High life

On board S/Y Bushido In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain and the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees... I once quoted the exact passage in these here pages and called it writing at its best, and a very nice Oxford don wrote me a very nice letter telling me I was full of crap. This was more than 15 years ago.

On board S/Y Bushido With plenty of time on my hands to read — television and DVDs are forbidden on board although both are available — I am shocked at the severity, downright viciousness, in fact, of the reviews about my two old friends, Jimmy Goldsmith and John Aspinall, in John Pearson’s book The Gamblers. You’d think they’d murdered somebody and got away with it, judging not from Pearson’s opus, but from those reviewing it. OK, Lucan did murder an innocent, but got away with nothing. I have not read the book, just some criticisms, and the latter tells a lot about some of the reviewers. Let’s be open about this.

On board S/Y Bushido The island evenings are always subtle and slow. White-painted houses rise up steeply from the wine-dark sea, the sunset drifting over the hills above the port, the streetlamps faintly lighting the quays along the waterfront. In Symi, one of the most picturesque of the islands bordering Turkey, the hawkers emerge as the light fades away and advertise their business. ‘Fresh fish, fresh kalamari, best oysters in the whole of Greece and Turkey...’ The neo-classical houses of Symi, their pediments and courtyards paved with pebbles —- all creations of the 19th century — are a pleasure to the eye. They are ochre and white, with the odd red one thrown in for variety’s sake.

Far be it from me to denounce the British for having lost interest in their heritage — they have embraced multiculturalism, deny the good their empire once brought the world, have banned fox hunting — but when it comes to changes that directly affect me, it’s time for action. Especially when the change is based on a silly agreement made 26 years ago. Let’s take it from the top: Mark Birley is known the civilised world over as the numero uno upmarketclub/restaurant/ nightclub owner, the so-called Nijinsky of the catering world, a perfectionist like no other, and the proof is in the pudding, as they say in Kansas.

A note from Jeremy Sykes enclosing an article about a friend of mine who died 40 years ago last Tuesday, on 5 July 1965. In his kind letter, Jeremy Sykes assumes that I knew the man who died in his Ferrari returning from a Parisian nightclub so long ago, and he is absolutely spot on. In fact, I was with Porfirio Rubirosa until 3 a.m. in New Jimmy’s, the legendary Montparnasse club, and had left only because I had to be on court in Nice the next morning for a tennis tournament. (That’s how we trained back then: in nightclubs doing a fast mumbo.) Rubi left Jimmy’s after 6 a.m., drove through a deserted Paris into the Bois de Boulogne on his way home across the Pont de St-Cloud.

Ah! Agh! Aaah! Ah! Aaaaa! Ugh! Ugha! Aha! Aaaah! Aaaha! Aaa! No, it’s not an orgy I’m listening to, just Wimbledon 2005. What has happened to the once-gentle game? You’d think phone- sex operators had taken over. Incidentally, the guttural noise has nothing to do with power-hitting, just gamesmanship. Serena Williams sometimes goes quiet and hits the ball just as hard. Federer makes not a sound. Nor did the great hitters of the past. As they’ve made rules about everything else, they should do something about the grunting, too, otherwise it’s bound to escalate. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I can’t watch tennis — especially men’s tennis — for more than a few minutes. It’s just too boring.

To the Royal Hellenic Yacht Club, high above the tiny gem of a marina once upon a time known as Turkolimano, its name changed to Mikrolimano after the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The yacht club also dropped the Royal, which is par for the course. Actually, it is the standard method used by Greek busybodies and other pests for seeking redress against those who have never sinned against them — like the Greek royal family. Never mind. The club will always be connected to the royals because it is they who sponsored it and put it on the map. The present King Constantine was our first post-war gold medal sailing winner in the Rome 1960 Olympics, and it was he who as crown prince managed to get Athenian society to turn into sea wolves.

London ‘Where did it all go?’ asks Mark Steyn in the National Review, talking about airline service, or the lack of it, rather. Well, I read the piece before getting on a BA flight from the Bagel to London in order to prepare myself for the worst, and I had a very nice surprise as a result. Mind you, I had a first-class sleeper-bed and was lucky with my fellow passengers. Jeremiah O’Connor and his wife Joan are not your usual travellers. (Why, oh why, do slobs travel so much?) They were friendly, polite, quiet and had a sense of humour. I was obviously a little worse for wear when the real-estate tycoon introduced himself and told me he was an avid reader of The Spectator.

New York My last week in the Bagel, and just as well. Things are heating up. Mind you, the last two weekends have been great. Noo Yawkers are very predictable, almost lemming-like. Come late May and June, everyone heads out of town, packing themselves into overloaded cars to travel on gridlocked highways to the Hamptons and down to the Jersey shore. Some even head for Connecticut and upstate New York, where poison ivy and lime disease are eagerly waiting for new city suckers. Never mind. It’s a well-known fact that the Bagel is never more pleasant than on the weekends, when the place slows down and relaxes. The streets are empty and navigable, taxis are everywhere and their Indian drivers looking for business, and the place feels like a small town with very large, empty buildings.

New York Robert Wood Johnson IV is the billionaire owner of the New York Jets, an American football team which plays in New Jersey, as its crosstown rivals, the New York Giants, also do. Big Bagel real estate is much too expensive to waste on football stadiums, or so the saying goes. Mayor Mike Bloomberg is also a billionaire, and the two of them — the trust-fund baby and the self-made one — have recently joined in an unholy alliance to make Woody the IV even richer. Let’s take it from the top. Some time ago, Woody the IV craned his neck from across the Hudson River, where his Jets were going through their paces, and noticed an enormous parcel of unbuilt real estate on lower Manhattan’s west side riverfront.

