Day Something or Other in Alcudia, in which news of my cars makes a surprise reprise, my knowledge of cycling and its quirks is expanded drastically (from nothing to a little more than just nothing) and I discover a smaller, pleasant resort just down the calla.

Eix Hotel Alcudia, Port d’Alcudia, Mallorca – Day whatever (five, I think).

I managed to shake of the lure of O’Malley’s yesterday – no football until last night – and saddled up old Trumpet for a trip into the Mallorcan hills. (Strange name for a horse, I know, be he does oddly resemble my neighbour’s father’s second wife, who has a loud voice and an even louder laugh and goes by the name of Horne. Tenuous, I know, but we must make the effort). Trumpet lasted less then half a mile, before he stopped and refused to budge any further, so I had to return to pick up the car Mr Hertz of Palma Airport had so kindly lent me.

It is when I drive a car as young as this one, a Hundai with about 4,000km on the clock, that I fully realise quite what a heap of shit my V reg 1600cc Rover 45 is. Forget for a minute the loose wings, front and back, one the result of driving into the back of another car at no more than 2mph while my attention was fully engaged on getting Radio 4 on my iPhone, the second time reversing at a slightly higher speed into one of the few low walls we have in Cornwall – i.e. had it been higher, I would have bloody seen it – it is, as Alan, of Atlantic Garage who MoTs it and applies other surgery, ‘getting tired’. (Atlantic Garages in Camelford were recommended to me a a little pricey, but good. They are, but do the job immediately and well. There's no hanging round for often two or three weeks as there was with Rob Gibbons up in Davidstow. He's a nice guy, but Alan now gets my vote and custom.

That was the first time I had ever heard that word used to describe a car, but he is spot on. I bought her with 80,000-odd on the clock, and she has since done another 120,000. Not bad going. But I keep her on, patching this and patching that because I am often in a dilemma: about a year ago, I had work her MoTed and little bits and bobs done for about £500 (I should tell you that she only cost £800 when I bought her about eight years), when, bugger me, the undoubtedly rather tired cooling fan went up the swannee while I has stuck in a two-mile jam outside London where the M4 narrows from three lanes to two (which explains the jam).

The subsequent overheating wrecked the head gasket, so what was I to do: kiss goodbye to the £500 I had just spent or spend more to keep the bloody thing on the road? On that and on other similar occasions I choose to cough up and keep her on the road. There is another very good reason for keeping her on the road and I should add a rather important point: the car is not exactly mine. She is in the name of my brother who lives in London, so that he could apply for a parking permit for the borough in which he stays. Useful, especially as until we came to that arrangement,

I had parked the car unofficially in the Daily Mail building car park, where the Mail pays thousands a year for parking spots for its ad reps and others – but not for the likes of me. All went well for many years till I was rumbled by some bloody anally-retentive jobsworth who will have had to have spent hours comparing the reg numbers of all the cars parked there at one particular time against a list of legitimate reg numbers before establishing I was a foreigner. (I have had a run-in with him since – he is one of life’s paid-up pains in the arse.) But rather than break one of my moral principles – ‘don’t push your luck’ – I had to come to some other parking arrangement.

. . .

I took off, heading for a small community called Caimari, intending when I got there to find some quite bar terrace and spend the next few hours there. But when I got to Caimari, I wasn’t particularly inspired – in my experience, due to the summer heat, very few Spanish villages or smaller towns in the country are particularly inspiring and usually pretty dead. You hardly see anyone except the odd man or woman shuffling along. So I carried on up the hill, climbing ever higher, just following my nose. And it was then that I started passing an inordinately large number of cyclists.

It is no exaggeration to say I must have, in the course of my drive passed, individually and in groups of two or three, more than 100 cyclists. At first I thought the Spanish obviously share the French passion for cycling, except in France you rarely see a lone cyclist and they speed along in one great pack. It was when I finally found my café (after turning down the chance to spend €4.50 to park in the back of beyond in a dead-end place call Lluc) that I found out what was going on. Mallorca, it seems is something of a Mecca for cyclists, and visited in the thousands every year by amateurs. The professionals move here in the colder months to practice and I was assured by the chap who told me all this that Bradley Wiggins lived just down the road in Pollenca.

