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Saturday 22 November 2008

High Life

Island Bliss

Assos, which means Ace in Greek, is aptly named. It lies on the bottom of the rugged cliffs and mountains that surround it, its peasant houses painted bright blues and reds built just off the aquamarine waters that gently lap against the limestone base. The only minus is the crickets, which have been known to drive some men mad, others crazed enough to murder their neighbours. (As it turned out it wasn’t at all the crickets’ fault, but a dispute over land, what else?) I flew to Cephalonia from London and straight on to my boat. After three weeks of non-stop partying, seeing a long dazzling beach, with a few unknown people minding their own business, was like finding the proverbial oasis in the desert. There are no Abramoviches here, no pop tarts, no celebrities. At night I hear a sad, elegiac, romantic sound coming from a lanterna, painted maroon; it is played by turning a brass handle at the side which strikes a series of levers inside. The old man with a white moustache who is playing it has more dignity than all the billionaires of St Tropez and Monte Carlo put together, but then what else is new? As both Socrates and Plato said, a lanterna player is worth ten billionaires and change.

I’m on my way to Corfu to pick up the editor of Chronicles, Thomas Fleming, and his wife, as well as Peter Brimelow and his young bride, for a short cruise around that once wonderful island, now turned into a hell hole by tourism and the Greek propensity for ruining the old and beautiful and replacing it with Coney Island honky tonk. Tom Fleming is a polymath à la Paul Johnson, so I’m hoping something will rub off on me, but high winds are forecast, which means unless their sea legs are in good nick, we’ll be doing a mama porpoise and staying safely in a man-made grotto, the marina.

The last evening in Cephalonia, we dined at the Anouilh house, literally hanging over a gorge with a 300-metre drop to the beach below. It is safe to say that this is the most dramatic setting anywhere on earth. I got such vertigo that it was hard to swallow, but swallow I did, lots of fine wine, but never ventured from my seat in the outdoor dining room, and never once dared to look below. We then tried to telephone Michel Déon, the great French writer and Academician, who lives in Ireland, but there, too, it was no go. No signal, rather. The Anouilhs were laughing as I made my way out, clutching at furniture and concentrating on the door and freedom. My thoughts were with mama and baby porpoise, and how lucky they are to be in their beautiful grotto safely on sea level. On my way back I plan to visit them again and say hello.

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