New York To Roxbury, Connecticut, a tiny, beautiful village covered in leafy verdure and straight out of a black-and-white film from the Forties depicting white, Christian, innocent America.

New York A letter from an English couple, who are long-time friends of mine, arrived, thanking me for lending them my London flat. (They live in America.) ‘We also managed to fit in a wedding near Oxford and a long private chat with the Queen at Windsor...who, in contrast to the incumbent at the White House, drove herself (in a nice ordinary Jaguar) to church and drinks with us without a sign of security. Just a lady sitting next to her in a dark-blue suit. It is possible the slight bulge in her skirt covered a weapon, but there wasn’t a sign of the boys in blue anywhere. Amazing — quite like the old days.

New York I Married a Princess is among the most embarrassing reality shows to have appeared on American television, which makes it unique in view of the garbage which fill the airways 24 unrelenting hours per day. The format is a simple one: a man and his wife and their small children spend their days being filmed saying nice things to each other. Children’s nappies are changed, the husband goes shopping for food, the wife cooks and opens some mail — it was so boring I had to turn it off. The banal horror takes place in Hollywood and the star is ‘Princess’ Catherine Oxenberg, with her real-life actor hubby, whom I’ve never heard of, and their children.

Trust Tony Blair to call an election the day after The Spectator goes to press: 5 May is a lousy day for conservatives the world over. Karl Marx was born 5 May 1818 in Trier, the Rhineland. The only good thing about the date took place in 1816, when ‘O Solitude’, John Keats’s first published poem, appeared in the Examiner. Mind you, bad day or not, I’m rooting for only two men, the sainted editor and Michael Gove. Both will be elected, and that’s my final word. Michael Howard I will not feel sorry for. Although I know nothing about business, I used to use a sports metaphor when my father asked me why my brother always got it wrong in shipping. If you’re afraid to lose, you can’t win. I learned this in karate.

New York Happiness is a German pope succeeding the greatest pope ever, a Pole. Not everyone agrees with me. Blogger Andrew Sullivan, a Brit expatriate and gay-rights advocate, called it a ‘full-scale assault’ on liberal Catholics. If he is a typical liberal Catholic, he has just doubled my joy at Benedict XVI’s election. Fifty years ago, secular liberals predicted that education and science would do away with the opium of the people. They were as wrong about the power of faith as they’ve been wrong about everything else. An hysterical Irish–American, Maureen Dowd, writing in the Big Bagel Times, described the new pope as a hatchet-faced bully, a Cardinal No, a Vatican Darth Vader. Dowd should be excused.

New York The founder of the Dorothy Parker society, Kevin Fitzpatrick, recently wrote to the F. Scott Fitzgerald society inviting its members to an Algonquin hotel cocktail party, a gracious gesture worthy of old Scott himself. The Fitzgerald types did not even bother to answer. Back in his day, that would have constituted a casus belli, but things ain’t what they used to be. Fitzgerald was known to be rude at times, but only when drunk and unhappy over Zelda. The trouble with the society that bears his name is not alcohol, but academics. It is comprised largely of eggheads, something that must have Scott rolling in his grave. He was, after all, the exact opposite.

New York It’s all over but the shouting, as they say in the Bagel, but bitchy British tabloids had nothing on the locals where Chuck and his bride were concerned. Call it envy, call it republicanism, but, wink-wink, the Yankee press had a field day. Tina Brown, an expatriate Brit who passes as an English aristo among the denizens of the Bronx, noted that Camilla reminded her of a governess. ‘Englishmen always marry their nanny...’ Quite so, but how would snide Tina know? I suppose the fact that Tina looks like one might have something to do with it. A ghastly old bag, Cindy Adams, wrote that Camilla resembled a cleaning lady. Again, the plebeian Adams surely knows what she’s talking about. In fact, she’s an expert on the subject.

New York Thirty-five years or so ago, William Buckley received an unexpected telephone call from one John Lennon. Intrigued, Bill listened while the John Lennon himself — with his Japanese wife blabbering away in the background — pleaded with him for help in remaining in the Land of the Free. Lennon had had a drug bust in his past, and some eagle-eyed Yankee immigration officer wanted him deported. The reason Bill was rung up by the Beatle was that Bill’s younger brother James was the junior senator from New York. Now I’m not sure about the dates, or even what happened, and all I know is that Bill referred Lennon to the right place and left it at that.

Nemmersdorf is a village in East Prussia that was overrun by the Soviets in the autumn of 1944. After seizing the village, the Russkies raped all the women, regardless of age, and then crucified them. All of them. Men and children were clubbed to death or run over with tanks. Not a single person survived. It was payback for three years of Nazi atrocities during their invasion of Russia. German units counter-attacked and retook Nemmersdorf, and then invited reporters from three neutral countries — Sweden, Switzerland and Spain — to see what our Allies had done. German newsreels showed the horror non-stop. Which brings me to General George Patton, my favourite warrior after Robert E. Lee and Hasso von Manteuffel.

Gstaad Skiing without poles accentuates the new carving technique, which uses one’s edges and the upper body to turn. During the 1950s we checked before a bump, planted the pole, unweighted the skis and turned. Then came the Austrian technique of weddle, which involves a shifting of the hips while keeping the body straight on the fall line. The new carving style derives from racing and new technology. One never brakes, while keeping the weight on both skis, using the upper body and almost facing the mountain, a real no-no in the past. Until the new high boots came along, the ankles were the most likely bones to break in a fall. A circular break of the knee was most feared during the slalom, where one tended to hook a ski in between the poles. No longer.