The café at which I stopped was some kind of staging point, and when I arrived there must have been about 40 lycra-clad stalwarts, both women and mean, filling themselves with carbs or whatever it is they do for the return trek. Here is a picture of Donna, from Louth, in Lincolnshire,

and her putative son-in-law Stuart, from Market Rasen. They arrived long after the general horde had left and by the time they got to the café it was gone 3pm and the proprietor had shut for lunch (below).

On my way home, I took at detour and dropped in on Port de Pollenca to have a mooch, and discovered it to be rather pleasant, far smaller the Port d’Alcudia where I am staying and thus not quite as attractive to those who’s holiday heaven is lager and lime and Sky Sports (which might

seem to included me, I must admit, though I’m now too old to qualify as a tearaway). There is another pleasant marina, but here the hotels and villas are right on the beach. I heard folk from all over Europe, but it seemed especially popular with couples with babies, toddlers and young children. Today, I’m off again. Yesterday is was the hills on the western side of the island, today I think I’ll head into the central plain and see what I can’t dig up. Cyclists, probably.

. . .

I was late home and missed the beginning of the match between West Bromwich and Chelsea. Following my winning bets on Crystal Palace against Liverpool, I was going to lay a fiver on West Brom, calculating that the odds would be good, but in the event, by the time I got to the match and was able to lay a bet, they had already scored and were 1-0 up, with the odds shortening to a pitiful 1/2 (which does no one any favours).

So I decided to do nought and was glad I hadn’t backed West Brom because they soon went two up. At that point I got clever, which is always a mistake: ah ha! I thought, Chelsea being the best side in the Premier League this year are bound to bounce back and make it 2-3. I looked at the odds which were impressive: 28/1, so I put a fiver on Chelsea to bounce back. They lost 3-0. Bastards.

Day Three: A day and a half spent in a fake Irish pub watching football. Well, why not?

Eix Hotel Alcudia, Port d’Alcudia, Mallorca – Day three.

No overcast sky today, just bright sunshine from the off, although there is still quite a breeze. As usual I am still in the initials stages of ‘going on holiday’, which is marked by a ongoing drive ‘to do something’. And ‘doing something’ is, as far as I am concerned, the essence of a non-holiday, especially if it is backed up by that drive. But it’s early days yet, just day three.

As it was I did nothing yesterday, just spent many hours in a pub called O’Malleys watching the football on Sky Sports 1, and won myself £67 with three bets on Crystal Palace getting the better of Liverpool. For scousers, their defeat was even more heartbreaking because it was Steven Gerrard’s last-ever home game for Liverpool, and there is little else scousers like than a sentimental ending. To use a current cliché, sentimentality is ‘in their DNA’, which is one reason, quite possibly the only reason, why in the centuries old Liverpool (the city) v Manchester (the city) why I am firmly in the Manchester camp. As far as scousers are concerned, the ending they wanted was Liverpool coming out top, with Gerrard not only scoring, but preferably scoring the winning goal.

Well, he didn’t, so boo sucks to all you scousers. I did try to sunbathe today, but not only have I not yet shaken off that ‘drive to do something’, but I burn easily and have been badly sunburnt in the past, so 15/20 minutes is all I shall allow myself. And if I go home with a body a rather paler shade of whipped cream, tough. So it is back in O’Malleys, after a glass of Rioja and a bit of tapas across the road (O’Malleys with its Sky Sports is almost exclusively patronised by Brits and the odd Scandanavians wisely stick to egg and chips, sausage and chips, bacon, egg and chips and baguettes every kind, of which chip baguette, I’m assured, is by far the best-seller.)

At the moment, while I write, it is half-time between Swansea and Manchester City. After the first few minutes, when the odds became worth it, I put a fiver on Swansea to win, so, of course, Manchester City were 2-0 up within minutes. But all is not lost: Swansea pulled one back on the brink of halftime and the way the are playing could well go on to take the match. If it hadn’t been for two great saves by Hart, it might already be 3-2 to Swansea.

The next match is The One: Manchester City v Arsenal, with United fourth in the table and Arsenal third. No bets on this one, I’ll just lose, but anyway the odds don’t really make it worthwhile. I spent some of yesterday tracking down some remote parts of Mallorca, and if the weather is more overcast than not, I shall take off and do some exploring.

. . .

Later.

