Imagine a picnic with scalding hot, salty chips, the sun beating down, a view of the white cliffs of Dover in the distance, and a good book to read
? We were back in France last weekend, as I was speaking at a dinner hosted by Guy Boursot. Guy (British, in spite of his name) is the wine merchant who got so fed up with seeing people in the hypermarkets of Calais hauling cases of disgusting fluids, such as cheap Muscadet whose only use might be for cleaning paint brushes, that he set up a shop in the small town of Ardres, just off the autoroute to Paris, selling good French wine at good French prices. The anniversary dinner is held in the wonderfully bourgeois seaside town of Wimereux, a mile or so north of Boulogne.
On Friday night we went to eat at the Hotel du Centre, where waiters in black with wraparound starched white aprons serve traditional French comfort food: I had snails, skate in black butter, and a tarte aux pommes. Almost enough to restore my faith in French cooking.
On Saturday, in that fabulous sunshine which you probably shared, we went to Cap Blanc Nez, where the Germans mounted a gun so powerful that it could fire a shell as far as the coast of Kent, clearly visible in the clear air. It's one reason why the Allies invaded Normandy instead.
From the top, and the monument to the Dover Patrol ? demolished by the Germans but rebuilt after the last war ? I could see a fabulous spectacle beneath me. It was a van selling fried-to-order frites. Imagine a picnic featuring a baguette, a tub of unctuous pork rillettes, and scalding hot, salty chips, with the sun beating down, a view of the white cliffs of Dover in the distance, and a good book to read.
?The good book was One On One, by Craig Brown, which I have mentioned before. It's 101 encounters between unusual or unexpected pairings of people: the aristocratic English wastrel who ran over Hitler in Munich, but failed to finish the job, Elvis Presley meeting President Nixon, Princess Margaret watching porn with Ken Tynan and Peter Cook. Richly entertaining. At one point a butterfly landed on my Kindle, and I thought, is this a metaphor ? an endangered species meeting the digital technology which is taking over all our lives? But I thought, no, that would be stupid.
But I did recall some other curious meetings I had witnessed or heard about. Joan Baez finding herself in a lift with Henry Kissinger, and wondering what, at last, she could say to the warmongering baby-killer. But she couldn't find the words, so when he said, "I love your music," all she said was, "Why, thank you."
Many people don't know that the poet James Fenton used to be political correspondent of the New Statesman. I was in a car with him and the soon to be Liberal leader David Steel, who had been reading the modish book Small Is Beautiful by the economist E F Schumacher. "I cannot think of any situation where small is not beautiful," said Steel, with passion.
"Oh, I don't know," said Fenton. "What about a gin and tonic?"
I recall strange social melanges, such as at the Hay Festival, chatting to Barry Cryer, Christopher Hitchens and the bishop of Edinburgh, who had come down on his motorbike and was still in black leathers.
Or the bishop of Oxford at a party in London, chatting to the BBC's chief newsreader Peter Donaldson and Grayson Perry, in his full gigantic little girl's blue dress. We discussed the bishop of Southwark who had got drunk at an Irish embassy party; he had made the mistake of drinking wine, which the waiters top up for you. If you stick to Guinness or whiskey, you have to break off to go to the bar.
?Modern linguistics. Young man on a tube platform the other day: "I am totally at South Kensington."
?I popped into the Private Eye 50th anniversary exhibition, at the Victoria and Albert museum. It's worth it for the wall of cartoons, of which one made me laugh embarrassingly loud. It's by Giles Pilbrow and it shows one of those castles where men are trudging endlessly up a trompe l'oeil staircase. Two men have appeared, saying: "I'm sorry, Mr Escher, but you will have to fit disabled access."
?Listening to Desert Island Discs I reflected on how often people choose records you wouldn't want to hear again once, never mind over and over. Couldn't they have a reverse programme?
Kirsty: So, in 1969 you completed the first single-handed expedition to the summit of Mount Everest, without the use of oxygen. That was quite an achievement!
Me: It's kind of you to say so. But when I got back to UK I found that a record called Where Do You Go To My Lovely was at No 1. Absolutely ghastly, especially the bit where he goes, "yes you do, yes you do," with that sort of drippy urgency.
Kirsty: then in 1975 you finished work at the Treasury, where your bold approach to balanced interest rates is credited with rescuing the economy.
Me: Well, that's what they tell me! But, you know, that particular success was ruined for me by the way Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen was perpetually on the radio at the time. Such hysterical, pretentious twaddle! Oh, and A Space Oddity, by David Bowie. Spare us! And Hold Me Close, by David Essex. A perfectly appalling year, though I was able to take up heart surgery at the time ?
? More labels next week. In the meantime, thanks to Eileen Velarde who spotted this bilingual sign in a DIY supermarket in France: "Quincaillerie. Hardware. Ornamental screwing."
Simon Hoggart's new book, Send Up The Clowns, is published by Guardian Books at �8.99. To order a copy for �5.99 with free UK p&p, call 0330 333 6846, or visit guardian.co.uk/bookshop.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/oct/21/simon-hoggart-week-france
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