When will the Americans withdraw? I don’t mind how long they stay in Mesopotamia but it’s high time they got out of Grosvenor Square. They’ve been muttering about relocating their embassy, but will it happen? Mayfair, my favourite English village, is ruined by their barricades, tank traps and miles of concrete Toblerone. Grosvenor Square and surrounding streets are becoming impenetrable and it looks as though there are going to be more hideous constructions and obstructions judging by the builders’ sheds and huts that are proliferating in this once tranquil square. Perhaps they should relocate to the old BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane. That is also an area more convenient for terrorists, who would find Mayfair a bit of a schlep. Shepherd’s Bush is also closer to the aerodrome.
I love wandering around Mayfair even though the picturesque streetwalkers of yesteryear no longer lend charm to Shepherd’s Market. All my favourite haunts were in this neighbourhood: barber, bookshop and record store (the lamented Discurio). Then there were the clubs, open between pub hours and closing late. Yesterday I walked past my old bed-sitting room in Park Street behind Grosvenor House where Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, in the Mayfair spirit, entertained her Ouida-like guardsmen. When I lived there, there was still a whiff of Michael Arlen haunting those little rural streets (Green, Hay, Down, Hill, Half Moon) and instead of immersing myself in yet another underprivileged Irish childhood, I’ve ignored the Booker winner and reread The Green Hat, Arlen’s huge bestseller of 1924. Arlen, the Savile Row Armenian trying to write like De Quincey, though often absurdly dated, still has wit and vitality, and if there is too much risible melodrama, it’s no more than may be found in Fitzgerald’s over-esteemed The Great Gatsby. Anyway, why should ‘dated’ be a pejorative? No one says Dickens or Jane Austen are dated. When Joseph Stalin’s wife committed suicide the old monster desperately sought for the reason. He thought he had found it on his wife’s bedside table: a book she had been reading just before she died. It was Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat.
Eating out in London is almost always disappointing and it’s increasingly hard to avoid chorizo sausage, which gets sprinkled in everything. Other overrated dishes include French onion soup, which I ordered without thinking last Tuesday, only to burn my mouth and get tangled up in a cat’s cradle of tasteless cheese. When I was in Australia a few months ago I went to one of my favourite cities, Darwin, in the Northern Territory. I checked into the hotel late and tried to order a meal from room-service. ‘There’s only soup and sandwiches,’ the desk informed me. ‘What kind of soup?’ I asked. There was a loud sigh on the other end of the line and the clatter of a telephone impatiently dropped on to the reception desk. I heard the sound of retreating footsteps. He was away for a very long time while I listened to a phone ringing plaintively in the distance; no doubt an importunate guest. But I was hungry so I hung on for what seemed like 15 minutes. Finally I heard the shuffle of approaching footsteps, and the concierge at last came back on the line: ‘It’s soup of the day.’
On Wednesday I drove to Heathrow to pick up an old family friend who had been living in India for most of his life. He hadn’t seen London since the mid-Thirties though the smoking room (now the non-smoking room) at the Oriental Club is probably still unchanged. He is a wonderful old boy and I watched him peering out of the car window in horror at the London streets, shabbier and more crowded than the noisome thoroughfares of Calcutta. We passed a big advertisement for the Simpsons movie. He evinced a sudden interest. ‘I didn’t know people still spoke of Wallis!’ he exclaimed in real astonishment.
Itake no interest in sport but I have been feeling a bit sorry for Australia lately. Our reputation for athletic prowess has taken a beating; no doubt vitiated by the epidemic of poofterism for which my homeland is increasingly famous. The other week the Guardian, lacking a new Maddie story, was not content with the usual vulgar triumphalism with which the British press greets its own success in sport. Instead it carried the front page headline ‘HAT TRICK OF LOSERS’. Aussie-bashing seems to be a deplorable new trend and I had hoped that my countrymen had sufficiently infiltrated the media to put a stop to this kind of thing. When will Rupert buy the Guardian?
A neighbour of mine from the slums of South Hampstead went to a picture show the other night at the comparatively new O2 centre on the Finchley Road. Halfway through the movie she felt something moving across her lap and it was not the exploratory hand of her partner, Lois. No, it was simply a large rat. Can you imagine what a perfect environment for rodents are these big, dark, warm auditoriums, carpeted with scrumptious popcorn? Think of them scuttling around your ankles while you are enjoying the felicitously themed movie Ratatouille.
I was meant to go to the Barbican this morning but it’s so ugly and hard to get at that I avoid it whenever possible. The current exhibition is called Seduced: Art and Sex from Antiquity to Now. Why should I go to the Barbican when all I have to do is browse in a corner of my own library?