High life

That’s not fair play On board S/Y Bushido As far as I’m concerned, the less said about the goings on in Beijing the better. I know, I know, I’ll be watching the judo and the athletics, especially the former (there are no drug cheats in judo, no money under the table, no money, pure and simple), but competition among chemists does not race my motor, as they say in Detroit. The opening ceremony may have dazzled some people, but it left me cold. There was no humanity to it, just a lot of Chinese animated figures acting as robots. Who invented opening ceremonies anyway? Back in the good old days Greece marched in first, in step, followed by the rest. Then some politician declared the Games open and that was it.

On board S/Y Bushido Sailing into Athens, renamed ‘cemento-polis’ by green-loving Athenians, can be a traumatic experience, for one’s crew, that is. Coming in from the west, crossing Pireaus, my German cook Daniel could not believe his eyes. ‘Was ist das? Das ist furchtbar, abscheulich!’ Daniel is young, a very good cook and as good a pick-up artist as I have come across in my travels. His specialities are English and Dutch girls. ‘I know you will not like me because I’m German but you will come on board for a drink...ja?’ Piraeus now looks like the Albanian coast, without a single tree or bush to relieve the eye from the utter ugliness of a city built by the short-sighted for short-term profit.

On board S/Y Bushido Around 20 years or so ago, Udai Hussein, Saddam’s boy, had some of his heavies beat up a man who refused their master’s invitation to join his table in a Geneva nightclub. The Iraqi wanted to meet the man’s beautiful companion, hence the invite. Although arrested, Udai got away with it by claiming diplomatic immunity. The Swiss caved in, as they often do in such cases. As Plato pointed out, money talks. The only good thing anyone can say about Udai is that he died like a man, as did his brother. Last week a scumbag who goes by the name of Hannibal Gaddafi, son of the Libyan head clown Muammar, was arrested by the Swiss police for beating up his servants. He spent two days in the cooler, was bailed, and then left the country.

Corfu The Ionian islands are softer, greener and more feminine than those of the Aegean, and Corfu in particular was used by Homer as the setting of one of the most beautiful episodes of ‘The Odyssey’, the meeting of Odysseus with Nausicaa. For any of you with short memories of the classics, Odysseus was washed ashore, having escaped Calypso’s enchantments, and is welcomed with warmth and generosity by Nausicaa’s parents, King Alcinous and his wife Arete. Once the Ithacan king reveals his identity the Phaeacians take him back to his island, which he hasn’t seen in 20 long years.

The sea surface is smooth and mirror-like, and from the deck of Bushido I scan the coastline for the mother and baby porpoises who live inside a blue-green grotto off Assos, the tiny village which clings to a small isthmus between the island and a huge, forested pine hill crowned by a ruined 15th-century fort. It is a bad time of day to meet mother and baby, the sun is straight up and blistering, the air still except for the noise of an occasional motor pest disturbing both the porpoises as well as yours truly. I first made their acquaintance at sunset the day before. My friend Nicola Anouilh, son of the great playwright Jean Anouilh, and a Cephalonian by choice, knows every nook and grotto of this, the most dramatic of the Ionian islands.

I’m afraid that Pug’s Club ‘Turd of the Year’ award went unanimously to the ghastly Andy Murray, he of the centre court primal screams and primate fist pumping. Perhaps his mother, who looks straight out of central casting of a Hollywood stage mum, and then some, should file his teeth down a bit and make him look less like Dracula. Better yet, he should be forced to watch Federer in action and learn a thing or two about behaviour on court (100 hours of videos, and then 100 more). I know the hucksters who now run sport require announcers to be cheerleaders, but praising someone for acting like a bloodthirsty mullah extorting the faithful to kill infidels — and on Wimbledon’s centre court to boot — is simply pathetic.

‘My legs are leaden, my throat is dry and I feel slightly sick with anxiety. As I make my way towards the arena the roar of the crowd gets louder. One question keeps edging into the small part of my mind which is functioning normally: what on earth are the combatants going through if I feel like this when I’ve just come along to watch?’ This is the opening salvo of Mark Law’s excellent The Pyjama Game: A Journey into Judo, published last year and prominently displayed in Brussels last week at the ugly but gigantesque Centre Sportif, Kinetix, central Brussels, and about 25 klicks from the place Napoleon met his Waterloo. An enormous 200-foot poster announces that this is the 10th World Masters Judo Championships, 24–29 June 2008, as if it had slipped my mind.

By the time you read this I will have a pretty good idea whether my 70-and-over judo world title will belong to some Mongolian monster or be retained by yours truly. Unpredictability is to sport what lying is to Clinton and Blair — a compelling stimulus — but my chances in Brussels are beginning to resemble those of the Belgian army facing the invading Germans back in 1940. Having trained hard all spring in the Bagel, it all went down the drain in two weeks living the high life in London and Devon. As good an excuse as any, and fun to boot. Speaking of Blair and Clinton, I am reliably informed that Arpad Busson’s ‘Diary’ in the 14 June Speccie is up for a Pulitzer Prize. And it makes me very proud.

Just 555 short years ago last month, troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople, ending a gallant defence by Constantine Paleologos, the last king of Byzantium. Just five even shorter days ago, a portly barrister and a ten-year-old almost pulled off the greatest cricket upset ever, but like Byzantium it was not to be. Ironically, I contributed to both gallant but losing causes: in spirit only in Constantinople; by fielding my arse off at the cricket. More about the portly barrister and the ten-year-old later. As barbarians tend to do, Mehmed rode triumphantly into the city on a white horse. Soon, churches became mosques and Constantinople became Istanbul. This was Islam’s greatest victory ever.

