High life
In the swim
Taki
t doesn't make sense, but the older the shipowner, the faster the boat. Take Evan- ghelos Nomikos, for example. He was very rich and always owned magnificent boats which he kept selling, and ordering newer and faster ones. Towards the end of his life he owned the fastest boat in the Med, but he hardly ever took her out of the harbour.
Stavros Niarchos made his money after the second world war, and immediately bought Eros, a black two-masted ketch, and then the most beautiful sailing boat ever, the three-masted Creole. But the moment he became 65 he started cruising on stink pots, and enormous and fast stink pots at that. Even Gianni Agnelli, the charismatic Fiat chairman, switched from sails — he once owned a boat that didn't even have an auxiliary engine — to pistons once on the wrong side of 40. My old man ditto. Our two-masted ketch, the Aries, was the toughest boat I've ever travelled on, and we sure travelled back then. Afterwards he bought the Nefertiti, and I the Bushido, two of the best-looking sail- ing boats around, but now we are reduced to only one large and extremely expensive gas-guzzler, which can cruise at 35 knots, and which sleeps ten in comfort.
But, as I said, the speed doesn't make sense. My father is now 79 years old, and spends four days a week on board, but going nowhere. Here is what he does. He rings up my mother every Friday morning and asks her whether she'd like to go with him for the weekend. As she has done for some 30-odd years, she declines and wishes him a pleasant trip. He then calls up some of his friends, and steams out of the harbour and heads for Angistri, a mere 22 miles away. After reaching his destination in less than one hour he orders the captain to drop anchor, his cook to start cooking, and goes for a two-hour swim. On Monday evening he heads back to port. None of his friends seem to complain, but I've got my doubts. And it's probably the reason the girls keep getting younger and younger. After all, nobody of mature or voting age would put up with simply watching a man swim for four days straight.
I spent all last week on board, anchored off Angistri, and thank God the ex-wife and my two children were on board (plus a young girl who my father insisted was his new assistant). I used to love to swim, but no longer. Even in out of the way islands the sea is too polluted, and anyway it doesn't give me the kind of rush I feel after an hour's karate, or a boxing match, or even a long run.
This week is my birthday, and I've now begun the countdown to 50. In 364 days I shall reach that depressing age, but I plan to enjoy myself until then, It is bit distres- sing, but not as much as when I realised that my reflexes are completely gone and that all sorts of nonentities simply come up to me and whack me at will. The old man has now turned against karate, and thinks I'm much too old for it. I disagree. If he can surround himself with young girls, I certainly can fight with young men. Any- way, I'm sure that the reflexes may just pay me a visit in September when I'll be at Crystal Palace for karate week.
On the last day we were anchored off that rock a friend of my father's tied up next to us, so at least we had some company. The wife of my father's friend is a legend in Greece. She's absent-minded but extremely pleasant and quick. She's also a rarity in this part of the world, a true lady. Alexandra told her a story which took place in Gstaad and involved yours truly. Christine Ockrent, a French televi- sion interviewer with politics like those of Scargill's, and therefore an old adversary of mine, greeted me one day by saying, 'Bonjour Taki, toujours fasciste?' to which I answered, 'Bonjour Christine, toujours putain?' That reminded the lady of an incident that took place in Athens when she ran into an acquaintance of hers and, as was the custom at the time, asked her in French, 'Et comment va votre marie?' when she suddenly realised that the hus- band had been dead for a year. So in desperation she blurted out, `Toujours most?' The same lady was the Greek ambassadress to Madrid when she had to attend a lying-in-state for a diplomat who had just joined that embassy in the sky.
'It wasn't the sex stuff that upset me, it was the marriage.' When she entered the house she handed her new flowered hat to the butler and then paid her respects to the deceased. Sudden- ly to her horror she saw her hat at the feet of the dead man — as the butler had mistaken it for a tray of flowers. As she told us last week, she cried for the dead man, but also for her hat. Well, there is nothing like old family tales to help pass the time away, especially when one has to sit on the fastest boat in the Aegean and watch a man swim round and round.
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