While our national archivists will still trawl official records and publish what they judge to be of historical value, newsworthy, or quirkily entertaining, the annual ritual of disclosure is no more It will be missed.. The seventh day since the tsunami ravaged the Indian Ocean rim, claiming so very many lives, and the international relief effort is only now, all too haltingly, getting underway. The desperately slow arrival of aid in the stricken region is hard to credit, given the matter of moments in which pictures can be received across the globe and the matter of hours in which first-world survivors can be evacuated to safety. Now one of them has written a book that smugly explains why French Women Don’t Get Fat (Chatto & Windus).

First Vanessa Paradis filched Johnny Depp from Kate Moss. But that deep national humiliation is not enough for French women. We remember Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.Maybe this is what I like – the being with people who weren’t born yesterday. The acceptance that we are among the ruins.Happy 2005, by the way It can only bring trouble, but hey ..
More from Howard Jacobson. Not for us the sudden discovery of dance because we saw it on “Strictly Celebrity Whatever It Was”.

An illness, a bankruptcy, an alienation, a death.I keep the palm of my right hand raised in readiness at all times to apply the touch of commiseration I pat a hundred people a day. They do the same to me, though I have no story to tell as calamitous as any of theirs, unless being a writer of long sentences in an age of short ones can be counted a calamity. I bear a sad expression, anyway, and that’s enough to bond us You don’t always have to divulge your tragic secret. The only rule is not to pretend you don’t have one.And then a wonderful thing happens.

Freed from the pretence of optimism, we get up like skeletons on the Day of the Dead and dance. Your muscles remember, that’s a wonderful thing about dancing Your body dances in spite of you. And because we are old, our minds associate in spite of us too. To which end, we tell one another the stories of our lives, stories which at first look suspiciously like victories but which belie themselves, else we wouldn’t be sitting here telling them.You listen to the early triumphs, the achievements in business, the prosperity, the proliferation of family, the soaring careers of the children, the even more spectacular raids on wealth and fortune effected by the children’s children – progress, you see, the teetering pyramid of family success – and all the time you know the sad bit’s coming. This was back in 2004 and anyway, when you’re as erratic a Christian as me, you can’t rely on the loaves and fishes scenario to come up trumps.The next glitch was that the old friend who, unlike us, was travelling first class was too ill to come, and the following week I set about applying for a refund of the £215 I paid for his ticket minus £5 administration charges.

Maybe it’s time to cut my losses and admit defeat.Just think at how much Russian, Schubert and home-made brioche I could have got through in that time.. I’m still waiting for it, but bearing in mind what I have just said about not complaining, time wasting and not being petty, should I in all conscience give up what has become both an unequal struggle and a Herculean labour of trying to persuade Scotrail to reimburse me?If you add up the calls I’ve made to Scotrail in the last four months, I’ve probably spent an entire week on the telephone talking to refund managers, customs relations advisers, service chiefs and a lot of women called Fiona. The checkout girl acted as adjudicator.There’s just one problem with this new resolution of mine. Is it retrospective, by which I mean, do those ongoing complaints that were not resolved by the end of last year still count?I better explain. Last August I organised a small christening party in the garden of the church down the road, after which sundry members of said family plus baby and an old friend would catch the overnight sleeper to Fort William for a bit of West Highland air The first glitch was that the caterers sent the wrong order.