We long for the pretty idyll and are repelled by the cruel reality, yet in the cosy context of the BBC and Sunday lunch we dare face it. This week someone who described herself as a jumped-up chorus-girl and an utterly unqualified show-off considered the problem. Irene Thomas – in fact, a charmingly modest compendium of information – chose an enjoyably catholic variety of records and a luxury that epitomised the ragbag of delights which was the late- lamented Round Britain Quiz (I wish they’d revive it). She’s taking a teddy-bear stuffed full of teabags, a bottle of perfume at its neck.The nation’s teddy-bear, for several years, was John Betjeman.

In Softly Croons the Radiogram (R2), a benign George Melly celebrated the collaboration between the last genuinely popular Poet Laureate and the composer Jim Parker. Parker set three collections of his poems to music, with such sympathy that the settings, once heard, become indispensable (these have been re-issued by Virgin, on their Chattering Classics label). My favourite was “Youth and Age on Beaulieu Water”, in which Clemency, the general’s daughter, rows strongly into the distance, away from the pining, bald old poet to the quietly comical strains of a melancholy euphonium.And what are you doing this evening? Will you be beset by the classic British Sunday ennui? Last Sunday made a virtue of inevitability, rejoicing in The Art of Boredom(R3). Boredom is a recent invention, but, none the less, a mighty spur to travel and creativity. Naughtily quoting various crushingly tiresome radio moments, Julia Eisner made a strong case for revelling in dullness, as did the heavenly Mr Pooter. This is what he’d be doing tonight: “I’m always in of an evening: there’s always something to be done, a tintack here, a Venetian blind to be straightened there …” Ah, domestic bliss..

There is one radiant set of ad cliches that leaves all others – from the Big-Swinging-Hair shampoo ads to the Batteries-Not-Included toy commercials – absolutely standing. I refer of course to saucy ads alerting us to the fact that a Sunday tabloid is carrying the most comprehensive, explicit and generally outrageous sex-guide since its rivals’ last week. Such ads always look deeply spoofy, but they’re not intended as spoofs at all (though clearly made by people who are laughing themselves sick). The point is that these ads – like the features they promote – are profoundly genteel and uninformative. The best one – I think it was for the People, though it is an archetype – had peachy Essex models (evenly browned, depilated, in white nylon underwear) in a series of utterly motionless poses, with lighting and legs arranged to avoid improper perspectives. Clearly the regulatory bodies were on set with rule books, stopwatches and tape measures.
The latest News of the World ad in this great tradition is slightly more ambitious.

It starts with a man in a shower – back view, heavily misted – and a woman advancing on him from the room So far, so marginally modern. Once in the shower there’s a lot of heavy, soaped-up grabbing and kneading and so forth, shot in sub-Hollywood ways so it’s unclear who’s doing what. While this is going on, a lot of naughty words float around the screen like typographical goldfish. “Arousal”, “erotic”, “brazen”, “intimate”, “desire” and, yes, “explore”. (There, I’ve said it.) “The A-Z of Passion – it’s steamy, it’s explicit and it’s absolutely free with the NoW,” says the voice-over. Then there’s a crude pack-shot and a final scene of a satisfied woman’s wet face with eyes closed.The advance lies in implying there’s something in it for the girls – but this is somewhat undercut by the model’s strong resemblance to Nicola Horlick, here apparently hell-bent on conceiving a sixth child.. Afew pages into The Songlines, as the first fine details of his investigation into Aboriginal culture began to glow, Bruce Chatwin casually let slip an admission.

On the loose in the dead centre of the Australian desert, the great innovator of contemporary travel writing had no clear idea what he was doing. “Obviously, I was not going to get to the heart of the matter,” he wrote, “Nor would I want to.”

Chatwin’s readers did not seem to mind: The Songlines remained in the bestseller lists for much of 1987 and 1988. But its early declaration of intent, both old-fashioned in its languor – as if Chatwin did not want to dirty his famously precious canvas boots – and quite modern in its scepticism about quests and heroic explorers, rendered his reputation forever slippery. Chatwin was the last of the gentleman travellers, coolly noting flashes of fauna, sun-creased natives of Benin and Patagonia; he was also the outflanker of that tradition, drifting rather than journeying, adding memoir and speculation, and, when he felt the need, simply making it all up.
Chatwin’s death, eight years ago, left five ambiguous books. Their brevity – barely 1,000 pages in all – was as beguiling as their precise use of words for mysterious purposes. Then there was the manner of their writing: in a rush from Chatwin’s mid-thirties to his late forties, a rush as abruptly halted as any fated rock star’s.