Naturally, la patronne also manges at Il Vaporetto - see below - my old friend Isabel Ettedgui, who was in the year beneath me at Edinburgh University.
I like to think I had a hand in the Ettedgui marriage. When Isabel first came to London in 1982, I helped her get a job at The World of Interiors magazine, then based in the Fulham Road and handy for a pre-work swim at the King’s Road’s Chelsea Baths. And who should be gliding up and down the pool every morning but Joe (in my imagination, with his trademark cigar clamped at a jaunty angle between his teeth)? It was only a matter of time before they were swimming in the same lane…
Of course, the Baths have changed since then. They’re privatised now, and equipped with the requisite sports centre and yoga classes. But I remember them from even earlier, when they were a chlorine-reeking municipal institution that actually offered baths to those not fortunate enough to have one at home. That was in the mid-Seventies, and one of those unfortunates was me.
I was squatting in the World’s End back then – in a house that’s probably worth a million today - and used to relish handing over 5p for a steaming, subsidised dip in an enormous enamelled tub. In one of the white-painted wooden cubicles, I would peel off my grubby dungarees, sink into the waters and lose myself in meditation until the attendant rapped on the door with a cheery ‘Time’s up!’ Ah, happy days, happy days.
