I have always admired those great souls in the world who re-invent themselves. The ones who triumph personally over circumstance and bend the world to their shape. Those who disregard convention and what is considered decent behaviour and forge an identity completely their own. I am drawn to these people: the Richard Burtons of this world. The Michael Caines. The Vito Corleones. The Ari Onassis. Onassis was half shade, half light. He enjoyed both facets of his character. It is what makes him so fascinating as a man and so attractive to so many women. He welcomed that duality, that Janus faced humanity and was shameless about it. He would say that he was a mere peasant so must be forgiven for his outbursts and vulgar speech. This disarming honesty was also charming and sexy – here was a man so self-confident he could be totally honest about who he was.

For those on the wrong side of his business dealings, it made him scurrilous, untrustworthy, sly. It also made him shrewd, sharp and cunning in search of a deal and profit – two things he was legendarily brilliant at creating. For those on the wrong side of his egocentricity, he was faithless, cheating and selfish. But he could also be thoughtful and caring – a regular guest on his iconic yacht, Christina, was Winston Churchill, then in his incontinent dotage. Ari looked after him and his needs personally and welcomed him aboard whenever the Great Man wanted a voyage.

Onassis stories are legion. He has been depicted in film and attracted controversy and headlines in both serious national newspapers and in the celebrity gossip magazines. He married the heiress to another shipping fortune – and lost that wife to his arch shipping rival, Stavros Niarchos, after she tired of his affairs. He pulled off the marriage coup of the C20th by convincing JFK’s widow, Jackie, then the most eligible woman in the world, to become Jackie O. Perhaps unwisely as her spending habits shocked even this paragon of generosity. And the great love of his life was La Divina herself, the American born Greek soprano, Maria Callas.

But my favourite story about Onassis is not about women. It is not about business. It is about the nature of the man. His approach to those who opposed him. Much of his business life and all of his relationships were characterised by huge drama. The anti-Trust suit brought against the Onassis shipping line by the US Government; the failed deal of the century struck with the Kingdom of Saudi that went sour; the controversy over his rapacious and indiscriminate whaling activities in defiance of the law. His troubled relationships with his children and the seemingly loveless mismatch with Jackie Kennedy – was she just a bauble to signal acceptance by the establishment? I don’t envy him any of these heartaches, even though – a mark of the man – he shrugged them all off stoicly and even revelled in the notoriety some of them brought. And I certainly don’t envy him having to bury his beloved son, Alexander, who died at the controls in a plane crash – a tragedy the tycoon never recovered from and which broke his heart.

No. None of these stories.

I like this story, the story about Onassis buying the Monte Carlo Casino. The casino in Monte Carlo is famous. Not just because James Bond plays there. In its heyday, it was the most glamorous place in the world. The Czarina of all the Russias brought the Imperial Russian Ballet to dance whilst she gambled and an aggrieved patron lobbed a hand grenade on to one of the tables after losing at roulette. There is even a song about the place: The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

As I walk along the Bois de Boulogne
With an independent air
You can hear the girls declare
“He must be a Millionaire.”
You can hear them sigh and wish to die
You can see them wink the other eye
At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo

Fred Gilbert 1892

Onassis wanted offices in the Mediterranean and he had struck up a friendship with Prince Rainier, the ruler of Monaco (Onassis pretty much paid for Rainier’s wedding to the movie star Grace Kelly and the after party was held on Onassis’s yacht). Naturally, he turned to Monte Carlo as the intended location. The Societe des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Strangers (Sea Bathing Society and Foreigners Club) controlled the casino and about a third of all land in the principality, but they rejected Onassis’s request to rent office space. So Onassis bought them. And moved in.

How brilliant. How magnificently one up. Churlish. Vain. Couldn’t make it up. Revenge against the establishment’s snobbery and antipathy to an outsider. But also, good business and very good new business – Ari used his connection with Ranier to stitch up the deal behind the SBM board’s back. He out established the establishment. He had better allies than they did and totally outmanoeuvred their Machiavellian ruse. It is the stuff of movie plots, of third rate novels, and yet, like so much of Onassis’ larger than life life, it happened. Onassis was, for real, the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

Ari had homes in Paris, New York, Montevideo and Antibes. But his home was a converted Canadian Navy anti-submarine frigate which had protected North Atlantic convoys in the war and also been at the D-Day landings: the Christina O. She was converted by Onassis to be a combined pleasure palace and office and she represented his character more completely than any of his other hideaways. With 17 cabins she could handle parties for over 150 people and had some breathtaking innovations: a Roman mosaic tiled swimming pool which had a floor to conceal the pool when the space was needed for entertaining and a bar where the stools were covered in whale foreskin. Onassis delighted in telling his female guests that they were now sitting on the largest cock in the world.

It was this coarse vulgarity that both attracted people to him and repelled them. The man himself just laughed, whatever the reaction.

Onassis did life superbly well. He witnessed everything he knew go up in flames as a boy and arrived from Anatolia in Turkey to Athens in Greece as a refugee. He learnt to speak seven languages fluently. He was diminutive in size but his presence and influence were immense. He partied and joked and flirted and fucked, collected art and artefacts, spoilt his children and consorts, amassed wealth akin to Roman Emperors. He counted the good and the great as personal friends and had everything at his fingertips and whim. But he also worked like a demon, in the wee small hours, labouring through the night until dawn after all his guests had partied out and gone to bed. He was inexhaustible. He was alive with life. He was all that a man is – both the terrible rage and ruthlessness as well as the fun and light heartedness. His command of details was ferocious and even if he was bettered, he would usually turn setback to his profit – if not financially then karmically.

