Spectator peregrinations

About turns. Enoch Powell wrote in the Director last week that "The U-turn is the Prime Minister's normal mode of progression: it is as natural to him as it is to a crab to walk sideways." A U-turn, unlike walking sideways, is not a mode of progression but a way of getting back to where you were before you started. That Wilson speciality, a W-turn is of course, different. It gets you back to where you were when you decided to go back to where you were before you started. That is progress.

On the town

At the launch of a disgusting German liqueur called Strahl recently the conversation turned automatically to methylated spirits. This may have been because I met an experienced bon viveur with a conscience — Harry Stone who doubles as Editor of Hotel and Catering Management magazine and an East End social worker. Twice this summer I have found him tackling a heavy hotel lunch before going to an afternoon cake-eating session. In the evenings he feeds soup and doughnuts to the meths drinkers at St Botolph's, Aldgate in the City. Last week I got a letter from St Botolph's saying that the autumn season was starting — it seems that even tramps go on holiday — and would I report for duty? One of the tramps claims that he went to Barcelona via Paris, for the summer and has a very exotic coat full of restaurant bills to prove it. My own feeling is that he picked it up in London but he has some good corroborative detail to back up the story. He spoiled it when he said he was Franco's grandson and would in due course be taking over from the old man. He is also Lord Nelson, conversing with the Trafalgar Square pigeons, and Jesus Christ. When the Duke of Gloucester died last year, he took a Greenline bus to Windsor to raise him from the dead. But they buried him in the Park rather than in the St George's Chapel. So he could do nothing about it. Finally he was attacked by a man talking about Lloyd-bloody-George and Lithu-bloodyWanians. Stone and I had to sit on him.

Quis custodiet?

Ever since parking fines went up to £6 I've been vigilant about traffic wardens — even banging on doors and warning neighbours of the approach of these demons. My efforts have saved one person at least £30. And earned me a visit from the police. I had left a note in my windscreen saying that as the car was jacked with two tyres being repaired, I could not move the car but would welcome suggestions from any traffic warden who cared to knock on my door. But he didn't call. He just slapped on three tickets. The police tell me that wardens are not allowed to call on people. It would cause them to neglect their duties and might even lead them to corruption. But would it not be cheaper and more just if traffic wardens gave up parking tickets and took up honest burglary anyway?

Water sports

Power has gone to Gandhi's head. At a race meeting at Laytown, a seaside racecourse north of Dublin, an eccentric horse by that name shook off its rider, jumped the breakwater and headed out to sea. When you have walked on water, Mrs Gandhi, try galloping.

English sprachen

British week in Baden-Baden (September 14-21) sees such unlikely exhibits as Royal Worcester (getting their own back after the teacup storm horror drama) raucous highland music, Guinness (hardly British as their new tax-exile Lord Iveagh will testify), clay pigeon shooting, and London policemen (why no traffic wardens?) amd "a team of youngsters from Guildford City Swimming Club:" More improbable for this picturesque German spa are the whisky tastings and "a flurry of wine consumption from the resort's local vineyards." The organisers have found that, Contrary to popular belief, the Germans are not the linguistic wizards they are sometimes -cracked up to be. So they are distributing English-ineasy-lessons leaflets. I wonder how the people of Bath, our equivalent, would like to have German leaflets stuffed into their Georgian letter-boxes.

Something fits* hy

In your search for the Irish terrorist, Margaret McKearney, do not spare the neighbours. An elderly relative of mine, who is very suspicious of the Irish, came to stay four years ago and immediately noticed that the neighbours had slight Belfast accents. She stayed up at night reporting car numbers to the police who came round to examine the place. Naturally I had to apologise to all concerned for extremely un-neighbourly behaviour. My first suspicion that anything fishy was going on was the lead story on the front pages of both London evening papers "Massive IRA arms haul: 300 machine guns seized."

Hard to swallow

'About the hardest thing for Lord Oaksey to swallow at a party given at the home of his fellow Old Etonian jockey Chris Collins last week was a glass of Ayala champagne. Ayala Was the horse, owned by that colourful hairdresser Teasy Weasy Raymond, which beat Lord Oaksey, or John Lawrence as he was then, into second place in the 1963 Grand National. Oaksey was riding Carrickbeg and, to make it more disappointing, he was part owner with Gay Kindersley. Carrickbeg led Ayala, which never completed any other course again, until fifty yards before the post. However, after a few glasses of Ayala, to celebrate the golden jubilee of the National Playing Fields Association, Oaksey was standing on a table announcing that they are orgahising a day's racing at Ascot on September 26.

Losing grip

When Patrick Lichfield, photographer and Peer of the Realm, opened the Chelsea Antiques Fair, he said he had considerable experience of buying and selling antiques. In particular he remembers visiting the yacht of "a very famous Greek shipowner, now deceased" to do a job for American Vogue. The only object worth photographing was a silver wine cooler and as he focused on it he noticed that it bore the Lichfield coat of arms. The uncouth shipowner refused to believe that a mere photographer had once owned the wine cooler and was only persuaded when sailor Lichfield rolled up his sleeve revealing the same coat of arms tattooed on his arm. Lichfield had a speech prepared by his wife, Leonora Grosvenor, but after reading the first sentence "I am honoured to open the 41st Chelsea antiques fair at Chelsea Town Hall," he abandoned it. Is she losing her grip already?

No lionesses

Peregrinating on my bicycle I would like to raise a hat to another predatory cyclist Frank J Manheim. He is an international banker who spends his time off hunting with the Galway Blazers — a terrain as dangerous as London. He has just written a book called Lion Hunting in London, based on his observations of the Lions in sculpture and architecture seen while pedalling to and from work. The blurb from Caduceus Press tells me "he is well-known in his large circle of friends as a persistent bicyclist and sightseer." He has been as energetic as a man chased by a lion, with specimens from as far afield as Syon Park, Islington and Stoke Newington. "Greater London harbours more representations of the King of Beasts than any city in the world." he says. But extinction may be just around the corner. I could find only one lioness in the book.