The hotel I’m staying in is fine. Not exorbitant luxury, but then I wouldn’t want that, three floors close to the seaside in Port d’Alcudia. I was going to go to Alcudia old town the other day to have a mooch around, but being stupid, I set off just before lunch and the traffic was awful. So in stead I set off for the centre of the island, changed my mind after a few minutes and drove several miles down a rural road to Pollenca. The guests are mainly British and German, with a few French and Swedes (I think, could be Norwegian and Danish) as well as some Spanish. Oddly, the Brits all seem to be about 20 to 30 years older than the others. Why, I could not even start to speculate.

Port d’Alcudia obviously started life as a small port serving Alcudia, but is now pretty much built-up and if you have been to any seaside resort, you’ll know what it looks like – tat shops, supermarkets which seem to sell spirits by the acre (and that’s no much of an exaggeration. When I am out tomorrow, I’ll take a piccy of one of them), bars, bars, cafes, tapas restaurants and a marina with hundreds of yachts, bit and small. It is quite busy, but I’m told not half as bad – by which I mean busy – as other resorts. Nor does there seem to be a ‘get pissed at all costs’ element roaming the streets.

I haven’t been out at night, but I would most certainly hear any yobs from Cardiff, Derby, London, Driffield, Lincoln if there were. But it’s now only May, perhaps they turn up later in the summer. I’ve looked at a map and jotted down the names of small towns and villages in the centre of the island, and shall take off when the mood takes me – rule No 1 for my holidays, plan nothing. The weather started well today and stayed that way, but might be a little cloudier tomorrow and Tuesday, so if it is, and my mood is taking me, that’s when I shall head off.

. . .

The biography of Somerset Maugham is a great read. I wish other writers could write with the same straightforward fluency as Selina Hastings (aka daughter of the 16th Earl of Huntingdon – for all the snobs who are reading this who might like to know). I have previously read her biography of Evelyn Waugh, although I can’t remember much about her book – as opposed to Waugh’s life (I’ve read several biographies of the man), but that, too, was immensely readable.

Actually, in some circles ‘immensely readable’ might be something of a putdown, but I don’t mean it like that at all. I knew very little about Maugham until I heard this biography serialised a few years ago as Radio 4’s Book of the Week, but since then I have read several of his short stories (and have many more to go – in a fit of enthusiasm I bought all four volumes of his collected short stories, a novel, The Magician, and his A Writer’s Notebook).

So far I find him rather likeable. But as I am only 86 pages into a 549-page book, perhaps that will change, although from what I remember of the serialisation, I don’t believe it will. I have written about Maugham before in this blog, but one of the main things I remember from the broadcasts was just what an industrious man he was, how disciplined he was, sitting down to write every day, and how despite his more recent reputation for being a nasty, cruel piece of work, he was probably more sinned against than sinning. But enough of that here. I might write more later.

Day One, drizzle (or almost), but hey, I'm Mr Relaxed and anyway I can still get Sky Sports

Eix Hotel Alcudia, Port d’Alcudia, Mallorca – Day one.

Shame about the weather. Arrived at Palma airport just after midnight and after the standard hire car ‘do you want to take out extra insurance for just €98, which we strongly advise?’, ‘no’, ‘but we really do advise it, sir, because…’, ‘no,’ ‘but sir, if you have any accident of any kind whatsoever…’, ‘I took out extra insurance in England,’ ‘well, that’s as maybe, sir, but there are several things which aren’t…’, ‘no, thanks, really,’ ‘but, sir, under Spanish law, you could well end up in jail for several years even if a fly even shits on the car, but with our extra cover…’, ‘no, I’ll risk, it’, ‘but are you sure, sir, because we do strongly advise it, sir, and figures show, sir, that almost 90pc of renters who don’t take out our extra cover…’, ‘no, now can I have the keys?’, ‘of course, sir, immediately, but can I urge you to think again, because?’, ‘no, thanks, really,’ (cont P92). Shame about the weather.

. . .

