High life
Taken over
Taki
Athens I am about to have a nervous breakdown. A friend of mine who dabbles as an amateur shrink thinks my troubles stem from the fact that I'll never see 40 again. I disagree: the reason for my imminent collapse is not fear of the male menopause but the horrible realisation that the summer might pass and my new boat might still be on its way from Taiwan. It is enough to drive one crazy with jealousy—or towards socialism. My new gin palace was strapped aboard a tramp steamer on 15 June, and I had thought that 30 days was the most time needed to reach Piraeus. What I didn't appreciate was the greed of the shipowner. Apparently the tramp steamer has been zig-zagging all round the globe looking for business, while I have been sweating in Athens or having to beg rides to the islands on my father's boat.
What really bothers me, however, is that there simply isn't a nice place in the sun that the so-called jet set hasn't polluted in recent years. Trying to find the kind of civilised place that Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were once enchanted by is like looking for a beauty among women's libbers. The late Noel Coward recognised the insidious trend back in 1950, when he wrote a song called 'Why Do the Wrong People Travel?'. The master had smelled trouble as soon as some misguided soul began packing people into aeroplanes instead of banana boats. Thirty one years later, there is only one point to add to his lapidary question, and that is: 'Why do the wrong people travel to what used to be the right places?' Given that the wrong people have overrun all the right places, I should say who the wrong people are. They are not the blue rinse brigade, nor the tourist brigade. They are the types who subscribe to the playboy philosophy (the males, at least), who tend to dress with the contrived dishevelment affected by the likes of Woody Allen, and who drop names like Marisa, Jack, Warren and Yoko. And although social mountaineers have tried to breach the walls of society's playgrounds since time immemorial, it is only recently that they have thoroughly succeeded. In the South of France the Cote d'Azur has always been a fabled land to the English, because it is rich in physical beauty and because the people who put it on the map at the turn of the century and later during the Twenties were either aristocrats or intellectual idols. People like Ezra and Dorothy Pound, Ernest Hemingway, the Murphys, Somerset Maugham, Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso and Matisse. The sophisticated clientele, the great hotels, the blend of diverse civilisations and cultures which left their marks on the Riviera's towns and villages have been chronicled ad nauseam. What is important is that the coastal area of southern France was the place to go. The last time I was at the Hotel du Cap, ill Antibes (my favourite hotel since I was a child) the only people I recognised were some of the staff. Even they seemed depressed: `Ah, Monsieur Taki, ce n'est plus la meme chose.'
All right, you say, where is anything the same? Even in remote places like Hammamet, Tunisia, one will run into Women's Wear Daily types. Back here, in the old country, one realises why the three million unemployed in Britain are not about to revolt. Most of them are over here, and if things go on as they have been my countrymen will soon revolt against Mrs Thatcher's policies. By now I hope you understand why I am about to have a breakdown. Surrounded by wretched, sun-burned types whom Jeff would not be caught dead with, without a yacht to call my own, and no relief in sight, my only hope is that some of those people who tried to get me last year will finally succeed and put me out of my misery for good. In order to accommodate them I have even given up my bodyguard.
Previous page
