High life

 Porto Cheli Nothing is moving, not a twig nor a leaf, and I find myself missing the cows, the mountains and the bad weather. The sun has become the enemy, a merciless foe who can be tolerated only when swimming, something I do for close to an hour a day. Nothing very strenuous, mind you, except for an all-out 50-stroke crawl towards the end. For someone who has swum every year since 1940, I’m a lousy swimmer. Not as bad as Tim Hanbury, who swims vertically rather than flat on the water, and who resembles a periscope, but I’m no Johnny Weissmuller, the late great Tarzan of the Forties. From the verandah of my house I look down on a beautiful bay and a private beach, which is no longer private.

Porto Cheli I have been thinking about my children and my own strange boyhood as I gaze up at the clear blue skies of summer. Summers lasted an eternity back then, and by the time one got back to school there were new friends, new loves and new discoveries of things unknown the previous May. For example, I had seen my father kiss a very pretty woman whose name, Raimonde, was French. She was a blonde beauty who was engaged to dad’s closest friend, Paris. It gave one a strange feeling, knowing something no one else did — certainly not my mother or Paris. Paris Kyriakopoulos was the son of the governor of the Bank of Greece, an extremely powerful position. But Paris also had something else going for him.

 Gstaad I am looking out of my window at the green landscape and forested mountains rising beyond, as peaceful a scene as there is in this troubled world, but this is Switzerland, a country that hasn’t fought a war in 700 years, resisting both Napoleon and Hitler through friendly persuasion and by having banks that don’t talk. No longer. The new big bully on the block, Uncle Sam, in cahoots with the vermin that is the EU, is forcing the Swiss to open up and spill the beans. What I don’t get is why the Swiss are lying down and playing dead. Sure, they have all sorts of referendums, but the government keeps signing treaties with the depraved bureaucrats of the most successful criminal enterprise invented by man, once upon a time known as the Common Market.

One event I regretted missing on my last visit to London was a party at the Polish Club, which has been refurbished and has a new Polish prince as its president and has good Poles and active members such as Ladies Belhaven and Hamilton, both friends of mine, keeping the home fires burning. I have often written about my love for Poland, a heroic country that has been betrayed by everyone throughout its history, but has always remained proud, refusing to play the victim, with 90 per cent of Poles belonging to the Catholic church in today’s greedy secular world. A Polish pope was the first to challenge the Soviets, and Lech Walesa led the charge. But what really gets me about the Poles is their refusal to evoke the betrayals they’ve endured each time they go on a public forum.

 Gstaad I write this on 14 July, France’s big day and the 25th anniversary of my father’s passing. He died at dawn, on the bicentennial of the uprising, as if he couldn’t bear French triumphalism of the foul event one more second. Actually he had a massive heart attack as he was preparing to go off on his boat. His butler found him and that was that. I think of him and certainly dream of him quite a lot, and I’m now three years younger than he was when he died. The past is constantly on my mind nowadays.

 Island of Rhodes When I’m on the water, I feel I was born to it. Yachting has always been a way to enjoy the sea and the nature associated with it. The motion through water, the breeze and spray on the face, the looking forward to a landfall, the sheer beauty of leaning into the wind and watching the bowsprit plunge in and then emerge shaking water off itself like a puppy. These are some of the pleasures. Well, I’m on a gin palace, and none of the above is happening. I’m a guest of John and Darcy Rigas, whose chartered megayacht accommodates 16 in pasha-like comfort, and to my eternal shame I’m having the time of my life.

To Fort Belvedere for a ball that most likely will discourage any more balls because of its brilliance and perfection. Galen and Hilary Weston, who lease the historic house that was once the playground of Edward VIII and the venue where he signed the Instrument of Abdication in front of his three brothers, are amazing hosts. In this age of gushing exhibitionism, their restraint and good taste leave one speechless upon arrival. On a brilliant June evening, with the weather holding, some 400 guests arrived at Windsor Great Park and walked down the immaculate rolling lawns of the Fort. On the right, on a perfect grass court where once upon a time I used to play regularly with Galen, a mixed doubles game was in process. The ladies wore long 1900s dresses and large hats.

