A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere. I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it is mentioned. Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The bad penny first dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of twelve told me proudly that he had seen Star Wars over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval. Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form and I guessed that one day they would explode.
“I would love you to do something for me,” I said.
“Anything! Anything!” the boy said rapturously.
“You won't like what I'm going to ask you to do,” I said.
“Anything, sir, anything!”
“Well,” I said, “do you think you could promise never to see Star Wars again?”
He burst into tears. His mother drew herself up to an immense height. “What a dreadful thing to say to a child!” she barked, and dragged the poor kid away. Maybe she was right but I just hope the lad, now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities.
A couple of weeks ago, in a Chinese restaurant, the dapper little Chinese maître D bowed low as I left and, full of Chinese smiles, said, “Sir Guin, now that Star Wars is being shown again you will be famous once more.” Oh, to be Ernest Thesiger.
The mornings, during the past few weeks, have started quite sharply and yet gently blurred in hazy sunshine. There is a very rounded cherry tree in the middle of the paddock, now in flower, but the haze softly obliterates the trunk of the tree, leaving the blossom looking as if it might be a small pinkish-white cloud that has settled with us. It spreads a feeling of calm like a blessing. I stand out of doors in my dressing-gown, gazing at it with gratitude, but know that all too soon there will be a thud of letters falling through the letter-box, including glossy photographs which no ordinary pen can sign. As often as not they have already been signed in a sprawling gilded signature by “Darth Vader” from Star Wars —“so-and-so IS Darth Vader.” Maybe — but it wasn't so-and-so's voice or face (when it was finally revealed) to the best of my remembrance. The “IS”, I suppose, is for reassurance, like clutching at something when waking from a bad dream.
Last Sunday, as Mass was finishing, a young man leaned over my shoulder and said, “My pop is a great fan of Star Wars. Will you say hello to him as you leave the church?”
I asked where his father was.
“At the back in a wheelchair,” he said.
The priest gave his blessing and the ritual words, “The Mass is over, go in peace.”
“Thanks be to God,” we chorused back, the young man adding, “And can I have your autograph?”
“Not here,” I replied rather crossly.
At the back of the church, sitting in a wheelchair, was a large, middle-aged, genial-looking man. I went up to him all smiles, like a baby-kissing politician, and exuding the sweet benevolence of a hospital-visiting princess. I took him warmly by the hand and made one or two fatuous inquiries. He suddenly said the dreaded words — “Star Wars!”
“Ugh —hugh –uh –ha –hm,” I said, but I kept up my smile.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he nodded at me and, for good measure, “May the Force be with you.”
“And also with you,” I replied, to ecclesiastical merriment.
“The Man In The White Suit; that was you, wasn't it?”
“Yes, about forty-five years ago,” I replied, with a sense of relief that we might have reached saner ground; anyway terra firma. Then his face became grave and he said, “Darth Vader.”
I backed away as quickly as possible, sketched him a valedictory wave of the hand and stumbled down the church steps into fresh air and morning sunlight. The young man pursued me. “The autograph,” he said, quite politely. But that was suddenly too much for me. “Not in front of the parishioners,” I said. Then I disappeared.
A second later I was deeply ashamed but the damage had been done. No excuse. Just sudden bloody-mindedness and panic. It's no good saying to myself, “Watch out in these declining years, things could turn nasty.” Donkey's years ago I remember seeing an elderly man in Harrods screaming and screaming at a shop assistant because she was buffing her nails. I felt sad contempt for him and it never occurred to me to mutter, “There, but for the Grace of God, go I some day in the future.”
The evening news announced that dust bowls have formed on the dry farmlands of Cornwall. Cornwall, of all places, where there used to be so many hedges.
We all need hedges, I thought. They don't have to be prickly though, like mine.
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