Personal column

Geoffrey Bocca

A prototype caricature for British derision is the American tourist, with camera in form-fitting case doing the Grand Tour from "Stratford Upon Ayvon" to "Edinburg." Recently, Miss Mimi Wise, a rather delectable executive secretary of American Heritage publishing house, in London for the first time, told friends over lunch at Sheekey's that she was going to Birming-Ham with her English boy friend to watch Birming-Ham play Newcastle. She was then given a lesson in pronunciation by Lionel Trippett of Mayflower Books, who has also worked in New York. He instructed her, "Britons slur last syllables, while Americans stress them. We say Birming'm. We say Stanop while you say Stanhope. You say War-wick. We say Warrick, and so on." Mimi, a bright girl, listened, making mental notes while she ate her steamed turbot. On the Underground she said, "I see we are going in the direction of Moorg't." The boy friend coughed in understandable embarrassment and said, "Sorry, Mimi. We pronounce it Moorgate." Embarking on the adventure of grocery shopping in a strange land, she said, "Your favourite beer is Whitbr'ds, isn't it." She then learned that the British pronounce it Whitbreads. Afterwards, she set off, determined not to be a typical American tourist, to buy some books at Hatch'ds.

Traditionalists

Visiting my old home in southern France for the first time in two Years, I found Frenchmen still talking and thinking in old francs. Lawyers discuss alimony in old francs, and it sounds ghastly. Even the newspapers still report football transfers and bank robberies in AF. Children unborn when the new franc was adopted fifteen years ago, have two sets of monetary standards, the new franc they learn at school, and the old franc which they use when they buy sweets, and fags. Having a drink with my old postman at a bar, I finally exploded when he called a ten-franc bill "mille balles." I said, "The British, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Russians and Chileans have all adapted themselves to new currency. Why not the French?"

He spat on the floor. "No one will ever use new francs," he said. "That's de Gaulle money."

Buried hatchet

Anti-Americanism appears to be on the wane in Britain. I notice the anti-riot ramparts that ring the United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square are sprouting moss.

The good life American executives have embarked on one of their two brief annual bursts of activity. There is no greater myth than that of the dynamic American exec., working into the night, taking his bulging briefcase home, lunching on a sandwich and Dixie-cup coffee at his desk. Pretty soon, he may well manage to draw his salary without doing any work at all. His year's work starts on January 2 or 3, depending on the New Year hangover, and slows in the spring. He then escapes the city heat to contemplate the crab grass in his suburban house throughout the summer, coming into town two or three days a week, partaking of a three-Martini lunch, and leaving early to avoid the rush hour. It was summarised in a New Yorker cartoon showing a small boy with a broken toy presenting himself to Dad in a deck chair, looking out over the

waters of the bay. The caption reads, "Not now, son. Dad is composing an inter-office memorandum."

This suspended animation continues all the way to Labour Day, the first Monday in September. Now comes the second burst of activity, from the day after Labour Day to Thanksgiving. This is traditionally the last Thursday in November. But this, with other national holidays, has been moved a day to give everyone a long weekend, so they take Thursday and Friday off (leaving at lunch on Wednesday to beat the traffic).

After Thanksgiving, forget all hope of firming up a deal or signing a contract. Christmas looms. The boss's telephone does not answer, because the boss's secretary is out buying the boss's Christmas cards. It gbes without saying that no work is contemplated between Christmas and New Year. But even in the two hard-work stretches, it is not uncommon to see large offices almost deserted every Friday afternoon, with only a couple of secretaries holding the fort.

Unspeakable

Has anybody noticed that the name "Heath" is all but unpronounceable in any other European language except perhaps German. In Russian it comes out Geet. In French and Italian it is 'Eat', in Spanish, 'Eath. Not that it matters any more. If it ever did.

Uneasy Ibiza

Nerves are jumpy on Ibiza, where I have spent the last three winters. The Guardia Civil and the Policia Armada are noticeably more numerous. Secret service men, easily recognisable, because they wear ties, look in and out of the English bars, pretending to be tourists. Trouble is confidently expected when the old man dies. Ibiza inherits the Catalan tradition that money is unimportant. What one has, one shares. An American lived seven years running up a bill at a bar on the port on the promise to pay when his father died.

The drug scene has been crushed, and the hippies rounded up. Clifford Irving looked in briefly, over Christmas, temporarily released from parole. He behaved more clownishly than ever. He seems utterly indifferent to the careers he has ruined, or the damage he did to the author-editor relationship. I have been barred from Sandy's Bar in Santa Eulalia because I wrote in Playgirl recently that Santa Eulalia, scene of Life and Death of a Spanish Town, was now occupied largely by old-fashioned, typically British ex-colonial wifeswoppers. The wife-swoppers tended to agree with me. Not Sandy.

Waiting to leave Ibiza Airport, always an eerie experience because the plane takes off at dawn into the blood-red Ibiza sunrise, I went to the, loo. It was as noisome as Spanish loos always are, and I saw an extraordinary sight. A young hippie, who looked as if he had been left over from 1971, was standing stark naked, giving himself a stand-up bath. Impervious to the bangs and pongs coming from behind locked doors, he swung first one foot and then the other into the sink, washed them with liquid soap from the soap dispenser, dried himself with paper towels. For me the significance was threefold, if not four. For one thing, he was alone. For another thing he was trying to get clean. And he was on his way out. As far as the last item was concerned, so was I. In spades.