But actually, I don’t care, not one bit. I am on holiday, and if you start getting pissed off because the ashtray in your room rattles if you get up quickly and go into the bathroom and is there any chance they might supply you with a different one? you might as well stay at home and watch archive programmes of The One Show. Me, I’m relaxed. So it’s overcast and there is just a hintette of drizzle in the air, and it’s not quite the 26c promised on Accuweather, closer to 18c, but what the hell. The wifi works perfectly in my room if you stand on a chair and hold it your phone up to the corner just above your window, and a lukewarm shower is far, far better for you in the Mediterranean climate so ignore all those Brit whingers who ‘didn’t pay top dollar for a four-star hotel just to spend ten minutes running around in a shower just to get wet! Wait till I tell Tripadvisor!’ Holidays are for relaxing, going with the flow, taking one day at a time, being honest with yourself, keeping in touch with your sponsor – sorry, wrong blog.

. . .

The really good news is that not only is the wifi fine, except in my room where it can be a tad flaky, but then I didn’t fly 1,500 miles to Spain just to sit in my room surfing the net, but the magic browser extension recommended to me which fools your laptop into thinking you are still in Old Blighty means tonight I shall be able to watch the second leg of Brentford v Middlesbrough on Sky Sports. But it gets better, far, far better: on Sunday I can watch live the match between Manchester United and Arsenal. Yes sirree, and here’s hoping United don’t fuck it up as they did a couple of weeks ago against West Brom. (Technical note: you can’t watch Sky Sports or BBC iPlayer on a laptop or tablet if you are abroad. Name of magic extension on application.)

. . .

I asked my friend on reception where to go for a little more peace and quiet and she says the centre of Mallorca is the place for that, the tourists don’t bother. But first it’s off for the mandatory trip to the local hypermarket (©Mark Powell) to find some cheap trainers. My open-toed, Greek athlete

A pair of open-toed, Greek style sandals very much like the pair which might not be quite so good to wear if the weather does take a turn for the worse. In fact, the open-toed Greek athlete style sandals I am wearing (though I took them off to take the picure, naturally, Doh!)
style, brown leather sandals are fine, but I forgot to bring the trainers I bought especially for this trip (at Sports Direct online, £79.99, reduced to £24.99 – yeah, right) and just in case – just in case, I’m really not expecting the worst – it does start drizzling, trainers might be better than sandals (though nothing as uncool as ‘sandals’, mind, these are those far more acceptable Greek athlete style brown leather ones. (Oh, and note to self: as my daughter keeps telling me, socks and sandals are something of a no-no, the kind of thing male librarians with OCD wear). Right, that’s it. I’m off.

. . .

Later.

Well, after my pessimistic description of the weather, admittedly larded rather a lot with hyperbole, in the event it turned out rather nice. Took off in the centre of Mallorca where, I was assured it isn’t quite as touristy as the coast, but just a few miles down the road, decided I was too knackered for a longer drive, and instead headed back to a town called Pollenca (no, not Pollenta, keep up at the back there) which on its outskirts is more or less Anywheresville, Mediterranea, what with half-built blocks which look like a health and safety nightmare until they are eventually covered in plaster and paint, by which time they look half-decent but are still a health and safety nightmare, but the town itself is medieval, so there’s the relief. Populated by British and German tourists, of whom the Krauts are all, oddly, at least 20 years younger than the Brits.

On the main square there are any number of eating places, almost identikit, with terrace, but it was crowed when I arrived and walked through, and even more so when I walked back. Not what I wanted. I finally found a pleasant place with an inside terrace where I and a couple on the other side of the terrace were the only patrons (only because the mob were happy to put up with sitting cheek by jowl with other members of their mob. Do I sound snobbish? Hope so). There I had a smoked ham and goat’s cheese bruschetta with a couple of glasses of lager and, courtesy of my magic browser extension which kids the world on I am still in Old Blighty.

Tonight, now, in fact, again courtesy of the magic extension (which surely by now deserves caps – Magic Extension) it’s Middlesbrough v Brentford playing for the Championship third promotion spot final. I’m with Brentford, who ‘have a mountain to climb’ (©Gary Commentator), but only because Chris and Richard at work are diehard supporters.

Incidentally, I’m glad I blew another £2,000 on hiring a car, because although the hotel and facitilities are fine, the area is another bit of Anywheresville, Mediterranea, with added Thai, Chinese and Indian restaurants. Who on earth comes to Spain, only to stuff themselves on Thai, Chinese and Indian food beats me. Would you go to Bangkok and demand tapas? No, nor would I. Pip, pip.

