Low life
Island hopping
Jeffrey Bernard
I had a preview of American health fanaticism ten years ago when I stayed in Boulder with an otherwise delightful girl, who asked me to go out into the garden whenever I wanted a cigarette. On one of my several trips to Barbados, the PR in charge of the trip allowed me to choose my fellow travellers and Fleet Street col- leagues. In a near-fatal joke which didn't come off, I chose six hacks and hackettes who I knew wouldn't get on with each other. We had tears from a couple of the women at a dinner given to us by the Lord Mayor of Bridgetown and that was the mildest of our many scenes.
On another occasion, a Spectator reader lent me a house just outside Nairobi and I asked Irma Kurtz to come out there for a few days to the land of White Mischief. We did the obligatory day in a game reserve and Irma kept trying to persuade our driver to stop so that she could go walkies with some of the most dangerous animals in the world.. She also tried to persuade a boat- man on Lake Naivasha to steer us into a herd of hippopotami, but not only was it Irma who tried to get me killed but also the maid-cum-housekeeper who asked me one day whether I had seen the leopard who lived at the bottom of the garden. They quite enjoy killing people, but I would love to have one in London since their favourite meal is dogs. The German ambassador in Nairobi, not well-liked, found his awful ALsation one day outside the kitchen door where it had been decapitated by a leop- ard_ A cheer went up in Nairobi. And then one day a mule ate my dressing gown which was hanging up to dry in the leopard-infest- ed garden_
I would also hie to go back to Sydney if It wasn't for the length of the flight, which now includes no smoking for about 20 hours. I have never yet been to Italy, but I don't lace the idea of so many cities being not much more than open-air museums.
England, particularly the Lake District and the Forest of Dean, would be two great places for a holiday if it didn't rain almost every bloody day of the year. Charringtons once sponsored a day's racing at Cartmel near Kendal and after the behaviour of my friend and colleague, Alan Hall, then Ath- ens on the Sunday Tunes, plus the two girls we took with us, Charringtons announced that they would never again sponsor anoth- er race. One night one of our party decided to go for a swim and he dived out of the Window of his room to find that it wasn't Lake Windermere but the reflection of the moon in a puddle on some concrete.
I think maybe the only satisfactory trips I have had in recent years have been when I have been alone in Barbados, Bangkok and Sydney. The last time I was in Sydney, to see Denis Waterman in the play, I started chatting to a man whose table I joined as we had a drink outside the bar sitting on the pavement. He suddenly said, 'Jesus Christ, I haven't been home for three days and three nights!' I assumed he'd strayed a long way and asked him if he lived in Mel- bourne or Adelaide. He pointed at a house on the opposite side of the street and said, 'No, I live over there.' How very Australian that was, to have been absent without leave for 72 hours from a house 30 yards away_ What I need is a week in somewhere harmless without leopards or colleagues and now I am seriously contemplating the Isle of Wight_
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