Petronella Wyatt

New York Thanksgiving is a bigger marathon than Christmas. Maybe because the holiday lasts only four days instead of 12. Thus Americans feel obliged to cram as many lunches and dinners as possible into that shorter period. It’s a form of speed eating. Meals are staggered — at least they seem to be in New York State and on Long Island. Thus, on Thanksgiving day itself (Thursday), I attended one lunch at 1 o’clock. Thinking this was it — you know, é finita — I did ample justice to the turkey. Just as I was getting into the swing of a third slice of pecan pie at 4 o’clock, I was told I was expected at another lunch at 4.30. ‘Oh, ha, ha,’ I said with heavy sarcasm, stuffing in another spoonful. At 4.

I don’t mind rude letters, really I don’t. I don’t mind much, actually, which probably illustrates a fatal weakness in my character. But I do mind having eggs thrown at me. There I was opening my front door the other evening and, wham, splat, an egg was hurled in my direction. With unusual dexterity, I leapt to one side and the egg hit the door before squelching to the ground in a trail of yoke and shards. Then the culprit tailed it. But not before a noise like a gun going off shattered the now still darkness. I bent down and examined the egg. Indignation rose in my breast. It wasn’t even free-range. Let alone organic. It was one of those battery-hen-laid-salmonella-infested eggs people buy for 20p a carton.

I was lunching with some friends the other day (I don’t lunch for every column, incidentally, but these happened to be friends from abroad whom I hadn’t seen for a while). I took them to a restaurant and we began catching up on our news over the gazpacho. ‘How’s so-and-so?’ I asked of a girl my age, who lives in America. This girl, let us call her Lucy and hope she doesn’t recognise that it’s her I’m talking about, is a good friend of mine (in a way we grew up together). Recently, though, we haven’t been in touch so much as she has been moving round the States. Anyway, I was expecting the usual answers to my question — new flat, got married, having a baby, split up with boyfriend, etc.

The other day I was asked by a friend to a lunch party. I told her that, unfortunately, I would have to leave early as I had a very important appointment at three in Westbourne Park Villas. ‘Oooh,’ she said, intrigued. What is it? I duly told her and that was that. The lunch turned out to be very jolly and I began to forget the time. I looked at my watch and it was twenty to three. Crumbs. Everyone was still on coffee. I stood up and said, ‘I’m really sorry but I have an appointment and if I don’t go I’ll be late.’ My hostess then giggled and replied, ‘Tell everyone what your appointment is.’ The guests looked at me with understandable curiosity as I had begun to blush.

The French have always enjoyed delivering snubs to les rosbifs. But now they have gone a step trop far. All red-blooded Englishmen, and loyal Englishwomen, should be inflamed this week by their shocking insult to our greatest rose anglaise, Miss Kate Moss. Miss Moss, the nation’s greatest natural product, has been dumped by Chanel as the face of its Coco Mademoiselle scent. The speculation in the fashion world is that Miss Moss’s motherhood and ‘partying lifestyle’ are partly responsible, but more still claim it is her advanced age of 30. Chanel, apparently, wants to replace her with an actress of whom I have barely heard — Scarlett Johansson, who is 19. But Miss Johansson is under something called exclusive contract to another fashion house, Calvin Klein.

Cape Town Cape Town is as different from Johannesburg as Cheltenham is from London. Actually, this is to insult Cape Town. But whereas Jo’burg, being the country’s business capital with a population of nearly ten and a half million people, is a sprawling, bustling metropolis, Cape Town is a virtual village. The proximity of so many people in Jo’burg, even if some of them might mug you, makes it a more hospitable city. Invitations fly in over the electric barbed- wire fences. In Cape Town, however, you are promised a vague invitation to dinner which is then cancelled as the sender has to mow his grass. Oh well, it is probably me. Strangers can be exceptionally friendly. We met two middle-aged women in the bar of the Hotel Cape Grace on the waterfront.

Johannesburg The South African sun is beating down on my brother’s garden. We have just returned from a shopping mall in Johannesburg. Jo’burg is full of shopping malls, massive American-style walkways. My brother and I have been sitting outside the Seattle Coffee Company watching people as they pass by. South Africans are averse to tanning. Some claim this is latent racism, others argue that in a country where the sun shines nearly every day they simply wish to preserve an element of youthfulness for as long as possible. My brother lives in one of those high-security compounds. It has walls with electric barbed-wire and armed guards. I am supposed to wear a panic button around my neck. It is on a heavy chain and is red and unwieldy.

Virginia I have had for a long time a certain obsession. It began in France when I was about 14 or 15. To be exact, it began in Paris, in the restaurant of the George V hotel. It happened when I first saw the brown topping oscillating towards me, giving off the warm scent of chocolate mingled with vanilla. I am referring, of course, to soufflés. Once you have been bitten by a soufflé, or rather once you have bitten into it, there is simply no going back. For many years, alas, few London restaurants have emulated Paris. Paris has one eaterie simply called Soufflé, where the practised soufflé-eater can indulge in a whole meal of dishes both savoury and sweet. In England, however, there have been few reasonably priced places that provide a decent one.

Virginia On a Sunday afternoon in the winter there is practically nothing that well-off people in the state of Virginia like to do more than go beagling. So it was that I found myself in the grounds of an ante-bellum plantation house last weekend along with a pack of small dogs, assorted senior citizens and some men in bright-green jackets. The men were also attired in jodhpurs, but without the usual boots. Indeed they appeared to be wearing bedroom slippers and so their legs resembled those of capons that had been dropped in a bucket of dye. Dr Johnson once defined pointless activity as being like getting on horseback on a ship. Beagling, I soon found out, is very similar. Essentially, it is a long walk to nothing.

