Like A Circle In A Spiral

Oh dear, blogging seems to have gone out of the window for a while. There's just too much to do, and now that I'm a fully-paid-up member of the working classes, so little time in which to do it. I have an ever-growing 'to-do' list which fails dismally in its efforts to reduce itself. I've taken to adding things like "Empty the bins" or "Get drunk" or even "Go to bed", just so that there's at least something I can cross off in the mornings and so that I get at least some sense of achievement. But it's not very fulfilling doing that – it's just like my dear mother always used to tell me when I was at school: "If you cheat in your exams son, you're only cheating yourself." So I never did.

This reminds me of a time when my Great-Aunt Dolores (she who was run down by a lorry and yet survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone) made me spend a summer with her in Paris. She'd been in a disastrous run at the Comédie-Française playing the lead role in Racine's Phaedre. It was nothing short of vanity acting – she'd paid for the production herself so that she could take the title role – and believe me, she was no Sarah Bernhardt. Her performance was laughable really, and the only reason that nobody ever told her that was because she bribed everyone to say that she was good. She'd have been better off at Les Folies Bergères where at least people could have laughed at her without guilt.

However, as a result of her efforts, we were invited everywhere that summer. Dinners and soirées in all the best places in town. We met everyone from presidents to pop stars, from divas to whores, and it was an endless round of champagne, caviar and les huîtres. One day, when there was no matinée at La Comédie, I suggested to my great aunt that we should take a trip out to the Bois de Boulogne and enjoy some sunshine. "Don't be ridiculous, boy," she said as she slapped me round the head with her bone-handled parapluie, "we don't even have time to fart today, let alone piss around in some fancy park. Now get your skates on, we're expected for tea at La Contessa di Cenapesce's hotel in an hour. I'm trying to set you up with her daughter – ugly as fuck, but loaded. Though knowing you, you wimp, you'd probably prefer her footman. I'll never get you married off at this rate."

I was exhausted by the whole thing, I can tell you. I've never been much of a party-goer anyway, and this interminable circus of salons and suppers at Maxim's was taking its toll. To be honest, it was harder work than when Dolores and I walked the Pilgrim's Way to Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain. Even though she insisted that I crawl the last half a mile on my hands and knees while she beat me with a donkey stick ("Good for your soul, boy"), I still preferred that simple trip to having to dress up and be polite to the glitterati of Paris.

However, I had the last laugh that year. Oh yes - La Contessa di Cenapesce's daughter turned out to be her son, in drag! Was Great-Aunt Dolores's face red then!