The Digested Twenty-first Century (16 page)

Digested read, digested:
Please shag me too, Tony.

It was the Alaska State Fair, August 2008. I passed the Right to Life stand with my daughter’s face on their poster. ‘That’s you,
baby-girl,’ I said to Piper. ‘There’s no member of this family your momma wouldn’t sell out to promote her career.’ As we watched three commy abortionists being burned to death, Senator McCain called my cell phone. Would I like to help him lose the presidential race?

My parents moved to Alaska when I was three and I fell in love with the outdoors and killing things. Swearing the Oath of Allegiance in school gave me a sense of civic pride and I vowed to serve America and go to church a lot.

After coming runner-up, and last, in the Miss Alaska pageant, I married Todd Palin, a guy with his own snow mobile. Todd blessed me with five children: Track, ‘we’d have called him hockey if he’d been born in the winter’; Bristol, ‘Todd said he hoped she’d have a rack like mine’; Willow, ‘we misspelled pillow’; Piper, ‘after our light aircraft’; and Trig, ‘short for the trigger on our AK47’.

‘Dang it,’ I thought, ‘this election campaign is getting mighty dirty.’ But Todd told me God had a purpose for me and after praying for his guidance, I was duly elected mayor of Wasilla by nine votes to six. Various stories have been told about how I dismissed a librarian for stocking anti-American literature on evolution and how I tried to get my brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. Well I don’t have space in this 400-page book to go into this in any detail, but if I did I would say that anyone who messes with God or my family has to deal with this pitbull in lipstick!

My proudest moment in office was seeing off an attempt by the police chief to introduce gun and alcohol controls. I hate liberals who don’t understand how things work in the 49th State. It is a God-given right for any Alaskan to get drunk and take out anything that moves. Why else did God create guns? Would He have made animals out of meat if He had wanted us to be vegetarians?

Having served on the Oil Commission, I realised that Alaskan
politics was rife with corruption and the waste of public funds, and when I was elected governor in 2006 by 73 votes to 59, I vowed to end pork-barrel politics. Mysteriously, though, I find I have omitted my initial support for the ‘Bridge to Nowhere, Jobs for the Boys’ scheme, a $300m construction project to build a bridge to reach 11 people. I would rather now concentrate on my vice-presidential campaign.

‘Tell me what you know about American foreign policy,’ McCain said, when we met at his ranch in Arizona.

‘About as much as the average American,’ I replied. ‘So that’s nothing, then.’ ‘Hell, Senator. I don’t need to know anything about the history of the Middle East to know the Iraqis are all a bunch of Russian Czechoslovakian Shiites.’

‘Where do you stand on God?’

‘Sarah Palin won’t hold back on God, Senator. I’m proud to believe in the book of Genesis that says the Garden of Eden was in Alaska. Jeez, every December I even go out hunting dinosaurs.’

For some reason I didn’t get to see much of Senator McCain after this and although there were great moments, such as talking to President Sarkozy of Paris, Texas on the phone, our campaign never really took off and we were narrowly beaten by 250m votes to 23.

The mud-slinging started in earnest once we returned to Alaska. Rumours about my marriage circulated – dang it, why would I want to divorce a man with the biggest skidoo in Anchorage? – but most damaging were the complaints about my ethical conduct, all of which have been dismissed except the ones that haven’t. So I won’t be standing for governor again. But if the American people are as stupid as I think they are, it’s Palin for president in ‘12!

Digested read, digested:
Going Rouge, An American Embarrassment.

1975:
I meet Harold at my sister’s. ‘Must You Go?’ he asks, as I get up to leave. We talk until dawn. Harold: I am loopy about you. Me: I would make a very good secretary. Harold: The same thought had occurred to me. Harold sends me a poem. ‘My darling Antonia/I just had to phone ya.’ I am thrillingly in love, though it is terribly awkward as I am heppily married to Hugh, and Harold is heppily married to Vivien except when he is having affairs. Luckily our children Orlando, Pericles, Immaculata and Stigmata just want me to be heppy.

