High life

No use datelining any more, I’m here for the duration. Even the ski lifts have been ordered to close: chiuso, geschlossen, fermé. The only way to ski now is the old-fashioned way, à la Hemingway: climb up with skins, peel them off, and enjoy the one and only run of the day. Not only is the climbing beneficial to one’s health, it’s also the only thing that’s free in good old Helvetia. Mind you, if too many people do it the Swiss will start charging for it. But for the moment, no one’s doing it as the snow has gone the way of women and children first in a sinking Saudi ship. This is also enforced family time. The mother of my children and my son are feeling a tiny bit paranoid, and seeing virus spreaders everywhere.

Gstaad     Rumours about the virus are flying around this village. First there was talk of a hotel being temporarily quarantined, then a shindig given by a fat social climber where one of the guests was said to be infected. So far these seem to have been false alarms but still the fat old rich who don’t ski are panicking, staying indoors and incommunicado. This is good news. Even better news is that I’ve been skiing with my son and have never had a better time, although he did have to wait for me at times. The snow was unexpectedly good and there was plenty of it. My trouble is that I look down from a south-facing verandah and see green fields.

Gstaad   I shoulda been a weatherman: no sooner had I announced snow to be a Gstaad rarity than it came down non-stop. But then it rained, so everything’s hunky-dory. Older rich people who don’t ski are relieved that it’s stopped; younger types who do indulge are over the moon that it’s snowed at all. Happy, happy Gstaad… but not really; the coronavirus news has some scared out of their wits. In fact, this alpine village is beginning to feel like Der Tod in Venedig, or Death in Venice for non-German speakers. The great South African doubles specialist Frew McMillan, now the best tennis commentator on TV, used to call me Dirk, as in Bogarde, because he thought I looked a bit like the thespian.

Gstaad It feels like a sepia-tinged melodrama, one directed by the great schlock master Sam Wood. Driving along the winding valleys through 17th-century villages, Gruyères Castle on one’s right, the heartbeat would quicken as Gstaad beckoned in the distance. Gstaad in those days meant beautiful women, parties galore, challenging, snow-covered slopes to swish down, and a friendly atmosphere. Only the lucky few knew about the place. All that has gone down the drain, except for the prices, which have gone through the roof. It’s called progress. I used to be able to identify the mood of a time, especially here in Gstaad, but no longer. For starters, there is no more snow from upstairs, only the man-made white stuff.

Gstaad I was not aware that there is a group of Spectator fans who meet in French-speaking Switzerland. They contacted me and we have agreed to meet up this week here in Gstaad. A very nice English voice informed me over the telephone of the existence of the group, asked if I was interested in speaking to it, and told me how long they have all been reading the dear old Speccie. My response was a resounding yes, and then I asked Michael Watts, the gentleman who rang me, if he was aware of my speaking fee. He was not. ‘Fifty thousand Swiss francs for 30 minutes,’ I told him and waited for the thud. But he agreed without a counter offer and asked if I needed a down payment. (Actually, a lunch is what we settled on, but don’t let my non-existent agent hear about it.

Gstaad Lenin Moreno is in trouble, despite his very unchristian first name. For any of you unfamiliar with the name, Senor Moreno is the president of Ecuador, a tiny South American country that I like very much because if you’ve met one Ecuadorian man you’ve met them all. There are 16 million Ecuadorians, and eight million of them, the men, all look like identical twins. One of my closest friends on the tennis circuit back in the late 1950s and early 1960s was Eduardo Zuleta, an Ecuadorian who was the colour of copper and could run all day, all night, 48 hours straight, as long as he was chasing a tennis ball.

I find myself detached from mainstream culture. It started with the demise of nightclubs like Annabel’s and the arrival of the people who frequent them nowadays, the likes of Lil Nas X, Dua Lipa, Lizzo, Fat Joe, Pusha T, DaBaby. All real names, incidentally, lifted from the saccharine, slush-like descriptions by gossip columnists of nightclubbing celebrities. Yep, things sure ain’t what they used to be — after dark, that is. Forget top hats and tails, and older men leering at figure-eight gels dressed in clingy gowns. This is the #MeToo era and men are almost redundant. The blatant extravagance — and at times arrogance — that came with inherited money is over. Silly empty-headed dowagers are a thing of the past.

I was walking up St James’s and happy to be in London. For a change I was not rushing but strolling in a leisurely manner, on time for lunch with Charles Moore at his club, when the lack of deference of certain Americans hit me like the proverbial pie in the face: ‘I mean, like, who the fuck does she think she is? I’m not taking this crap from anyone. This is my life and this is me…’ The young woman bellowing at the top of her screechy voice had those ubiquitous wires hanging from her ears, was wearing leggings — she was not bad-looking, incidentally — and was as unaware of her surroundings, as she shouted into her contraption, as it is possible to be.

Did any of you know that most of the 20th-century monsters — Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Ceausescu, Duvalier, and even the Ethiopian mini-Napoleon Mengistu — were rather good writers who could form better than average sentences that said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun? I read this in a Big Bagel weekly that was once known for its wit, but is now so blinded by hatred for the Donald that it has turned into a rag, surpassed in venom only by the New York Times and CNN. I knew that Mussolini was a scribbler of note because he wrote the editorials of his newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia before he took power. ‘Inequality and discipline, these are the substitutes for the cries of Equality and Liberty,’ wrote Il Duce.

Gstaad I’ve been hitting the books rather hard lately, the ritzy-glitzy crowd having gone the way of natural snow. There’s great skiing, they tell me, but it’s on man-made white stuff, which is a bit like going to bed with a plastic doll instead of the real thing. I know, skiing is skiing, but it’s somehow different for me. I need the true white powder, and I don’t mean the Colombian marching stuff. My friend Peter (Santa Claus) Livanos sent me two literary beauties for Christmas, Wounded Tiger by T. Martin Bennett and James Holland’s Normandy ’44. The result is that I’ve forgotten all about women, martial arts, booze and even my family while deeply engrossed in them. In fact, it’s worse than that.