LONDON REFLEXIONS

I am sitting in a large room in one of those elegant terraces sandwiched between St James’s Park and Pall Mall. In former times this must have been a dining room, or even a small ballroom; the elegant townhouse of some Regency grandee no doubt Now it is just a meeting room in the alliterative Institute for Materials, Minerals and Mining, and I am meeting.

On one side of me sits an executive from the BBC. On the other a kindly and vivacious woman who used to be a member of the European Parliament. We are here on UNESCO business. Through the tall windows I can see the bare tops of the trees on the Mall. This might be London; but it could equally be a great house anywhere.

Four and a half hours earlier I had hauled myself out of bed at some ungodly hour to be here, but the pain of early rising is worth the trouble for the hours it adds to the day. The meeting ends, as usual, without conclusion and I have time to cut away, up through St James’s, to where I am meeting my brother in a café on Piccadilly.

Usually we pass like ships in the night, my brother and I, bumping into each other, sometimes quite literally, on a London street. In fact, now that I come to think about it, I have encountered both my brother and my sister quite randomly on London streets. The chance of this must be akin to winning the lottery I would have thought. Still, this time we planned to meet.

As I arrived he was talking business to someone whose circular features and vaguely foreign tones reminded me of the sad-faced Peter Lorre - one of the ‘usual suspects’ who seemed to come as a job lot with Bogart on 1940s films like ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and ‘Casablanca.’ When the round-faced gentleman confirmed he was leaving that very afternoon for a destination in the Caucasus, the pigeon hole into which I had momentarily placed him was complete. Somehow this seemed normal.

Whenever I am in London I always think that here is a city that might be run far better by the Parisian authorities, or those of New York even. There is an element of unfortunate chaos to it. Few things seem to work as they should. Yet there is a charm and a richness here that can perhaps only exist alongside the chaos. The diversity is much greater than you would see on the streets of Cardiff let alone its hinterland. This is not only a diversity of origin and culture, but of wealth and dress, of occupation, of language.

As I walked through Bond Street it was Russian I heard on the air as elegant men and women in clothes that looked to cost the average of a month’s salary browsed insouciantly in the shop windows. On the tube it was French: everywhere I went. As if Sarkozy had sent an advance guard to succeed where Napoleon had failed.

I am struck by how odd the temperature feels in London. The city is usually a couple of degrees warmer than anywhere else and the buildings are of course heated to hospital incubator levels. The idea of pullovers being garments designed to keep one warm has clearly been long forgotten by their designers. But London also has its cold and shivering spots. Something perhaps to do with it being an eastern city and dry to boot. Stand still and rapidly the cold enters your bones. It is impossible, I find to dress comfortably for, unless you hurry, mouse-like, from building to building, which is a shame.

For one of the advantages of central London is its surprising compactness. You can walk to most places in less than half an hour. And you see so much more of interest than taking the underground. I meandered (the word being appropriate for I found I had strayed too far north and not far enough east) towards the British Museum, always full of treasures and a convenient spot to open the computer and collect emails.

The exhibition on the famous Persian Shah Abbas, I confess, I found disappointing, on balance. It seemed as much full of large pieces of Chinese porcelain as of anything else, its only connection with the fabled sixteenth century Persian ruler being that he donated it to religious foundations. It is there, of course, because at the time it was very expensive (even though the style seems to me appalling reminiscent of Victorian lavatories) and Shah Abbas, being a holy as well as a ruthless ruler, gave a lot of it away to the shrines, slides of which illuminated the walls.

These prompted me to ask why are these decorated mosques - all blue? There are touches of yellow, black, gold, white - but the predominant colour is blue. Yet the stone is a very pretty golden Bath stone. Would the buildings look even more beautiful undecorated, I wondered? And if they were decorated surely the odd red shrine would not come amiss. I am sure that sixteenth century Persians didn’t all support Chelsea.

There were carpets, of course - very pretty if you like that sort of thing and no doubt, if you know your carpets, very impressive - but they did look like the worn rugs you see in even the most average stately home. Most impressive was the beautiful Arabian calligraphy including a translation that read: ‘eat less, speak less, sleep less, learn more.’ Was this directed at teenagers, I wanted to ask?

But why so few pictures or portraits? (Though there were some.) Why so few trinkets, swords, armour and domestic artefacts, clothes even - even if they were copies?

After this there was just time for a dash around the galleries of pre-history. The iron age is well represented - but there is almost nothing Neolithic. I know that the Neolithics didn’t leave much in the way of portable artefacts - but considering this was the first European civilisation enduring for some four thousand years and stretching the length of the Atlantic seaboard from Scandinavia to Iberia - you’d think the Museum might do more. I live in expectation.

Then a hurry back to the station, this time on the underground, flashing my oyster card, which I am still not quite used to. I open the wallet place the card on the key pad and wait, not realising that the portal has already opened. Seasoned travellers flash their card and pass through the portal without breaking step. Still, I’ve only had my card since last summer and I don’t visit London much.