I like largesse. I like flamboyance – when done stylishly and without having to be the centre of attention personally. These were Onassis’ qualities. A barrel chested force of nature. Brilliant. Unstoppable. International. Fast. Impatient. Wily. Terrific company. An enjoyer. Entirely self-made. Scion of Greece. A Greek. A man. Aristotle Socrates Onassis. Hero.

Chips was a fictional school master in the novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips, who devoted his life to the boys in his charge. He worked at the school as a housemaster and classics teacher and generations of old boys at the school revered him – he was remembered with affection by all of his boys. Chips personified what a housemaster of the old school should be: kind, fair, straight talking, slow to anger, quick to forgive and always with your best interests at heart. And our old housemaster, Guy, was all of these.

Whenever I think of Guy, it is either leading evening Prayers and giving out house colours in the table tennis room in our house, Manor, or on the touchline dressed in his Cambridge blue scarf or blazer. And of his smile, which he wore so often. I have always been incredibly grateful to him. He showed us an example of decency, good humour and quiet authority. A thunderous look from him spoke volumes and we never wanted to incur his displeasure, mainly because you knew that of you did, you had disappointed him and so let yourself down in some way.

I was reminded of this when my friend, Neil, with whom I shared a dormitory in the IVth form (14/15), asked if I remembered a wall punching competition between us one night after lights out. I did. We took it in turns to hit the wall opposite our beds as hard as we could with our fists. The idea being, either one of us would punch through the wall or break our knuckles trying. I stepped up. I threw my punch and, my guardian angel taking charge, hit straight through a weak point where the wall had just been plastered over. A false wall. Guy, doing his duty rounds, heard the noise, came in, turned on the light, saw us standing there looking guilty, looked at the hole in the wall and the shards of plaster strewn on the floor and simply asked “Why?”. He put out the light and left. We had no answer and went to bed, shamed.

Guy also knew when to look the other way. One evening, when everyone had gone over to tea in main school, I snuck into a bathroom with my then girlfriend. Carried away with passion, we had forgotten that this bathroom was directly above Guy’s study. He must have been working downstairs and heard us. In a heart stopping moment, we could hear him ascending his private staircase, come through the fire door and along the corridor to the bathroom door. We had locked the door but lay, entwined and terrified. We held our breath. Guy just stood outside the door for a moment, his face against the door. We could hear him breathing. Then went away. He didn’t even try the door handle. That is all he had to do. As his footsteps retreated back to his study, we let out our breath, reassembled ourselves quickly and quietly snuck out of the bathroom. We never did that again. Guy could have rumbled us and made a big deal of it. We would probably have been expelled and he knew that. So he just made his presence felt. Message received and understood.

Guy was old school, in all the right ways. Gentlemanly, interested in everyone, dedicated and both academic and sporty – the public school ideal. I remember being very impressed that he had a Cambridge Blue. And that he had gone to King’s College. And that he played cricket for Lancashire. And football for England. And – most confusing of all – was magic at mathematics. A word of encouragement from him meant the world and you wanted to do your best for him. Because he always did his best for you, and you knew that he did. When Guy retired from being a housemaster in 1981, his replacement had very big shoes to fill. Which he didn’t. He couldn’t have.

In Manor, we were incredibly fortunate for the four years we had Guy in charge. The environment he and Tan, his wife, created was safe. You could be yourself and not be scared. Not true in other boarding houses at the time. Manor was fun, lively and happy. And that was entirely down to the environment the two of them created. I will always be grateful to Guy and the nurture he provided. We called him “Boooky” in homage to his Lancastrian vowels – we were a Yorkshire school, after all. But he was, and always will be, our very own Mr. Chips.

Rail travel is dull… commuters, routine and suburbs. Travel on the night train is exotic, dangerous and laden with possibility. Who will you meet in the dining car? What might happen as the locomotive screams through the night time? What strange goings on will happen in the homes flashing past the speeding express? What will the guard find in cabin 42 when he goes to wake the occupant with a tray of tea? What nightmares will haunt the sleepers as they lie in troubled conscience unconsciousness? And who shall we follow as the merry band of passengers disperse to the new day upon reaching the final destination?

It is gripping stuff.

The inherent drama and pregnant expectation within the closeted universe of the night train was captured beautifully in W. H. Auden’s poem Night Mail which was turned into a lovely piece of advertising for British Rail by my old agency, Lowe Howard-Spink.

Sleeper trains have played a big role, not just in the movies but in my life, too. ‘My life – the movie’ definitely features one famous sleeper: The Cornish Riviera Express. Less 1920s flapper dresses, DJs, silver service and Russian Grand Duchesses with their Lady’s maid in tow. More refugee cross Channel ferry bar stewards in crumpled uniforms, a packet of Bourbons and a solitary tea bag in a NAAFI tin tea pot rattling along the decrepit West Coast line.

The Night train – the Sleeper service – departs from Platform 1 at Paddington station at a quarter to midnight every night, except Saturday. It covers a distance of just 253 miles in six hours. It is an old school way to travel. By way of comparison, a flight from London Heathrow airport to JFK in NYC is 3,443 miles. It takes one hour less than the sleeper train. But on the night train, you get your own cabin, a proper bed and a it takes you direct into the heart of town.

You can board and enter your cabin from 1030pm. Between 2006 and 2013 I used it once a week each way, give or take. When we moved to Penzance from Clapham, my original plan had been to learn to fly, take a part share in a small aeroplane with some other London refugees and fly up and down from the airstrip at Land’s End. That plan, as they say, never really took off. And so, along with many other Cornish-based business folk, the Night train was my lifeline. I used to drop my bags in the cabin and then wander off back into Paddington for a pint or two at the Fountains Abbey pub on Praed Street. Or a nice steak and a few glasses of Malbec at a favourite hotel brasserie near the station. I doubt you can do that now – its just waiting for a novelist to set a terrorist attack on the train – as it would be easy to check in (no ID is required, just a ticket), drop a bag off with a bomb inside it and scarper.

