Low life
Atlantic crossing
Jeffrey Bernard
From what little I could see of Boston last week, in the three days and two nights I was there, I would say that it is the most livable-in town or city I have been to in America. The old and the new blend well and a campus on the site seems to exert a good influence, as it does in that charming city Boulder, although God knows why when you look at and listen to some of the students. The intensity of their sincerity is overwhelming and they are as serious as most of the professional women I know in London. Rich pickings for the Guardian readership. I went up to Harvard to get my daughter a university sweatshirt — I don't know why she doesn't settle for a Holland Park Comprehensive one — and browsed in four bookshops, none of which had a single biography of Lincoln. The place bristles with cafes that specialise in health food, nearly all the students wear jogging shoes, and all are in good, pink, rude health. Quite sickening in its way. Back in town, walking across a car park to my motel, the Park Plaza, I came across two housewives leaning against prams, passing the time of day and smoking a joint. It made me feel curiously at home although I don't touch the stuff. Back in my hotel room — two double beds and two bath- rooms — I watched an extraordinary chat show about Aids. Taking part were a doctor and a prostitute. The presenter was a nicely groomed, straight lady struggling to be unmoved and unshocked. The doctor was worried and the hooker almost blase'. She certainly didn't look frightened but she was well past retiring age. The doctor went on and on about how we must all protect ourselves against 'body secretions' and that our salvation lies in us all arming ourselves to the teeth with condoms and avoiding gays as much as we can. (I don't like those words. What ever happened to french letters and queers?) But it is, of course, a topic on television in America that made the Geneva summit almost fight for view- ing time. The real Star Wars is Hollywood litigating over Rock Hudson's estate and most of us will sleep more peacefully when the arms race becomes the condoms race.
But I wasn't there to be lectured on Aids. I'd flown over with some hacks at the invitation of a German wine company called Deinhard who gave us a tasting of their stuff on the very comfortable flight over on Northwest Orient Airlines. (Get the plugs in.) It was comfortable mainly because the weight of Beaujolais Nouveau in the hold, 35 tons of it, didn't leave too much room for passengers. When it came to the sweet white wines, which I don't like, the German PR told me I had an unsophisticated palate. I told him that if he'd had in his mouth what I've put in mine over the past 25 years his too would be a little jaded. But I didn't mind that. What I did object to later in the day was his complaining about having been bombed in Berlin during the war by the Allies. I said I didn't like being bombed in Holland Park during the war or doodlebugged at school in Sussex come to that. Someone said it took all sorts. Some twit always does.
Back in England — and how I'm missing those American breakfasts already — I had to make haste to yet another university, Oxford, where t4.: undergraduates of Cor- pus Christi had ';'kindly and somewhat foolishly invited me to dinner. How could they expect sense with jet lag, reviving .vodka and then their sherry of all things followed by wine? My apologies to them for wasting their time. I felt so awful in the morning I came straight back to London after a snatched cup of tea in the rather unfriendly Hall without even waiting to find out if Joanna Lumley was delivering a lecture on English Literature. Back in the Coach and Horses again it was marvellous to reacquaint myself with insanity. Norman said, 'Was that the bleedin' Boston up Lincolnshire way you went to?' I'd forgot- ten just how small an English large vodka was. Then my daughter phoned to cancel the Sunday lunch I'd bought for us and to think I could have spent the money on life-saving condoms. Yes, it is wonderful to be home. While the duty free lasts anyway.
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