At dinner the other night in Washington I was sitting next to Robert Redford. Actually, this is a slight fib. I was in a restaurant called Nora's – which, incidentally, was the first organic restaurant in the capital – and he was at the next table. He is a man of stature; that is, he has heights attached to his shoes. He was also the polar opposite of butch, rather stringy with bad skin. My friend and I wondered what he was doing in Washington. Obviously not dining at the White House as Mr Redford's political proclivities tend to the left-side. We guessed he might be lending support to Hillary Clinton's campaign for, erm, herself. Will she run for president? The general view is that she will not. She has vowed to serve her full term.

It seems a bit odd, learning to drive in one's thirties. Readers will wonder why I have put it off for so long. The answer is that, as Eliza Doolittle thought, it is jolly nice being driven around in the back of a taxi. The expense of the fares was justified by the cost of car insurance, petrol and Ken Livingstone's road toll. In Italy where I spend my holidays it was oh so much easier driving a motor scooter, particularly as a motor scooter could take you to parts that other vehicles couldn't reach, such as the marina or the old port where there is very little space to park and where, during high season, cars are not allowed. But this summer I began to have second thoughts.

At a dinner-party in Italy, from which country I have now returned, a question came up. This was, are women really bitchier than men, and, if so, why, when their behaviour can be so much more exemplary? For some reason this question was addressed to me. I hadn't recalled, alas, saying a bad word about anyone that evening, but perhaps as the only female journalist present I was rashly considered by the others as some sort of oracle with regard to members of my sex. The women sitting around me were surprisingly quick to agree with my rather obvious assertion that, yes, most intelligent women had sharper tongues than men and that their conversation was often much racier.

Ihave been singing for my supper here in Italy in a big way. For the first course, the pasta, the entrée and the gelati. The manageress of the hotel, Il Pellicano, heard from a well-wisher (one can only hope it was a well-wisher) that I can just about croak out a few Cole Porter standards, once some alcoholic refreshment has been poured down my gullet. As a result the guests appear to be getting thinner – an exodus from the bar and dining area being the minority reaction. Otherwise the hospiti are evidently listening so intently that stupefied admiration has played havoc with their digestive systems. This is not surprising on a non-terpsichorean level. Everyone appears to have lost weight – except me – due to the Sahara-like conditions still prevailing here.

I looked out of the window the other day and noticed that there was something funny looking about the car (a red Honda, if anyone is interested). The car is always parked overnight in the garage driveway, the entrance to which is strongly secured by a bolted green gate. Nonetheless, there was something funny looking about the car. The fact was inescapable. You will probably have guessed that vandals had climbed over the gate and either slashed the tyres or scratched the sides. You have, in which case, guessed wrong. One side of the car had indeed been completely disfigured – but by the addition of a huge yellow carbuncle. In other words, it looked as though it had been clamped. At first I thought I must be imagining things. Perhaps it was a mutant giant canary.

I have a summer cold. My eyes feel as if they have been rammed into the back of my head by pokers, my chest tells me that a boa constrictor has wrapped itself around it, and the rest of my body is convinced that it does not belong to me but to the Michelin man. Why are summer colds more painful and more difficult to shake off than proper winter ones? Perhaps germs thrive in warm weather or maybe it is simply nature mocking one, as others happily chatter outside street-corner cafés, and the victim lurches from room to room in a dressing-gown. Feeling sorry for yourself, on top of being slightly less mobile than normal, generates an orgy of thinking, that is, once the drugs have worn off.

The Italians are an easy-going lot as a rule. Except when it comes to domestic matters. I do not refer to politics, of course, but to matters pertaining to the household. When my parents owned a house outside Pisa, they employed a cook called Amelia and a maid whose name is now a long-distant memory to me. What is not a distant memory, however, is how those two scrawny-looking women with skin like Egyptian papyrus fought each other. The maid would clonk Amelia over the chops with a broomstick and Amelia would retaliate with a spaghetti fork. These rows were usually about Amelia’s husband who drove a bakery van. Amelia was convinced that there was more in the van, which left the house at midnight, than just bread.

Should this column be more frugal or less frugal? As an unelected column should it be allowed to ask someone else to squeeze its toothpaste tube? Should it be required to give an account of its expenditure, its private minicabs and the cost of refurbishing itself? If I have to read another word about Prince Charles, his money and what he does or does not do with it, I think I shall scream. I shall scream even louder if I have to read any more articles by commentators attacking him for having Michael Fawcett in the bathroom or complaining that he is a miser. I don't know what moron at the Palace suggested that the Prince reveal details of his income and how he spends it, but it was always bound to be a Morton's Fork situation. Personally, I don't care if he spends it on coloured condoms.

I went to church last Sunday. This will surprise some of my friends. I am not noted as a regular attender of Church of England services. This is not because I don't believe in God. But our relationship has always been a private one. One in which He or I can make our excuses and leave. Not that I haven't been inside plenty of churches. I have always had a great interest in them architecturally. There is an extraordinary beauty and felicity in driving through a country village during the summer and coming across a simple, 12th- century church. There is no light like that which shines through stained glass; all the best efforts of Hollywood in its golden age could not surpass it. In London I used to attend church at Christmas, usually on Christmas Eve.