I used to enjoy going along to the lounge car where you can sit in comfort (sleeper ticket holders hold the status of First Class), get a night cap (whisky being mine), watch the drama of the whistle blowing and the train pulling out of historic Paddington station, and sip your drink contentedly as the locomotive picks up speed through the window-lit suburbs of London until the darkness of countryside descends. The staff became familiar faces and occasionally you find yourself sitting opposite a famous person: I remember striking up a conversation with the lovely Eddie George, who lived in Bodmin in Cornwall, and had just retired as Governor of the Bank of England. He was just returning home from Hong Kong, where he had delivered a lecture on the future of the world economy for an exorbitant fee. Ensconced together for an hour as we departed London, I got the benefit of his thoughts for free.

From dawn, as the train enters Cornwall, the carriages resound to the sharp, metallic rap of the stewards giving passengers early morning alarm calls. As we stop at stations various – Plymouth, Liskard, Bodmin and Truro – passengers open the latch of their now well used cabins, extract themselves and their baggages and belongings, and shuffle, bleary eyed, along the corridor to the doors. The train spills its passengers onto the platforms, the doors shut noisily in a slam of percussion, and we head off again towards the last stop: Penzance. Threading through railway embankments, past gorse bushes with their tight, bright yellow flowers , scattering horses from their slumber with the noise of the engine, we huff and puff through the landscape of Cornwall until, at last, we emerge from our long night’s travel, to the coast and the magnificent sight of St. Michael’s Mount rising out of Mount’s Bay.

The train has slowed to a crawl now, tired and done for the day, and we limp, tired, into end of the line station. You can hear the sigh of the engine and the tic-tic-tic rhythm of the train as it stops and settles at journey’s end. All who remain, come to ground off the carriages and quietly move towards the taxis and town – home for some, holiday for others. Ready for rest. I always went straight to bed on getting home and straight to my room in London after arriving in Paddington – you need more sleep after the jolting and bumping journey. In truth, the train doesn’t deliver a great night’s sleep. It’s more the Dozer than the Sleeper service.

Often, for me, the night train was the start or end of a longer adventure, overseas. It started me on my way to Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore. Or west to America. Or south to Cape Town. Or north to Moscow. Or simply back home from all those distant lands. But whichever way I was travelling, once I got on board, adventure lay ahead. Either the adventure of new places and new people or of the glorious Cornish beaches and my two favourite people on the planet.

It may not be the Orient Express, but it’s a train you don’t want to miss.

For the rest of us, there are maps, reruns of travel programmes and armchair fantasies fuelled by photographs. I miss travel. It has been such a normal part of our lives. We thought nothing of going abroad. In 2019, we spent almost as much time overseas as we did at home. Every year we had scaled new heights of adventure. Since I kissed Tanya by the river Tees in 2015 that fateful day in August, we have travelled the globe with our little troupe. A six week road trip around New Zealand. A three quarter circumnavigation of Sicily. Paris. Rome. Marrakesh. Another six weeks driving the Atlantic coast down France, Portugal and Spain to Morocco. Prague. Budapest. Munich. Moscow. Kiev. Yaroslavl. Singapore. Sailing the Greek Islands. Skiing in the French Alps. Trips to see Josh in Shanghai and Barcelona. Vietnam for my sister’s sixtieth. St. Petersburg.

The last plane we caught was to Budapest in September 2019. That’s eighteen months without a single trip abroad. Tanya is deprived of her family and her parents and brother are deprived of contact with their grandchildren. The Earth has stood still. Holidays last summer, in the brief excitement of thinking all this virus stuff had gone away, were British affairs: Bath, the Cotswolds, Suffolk, Yorkshire. Wales and Scotland had to be abandoned because no one wants to go camping in the Western Isles when the weather forecast predicts rain for three weeks. And everyone wanted to go to Wales so there wasn’t even a spare tent pitch to be had in any campsite throughout the Principality. Yes, we discovered Sussex. And she is very beautiful.

But.

But, I hanker for foreign affairs. I feel like a diplomat put under house arrest. The world is tantalisingly near but we are all prisoners in our little house boxes and our only connection to the outside world is through another little box of electrical tricks called a computer. Everything else is banned. “Stay home, save lives” is now the mantra, and has been for damn near a year. So any travel has to be travel of the mind. Books, ballet, film, concerts, documentaries, plays, audio, BBC Sounds, podcasts, papers. Our entertainment is merged with our work. Seemingly, the only people excused this confinement are the TV presenters and journalists, who roam at will all over the globe to cover the US election, coups in Myanmar, fires in California and write unnecessary pieces about hotels we cannot visit in countries we cannot get to. Our travel, for now, is piloted from our armchairs. It is a poor substitute. If travel broadens the mind, then lack of travel narrows it. All our minds feel narrower. More petty, less tolerant. Irascible. Cantankerous. Super sensitive. Unstable. On a knife edge. This confinement is getting awfully tedious. The papers say that lockdown fatigue has kicked in. Anxiety levels are up. Tanya’s blood pressure is high. We go out less and less. When we do, the only question is left or right?

Modern day travel is claustrophobic. We are prisoners. And I, for one, need to break out.

I didn’t want to wake the children, though the lullaby sea took care of their slumber. The water was welcomingly cool and calm. The white sparks of the phosphorescence lit up the sea with every stroke and I submerged myself in its glow. A few strokes and I was with her. “Thank you for getting me up”, I said. There is little more magical than being afloat in a sea with your lover, striking distance from the shore of an Ionian Island. Every movement bringing a cascade of minute water sparks that mirror the canopy of Heaven above – like swimming in the night sky as an Olympian God, wreaking havoc in the Universe. Our limbs entwine under the water and send galaxies cannoning into one another.

