Jeremy Clarke

The beer garden at the back of the pub was empty, save one woman sitting alone at a table contemplating a pint glass. It was Saturday night, early, already dark. I placed my carnival glass of Kirin Ichiban on the table next to hers and sat down. The beer garden was floodlit with blue and orange light. The stars were out. I craned my head forward, sucked up an inch of cold lager without using my hands and looked sideways at the woman on the next table. I noticed a reaction to the mouthful of chilled beer on a cellular level. The woman looked miles away. ‘If you’re interested in a chat,’ I said, ‘this is the most sensible I’m going to be all night, so we should have it now.’ She backed out of her reverie and regarded me. ‘OK,’ she said.

Theresa May must have been a little disappointed. Her government limousine rolled silently to a halt at the rear entrance to the Savoy hotel, she got out, and the only people around to witness her latest fashion statement were a top-hatted doorman and your Low life correspondent having a fag. She was again wearing what the Daily Mail describes as her ‘zany, patterned’ coat. I confided to the doorman how upset I was that she wasn’t wearing those shiny, over-the-knee S&M boots. Something about the doorman suggested a vast and perhaps dangerous hinterland that only a top hat and Regency-style coat could keep from spilling out into everyday life. He expressed agreement by distending his eyeballs and giving a discreet little spasm of ecstasy.

In the Spar shop I overheard someone talking anxiously to the woman on the till about an approaching ‘hurricane’. I had thought the fast forwarding sky was looking a bit apocalyptic, so we hurried back to the caravan and put the radio on and waited for the news. The most important thing to have happened in the world in the past 24 hours, apparently, was the death of the ‘influential’ former Velvet Underground member Lou Reed, the man who characterised his style of musicianship as: ‘One chord is fine, two chords is pushing it, three chords and you’re into jazz.’ The gathering storm was the second item. Hurricane-force winds were a possibility rather than a certainty. A disappointment, this.

We’d being trying to meet for lunch for weeks, but always something had got in the way and either she or I had had to cancel. But at long last we’d managed it, and after two pleasant hours we emerged from the fish restaurant and made our way along the sea front towards the car park, still marvelling at the achievement. We hadn’t gone far when she noticed two planks leaning against a wall. They were six by twos, each about 2ft long. The sight of these planks seemed to cause her to lose the ballerina’s poise that she’d maintained throughout lunch. She became agitated and started hopping from foot to foot. An absent person was putting in a new window frame. The job was half-finished.

I’d been trying to curb the habit — one day at a time — and then I felt a bit toxic and marched smartly into my favourite local charity shop as though I were on rails. I’ve been in this particular one a thousand times — a peasant enamoured with tat. I know all the volunteers by sight. One day it might be the big humble guy in the frock and with the devil-may-care approach to applying his lipstick.

I’d booked a private one-to-one session with her for an hour on the afternoon of the day she flew in. I’d booked it casually, thoughtlessly, on a recommendation, a month in advance, unaware of her reputation. I’d dutifully filled in the form she sent me, circling problem areas on a drawn representation of my body, and mailed it back. It was only as the appointment drew near that I began to take heed, when overhearing talk at the yoga centre, of the excitement at the imminent arrival from across the pond of the great Linda Strong (as we’ll call her). The impression was of a St Paul scheduled to visit Antioch for a few weeks to whip the faithful into shape. The day, then the hour, of our private session came.

A surprisingly convivial atmosphere prevailed in the second-class carriage of the fast London-bound train when I stepped aboard at Bodmin. A loud, cheerful, messy young family was eating and drinking unrestrainedly, though it was not yet 11 o’clock. Cans of bitter and lager, not all of them unopened, were arrayed on several other tables. Animated conversation and uninhibited laughter were widespread. And — was it my imagination? — a Cornish national spirit presided, vivid with pleasure at the prospect of exchanging a green wet peninsular for the solidity of the metropolis. As I moved down the carriage aisle searching for an empty seat, Cornish eyes lifted to meet mine, not shyly or slyly, but with friendly curiosity.

I went to a Tibetan yoga all-day workshop. Tibetan yoga is very simple. It would be hilariously so if it didn’t hurt as much. For the first hour we stood and very slowly raised our hands — as slowly as a satellite seen from the earth on a starry night, was the advice given — from down by our sides until they met above our heads. For the second hour we lowered them back down again to their starting point. After a frugal lunch we stood and swung our heads in a fast tempo from left to right and back, and for the final hour we nodded them up and down. Then we went home. When I got home, the grandson was there clamouring to be entertained, so I took him out for a stroll along the promenade to see what we could see.

I woke up in the foetal position, on my back, on Trev’s tiny sofa, with an old curtain over me. This curtain was a step up from the tea towel I once found draped over me when I woke there. Then the usual panic-stricken search for phone, wallet and glasses. My wallet was in my back pocket. My glasses were on the floor over by the television as if flung there. No phone, though. Oh, good. I had not the faintest idea what the time was. I peered out of the grimy window to try to gauge the hour by the strength of the daylight. The sky was overcast, the road empty. Difficult to tell. There wasn’t a clock in the sitting room. Nor was there one in the kitchen. I opened Trev’s bedroom door and crept in to look for his phone.

