The World According to Clarkson (7 page)

After an hour on the phone it looked like we’d have to give up and eat in a pub which, as I’m sure you know, is slightly less appealing than eating the pub itself. The only thing I can say about ‘pub grub’ is that it tastes like I cooked it. And I am the only person in the world who can make cauliflower taste like the back of a fridge freezer.

Eventually, we found a rather nice smoker-friendly fish restaurant called Dexters in Deddington, which is a local place for local people, all of whom were not celebrating their wedding anniversaries, or indeed anything. That’s why they were at home and we were the only people in there.

So, one has to presume, it will eventually close or ban
smoking and then that’ll be it. We’ll have to start eating the millstone grit outcrops.

I’m not kidding. I live in the Cotswolds, one of the most affluent, sought-after areas in the whole country – a six-bedroom manor house round here costs more than a whole book of stamps – and yet there is only one worthwhile restaurant within a half-hour’s drive. One. And it’s empty.

However, before everyone in London splits in half with mirth I should point out that the three worst meals I’ve ever eaten were all at well-known restaurants in Notting Hill. Last week.

In one we were told by a waiter, who looked like his house had just burnt down, that the chef had messed up the food and that most of it was off. We never saw the wine we ordered, my crab starter was covered in wallpaper paste and after two hours the main course still hadn’t turned up at all.

And I’m not alone. Everyone I’ve talked to recently is saying that their favourite restaurant is starting to deliver what tastes like hamster droppings to table 9 at 10 p.m., when it should have gone to table 14 at 7 p.m.

But this was inevitable because while the countryside has no restaurants at all, London has far too many. Take West End Lane in Hampstead. It used to be a shopping street but all they can offer now, apart from a haircut and a bijou flat for the price of Gloucestershire, is a plate of spaghetti that should have gone to table 8 last week.

A year ago the situation was so bad that restaurateurs were reduced to trawling Paris for waiting staff. Some reports suggested that as many as 10,000 surly, off-hand Pierres had migrated to London. And that was then.

Now, with more and more new restaurants opening every day, I’m surprised Marco Pierre White isn’t to be found at the traffic lights offering jobs to passing motorists. Hell, I’m surprised he isn’t offering them to the Albanian window washers.

You see, it’s all very well employing the best chef in the world, but what’s the point if you can’t find someone to take it from the kitchen to the dining room? Well, someone with a sense of direction and a basic grasp of English anyway.

I was disappointed the other day when my six-yearold daughter said she wanted to be a waitress when she grew up. The way things are going she could get a job now. Unfortunately though, there aren’t any openings round here. Indeed, the only place where you can get a decent steak is called a pyre.

Sunday 20 May 2001

Having seen
Emmanuelle
in Bangkok, I thought I knew what a massage would be like. Well it isn’t.

The first disappointment comes when you find that there will only be one masseuse, and the second when you discover that his name is Bill.

Then things really start to go pear-shaped. After asking you to undress and lie face-down on the bed, he’ll tell you that you’re tense. And you’ll want to reply that this is not surprising because you were not expecting someone who learnt all about body pressure points while serving as a Spetsnaz assassin. But all you’ll manage is a muffled ‘Aaaaaaaargh’.

Be assured, a proper massage gives you some idea of what it would be like to fall down a mountain while locked in a fridge freezer. It would be more relaxing to have your fingernails torn out while being force-fed with used engine oil.

I have discovered that the best way of soothing away the stresses and strains of the working week is to mow the lawn. Sitting there, with the sun on your back, concentrating on nothing but going in a straight line and not running over the flowers, you can actually feel your muscles turning to jelly and your teeth unclenching.

And then, when you’ve finished, you can stand back
with your hands on your hips and admire the sheer geometric perfection of that verdant test card, that subtle blend of absolute straightness in a curved and wild world. You have taken on nature and, with nothing more than a Honda Lawnmaster, brought civilisation and order to the unruly forces of nature. Well done. You are now a lawn bore.

