How inspiring to see key attendees at the TUC conference shrugging off the gathering fuel crisis. Anna Diamantopoulou, the EU commissioner for social affairs and a speaker in Glasgow yesterday, set the tone by turning up in a lovely maroon Rolls-Royce, which might do, ooooh, 20 miles to the gallon tops.
In Mandarin the word for crisis is the same as opportunity (crisitunity?), and in this case the fuel crisis is an opportunity for the Diary to hold another competition. Someone sent us one of those fold-up lightweight skate scooters that have become so fashionable - and it becomes the glittering prize in our new Running On Empty competition. The first reader to ring the Diary while actually stuck in a queue at a filling station, or waiting for the RAC on a hard shoulder after running out of petrol, will win a magnificent Viper 2, which retails at £85. This competition is not open to anyone in the south-east of England. But if this thing keeps going, how we are going to actually get the scooter to the winner is a tricky one.
Matthew Norman's on holiday, and after one day in charge I've already made an appalling error. Yesterday's Diary ascribed Downing Street's comment on Andrew Rawnsley's new book - "A series of tittle tattle gossiping, flambéed up into some frothtastic cocktail" - to Alastair Campbell. But no, it turns out that it came from the brain of Godric Smith, Alastair's civil service stand-in. Godric was too busy dealing with the petrol crisis to come to the phone yesterday. But it is wonderful to see Godders transforming before our eyes, like a caterpillar changing into a beautiful butterfly, as he makes the job of being Mr Tony's mouthpiece his own.
As the fuel crisis drags on, one can't help thinking that today was the wrong day for Peterborough city council to launch its new mobile library service. Anyone planning to gather by the post box on Silver Hill at 5.45pm and (as promised in the press release) borrowing "books of all kinds" may be very disappointed.
I'm looking forward to catching Puppetry of the Penis when it opens at London's Whitehall Theatre next Wednesday. But a rival has appeared in the shape of a brochure for Sheffield's Site Gallery. If I had to recommend one thing from so many treats, it would be the live and visual art of Lisa Watts. "Running Machine Performance will be performed," says the blurb, "to a blindfolded audience who will listen to the performer working out on the stepping machine whilst reading a prepared text." It sounds tremendous. But there's more: "Crying Video is a competition of who can cry the most in a given hour performed by two actors." Frothtastic! (© Godric Smith 2000). Call the Site Gallery on 0114 28121077.
