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 Diana Athill |
Author Diana, 92, beats bailiffs
ONE is a 92-year-old lady, an acclaimed author to boot; the other a bailiff. Who do you think will win?
In a wonderful turn of events, the victor on this occasion is the nonagenarian, Diana Athill
(pictured), who was told on Wednesday (yesterday) – after – she would be refunded the £600 bill she recently paid to a debt
collector.
One might ask how Ms Athill, who won the Costa Prize for Biography earlier this year for her novel Somewhere Towards the End, ended up in such dire straits.
In fact, the author from Elsworthy Terrace, Primrose Hill, had made a slight error in filling out a registration form for her disabled badge.
Several ignored letters later, as she convalesced at home with a broken arm, Ms Athill received a visit from a “huge, rather frightening looking man” looking for monies owed to the dreaded Congestion Charge. But Ms Athill had some heavies of her own. Five female neighbours formed a physical barrier between the bailiff and the author.
Talking about the “hoo-haa” yesterday, Ms Athill told me: “I’ve been here 50 years and all my dear neighbours are so loyal and kind.
“They leapt to my defence, regardless my sin. I never imagined being visited by a bailiff. Apparently he was planning to take my car away without telling me.”
“The poor man looked absolutely shattered by the time he got up here because all the neighbours had been so fierce with him. He said, ‘I’m not used to dealing with ladies over 90. I usually deal with rather husky people.’ This is my first brush with bailiffs and I hope my last.”
Red-faced Transport for London (TfL) officials assured me last night Ms Athill would be refunded the money, acknowledging she was a blue badge holder who had made “an honest mistake”.
Presumably they don’t want a visit from Ms Athill’s heavies either. One of the neighbours, Becky Howard-Dennis, told me: “Diana is a treasure of Elsworthy Terrace, if not a national treasure. The second we saw there was a problem we stepped in to intervene – it very quickly became a posse. It was like, ‘If you want to get to her you’ll have to get through us.’”
A TfL spokeswoman said: “We are going to be refunding the money [Ms Athill] paid to the bailiffs. In cases like this we use our discretion. This is linked into the Mayor wanting to make the Congestion Charge as easy to use as possible.”
Is Royal Free in fit state for physio?
SOMETHING odd is going on at the Royal Free hospital.
My suspicions began a few weeks back when the hospital, who had been treating a colleague for a fractured foot, refused to give him physio treatment.
The attitude at the orthopaedic department appeared to be: If you want treatment, go to a private physiotherapist.
The physiotherapist who treated my colleague privately – £45 a session – told him it was a common ploy at the Free to stop patients claiming treatment and that if they insisted on it the appointment was usually 8-10 weeks later in the hope they would cancel or not bother with it.
Another colleague told me he could not get physio treatment three years ago at the Free.
Now, the hospital has sold off the physio department to a private company (See page 4).
Is a shortage of therapists behind the closed-door policy at the Free?
Perhaps. But then why, apparently, is it easy to get treatment at the University London College Hospital?
Or has the Free been running down the department as a precursor to its sale – in the same manner that one or two public utilities were run down before privatisation in the 80s and 90s?
As I say, there’s something fishy happening at the Free.
Hiroshima... Anniversary is as poignant as ever
A STRANGE silence hung over Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury on Thursday as more than 200 people bowed slightly in memory of the women, men and children who were killed in Japan in 1945 by atomic bombs dropped by US planes.
This ended the war against Japan but ushered in a new fear – the fear of atomic warfare.
Speakers at the ceremony – organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament – included local MP Frank Dobson, Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn, Bruce Kent, CND vice-president, Camden Mayor Faruq Ansari, Pat Allen, the Hackney and Islington CND stalwart, who remembered his reaction 64 years ago on hearing of the destruction of Hiroshima, and Len Aldis of Tower Hamlets on his campaign to get mayors all over the world to declare themselves “Mayors of Peace”.
With daily headlines of the deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan, the annual ceremony – perhaps more than ever – bore a special significance this week.
War writers fought their way up from poor starts
IN today’s hard-pressed book trade I suppose I cannot blame Penguin’s attempt at re-issuing a war-time classic, The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat.
But it made me think of two first-rate war books that have vanished from view. One, From the City, From the Plough, went into several paper-back editions from 1948 until the 60s, and then disappeared.
It was the debut of a very talented East End writer, Alexander Baron. Acclaimed as one of the outstanding novels of the Second World War it is set during the battle for France in 1944.
Another was The Trap by Dan Billany who fought in Africa and Italy until captured by the Germans. He was killed in a struggle with another prisoner. The manuscript for The Trap was given to an Italian farmer who sent it to his parents.
What distinguished both authors from the literati of the day was that they were from poor working-class families – Dan Billany grew up in Hull and worked hard to make his way as a writer.
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Your comments:
Re: Dan Billany. Used copies of his book The Trap are available quite often on line and in second-hand book shops. Dan was not captured by the Germans did not die 'in a struggle with another prisoner. He was lost whilst making his way south to the Allied line in Italy. See www.danbillany.com
V.A. Reeves
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