You will start shouting at your children if they ride their bicycles on your immaculate conception. You will tut when you find discarded cigarette butts. You will stand for hours in the garden centre eying up trowels, and you will talk about Roundup with your friends in the pub.

I am now such a lawn bore that when I discovered a thistle that had dared to show its hideous, ugly face in my perfect turf I shot it.

And while I like having a fighter plane in the garden – it’s better than a water feature because the children can’t drown in it – I was inconsolable when I saw the damage that had been done while it was being towed into position. There were three grooves, each a foot deep, stretching all the way from the broken electric gates to my dead yew hedge.

This, you see, is my problem. I want to be a gardener. I want a potting shed and some secateurs. I want
Homes & Gardens
magazine to profile my work, but all I can do is cut grass. Everything else turns to disaster.

Two years ago the field across the road was planted with saplings and I bought precisely the same stuff for a
patch of land next to my paddock. Today, his trees are 12–14 feet tall. Mine have been eaten by hares.

I filled the grooves in the lawn with ten tons of the finest topsoil money can buy and then, to speed the repair along, mixed some grass seed with the most expensive organic compost in the world and sprinkled it all on top. And the result? Three long and unsightly strips of mushrooms.

I was assured that my yew trees would grow at the rate of a foot every twelve months but they did nothing of the sort. For the first two years they just sat there and then they decided to die. So they did.

So I was intrigued last week by the fierce debate that appeared to have been raging at the Chelsea Flower Show.

There are those who like gardens to be traditional, a Technicolor riot of flora and fauna harmonised to create a little piece of harmonised chaos. These people are called gardeners.

Then you have the modernists who think it is much better to throw away the plants and replace them with stark concrete walls and gravel. These people are called Darren and you see them every week on
Ground Force
.

The Darren philosophy is tempting. First of all, you get a quick fix, a well-planned and attractive garden in a couple of hours. And second, the whole thing can be maintained by taking the Hoover to it once a year.

But these modern gardens do feel a bit like rooms without roofs, and you will lose things in the gaps of
your decking. I know one man who lost his wife down there.

So what about the gardening option? Well, all things considered, it doesn’t sound quite so good. I mean, what’s the point of planting an oak tree when the best that can happen is that it stops being a twig just in time for the birth of your great-great-great-grandson. And the worst is that it commits suicide.

Furthermore, if you go down the gardening route, you will have to spend your entire retirement in crap clothes with your head between your ankles. You will then get a bad back and that will require terrifying and undignified weekly appointments with Bill at the massage parlour.

So what’s the answer then? Well, I’ve just bought an acre or so and I’m going to employ the third way. I’m going to do absolutely nothing, and next year I shall call it ‘the New Labour wilderness’, and transport it to Chelsea where it will win a gold medal.

Sunday 27 May 2001

What would life be like if parties had never been invented? Tents would still be used solely as places for Boy Scouts to sleep, there would be no such thing as a plate clip and you would never have heard an amateur speech.

There would be no black tie, no parking in paddocks, no chance of running into former spouses and you would never have drunk a warm Martini, garnished with ash, at four in the morning because the rest of the booze had run out.

We’re not even programmed to enjoy parties that much. Think. When you were little you liked your teddy and you liked your mum, but other children were the enemy. You were forced to go, and sat on your bottom waiting to be humiliated by someone saying: ‘Oh dear. Who’s had a little accident then?’

You always have little accidents at parties. No sooner are you out of nappies than you’re straight into the flowerbed where the hostess’s mother finds you face down at dawn. And then when you’re married, you get in huge trouble for dancing with the wrong girl in the wrong way for too long.

I mention all this because three weeks ago I caught the perfect illness. There was no pain, just an overwhelming
need to lie in bed all day eating comfort food and watching
Battle of the Bulge.

I was enjoying myself very much, but halfway through the afternoon my wife tired of popping upstairs with trays of quails’ eggs and mushroom soup and, with that hands-on-hips way that wives have when their husbands are not very ill, announced that I should get up and organise a party for her fortieth birthday. ‘You have 21 days.’