Maybe it’s just age. I feel increasingly unco-ordinated when, at the station, I try to manage paper, tickets, bags and so on. I have the frantic air of the irregular traveller. At Paddington I put a ticket into the gate machine. It doesn’t work. I’ve put the seat reservation ticket in. How can you tell? They all look the same. But the ticket man, neatly dressed and sitting five yards away can manage it. How? The flesh is willing, but the brain is weak.

Yes, definitely, the grandchild has arrived. It is a signal to pass the baton on. In my own time, of course.

CONFESSIONS OF A GRANDPARENT

This will be, unashamedly, a piece about my new grandchild, so those of you who are inclined to see such young beings as merely ‘a hole at both ends,’ can look away now and find something better to do: Sky has some excellent football coverage, I believe, and there are pressing things to fuss with in the garden.

It is all of 36 years since I last held an equally small scrap of humanity - at least one that preserved a good part of my own genome. How I managed then, I don’t know. Grandparents were noticeable by their absence, while the books seemed just too theoretical. In any case, I had quite forgotten it all. But I do remember that somehow there was nothing to learn, nature, by some miraculous process, just took over. Instinct, I suppose.

In any case, as quickly as I became expert with the new born, we were off on the helter-skelter trip down, or rather up, the ages of life: toddlerhood and talking, reading and nurseries, school and so on.This time I expect this progression will seem even faster. Young Topi is a week old already. In a few short months - by the end of the summer holidays - he will be crawling and already taking his first steps by Christmas.

I call him Topi, as no-one else seems inclined to call him anything. With great earnestness do his parents produce constant streams of names, which fade from consciousness like mayflies. We are no further forward.

Topaz was his womb nickname. Topaz was inside the ‘bump.’ At the time we did not know his gender, of course, though we might have learned from the scans. We preferred not to know. Younger Daughter, his mother, has always been endeared to having a couple of (presumably female) offspring called Topaz and Ameythyst - names which even Mrs Worthington would have been pleased to put straight on stage.

I have shortened and masculinized Topaz to Topi - or Toppy, if you prefer - but Topi sounds both more exotic and has a handsome ruggedness that comes with a gentle and caring interior. No-one, anyway, has objected and his parents seem grateful that someone is calling him something in the six week interregnum before they need to pay a visit to the registrar.

I have to confess to being reluctant to hold Topi when I first saw him. An alien, delicate and soggy piece of flesh wrapped in swaddling layers of blanket and what I regarded as a completely unecessary hat, given that the fellow already has a lot more hair of his own that many of the medical men who flitted in from time to time.

But once placed in my arms it is remarkable how quickly the parental instinct usurps such feelings. One ‘knows’ without thinking how to hold a baby, how to position his head close to your own heart and how to move with gentle rocking motions that soothe and comfort.

You forget just how easy the bonding process is and indeed the degree of interaction develops unbidden. Babies are not inert pieces of tissue, they react vigorously to this and that and even when they are content to snuggle asleep against your chest, that itself is a reaction to feeling safe and secure.

It’s been a week now and already we have our little routines. I sing or hum to little Topi while walking up and down. He seems to like the Souza march, which Monty Python took as their theme tune, but Leonard Cohen also seems to go down well. Now and then we do Mozart - at least we try. This, too is lapped up with the rest.

All of this makes me fancy that Topi will be musical - or rather is musical. I can’t remember singing in the same way to my own newborns. But there is something in this baby that demands it. The big eyes, fringed at this stage of development with blue, open and rock from side to side as they try to focus. ‘It will come, Topi,’ I say, ‘it will come, your focus.’ At the moment, trying to focus just makes the little fellow screw up his face and shake his head.

His little fingers, long and narrow, with perfectly formed (and clean) fingernails, clutch mine, with a grip that is surprisingly light, while he forgets about music and remembers the only thing that babies are really interested in when they are not asleep - food.

I give him my knuckle to suck and am initially surprised not just by the force but by the efficiency of the action. Whereas all else about baby is loose and unco-ordinated, half-formed and helpless, the sucking reflex is well-honed.

And once lips touch knuckle he draws his head back, waggles it from side to side and then lurches forward in a species of head butt. The suction starts and we have ‘lock-on.’

Disappointment clearly follows as the knuckle fails to provide anything sweet, warm and nutritious. Topi then boasts a ferocious frown. But, persistent chap that he is he tries again, jerking his head back, doing the little wiggle, and then throwing himself again forward. Thus we continue until he tires and falls asleep, still ‘locked-on’ to my finger.

Yes, all this really is a miracle. And, for it, ordinary life seems to stop, everyday priorities melting away like snow before a warm wind.

So, I am back to re-learning nursery rhymes and finger games and how to make the legs of Pipany’s wonderful Babbit go pitter-patter, pitter-patter. I am back to looking at baby books and wondering (at times) whether the babies that they know are anything like the babies I have known. But most of all I am back to feeling that fierce, defensive pride that wants to love and protect one’s offspring; to draw out and reinforce its aptitudes, to help to link all those myriads of unformed connections in his brain that provide the basis of intelligence and to help him to grow into a sound and happy little soul.

Which is all most wonderful and perfect.