pat of butter smack in the face, right under the eyes of a traffic warden ... the finest panama hats, of course, being Monte Cristi superfine .. flipped her over without warning and ... tiny oleaginous room- service waiter clutching a bottle of turps and a shaving-brush ... "But you can't have a view of the Acropolis in Rome," he snarled ... voluptuous curves and the scent of coumarine and ambergris .. eggs Benedict ... innovative mathematical model of binary star-systems, which he sold to the .. sodomising a dugong .. unsatisfactory conclusion .. Tony Blair's fault.13 June 1999: .. shuddering descent into Heathrow .. whiny-voiced proletariat .. nylon leisurewear .. pall of dirty yellow haze .. think air-conditioning had never been invented .. how would it be if everyone did it .. all right for some .. Cassius Dio, I think it was, said that .. immaculately cut Solaro cloth suit .. flashing-eyed beauty with a secretive smile ... actually buys Richard Clayderman, except the Chinese, who know no better .. four-poster bed with shackles at each corner .. John Donne's The Good Morrow .. pat of butter smack in the face .. the grey London dawn .. rid ourselves of little Mr Blair once and for all .. angry and inflamed .. dispossessed and disenfranchised .. GP's surgery .. lotion ...20 June 1999: .. illusions of childhood, or is it just me? .. sand in the ice-cream cone .. ferry clanking across the bay on its chains .. poor Dylan Thomas .. fat git ...
white bread, of course, the only way to clean a Monte Cristi .. smell of turpentine .. psychic wound .. only find them in Essex (I think the word is "scrannet") .. immaculately cut Solaro cloth suit .. pat of butter smack in the face .. looked like it had cleared up, but then I noticed a .. hell Blair thinks he's doing .. flashing-eyed beauty with a secretive smile .. suppose they think it's clever .. "let you know," but she never did.There Now you know what to expect Repetitive and mawkish? I think not Res, as they say, ipsa loquitur.. Levels of sexual frustration and insecurity in Britain have reached an unprecedented high, at least according to the downmarket women's magazine I picked up in a hairdresser's the other day, having searched in vain for The Economist for almost a full second And if that is so, then it is clear where the blame lies With television. On the box, everybody is doing it, or talking about doing it, all the time Mostly on purpose but sometimes accidentally. Even Richie Benaud, doyen of cricket commentators, chose some odd words to sum up Robert Croft's dismissal of Alpesh Vadher, in the England v Kenya match on Tuesday "Between the legs and completely in the dark," he said. Seriously, though, I've no real objection to sex on the telly, and I'll spare you the old joke about the aerial getting in the way.
But is it really any wonder that we get frustrated and insecure, and start thinking that maybe there is something wrong with us doing it once a week after Newsnight if we're lucky? In An Evil Streak (ITV), Gemma (Rosalind Bennett) complained that sex with her husband was nice but predictable, like listening over and over to the same wonderful piano recital. It didn't seem to me like much to complain about, but her uncle Alex (Trevor Eve) sympathised "Always Chopin, never Gershwin or Brahms," he said. My wife didn't look up from her crossword but evidently appreciated the metaphor. A little later, in the kitchen, I caught her humming "Chopsticks", which was rather humbling, until I consoled myself with the thought that she must have been with someone else.An Evil Streak is another tale of sexual skulduggery from Andrea Newman, who brought us the compelling A Bouquet of Barbed Wire and A Sense of Guilt, as well as last year's disappointing Imogen's Face With An Evil Streak she is back on top form In other words, it is a bit daft and a bit pretentious It is resolutely, almost parodically middle-class It contains not a single sympathetic character. And yet it is thoroughly compelling.It all began with a flash-forward to Alex's discovery of Gemma's bloody suicide, sparing us the distraction of wondering where it would all end. For Newman's concern is not with the starting or finishing point of an adulterous affair, but with the messiness in between. Moreover, in Alex, she has created her nastiest character yet, a lecturer in medieval English whose passion for Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde inspires him to inveigle his beloved niece into having an affair, in his flat, with his domestic cleaner, an out-of-work actor.
That's what Troilus and Criseyde is about, apparently, give or take a can of Pledge. However, the Chaucer connection is a highbrow conceit on the part of Newman, a former English teacher herself; indeed, the repeated cutting between Alex's lecture and Gemma's seduction was like being hit over the head alternately with The Joy of Sex and The Oxford Companion to Medieval Literature. I suppose Newman wanted to lend some intellectual credibility to what is essentially a story about an old-fashioned perv And quel perv, as Antoine de Caunes would say. For Alex not only steers Gemma into the affair, but sits behind a two-way mirror, watching.Incidentally, I had the pleasure of meeting Andrea Newman a few months ago, and she told me that An Evil Streak nearly became a play in the West End.