Bentleys and other adventures...

I began the era of 'living my life as though I were in a movie' before I was actually making them by going to England to buy Bentleys and enjoy the sights and sounds of swinging London that was dominating the cultural scene at the time. I was able to experience the new pop culture while being tutored in the old school (lessons of all sorts provided by my friend W.J.D. Clarke not the least of which was to always pronounce the last consonants), which provided quite a contrast Lord's being what it was and Carnaby Street, well...

Staying at the Garrick Hotel, I looked out my window one morning to see a half dozen Bobbies trying to break into my dark blue S1 Bentley parked below on Charing Cross Road. I flew down the stairs and managed to convince them I was undeserving of a citation--David Hemmings having set the stage for unlikely Rolls/Bentley drivers--and they let me off with a warning about double yellow lines. In the States, rock & roll types were commonly seen in sports cars but infrequently in Bentleys. One day, I was at a gas station where my stepmother and I were filling our tanks and, after I'd driven off in my Bentley, an incredulous man approached her asking, "Do you know him? What on Earth does he do for a living?" I'm not sure how she answered that question because I'm still struggling with it...

All this came back to me as we enjoyed afternoon tea with French friends in Donegal at the Central Hotel. I've enjoyed afternoon teas at the Brown's in Mayfair, The Shelbourne in Dublin and at Eala Bhan in Sligo but the style of the Central was reminiscent of London during the 'Bentley' years sporting a vintage feel and atmosphere--the only thing lacking were the red double-decker buses and the scent of London diesel in the air. In those days, I was too young to be out on my own but, nevertheless, there I was taking trains to Southampton (that served very nice luncheons with starched white linen table cloth and waiters who understood customer service) to look at a Bentley I just had to have, flooding the bathtub at the London Hilton on Park Lane (an American ritual, I was told) and trying to follow the thread of Cockney rhyming slang in a theatrical presentation, which would have been quite a feat had I managed it--years later, I heard that Sean Connery and his friends would hang out in a Santa Monica pub called The Mucky Duck and it still hadn't dawned on me what that meant (!!).

A lot of pleasant memories were stimulated by our visit to the Central but, just as surely, we were creating new ones with our friends as we managed to make 'afternoon tea' last a full seven hours and, to their credit, that was fine with the staff at the Central Hotel