When I hear the words Sykes-Picot I more often than not feel like punching an Englishman or a Frog — any Englishman, any Frog — in the mouth, but then I think of François Georges-Picot’s granddaughter Olga, and my pugilistic thoughts turn to romantic mush. More about those two arrogant and ignorant fools later, but first Olga. I was 22 and she was 19 or 20 and we met in New York where she was studying acting and I was studying girls. It was love at first sight and we swore we’d never ever look at anyone else ever but then the summer ended and we never saw each other again. Well, I did see her but she was 20 feet tall and in Technicolor.

As everyone who has ever joined a club knows, Pugs is the world’s most exclusive one, its members ranging from German nobility and Greek and Danish royalty to the British upper classes, Indian nobility and American and Greek aristocracy. Plus Sir Bob Geldof and Roger Taylor of pop music royalty. Club rules prohibit membership to exceed 21, hence a titanic struggle is taking place, as I write, to fill the last two spots. We are, at present, 19 members. Last week in London, the annual Pugs lunch took place and I flew over for it from New York, despite running a temperature and suffering from flu. Mind you, it was worth it. Everyone wore the sky-blue and white striped necktie of the club, evoking a gentler time when men wore uniforms and marched in step.

 Gstaad A slight bump at 30,000 feet concentrates the mind, as the good Dr Johnson said about an appointment with the gallows. Halfway over the Atlantic and lost in a fantasy, I came back in a hurry as the plane shook and trembled; yet my first thought was to show off, pretend I hadn’t noticed, exhibit a kind of brazen indifference while my co-passengers nervously tightened their seat belts. It was only a bump, the nose dipped and then pulled up rather violently, and it lasted less than half a minute, hence my bravado. (I suspect the automatic pilot was the culprit.) They say that when one is about to die, one’s life flashes before one. Not necessarily true. Although I’ve lived through cataclysmic times, I’ve always thought my life was rather uneventful.

Last week in the Bagel, and then London here I come. As I write, hundreds of thousands of Jews are marching up 5th Avenue in ‘Salute to Israel Day’. They have been marching for close to six hours and come close to the Puerto Ricans in terms of noise and provocation. Looking out from my window I see only blue and white Israeli flags, no stars and stripes whatsoever, and the chants I hear are those of the aggrieved. They want Palestine back!  Why waste time with the truth when there’s an angle to promote and a grievance to air? Palestinians should leave the West Bank because these late arrivals say so. Well, folks will say anything nowadays.

 New York Here’s a question for you loyal readers: if a hubby asks his wife to cook him a hearty meal of goat meat and she serves him lentils instead, is he within his rights to beat her to death with a stick, as a New Yorker who is on trial this week did? Mind you, Noor Hussain is not a native Noo Yawker, he comes from Pakistan. But he’s as American as, I guess, not apple pie but lentils, which got him in a spot of bother to begin with. Once upon a time immigrants had names that ended in vowels, like Cuomo or LaGuardia; now they’re called Hussain, Hamid, Rodriguez and Hernandez. The hubby’s defence is that he comes from a culture where it is appropriate conduct to murder the wife if she gets the menu wrong.

So the wedding of my little girl to Andy Bancroft Cooke went off without a hitch, a wonderful ceremony in a beautiful Catholic church off Manchester Square, and even the weather played ball and gave us the most perfect spring day imaginable, cloudless and cool. Green Park was at its most glorious as we drank outdoors on the long terrace and lunched in Spencer House, which pulled out all the stops. It’s hard to believe but as I was leaving the church, having performed my duties as father of the bride, a Speccie reader approached me and asked if I had walked her down or had been walked down by her. Obviously a loyal reader and one much appreciated. What touched me besides the obvious was Father Colven, who is the rector of St James’s Spanish Place.

