High life
Stimulating the emotions
Taki
It's damn nice to be back in London and to run into what my friend Sir Les Patter- son calls English ceiling inspectors. There were about five card-carrying pillow biters at San Lorenzo on my first night back, making it easy not to follow my doctor's orders. The reason I flew over was John Aspinall's memorial, but I got sandbagged by the aforementioned ceiling appraisers. After a rather late night, I arrived at St John's, Smith Square, just in time to be informed by the lady seated on my left, our benevolent proprietor's wife, that I stank of alcohol. Alas, much too true, but in a way it made the service and the speeches, not to mention the Zulu warrior dances, all the more poignant. Perhaps a drunken state should be mandatory when celebrating the life of a friend. It is a fact of nature that booze stimulates the emotions, just as it is a fact of nature that people who are romantic but idle feel a restlessness that inevitably turns amorous. Seated on my other side was Maya Schoenburg, wearing a sort of mini-skirt, which further stimulat- ed my emotions.
Oh well, Aspers would have laughed at my drunken shenanigans. He never object- ed to a friend's flaws except for cowardice and disloyalty. And he did get a hell of a send-off. Teddy Goldsmith, Ian Player and the Zulu dancers were particularly effective in recalling the greatness of John Aspinall, a man who never flinched and feared no man. When dying of cancer and extremely weak and fragile he still went to his wife's aid by standing up to three knife-wielding black thugs. And speaking of thugs, no sooner had I arrived than my neighbour Christine Camerana informed me that two of her Italian friends had been mugged in Cadogan Square. So what else is new?
Christine was giving a dinner after a reception at a gallery on Walton Street, which is less than a five-minute walk to the square. One lady, Grazia Gazzoni, was attacked by a helmet-wearing biker who knocked her to the ground with such force that she bled profusely. Luckily for her, Peter Saunders, a brave German gent, came to her rescue and struck the black assailant with a cane, whereupon the cow- ard fled on his motorcycle.
Two days later, another Italian, Marino de Lagarda, was also mugged near the square, but this time there was no help from an Anglo-German. The fuzz was sym- pathetic but with the usual story. Not enough cops on the beat, too much paper- work, and too many howls of racism from Islington morons the moment they arrest anyone black. (The howls must be particu- larly offensive to Eva Harold, the fiftysomething lady who was assaulted by a gang of 15-year-old black schoolgirls who repeatedly punched her in the face and broke her arm while calling her a white bitch.) Mind you, the English are slow to react, but one day they will. Weak elderly people cannot be attacked with impunity by young thugs just because the clown Jack Straw is politically correct and probably scared of his deputy Paul Boateng. And London can- not be a more dangerous place for tourists than, say, the Big Bagel, which is far, far safer. One day there will be a government that will crack down on crime in general and young black criminals in particular, after Blair and his incompetent bullshit artists have crawled back underneath the rocks they came from.
But to more pleasant subjects. On Wednesday night, again at San Lorenzo, I gave a dinner for my friend Harry Worces- ter and his younger brother John Somerset to celebrate the Bush victory the grotesque Gore is trying to steal. Afterwards we went to hear the Bill Lovelady Sextet playing great jazz nearby. The basement club, the wonderful music, the booze and the sweet young things brought back much too many memories of the Fifties and New York. Lovelady is a terrific classical guitarist and composer but he also excels in jazz. His piano player, Leon Greening, is a black gentleman of truly rare talent. When I grabbed the mike and announced that he was the Rommel of jazz, he was among the few who got the message. (Yeah, man, I hear ya!) This was uncompromising Fifties swing, bebop, and a wonderful rendition of `Body & Soul' that almost had me blub- bing. This group is a must. The club is on Draycott Avenue but I was too drunk to catch the name.
The next night was Tramp with the younger, Jessica de Rothschild and Serge of Yugoslavia set, but by this time the poor little Greek boy was showing his age. I was the first to go home at four in the morning.
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