Spectator Life

I’ve been on holiday to a country that doesn’t officially exist. It has its own border, passport, flag, currency and army but no one recognises it – not even its main sponsor, Vladimir Putin. Transnistria is sandwiched between its proper motherland Moldova – which is itself really Romania – and Ukraine, which Putin thinks is part of his motherland. Confused? It doesn’t get any easier.  In 1992 there was a short war between the newly created state of Moldova and separatist, ethnic Russians which resulted in nearly 1,000 deaths and the breakaway ‘country’ (via a peace accord) policed by Russian ‘peacekeepers’.

What does Monte Carlo conjure up? A glamorous casino where fortunes can be won and lost, but mostly lost? Men in evening dress at baccarat tables with beautiful women standing by? A tax haven for the glitzy rich on the Cote d’Azur? Fabulous Belle Epoque buildings? A refuge for Edwardian English invalids to escape the cold? Grace Kelly? The Grand Prix?  It was here that Max de Winter met the girl who became the second Mrs de Winter at the beginning of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. ‘What do you think of Monte Carlo, or don't  you think of it at all?’ he asked her.

I had never thought much about longevity or even ageing. But once you hit your mid-50s, things shift in irritating ways: love handles become more stubborn, typefaces mysteriously blur, sports injuries take ages to heal and conversations in noisy restaurants start to become puzzles. You haven’t fallen apart but the factory settings no longer apply, and Philip Larkin’s poems increasingly seem more poignant than funny. I apparently am not the only man of a certain age to have had this realisation. Last September, at an autocrats’ conclave in Beijing, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, both 72, wondered aloud if they might be able to extend their lives and therefore prolong their reigns indefinitely.

A seagull’s screech can be heard over a mile from the coast. I reckon my seven-year-old daughter’s seagull impression carries twice that distance. We call her screeches ‘bunker-busters’ because they have been known to pierce through four storeys, a pillow and noise-cancelling headphones. Months of shattered hangovers, terrorised wildlife and fractious calls from neighbours have paid off, however, because last weekend we all piled into the car and drove from the East Midlands to the European Seagull Screeching Championship in Belgium to watch her compete.   This eccentric event, now in its sixth year, was founded by ecologist Claude Willaert with the aim of improving seagulls’ reputation (summed up by Claude as ‘Make Seagulls Sexy Again’).

Picture the scene: a field somewhere in the Midlands on a Tuesday evening. It has rained continuously for seven hours. You are in a tent that took 45 minutes and three minor altercations to erect. Inside, there is no room to stand. You are sitting on a bare groundsheet, shivering, staring at an unopened tin of beans and sausages with a broken ring pull. A friend, whose idea this was, is somewhere nearby — in their tent, also rethinking the collective decision to sleep in a field.  With Easter out of the way, we are now heading face-first into another camping season.

Sooner or later, Airbnb is going to change its name to Airb, partly because it takes less time to type, and partly because it is becoming a misnomer. Increasingly rarely is there a breakfast to go with your bed. I am walking from John o' Groats to Land's End at the moment, so I have been staying in a different town every night, save for when I have been on the hills in a tent, and not once so far has anyone offered me a fry-up. Only once have I been offered any breakfast at all. Neither, by the way, have I even seen anyone in most of the places I have been staying. All but one have been entirely remote-control operations with key codes and key safes. I am, therefore, getting quite nostalgic for the traditional B&B.

Before the cocoon I had never met a hotel I didn’t like. I thought all hotels were interesting. There was the hostel in the walls of old Jerusalem, so dirty I had to sleep in my clothes but riveting; the pale box in Oświęcim, Poland (Auschwitz in German) by the haunted square; the best hotel in Batumi, Georgia, pleased with itself because it was nearly an Ibis; the vampire-themed hotel which felt weirdly normal in the Carpathians; the lovely Narnian winter of Claridge’s. Then I stayed at the Zedwell Hotel near Piccadilly and I didn’t like it because there is nothing to like. It’s inside the Trocadero, the old Victorian pleasure palace, so it will have known a world of pain.

There are few things that look sadder than an abandoned football ground. I spent longer than I meant to sitting on a decaying bench looking out over the forest that was once the intended playing surface for the Stroitel Pripyat football club. The sky above was cerulean, cloudless and entirely still. The only life came from my hand-held Geiger counter which spluttered and crackled, telling me that I was in a territory that wasn’t fit for a stroll, let alone 90 minutes of lung-bursting athleticism.  Stroitel Pripyat ceased to be a club 30 years ago, just as they were about to move into the purpose-built Avanhard Stadium where I sat that afternoon.