Like the late Christopher Hitchens who only discovered his Jewish roots once he had moved to New York in the early Eighties, Donald Sterling has also had a revelation and is advertising the fact that he’s Jewish. For any of you who might not be aware who Sterling is, he was born Tokowitz 80 years ago but changed his name to Sterling to sound ritzier. He is a slum landlord who evicts poor women, began his career selling second-hand furniture to blacks and Hispanics, is as disgusting a man as you hope never to meet, and is, since a week ago, the most reviled man in America. His crime: telling a black girlfriend, who insists the relationship is platonic — one who has been arrested four times, however, and the recipient of at least 1.

For some of you younger readers the name Schmuel Gelbfisz will not ring a bell. Yet back in the Thirties Schmuel Gelbfisz’s identity was a dinner-party quiz question, and the one who guessed correctly would receive a kiss from Mary Pickford — America’s sweetheart — if he happened to be a man, or an expensive trinket if a lady got it right. Schmuel was born in Warsaw, Poland, in July 1879, a Hasidic Jew, but later on falsified his birthday in order not to serve in the tsar’s army. He left my favourite country as a 16-year-old and walked to ...Germany. He had no money and no friends, got to the Oder, fell into the water, was fished out by border guards, talked a good game and walked another 200 miles to Hamburg.

The vicissitudes of getting old are linked to the mystical innocence of childhood as one daydreams the precious time away. I’m a daydreamer par excellence, and lately I’ve been thinking non-stop about my daughter. She’s getting married this week and I’m off to London for the festivities. Solipsist that I am, it’s nice to think of others for a change. It’s the nature of prestidigitation to mix one’s self and one’s children — I’ve got one of each — and I thank my stars that there’s only one bride, as I read with amusement that three gals in Massachusetts exchanged vows although no state in America has yet to pass a law that three can get hitched. (Not to worry, it’s bound to come. And why only three?

New York The poet was right: April is the cruellest month. We at The Spectator lost Clarissa Tan, my good friend Bob Geldof’s 25-year-old daughter Peaches died, and my oldest friend from prep school buried his son, one of the greatest athletes of his time, at the age of 42. There is something obscene about surviving the young, something only politicians like Tony Blair can do and still smile, and A.E. Housman got it right in his ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’. We live in a culture awash with talk about happiness and the pursuit of it. Thousands of books are published about it every year. Arianna Huffington’s opus on how to thrive is number one in the bestseller list. (More about this later.

 New York This is a tale of two escape artists in one city. Let’s start with my old friend the Rev. Al Sharpton. I call him an old buddy because about 15 years ago, in a downtown restaurant, a boxer friend asked the strutting Sharpton if he wanted to meet yours truly. The reverend did not miss a beat: ‘Man, I got better things to do than meet Taki,’ he snorted. I burst into laughter, so he stopped and shook my hand and I pretended to count my fingers and then it was his turn to laugh. As some of you may remember, Al became famous 30 years ago by playing the race card non-stop and claiming that a young black girl had been kidnapped and raped by a white district attorney working for Rudy Giuliani.

America and western Europe sure have their priorities right, blanketing our newspapers, magazines and the airwaves with newsworthy items that reflect our culture. For example, the April cover of Vogue magazine featuring a rap thug and a reality TV queen on its cover has been covered as extensively as the sinking of the Titanic was back in 1912, except that those were pre-TV and pre-internet times and only ink-stained wretches invaded our homes daily. The editor of Vogue apparently wrote that she wanted to feature those who define our culture and who stir things up. That’s not even original, because another monthly some time ago featured on its cover the mass murderer of the Boston marathon, calling him sexy.

 New York Back to the mythic city, dreamed into existence by the movies long ago and instantly memorable, a visually stunning place built for action and adventure, a city of broad avenues and narrow side streets, of soaring towers and grubby tenements, all giving an air of, as Humphrey Bogart drawled in The Maltese Falcon, what dreams are made of. But what’s happened to the gritty stoops of Harlem, the waterfront filled with gleaming ships, its majestic train stations and grand hotels? I’ll tell you, progress is what happened, and it stinks. New York for me has always been a fictive place, mostly made up from movies I’ve seen, the rest from childhood impressions when New York really was the centre of the universe.