Mercury and Me by Jim Hutton & Tim Wapshott

Author:Jim Hutton & Tim Wapshott [Hutton, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0747519226
Published: 2015-03-03T08:00:00+00:00

7

DUCKINGHAM PALACE

In the early summer of 1988 Freddie and I flew off to Ibiza for a very quiet ten-day holiday. Phoebe came too, as did Peter Straker and Graham Hamilton, a stand-in driver since Terry was on leave. Before we left the country Freddie was raising merry hell over the time Volvo were taking to deliver my birthday present. He demanded that the car be there by the time we returned.

Unlike our previous two visits to Ibiza, this trip was blissfully quiet and for the first time we didn’t stay at Pike’s. Freddie was considerably weaker and wanted to avoid any serious socialising; also, he felt the hotel lacked the privacy he needed now more than ever. To avoid the press, we borrowed Roger Taylor’s villa and spent most days flaked out around the pool sunbathing, hidden from prying eyes.

Some days we ventured out. We did some shopping in Ibiza, for clothes and pottery and ceramics for The Mews. And we ate in good restaurants every night. The only thing missing was the comfort the cats brought to him. The first thing Freddie did when we got home to Garden Lodge was to herd up the cats who were waiting for us in the hallway.

Also waiting was the news that my Volvo was ready for collection. Terry went with me to collect it from the garage. Freddie had given him specific instructions to take me right away to drive on a motorway for the first time. By the time I got home I was a nervous wreck.

The first journey Freddie made in the Volvo was when I went to collect him from the studio one night. He was a nervous passenger, constantly upset by my terrible habit of creeping up on the car in front, then stopping very close behind. When I did that, Freddie’s knee-jerk reaction was to throw his arm out and grip the dashboard. He was in no danger, but I made sure he always wore his seat-belt all the same. And I insisted that there should never be any physical contact between us when I was driving in case he interrupted my concentration.

On that cautious first journey home with Freddie I crept back to Garden Lodge no faster than 25mph all the way – and the ‘Melina and Jim’ sun-visor sprang to mind. But I took a different route home from the one Terry usually used and, thanks mostly to empty roads, it appeared to be faster.

‘Why doesn’t Terry take me down this route?’ Freddie asked. ‘It’s much quicker.’

‘Because Terry is used to his route and I’m used to mine,’ I said. And the sun-visor sprang to mind a second time.

That year I tried my hand again at breeding some koi spawn. The previous year the fry had all died, but this year about twenty tiny fish survived. Freddie took a great interest in how they were faring and took to one in particular, which looked rather sorry for itself as it had a badly deformed mouth.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.