Is any tourist attraction on earth really worth enduring a madding crowd to see? My mother, denied international travel for half her life by the Soviet state, made up for this deprivation by becoming the world’s most fanatically rigorous tourist. A major site left unseen or portion of a museum unexamined was, to her, as morally repugnant as leaving food on the plate or abandoning a book half-way through.   I, spoiled frequent flyer that I am, find crowds the ultimate holiday buzz-killer. Nowhere is this more true than in Rome, which clocked a record 52.92 million overnight visitors for the Papal Jubilee year of 2025 and, according to pre-bookings tracked by the local tourist board, is expecting even more tourists this summer.

Shortly before Christmas, I visited Australia for the first time. It’s quite some journey but I was fortunate enough to fly business class with Cathay Pacific – and very plush it was, too. On the first leg to Hong Kong (a mere 12 hours or so), I was just settling into my pod (they don’t call them seats) and was about to nod off when there was something of an altercation across the aisle. ‘I understood that wi-fi would be available for the entire journey,’ said a grumpy middle-aged man, who looked like he was from the Middle East. He might well have owned much of the Middle East for all I knew. ‘We’re sorry, sir,’ said the air hostess. ‘It should be up and running shortly. One of the crew is looking into it.

It is one of the world’s most remote corners – but Greenland is playing an increasingly important role in global affairs. In January last year, the island’s 57,000 residents became an object of desire for Donald Trump. ‘I think Greenland we'll get because it has to do with freedom of the world,’ declared the bombastic President. ‘I think the people want to be with us.’ Six weeks later, the people of Greenland duly gave their reply, crushing their pro-Trump party in an election centred on questions of independence. The ongoing struggle for control of the Arctic motivated Trump’s demands. The British government believes that the Arctic Circle will be ice free each summer by 2040; some experts predict it will be sooner.

Across the border from San Sebastian, just down the beach, is France. I never got over that. San Sebastian is so effervescent, so tropical, so fast, that its proximity to the surlier Gauls seems strange. French cooking is the best in the world and there is no point arguing. But somehow it’s been eclipsed by its neighbour on the Basque coast. Biarritz and Bayonne have nothing on this Spanish city that’s pretty much universally called the ‘culinary capital of the world’. Of course, it isn’t quite: that’s still Paris or maybe Tokyo. But San Sebastian might be the best place in the world to eat. There’s a difference. You can’t go to Paris just to eat: even by day two, un autre confit duck leg begins to make you feel sick.

Though I hadn’t lived there since 1998, when I was 16 and Bill Clinton was in power, I’d always defended America. Sure, it had flaws. Big ones. It had gun problems, drug problems, healthcare problems, race problems, problems winning wars. But, by Jove, it was still the end of the rainbow. It still had the highest concentration of good of any country on earth.  Then Donald Trump inaugurated a new era in which the US went weird, and not in a good way. Not only did the problems with opioids, guns, wars and healthcare only get worse, new catastrophic fault lines opened. The bizarre reign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was hardly a comforting interlude.

When was the last time you were shouted at by a stranger wearing a lanyard? Or spent hours in a crowded public space with low ceilings and no natural light? Or paid £8.50 for a Pret sandwich? I’ll wager it was in a British airport, the unnatural habitat of humiliation, discomfort and rip-offs. Not to mention ugliness, rudeness and inefficiency.  Airports do not have to be this awful. Traveling through Rome’s Fiumicino (officially Leonardo da Vinci) Airport, for example, is a joyful, uplifting experience. The place is full of light, superb espresso, fresh-made pasta, pizza and ice-cream. Hard-core junk food addicts can find a McDonalds and a KFC, but they’re tucked away in a corridor far from the glories of the Italian-only food court.  The shops are stunning.

Ballroom dancers, suicide cases, charlatans: Blackpool has them all. No place has so much possibility or holds so much of the British soul on one bright, windswept drag. I first came here for Conservative party conference, where the cognitive dissonance of pre-Coalition Tories in funeral suits and the reality of the country they sought to govern – love, loss and candyfloss – felt wild. Did these people even know each other? It turns out they didn’t. Then I came to watch Russell Brand pretend to be Jesus Christ at the Winter Gardens for people alienated enough to think Russell Brand is a viable alternative to anything. They all meditated together.

A Real Pain was one of my favourite films of recent years, a tragicomic exploration of family, history, place and identity featuring two Americans in Poland - specifically in Warsaw and Lublin.  My wife was also quite smitten - with Lublin as much as the film - and on the back of this began planning a weekend in the eastern Polish city. I was a little wary of such an overtly fan-like step - this felt one notch down from trying to emulate an influencer, of all the awful modern things. But she’s very good at arranging interesting weekends overseas on a miniscule budget so on this question I relented.

