Spectator Life

If you like piña coladas – and I do – Puerto Rico will suit you just fine. The cocktail was born on the island in 1954, though debate lingers over exactly where it was first dreamt up. A bartender at the Caribe Hilton is credited with blending coconut cream, pineapple and rum into its original form, but some claim it was at Barrachina that the drink evolved into the slushier, icier version we know today. But does it really matter? What’s important is that in Puerto Rico, you’re never far from a piña colada. Spring break was in full flow when I arrived on this tropical US territory. The college kids were easy to spot. The girls paraded around in string bikinis, which barely held everything in. Some of the boys, meanwhile, bore fresh hickeys, badges of honour.

Are you hungry, peckish, esurient? Join me at Josie’s diner in Lexington, Kentucky, in the heart of Bluegrass country, where the horses are lean and very many people are, let me be frank, not. Josie’s is heaving at 8 a.m. as the well-upholstered clientele arrive for the morning feed. A mercifully slim student at the University of Kentucky is my waitress. ‘Hi, y’all! I’m Madeline Rose and I’ll be your server today,’ she announces, in the earnest tone of wait staff in a country where the credit card terminal offers the option of a 25 per cent tip. The menu she hands me is already expansive, but there’s more.

Right beside the airport I often use to fly home from Italy, there is a pod hotel where I am becoming a regular client. These, as most will know, are dirt-cheap places where sleep is stripped down to its absolute core. For about £35 a night here, you get a tiny berth of a room – a ‘capsule’ about 4ft wide and 6.5ft long – with a narrow bed, a socket to recharge your devices and, if you want to work, a fold-down mini-table for your laptop. It is a bit like you imagine a rather poky Swedish prison cell, decorated with Nordic minimalism: white bed, white walls, fluorescent light, no windows. ‘We make every traveller’s dream come true,’ the leaflet says.

Let’s cherchez un violon petit! Skiing is now too pricey for the middle classes. According to a recent flash poll by the Telegraph’s ski section, 70 per cent of readers now think skiing holidays are unaffordable. For the bourgeoisie, skiing – along with many of the other trappings they used to take for granted, such as being able to afford the fees for a private day school or a daily takeaway coffee – ce n’est pas possible. Quel dommage! (Let’s parlez anglais now; I think you get the point.) It’s not just the accelerated cost of living in the UK – or Liz Truss personally putting our mortgages up by a grand a month. Long gone are the days of getting almost €2 or $2 to the pound. In France last week, it was around €1.

A recent study by the Centre for London thinktank claims that the city’s black cabs could disappear forever, unless something is done to reverse the decline. Thanks to Uber, the ubiquitous satnav which devalues the cabbies’ hard-earned Knowledge of London’s streets, and the Mayor’s anti-motorist measures, there are ever fewer black cabs rumbling around the capital. The number dropped from more than 23,000 in 2014 to just under 14,500 last year – down by a third. Only a hundred licences were handed out last year. At this rate, we are told, they will vanish altogether by 2045. Well, tough. I’ve been a Londoner for half a century and have had enough bad experiences with our black cabs to feel that their disappearance wouldn’t bother me a jot.

The second passport used to be a backdoor: a legal hack for the well-advised, well-connected or well-heeled. You could acquire nationality in a country you’d hardly visited, without necessarily even speaking the language, and still find yourself welcomed with open arms – or at least waved through the fast-track lane at immigration. But that game is ending. More and more governments are closing the door on tenuous ancestral claims and pay-to-play citizenship. Whether through lineage or liquid assets, the old tricks to get a second passport no longer work. Nationality is being redefined – not as a loophole, but as a bond. The appeal of a second passport has always been practical. For Britons, Brexit turned the post-Brexit navy passport into a travel straitjacket.

Almost 50 years ago, in a hotel bar in central Paris, French wine faced a reckoning. Steven Spurrier, a British wine merchant, decided California deserved a spell in the sun: at the time French wine was the dominant force in Europe, with bottles from the New World – Australia, New Zealand, the US and the like – considered their poor cousin. Spurrier came up with the idea to pit the very best French Bordeaux against Californian cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays against white Burgundies, and have a panel of experts – all French – rank them in a blind tasting that came to be known as the Judgment of Paris. California won both categories. Odette Khan, a well-known critic, reportedly demanded her scorecard back so news of her grave error wouldn’t reach the papers.

It’s cherry blossom season in Japan and about half the population (according to a Kansai University study) will gather at the viewing spots to pose for photos (Japanese Instagram may collapse) and enjoy picnics in the shade of the sakura trees. Japan will also welcome close to four million visitors to witness the floral marvel. The season is brief, peaking in about a week and disappearing by the end of April, during which time the progress of the blooms across the country is followed with breathless enthusiasm by reporters on the news bulletins. We are assumed to be, expected to be, giddy with excitement about all this, and to swoon with childlike wonder at the profusion of vivid yet delicate flowers. But I’m afraid I’m not quite up to it any more.

