JUST ONE MORE THING AFTER ANOTHER

I'd been trying to extoll to someone the virtues, the cleverness, the neatness, the deliberately narrow but rich set-up, the exquisite pleasure of watching the psychological torture that Columbo inflicts on the party he thinks and we know to be guilty.

"Uh-huh...Columbo. Smart cop plays stupid, yeah?"

Which stopped me short. "Yes, I suppose so," I said, deflated, and saddened that she had managed to reduce one of my household gods to his essence so completely that there was no possible comeback. At the time I was arrogant enough to think that this indicated stupidity on her part: I mean, couldn't she see...? Of course, it was acuity, and a technique that I've found to be useful since then.

*

Thus, it's unfair to describe Edwin Muir's Scottish Journey as an extended grump - but not by too much. Granted, it does not take account of Muir's elegance, perception and the force of his argument, in a book which is still in print, regularly name-checked or quoted in Scotland, and has served as an inspiration for similar, later tours which try taking the nation's temperature; granted also that by any standard the view becomes depressing once Muir leaves Edinburgh, particularly in the industrial West. In fact, one can't imagine that anyone in the low dishonest decade was having a particularly good time of it, post-economic crash and pre-war (apart from in Spain and China, where war had got off to an early start.)

Nevertheless, Muir seems to see the 1930s in Scotland as an endpoint, with no prospect of things improving. In a way he was right - they got worse, but they did get better afterwards. Without falling into the traps of hindsight or historical inevitability, one can still say confidently that things do change. Watching the first two episodes of Smiley's People the other week was like looking at a museum piece.

*

Thinking of this, I predict that Labour will lose the next General Election. Brown simply doesn't feel lucky, not enough of a winner. My tip is to begin preparing for the consequences of this now, and try to see past the grey, muddled, inglorious 18 months which I guess are in front of us. I will be delighted if I'm wrong about this.