From royal loos to Vespa views
SUNDAY. It’s the night after THE interview. My own encounter with the Royal Family was in November 1981, when I gave Prince Charles a lavatory for his birthday (he collects loos…you’ll just have to trust me here). The policeman on the gates at Buckingham Palace looked inside the bowl just in case I’d hidden a bomb there.
A week later I received a letter from his equerry. “His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has asked me to thank you for the magnificent gift of a lavatory on the occasion of his birthday: it is being installed in the Palace…where it will no doubt be greatly admired.”
Admired? Is it in the living room?
Monday 3.02pm
On the train from St Pancras to Barnsley — I’m going there to try to inspire school students by telling them about my career, The Adventures of a Life Insurance Salesman.
I read that males living in West London have the highest life expectancy of anywhere in the EU. So that’s another great reason not to leave. (I live in West London.)
It went on to say that the lowest life expectancy for men in the EU is in Lithuania. Not such great news. My great-great grandparents came from Lithuania.
Wednesday
During my speech I told the students that life’s an adventure, a journey — and sometimes we fail.
But we only really fail if we don’t keep going. All the great explorers, they kept going didn’t they? Until they got where they were going.
I asked them: “Name me a great explorer.” A girl in the front row put up her hand.
“Dora,” she said.
“Who’s Dora?” I asked. “Dora the Explorer!”
Thursday
In September a cyclist filmed me on my Vespa scooter at the traffic lights near the synagogue in Great Cumberland Place, Marble Arch, downloaded it and sent to the police a very short film of a middle-aged Jewish life insurance salesman in a suit and tie wearing his helmet, sitting waiting for the red light to change.
Why? Because I was sitting in the box marked for cyclists. Just like thousands of other motorbike and moped drivers do every day.
Dora the Explorer
Of course you’ve never seen a cyclist go through a red light, have you?
I only know about this secret cyclist cameraman because I got a letter from the police telling me that a ‘member of the public’ had witnessed this heinous crime and filmed me.
It said if I didn’t want to go to prison for life and be fined millions of pounds I could do a speed awareness course. Or in my case a ride awareness course, because I was stationary. I thought I’d do the course at the same time as one of my school talks and I’d asked the lady who books me in for them to find me “some schools in a beautiful part of the country, maybe by a beach”.
She chose Barnsley.
Weekend
Back in London, I’m having dinner with a friend at my new favourite Italian family restaurant, and at the next table I get talking to some Swedish and Danish trawlermen and one Swedish trawlerwoman. I say to her: “My daughter is Scottish Jewish Chinese Canadian.”
“That’s funny”, she says. “You don’t look Chinese.”
“I’m the Jewish bit”. “We are Jewish, too!” three of the Swedish and Danish trawlermen say at once. “My mother was a Cohen,” the young blond man at the end said.
The fisherman opposite says: “I’m Peter Goldman from Gothenberg” and the man next to me said, “Hello, I’m David Berg from Malmo.”
What are the odds of bumping into three Jewish Swedish trawlerman in an Italian restaurant in Baker Street? “I’m Peter Rosengard”, I say.
“Rosengard! That’s the name of the most antisemitic place in Sweden,” they say.
“I know”, I say. “I’ve always wanted to go to Rosengard and check into a hotel.
The receptionist: ‘What’s your name?’
‘Rosengard’.
‘No, this is Rosengard. What’s your name?’ ‘Rosengard’.
‘No, this is Rosengard!’”.
Later
I’m on my Vespa on the way to the theatre when I try to overtake a car. I hit the curb and fall off. The play I was going to see? Death of a Salesman.