Waking up to hear the ‘unprecedented’ news about Heathrow Airport, I felt a nanosecond of luxurious relaxation (albeit I’m not exactly over the moon about being in a hospital bed without the use of my legs). Of course I’d rather be scampering about an airport superstore being sprayed with scent by sexy shop-girls rather than stuck here waiting to be hoisted into the air over a commode like some smelly piñata. But there’s never any harm in looking on the bright side and I’m very glad not to have been flown all the way back to Delhi when I was on the verge of landing in TW6, as was one young woman on the Today programme last week.

Dubai is the new black: it’s everywhere and apparently for everyone. The steady trickle of first-person tell-alls about starting over in the Emirate has, since the Labour government moved in, built to a tsunami. ‘How I became a Labour school-fee exile in Dubai,’ written by Isabel Oakeshott, partner of Reform’s Richard Tice, was one that scored particularly highly among readers. ‘We moved from Aberdeen to Dubai – it is hugely expensive to have a family here,’ reads another headline. ‘Low tax might sound affordable, but life in the glitziest emirate is anything but cheap.’ James Vince, the cricketer, is another recent high-profile Brit to relocate there.

I’m now officially Irish – the proud recipient of a shiny red passport. It arrived, with the luck of the Irish, in time for St Patrick’s Day. But as I gaze fondly at the words ‘European Union’ and ‘Ireland’ embossed in gold on the front, I do feel the awkward guilt of the hypocrite. I may have voted Remain just to avoid any upheaval but I’ve never been much of a fan of the EU. And while I’m in the confessional box, I should perhaps mention that I’m not even properly Irish – my mum was English. I’ve seldom visited the green fields of Erin and have never finished a whole pint of Guinness. So I’m afraid Paddies don’t come more plastic than me.

One can see a city so differently over time. Visiting Oxford recently I noticed fine whisky shops and fashion stores which have always been there but which I barely registered as a student 15 years ago. There are new arrivals: some good, such as the handsome Jericho Cheese Company; others less so, such as the proliferating bubble tea shops catering to the now numerous Chinese, both students and tourists. Covered Market is still there, where we used to indulge at the original Ben’s Cookies. Though I do not remember back then the Thames Valley Police signs now warning of ‘bag dippers’ operating in the area. Oxford is both swisher and scruffier than I remember it. Swish embodied in the new Ivy, in a palatial neo-Gothic pile on the High Street that used to be a NatWest.

A Sunday morning in Bethnal Green and Adam, who has been leading Kray-themed walking tours of the neighbourhood for almost two decades, corrals a congregation of eight polite, reserved, attentive customers who, with sensible rucksacks, floor-length M&S skirts, reusable water bottles and neutral-coloured, thin-laced trainers, look as far removed from pool hall brawls and basement flat stabbings as it’s possible to get without joining the Church Army or taking up cribbage. When he started giving tours of the Kray twins’ haunts, Adam tells us, it was impossible to go more than five minutes without some tipsy ageing derelict lurching out of the Blind Beggar pub to inform the group that he ‘knew the Krays personally’.

Faithful readers will know of my journey through the French health care system. I have not shared these histories because anyone should be particularly interested in my aches and pains, or to complain. If I wanted to moan about a health system on the verge of a nervous breakdown I would return to Britain. No, I drone on because it’s worth repeating the astonishing discovery that it is actually possible to have a health system that isn’t crap. And I have made some other discoveries along the way. In previous episodes, I have covered the remarkable behaviour of French GPs, who actually answer the phone – and will see you the same day if necessary or tomorrow if less immediately urgent.

It’s half-term and instead of the Baftas and Anmer Hall in Norfolk, the Prince and Princess of Wales have decamped en famille to Mustique. Old pictures of Kate and Wills walking along the Caribbean seafront hand in hand and a young Prince George in a green polo shirt are accompanied by newspaper commentary detailing how Kate deserves a rest in what is thought to be her favourite place. So far, so very lovely.   Mustique itself, though, has always struck me as a rather sinister place.

It was when the peasant didn’t move for the second hour that I became suspicious. I was in an ultra-expensive hotel in southern Thailand. It was built to resemble a sequence of exquisite villas from some ancient Thai dynasty, arranged around tropical gardens and meadows. I was staying in my very own, beautiful, teak-and-mahogany mini-palace, which came with a grand piano and butler – all the usual things I’d come to expect as a luxury travel correspondent. Yawn. The only thing really unique about this five-star hotel (they tend to blur, eventually) was the fact my own villa, the best of the best, the jewel in the crown, came with its own paddy field. And in that paddy field was a singular peasant in a charming conical hat, next to an ox.

