How right I was to choose to spend my summer holidays in Moscow! As I stand in the lunchtime cabbage queue gazing at the onion domes of the Kremlin and listening to the music of the balalaika, I might almost be in Market Harborough. I could have gone on a golfing holiday with someone calling himself "Kenny Bunkport", but I thought that a damned fool name (even for an American) and declined the invitation. I fear that my fur hat is a trifle warming, and the snow that I carefully placed on my boots has long since melted, but it behoves one to make every effort to follow the local customs.
It was, I believe, Emlyn Hughes who wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. Such were my feelings on waking to hear that a cadre of Communists has seized power after enticing Gorbachev into the coal cellar and locking the door behind him. (A mean trick that: I recall poor Maclennan falling for it three times one Christmas at Bonkers Hall.) When last this happened I had the devil of a job spiriting the Tsar and his family out of the country, and I have not brought my bison costume with me this time. I told Lenin that no good would come of his "revolution", and his later success as a songsmith (in the company of Mr Paul McCartney) did nothing to change my view. Nor have his execrable manners improved with the passing years: I took the trouble of going to see him the other day, and he just lay there without saying a word.
A tense evening at the Russian parliament building as we prepare to defy the usurpers. As one who has outfaced David Owen's tanks in Whitehall Place I fear nothing, but I should feel happier if a detatchment of former Liberal Assembly stewards were at the barricades with me. Our predicament cries out for professional expertise, and that fine body of men and women has more experience of preventing people getting into buildings than any I know - unless it be the gatemen at Grace Road. Even in their absence we are a fine company, including amongst our number Mr Boris Yeltsin, who has had the kind thought of sending Gorbachev a game of ludo in case he finds the time weighing heavily upon him, and an Orthodox priest. It is a particular pleasure to meet the latter as one comes across so many unorthodox vicars nowadays.
What a wonderful day! The plotters, after reading a condemnatory letter in The Guardian from Margaret Drabble and her riends, have fled to a distant place where Marxists still feel safe - I imagine that their destination will turn out to have been either the London Borough of Newham or a department of sociology at a British university - and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are to be granted immediate first-class status. I write these lines on an aeroplane as we hurry to rescue Gorbachev, and am pleased that I thought to bring with me another jar of the "Old Granny Meadowcroft's Mulberry Hair Restorer", which he was so taken with when last we met.
Arriving back in Red Square this evening I come across Paul Foot (a grandson of my staunch old friend Isaac, I believe) making a speech to the assembled populace. There can be no doubt that he is a dangerous revolutionary - his housemaster has had cause to mention the length of his hair on more than one occasion - but I fear that his oration is not well received. "Comrades," he begins, "we all know that Socialism-as-it-has-been-practised has led to the deaths of tens of millions of your fellow countrypersons, but a truly Socialist state would..." At this point he is met by a hail of chess pieces, those ingenious wooden dolls that fit inside one another, and leather-bound volumes of the collected speeches of Leonid Brezhnev (published by Mr Robert Maxwell) and forced to retire. I trust that I do not flatter myself when I say that my \par own address on Free Trade and Land Reform is better received - and a great deal more relevant.
Later I spy Sir David Steel (or "Stalin" as he is known hereabouts) making his way through the crowds. Why has he not been arrested?
Breakfast is somewhat complicated by my hotel's having declared its independence from the Soviet Union yesterday evening. The queue that forms for cabbage, in winding three times around the block, inevitably crosses the international frontier in a number of places, requiring passport formalities to be completed each time. But I am loath to belittle the aspirations of any small nation: quite apart from my determination that Rutland shall one day be restored to its ancient and rightful place, I have happy memories of a weekend that I, or at least the greater part of me, spent in the Vatican City as a guest of the Pope (a Roman Catholic, I was interested to learn).
My heart is heavy at leaving Russia, but I have promised to lead the Rutland Morris Men in the Notting Hill Carnival procession, and a gentleman is bound by his word. Yet some things are already clear: the Russian people still have far to go in breaking the power of petty officialdom - why should a man not take two dozen cases of Oborski vodka on a flight with him if he so chooses? - and Miss Fearn's collection of dolls in national costume is once again incomplete.
How lucky I am that I can leave the Hall knowing that all will be well on my return! The unfortunate Gorbachev will now be telephoning \par home every five minutes if he takes his delightful wife on so much as a weekend in Skegness.