High life
Listening to the doc
Taki
This is the week of 100 picnics in aid of the Addictive Diseases Trust, with Amabel Lindsay's and Emma Soames's parties bringing the summer party season to a close, and not a moment too soon. Last Monday, after a Bar Vendome blast given by Olga and William Shawcross, I found myself fully dressed in a white linen suit drinking warm whiskey from a silver cup at ten in the morning. When I realised the time and the shape I was in I became so disgusted with myself that I swore not to touch alcohol until I got to Gstaad in August. Twenty four hours later, my oath is unbroken, although it was touch and go for a bit. Getting through Monday, that is. I was violently ill for a while, which means the liver is not filtering through the impuri- ties, which means it isn't functioning. I had the same problem last year and stopped drinking for 11 days. I have felt perfectly well ever since, except for the last two timo when I overdid it. Now it's back to boring old water and the occasional Coors beer.
This is the good news. The bad is that Cartier are thinking of giving up polo, which is where my lost weekend began last Sunday. It doesn't get better than it did on Sunday, with wonderful cool and sunny weather, lots of pretty girls, good polo and thousands watching, including the Queen. Cartier have been very generous in their sponsorship of international polo, and the name is synonymous with Smith's Lawn, the Guards Polo Club and the Dionysian extravaganza in the last week of July. I hope they change their minds.
And speaking of polo, I used to play the game until May 1972, when I left for Hue in Vietnam, where for some strange reason the game had not caught on with the Viet Cong. The next time I got on a horse was three weeks ago, in Fort Belvedere, Galen and Hilary Weston's magnificent estate in Windsor, where there's a private polo field. The reason for making a fool of myself was Alannah Weston, their 21-year-old daugh- ter, who asked rather rudely whether it was against my doctor's orders to indulge in anything as strenuous as stick and balling.
Needless to say, I'm now hooked all over again, and am about to buy some ponies and play some low goal polo next year. What I'm really hooked on is Alannah. Unfortunately, she is leaving to live in Canada, so I shall be writing High Life out of the frozen North in future.
Previous page