We look up to the sky and smile. There is just love in the air around us. Our little boat rises and falls ten feet distant, a home adrift in space. We are cosmonauts of the ocean. As we tread water, we hold hands. This is bliss. Our quiet words float over the tips of the swell and we move back towards the boat. Pulling our bodies up the ladder in the stern, the evening air makes us sigh with pleasure. The warmth envelopes our wet skin and we are cool at last. The heave of the deck beckons us to sit in the stern and just breathe it all in.

Wrapped in a toga’d bedsheet, she whispers to our boy to come up from his sleep and swim. Blearily, he slides into the water. The spectacle of a billion creatures illuminating his limbs at every glide of his hands lights up his face. It is an unforgettable first and only adds to his smittenness with all things sea-soaked. Our sailor lad. Swimming like the Ancients on a third watch around our slumbering vessel. It is our night swim. Gentle, calm and ocean free.

The Ionian Sea, off the coast of Keffalonia, August 2019.

We took our cue for drinking from our faculty heads – Professor Allen Phillips Griffiths and his Jesuit sidekick, Cyril Barrett. They were both prodigious imbibers and at the inaugural session to welcome us to the Philosophy school they pleaded the case that we would all learn a lot more from arguing in the union bars over a pint than we would in lectures, and they heartily recommended we did this. We took them at their word, with the result that I had to resit my logic exams over the summer just to cling on to my place at Warwick. We took our bar studies seriously, several times being attacked and beaten up by other-minded fellow drinkers from the left of the political spectrum. One morning I awoke with a set of black eyes, earned in the Student Union Market bar, for singing Unionist songs and wearing black tie, and attended my politics tutorial with Professor Jim Bulpitt with the people who had set on me the previous night. It was a bear pit.

University was drinking. It was subsidised bars and pints-a-plenty. Bitter, lager, Guinness, mild, cider, scrumpy, pints of Pernod – anything that was on promotion at a pound a pint. The Pernod was a mistake. I have never been able to stomach it ever since. It was seats and tables sticky with beer and sweat. It was live music every night. It was pints at Union General Meetings. Dinner. Lunch. Even breakfast. All served with beer. It was, one memorable evening, dinner in a first floor communal kitchen in a Hall of Residence where the washing up consisted of chucking every plate, glass, mug and all the knives, forks and spoons out of the window. You don’t do that when you’re sober. It was the Westwood Mingle – an all day pub crawl around the arse end of Coventry where our accommodation was located – starting in a working mens pub and downing pints in one immediately followed by a tactical. A ‘tactical’ is a tactical chunder – making yourself sick in order to free up room for more beer. It all ended in the evening at a disco where everyone tried to “box off” whoever was willing. Beer makes for strange bed fellows.

In the summer holidays at the end of my second year I flew to America for three months on a BUNAC exchange. BUNAC is the British Universities North America Club and is an exchange programme where they come over here and we go over there for a summer as students to work, explore and experience another culture. We get the better deal. Some go to work in American Summer Camps – my girlfriend at the time did that. It seemed the worst option. Who wants to spend your whole summer looking after with brattish kids and being “Owl Chief”? Not me. Ripper, my uni companion on this trip, opted instead for finding work at Faneuil Hall in Boston, skinning fish and serving subs (giant sandwiches). Ok, it doesn’t sound glamorous, does it? But it was magnificent. Our work friends were all college students too, working their way through university like all US students do, by taking on summer jobs waiting tables. With our British accents, which we obviously hammed up, we were mini celebs and we paid for only five nights’ accommodation in 60 days. Every night, after our shift ended at 11pm and we had taken all the rotting seafood bones and scales to the dumpster, we joined our crew to go drinking at Serendipity, the bar over the other side of the Hall. All the restaurant crews met up here and the drinking went on until the small hours. Ripper and I – like all the other kids – had to be up and back at our jobs by 9am. We partied on regardless. Beer got us started – this is where I developed a taste for Sam Adams and Amstel, which was all the vogue then – but being Brits, we avoided the dreadful Bass that our US friends worshipped: served ice cold, supposedly proper British beer. The beers were chased down with Hawaiian sea breezes, a cocktail of vodka and cranberry juice. After two months in Boston, Rip, me and a waitress we were both in love with called Cindi Rittenhaus (who was relocating to San Francisco), took a “Driveaway” car across the states to California. We sampled several beers on the way through New York State, Kansas, Colorado and into California where we fell for Anchor Steam. But it was a dry old ship in Salt Lake City, capital of the Mormon and abstentionist state of Utah. Nevada wasn’t much better.

After university I began work and discovered those lovely Victorian London pubs. London Pride. Then I moved north to Tetley-land in Leeds. I was hired to sell Yorkshire TV’s experiment in through the night broadcasting, which was called MusicBox. Odd to remember that TV transmission on just 4 channels stopped promptly at midnight in the 1980s. But the launch kept getting delayed so I had nothing else to do than go to the (again subsidised) bar in YTV Studios on the Kirkstall Road and get smashed on Guinness. Four or five pints was the usual lunchtime amount. My regional sales colleagues thought nothing of this; it was standard practise and often they would either drive off on their rounds to talk to the advertising agencies of Leeds or to clients or, in one case, to fly his two seater plane for a little afternoon’s light entertainment. I went up with him several times. We were both on the clock but this was normal. Business was, when MusicBox eventually came on stream, carried out at the Moortown Mecca, The Flying Pizza – restaurant to the media moguls of the North. Starting with a Peroni – unimaginably exotic in the 1980s – and moving on to a bottle or two of Frascati. Frascati was everywhere then. Now, it has virtually disappeared.