Just a little more of our British election bollocks, then rather unexpectedly I talk about myself and sex - yes sex, the one topic no one can resist

Well, it’s all over bar the shouting, as they say, by which we mean, of course, the interminable analysis. Yes, I listen to it, and yes it is halfway interesting, but what is the point? Only Labour and, I suppose, the Lib Dems will benefit from analysing just how they managed to fuck things up so comprehensively, but for the rest of us it is back to football and gossip.

Given that one or two folk abroad read this blog, I should add the Britain, the United Kingdom, call it what you will (and mere good manners stop me from adopting some of the choice language used by one Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the EU parish council, uses when he is in his cups) has just suffered another of its general elections, but I should imagine that there is not great interest abroad in our political comings and goings.

For the record while all the pundits – who like to pass themselves off as experts – predicted a very close-run race, with the Conservatives being neck and neck with Labour (i.e. Tweedledum being neck and neck with Tweedledee – or is it the other way around?), and neither would be in a position to command a majority in the House of Commons and would have to strike all kinds of sordid deals with a motley crew of wacky Greens, wacky little Englanders, and, in Labour’s case, rather frightening Scottish nationalists to do so, the outcome was a true surprise. Not only did the Conservatives (the True Patriots/Complete Bastards depending on your political prejudice) manage to get rather more seats than expected, they even managed to get enough seats to gain an overall majority in the Commons.

Well, from me just two cheers, and only because having reached the ripe old age of 97 and sooner or later having to depend on my pension, I trust the blue set of bastard deadbeats to be just a little more competent running the economy than the red set of bastard deadbeats (my brief 14-month flirtation of several years ago as a signed up member of the local Conservative Association notwithstanding).

Once the celebrations are over and the Conservative leader and once again our Prime Minister David Cameron wakes up to the day job, it will not be a bed of roses. For one thing he has promised us good people a referendum, after a period of negotiating with Mr Juncker as to changing the terms of Britain’s membership of the EU, a vote on whether we want to remain a member of that by now rather threadbare organisation. His position, and mine, is that the EU must be reformed and that many arrangement, not least the totally free movement of labour, should be amended as part of reform, but that EU membership – under newer arrangements – is a good thing rather than not.

But that will be a hard sell, and I’m not yet too convinced that David Cameron has the necessary political skills to pull it off. He’s good at some things, winning elections perhaps now being added to his skill set, but not quite as good at others. But more than a fair amount of political nous will be necessary to satisfy both wings of his party, those who want to stay in the EU at all costs, and those who want to leave and bugger the costs. Being contrary, I subscribe to neither view.

The EU is a great idea on paper, but in practice is going wronger and wronger. But here and now are not the place and time for me to outline why I think that is the case. The big sell for Labour was ‘far less austerity’: the Tories, faced with a huge hole in their bank account have taken to the ‘welfare budget’ with gusto, cutting this and chopping that. You might argue, as the Tories, of course, to, that the figures, the falling employment figures to name but one set, bear them out. Their opponents, Labour but now far more seriously the Scottish Nationalists who have – this is no exaggeration – destroyed Labour in Scotland, argue that the cuts the Tories have made in the welfare budget have lead to a great deal of misery among some.

The problem for Labour was, though, that they did not lead to a great deal of misery for a sufficiently large number to persuade them to ditch the Tories and vote them into power. For many, who took stock of their lives and financial position, it came down to the simple question: austerity? What austerity? If you like it came down to the fact that more folk than not were able to proclaim ‘I’m all right, Jack’. I’m well aware how callous that attitude sounds and can be, but the majority were persuaded by the argument that if the books aren’t in order and if we are spending more than we are bringing in, you ain’t going to do very much good very anyone for very long.

So it’s another five years of Heaven On Earth/Tory Misrule. All of which will be of little to no interest to the good folk who flatter me by visiting and reading my blog living in Russia, China, Germany, France, South America and the United States. The U.S. has its own bunfight coming up, anyway, but I should imagine it will in essence be very like the rather tedious hell we her in Old Blighty have been through.

. . .

I am off to Spain in five days though it won’t be what has become my annual pilgrimage to visit Senor Seth Cardew in Alabdos (which will come later in the year). This time I just want a bit of time to be all on my own. And this time I am making it ten days rather than the usual seven, because I find you don’t really begin to chill until five or six days and usually by then you are on your way back home.

