Brooklyn Bridge, New York

Source: Bigstock

I can’t help writing about the social slaughter of displaced storefronts and fleeing bohemians because my memories of these places are so vivid. Although they were hardly vivid after the birthday party at young Bartle Bull’s flat last week. I call him young Bartle because there’s an older Bartle, the novelist, but young Bartle has a beautiful wife and 5-year-old daughter, and has been described by me in the past as an adventurer—which he is, but in the best sense of the word. He writes books about Africa and the Middle East and has just returned from Mosul, a place that could do with a bit of law and order, but is still safer than any large city in England as I write. Bartle serves as an adviser on the Metropolitan Museum’s board for endangered monuments and places, and reports from the front how these art-loving ISIS scumbags are trying to do away with past history once and for all.

There was something about that evening, a soft Manhattan night, with a few of his friends, all very interesting chaps, that made me so nostalgic I got thoroughly sloshed on gin. I looked down on Fifth Avenue and the park and it was sepia-toned, with Fred and Ginger dancing ever-so-gracefully in the distance. No one spoke into mobile gadgets, and there was a wonderful breeze coming up from the east. For one brief hour—more like five—I was back in old New York, young and ready to try my luck. Then I woke up with the worst hangover since the last one.

This is my last week in the Bagel and I am giving it my all. A dinner at Terry Kramer’s for Broadway biggies, then one with Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera and Lee Radziwill for Nicky Haslam, completed the socializing. Now it’s London and here I come.