High life
No regrets
Taki
Southampton, Long Island I have finally seen the light. Southamp- ton is a great place to be at after the great unwashed have departed. Which means September. My great mistake was to go there during the summer's busiest end-of- week, over here referred to as Labor Day weekend. No wonder I sounded so churlish last week. The traffic was horrendous, the fumes even worse, and the people made my old pals at Pentonville seem to possess plenipotential dignity by comparison.
Seven days later the place felt like the paradise I once knew. I could park any- where, walk around the beautiful main street without hearing trash talk, and even jog in Captain's Neck Lane without a sweating slob spitting at my ankles. I guess that's what happiness is all about: your state of being after the fact. Once upon a time I used to think cheap thrills afforded by yachts, nightclubs and fast women would render me happy; now it's distancing myself from trendy folk. It's most likely the age thing, but it's also the Aristotelian influence, `a kind of rational satisfaction with one's character and actions'.
A person whose values and activities are in unison is a happy one. Someone whose beliefs are contrary to the ways he or she lives is not. Take, for example, my sporting life. Throughout it I did everything in my power to make sure I entered a competi- tion ill-prepared. Was it a subconscious desire to have a ready-made excuse in case I lost? I don't think so now, although I did think it back then. What it was is very clear at present. Back then I did not have the rational capacity to analyse and reject a desire which did not accord with my con- ception of what was really worthwhile — an easy lay, a glitzy party, a drunken weekend. I could have changed things but chose not to. It is only now that I have the wisdom to do so. But again it could be only age and the serenity that comes with it.
But enough of this. After all, every action one has ever taken has been done to make one happy. And regretting is a mug's game. One thing I obviously do not regret is 23 years of writing for The Spectator, and the unseen friends I've made with readers throughout these years. I recently received mail concerning a column I wrote about becoming 64. It was a gloomy one and not much fun to read, except for those who think very little of the poor little Greek boy. One letter was from a very long-time reader, an English gentleman by the name of E.N. Edwards. He lives in Florida and we've been corresponding for years. Mr Edwards writes that his life's innings is drawing to a close and, because I am among the last to defend the England that was, he sent me a wonderful parcel of books concerning the linkage of Greek mythology and the psychology of different types of human males. It is riveting stuff, not at all heavy, and I'm going through the books as I write. Another reader from South Carolina, Mr Chris Timmers, demands I stop being hard on myself and calls Nothing to Declare a great book. (Inci- dentally, Nothing to Declare has been optioned, the director has been named and two actors have been approached to play you-know-who: Billy Zane, the rich-bad guy in Titanic, and Johnny Depp, of whom I've never heard. Well, if dear old Jeff Bernard could make it as a play, little Taki might make it as a movie. God help us.) And speaking of actors, about 150 of them, with another couple of thousand in tow, stormed the Bagel last week and almost blew a new hole in the ozone with the gasses they spewed into the atmo- sphere. It was so typical of the UN: to invite heads of 150 nations — some won- derful, like the King of Norway, most oth- ers pretty dreadful, murdering crooks from Africa, and dictators Like Castro — the week the great masses returned from Labor Day weekend, and during the US tennis Open to boot. Whoever said that the people count should immediately go to Zurich and see Dr Klinghoffer, an expert in delusion and self-deception. Only the very rich who use helicopters to come in and out of the Bagel count; plus flim-flam men like Blair and Clinton who use our moolah to fly private and have the streets emptied for them by the fuzz. The latter employed 6,000 cops to ensure the safety of criminals, cops who were taken from polic- ing their neighbourhoods, plus 750 detec- tives. There were also fire department teams and emergency crews all ready to serve the whims of these gasbags. The city was not only paralysed, many people went broke, unable to work as the Bagel came to a standstill. Restaurants did not bother to open, taxi- and minicab-drivers remained indoors, with hundreds of millions being squandered by the gasbags so they could hear themselves talk. So the next time `Hello Sailor' Brown rips you off with his stealth taxes, which is every day of your life, feel happy some of the moolah went to the UN and what a swell party it was.
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