High life
Royal cactus
Taki
Gstaad
(thoughlthough some readers might suspect I'm on the take from the Swiss office of tourism, if anything it is the other way around. However broke I find myself after my yearly visit to good old Helvetia, I simply cannot stop raving about the coun- try Papa Hemingway described as more upside down than sideways. As an American might say, the place just blows my mind. It is not only among the most beautiful countries on earth, it is also the cleanest. It is committed to unbridled capitalism, yet it follows socialist princi- ples. Its trade unions are rich and power- ful, but also extremely responsible. Fin- ally, every able-bodied man up to the age of 55 is armed to the teeth, yet the crime rate is the lowest anywhere.
Looking back at the 32 years that I've been going to Switzerland, the past ten days must rank among the happiest. It obviously had to do with the company I kept. Oh, yes, the snow was also perfect, and the sun shone every day but one. My day began with 15 kilometres of cross- country skiing, followed by a long liquid lunch chez les Buckleys, the Eagle Club, or in the terrace of a trout restaurant near Gsteig, and ended with three hours of downhill skiing in Rougemont or the Was- sengrat. After embarrassing myself in the Eagle Club race last week, I stuck to uncompetitive stuff, which — not surpri- singly — turned out to be much more fun. I guess the real meaning of getting old is accepting it, and I now accept the fact that I shall never try to compete again. In skiing that is.
My nights were spent in the company of Christopher Buckley and his wife Lucy, my friend Mario Ruspoli — a man who makes Pol Pot seem the epitome of compassion and an old flame from my Swiss past. I accepted only two dinner invitations during my ten days' stay, and that seems to be the trick of finding happiness in the Alps. There is a lot of rich white trash in Gstaad, and even some that's not so white (the Lebanese) and if one goes to parties one is bound to get stuck next to some of them.
Christopher and Lucy are the most delightful companions, mainly because they're attractive and intelligent, but also because they allow one to speak, however non-stop. Prince Ruspoli is another mat- ter. He hates the modern world far more than I do, and spends his time complaining about it. Ten minutes with him is like five hours at a Nuremberg rally. I suspect the Buckleys cut their holiday short after one night when both Ruspoli and I went over the top. But — as Barnaby Conrad said it was fun while it lasted.
And then, of course, there was the sage of Château d'Oex, Alastair Forbes, better known as Gotha Forbes to us Swiss afi- cionados. Both my invitations to dine were turned down by my favourite book review- er, on the grounds that he preferred to burn the midnight oil getting through a brilliant 850-page book sent to him by his pinko Vietnam-veteran nephew, John Forbes Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts, a man who I suspect reads less than a predecessor in that seat, his uncle's onetime pal, J. F. Kennedy. Ali regaled me instead with stories about the Gstaad of 60 years ago, when there were no ski-lifts, and only one car, the doctor's. He waxed eloquent about his first love affair — a requited one, wouldn't you know — with a six-year-old cousin of Harold Acton's by the name of Betty Lou Dillingham. They held hands, which must be the last time safe sex was practised in the Gstaad Palace.
Needless to say, Gstaad had more than its share of royals this season. As luck would have it, I was with some prankster friends seated at a table next to Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, when we heard the news that the heir to the throne had arrived for the weekend. Just as needless to say was the fact that the Kents were staying with a rich Arab, and were not expected by Prince Charles's Greek hosts. And that is when one of my friends had the brilliant idea of sending a cactus plant to the Greeks, thanking them for their invita- tion to stay, and signing it Princess Michael. The last we heard, the ex-King of Greece, the present King of Spain and the future King of England were furiously climbing a nearby mountain on seal-skins, in a successful attempt to escape from the pushy Austro-Hungarian.
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