High life
Santa comes to town
Taki
edford Falls is the small American town where Jimmy Stewart one Christmas Eve discovered that, really, It's a Wonder- ful Life, after all. It's also a wonderful film, directed by the great Frank Capra, a man who not only made non-stop fun of the human condition, but also made people feel better for having seen his films.
Redford Falls is a mythical town, but 34th Street in Manhattan is not. That is where the Miracle on 34th Street took place, on Macy's eighth floor, to be exact. It is Santaland, and last week I took my little boy there and proved to him once and for all that, yes, John Taki, there is a Santa Claus. (And an expensive One to boot.) I guess even those ghastly hucksters who run American television turn human around Christmas time, and Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life have replaced such classics as Sammy and Rosie get Laid and Friday the 13th on our small screens this week.
Not to be outdone, even cab drivers, who are the rudest people in this rudest of cities, say the magic word when tipped during the holidays, or something that resembles the magic word, as the last cabbie who spoke English died back in 1968.
Christmas time bewitches most cities, but none more than the Big Bagel. Lights have a lot to do with it. There is a giant illuminated snowflake on 57th Street, hun- dreds of lighted Christmas trees on every island up Park Avenue, and of course there is the tree at Rockefeller Center, soaring some 75 feet, its limbs sprinkled with thousands of lights.
The Christmas trees bring a feeling of country to the city, and brightly lit store windows somehow soften the Bagel's rough edges. When the Salvation Army's brass bands do their stuff, even the mug- gers get into the spirit of things.
Yes, there's no place I'd rather be during Christmas than Noo York, although the week before Christmas was Annabel's week for me for years. I'd catch the Concorde on 18 December, have five terrific nights at Annabel's and then fly back. Then two things happened: I went to Pentonville on 14 December 1984, and three years later Harry Worcester got married, and somehow I got out of the habit.
Now, after a dumb heart attack, the mother of my children put her foot down about my pre-Christmas trip to Berkeley Square, so Nell's will have to do. Mind you, I ain't complaining. The place is still jumping, and is by far the mimero uno nightclub in the Big Bagel.
Last week I ended up at Nell's after the rather grand dinner party I gave in my house for Anne Somerset's engagement to the artist Mathew Carr. The trouble was that I'm very superstitious, and we had been 13 at dinner, the reason for this being that Anthony Haden-Guest passed out during cocktails. So, in order to assuage my fears I got into a similar state to that of the beast, and the next thing I knew I was being carried into a cab by a black man who made Sonny Liston look like Shirley Temple. Nell told me afterwards that during the holidays she takes on three more bruisers simply to carry the bodies to their limos.
Yes, like the song says, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and the mother of my children is busy getting the house ready for Taki's annual Christmas Eve party. This will be the seventh year in a row that we've had it, although I missed one back in 1984. We have about 60 people, and I divide them into three groups: those who can read and write, those who cannot, and the young ones. After dinner the children sing Christmas carols, and I give a speech. For reasons known only to myself, the speech has yet to be a success, but I swear I shall keep trying. This year's party promises to be the best ever as the plunging dollar has kept all my close friends at home. Better yet, I have given my word of honour that I shall deliver my Ballad of Pentonville Gaol to my agent on 23 December. What better reason than that to celebrate the day after?
And if my word of honour turns out to be as forked as some of those people who occasionally testify against me, well, so be it. A happy Christmas to all of you.
Jeffrey Bernard is ill.
Previous page