Yorkshire ale is wonderful. There are so many regional brewers. Masham gave us Theakstons. John Smith was famous outside Yorkshire for its advertising (done by BMP, the agency I would work for 10 years after) but which never ran in the county itself for fear of upsetting the locals. John Smith’s rival brother, Samuel Smith, brewed in the same small town, Tadcaster, but the beer is poor. I am not a Samuel Smith fan, in spite of the quaint packaging of yesteryear they wrap around their gaseous brew. Timothy Taylors – Landlord is a great beer – from the Bradford area. And my beloved Tetley, with its foaming head. Tetley was served in the Queen Anne pub at the back of the YTV studios and we delighted in taking visitors from the London sales office who had to show a leg “up North” every now and then – just to show willing, like – for a lunch of ‘pie and peas’. The look of revulsion on their faces as they were confronted with a hot pork pie drowning in mushy peas and topped off with vinegary mint sauce was always worth the wait. Tetley was poured from the font so that the server kept pulling and pulling in order to fill the pint and attain that legendary Yorkshire head on the pint that Northerners love and Southerners (where beer is served without a head) do not understand. But in order to achieve this peak-pint performance, the beer that spilled over the glass and hands of the pourer was syphoned back into the barrel to be recycled rather than disappearing for ever into the drip tray. Meaning that whatever germs of nail clippings were washed off the pourer’s hands went straight into the next pint. Lovely. What we called “flavour”. They aren’t allowed to do that anymore.

I returned to London in 1988 to begin working in advertising. London agency life was fuelled by beer (and wine and spirits – just like in the TV series Mad Men, only with English accents. It was especially so in the 1970s and 1980s. The best agencies had their own bars – we had one in Lowe Howard-Spink (subsidised again, naturally) where Whitbread was a client. Pints of Stella were de rigeur (we produced the Jean de Florette cinema ads and the brilliant line that made the beer famous: Reassuringly expensive) and I remember my Account director boss popping his head around my office door at 8pm on a Friday night as I was being sick into my wastepaper basket. This was perfectly normal. We used to congregate at the Grenadier on Friday lunchtimes and get hammered. Work finished at midday. The afternoon was for drinking. Or lunch. Preferably both. And people would start leaving for home at around 8.30pm.

Pubs fortunate enough to be located near ad agencies in London were sitting on a goldmine. Quite often, the chosen watering hole was grotty. The nearest pub to Lowe’s in its salubrious Bowater House offices in Knightsbridge was the ominously nicknamed “Stabber’s Arms” – so named because one unlucky drinker had been attacked there with a knife. Collett’s pub in Euston was no nicer. BMP’s was the sort of purpose built pub you find on dangerous housing estates of tower blocks in inner London areas. But whilst the venues were seedy, the company was invariably brilliant. Any excuse for a pint. A pitch win. A pitch loss. A leaving do. A new recruit. A new campaign. A Thursday night. One year, when BMP won the Foster’s beer account, the management took the entire agency on a booze train from Paddington to Bristol. No stops. No passengers other than staffers. Just one long drinking journey with an open free bar the whole way there and back. Commuters waiting on the platform at Reading and other stops down the line watched enviously as eight carriages’ worth of beautiful young things sped past at light speed in a blur of Foster’s induced partying and largesse.

Over the course of my career in advertising, I have been brand steward for a number of beer brands. Some lovely and some dreadful. The illustrious Marston’s Pedigree from Burton on Trent. A truly exceptional pint and we sold the campaign to the live reincarnation of the founder of the brewery in the form of his great grandson, now Chairman, be-whiskered and sitting directly under an imposing portrait of his forebear in the oak panelled Boardroom.

Newcastle Brown Ale, iconic, fizzy, filthy brew but a great brand. I remember being put on it as Board Account Director and flying up to Newcastle for the obligatory tour of the on-trade. We began in a Geordie Working Men’s Club. I wore my best London adman uniform: black polo neck top, dark grey trousers, shiny leather Oxfords on my feet. Everyone else was in their Friday night finery. I might as well have been wearing a badge that shouted “I’m a homosexual Londoner”. The looks I got. I felt like Dicky Beasley, the pony-tailed boy wonder from Viz comic whose dream was to grow up and become an advertising account executive. A ponce. Men holding three pints in their hands stopped on their way back from the bar to scan me from my toes to my hairstyle. Their scorn was evident in the sneering which accompanied a small but sad and disapproving shake of the head as they passed me by which effectively passed their unspoken verdict: “Puff” or “Wanker”. It was a tough night. Made worse by having to drink that shitty bottled filth, Newcastle Brown Ale. The Scottish & Newcastle conglomerate which owned Newky Brown also owned a variety of other second rate beers: Harp Lager, Gillsepie’s (a made up brand to compete with the wildly successful Caffrey’s Irish Ale) and 80 Shilling. All dreadful.

The volume days diminished when my children arrived. They couldn’t drink. This isn’t necessarily a drawback. My sisters remember being left outside the aforementioned Windmill pub in Linton with a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps whilst my father and their mother drank inside with their crowd of friends. But they couldn’t afford the rounds, so drinking became, by and large, a home hobby. Our family holidays in Majorca, at the C’an Canonge finca near Pollenca town, topped us up with rosado, white and red wine and a nice San Miguel or Estrella at the shank of the day to get us started. Beer with pistachios is a great way to begin the evening, and a good appetite whetter for the wine and brandy to come later.

