DIARY ALEC GUINNESS
The little hilltop town of Vezelay in Burgundy boasts the most striking Romanesque basilica imaginable; not from the outside, which seems a little unbal- anced and uninviting, but within it is a knockout of light, architectural strength and sheer simple beauty. A place for a `rave' perhaps. When, on a recent sunny afternoon, my wife and I trudged up the steep street to visit it for the first time it was all but a 'rave' we found. The great spaces of the narthex and nave were swarming with a hundred or more French teenagers, all shouting, laughing, scream- ing, chasing, kicking and goosing each other. (There was similar exuberance, with a touch more sexual activity, I think, before the great Grilnewald crucifixion in Colmar when we went to the Unterlinden Museum last year.) The basilica meant nothing to them — just a place where school buses had deposited them for a cultural `projef. I wondered what Thomas a Becket, Richard Coeur de Lion and Louis VII of France, all of whom had climbed the same hill, would have made of the modern infidels. St Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached the Second Crusade (1146) from the same spot, might have had quite a lot to say. He died before the notorious and fatal Children's Crusade, but whoever got that one going had the bright idea of packing off the brats — never to return — before they could grow into adult vandals.
We returned to the basilica several times in the following days and — in the absence of the ravers — found all breath- takingly peaceful. The classier guide-books complain about the restoration work done in the last century by Viollet-le-Duc but, for my part, I rejoiced that it had been done at all. A swallow kept up swift swoop- ings throughout the building each time we were there, and every minute or so returned to catch its breath at the same, most suitable, place — at the feet of a stat- ue of St Francis of Assisi.
Our charming and chic small hotel in Vezelay was B&B only; but when the sun was warm enough breakfast could be taken in the pretty garden among tall, pale, mauve irises and the scent of low box-tree hedging. Very superior Limoges china and solid silver started the day handsomely: no tarnished and bent tea-spoons such as are found in my own house. We were directed to a simple but decent restaurant nearby called La Bouganvillee, run by two young women who had such welcoming smiles that we took all our meals there except for one luxurious dinner at the gastronomically famous Marc Mineau about two miles away. This is in an attractive setting (except for some eager insistent sculpture dotted around) and the food was superb, but our dinner was interrupted seven times by pass- ing staff asking if everything was to our sat- isfaction. Why do grand restaurants go in for this tiresome practice? They brought our food hidden under those ghastly silver- plated Kaiser helmets, which they removed with a one-two-three-oops! synchronised flourish. I longed for Paul Daniels to have magicked some substitute for what we had ordered: a smoking cigarette perhaps, a Barbara Cartland pink hat or the head of John the Baptist. (The premiere of a Holly- wood Biblical epic was jeopardised when Salome presented Herod with the Baptist's head on a dish and a camp character in the audience shrieked, 'Dig that crazy dessert!') The best I could manage was, `Non, non, the foi de veau for Madame there, and the tete de veau ici pour me.' The helmets were replaced for a ridiculous repeat performance.
Amiddle-aged German came to the table and accused me, 'You are Alec Guin- ness.' I had to admit it. 'I knew,' he said. `Not your face. Not that. I saw you in the street. I recognised your mannerisms.' My mannerisms? In the street? What is it I do that I am unaware of? Perhaps I jump from side to side or stop, doubled up with silent laughter, or reassure myself I haven't devel- oped a hernia. The thought quite put me off my passion-fruit sorbet. I was well and calmly prepared for the bill, as for death, thanks to Diners Club. In any case it seems to me that all French restaurants are about a third less expensive than their English equivalents; if there actually are English equivalents.
Awe walked down a narrow country lane on the outskirts of Autun we were taken aback to come face to face, over a
hedge, with a tall, handsome, well-groomed llama. A little further on we encountered some vast mythological beast which slowly lumbered across a hilly field. He looked like some sad buffalo with tremendous horns, a dirty white woolly face, shaggy legs like a Suffolk punch and a long horse's tail. He lowered his rump into a stagnant weed- covered pool and farted. And so we say good-bye to Burgundy, land of etc. etc.
The ten-year-old daughter of a friend of mine brought me an unexpected birthday present. The year was 1960. She was a quaint, bright child, very Victorian in appearance. 'Many happy returns,' she said, handing me an envelope which obvi- ously contained a paperback book. 'I bought it with my own money; it didn't cost much,' she added. I took the book out of the envelope and thanked her warmly. She looked at it, I thought, with a touch of envy. `It's the book all grown-ups want to read,' she explained. It was, of course, Lady Chat- terley's Lover, recently made available in all the high streets of the country. Housewives were popping it in their shopping-bags with the groceries with keen anticipation of a good read. I didn't let on that I had read it in 1933, when I was working as a copy-writ- er in an advertising agency. The copy which I read — plain paper cover — had been smuggled in from France by one of the staff and was doing the rounds of the office. It was probably a month before it reached my humble desk. It had not been greatly appreciated as literature, I felt, many of the pages having been barely turned; but a dozen or so were grey, greasy and dog- eared. Somewhere at the back of my mind I see a couple of typists removing the tor- toise-shell slides from their hair and letting it go loose while, at the same time, casting strange glances at the office Mellors. The office Mellors, for his part, kept up his usual phallic chit-chat and continued to shuffle through his collection of porno- graphic snap-shots. D.H. Lawrence, Pen- guin books and obscenity laws would never mean anything to him — life would go on the way it always had. Watching recently an episode of the television Lady Chatterley and wanting more volume, I accidentally pressed the wrong button. For a second or two I didn't realise what I had done. Things looked much the same: a vast baronial hall, candle-light. 'But wait a moment,' I thought. 'Why is Mellors dressed as a but- ler? And Sir Clifford is being highly mobile without his wheelchair.' Then the penny dropped: Fry and Laurie as Jeeves and Wooster. The dialogue seemed just as funny as D.H. Lawrence's, so I stayed with Channel 4.
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