I am off to a place called Port d’Alcudia in the north of Mallorca, the north of the island, I’m assured being rather quieter than the south – Palma and Magaluf – and which experiences rather less volatile puking in the streets by adolescent Brits between the ages of 18 and 40. No, I hope, ‘all-day English breakfasts, no pubs run by retired crims showing football on Sky, and, I hope, quiet and peace. OK, I am no longer 40, 50 or 60, and all I want to do for the first few days is fuck all. Nothing. Get up, have a shower, have a light breakfast, them find a sunny corner somewhere and do fuck all.

I am taking with me Selina Hastings’s biography of Somerset Maugham and having now read several of his stories quite apart from reading up on him, I am intrigued by the man. He described himself as something like ‘foremost in the second rank of English writers’, but I don’t know whether that is quite true. As a rule we English tend to a certain insincere modesty, hoping though that others will disagree with our judgment and insist we are not doing ourselves justice. I know I do it.

Maugham’s writing style is straightforward and simple, and as far as I am concerned there is nothing wrong with that. It is far better than many I have read, though I must confess – and I am not being insincerely modest here, simply honest, that I really haven’t read enough, especially not enough of ‘modern’ writers to be in a position to make that call. And also bear in mind that I was, so to speak, brought up in journalism, particularly on the sub-editing side of it, so my judgment might well be limited by that.

I have previously read Selina Hastings’s biography of Evelyn Waugh, another who can write the pants off most, and know that she hits the right balance between being dryly academic – not for my, m’lud, I’m sorry – and superficially sensationalist. Yes, I want the dirt – and I understand there is a great deal of that in Maugham’s life, living as he did as predominantly homosexual man all his life at a time when all homosexual acts would most certainly result in imprisonment if you pissed off enough of your friends to warrant them denouncing you.

I am not homosexual, but I suspect that if I were, I would have been very, very unhappy to life in such an era. I can’t speak for what is it like these days to be gay, but I’m sure many more men and women who prefer to shag their own sex rather than the opposition are rather happier and more content. And amen to that.

. . .

Speaking of sex here might well be the occasion to mention that my sex life is probably well and truly over. Maugham and others might well have been able to carry on shagging well into their seventies and eighties, but age and a heart attack nine years ago, have all rather put paid to that, I’m sorry to say. I last had sex a month or two after my second child was conceived and he will be 16 on May 25. Work it out for yourselves.

I once, more as an exercise than anything else, counted up the number of women I had ‘known’. I most certainly couldn’t remember all their names, but at the time I could remember the occasion or where I was. That was in the mid-1980s and I am grateful that I was able to add to that tall in the years that followed. But at the time – and I shan’t give the number I arrived at – and hearing what number of lovers other men claimed to have had, I was rather surprised that is was higher. I was surprised because I didn’t and don’t’ regard myself as a swordsman of any kind. I suspect that in the bedroom I was rather more vanilla than some, but on the other hand I simply can’t get my head around that some men and women, for example, like to beat each other senseless before they feel their sex instinct has been gratified.

. . .

As I am speaking, rarely for this blog, rather personally, I should add that I have never got off on pure sex, a quick shag, that kind of thing. I really do – well, did – like to make a night of it, and that night would include, apart from the sex, of course, conversation and laughter. I like – make that liked – to make a personal connection, and the idea of going to a brothel or even picking up a prostitute had no appeal to me at all. So I never did it.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t shagged, then realised that the act once concluded I simply wanted to get away, that is, the woman was of very little other interest to me, but what once came as a surprise to me is that many women feel and felt exactly the same. For example, I can recall one woman I slept with a few times who, it quickly became apparent, thought of me as nothing more than a shag where not other was available. And I didn’t much like it, though I couldn’t deny it was true.

Enough of that here, but having finally admitted all that, I might revisit the topic in some future blog. I can’t even think why and how I have reached this point. Perhaps it was some primeval suspicion that all politicians want to do is shag the voter and leave it at that. But, of course, that isn’t true, either. Cynicism is easy, far, far too easy. What is far more difficult and thus far, far more worthwhile is trust and trusting someone.

