High life
Mountain gloat
Taki
guess I didn't celebrate the collapse of Communism too soon after all, although had I known what I do now, I would have waited until October '91. My next party is planned to coincide with the publication of the KGB files, and this time people will sit at tables named after Western politicians, members of the media and academics who have been on the payroll of that benevolent organisation. I can't wait.
Unlike in Western places of learning, where the collapse is bound to have broken many an intellectual heart, here in Gstaad only one man sounded bitter. It was my friend John, an Englishman, whose wife owns one of the two bookstores in the vil- lage. In view of the fact that John has been seething with revolutionary fervour most of his life, I thought it appropriate to buy him a drink and gloat a bit.
Mind you, gloating is de rigueur only where politics is concerned. In sport and business it is a fate worse than death (look at Tyson and Gutfreund). But when Alexander Cockburn's favourite system of government collapses, gloating is a must. Now my fearless prediction is that all those who jeered at Uncle Sam and made excus- es for Uncle Joe will turn their attention to weightier matters, such as rewriting history. If the jerk Martin Bernal can write that the Ancient Greeks were black and towelheads to boot, imagine what the pinkoes of the academy can come up with where the 100 million who perished under communism are concerned.
Gloating aside, this has been the best holiday ever. The weather has been perfect, and despite the fact that I've been drunk every night for 21 days running bar two, I have yet to wake up with a hangover. The schedule is as follows: After breakfast the various females the mother of my children has invited in order to counter my male chauvinist friends begin to complain as the men lead the way up a mountain. The weaker sex has never been able to keep up with the stronger one, and this is no excep- tion. Oh well, perhaps there are one or two: Professor Van Den Haag and Arnaud de Borchgrave, to be exact. Both gents take the lift up and make rude remarks about sweaty people.
We all lunch at home, as Sarah Litt's cooking is to good food what General Gud- erian's blitzkrieg tactics were to the art of war. After lunch the men go to the Palace pool for some serious girl-watching. It was there that Christopher Gilmour met his Swiss wife-to-be last week. She was there with her husband and two children, all a thing of the past once she saw Christopher perform a swan dive.
After this comes an hour's brisk tennis. Intellectual matters are taken care of between 7 and 8 p.m., and then it's time for drinks and dinner on the terrace chez Taki. Excuses for celebrations are a dime a dozen, such as the arrival of Gianni Agnelli or Bill Tuohy, or even the revelation that de Borchgrave's brother-in-law was the Queen's gynaecologist.
But next week everyone has to go back to work. Everyone but me, that is. I'm heading for Le Touquet for a 45-and-over tennis tournament. Only doubles because I'm still limping like hell, but not as badly as, say, the house that Salomon built.
Previous page