1976:
Take Harold to meet my uncle, the writer Anthony Powell. Tony asks me if Harold is one of the Northumberland Pinters. I shake my head. ‘Oh,’ says Tony, before circling the table in a clockwise direction to pour himself another glass of port. Harold sends me another poem. ‘My heart goes va-va-voom/When you walk in the room.’ His genius is irresistible. He and Hugh have a naked wrestling match in front of the fire while reciting Orlando Furioso, after which Hugh gives us his blessing to move in together. I am the heppiest woman alive.

1977:
Harold and I have a long chat about money. Frankly, we are down to our last two castles and we are flat broke. We open a bottle of champagne and go to dinner at the Connaught to cheer ourselves up. The phone rings. It is Melvyn, Larry, Ralph and Trevor all calling to say Harold is a genius. I have to agree with them. We get home and Harold recites Eliot. He does so brilliantly.

1980:
To Sissinghurst where Harold learns bridge, confirming my theory he has a naturally brilliant brain. We then join Tom Stoppard for a game of cricket. Harold scores a scintillating 1 before writing me another poem. ‘Your radiance divine/Is mine, all mine.’ If he wasn’t such an outstanding playwright, they would have to make him poet laureate.

1982:
I continue to beaver away at my little histories while Harold creates his masterpieces in his Super-Study. He is in a furious temper because he can’t make the second act of A Kind of Alaska work. He says he can’t write any more. I glance at his notes. Me: You really haven’t lost it at all. Harold: That was my shopping list.

1985:
Harold is in New York to direct a production of
No Man’s Land
. He rings to say he has a slight cold. I can’t bear the thought of him alone in his hotel room. How I long to mop his fevered brow! Luckily he recovers and the reviews for the play are, of course, marvellous. He sends me another poem. ‘Such beauty, such grace/The smile on your face.’ I really do think it’s the best thing he’s ever written.

1988:
At some point in the last few years, it appears that Hugh and Vivien have both died. But I do not want to dwell on unheppy things. And Harold and I are both so very heppy. We have Daniel Ortega and Vaclav Havel to dinner and are heppy to hear both plan to stage
The Homecoming
once democracy is restored to their countries. Salman was also present. His fatwa is too, too awful, but he is such a handsome man.

1995:
Harold and I are the heppiest we have ever been now Dada has finally accepted our marriage. Harold has decided to return to
acting and is quite brilliant in
Betrayal
. Jeremy Irons and Claire Bloom say it is terribly unfair he should be the world’s greatest actor as well as the world’s greatest writer. I am the luckiest woman alive.

2005:
Every theatre in the world is performing one of Harold’s plays. It is no more than he deserves. Harold is increasingly angry about the war in Iraq and he sends me another poem of transcendent beauty. ‘Without you at my feet/I am incomplete/Just like the widows in Baghdad/Whose husbands have been murdered/By that fucking war criminal Blair.’ So sweet!

2008:
Despite filling the house with the scent of freesias, I am very, very unheppy. Harold is dying. He writes me one last poem. ‘My heart is all yours/My death just a long pause.’

Digested read, digested:
Hark the Harold, angels sing.

I wanted this book to be different from the traditional political memoir. Most, I have found, are rather easy to put down. So what you will read here is not a conventional account of whom I met. There are events and politicians who are absent, not because they don’t matter, but because they are part of a different story to the self-serving one I want to tell!

No, seriously guys, this is going to be well different. How many other world leaders use so many exclamation marks! And it is as a world leader that I’m writing for you about my journey. And what a journey! When I started in politics I was just an ordinary kind
of guy. And you know what? I’m still an ordinary kind of guy – albeit one who has become a multi-millionaire and completely destabilised the Middle East!

You know, I had a tear in my eye when I entered No10 for the first time in 1997, though it wasn’t, as the
Daily Mail
tried to claim, because I was choked with emotion at how far I had come since I was a young, ordinary boy standing on the terraces of St James’ Park, watching Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle. It was because Gordon had hit me. Ah, Gordon! He meant well, I suppose, in his funny little emotionally inarticulate way.

I guess some of you will find it hard to believe, but I never really wanted to be a politician. But sometimes courage is about taking the difficult decisions and when Cherie said, ‘God is calling you to fulfil your destiny’, I knew I had to listen. So it was with a heavy heart that I outmanoeuvred Gordon over the leadership of the party after John’s death – and whatever Gordo says there was never a deal struck at Granita where he could definitely take over after my second term. Because I had my fingers crossed!