I have recently returned from a fleeting visit to the City of Light. As usual, Paris itself was a delight. It is an architectural and historic marvel that nevertheless manages to offer the best food and wine in the world at all kinds of prices, and somehow also has a respectable number of quirky and interesting independent shops and boutiques amidst the more anticipated international names. In other words, any trip to the French capital should be an alloyed pleasure. So why, when I arrived back at St Pancras, did I all but sink to my knees in gratitude that I was once back in rainy old Blighty, and that the land of the Belle Époque was a distant memory?

Loelia Lindsay, socialite and former wife of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, is said to have remarked: ‘Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life.’ Well, I’m turning 59 soon and I still use buses. So, by that reckoning, success has so far not only eluded me but given me the widest possible berth.  In my defence, I live in Bristol, which has the worst congestion outside London. Driving here during rush hour is a kind of psychological torture. It’s also a war of attrition between the local council and motorists, with roadworks popping up overnight like molehills. Almost anything is preferable: walking, cycling or the bus. Admittedly, bus travel isn’t glamorous. There’s no bus equivalent of the Orient Express that I’m aware of.

It’s because I was on my own in Los Angeles, smoking weed on Venice Beach, that I ended up at Coachella Festival with two girls I’d barely met and the DJs Belle and Sebastian. It was because I was on my own in Nashville that I woke up with a Texan soldier and never had to tell anyone. And it’s because I was on my own driving up the west coast of England that I could take a spontaneous detour to Anthony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ – just for the wonder of seeing those mossy, iron sculptures lapped by the waves.  Hell is other people – especially on holiday. Group trips give me chills. Words like ‘minibus’, ‘group tour’ or ‘kitty’ make me nauseous.

It’s the largest city in Europe, spans two continents, has been the capital of three mighty empires – Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman – and is visited each year by some 20 million tourists. These days – and I’m only guessing here based on the scores of battered, bloodied and bandaged scalps I spotted – it’s also the hair transplant capital of the world. Little wonder so many choose to come here for their cosmetic ‘enhancements’ (or ‘maimings’ depending on your view): if there’s one city that understands reinvention, it’s this one. I’m talking, of course, of Istanbul where continents and cultures, Christianity and Islam collide. To my shame, I’d never been before but, crikey, I loved it.

The problem with conventional ski holidays is that every day is more or less the same. You step eagerly out after your hotel breakfast to take the same ski-lifts and ski on the same slopes every day, and return to the same room every night. It can feel like a work commute, albeit a bit more fun.  Ski ‘safaris’, by contrast, offer a far less humdrum experience; but the terrain must be right. In the case of the Dolomites, a ski safari works precisely because the ski area is made up of loosely interconnected resorts with, crucially, a series of rifugi (mountain huts) high up on the slopes providing food and accommodation for an overnight stay.

Imagine going into an English pub and slapping a tenner down on the bar. ‘All I can drink, please,’ you say. ‘Certainly sir,’ says the barman. ‘You’ve got two hours.’ ‘Right then,’ you say. ‘I’ll start with a pint.’ Ten minutes later: ‘Whisky, please, no ice.’ Shortly afterwards: ‘I think I’ll have a Bloody Mary.’ Then: ‘Pint of that there. The green one. Please.’ Shortly afterwards. ‘Large white wine.’ And so the night wears on. You can have absolutely anything you like: cocktails, double G&Ts, rum and coke, Jack Daniels and Jack Daniels. Two hours is enough to render you senseless. You have drunk the equivalent of £100 of booze for £10, and you need a taxi, a chicken fajita and an urgent visit to the toilet.

I was in Scottsdale, Arizona and, to put it mildly, a little squiffy. Most folk go there to play golf (yawn) but I’d gone there to drink and, after a lengthy tequila masterclass in La Hacienda and several cocktails at Platform 18 (‘best US cocktail bar’ in the 2023 Spirited Awards, incidentally) in nearby Phoenix, I was also more than a little disorientated. No, don’t laugh. Firstly, La Hacienda – a fancy bar in the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess resort – has more than 240 different tequilas and mezcals on its list and, thanks to the resort’s resident Tequila Goddess (its term, not mine), they just kept on coming.

For the first time in almost a century, when Arthur Conan Doyle was buried in a Turkish carpet in his garden, my hometown of Crowborough is in the news.  For those fortunate never to have been, Crowborough is a small place in the Weald of about 20,000 souls. The cadet training camp, where my school pals and I endured a week of army exercises and tinned rations, has been turned into a migrant hostel for more than 500 asylum seekers, sparking a furious reaction from the local residents. I have much sympathy with them – but also for the young men who have been sent to live there.  Kim Bailey, leader of the protest group Crowborough Shield, calls the decision to house migrants in the town ‘disgusting’ and a ‘disgrace’. ‘There is nothing to do in Crowborough,’ she adds.