Monday
SPOILER ALERT: After 39 episodes, five years and four seasons, Succession bowed out with a note-perfect finale. All loose ends more or less tied up. Most of all it has been a satisfying if disconcerting psychological journey throughout. Writing that somehow made you care about characters who were fundamentally dislikable.
Seldom has the private jet and chauffeur-driven car lifestyle of the super-rich been made to seem quite so empty. Just a dysfunctional mass of insecurity from an entitled family who can never have too much. Quick to spot weakness in others, slow to recognise it in themselves. No opportunity passed up to double-cross. The series creator, Jesse Armstrong, has said there will be no fifth season. But part of its genius is that you could imagine any number of sequels devoted to the main characters. The franchise has so much more to give.
We last see Kendall walking towards the water’s edge. Pursued by Colin, who presumably stops him jumping in. So what becomes of him? Does his past come back to bite him? I think not. I somehow see him lurching from one rehab centre to another, never able to come to terms that he has had what he believes is his birthright snatched away. A billionaire destined to while away his days pointlessly playing golf with Prince Andrew.
As for Shiv? Surely she has her baby and then has an affair with Lukas Matsson. Her marriage to Tom was never going to last. Roman could end up the king of the daytime TV sofa. He at least recognises that at heart, he and his siblings are just bullshitters. And Tom? He’s never really belonged. He’s always known it. Just a tolerated courtier, happy to be a punchbag as the price for a seat at the top table. Matsson will spit him out within months. Sooner or later, he’ll drift back to Minnesota where he will run a successful pontoon boat rental on Lake Minnetonka. Which was always really his level.
Tuesday
It’s all very confusing. First the government says it will comply with the Covid Inquiry’s request for all the ministerial WhatsApps, notebooks and diaries to be handed over. Then it says it won’t. It has read them all and has decided they are not relevant. Next it says that all the messages must have been lost. Civil servants have looked and looked but can’t find them. This after the same civil servants had handed over much of the same information to the privileges committee for their investigation into Boris Johnson. I guess the WhatsApps and diaries must have slipped down the back of a departmental sofa.
Now we find ourselves in the even weirder situation where it’s Johnson who is more or less on the side of truth and justice. Quite the narrative time-slip. ‘Hold on,’ says Boris. If the government can’t find all the messages, then my lawyers probably have copies. Though not anything on his personal phone. God knows what’s on them. So if it’s more convenient, he’d be happy to give the Covid inquiry everything he had.
All of which is awkward for Rishi Sunak, because this time it’s his own WhatsApp messages that are under scrutiny. Now have this strange standoff where Sunak says he has handed over more than enough documents and refuses – as a matter of principle – to hand over any more. At least that was his position by the time the first deadline passed today. And it still was by the time the second one had passed. There must be something there that someone doesn’t want us to see.
It seems that Sunak only wants to cooperate with the inquiry so long as he is allowed to determine what is and what isn’t relevant. But even if the WhatsApps aren’t strictly relevant, it may be helpful to know what the government thought was more important than Covid.
Wednesday
Hard to believe but it’s been almost exactly 30 years since Shane Warne bowled the “ball of the century”, his first delivery in Ashes cricket, which swerved to leg, pitched outside leg stump and clipped Mike Gatting’s off-stump. I was there at Old Trafford that day but probably had the worst view of the ball as I was sitting in the pavilion, side on to the wicket, and had no idea of how much it had spun.
Then I also wasn’t terribly interested in what had happened to Gatting as my focus was on Robin Smith, the batsman who replaced him. I was in Manchester for the launch of the book I had written with Smith and had been counting on him to make a big score to help drum up sales. Sadly, he lasted only six balls before he also fell to Warne. Needless to say the book never troubled the bestseller lists and I’ve often since wondered if I wasn’t in some way responsible for Smith’s decline as a batsman.
At the time I pitched the idea for the book, Robin was England’s pre-eminent batsman, the one man who could stand firm and score big runs against the world’s best pace attacks. So I had thought it would be interesting to write a book that focused on the psychology of batting. The anxiety, the concentration required, the visualisation, the waiting, the mind games. And luckily for me, Robin had agreed. So we had spent hours together, talking through what was going on in his head and watching videos of his innings.
But it gradually became apparent that – despite all the theory of sports psychology that I tried to pack in – Smith didn’t actually think that much while he was at the crease. Rather he was playing mainly by instinct, which was why he was so brilliant. All I had done by making him think about the psychological processes was to confuse him. Certainly he was never the same player again. Robin Smith: My Part in His Downfall. Something I’ve always felt guilty about, as he was a lovely, charming man.
Thursday
A huge thank you to all who got in contact with me in response to my plea for help with the tree fern in my front garden. I’m sorry if I wasn’t able to thank everyone personally, but having taken my pick of what I thought were the very best bits of advice, I am thrilled to say the plant is now very much alive.
Just a few weeks ago, I had thought its days were numbered. Instead, I chopped back all the dead fronds and watered the hollow at the crown of the fern with a seaweed nutrient and about four weeks or so later there are now four new fronds beginning to unfurl. Still a long way short of the 12 or so that appear most years, but hopefully – if next winter isn’t quite as brutal as the last – then maybe it will recover its full glory.
So thank you all again. Even so, I can sense that a trip to one of my favourite plant nurseries, Architectural Plants, near Horsham, is in order as several plants have not survived the winter. Only one of my ginger lilies is showing any sign of life, several of the young bananas that self-propagated are ex-bananas, and some of the cordylines are barely alive. My goal is now to find a cactus-like Euphorbia ingens to fill the gap. Then the trick will be to wrap it up warm in the autumn and hope it lives. A quasi-tropical garden is an ongoing battle in Tooting.
Friday
A fortnight ago I went to Minneapolis for a long weekend. Which sounds daft. Who in their right mind would want to scramble their brains flying back and forth through six time zones just for three days? Except that it had taken me the best part of six months to realise that if I didn’t take an opportunity like that then I would hardly ever get to see my daughter.
I had a fab time with Anna and her husband, Robert, just wandering round, meeting some of their friends and having a ritual family pedicure at the nail bar. We also got to hang out at one of my favourite places in the world. The beach at Cedar Lake, just a 10-minute drive from downtown Minneapolis. It’s a place for the soul.
Leaving Anna again was tough. I always wanted my children to be independent and make their own lives. But there is independent and too independent. I had never banked on having a daughter living in the US; somehow I had always imagined she would live in London. Or, at a push, in Brighton. Which is where my son, Robbie, lives.
Anyway, these aren’t the sort of problems that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are likely to have. They will be lucky to see their new arrivals reach their teens. The next headache is to arrange a family holiday when Anna is over in August. God, it’s hard being a needy parent.
