Low life
Sun struck
Jeffrey Bernard
Athens Dear Reader, I promised the Editor that I'd write to you, which is a hell of a drag I can tell you, because I've got far better things to do here in sunny Athens than chase about looking for a telex machine. Anyway, here I am sitting outside a cafe rather like one of the ones you know in Paris. It's 9a, —7arn to you — and it must be about 7: degrees Fahrenheit already. It may surpris you to be told that Athens isn't very Rt. Kentish Town, which is usually where I wake up unless I'm playing an away game. Apart from the fact that there isn't a church on top of the mountain outside my bedroom window at home, as there is here, the breakfast was also a little different from the ubiquitous boiled egg I endure in London. For a start, there was a great vase of freshly cut carnations and sweet william on the table, which is a better sight than the obituary column of The Times. Then an extremely well nourished looking young lady served me a bowl of strawberries, every one of them the size of a tennis ball. (All right, perhaps the sun's getting to me and I exaggerate a little. A golf ball then.) There was also a bowl of peaches and oranges, hot bread and excellent coffee. The only blot on the horizon were two English women at the next table who looked like Guardian readers from a clever place like Aldeburgh. After that sweet-looking, -smelling and -tasting breakfast I walked along to where I'm sitting now, expecting to see the streets crawling with bearded philosophers and ladies with snakes in their hair. That's what my old prep school prepared me for anyhow. But it isn't like that at all. In fact all the men are dead ringers for Taki. They're all incredibly handsome, rich, cool, strong and masterful. Incidentally, before I leave here I swear I'll find out what makes Taki tick and me tat. The women, too, surprised me being so much more attractive than those Greek harridans I occasionally bump into in Soho and Camden Town. The ugly ones are American and no amount of ouzo can alter that. Which reminds me, I must order one.
Right, what else? Dinner last night. My Athenian contact, Tim Butler, took me to what he called an 'ordinary' taverna and I must say I was knocked out. We had a plate piled high with those giant prawns that go under so many different names but are like enormous scampi and then we shared six red mullet, a bowl of salad and two carafes of the local white wine. This was all incredibly cheap and I could kick myself for having dreaded Greek wine before I got here. The ordinary stuff is far better than the ordinary French versions in the West End. I rolled it around my palate and then down the front of my shirt and went to bed feeling better than I have since I was in Barbados last year. Tomorrow I'm going to a small fishing village in Evia where, under the shade of walnut and olive trees, I shall start work on a treatment for one of the greatest films to be made since the Marx Bros'A Day at the Races. Seven Days at the Races, simply a working title, has been commissioned by my friend, Tony Stratton Smith, and if you're reading this Tony, don't worry that the job won't get done. There's nothing else to do here but work. After all, who the hell wants to lie around in the sun all day, taking the odd dip in the Mediterranean, sipping ouzo, eating roast kid, prawns the size of whales and strawberries as big as footballs? I now have to navigate my way through the biggest traffic jam in Europe to get to the bloody telex and don't expect me to schlap 100 miles to do it next week. Yes, I think I've definitely caught the sun already.
Yours, Jeffrey B.
PS: The Acropolis really is falling down. What 2,000-odd years of weather have failed to do has at last been accomplished by the trampling boots of 2,000 German and Swedish tourists per day.
Previous page
