Two Mile High Club (Cusco, Peru)

Said to my beautiful blonde then-girlfriend (later first wife) as we hiked up the cobble-stoned steps of Cusco, Peru: "So, you want to join the Two Mile High Club...?" Although I succumbed to a terrible case of altitude sickness--during which I lay bedridden in an ancient Spanish colonial room in a secluded hillside garden villa watching giant spiders crawl about on the ceiling--my directive was eventually granted an affirmative response.

Cocktail Specifications

Waugh on Truth

Note: large decanter of Gin on office floor

'You should tell the truth as often as you can, but in such a way as people don't believe you or think that you're being funny.'

- Auberon Waugh (1939-2001)

Chicks Dig Jerks

Chicks dig jerks. Apparently, they also dig philandering alcoholic nazi surf bums.

Wax Fax

(sans beard)

The Southern California summer proceeds apace.

In recent weeks the salt water and sun have taken quite a toll on my Saxon-blond moustache and beard. Which are, I can report to you, still attracting increasing public attention.

Still, issues remain. In light of which, can any readers of this column recommend a suitable brand of facial hair wax to keep the chap-wool under tight control?

Many thanks in advance.

Sent from my iPhone

Funny (Black Lips)

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica (Matthew Parker)

'Goldeneye: the story of Ian Fleming in Jamaica and the creation of British national icon, James Bond.

From 1946 until the end of his life, Ian Fleming lived for two months of every year at Goldeneye - the house he built on a point of high land overlooking a small white sand beach on Jamaica's north coast. All the James Bond novels and stories were written here.

Fleming adored the Jamaica he had discovered, at the time an imperial backwater that seemed unchanged from the glory days of the empire. Amid its stunning natural beauty, the austerity and decline of post-war Britain could be forgotten. For Fleming, Jamaica offered the perfect mixture of British old-fashioned conservatism and imperial values, alongside the dangerous and sensual: the same curious combination that made his novels so appealing, and successful. The spirit of the island - its exotic beauty, its unpredictability, its melancholy, its love of exaggeration and gothic melodrama - infuses his writing.

Fleming threw himself into the island's hedonistic Jet Set party scene: Hollywood giants, and the cream of British aristocracy, the theatre, literary society and the secret services spent their time here drinking and bed-hopping. But while the whites partied, Jamaican blacks were rising up to demand respect and self-government. And as the imperial hero James Bond - projecting British power across the world - became ever more anachronistic and fantastical, so his popularity soared.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Ian's family, his Jamaican lover Blanche Blackwell and many other islanders, Goldeneye is a beautifully written, revealing and original exploration of a crucially important part of Ian Fleming's life and work.'

The Girl from Slovenia

There's a cute twentysomething girl who works at my local cocktail lounge. Brunette, 5'3", bright eyes, wide smile, tight curvy arse. She's very flirtatious. But she has the oddest accent. It sounds as if she has some kind of speech impediment. And so for the last several months I assumed she was slightly retarded. But just recently, when she inquired if I were German and we connected, did I discover that she isn't retarded, but foreign.

Mensur