DIARY ALAN WATKINS
Nice Lytton Strachey used to say that he could only read Sir Thomas Browne in Oxford. I find in middle age that to read a book that is both long and serious I have to go abroad. In fact most of my solid reading was done in late adolescence, sitting by the fire with the clock ticking away: a common experience among my contemporaries, I find. Last summer, in south-west France, I managed Boswell's Life of Johnson, which I had not read before all in one go. This New Year, in Nice, I am doing the Decline and Fall, and making good progress. En- terprises of this kind are rendered easier by having the right editions. I do not mean `correct' or 'standard' ones but nice, com- pact volumes. My Boswell was a two- volume old Everyman (the sort with the art nouveau spine) which I had inherited from my father. My Gibbon is a World's Clas- sics, now rare and scarce. Books nowadays are too big.
Ihave never understood why British Airways always seem to come out on top in the airline surveys organised by the travel sections of our great newspapers. Both the men and the women stewards combine heartiness with a servility which can turn nasty when their decisions are questioned or their routine is disturbed. Moreover, they charge for drinks which Air France give away. Nor do the French functionaries possess the falsely ingratiating qualities of their British equivalents. Whenever possi- ble, I try to travel with Air France. Their principal disadvantage — and it is a serious one — is their checking-in area at Heath- row airport. This place generally is a hell-hole at the best of times, but the Air France bit of it, at the far end of Terminal 2, is a particularly vicious inner circle. Every time I have penetrated it at this time of year I have been part of an angry, bewildered, luggage-laden crowd: no announcements, no proper queues, notices of destination which change or switch themselves on and off with manic incon- sequence. Truly you think of the souls of the damned trying vainly to effect an escape.
Lord Beaverbrook used to advise his editors: 'Write about health and cures. People are interested in them? By which, of course, he meant that he was interested in them. Though he lived to well into his eighties, he was troubled by a succession of minor ailments and one troublesome one, asthma, which led him to prefer fellow- sufferers such as the late Robert Pitman and Mr Michael Foot. However, the Old Man (as he was known by his employees; never as 'the Beaver') was right about people's interest in health, as he was about most matters journalistic. But I cannot say I ever had much occasion to follow his precept — until, a few weeks ago, I wrote about my athlete's foot. Well-intentioned friends who had advised beforehand that my feet were a disgusting topic and that no one would be in the least bit interested in them were proved comprehensively wrong. Acquaintances inquired about the state of my health with every appearance of genuine solicitude, some of them going so far as to ask whether I could still walk (I could). Readers wrote to me. One of them even produced a cure. It is an old- fashioned medicament bearing the fine Calvinistic name of Whitfield's Ointment. It can be purchased of any chemist without a prescription. When I bought my 100 grammes it did not come in a proprietary jar but was ladled out by the pharmacist. It is white and its odour is faint but not disagreeable. Its proper name is Benzoic Acid Ointment. And it works. Now free of the affliction, I can walk along the prom- enade with an independent air. God bless Mr (or Dr) Whitfield and my thoughtful correspondent, Mr Brown of Godalming, who confided that the cure had been passed on to him by an old ship's doctor.
Late Victorian and Edwardian govern- ments used virtually to decamp to this part of France in January. It is perhaps the most sensible time of year at which to come. The sun shines warmly but not oppressively, and you can sit in the open air from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon. I like to think that in a small way I am keeping
'It always happens just after Christmas.' alive an old British political tradition (`British' not least because both Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and David Lloyd George were regular winter visitors to the Riviera). But after several early Januaries here I have yet to spat a present-day politician, not even one of deliberately anachronistic character such as Lord St John of Fawsley or Lord Jenkins of Hill- head. Lord Beaverbrook, whom I men- tioned earlier, used to maintain a villa in Cap d'Ail. I was never sufficiently high in his employment or his esteem to merit an invitation to this residence. Arlington House, Piccadilly, and the Waldorf Tow- ers, New York, were the furthest I got. In fact he went under the impression that my name was Watkinson. I cannot say I regret — or regretted — this. Visits to Cap d'Ail were by most accounts pretty gruesome affairs. The best, certainly the most comic, account is by his former male secretary, Mr Colin Vines, in his memoir of his master, A Little Nut-Brown Man, a minor master- piece and still the best picture of what the old monster was really like. I once asked his relative, Mr Jonathan Aitken, whether he liked this part of the world. He said no, he hated it, and that some of the unhap- piest times of his life had been spent here.
The Daily Telegraph (London papers can be bought here on the day) provides a chastening catalogue of disasters suffered by my fellow-citizens on New Year's Eve. It appears that those who escaped being stabbed or kicked to death were either run over or accidentally set alight. Nice, by contrast, was, despite its reputation for criminality, a model of decorum. Even the less grand restaurants provided special menus, oysters, smoked salmon (always served with vodka), foie gras, and game predominating. All the customers wore smart clothes. Dinner jackets were much in evidence. The Italians from across the border were particularly smartly attired and tended to exuberance but nothing more. At midnight the cars on the Prom- enade des Anglais sounded their horns. It reminded me of my childhood, when I would be awakened by the colliery hooters seeing the New Year In.
If I were a proper investigative journalist I would try to interview the Mayor of Nice, the embattled M. Medecin, author, in- cidentally, of a fine cookery book. Instead I content myself with asking the citizens about him. I am not getting very far. They either do not like him very much or resent outsiders asking about him — perhaps both. Maybe it is tactless to begin by saying that he is the most famous inhabitant of their city.
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