Dinner with the ambassador

Like nearly everyone of modest talents and humble background, my contact with the good and great is virtually non-existent. Apart from a very slight acquaintance with Stephen Fry when he was a student at the College where I taught and attending a party - when I was 19 - at which Dennis Waterman was a fellow guest, there is nothing to tell on a personal level. I suppose I must have shaken Princess Margaret’s hand, or at least bowed to her, when I received my degree - she was Chancellor at the time - though I remember nothing of the occasion, and I have listened to various literary worthies - Antony Thwaite, Beryl Bainbridge, Louis de Bernieres, George Barker and Thomas Blackburn among them - address the English students and staff at the College. But unlike a friend and colleague who unsuccessfully invited Rachel Cusk to spend the night with him in his dormobile, I was merely a face in a crowd.

But although I’m a non-runner in the Drop-a-name Handicap, I know quite a few people who have actually met the good and the great, and the not-so-good. My friend Ed must occupy the number one spot. He was taught by Tom Sharpe at prep-school, introduced to Bobby Kennedy as an undergraduate in South Africa - the great man said ‘Hi, how are ya?’ - had one of the visiting poets - and his inseparable companion, an attache case containing a bottle of gin - to stay, and actually taught Stephen Fry, on the rare occasions when the future luminary could be bothered to attend class. I had a friend at university who’d been to primary school with Christine Keeler and another on my postgrad. cert. ed. course who’d been to secondary school with Mick Jagger. And - prepare to be amazed - for the last 32 years I’ve been married to someone who once shared a doughnut with Vanessa Redgrave! But the jewel of my collection has to be a German mature student when I was an undergraduate at Keele. As a 14 year old leader of the Hitler Youth he’d travelled to Berlin to present Munich’s collection for the Winterhilfe fund to the Führer. The dictator asked him where he came from. ‘Ah my faithful Bavarians,’ he commented on hearing Hans’s reply.

Imagine my delight then, gentle reader, on receiving an invitation to dine with the ambassador.

Perhaps I should explain. Montefalcone is twinned with a village in Moldova and for some reason I can’t quite fathom the Moldovan ambassador to Italy was invited to visit our village, the event culminating in a meal at Lupo’s Locanda. I guess that in most of the places the ambassador visits there is a carefully selected guest list comprising the cream of local society. Montefalcone, though, is very small and cream is in short supply. I guess the town council were worried about having a sufficiently large gathering to meet him. They therefore sent a circular to every inhabitant inviting us to book a seat at the dinner for 16 euros a head. As my wife had gone off to England for a week yesterday to look after our grandson, I thought I’d go - it would save having to cook - always a depressing business when you’re on your own.

In anticipation of the event I googled Moldova. and discovered its chief claim to fame to be trafficking women sex workers to Western Europe. At the dinner, during the course of a very lengthy speech, His Excellency stressed the importance of strengthening commercial ties between the Marche region and his homeland. I hope, but this being Italy cannot be sure, that he only had in mind the wine to which he frequently referred and, even more frequently, imbibed. His speech also made several references to his country’s having once been a part of the Dacian province of the Roman Empire. The romanophile in me wanted to jump up and shout, ‘Civis romanus sum. My country too was once a province of the Empire (if you exclude Ireland and the north of Scotland which the Romans very wisely decided weren’t worth the expense of conquering).’ Fortunately my total lack of Moldovan, and erratic command of Italian restrained me. But the contrast between the two former provinces is, I think, instructive. Moldova is a very poor country and desperately wants to join the EU because it sees membership as a route to once again enjoying the peace and prosperity it had enjoyed under the pax romana. Britain is a country which, once very wealthy, is on an inexorable slide towards economic impotence. But because it was once the most powerful country in the world it imagines that it can still flourish as an ‘independent’ nation and resolutely opposes the greater european integration which could save it. However, if we look fifty years ahead when Moldova flourishes as an integral part of a federal Europe, it will no longer need to rely on its current staple industry. Could be an opportunity for the UK there!