The silence of the Irish Times newsroom was broken by the soft, tearing noise of the writer of "An Irishman's Diary" plucking out his thinning grey locks in morose, despairing clumps.
Before him lay the morning newspapers of Europe. The headlines of Le Matin read: "Sacre Bleu! Pas de Nouvelles Aujourd'hui - Encore." The front page of the Frankfurter Allgemeine was a little more fulsome: "Donner und Blitzen: Eine Kleine Neues Zis Morgen, Butt Nott Mutch, Mate." The Gazetta del Roma was pretty similar: "Mama Mia. Pauco Novita in Tutto Italia!" From Madrid, the tidings were pretty much the same: "!Caramba!Una Autro Bleeding Journo Sin Novedad!"
The agency machines lay wordessly mute as the tufts of hair were hoisted by the root from the diarist's follicles. From across the world, there was nothing, merely the silence of the moon. Machines which had once chattered about lunar landings and titanic wars, or earthquakes, famines and tsunamis washing away entire Pacific islands - wholesome things which bring joy to a journalist's simple soul - now communed with their innards, maybe occasionally uttering the small meditative drone of a bee in an ashram.
Provincial newspapers
Kneeing UPI in the privates, and kicking Reuter's shin with the steel-tipped boot he normally used only on the editor, the diarist rubbed some hair lotion into a scalp which was beginning to resemble the Ho Chi Minh trail after a visit by B52s. How to escape the forlornness of the silly season? A small, confident smile appeared on his face as he reached for the provincial newspapers of Ireland, whose creativity in times of adversity had come to his rescue many times in the past.
Think how the Tralee Kneecapper had reported the introduction of a large round device on which social misfits could be tied for days at an end, until they had repented of their ways: the Ferris Wheel had made a great story indeed. The Andersonstown Argus had produced, out of nowhere, a brilliant report some weeks before of how the Colombian Tourist Board had opened up an office in West Belfast, and the three tourists had already packed their bags and gone there. And the Crossmaglen & Cullaville Culveteer had led with a first-class item about unorthodox uses for icing sugar and diesel.
Crying, "Thank God for the provincial newspapers of Ireland!" he grabbed the latest edition of the Mullingar Mullet. Nothing. The page was blank, apart from the title, and the price: £1. No news at all. The sports pages were a little more rewarding. They reported that the grass on the pitch at the Blessed Virgin Mary Hail Glorious St Patrick For What Died the Sons of Erin GAA Club had continued to grow recently, and during a moderate wind the top of the goalposts were seen to sway by nearly an inch or two.
More tides to come
Ripping his remaining hair out in handfuls, he turned to the other provincial newspapers. The Galway Gazette led with a story that there had been tides in recent weeks, with more tides to come. The Oughterard Echo reported that Lough Corrib was still there, and the Limerick Lunger stated that the same could be said about the Shannon. The same with the Atlantic, confided the Belmullet Bugle, which had in-depth eye-witness accounts of the ocean's continued presence off the west coast of Ireland.
Comparably reassuring reports issued from newspapers in Wexford, Wicklow, Drogheda and Dundalk about the Irish Sea, which were otherwise mute on all other subjects, virgin page following virgin page.
In despair, he turned to the British newspapers: again, nothing whatever, page after page of snow-white paper - apart, that is, a single obituary to Squadron Leader Hedley Hazelden. That is a name which will mean absolutely nothing to anyone still reading this diary - if such a masochist lives - but it means a great deal to the diarist with the empty follicles.
For Squadron Leader Hazelden test-flew the most beautiful aircraft in the history of aviation, the Handley Page Victor B1. Indeed, it could be said to have been the most beautiful man-made object in world history, and I include the Mona Lisa and the Cistine Chapel ceiling in this. As you no doubt know, the B1 was more perfectly proportioned than the later B2, which, in addition to having bulkier Rolls Royce Conway bypass engines (instead of the slimmer, more melodious Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire turbo-jets) had 10-feet longer wings. This, and the larger nacelles - I think you will agree - destroyed the sublimely harmonious balance between fuselage and wing which so characterised the Victor B1.
Uncluttered elegance
The Victor B1 at its most visually perfect had neither the external tanks nor the appalling in-flight-refuelling nozzles which disfigured later models. In its anti-nuclear flash, all-white livery, its simple lines flowed smoothly in uncluttered elegance from the point of its nose, around its faired cockpit, its crescent wings with their sculpted intakes, culminating in the all-flying tail which, I know, would have had you all gasping with joy.
There's not much to be said for the silly season: but at least on this day, it allows me to celebrate the astonishing physical loveliness of the most faultless thing ever to take wing, to hang in a gallery or adorn a pedestal: the Handley Page Victor B1. I suspect I am the only person in Ireland ever to have seen one in flight, which makes me the luckiest person as well. I have seen true beauty; and you, my dears, have not.