But I am sitting outside in the garden writing this, it is almost 8.30 on an English May evening, it is getting rather chilly – it is almost 8.30 on an English May evening – and the laptop is running out of battery power, so I shall have to stop. Pip, pip.

If there were ever a good argument for not living too long, it might well be William Somerset Maugham

My reading for the next few months seems to be settled. Amazon’s Buy With 1-Click facility is lethal: a brief second’s enthusiasm for a book or a CD can ensure that within days you have books and CDs coming out of your arse, though I am pleased to say I haven’t yet regretted a single purchase, though I do have quite a few books still to be read.

The most recent arrivals from Amazon are four volumes of Somerset Maugham short stories, the biography of the man by Selina Hastings and, most recently - obviously courtesy of Buy With 1-Click one of his novel’s, The Magician. I had previously bought The Painted Veil after watching the film with Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, but I never finished it.

At the time I thought the writing rather flat and that although Maugham undoubtedly had a gift for dialogue - a greater gift than many writers I’ve so far read - other facets of his novel writing weren’t on par and seemed merely to serve the purpose of getting the story and the reader from one piece of

dialogue to another. Perhaps he was a better short story writer than novelist. So far I’ve read only six or seven of his many stories, and it does seem to me that his style is more suited to short fiction than novels (although The Painted Veil is so far the only one of his novels I’ve attempted).

Earlier today, I read on someone’s else blog his prose style described as ‘simplistic’ (although whether the writer in fact meant merely ‘simple’ or indeed wanted to call it ‘simplistic’ I don’t know, as all too often people do upgrade ‘simple’ to ‘simplistic’, obviously oblivious to the fact that they mean rather different things). His style most certainly straightforward, too straightforward for many these days when we are said to now to have become so accustomed to ‘modern’ writing and ‘experimentation’ that and ordinary, unadorned, straightforward style is regarded as a little second-rate. Perhaps.

But even though the style is in no way astounding, it is effective, and it is, perhaps, because that style is so unassuming and doesn’t draw attention to itself that his observations and depiction of character are so telling. And they do contain some real gems, of which, in my view, this is one. It is from one of his Malay stories, The Back Of Beyond:

Oh, my dear boy, one mustn’t expect gratitude. It’s a thing that no one has a right to. After all, you do good because it gives you pleasure. It’s the purest form of happiness there is. To expect thanks for it is really asking too much. If you get it, well, it’s like a bonus on shares on which you have already received a dividend; it’s grand, but you mustn’t look upon it as your due.’

I haven’t yet started the Selina Hastings biography yet, but I did hear an adaptation of it for Radio 4’s Book Of The Week, and it mentioned a certain irony about Maugham. Oddly, and because he was a big name in the early to middle part of the 20th century but went on to live well into late 80s, he was something of a curio in his latter years, apparently a wizened, unpleasant old man living in the South of France.(I have previously blogged about him here and here.)

He was nicknamed The Lizard, because many thought he looked like one in his dotage, and his vast body of work, though still respected and bought, was regarded as a tad old hat and from an earlier

age by more ‘modern’ writers and the literary parasites who make their living commenting on and deciding these things.

He, who once regarded himself as three-quarters heterosexual and a quarter ‘queer’ - his description - but later revised that and said it was the other way around - had also gained an unenviable reputation as being a louche old lecher in whose company no good-looking young man was safe (though many, admittedly, didn’t want to be safe and were quite happy to trade sexual favours for a place at the great, and rich’ man’s table in the South of France).

All in all he doesn’t sound to pleasant. And yet, according to Hastings, he could be extraordinarily kind and generous. Are both - being a gay old lecher and being kind - mutually exclusive, you might now be asking. Well, of course, not. My point is that being regarded as rather passé in the last two decades of his life - and quite possibly rather gaga - and having been encouraged by his unscrupulous lover, one Alan Searle, to disinherit his daughter and make him, Searle, his sole heir, he did not, as we say, have a very good press at all. But that, it would seem, is a shame in that his undoubted good qualities were and are simply overlooked.

I am here merely repeating what I remember of the radio version of Hastings’ biography (and which I described here in an earlier entry), and I look forward to reading the book proper. But it does seem to me that there was a good deal more to Maugham than we now seem to accept, especially if the above quotation is anything to go by. Because it does strike very much as Maugham dropping the writer’s pose and speaking from his heart.