High life
Well-placed
Taki
It begins right after Wimbledon ends. At Annabel's, at Harry's Bar, during weekends in the country. It is always the same question, and it's asked more often than Martin and Nona Summers drop names of people they've never met. By late July the question grows pointed, but hY, then every last pinstriped Hooray seems poised for flight. Except, that is, for a curious few.
Due to circumstances beyond my con- trol, this is the first time that I've joined those curious few who stay behind while the rest make their getaways to resorts-sur: mer. Places like the sweaty, Arab-infested hell-hole that is the French Riviera, the geriatric, German-clogged Marbella, and the homosexual heaven of Mykonos. (There are even those who go to Port° Cervo, the only resort in the world that is greedier than its owner, the Aga Khan' and even more expensive.) And what a treat it's been. There is something ex" tremely ritzy about not going abroad din- ing the month of August, a sort of last vestige of civilised living, especially for one who has spent the last 46 Augusts in places like the ones mentioned above.
Take last weekend, for example. I sa,t, outside my cottage in Wiltshire and draw' iced champagne for lunch. Two of my male friends sat with me while their wives prepared the food. I was telling them that in America no upper-class girl would ever be caught dead doing it, the food that isi and my friends were surprised (one °, them even went as far as saying what go- was a woman then). That is when it hit me; It was the first time in, say, 30 years that I was having a champagne lunch while 011,1 the horizon all I could see was green, an the only thing that moved was on four legs or on wings. Perhaps it sounds all too simplistic, WI only I could describe the pleasure I suu," denly felt in just being there. No fat, bald' loud Hollywood types, with fat cigars stuck in their fleshy mouths, to gaze at while getting ripped off at the Hotel du Cap; greasy, expectorating and entourage' Arabs to do biggies in the pool at Vouliag- meni; no hustlers like Sebastian Taylor t° relieve me of my petty cash in backga°1- mon at the Marbella Club. Just a long vista, of green and brown, with a few cows an
u sheep thrown in for good measure. I didn't even need the Moet Chandon to feel blissful, but mind you it helped.
That evening I paid my first visit to mY local pub. The wife of the governor ist called Dorothy, and being a wise guy 1 O., on a thick American accent and called he's Dotty. 'No more of that or out you go,' was her response, but after a while we beam
friends, especially when I ate some of the plastic fruit that was decorating her bar. What struck me about country life was the fact that it's bliss if one doesn't need to drink compulsively, eat at irregular hours, find petrol after dark, or wake up very late and still expect to read the newspapers. (Which means that I went a whole weekend without food, drink, travel and news. That, of course, was the weekend before, because by last weekend I knew better.) Even driving back to London on a Sunday night is fab, as they say at St Paul's School for young ladies. Every restaurant on the Fulham Road actually welcomes you in with open arms. The service is perfection, and the decibel count low. So pleasant are restaurants during the languid days of August that I haven't even missed my beloved Annabel's. And there are added bonuses. I can have my car washed any time it needs washing, there are plenty of theatre tickets to be had, and I even manage to go to the British Museum and fuld it not bursting at the proverbial seams.
So, here is what the civilised jet-setter should bear in mind when he programmes his travel computer: January and February should be spent in New York (all the rich and fatnous are in Palm Beach), March in the Swiss Alps (for the same reason), while April and May should be reserved for visiting resorts the rich and famous visit In the summer (i.e. Antibes, Mykonos, Deauville and Marbella, but never Porto Cervo). June, July and August is London time, while September and October can be spent travelling in Scotland and making sure that everything that flies dies. Novem- ber is the time to go to jail (if one has to) and then it's Christmas and all that, which means it's time to go home.
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