‘Jeremy! Jeremy! I can’t believe it! There’s no bloody booze!’ I’d walked into the music room where Elgar and Fauré were lavishly entertained by their sponsor, the flamboyant arts patron Leo Frank Schuster, whose townhouse 22 Old Queen Street once was. Our magazine was holding its annual ‘Meet the Readers’ afternoon tea party. And there he was, standing close to the door: the tanned, immaculate, cheerful figure of the great Taki. A sight to gladden every heart. It seemed too good to be true. That tan, those easy good manners, that lightness on the feet, that devotion to fun epitomise my romantic notion of what The Spectator is. Before every Spectator event, one idly wonders, or even goes as far as to ask, whether Taki will be there.

One evening last week, I trotted over to the caravan site’s clubhouse to use the wifi and pick up emails. One email was from a friend who reported that someone had described me, after meeting me for the first time, as an ‘intellectual’. Unsure whether to be flattered or appalled by this misjudgment, I ordered a hot panini (cheese and red onion) to save cooking dinner back at the caravan and running the battery down on the smoke detector, which was going off so often when I cooked that I’d begun using it as a timer. As I rammed the panini into my face, an elderly man, with what was almost certainly a chapel Christian face, came and set up a table, chair and microphone in a central position.

We picked up the key to the caravan, let ourselves in, ascertained the phone signal situation (none) and went to the beach. Polzeath beach is the kind of bucket-and-spade beach Janet and John’s Mummy and Daddy might have chosen for their annual holiday. First, soft white sand ideal for burying Mummy;  then a broad shining plain of hard, smooth sand, ideal for sandcastles, dam projects, or tunnelling to Australia; then gentle inch-deep wavelets — spent rollers — for toddlers and oldies to paddle in. Then flags. Then thundering surf crowded with Neoprene figures, all shapes, sizes and ages, some of them screaming, and riderless surfboards flipped skywards; each successive wave a chaotic and exhilarating drama.

This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the front of that postcard was contemporary, but the colours were digitally manipulated to invest the image with a nostalgic, hand-tinted, vintage air. The square was eerily deserted. No customers were seated at the tables under the gay sunshades set out under the trees. Time stood still. I’d never been there. I hadn’t even heard of the place. And yet the square and its forsaken tables seemed oddly familiar. The photograph transmitted a nostalgic sweetness which was almost sinister. An invitation was implied. ‘Come!’ the picture seemed to be saying. ‘Life! You belong!

Golly my testicles are shrinking fast. At this rate by Christmas they’ll be down to the size of garden peas. And I might have breasts on the way, too, it says on page 92 of the hormone injection contraindications leaflet. Fantastic! Just what I’ve always wanted. After two days at the seaside at St Raphaël, me and my incredible shrinking knackers headed inland to a busy, famously pretty little village in the hills. Friends — a sculptor and his wife — put me up in their tall rented house on the plane tree-shaded square for five days.

Hotel Trepaner, St Raphael, French Riviera: I have read all ten reviews on this site. The overall rating (given by five of the ten reviewers) is ‘terrible’. ‘Disastreux!’ says Kimi. ‘Affreux!’ moans M Lanie. ‘A frightful hotel run by a slum landlord,’ claims Juliet45. After staying at the Hotel Trepaner for a week at the beginning of August, my opinion is that the majority of these reviews are snobbish and unfair. What, may I ask, were you people expecting for that price? A chocolate medallion on your pillow every night? It’s the cheapest hotel on the French Riviera, for goodness sake! Up the road in Nice, 60 quid a day in the first week in August wouldn’t get you a deckchair on the beach for the afternoon.

I haven’t been out for three weeks and I’m up for a big night. To prove it I’m wearing my cowboy shirt with silver buttons and crimson roses embroidered on the shoulders. I ring Trev to check in and say I’m just leaving the house. So that we don’t have to worry about last orders, I tell him, I’ve got two tickets for a reggae disco at a bar with a late licence. ‘It’s been a long time, bud!’ he says. ‘How’s the old love life?’ I say. ‘Are you still seeing that Juliet?’ Trev’s love life conforms to the rules of a narrow, traditional genre, but within these constraints it is endlessly entertaining. He is 55 or something. Juliet is 18.

‘How was your journey?’ I said. In summer, the place next door is let to visitors on a weekly basis. We share a driveway, and I generally get to meet whoever comes to stay. Last week’s visitors were German. The father and the two teenage boys were tall, gangling and mild. I met them soon after they had arrived and were unpacking the car. Silent, gnomic presences in the background, the sons continued dutifully with the unloading, leaving it to their parents to interact with the inquisitive natives. They’d driven from Germany, said the Dad. Motoring across Belgium and France was easy. From Dover to Devon was less so. It was an ordeal, frankly.

Searching the web for information about the enigmatic Bilderberg group, I came across a website called Who Controls America? It’s a simple site to navigate: you click on ‘White House’ or ‘Wall Street’ or ‘Hollywood’ and you get a list of the main players and a big colour photo of each from the neck up. (You know where I’m going already, don’t you?) Each face is identified as belonging to a particular race or, if you prefer, heritage. At the bottom of each list is a tally of the percentage of Jewish people on that list, the percentage of Jewish people in the US population at large (2 per cent, it says), and the factor by which Jews are therefore overrepresented.