The first year in office was pretty exciting and it was great fun having my old mates like Anji in the office. (I’d tried to get in to her sleeping bag once when I was 16 but she kicked me out! Her loss!) The death of the People’s Princess came as a blow – I always found the Royal Family a bit freaky! – but I had a real sense the public were willing me to succeed. A pity the same couldn’t be said for the media, who were only too willing to see the worst in the Bernie Ecclestone and Peter Mandelson affairs. Looking back, I feel bad about forcing Peter to resign. But at the time it was him or me. So what the hell!

I find also that Mo Mowlam’s part in the Northern Ireland peace process has been rather overstated. So to put the record
straight, it was all down to me. The talks had reached an impasse and I said to Gerry and David, ‘Look guys, we’re on a journey,’ and they said, ‘Cool Tony, we’re with you.’

If only Iraq had been that simple. I know there are some of you out there who want me to apologise, but life isn’t that simple when there’s a war crimes indictment at stake. Look, I feel the deaths of our servicemen every bit as keenly as if the bullets had pierced me like stigmata, but sometimes one has to just stand up and do the right thing even if the evidence isn’t there. OK, I will admit I did have a bit of a wobbly – Cherie had to give me big cuddles, know what I mean! – when it turned out Saddam didn’t have WMD, but I honestly never lied about them. It was just one, small, teeny mistake and everyone tore me to pieces! Give us a break! And for the record I didn’t always have a plan to go to war. The first I heard of it was when Statesman George – Top bloke! Top thinker! – phoned to say US troops were going in!

I was pretty fed up when everyone failed to see what we had achieved in Iraq, but an audience with the Pope, who said, ‘It is you who should be baptising me’, soon cheered me up. And I felt a sense of duty to protect the country from Gordon’s incompetence. ‘You’re just waiting until everything’s about to go pearshaped,’ he would yell. As if ! It was only my darling John Prescott’s desire to be out of the limelight as my deputy that prompted my resignation. Selfless little old moi!

Yet, though I feel proud of my achievements and sad at the direction the Labour party is now taking, my journey is not over. It continues ever onwards into farce. May my blessings rain upon the Middle East!

Digested read, digested:
A journey … along the path of self-righteousness.

Man, I only sleep two hours a day so I’ve been conscious for several lifetimes. Shame I’ve missed most of them by being completely out of it. But hey, this is my best guess at what happened so you cats better chill and come for the ride. It ain’t free, but we’ve all gotta pay our dues to the Man, man.

Dartford. Town of short sentences. It was hard, man. When I got kicked out of the school choir, I thought, ‘Fuck these cats.’ That was me done with authority. My guitar. I slept with it, man. You’ve gotta. It’s like running a whorehouse. Fats, Muddy. Music, I was on the black side of town. Mick. He was the greatest R&B singer I ever heard. And I don’t mean maybe. Charlie, Bill and Brian. When we were playing Alexis’s club it was like we were on another planet. We moved to Edith Grove. Man, that was poverty. Pooftahs living above. Bank robbers below.

Andrew Oldham threw Mick and me together. Said, ‘Write songs, dudes.’ Man, my guitar was a mangling, dangling, tangling kinda thang. Tuned it to C. Played a couple of minor breaks. Bobby twiddled some knobs. Charlie hit some back beats. Bill stood in another room. Guess you kinda had to be there.

Satisfaction. Wrote it in my sleep. Then it was hard to tell. They don’t make downers like they used to these days. Mandies, reds, Tuinal. Yeah! And the acid. I was tripping with Johnny Lennon. What a lightweight. The chicks. Anita was some sexy bitch. She made the make on me. Then Mick and his small cock made the make on her. Couldn’t resist. He was like that. So I had the boinky-boinky-boing with Marianne. I guess we’re quits. And she never had the Mars bar. Get me, brother?

We’d had enough of Brian. Long before he died. We heard later some motherfucker said he killed him. Who knows? But even if he did, it would only be manslaughter. Cos Brian was a whining son of a bitch. He could take his narcs, mind. Heroin. Man, it was all around. Gram Parsons. You couldn’t find a nicer cat to do cold turkey with. Then, like, it was we gotta get out of town. The pigs were out to bust us. The Man wanted all our cash.