High life
Oh, to be in England
Taki
Upon choosing to live under a trade union dictatorship rather than languishing in a Greek gaol (it was an agonising decision) I decided to pose as an Englishman and a Country squire at that.
The first thing I did was to trade in my Caraceni of Milano suits and Gucci shoes for English hand-me-downs available from the Workers Revolutionary Party benevolent fund. What I received in return was third-hand clothes — having been stolen by seething revolutionary offsprings from their parents' upper middle-class homes — but they nevertheless instantly transformed me into a pin-stripe Englishman. My accent was a slight problem but I contacted my old friend Sir Charles Clore who gave me elocuholt lessons and taught me the public schoolboys' old trick of speaking with the mouth closed while breathing with my back. I then bought lots of back copies of Dog and House, covered my room with chintz, bought a Volvo estate wagon, installed a cage in the back of it and triumphantly drove into London. In retrospect it was the greatest mistake of my life. Just past Baron's Court there was a road block. A policeman looked first at my car and then at my clothes and asked me what the nature of my visit to London was. He bupmed and hawed for a while and finally said, 'I am terribly sorry sir, but we have allowed fifty-two people like you inside the City today. The quota is full. Please try tater.' Although I was dressed like an Englishman I hardly felt like one so, pre tending to obey blindly and make a U-turn, I gunned the car and drove on. Passing through Little Arabia, or the Boltons, as it used to be known, I was inundated with spittle from rich Arabs' flunkies shouting and gesticulating while waiting for their masters. Arab children riding with their nannies in Camargue Rolls-Royces jeered at me and threw precious beads.
I managed to reach Belgravia with my new-found English imperturbability still intact. Getting out to buy a newspaper I was accosted by a panhandler. 'Parakalo, parakalo,' he shouted sticking his arm out, 'drachmas, drachmas.' For a moment I thought the insidious Greeks had penetrated my disguise until I realised that all the beggars in Eaton Square were Greek speaking Englishmen. The whole square is inhabited by Greek shipowners and even the traffic signs are in Greek. The beggars were now getting excited; `Goulandris sahib,' they screamed, making the best of two worlds.
Some very fat Greek children were out sunning and stuffing themselves with back lava and feta sandwiches. Their prams were tanker-shaped and their English nannies wore sailor suits. Unpatriotically they laughed when the oleaginous fatty Greeks pelted me with olives and yelled 'foreigner, foreigner.'
Disheartened and disillusioned I drove on. In one of London's most famous thoroughfares, opposite the Victoria 'and Albert Museum, a mosque was being built. Thousands of shoes were outside it as the constructors were all Ismaili workers flown in as cheap labour. The mosque is to be a place of worship for the Ismailis whose God is Karim Aga Khan. He flies through the air with the greatest of ease on his three private jets, and cuts through the waves in his four super-yachts. Total cost over £20 million. He also has about fifteen houses and one thousand servants. Thus none of the faithful thinks he is a slob. The 'living god' wants an English mosque because both his wife and mother are English.
The sight of the mosque was the last straw. I needed a drink badly. But that proved the most difficult task of all. I dared not go into a pub dressed as a nob Englishman because I was certain to be mugged by Marxists having nothing better to do now that the polo season is over. And smart bars and restaurants would not let me enter without djellaba. 'I am sorry, sir,' was the way Louis, the elegant maitre d' of Annabel's, put it. 'We are all booked for tonight and our clients do not want their seats all sweaty before they arrive.' Furious, I rang the owner, old Etonian Mark Birley. Surely he would set things right. 'Not a chance, Taki old boy,' he said, 'they won't even let me in. But do come dear boy for a hot cuppa tea.' My efforts had not been in vain. I finally understood what the old tie network was all about, Nicholas Davenport is unwell and will resume his column next week.
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