High life
Wild times
Tala
Everyone seems to be talking about riots in cities these days, although where I live ladies tend to potter in the garden rather than throw bricks at the thin blue line. My father woke me last week and told me about a red dye which ICI manufacturers, and which the Greek police have used most successfully against the scum who riot in Athens. Apparently the stuff doesn't come off and the real trouble-makers can be identified. Old Daddy has had bitter experi ence with street rioting. In 1944, after successfully resisting my family's natural friends, the Germans, he had to resist the communists. So he parked an old APC in front of our door, waited until they came to cut our throats, and let them have it. His factories were blown up in reprisal, factor ies that he had shut down in order not to help the Germans. So every time he hears about rioting, he judges the police to be guilty of underreaction. I, of course, was sleepy and terribly hungover, and I tried to make a joke by asking if it would work on Stendhal. He didn't get it. 'You know, Daddy,' I said, 'will the rouge work on the noir?
Despite my failed pun, my father and I have been getting along famously of late. I think that the poll in Athens that named me as one of the most hated journalists might have something to do with it. Anyone. Daddy figures, who is hated by the Greek press must in a way be a saint. Which I believe I will be soon if! go through another week like the last one.
It all began with the dinner I went to after the Spectator party. It was the first time I had been to Soho, and actually stopped there. And it wasn't what I expected. I thought the restaurant was terrific. I got drunk, forgot to go to the Belgrave ball where I was expected, went to my friend Jake Morley's instead, and the next thing I knew it was six the following evening and! was back in Soho again. This time it was different, not so nice. I actually was led by a man into a place that reeked of urine, where on the second floor a sign said, 'Colony Club, members only.' Inside, there were six men sitting around an empty green room, and behind the bar an extremely abusive man whose face spouted verbal nitroglycerine and looked as if it had been on a Karamazovean bender for at least 50 years. I was stilt dressed in the same clothes, not having gone to bed, nevertheless I looked like Beau Brummel compared to those mugs. So the man at the bar yelled at me, 'Why aren't you wearing your white suit, you dirty Greek F----r? I can't stand the sight of you, get out.' This was one of Jeffrey Bernard's haunts, and I suspect they were pulling my leg. What I also suspect is that I'll stick to Annabel's and the Turf Club in future.
When I recovered from those two lost days, it was time to drive down to Kent, to my old friend John Aspinall's ball of the century. And, hyperbole aside, it was. The party took place at Port Lympne, Aspers's 270-acre wildlife sanctuary, which is about 20 minutes drive from his zoo at Howletts. (Incidentally, Howletts is the most perfect small Palladian structure inEngland.)1 have been to Aspinall parties before, and am using to seeing wild aninvls, tumblers, and other Dionysian extravagances. But this time he had managed to outdo himself. Aspinall's sense of theatre is of such magnitude that only the Nuremberg rallies or Napoleon's crowning can be compared with the spectacle he put on that night.
His touch of genius was to have dwarves at the ball, giving it an air of decadent extravagance. Laurels were strewn on the floor, with thousands of rose buds and rose heads also serving as carpets. Tumblers and jugglers performed throughout, and the orchestra of course had been flown in from America. I was, as always, the last man to leave. For the next two days I brooded on why the night had been so short. It was like having experienced a masterpiece in the making. But it was more poignant than a masterpiece, because its beauty was evanescent, and gone with the dawn.
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