Low life
Beatitude and the beasts
Jeffrey Bernard
yen the Germans couldn't be bothered to invade this island during the war and it is to be hoped that their tourist corps have no desire to make up for lost time. It is a very dreamy little place. So far. Now, having just said that, a disgusting child has started to murder some Alessan- dro Scarlatti at an old piano in the hotel bar that I write to you from, and the piano, like the barman, doesn't fire on all cylin- ders. Although it is bliss and balm here, what with 85 degrees for the last three days and a breeze sighing through the palm trees and flowers, it has just begun to rain as I write to you. As a result, the guests in the Grand Hotel have gathered here in the bar and changed the entire atmosphere of the place. Yesterday, I felt I was immersed in Mediterranean luxury of a sort and today, surrounded by English tourists con- fined to the indoor sport of drinking coffee, beer, playing Scrabble and reading trashy paperbacks, plus the girl pianist, I feel utterly institutionalised. The bar has become like the day-room of a lunatic asylum.
We have Mr John Whitley to be thankful for, for having discovered this remote little paradise off the coast of Tunisia. He alerted me to it in the Sunday Times of 7 September. It is now on the map. Kerken- na just peeps its head above the surface of the sea. It is completely flat and its fig, date and olive trees are none of them much more than ten feet or so above sea level. Although I can't recommend it strongly enough, it needs to be said that there is nothing whatsoever to do here except eat, drink, sit in the sun and swim. You would think that it therefore might be extremely boring for children, and yet the beasts abound. Apart from the small girl assassi- nating Scarlatti, a small boy has just been playing hide-and-seek under my table which is supporting a very large vodka. I exposed him to his enemies, secretly whacked him over the head, before he knocked it all over.
But before publicity ruins Kerkenna and they are about to spend millions on developing it Over the next three years you really should visit the place. It is just the job for anyone who wants to 'get away from it all'. I am just such a one, but the trouble is that as I lie soaking up the sun I find that my mind constantly turns to thoughts of the 'all' I always feel that I want to get away from when I am in London. I somehow don't trust London to take care of itself when I am away. Anyway, Kerkenna is not only as idle, pretty and cheap as a kindly whore, it is a new discovery. I only wish Mr John Whit- ley had whispered its name in my ear and not written about it so publicly. The travel people, the only English packagers, Panor- ama Holidays, 89A Church Road, Hove, East Sussex (0273 730281), have had to lay on three extra flights since his article. They well deserve a plug, and my Grand Hotel at £119 for a week at half-board and £234 for a fortnight. The main meals are about £2 a head.
What it really needs though — Kerkenna that is, is a little supermarket. There is nothing here, but nothing, and anyone with something like £10,000 capital could open a shop and rapidly become rich selling rubbish like shampoo, cigarettes, razors and bits of food and drink. The drawback for the gregarious, though, is the inactivity and silence broken only by the surf and the little monster practising her Scarlatti. It is an ideal place, not only for the sun- worshipper and layabout but for the per- son newly converted to celibacy and hell- bent on avoiding Aids and Tunisian wai- ters. At the time of writing, there is only one attractive woman in the hotel and she seems to be strongly attached to, if not owned by, a Glaswegian hack. But the sun is sinking into the sea now and in the evenings the temperature plunges to a high English September average and my thoughts turn to a spicy Tunisian dinner, wine like red mud and forbidden fruits. Forbidden by the Middlesex Hospital that is.
By the way, as our man Whitley wrote in the Sunday Times, the hotel rooms are spacious and terrific and really do shame most French hotels — £13 for a double room including three meals a day plus bathroom and balcony can't be bad. 'She' has now just started to attempt a Schubert impromptu on top of the background muzak in the bar and I will kill her after one more 'just the one'. Even that won't cost any more than it does in the Coach and Horses, and that reminds me, the sea is so safe and shallow here that you'd have to take Norman out a half a mile to drown him.
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