Tour de farce

Europe, Summer 1986. I had no sooner landed in England aboard my tall red-haired friend’s 727 than I got a frantic phone call from a San Franciscan who knows I attach great importance to the letters-tothe-editor column in the Chronicle. “Two already,” he said, “from people who don’t care where you went on your vacation and don’t want to hear about it.” Rully. How rude! I love to hear about people’s vacations — where they went, how they got sick, the money they blew on terrible food, the rudeness of the natives, and so on. (Most people say they had a wonderful time anyway because they don’t want to look like suckers for spending all that money to be miserable). At Sacramento High, I always got an “A” in the annual “What I Did on My Vacation” essay contest, even though I never did anything and went to only three places — San Francisco, Tahoe or Santa Cruz, where I got thirddegree sunburns I am paying for to this day.

However, I concede that a lot of people out there don’t like to read about my or anybody else’s vacation. Other readers think the travel pieces are the best things I do and would like to see a lot more of them, from as far away as possible and delivered by native runners using cleft sticks. Therefore I will carry on, mainly because there isn’t much else to write about these days. Nothing is happening in San Francisco, obviously; the botching and butchering of the downtown ballpark issue is farce, tragedy or scandal — take your choice. The best and only news is that the S.F. Youth Symphony, a great bunch of kids, won the international competition in Vienna. We now have the world’s best youth symphony, which I think is more exciting than the Giants winning the World Series. Not too many people will agree with that, but I want to hear about their vacations anyway.

I’m still in London, a city where plenty is going on, mostly in the past. All those oversized imperial buildings lining broad boulevards, enclosing the great squares, looking out over the timeless Thames. A stage set for a drama that was enacted long ago. Touching, even heart breaking, but the ghostly pageant moves on, and we all play along as best we can. London was the right size when it ruled the world, but now it seems too big even for England — sprawling all over the place, messy but lovable, even though polls show that Britain is more anti-American than France. We few intrepid Americans on hand this summer are not aware of it, however. The English are still mannerly and, yes, the food is better than it once was, but that still isn’t saying much.

Rank has its privileges, and the privilege is sometimes rank, all pomp and sad circumstance. The London stage set is peopled with the living dead of royalty, acting out their pointless roles. Ex-King Constantine of Greece and Queen AnneMarie have a “royal christening” in a Greek Orthodox Cathedral, and they’re all there: King Juan Carlos of Spain, Prince Michael of Greece, Prince Philip, the Prince of Wales and 24 princes and princesses in exile. Only in London. Next day, the mysterious international financier Aleko Papamarkou, pal of the Gettys, gives a lunch for most of them at Claridge’s. The men are all cinched up in their pin stripes and the women wear hats. Same day, the queen had one of her garden parties at Buckingham. You never saw so many sad souls in rented top hats and cutaways, so many delightfully dowdy and daft ladies, dressing as only English ladies can dress. As though there were no mirrors and nobody to tell them. “Who gets invited to these things?” I asked a Londoner. “All the wrong people,” he said.

The English are different from the rest of us. For one thing, they speak the language better, having owned it so much longer. They also have delightful idiosyncrasies. When I phoned a London friend who was out, I asked his secretary if I could leave my number. “Oh, PLEASE!” she said enthusiastically. When I gave it, she breathed, “How LOVELY!” I don’t think she was putting me on. During the buildup to the royal wedding, dozens of Londoners were interviewed on the street and not one said “Uh — well — you know.” They spoke their pieces briefly, literately and to the point. Then came the American TV crews — Maria Shriver! Willard Scott! Where do they find these people? — and the difference became even more noticeable. London Carries On, minus the Americans. “Lay Miz,” London shorthand for the musical version of “Les Miserables,” is still a tough ticket and well worth the effort; it may get to the provinces eventually. The Spectator, the stylish right-wing magazine, gave its annual party in its offices — an old house with room for 100; a thousand jammed in, mainly tired old ex-liberals, gossip columnists, politicians and nobles like Lord Alexander Hesketh (grandma was a Sharon) who supports white supremacy in South Africa to the point where “I have instructed my staff to buy ONLY produce from South Africa.” ...

London Minus Americans. The Connaught Grill, usually as hard to get into for lunch as Buckingham Palace, indeed had a table available, sir. The captain didn’t say, “How soon can you get here?” but he did sound a bit anxious. The roast beef was incomparable.

A longer version of this column appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on July 29, 1986.

The English are different from the rest of us. For one thing, they speak the language better, having owned it so much longer.