.
✒I dislike the burka and remember seeing a poor Muslim woman in a restaurant in Sri Lanka trying to eat while wearing one. She had to lift the bottom of the headdress, then somehow shovel the food up, aiming for her mouth. Last year, waiting in a London hospital I saw a woman in the full kit. Her husband arrived with their two little girls, who eagerly ran to their mummy, and I thought how sad it was that in a decade or so these delightful kids would probably be imprisoned by fabric too. But unlike the French I don't think we should tell people what to wear. Jack Straw complained about burkas in his constituency, Blackburn, and said it's vital to assess people's facial and body language when you speak to them. Hasn't he ever used a phone?
✒True story about Judi Dench, whose eyesight is beginning to fail, though not her spunk. Recently she accidentally stepped off a pavement in London, straight in front of a taxi, whose driver slammed on the brakes, leaned out of the window and yelled, "Bitch!" She stood her ground, raised herself to her full height, and declared, "That's Dame Bitch to you."
✒Back to earlier columns, and my admiration for American restaurants. Tony Lurcock sends a story from years ago at Crawford's canteen-style restaurant in Oxford. "The pudding of the day was apple crumble and custard; the lady in front of me asked for crumble without custard, but was told, as the custard was poured on, that the menu was the menu. I heard the server remark to her assistant 'If you start giving people what they want, there'll be no end to it'."
✒And more mad labels: Jude Anderson sent in the label from a tin of Sainsbury's organic kidney beans in water. Everything in the tin is organic, except the fluid: "water cannot be organic", we learn. Jennifer Gale bought some Morrisons sparkling spring water: "vegetarian", apparently. Christine Hyatt acquired Wild Olive hand-made soap, tuberose-and-jasmine flavour, "inspired by nature". A stern warning on the back says, "do not eat."
Back at Morrisons, Fiona Widdows bought what appeared to be a discounted pack of raspberries: "£2.50, now £2.50," it declares, adding helpfully, "Save 0p".
And I loved the breakfast panini Sheila Phelvin bought on an East Coast train. The list of ingredients includes, "outdoor reared sausage". Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's work, I expect. "The young sausages are allowed to roam free, not cooped up in the inhumane 'banger bays …" But what do they eat?