THE ONLY WAY IS UP

It has been considerable time since I have had as much “free” time as has been the case this summer, and so, barring an irritating three days when I had to return to Lisbon because one of my students who had failed an examination wished for an official second opinion (which was the same as the first opinion, except this time it was personal), I have more or less been on the road since the middle of July, as I still am, only now a couple of days from being snug back home in elegant and leafy Campo de Ourique in Lisbon.

The sojourn, partly to look at paintings and partly to look at places I haven’t seen for a while, has had its ups and downs, an expression I find less than keen in its pierce, but which perfectly suits one that begins in the charm of London and ends in the spittle-, urine- and vomit-ridden streets of Oporto, surely the least civilized city in Europe.

Our sally forth to London, in mid-July, was primarily to look at some works that need attention at first hand. Fragonard’s The Swing can only be seen in the Wallace Collection, in Manchester Square. The whole collection, the Boucher stuff and that painting by Rembrandt of his little boy, and some trinkets of jewellery – all of this makes one wonder whether the French really regret having had a revolution which ended up in them seeing anything remotely charming being smuggled out of the country under wraps and sold to wide boys in East London for considerably less than their real value.

I was deeply distressed to see that the house in which I lived in Mayfair as a student had been pulled down shortly before this recent visit, but even more distressed to note that Sargent and the Sea, at the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, one of the exhibitions that had been a reason for this trip, was a damp squib designed to separate American tourists from their money.

In Oxford, however, hardly anything had been demolished since my student days, although a sea-change had taken place in the support service industries of the town. As far as I remember, undergraduates (when allowed out in the evening without paying a fine) would easily be able to find a food establishment providing proper fayre of the English kind; the 2010 version of Oxford eating out is rather one of Thais than ties. Almost every corner of the bi-cyclable part of town was in sight of a Thai restaurant. The Bodleian and the Radcliffe Camera, were, of course, as resistant and sandy-crumbly as ever. But I thought the Minister at Evensong in St. Mary the Virgin somewhat blunt in barking at me for wishing to hear the choir in the pews in the nave rather than the choral benches. No wonder Cambridge and University College London are outstripping them.

And so on to Chester. The town itself needs no introduction, as any package visitor to Britain will have been shuffled towards the city in order to appreciate its picture-postcard streets full of oak and plaster mock-Tudor delights, lovingly restored in the age of plate glass by Victorians who had become enamoured with the XVII century. The city is a blaze of all that is good about keeping history alive – and Chester does this by remaining astride of progress while doffing to the glory of the established. It is rare, even in London or Lincoln, to be able to shop or dine in cutting-edge premises fronted by elegant façades. And some of the pubs have remained structurally unchanged for almost a thousand years.

Progress has come to Liverpool, my home town, in varied manners. The Adelphi Hotel, once the jewel in the crown of hotels not only in Britain, but renowned as the most elegant hotel in the world in the days when the London to Philadelphia railway journey, stopping en route at Liverpool with a ferry trip to New York City, was the only decent way to cross the Atlantic, and when all first class passengers would stay in the hotel overnight or at least until the tide changed, has seen better days.

In the seventies and eighties it had become a sad joke; a decrepit monument to the end of sail and, to some extent, the end of Liverpool. Its bars were full of Irish beggars (as was the rest of Liverpool) scrounging just enough for a pint. Nowadays, as I can vouch, things are on the up and up. The wretches who robbed us in the hotel (what does one expect in Liverpool?) were sufficiently hi-tech to use a crowbar to separate the lock from my hotel bedroom door and then go in to ransack the room. I feel sorry for them in the fact that any serious valuables had been kept about my person and thus were not available for stealing. I get the impression that if “progress” continues at this rate in Liverpool’s major growth industry someone may actually take a crowbar to me next time I have to visit.

The flight from Liverpool to Oporto was the last leg of this trip. I had on another occasion made it perfectly clear to my good lady wife that I would never, under any circumstances, visit the city of Oporto again, but, as so often happens, she managed to contrive some reason to be able to persuade me to break my vow. The reason was to visit the Soares dos Reis Museum and enjoy the paintings, leave our luggage in the gentle care of the museum and jolly about the city. I cannot actually remember whether I really believed that such a fantasy might have become reality, but needless to say none of this happened.

Good manners prevent me from going into great detail about how disgusting the downtown area of the city of Oporto is, and therefore my advice is to go there and see for oneself. It is a feast for the five senses. See the collapsing national heritage buildings, smell the rancid food on sale in the badly lit and overheated shops and cafés, touch the spittle-coated railings running along the steps in the steep streets, hear the grating accent of the locals coming out of mouths where teeth used to be and taste the bread-and-dripping they call cuisine. The sixth sense, of course, would advise anyone to avoid the place completely. My picture shows the city from a nearby hill. The Estação Atlântica bus station, the most horrible place I have ever been forced to enter in my life, is in the foreground. The good thing about visiting Oporto, of course, is that afterwards the only way is up, but I imagine that this holiday break might have been better organized in reverse.