I had been kicking my heels in a dusty two-star hotel on a dual carriageway in Leon, central Mexico, for days. One afternoon, I spotted a battered old English language hardback in a junk shop window: Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry.  I had read the book before, half a lifetime ago, in maybe 1985, when I knew nothing about Mexico, failed relationships or alcoholism. Almost 40 years later, with a more than working knowledge of all three, I felt better placed to appreciate Lowry's 1947 masterpiece. With nothing else to do or read, I bought it. I haggled the shopkeeper down to 100 pesos – about £4. Barely 24 intense hours later – the same time span that the novel unfolds in – I had finished it. Or had it finished me?

The fall of the Berlin Wall was meant to have been the crowning moment for the West, and for the principles of empowering liberation and freedom. Obviously so – I used to think. Now I’m more along the lines of, well, yes and no. The fall also seems in some ways to divide the former good times from the current bad times, both for Germany and for the rest of us. Such thoughts came to mind after I headed to Berlin to witness the New Year’s Eve fireworks display, during which the city is turned into the most attractive war zone you’ll encounter. I stayed with my brother, a creative type who, like many others artistically inclined, settled in Prenzlauer Berg, an area formerly in East Berlin. With the Wall down, people were drawn to the low prices and atmosphere of artistic liberty.

Entering the New Inn in Llanddewi Brefi in Ceredigion is like stepping back in time. The only pub in the village (since the Foelallt Arms closed down four years ago), The New Inn seems to hail from the 1970s. Its till is a pull-out wooden drawer full of coins and notes. There’s a coal fire in the grate. The bar is littered with eccentric and old-fashioned clutter: a jar of pickled eggs, boxes of Swan Vestas as if smoking in pubs was still the norm, plaques to award the winners of a conker competition long past, sheep farming memorabilia.   The clientele are dressed as if they’ve just got back from marching down Whitehall with Jeremy Clarkson. And, it transpires, these drinkers are waiting to be fed.

You can’t get a Pegu in Rangoon any more. That may not sound like a disaster for the ages – nothing, say, compared to the ongoing chancellorship of Rachel Reeves, MP for Blankstare-upon-Derr – but it is quite telling, once you know the background. To explain, the Pegu is a cocktail. Here’s the recipe, if you fancy making one: Take 2 oz of gin. Add ¾ oz of orange curaçao or triple sec. Squeeze ½ oz of fresh lime juice. Include 2 dashes of Angostura bitters. Add 1 dash of orange bitters. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice and combine all the ingredients. Shake vigorously for 15 to 20 seconds until well chilled. Strain into a chilled coupe or martini glass. Sounds nice, right?

Monopoli, Puglia Monopoli is an elegant little seaside town in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot, and in summer it’s unbearable. Tourists flock from everywhere. Squares you could normally zip through in a few seconds take ten minutes to cross, and the queues for Bella Blu, the ice cream parlour in Piazza Garibaldi, remind you of the Ryanair check-in desk. That struggling little pizzeria you patronised loyally throughout the autumn and winter now asks you to come back in an hour’s time and still can’t find you a table when you do. Monopoli, which seemed to be begging for it on every previous visit, suddenly has options. It’s offhand with you, looks at its watch and plays hard to get.

This year I shall have lived in Edinburgh for a quarter of a century. I fell in love with the city on the 23 bus travelling from the New Town to the Old Town. There was so much architecture. Gothic and Georgian, medieval, baronial. So many turrets and finials, tollbooths and towers. I was drunk on the stuff. Add pomp – a Royal Mile, a castle, a palace. Then the libraries, art galleries, museums. And that’s before you get to bookshops and Edinburgh’s proud moniker, the first Unesco City of Literature. What other city has a railway station (Waverley) named after a novel or a high street (Princes Street) with shops on one side and gardens on the other? The 23 bus was taking me to the psychiatric hospital just beyond Morningside Edinburgh doesn’t love me.

John F. Kennedy opted to serve New England lobster, Ronald Reagan a California-inspired garden salad – and James Buchanan 400 gallons of oysters. Held at Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, the inaugural luncheon for a new president is as much part of inauguration day as the swearing-in ceremony and the inaugural address.  Nixon enjoyed pineapple slices topped with cottage cheese and washed down with a glass of milk First time around, in 2017, Donald Trump’s inaugural meal featured dishes including Maine lobster and Gulf shrimp. But for those not on the guest list to find out what he serves tomorrow (McDonald’s ice cream, perhaps?), there are plenty of other opportunities to eat like a president in Washington DC.

Ski season is upon us, and with it that familiar dump of status anxiety. Sliding down mountains has always been a rich man’s folly, but only a few years ago, normal people could just about afford to go if they saved hard enough. Not anymore. In parts of France, the cost of a six-day lift pass is just shy of £400. In Switzerland, a pizza can set you back forty quid. That’s just for starters. Factor in the cost of ski hire, ski wear, flights, accommodation, après-ski and mountaintop lunches, and your eyes won’t stop watering. Bring the family, and you’ll need more than a second mortgage. Flights and accommodation alone can double in price during school holidays, and those energetic sprogs will need fuel – lots and lots of expensive fuel.