<div><p> Happiness was receiving a selection of good books in my Christmas stocking and a cold January afternoon in front of a log fire is the perfect way to enjoy them. My daughter Sarah gave me Andrew Roberts's superb Masters and Commanders, a good friend sent me a fascinating treatise on the snowflake, another sent me Black Diamonds, Catherine Bailey's riveting history of the dynastic Fitzwilliam family who built the vast Wentworth House in Yorkshire with its 365 rooms and five miles of passageways, and my stocking also included a new biography of Madame de Staël. In this, the age of the credit crunch, I was particularly struck by certain similarities in the personality and actions of Germaine de Staël's vainglorious father, Jacques Necker, Louis XVI's director of finance who, pre the Revolution, attempted to solve France's equally savage economic woes.</p><p> I read that 'he was a man completely persuaded of his own superiority, so certain he possessed every talent in the highest degree of perfection that he did not look elsewhere for instruction, being always enveloped in his own greatness.' He failed, of course, and I wonder why this leapt out of the page to suggest an accurate profile of our own current saviour of the world.</p><p> What is it about the dawn of a new year that makes me nostalgic about the past? Is it because (quoting Hartley) they did things differently there? Certainly, compared to today, the England we once knew was a foreign country, a point brought home this afternoon when I set aside the necessity to stop sharpening pencils and progress a new novel by embarking on a resolution to rid myself of a landfill of rubbish: letters hoarded for reasons now forgotten (because I cannot decipher who they are from), boxes of early penny coins that once I fondly imagined would increase in value like Krugerrands, a collection of keys that now unlock nothing, a host of fountain pens with crossed nibs, old briar pipes once manfully clenched between perfect teeth, old diaries needing a Bletchley Park cryptographer to decipher and a veritable host of old magazines, among which I found a copy of the now defunct Illustrated London News circa August 1969.</p><p> The opening page had a photograph of that mega-smoothie Roy Jenkins and gave details of his latest budget. That year out of the kindness of his heart he had allowed the road fund licence to remain at £25 (I have just renewed my wife's licence for £185), the old-age pension for married couples had been increased by the princely sum of 16 shillings, and duty on a bottle of sherry had gone up by 9d. Big deal as they say. A large advertisement crowed that you could drive away a brand spanking new 4.2-litre Daimler Sovereign for £2,331.8.0 while the American airline TWA (cruelly known as Try Walking Across by seasoned travellers) was offering two-week holidays in New York including return economy-class fare and a room in a Hilton hotel for £139. If men suffered from hair loss, they could purchase a curiously named 'HE-TYPE' toupée made in all colours from 100 per cent human hair, from £15. Ah, happy days!</p><p> January is not only the month to hunker down and take stock of one's life, it is also the time when boilers, washing machines, dryers and whole armies of light bulbs are programmed to self-destruct simultaneously.</p><p> Two days ago our central heating went into arctic mode, but I somehow managed to locate a non-Polish plumber not vacationing on the Costa Brava willing and able to minister to my urgent needs. Before he even started to dismantle the now silent beast, I thrust a magnum of champagne into his saintly hands and throughout his stay plied him with coffee and nourishment. He worked solidly for two days while Nanette wore enough sweaters to qualify for a BBC Dickensian costume drama and staved off hypothermia. Then, just as we were congratulating ourselves that the worst was over, a sinister trail of water appeared on the stone kitchen floor. Despite frantic mopping-up operations the water reappeared. I contacted another plumber who proved to be a potential Inspector Morse and immediately pin-pointed and repaired the cause of the flooding -- the water-softener overflow pipe was frozen solid. So what else can befall us?</p><p> Pondering the sad demise of Woolworths, I recall that my own criminal past began and ended at the Woolies branch in the East End's Stratford Broadway. At the tender age of eight I stole a single lead soldier there, but was swiftly apprehended by a friendly Dixontype copper who daily shepherded us over the Belisha crossing. He gave me a deserved cuff around the ear and told me that if I continued in my wicked ways, I would end up breaking rocks on Dartmoor. I bore no resentment towards him, and indeed was grateful he administered such immediate justice and saved me from having a criminal record.</p><p> Today his actions would earn him immediate ignominy and dismissal, but then today we live in a climate of political correctness.</p><p> When lollipop women are forbidden to wind tinsel around their placards and playing the ancient game of conkers is deemed too dangerous for children, we should perhaps label it political lunacy, a symbol of the headlong descent into a nanny state that will emasculate us all before we are much older.</p><p> After all, we have already cravenly accepted the abolition of so many basic liberties, so why be surprised?</p><p>© 2009 Spectator Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=41284417&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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