I never thought I’d see it, a beauty winning a major title, at least not since the Williams sisters and the ghastly Maria Sharapova came on the scene. But there she was last weekend, an olive-skinned enchantress winning the French Open and charming everyone with her femininity and grace. If only Ana Ivanovic did not use the word ‘guys’ so much, she’d be perfect. But, what the heck, that’s the price you pay for mixing with Americans on the circuit. Will her looks last? Not if she keeps playing they won’t, so let’s enjoy her while she still has them aged 21. Nothing kills beauty quicker than sweating and battling under the harsh sun.

Città di Castello, Umbria A few years before the end of the 19th century, King Leopold of Belgium summoned his favourite banker, Baron Lambert, for an intimate chat over lunch. ‘My dream is to have a little place in the sun,’ said the monarch to the banker. ‘Somewhere down south, where everyone runs around without clothes on so I can relax a bit.’ ‘I understand and will see what I can do,’ said the loyal baron, and then they proceeded to talk about more pressing matters. The little place in the sun turned out to be called Congo, a piece of real estate much larger than Europe and, I believe, 800 times the size of Belgium. Baron Lambert lent the moolah to Leopold, the king went shopping, and, well, you know the rest. Oh, yes, I almost forgot.

‘Is democracy on the march or is it in retreat?’ screams a headline in the Washington Times. The question was put to Condoleezza Rice last week, and I must say, for a little-to-show-for-it secretary of state, she answered very well: ‘Freedom does not advance on a steady trajectory — setbacks and detours should be expected...’ Americans seem to be obsessed with democracy, now even more so than during the Cold War. We (ancient) Greeks take credit for it, but don’t really consider it for others, only for ourselves. Athens became a democratic city-state in various stages. The poorest were eventually made eligible for the magistracies, but the generalship always remained in aristocratic hands.

Is the opening sentence of a book, especially a novel, the most consequential, or is it just dressing for the feast to come? I’d say the former judging from A Tale of Two Cities, Moby-Dick, Pride and Prejudice, and my favourite, The Death of Manolete, by Barnaby Conrad. ‘In August, 1947, in Linares, Spain, a multimillionaire and a bull killed each other and plunged a nation into mourning.’ But here’s one that’s bound to be the greatest of them all, Tan Lines, to be published by St Martin’s Press on 8 July: ‘There are 8,000 nerve endings in the clitoris, and this son of a bitch couldn’t find any of them.’ Nabokov, eat your heart out. The intellectual behemoth who wrote these immortal opening words is one J.J.

New York From my kitchen window I have watched a little boy grow up to be a man. I live in what Americans, with great economy of expression, refer to as a brownstone, actually a townhouse. It is on 71st Street off Park Avenue. My father bought it for us 30 or so years ago, and both my children refer to it as home. Although both have left, my daughter for Los Angeles and my son for Brooklyn, their rooms still feel lived in, with shoes lying around, old books, bric-à-brac and pictures of their parents looking less worn, to say the least. The house, I am told by neighbourhood historians, used to be a whorehouse, but a very upper-class one. Never a scandal, just a few gentlemen going in and out throughout the days and nights.

I am heartbroken but for once it is not over a girl. I have to stay in the Bagel, hence missing The Spectator’s 180th anniversary party, Pug’s club’s first annual meeting in our new digs, Countess Bismarck’s dinner, Nick Scott’s shindig, and so on. Not having set foot in London in months, I was looking forward to it, but it’s not to be. I should be celebrating because one of the reasons I didn’t like living in London any more was Ken Livingstone. Now he’s voted out, Taki can come back in — it’s as simple as that. One thing is for sure. London could do with a makeover. Better yet, a broken-window policy. It is hard to believe but the Bagel was saved by one man alone: Rudy Giuliani.

New York It obviously came from above — the order, that is — because I have never seen such perfect temperatures and clearer skies than for the Pope’s visit. And this wonderful Pope, who believes in the strictest doctrine for the Church, was greeted by the faithful like a rock star, cheered and applauded everywhere, with people yelling ‘Wilkommen’ in Brooklyn accents and thousands upon thousands waving yellow-and-white Vatican flags. His Holiness stayed in an upper east side house, one block away from mine, and watching tough and burly Noo Yawk cops tear up whenever he passed by was a sight to remember.

New York Their memorials were held five days apart, each in one of Manhattan’s most hallowed venues, each one attended by more than 2,000 worshipping fans, both attracting A-list mourners as well as the poor and the humble. William Buckley and Norman Mailer had great send-offs, the former, as a devout Catholic, in St Patrick’s Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue, natch; the latter, as a non-practising Jew who called himself an atheist, in Carnegie Hall, where art and imagination have flourished for decades. As both men had been mentors of mine, their families kindly sent reserved-seat tickets, but it was not to be. Death unites the fallen and abjures snobbery and privilege. Paying homage to the dead means first come first served.

New York I read in the New York Times that one of the four persons who apparently operated the escort service that undid Eliot Spitzer, the ex-governor of the state of New York, was one Cecil Suwal, 23, ‘a graduate of an élite New Jersey prep school’. Bad news travels fast and I was informed of the fact that Cecil — a girl, incidentally — and I had attended the same élite institution, Blair Academy, from more than one old friend. Mind you, we were 45 years apart, and when I went to Blair the place was not co-ed. I have the fondest memories of Blair. It took me in after I had been thrown out of Lawrenceville school for being recalcitrant, and I ended up captain of sports and won some other honours, which seemed very important at the time.