DIARY
N
ow, who was I being faithful to at the time? . . .' Conversation overheard in cafés abroad is somehow so absorbing. One feels entitled to listen in, even to stare, as we never do in England. The coast here in Turkey seems to attract a strange mixture of tourist types. There are package tourists, jetted in from Strathclyde. There are intrepid backpackers. And there are ele- ments of the smarter set, trailblazing for evidence of that especially delicate environ- ment the Sunday Times bacterium needs for holiday survival: a fragile balance between unspoiled native charm, and the proximity of just a few — not many —of one's own race and class. The discerning bourgeoisie seek places which, like a decent brie, are just on the cusp between virginity and ruin. Then we settle down to deplore the arrival of the hordes for whose coming we were never more than the wakening cock-a-doodle-do at dawn. Odd, that we who insist on being the first to ravage the maiden should be loudest in complaint against her later promiscuity.
You can always spot the couples who on arrival were strangers, and have met on this holiday. They are the ones laughing as they stroll together along the beach, or deep in interested conversation over dinner in the waterfront restaurants. The couples who arrived as couples already are different. Their eyes never meet. They stare into the middle distance, mostly silent. To identify the friends and partners who have known each other longest and know each other best, look for those who do not seem to like each other much. These are the stable rela- tionships. Resignation is the key to human constancy, and I wonder whether fidelity is often more than a failure of nerve.
In the glare of a Turkish noon in which mad dogs and Englishmen go out for their midday Sun, the news-stands display a range of foreign papers. To see the English headlines alongside the Italian or Turkish ones, is to see that there is no international consensus on what is news. The French press is dominated by the capture of a new French hostage. The Italians are worried about Albania while the Turkish press looks east, to the Kurdish borders, north, to Soviet convulsions, and west to Croatia. The Turkish perspective strikes me as the more international. Geopphy dictates it. British papers seem dominated by John McCarthy, and the fact that Kenneth Baker is not going to resign. How often, do you suppose, dare a man repeat that he is not going to resign before it necessarily means that he will? I should have thought Mr Baker was getting pretty close to the limit. MATTHEW PARRIS
y the time you read this the British press will be running the inevitable series of in-depth articles by psychiatrists on the prognosis for Mr McCarthy's relationship with his girlfriend, and the opinions of counsellors on the psychology of release after long confinement. Someone will have written to the Times wondering how, before we had these so-called experts, all the pris- oners released after the first and second world wars managed. I understand that there were many pregnancies. As a journal- ist Mr McCarthy will know of the horrors he now faces at the hands of his trade. He will know that this circus serves no greater good. So I hope he will not shrink from extracting the largest possible sums from its ringmasters.
Acircus of the original kind greeted me at Ephesus, yesterday: an ancient arena seating 24,000 at which Jethro Tull played last week. We reached the famous site after a morning's drive of spectacular beauty, starting from a tomb called Mausoleum, from which we get 'mausoleum', at Bodrum: driving alongside the lovely Lake Bafa, its waters as warm as a Labour-con- trolled local authority swimming pool; and crossing the Meander plain, through which the River Meander, from which we get 'meander', meanders. We passed castles built by the Knights of St John. What, I
wonder, is the Marxist explanation of the Crusades? Class-analysis is not easily applied to them, my best hypothesis being that the skirmishes were an early equiva- lent of skiing holidays or European grand tours, enjoyed by the rich and paid for by the poor. The most well-to-do had their own tents — self-catering or serviced — and would return to boast of their holiday acquaintance with Richard, or John.
alikarna's disco, at Bodrum, accom- modates fewer than Ephesus — only 4,000. Commanding the bay, it is a lavish post modernist neo-classical folly, its arena encircling a marble dance floor under the stars. Greek columns stand, or lie fallen, around. From a temple a floor-show com- mences — last night, belly-dancing — while a great fountain sprays the sea, lasers stab the dark, and pink neon strobes in rhythm. The marble balls punctuating the bal- ustrades are not marble at all but translu- cent. Plugged to the mains they flash with the beat, throbbing with light as thousands dance. Couples writhe beneath little pavil- ions. No violence, only pleasure, hedonism on a stick. Locals crowd the barbed-wire- topped perimeters for a glimpse. Snobs complain — the European did — that this violates Bodrum's classical heritage. But looking down at the light and out across the dark, I felt momentarily closer to the ancients' idea of fun than ever in my life. Never have I felt the power of classical style so strongly.
It was my 42nd birthday, my first experi- ence of Turkey, but not my first sighting. That was on my fifth birthday. Recently arrived in Cyprus, Dad drove the family in his new car, a black Morris Oxford, num- berplate KO 12, from Nicosia to my birth- day picnic in the Kyrenia mountains. The jelly melted, as Mum had not understood about jelly in the heat. High in these moun- tains we could just discern, far across the sea, the purple tops of the mountains of Turkey. I resolved to swim there, once Dad had taught me to. Later he was to dissuade me from this endeavour, but the fascination remained. Now I am here, 37 years later, and this afternoon we visited new excava- tions of the city of the goddess Ares. The arena is entirely buried save for one surgi- cal trench revealing, like a post-mortem slice into a skull, a narrow section of mar- ble benches, legs carved like lions' legs. The whole great amphitheatre will be here on the hill, under the earth. I pose in a VIP's stone armchair, for a snapshot. I shall keep the photo and return when the arena is all uncovered, 37 years on, when I am 79, God willing.
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