Tennis

New York It’s party time in the Bagel, or at least private party time. Yours truly is an extra man nowadays as my wife and I have been separated by pandemic restrictions for six months. Alexandra is in London, quarantining after visiting two little blond things in Austria for my fourth grandchild Theodora’s first birthday. I am doing dinner parties non-stop in the Bagel, as if I were a gaywalker back in the 1970s. Actually, I’ve been seeing a lot of old friends who have thrown dinners for Lita and George Livanos. We have mostly been the same crowd, as New York society types have gone the way of wooden

Q. Our neighbours have a tennis court which, under the property’s previous owner, we enjoyed playing men’s fours on. The new owner is very welcoming and friendly. The problem (without sounding conceited, I hope) is that he is not up to the standard of the rest of us in the village who would like to play on his court. How do we politely say that we want to play — but not with him? — Name and address withheld A. What about one of your number inviting him to play golf? He will thereby have the opportunity to introduce the new court owner to lots of locals, or businessmen, or

Wolfsegg, Austria I have finally understood what’s wrong with the modern world: motorways. These dehumanising slabs of asphalt covering our continents are Prometheus-like chains that lure us into non-stop movement and uniformity. But before you start screaming that you’ve been isolated for months and would give up a night with Jennifer Lawrence to roar down a highway, let me explain. It all began when Alexandra and I decided to visit my daughter and the new baby in Austria. It was my idea to drive there, the Swiss-German-Austrian borders having opened that very day. When the wife suggested a chauffeur, I said no. When the son assured me that I’d get

In Mr Alton’s absence, I thought readers might want a column about sport. The problem is that I’m largely indifferent to most sports. But I will berate the All England Club for cancelling the Wimbledon Championship. Fair enough, I can see that tennis might be a problem what with all the loud, virus-spreading grunting, but I think it’s time we reminded them they are the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Shockingly, last time I went there on a corporate jag, I could see no evidence of the superior game being played. Yet croquet is a game where social distancing poses no problems. If you sold the rights to

Desperately boring times but very healthy ones. No parties, no girls, not too much boozing, lots of smoking and reading very late into the night. And non-stop training and sport. What else can one do when locked in with one’s wife and one’s son and with nostalgic thoughts of a time when people gathered in groups? It seems very long ago but do any of you remember when people gave parties? Desperate times demand desperate measures and make for desperate columnists. Meditation might be good for philosophers and their ilk, but correspondents need to get out and get the story. The only thing to report nowadays are the sleeping habits

A chum was in Waitrose a year or two back, and was bending down with some difficulty to look at the sandwiches when he realised the sprightly elderly chap next to him, eyeing up the cheese and celery, looked very familiar. It was the greatest tennis player of all time, the one and only Rod Laver, the Rockhampton Rocket himself. They had a pleasant chat, for the Rocket is nothing if not affable, and Laver agreed to call my pal’s tennis coach and say: ‘Hi, it’s Rod Laver here.’ The coach didn’t believe him, of course, but it was true. When you saw the ecstatic reaction of Centre Court last

A lady once offered to go to bed with me if I could ensure that she would write The Spectator’s Diary. This was some time ago, but what I clearly recall is that I didn’t even try. To help her land the Diary, that is. I don’t wish to start any guessing games among the beautiful ‘gels’ that put out the world’s best weekly, but to my surprise that particular lady did get her wish some time after, with no help from yours truly. (What I can tell you is that all this did not happen under the present sainted editor’s watch.) I was thinking of the Diary as I

Asked how he was feeling as he was about to give a speech to a ladies group, Mark Twain, looking stricken, is supposed to have said: ‘How do you expect me to feel? Shakespeare is dead, Goethe is dead, and I have a terrible cold.’Alas, I’m no Twain, but I feel worse than the Mississippi sage ever did — that I’m sure of. Going cross-country skiing underdressed in bone-chilling temperatures didn’t help. I now sneeze about 150 times a day, I’m aching all over, my nose is running as if I had shoved two ounces of Peruvian pure up it, and my head feels as though it is stuffed with

A letter from a reader in South Africa mentions that the writer’s father insisted a white dinner jacket was permissible only in Palm Beach, Biarritz or on the Riviera. I agree and stand corrected, having worn one at the Duke of Beaufort’s bash in July. A heatwave is my excuse. England was a frying pan, I was planning to drink it up, and a new Anderson & Sheppard dinner jacket was hanging Circe-like in my closet. The letter also said that if the Duke is a rock star, as I described him in my July column, then all is forgiven. My South African correspondent would have got a surprise had

Because my mother is always telling me everything will be all right if I join a tennis club, I’ve joined a tennis club. In fact, I haven’t joined a tennis club so much as joined a group of women with a tennis coach who meet once a week for instruction at a court in Surbiton. A friend of mine is a member of this group and kindly agreed to take me. I borrowed a spare racket of hers and dusted off some dusky pink Lycra hot pants left over from my flirtation with hot yoga. As we gathered on the sunny court down an alleyway between two houses in a

As regular readers will know, Caroline has developed a fanatical interest in tennis and is currently captain of the ladies second team at the local sports club. I have written before about how her new-found passion has turned me into a tennis widower — she is out two or three nights a week during the high season — but I thought that was the extent of its impact on our marriage. Turns out I was wrong. The nights she spends at home with me watching television are even more emasculating than the nights she spends out. Why do I say this? Because the only thing she wants to watch is

Fifteen years ago, when I was The Spectator’s drama critic, Caroline used to complain that she had become a ‘theatre widow’. I was spending at least three nights a week in the West End while she was cooped up at home. Occasionally, I was able to persuade her to come with me, but most of the time she just made a face: ‘I’d love to accompany you to the musical version of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, but unfortunately I have an unbreakable appointment with the sofa and the TV set.’ Well, she has her revenge. Caroline is captain of the Park Club Ladies Second Team and if she hasn’t got