Our move from London to Penzance brought in a whole new raft of beers, most particularly Doombar, which still tastes its best on pump in Cornwall although it is now seemingly omnipresent. The St. Austell beers are good and I enjoyed many a pint watching the rugby internationals in our Pz local pub and also celebrating wins of new business at one of two pubs where I would make a solitary pilgrimage: the beautiful Tinner’s Arms in Zennor for when I won a brand new client for our consultancy business, Caffeine, and the Halzephron Inn on the Lizard for when I won more assignments from an existing client. (You see? There was method in the madness.) On these trips, I would have just one pint of ‘Doom’ and raise my glass to the client. Along with lunch; always with food. There were other compensations for living in Cornwall: the Ship in Porthleven, the Gurnard’s Head near LandsEnd, the Maltsters Arms in Chapel Amble and the St. Kew Inn – being possibly my favourite pub in the world alongside the Craven Arms in Wharfedale. All brilliant purveyors of a glorious pint.

In truth, I am never happier than when in a pub and an hour or so in the company of a newspaper, a proper lunch and a pint is my idea of Heaven. I have never been miserable in a pub, even if I entered one in such a mood. The variety of all these hostelries juxtaposed with the familiarity of the protocols and the rituals of pub going, make them all a second home, and I can spot a great pub with a well trained glance. Thursday evenings at the Tinner’s in the company of some 23 musicians playing the Cornish pipes, guitars, fiddles and an array of instruments is a magical experience. And to top off your evening’s drinking with a night cap dram of whisky and a toddle over the courtyard to the cosy bedroom is a blissful end to any day and much to be recommended.

Holidays in Thorpeness every summer were also punctuated withe pints. Although dinner every evening, cooked by all of us in turn, staying in the different households scattered through the village, was always a wine affair, the Dolphin pub in Thorpe plus the Cross Keys and White Hart in Aldeburgh all served Southwold’s Adnam’s stable of beers. And Adnams Bitter is a lovely beer.

It was also in Thorpeness that I always had a pint of bitter shandy in the Clubhouse with dad after a round of golf. I always associate shandy with dad as a consequence. We transferred this ritual north when we played at Wetherby, his club. Dad always had a pint of gingerbeer shandy (bitter and ginger beer, half and half), where my preference has always been for lemonade shandy.

On the way to Thorpeness, journeying south from Yorkshire, we always new we were near when we started to see Tolly Cobbold pubs from the car. This meant we were getting near. It also made us laugh, as it sounded so funny to us as a name. Tolly has passed into history now. And in later years, I have grown to think of the Bury St. Edmunds brewer, Greene King, as maker of probably my favourite ale: Abbot Ale, winner of the prestigious Monde Gold Award in 2014. Abbot is best served at The George pub in Alfriston, Sussex.

Living in Sussex means there are lots of Harvey’s pubs and Harvey’s is another lovely hoppy ale. My favourite place to sup a pint is the John Harvey Tavern, adjacent to the brewery by the river in Lewes, where the beer hails from originally. Harvey’s shares Adnam’s Cambridge blue livery – perhaps that is why I am so taken with them both, as I am a sucker for this colour.

The pubs of the South Downs are often stunning and a few times we have been lucky enough to sit in the pub garden on a hot summer’s afternoon sipping a pint only to hear the unmistakable noise of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine of a Spitfire, as this British icon flies overhead on its return from an airshow or State occasion to Biggin Hill RAF airbase. One even performed a victory roll in the summer of 2020, which I have never seen before in real life nor will see again – they are supposed to be banned from such manoeuvres nowadays given the age of the planes – but what a sight! In an otherwise terrible year, it was a welcome signal.

My drinking companion of choice is Dom, or Louis Fairdrop as he styles himself when the booze is working. To his Louis, I become the Baron Ernst von Stollenheim. In the days when you could, we began our imbibing on the allocated day at 0500 in Smithfield where a pint of Porter could be had in the Market Tavern underneath the meat market, and many of the market’s porters availed themselves of this institution. After all, they had been hard at it all night and so were in need of a refreshment. Along with an early morning kickstarter fag, this was the traditional commencement to our Walk of wisdom – an all day and all evening and all…well, as long as we could stand, pub crawl. These are usually themed to take in all the legal pubs of London, or the ancient pubs of the City or, as was the case with the inaugural walk, the pubs along the river Thames. After Smithfield, which is also home to a fantastic pub called the Fox and Anchor, where they purvey a very line in pies, we cabbed to Simpson’s on the Strand for a proper gentleman’s breakfast. With Champagne. And a Bloody Mary.

On that first walk, we then ambled along the Embankment to the river boat which took us all the way down to the official start line of our pilgrimage. The prospect of some 21 pubs and inns stretched out before us. It was a glorious prospect. Dom is one of those people where you can gabble and laugh or just sit in companionable silence; he is the quintessence of the Bar Stool Philosopher. We disembarked at Greenwich pier and walked East along the towpath , past the redundant concrete works to the Nelson pub. Opting to take the appropriate drink of the time of day, we began with a pint of bitter and then ambled along to the Yacht, where we had a glass of Madeira, which seemed fitting for the hour. Another pint in the bow windowed seat of The Trafalgar Inn (it is my hope one day to hold a party upstairs in the plush, gold and scarlet upholstered Nelson Room) and then on to Rotherhithe and lunch at the Mayflower. A pint and a bottle of red.

Borough Market and the only Georgian galleried Inn left in London, The George. Another pint. Across the Bridge and another cab ride to Wapping and the notorious pubs of that manor: the Prospect of Whitby, the Grapes in Limehouse, the Captain Kidd, Turner’s Old Star. By now we are quite merry. To Soho and the Crown and Chairman. Some other pubs. A green doored Speakeasy I couldn’t ever find again but which Dom seemed to know the secret password for. And back to the bar at Home House, where we were sharing a bed, Laurel and Hardy style, for the night. Twenty one establishments. And Dom was up and fit as a flea in time to catch the 0720 from King’s Cross. Outstanding behaviour.

