There’s a story I forgot to tell, back in the early fifties soon after I came back to London from Paris. The war had been over for almost ten years but London was still a city-in-waiting. I didn’t know it at the time of course, but looking back I can see how much quieter it was then, particularly at the end of the day. And even at the busiest times you could still count the cars as they passed by on Bayswater Road.
I had a pretty girl friend called Monica and all I can remember about her was that, like every other girl, she wanted to be a model and was practicing on stiletto heels. I had just scraped a bit of money together and I asked her to come and have dinner with me in Soho.
We found a nice-looking Chinese restaurant on Gerrard Street, somewhere near the Windmill Theatre, famous for it’s naughty entertainment and for staying open all through the war. That was before Paul Raymond opened his Revue Bar, where you could goggle at naked women as long as they remained absolutely still, because then they were Art. I would never have guessed then what an influence he was to have on my life.
The restaurant we chose must have been a converted shop because the dining area was immediately behind a large plate glass window. There were tables and chairs on the left of the room and booths on the right with red leatherette bench seats.
We took one of the booths and were happily into our chop suey when two men with oddly vacant faces came through the door and began smashing things. They started with the furniture nearest the window, methodically taking everything apart. The diners, of course, cowered over by the wall and the demolition men paid them no attention. Having thrown a chair through the glass window and reduced the first row of tables to wreckage, they advanced up the aisle. Meanwhile the Chinese from the kitchen appeared from behind us in a crouching stance holding iron spits like lances, and whatever other ironware they could muster.
I decided this would be a good time to leave but Monica had clambered up onto the bench seat in what seems to be the atavistic response to all threats, from mice to murderers. Unfortunately her stilettos had sunk through the fake leather and it took a minute to disentangle them, but just before the advancing horde engaged with the Chinese wall I managed to rescue her and we slipped past unnoticed, regrettably unable to pay the bill.
It was a lovely warm summer night, and aroused by our adventure we decided to walk back to Kensington. Somewhere in Belgravia we passed through a large square of wealthy stucco residences, all slumbering peacefully except for one where expensive sports cars were lined up outside, and a party was proceeding noisily on the first floor balcony. We were able to make out a crowd of crumbs from the upper crust all decked out in evening dress, and one of them, no doubt thinking it would be fun to pick up a couple of plebs, leaned over and yelled, “I say, won’t you join us?” And that being our night, we did. I don’t remember being particularly impressed by anyone present, but it was an opportunity to drink some very good alcohol.
I forgot to mention that I was wearing that cashmere jacket I had bought from Walter Coleman back in Paris for 4,000 francs. One of the Hooray-Henry’s sat down beside me, gazed at me with a meaningful eye, and said, “I say, I do think it rather remarkable that you are probably wearing the most expensive piece of clothing in the room.”
He confirmed what I was already thinking. It’s all about money.
The only thing to mar that beautiful ride from Bavaria to Aspiran when I brought my BMW down to France in 2017 was an erratic but persistent fault in the fuel system. Every now and then the fuel stopped running, and I had to find a spot by the roadside to stop and fiddle. I quickly found out that if I wrenched the tube away from the tap and plugged it in again everything was OK for another fifty or sixty kilometres.
This annoyed me but not as much as it annoyed my travelling companion. She felt herself exposed on the roadside, and she formed the opinion that if I filled up at every available opportunity it would happen less.
I didn’t believe her theory but had no explanation myself. It was not suction from the tank. I rode with the gas cap open for a while but it still happened.
There was no blockage at the tap. When I took off the tube, the gas ran freely. The filter likewise showed no sign of being blocked.
My reluctance to keep stopping for a refill created bad feeling which eventually built up into a full-scale shitstorm, and became what I still think of as the worst thing that has happened to me in my life, although I have no scars to show for it.
Always remember to carry string (along with your umbrella, of course)
The other day, three years too late, a friend of mine called Simon de Burton came by, took one look, and said “Your filter is too close to the engine block. I bet it’s because the petrol is vapourising and causing an airlock.”
That sounds like the perfect and most promising explanation. I have yet to prove it. I shall do so in the coming days, but some of the joy of discovery has already dissipated. Another biking friend, Helmut Heusler, came to visit, and he has had decades of experience as a design engineer for the big German car makers.
He says, “Throw the filter away. It’s quite unnecessary.”
I’ll try to prove Simon’s theory before I do though.
I have never had to deal with the French Gendarmes before. I see them around of course, always very smart and business-like as befits a national police force. Usually I see them in their vehicles, and they are very impressive on their BMW motorcycles. They wear a blue uniform and in the heat of summer here in the south they cast off their jackets and wear broad braces to support their military style trousers, but this does not imply a relaxed or slovenly attitude. I have always thought of them as a force to reckon with. On the one occasion that I was stopped, at random on a roundabout, the Gendarme was very pleasant and polite and joked a bit as he went through the routine of checking my license but you knew it was the velvet glove over the iron fist.
Recently they have been building a new headquarters for the Gendarmerie alongside a road I travel quite frequently and it is finished now, a very fine looking purpose-built establishment flourishing aerials and such, surrounded by a panoply of new houses that I assume houses the agents. All very convincing and I must say it bolstered my impression of a powerful, effective force of rather superior people, well above the municipal police one sees around.
The new Gendarmerie National headquarters of Clermont l’Heraoult
After my recent unfortunate loss through cyber crime I went to the bank to explain how I had been tricked into sending a number of large payments to the account of a criminal in Switzerland and my counselor said that I must report it to the Gendarmes immediately. I have to say I was little nervous and excited at the prospect of my first interaction. I imagined the kind of interrogation they might put me through, thinking that their investigation might stretch across Europe and back to the States where I suffered the final coup de grace. Interpol and the FBI might be involved. I prepared the paperwork as best I could before going there last Friday.
I parked alongside a barricade with stern warnings about this being a military establishment and threatening dreadful consequences to trespassers. It was quite hard to find a way in. I had to guess where the office was. A heavy iron fence surrounded it but eventually I found a locked gate. This being corona virus time there was also a sign to say that it was obligatory for everyone in this establishment to wear a mask. In a place like this that would be an iron rule so I fumbled for my mask, because I don’t normally wear one outside. As I was hooking it over my ears I heard the gate unlock itself. I went through into a sort of holding area locked in on both sides, and then the door of this imposing establishment unlocked itself.
I found myself inside a rather small, dowdy-looking office much like the old offices of yore and my respect for the whole enterprise began to diminish. A young blonde woman in uniform sat behind a pane of glass and looked at me, rather indifferently, intimating that I should say something. Unusually for France she didn’t even say “Bonjour.” She was not wearing a mask. In fact none of the people coming in and out at the back of the office wore masks. I felt like a dick.
“Do I have to wear this?” I asked. She gave me a Gallic shrug. I half removed it
“I have come to report a crime,” I said.
“Oh yes,”
“I have been defrauded out of a large amount of money.”
The telephone rang. She reached for it, gratefully I fancied, and talked animatedly for several minutes. Then she turned to me again.
“You were saying, Monsieur?”
“Somebody imitated a friend’s email address and tricked me into sending four large payments to a bank account in Switzerland.”
She seemed not to understand me. I did my best to explain. After a bit of this she said she would pass me on to a colleague, an older woman with dark hair and glasses who had come in and was now standing in front of me, mask-less, of course.
I went through it again.
“What is this to do with us?” she asked. “It’s none of our business. You should go to Switzerland, Monsieur.”
They were happy to see me leave.
I see the Gendarmes differently now.
Maybe they should go back to where they came from
