Switzerland

Gstaad My annual end-of-year party in the Bagel was a bust. Too many people brought their friends and I ended up asking men and women to please leave both my bedroom and, especially, my bathroom. I had some very pretty young things drop in. Some even overstayed and — surprise, surprise — there were some items missing after the clean-up the next day. But that was then. I’m now in Gstaad for the duration. The good news for the nouveaux is that it rained like hell for three days, washing away all the snow. Skiing and new moolah don’t mix. Main Street now sounds a bit like Beirut — or should that be Athens? However it sounds, it’s not like the Helvetia of the good old days.

New York At times I used to think the place was real. The New York of films, that is. The reality is an urban agglomeration of millions, most of whom have a disinclination to speak English. Then there’s the celluloid city of 42nd Street, Annie Hall, Dead End, Rear Window and King Kong. This is the dream city I keep writing about, the one that stabs you in the gut because it’s gone. And it gets worse when you accept that it never existed in the first place. Like the woman of your dreams who has lost her looks and your best friend tells you they were never there. And yet they must have been, because I lived them.

I think this week marks my 40th anniversary as a Spectator columnist, but I’m not 100 per cent certain. All I know is that I was 39 or 40 years old when the column began, and that I’ve just had my 81st birthday. Keeping a record is not my strong point, and it’s also a double-edged sword. I once planned to publish my diary, but then I stopped keeping one. I’d found passages in it that were dishonest, written in the heat of the moment, most likely under the influence, and the result was a bum-clenching embarrassment. Now I don’t use any social media, certainly not Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, being a firm believer that Zuckerberg and Bezos should be locked up for life (Zuckerberg for not doing enough to tackle terrorist content).

From my chalet high up above the village, I look up at the immense, glistening mountain range of the Alps, and my spirit soars. Even youthful memories receding into sepia cannot bring me down from the high. Mountains, more than seas, can be exhilarating for the soul. Then I open the newspapers and the downer is as swift as the onset of an Alpine blizzard. Television is even more of a bummer.

 Gstaad The snows came tumbling down just as the camel-drivers headed back to the Gulf. In fact, they never saw the white outdoor stuff. And a good thing it was, too. The outdoor stuff makes everything look so pretty that the glitzy types might have been tempted to return. God forbid. Let them stick to the indoor white stuff. The problem with Gstaad is the local council. They remind me of the EU: they’re intransigent, short-sighted and stick to a losing game. In Brussels they keep passing more and more laws and regulations. In Gstaad, they keep putting up their prices and building more and more apartments. As a gentleman with a close association to The Spectator told me, ‘My son doesn’t come here because there are no young women around.