This tradition continues, two decades later. Dom “doesn’t do solids” as he puts it, but we have drunk our skins full and I need food to soak up the alcohol. So we often break up the booze with the nicer eating establishments London has to offer: Langan’s Brasserie usually does the trick. We have pubbed in Hammersmith and Chiswick, Clapham and Wandsworth, in the City and in Brighton. So much more to do and so little time…

Work has also taken me on drinking extravaganzas and introduced me to some lovely brews: Budweiser in Prague; Leffe in Bruges; Effes in Istanbul; Tsing Tao in Shanghai; Kirin in Tokyo; Lion lager in Cape Town; Grolsch in Amsterdam; Weissbier in Munich; Piva (live beer) in Russia. This last one, best taken to rehydrate yourself in a Banya (think sauna with a bar) with good company and some snacks. And Guinness in Dublin, of course. But don’t go on St. Patrick’s day – all bars are shut in deference to the Man. All except the bar at Dublin’s main train station where you can buy a drink if you have a ticket for travel that day. My ambition is to make it for Bloom’s Day one 16 June.

Then there are all the holiday beers: Mythos and Fix in the Peloponnese. Phoenix in Mauritius. Wadadli in Antigua. Kalik in Bermuda. Chang and Singha in Thailand. And a little local twist on a French pression when you add Picon, the orange liqueur, which gives you a nice kick. I learnt this last one when working in the French Alps in Morzine and it became my preferred way to drink beer in the winter cold up there in the mountains.

Beer is my friend. The lubrication of sorrow and the enhancer of fun. A pint is a joy. Company enough for one but a welcome addition to any throng. It is a fundamental part of the human story, having been part of our history since about 3500BC. It has been responsible for some horrendous historical blunders, for countless relationship breakups; it has also cemented many marriages, loosed the inhibitions of those born a drink too short. It is a leveller, a companion, a small but potent ally; a dangerous enemy if given control. It can heighten the confidence and gag the articulate. It is a fiend and a lover. It is class in a glass and the dregs of despair. The world always looks rosier through the bottom of a glass that has contained it and it is a marvellous accompaniment to all manner of pleasures. I am a fan. It has given me untold tales as well as told. The madness that lies in its innocuous promise of quenched thirst is celebrated in poetry and plays around the world. But mostly, it has been the common denominator to a lifetime of happy and funny memories. This is to say thank you to all the crafts people from around the world who have produced the liquid lubrication which has oiled the friendship of decades that I have enjoyed. And to all the publicans and bar staff who have poured me a pint, cleared away the empties and replenished the same. Here’s to you all. Cheers.

In the most famous TV sketch that Eric and Ernie appeared in with the world class conductor Andre Previn (“Mr. Preview”), Eric (think Boris) misses his cue several times. Taking too long to walk to the piano due to his showboating (think Boris), he is at least a yard too far from the piano when the time comes for him to play. In a real classical concert, this would be a tragedy. We now enter Eric’s surreal world and the serious minded Previn is dragged into an Alice in Wonderland world of nightmarish proportions (think us – seriously trying to get a sensible solution – in Boris’s egotistical universe of Walter Mittyish promises and exaggerated claims). Eric suggests that maybe Previn could make the musical introduction “about a yard shorter” to give him time to get to the piano in time to hit his cue. In his twisted imagination, this is how music works and this is how you deal with the problem (think Boris’s boosterish behaviour shaking hands with anyone and everyone in some sort of parallel universe attempt to show the disease who was boss). Eric then decides to sit at the piano rather than make an entrance (think Boris getting the disease and rethinking his original flamboyant approach) then misses his cue again because he is seated and cannot see the conductor cue him in over the piano lid (think Boris failing to spot a glaringly obvious problem with his “plan”).

The sketch goes on and Previn attempts to get the concerto underway. Eventually, the introductory bars build back to the dramatic moment when the piano solo starts. Eric gets his cue but starts playing, very badly and out of tune (think Boris striking precisely the wrong tone with his own discordant plonking notes when what is called for is gravitas and realism). Previn stops the orchestra. Dumbstruck with horror, he stalks over to the piano and says to Eric: “You’re playing all the wrong notes!”. To which Eric replies with Boris-like bravado: “I’m playing all the right notes…just not necessarily in the right order”.

That’s Boris. Playing all the wrong notes. Out of time. And not necessarily in the right order. And, instead of laughing, we are crying. Crying with frustration at the hopeless ineptitude of the whole show. It has ceased to be funny. History may well be tragic at the start, progress to farce and then to pure comedy, but eventually, when repeated over and over with no apparent lessons being drawn, it turns full circle to tragedy again. It shouldn’t happen, but it does – over and over again.

Eventually, Previn takes to the keyboard himself and shows how it should be done. Shown up for the hopeless imposter he is, Eric covers his embarrassment by trying to dismiss the virtuoso performance as “rubbish”. Boris is trying to pull off the same trick. When it comes time again to pass verdict on his Covid “show”, the people of Britain will not be laughing. And Boris will be starring in his very own, self-imposed, self-regarding ‘tragedy’. But the real tragedy is the unnecessary suffering his incompetence has imposed on everyone else. It is beyond farcical.

But unlike in Britain, where Christmas seems to have lost most of its religious meaning and become primarily a commercial occasion, in Russia it retains its religious significance. The present giving is already dispensed with: for Russians, the holidays start on New Year’s Eve and the tree is a New Year’s tree (a Yolka) not a Christmas tree. So Christmas is primarily a festival kept by the newly religious…or the anciently devout. The Orthodox church has undergone renewal since the collapse of Sovietism. It has many devotees. Our daughter, Emily, was baptised into the Russian Orthodox church. Her Godmother, Ocsana, is devout – she takes Communion every Sunday at the new church where her children went to school. The priest who presides there, Andre Tkachyov, has a Holy presence – when we were at the baptism, I felt the authority of something divine in his person. Yes. I did. And it felt comforting. Yes. It did.

