Much ado about middle-aged lovers
By Sarah Sands
Published: Financial Times, January 12 2008
Nicolas Sarkozy has overtaken Diana, Princess of Wales in the range of locations that his romance spans. Cairo for breakfast, Petra for lunch, Paris for dinner. A friend of mine was in Cairo at the same time as the French president and complained that the crowds queueing for the pyramids were enormous. I suggested that perhaps they had spotted the rival world heritage monument of Carla Bruni.
Petra looked much emptier in the newspaper photographs of Sarko and Bruni "the Maneater" but, then, it was a little out of season.
If everyone does have a book within them, bursting from within me is A Short Guide to Beating the Crowds. Perhaps it is the sense that England is becoming a raft, sinking under the weight of its population. This may sound alarmist but there is, undoubtedly, a premium on personal space.
The easy answer to privacy is money. There is more space at the front of the aircraft than the back. Even better is a private jet, on which you do not have to see any other passengers. You can buy private views and private access, too. Richard Branson spends his money not on ostentatious luxury but on a Robinson Crusoe island – with fresh water and tennis courts.
But my little book would not restrict such pleasures to the rich. The rest of us just need to be much better at studying the notion of "off-peak". Those with grown-up children already know this. Now that all the family holidays are out of the way, the silver travellers are working out their fabulous itineraries from Barbados to Bhutan.
The other week, I spent a couple of days in Avignon, in the south of France. I had the papal palace to myself. The streets could not have been prettier – or emptier. I vowed that I would only ever visit places of wonder off-season.
There are, of course, limits to beating the crowds. It would be wilful to try to ski in the summer. And there is no way round blockbuster concerts at the 02 Arena. But flexibility and crowd psychology are useful tools.
I found, for instance, that the best day to do the sales was January 1. Most sales began on December 27, when people made their first blind rhino charge for goods, without clearing the shops. On January 1, however, they were hungover and less excited.
The best time to find a parking space in the West End is 6.45pm. Off-peak is another expression for a lull in human affairs.
Similarly, if ever the Foreign Office advises tourists to avoid a country, that is the time to go. Violence and natural disaster are almost always contained, with the poor locals taking the brunt of it. Tourists on the Mombasa beaches looked untroubled.
One of my best holidays was in Egypt, in the very spot chosen by Sarkozy and Bruni and by my irritable queueing friend. I booked as Allied forces began to arrive in the Middle East for the first Gulf War and Foreign Office warnings were being distributed like pizza leaflets.
One or two of my male friends have been sniffy about the production of Much Ado About Nothing at the National Theatre in London. They are prepared to suspend disbelief that we are in a different century in a different country in the middle of a war, but not that the main characters as portrayed by Simon Russell Beale and Zoë Wanamaker, both middle-aged, could be capable of a romance. No matter that Benedick and Beatrice have both been round the block, that both are tough and bantering. Which leads us to the tender heart of the play. When Benedick says, "I do love nothing in the world so well as you: Is not that strange?", one is filled with joy that this hardened old soldier who has seen it all can yet experience innocent wonder. You will never get that depth or poignancy among the young, who fall in love as easily as they breathe.
Older people are allowed affairs in films – if only to find roles for Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep or Jack Nicholson. But seeing it in the flesh is too much for the delicate tastes of my paunchy male friends. I do hope that Much Ado About Nothing prevails. It is in an ageing population's interests to believe that youth is transient but love can last for ever.
One of the convincing arguments for private services is that people appreciate what they have paid for. They think nothing of missing NHS hospital appointments but would never skip a visit to the vet.
On the other hand, money can leave some people out of touch with common humanity. First-class air passengers take exception when the ill or injured are allowed in to their cabin. Last year, women using a municipal swimming pool in Surrey objected loudly to amputee soldiers using the lanes. The women said they had paid their entrance fees and should, therefore, be spared the sight. I am told that men in first-class train carriages are particularly reluctant to give up seats to pregnant women.
An acquaintance who lives near the Marsden Hospital in London's Fulham Road told me a very dispiriting tale. During the recent terrible fire patients were evacuated in their nightgowns on to the road. A pretty young woman, desperately ill and attached to an oxygen machine, stood shivering on the pavement. A passing woman saw her and immediately ushered her into a restaurant opposite. As the woman entered, there was a murmur of disapproval from some of the tables. Customers who had paid for an expensive meal did not take kindly to an encounter with someone so much less fortunate. The woman said loudly: "I have brought this young woman here because the manager treats me so well when I frequently come to dine." The moral authority of shared bills was the necessary battering ram into the diners' hearts.
Along with all other FT readers who donated money to the excellent charity Camfed, I received a charming personally signed letter thanking me and explaining what the money could achieve. In the same post, I received another letter from HM Revenue & Customs with a threatening red stamp on the page saying, "31 January is your final deadline." There were further details of the penalties a late tax return would incur.
Why are taxpayers automatically suspected of being feckless, cheating procrastinators? Wouldn't it be nice to have a personally signed letter thanking us for our generous contributions and explaining where our money is going? It might focus the mind a little. This year I have, in a small way, aided the education of a poor African girl. And I have helped to bail out an incompetent bank.
Sarah Sands is a journalist and broadcaster and former editor of The Sunday Telegraph
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