My first chance to have a little accident came with the invitations. Every morning we get invites but we have no idea who they are from or where the party is being held because the typeface is a meaningless collection of squirls, and all the instructions at the bottom are in French. RSVP.

I thought the solution would be simple. Write in block capitals and use English. But oh no. Nowadays, it’s important to make your invitation stand out on the mantelpiece, so it must be written on an ingot or a CD-Rom or on a man’s naked bottom.

The printer was quite taken aback when I asked for card. ‘Card?’ he said. ‘Gosh, that really is unusual.’ And then he gave me an estimate: ‘For 150 invites, sir, that will be £6.2 million. Or you could go down to Prontaprint and have exactly the same thing for 12p.’ Right.

The next problem is deciding on a dress code. What you’re supposed to do these days is dream up a snappy phrase such as ‘Dress to thrill’ or ‘Urban gothic’, but since none of our friends would have the first clue what any of this meant, I put ‘No corduroy’.

With just two weeks to go I called a party organiser to help out with the event itself. ‘All we want,’ I explained, ‘is a bit of canvas to keep the wind off everyone’s vol-au-vents.’

Well, it doesn’t work out like that because he sits you down and says that you really ought to have some kind of flooring. It’s only £170. So you say fine. And then he says that electricity might be a good idea, too. It’s only £170. Everything is only £170, so you end up ordering the lot.

When the estimate came, I really was ill. ‘What would you like?’ asked my wife, seeing that this time I wasn’t faking. ‘Some fish fingers? A nourishing bowl of chicken soup?
Where Eagles Dare?
’ No. What I want is for everyone we’ve invited to come over all dead.

It was not to be. With a week to go, only six had had the decency to say no and the next day, two changed their minds.

Except, of course, we hadn’t heard a whisper from anyone who has ever appeared on television. It is a known fact that once you’ve been on the electric fish-tank, even if it’s just for a moment in a Dixons shop window, you lose the ability to reply to party invitations.

So you’ve got the caterers asking how many they should cook for and you’re having to say they’d better get Jesus in the kitchen because it could be five or it could be five thousand.

Then the guests start telephoning asking what they should wear instead of corduroy and where they can stay. Here’s a tip. When you’re looking for a hotel in
Chipping Norton, you’re more likely to find out what’s good and what’s not by calling someone in Glasgow. People who live in Chipping Norton usually have no need of local hotels. And I don’t care what you wear. And yes, your ex-husband will be here. And no, I’m not going to tow you out of the paddock if it turns into a quagmire.

You’ll probably have a miserable time but look at it this way. It’ll be much more miserable for me, and even more miserable for the poor old dear who lives next door. As the band wheeled in their speaker stacks, I called her to explain that there might be a bit of noise on Saturday night. ‘Oh I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘What is it? A dinner dance?’

No, not really, it’s more a chance for all my wife’s wildly disparate groups of friends to come and not get on with each other.

Sunday 10 June 2001

Many years ago, when I was working as a local newspaper reporter, the editor sent me to cover the inquest of a miner who’d been squashed by an underground train.

Hours into the interminable proceedings a solicitor acting for the National Coal Board told the court that the deceased ‘could’ have stood in an alcove as the train passed. And I wrote this down in my crummy shorthand.

But unfortunately, when I came to write the story, I failed to transcribe the meaningless hieroglyphics properly. So what actually appeared in the paper was that the man ‘should’ have stood in an alcove as the train passed.

Well, there was hell to pay. Damages were handed over. A prominent apology was run. The lawyer in question shouted at me. The family of the dead man shouted at me. The editor shouted at me. The proprietor shouted at me. I was given a formal written warning about my slapdash attitude. And here I am, twenty years later, with my own column in the
Sunday Times
.

We hear similar stories from the City all the time. Some trader, dazzled by the stripes on his shirt, presses the wrong button on his keyboard and the stock market loses 10 per cent of its value. He gets a roasting and
later in the year spends his seven-figure bonus on a six-bedroom house in Oxfordshire.