An Orthodox service seems to last ages. On Sunday morning, we arrive at 10am and leave at the end. The service has always been going a long time and we arrive – usually about twenty minutes before the taking of the Sacrament. The church is full. Everyone stands. People – children, adults, men and women, wander in and out. This is not a static affair like in the Anglican church. Here you move about, chat outside, look after babies, pop back in, cross yourself (I don’t – the Protestant in me, er, protests), soak it all up, recite the responses if you know them, pop out again. The choir is not visible but the singing is, for me, the Great Soul of All the Russias. It is mystical and enveloping. It transports me into the ethereal world and I find great comfort there. I wish you could hear it. It is transportive. Deep. Soaring to Heaven. Vibrating into the Earth.

At Emily’s Christening, taken when the service had been completed and the congregation was going home, our lovely priest, so Holy in his resplendent gold robes, leads the Godparents around the font three times and they renounce the devil. Emily is immersed in her golden bath for the first time. She is naked and held in the hands of her Church incarnate in Andre. She is somewhat taken aback by this dunking, where she is wholly submerged. The second immersion calls forth her indignation which is written all over her shocked face: are you kidding? Again? The third is merciless and renders her speechless with shock at the effrontery that anyone would dare do this to her. She is wrapped once more in the warmth of her Christening robe. Belligerent but now welcomed into her church; indignant but saved. The family pose for photographs. Neil, Godfather; Sam, Emily’s eldest brother – I am so glad that he has come to be here on this day with us; Nefisa, loyal friend; Ocsana, Godmother and the one we have to thank for arranging all of this; Steven, ever so proud to hold Emily in his arms for the photograph. Tanya, head covered, as all women must be in the church, and beautific on this day of days; our priest, officiate and conduit to Emily’s introduction into the fellowship of Christ. Me. In Heaven already.

There is so much I will never know about Russia. But the fragments I see and feel and taste draw me in deeper and deeper. None more so than the peace I feel in the churches. Christmas has always been special to me. It holds my heart for the hearth of home, for those I love, for company and companionship and for drink, making merry and for the rituals of Scrooge, presents, feasting, cooking, holly, ivy, singing along to carols at full volume. But recently the religious significance has gone. The story that started it all is missing. At her nativity, Emily was an angel. Her part was to sing the 12 days of Christmas with altered lyrics. A partridge in a pear tree became, for some unfathomable reason, “A shrimp on the bar-bie”. She doesn’t even know the basic story. What chance has she got when they start mixing it up with some ‘I’m a celebrity, get me outta here’ menu recitation? In the Orthodox faith, Christmas is about Christ. Simple. No kangaroos. No platypi.

On this Christmas night, I am for the majesty of miracles. We need some magic, some hope. We need guidance and good news in these malign times. Focusing outside of ourselves, transcending the world and joining in communal celebrations of a life that served us all is a joyous way to re-centre ourselves. Maybe it’s the rituals; maybe it’s the smells and bells, the incense, the chanting, the music, the comfort of ritual. Maybe. And then again, maybe it is the Light of the World that comes to us from the most unexpected places.

America has had it. As a world power, as a democracy, as a civilised society. Joe Biden talks about “being back at the head of the (international) table”. Uh-ugh. No. Trump relinquished that seat and you cannot just slip back into it as if nothing has happened. Lots has happened. The USA is no longer a stable democracy for one. It is an untrustworthy ally. It has walked out and reneged on most of its bigger global commitments, courted enemies and offended friends. Half its population voted for the horror of a human being that is Trump. Half of the populace willed the wreaking of havoc he brought, voted for the values he espoused. And now America will pay the price.

It is a horror story for America. The nation’s demise has played out on live TV like some tin pot, third world country where the symbolic citadel of power has been exposed – just as vulnerable to attack and undermining as any other regime. The edifice of grandeur has collapsed with the Barbarians at the gates baying for blood. What a sight. What a scandal. What a tragedy. All so eloquently symbolised by that Stars and Bars banner triumphant in the seat of the Union. That flag of a discredited political system, of a defeated army, of a slave-owning economy, of every disenfranchised, ignorant, gun-toting, white supremacist dickhead, of hatred, bigotry, violence – waving proudly as the banner of Trumpian Glory. It is as viscerally shocking as if a swastika swung over the Palace of Westminster. It is a reminder that we are all a hair’s breadth away from despotism and the rule of the mob. America came close to dying today. Its fragility exposed, its democratic values hanging by a thread.

If the price of liberty really is eternal vigilance, then the people of the USA need to get back on guard. They have been ambushed and bamboozled and wrong footed by the malignity of a man with whom people who should know better should not have joined in common cause. The Republican Party will be out of power for generations after this betrayal. They have shown themselves to be unfit for office – their complicity with Trump has turned them into the party of the Confederacy. You can hear the backpeddaling now as they try to distance themselves, but people are not so easily fooled: just as Britain’s Prime Minister and Facebook and Twitter so fearlessly attack Trump by name with only two weeks left in office for his incitement to riot when they no longer have to cower prostrate in front of him, the Republicans are denouncing their saviour in his hour of need. Fair friends indeed. It is a blessing that on the day these KKK thugs tried to take power by President-backed coup, the Democrat party took back control of the Senate, clearing the way to deal with this departure from the High Road of Democracy that America has taken. The march back must begin straight away. There can be no forgiveness for Trump’s attempted over turn of the election result. He has encouraged his supporters to overthrow an election he lost; he has broken his oath to uphold the Constitution. He must be impeached. He must be evicted from office. As Confederate in Chief, he must be tried for treason.

Blog written by Tanya Khandurova