Morning:
13°c
Not much sign of transgressive student activity on May Day. I was in Cambridge talking about the Baader Meinhof movement that terrorised Germany in the Seventies and Eighties and enjoyed a considerable amount of support in radical circles.
The prevailing mood among the students this time around was mild curiosity about the far-Left politics of that time, rather than any outburst of the street (or Quad) anger we keep being told to expect as a result of the turmoil in global capitalism.
Stefan Aust (on whose book the film Baader Meinhof Komplex is based) sketched out the mood of the period expertly. He was an early friend of Ulrike Meinhof, the only Red Army Faction character who excites empathy when you read his account of the group's psychopathology.
But it's interesting that just at the time when the capitalism the old far-Left wanted to destroy has finally had a major wobble, the temperature of protest is so low.
The only serious act of violence at G20 turned out to be from the police.
On the way back from Baader Meinhof studies, I got a message from Helena Kennedy QC urging attendance at the Left-wing Compass conference and saying: "There can be No Turning Back to the ways of the failed free-market consensus." It's come to something when for the real voice of Spartite anti-capitalist protest, we have to turn to a QC with a seat in the Lords.
• A moment of pointless outrage while watching a BBC4 trailer for a programme on advances in farming: "We've produced crops with less pests," intones the voiceover No we haven't: we've produced crops with fewer pests, seeing as less should be followed by a singular and fewer by plurals.
Those of us who like our language in tidy order have had to learn to live with "for free" and other casual atrocities. Now the distinction between less and fewer is being washed away - and if we can't trust BBC4 on these matters, who (or rather whom) can we? Lynne Truss, Simon Heffer and any other doughty guardians of grammar, aux armes.
• At the launch of the smart new Dyptych store in Brook Street, the talk was of the small luxuries we now hanker for, having junked the bigger ones.
Among the exotic smells, I bumped into Tara Palmer Tomkinson, below, who was heading off to sing at the Met bar. TPT is one of those very useful people who cheer everyone else up.
We first met when she was being derided as a dim It girl and I asked her to write a piece on "Why I am not stupid" for the Spectator.
Many years and ups and downs later, she is still bouncing around town, agent in tow, a throng of male fans and yet another reinvention under way. Not so stupid at all, then.
