So we eventually got to Luxor airport only to find that there was no air-conditioned waiting lounge – people just sit round in the heat and get sun stroke – and to be informed that there was no plane for us. Apparently, and I quote, ‘The engine fell off your plane in Cairo, so we are without a plane.’ Well, call me an old stick-in-the-mud if you like, but I didn’t find this terribly reassuring. And I didn’t feel a lot better when they told me that there was a plane going up to Cairo that wasn’t scheduled to be taking passengers but we could hitch a lift on it if we wanted. Louise had just come back from the toilets for the third time and said she just needed to get out of there, so we headed for the plane. From the outside it looked like a normal plane, but on the inside it was a different story. There was food and litter everywhere and the air hostesses looked at us in horror as we boarded, desperately trying to tidy themselves up, applying make-up and buttoning up blouses.
‘I don’t like this, this doesn’t feel right at all,’ I said and, as if to put a further jinx to the whole flight, I added, ‘That’s exactly what people say on the telly – there’s always two people who decided not to get on Death Flight 110 because they had a strange premonition about imminent disaster.’
Weeze shook her head and said, ‘It’s this plane or the old woman who won’t give me enough toilet paper back in the hell hole of a toilet. I’m taking the plane, you do what you like.’
So off we set and everything was going fine for a good twenty minutes. I was looking down for the first time at the beauty of the desert. Images of Peter O’Toole on the back of a camel floated through my mind and then we suddenly dropped five hundred feet out of the air. One second the engines and the wings and all the little flashing lights and knobs had been keeping us airborne, the next minute we were heading for the sand. My stomach, which I’d left some five hundred feet above, took a good few seconds to catch up with me. I turned to Weeze and managed to say, ‘Fuck me, that was a bit scary, what …’ when we hit another series of turbulence pockets, the plane dropped and bounced all over the place and I started to freak out. Singing and laughing as loudly as I could, I tried to remember all the names of the Egyptian gods we’d heard about on our travels. ‘Horus, erm … Horus, ermm, Amon, Ra, ermm, look any of you, help me and I’ll believe, I promise, I’ll believe, and I’ll make others believe, please oh gods, please help …’
Weeze, on the other hand, always became calm in the face of adversity and with Zen-like peace she whispered to me, ‘Tim, we’re all frightened, now keep it down a bit.’
At this point the captain came on the tannoy. This was what I wanted, news from the man in charge that things were OK. What I’d hoped for was a very upper-class BA pilot saying, ‘I’m terribly sorry, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the teensiest bit choppy up here, but we’ll soon pass through it and Jeeves will bring round the Earl Grey tea.’ But this was not BA and what we got was an Egyptian pilot who sounded more scared than I did: ‘It very bad, we try to get out of it.’
At this point the plane went into a severe dive. I could see the dunes getting closer and closer and closer and at what I assumed must be somewhere near the last minute he pulled out of the dive, levelled off and we proceeded on our way more or less without incident. I was so petrified by the experience that when we landed I found myself not only unable to clap and cheer along with the rest of the passengers, but unable to walk. I stood up and found my legs had turned to jelly. Much to Weeze’s amusement, I weaved my way down the aisle like a drunk man.
Ever since then, flying has been a somewhat nerve-racking experience. Except in first class on the way to New York. That was a dream and Weeze was stunning all weekend. She was radiant, gorgeous and – most importantly – alive, really alive, glowing, absorbing every experience. We did the whole Big Apple thing, we went up the Empire State Building at night, wandered round Times Square in the rain, went to the Metropolitan Opera House – it was all so New York.
Weeze suffered from jet lag or was just getting more tired, but overall she was on top form. In the mornings she had trouble getting up and there seemed to be no need to push on too early. I, however, got up each morning at five and didn’t really know what to do with myself. I would spend half an hour or so watching her sleep. She looked really peaceful, as if she’d left the cancer behind her in England. But the longer I watched her, the longer I felt I was pushing my luck. After a while I would inevitably be hit by a melancholy, as I realized that one day I’d be alone and that she wouldn’t be with me, in my bed, sleeping peacefully. At this point I’d put on some shorts and my trainers and head off for a jog round Central Park in the early morning light. It was chilly and frosty and surprisingly empty. It felt like it was my park. And as parks go, that’s a pretty good one to have. The cold air was sharp and chilled my lungs as I ran. I loved running round to Strawberry Fields, then out of the park over to Lennon’s apartment where he was shot, then down to the Met Opera House, down further to Times Square and then back to the hotel. Normally by the time I’d finished my run it was still only 6.30 so I’d find a café and chill out there, just watching New York life for an hour or so.
When I’d had enough of gawping, I’d make my way back to the hotel and wake Weeze with a kiss and a coffee. We shopped like there was no tomorrow. Or rather, I did, while Weeze bought the odd little thing that would come wrapped in a beautiful paper bag. I bought eight pairs of Levi’s, thirty t-shirts, baseball hats, shoes – you name it, I bought it. I don’t know why, I usually hate shopping, but New York just had everything I wanted by the bucketload.
A lovely friend of ours, Sally, had more or less organized the whole trip for us. She was so sweet. All our dinner appointments were at the grooviest restaurants and everywhere we went we got VIP treatment – it made us both feel very special. But there are some times when being treated like a VIP is a good thing and other times when it can all backfire. One of the things we were most excited about was the fact that Sally had got us tickets to see Woody Allen play jazz at this little club. So we got all dressed up and headed down to the venue. When we got there we hadn’t realized the lengths Sally had gone to. We thought we had to wait with everyone else, pay for our tickets and then squeak in at the back. So we spent half an hour out in the cold with the other people queuing up on the off-chance of picking up a ticket. Getting cold and losing patience, Weeze told me to go and check up front to see if Sally had left us tickets to pick up. So I managed to push my way through to the maître d’ and apologetically asked if there were tickets for Tim and Louise. This slightly camp guy gushed, ‘You’re here, at last you’re here. Fabulous, where’s Louise? Come on, quickly bring her in. Quickly, the show’s about to start.’
So we were ushered past all the waiting fans like we were film stars and taken into the room. It was tiny and could have seated no more than a hundred people, all of whom were already seated and drinking at their tables. Much to our disbelief we were led to the front table. It was no more than two feet away from the small dais where the band would be playing. Champagne and glasses were rushed to the table by numerous waiters and everyone in the whole place looked at us as if wondering who we were. Then in came Woody and the band. And there he was, sitting right in front of us, literally within an arm’s length, one of the century’s greatest filmmakers.
In fact, he was so close it was almost embarrassing – wherever you looked, there he was, exactly like in his movies, nervy and twitchy, fiddling with his clarinet’s reeds, looking nervous and uncomfortable, ill at ease with the world. Then he was playing and his clarinet sang. His furrowed brow relaxed and he entered his own world, oblivious to the packed room in front of him. Oblivious to the hundreds of flashes from the cameras that everyone seemed to have smuggled into the club. So many, in fact, that I kept checking Weeze, worried that they’d have some kind of strobe effect and send her into a fit.
I’m no jazz expert, as my good friend and ex-jazz editor for Time Out Linton will tell you (I thought Duke Ellington was eighth in line to the throne), but he sounded wonderful – quite raw, quite unschooled, but the music was coming from somewhere deep inside him and as such was transfixing. Each player in the band took their turn to show off their own musical virtuosity