High life
Making waves
Taki
Mind you, the boat I would love to have inherited was his 120-foot ketch, the Aries, probably one of the toughest sailing boats ever built, and one he sold for next to nothing during a penny-pinching mood. The trouble was the crew. She needed more men than there are social climbers on the upper east side of the Big Bagel.
After Aries came Nefertiti, a brave 12- meter racer, and then, on turning 70 years of age, he acquired his first stink-pot, from a Rothschild of all people. (And it got worse. His present palais he bought from . . . Peter de Savary). Although I agree with the axiom that you judge a man by his boat, I will make an exception in the case of the old boy due to diminished responsibility. The older he got the faster he needed to go. Until this summer he powered around the Aegean at 35 knots making sure the oil companies were kept in the style they were accustomed to. The result was predictable. The vibration made him ill and turned me into a marine version of a gigolo. (This is a yachting term for those lucky enough not to have to pay for their yachting.) Which meant the moment the denizens of the Big Olive began to return I sped out of Piraeus and headed for Spetse, the Aegean version of Monte Carlo. I call Spetse MC because, like Monaco, it was once upon a time a wonderful place to spend the summer. Then the Spetsiotes, who are all Albanians in reality, took a lesson from the Grimaldi Construction Company and began to build. It took them ten years to wreck the place.
The first victim was also the island's most respected expatriate, Michel Deon, the French writer and member of the Academie Francaise. Michel, a good friend of mine, had built a wonderful house above the old port, and had spent the last 30 years there. Then a Greek vulgarian built a house that cut off most of his view by constructing two extra floors above the permitted limit. Deon appealed to the authorities but nothing happened. My friend had made the classic mistake for- eigners make in the Olive Republic. He appealed to the authorities' sense of justice and did not offer a bit more of the root of all envy than the vulgarian had done. Michel now lives in Ireland, having sold his house to some Americans who bought it thinking he was a member of the Academy Awards committee.
Needless to say, the other reason Spetse has gone down Swanee are the new arrivals from the Riviera. A court order prevents me from naming them, but their arrival signalled the end of an era to gracious people like Lady Anne Tree, the Deons, and of course Monsieur Taki. With them came many of their ilk. It was time for a hasty migration all around.
Last week, however, was not that bad. I saw some old friends from England, and had a good laugh about an Anglo-Greek shipowner, one who gave evidence against me in my libel case a couple of years back. It seems they all refer to him as the man with the disappearing mother, a reference to the fact that he hid his mother whenever an English-speaking person came around because the poor dear had trouble with her aitches. She is now dead, God rest her soul, but the jokes go on.
Well, not to worry, Next week I'm heading for the civilised side of Greece, the Ionian islands, leaving the vulgarians and the Albanians behind.
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