In the wider circle of family and friends one person stands out as an obvious solution to all of Donald Trump’s current problems. Our very own Uncle Buck could easily fill the various roles of U.S. Press Secretary, Chief of Staff, and, possibly, Defence Secretary all at the same time.

His erudition has again been brought to my attention in a recent public message containing 80^th birthday wishes as he congratulates Harry on his 41^st anniversary of his 39^th birthday. His source for this witticism is his old friend, Ronald Ragun (known to the rest of us as Reagan.)

This already proves his Trumpian qualities, as Uncle Buck grooves to unconventional spelling and youth. His nationality, height, girth and date of birth are almost identical to Trump’s. He wears jackets that are shiny and too large and his thinning hair is a shambles.

Uncle Buck and Donald have many common attributes. For example, they both talk without listening and dote on much younger/thinner women. Despite his phrase that he is “fighting to stem the new tide of Narcissictic Apathy” Uncle Buck feels that he is a most attractive specimen of virility. His heart would go into fibrillation (which it does regularly) if he were placed next to Ivanka or even Melania.

He is picky about his food, and brings his favourite (beef steaks) with him to be stored in friends’ freezers in case he spontaneously arrives. Some of these slabs have been there for decades.

Like Donald, Uncle Buck’s relationship with the truth is artistic rather than factual. He feels very strongly that he  physically fought in the Vietnam War, and the current moment of history he describes as: “the Indians are no longer at the gates but on the walls and I’m out of Ammo and doing Hand to Hand combat.”  Uncle Buck is not a POW loser, he’s a Serving Soldier.

Uncle Buck is also secretive and protective. He has to be, otherwise others would steal his ideas and designs. As an artist (all mediums) of the Old America West bas-relief School (lots of eagles and feathered war bonnets) all his work and much of his writing is copyrighted and, he believes, legally protected against theft.

Uncle Buck is a shoe-in for an appointment or two on Donald’s ever-changing dream team. He would resonate with the American public as he speaks out for “a New world Renaissance”. He would dazzle and confabulate with ideas about “kicking out the UN”, forcing a “Creative Coalition” as he longs to “steady the drain in Creative Thinking.”

The illogical rhetoric is in place: the grand ideas that make no sense, the virulent verbosity, the conflicting concepts, and the bashing on about predicament of the present all uncannily twin Uncle Buck to Donald Trump.

Roll over, Mooch, you’ve had your week in the sun. The age of Uncle Buck has finally dawned.

The other evening, I happened to see Mrs Trump and Mrs Macron stepping off a Seine tourist boat in Paris. They were immediately recognizable as killing time on an “accompanying persons” tour. While their husbands attended to vitally important world matters, the girls had put on clean clothes and gone off to see the sights before their Eye-Full Tower dinner.

Now, I’ve been doing this for decades, and am most surprised no one has called asking for my professional advice. These two are obviously wet-behind-the-ears rookies.

Just in from Jeju Island off the south coast of South Korea, I must say that I judge myself to have reached the pinnacle of my accompanying person skills. At a major international scientific conference of over 600 people, we were 5½ ladies who took it upon ourselves to improve our minds and explore our new neighbourhood.

None of us spoke Korean (however, Shigeko’s Japanese English was the most acceptable to Korean eyes and ears.) Most of us were retired school-teachers, so enjoyed talking in loud voices and were not particularly attentive to what others had to say: this meant we didn’t get on each other’s nerves. Lulu knew how to read the map and Eva had remembered to bring along some Korean wons. Helen wore a sunhat and Ute kept us focused.

Our first entertainment choice was the thrice-daily Korean acrobatic display in Asia’s largest circus tent. Unfortunately, the acrobats had all run away, and the huge orange globe was abandoned and wind-swept (due to a sudden lack of Chinese tourists brought about by missiles and anti-missiles). We cheerfully made do with the Peace Museum and wax figures of famous peaceful people such as Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and pop stars.

One of us had already seen the Hello Kitty Museum and said it was only interesting for the first five minutes and she wasn’t sure if there were any Hello Kitty earrings. And after the Botanical Gardens and the Goof-Train ride we were too exhausted to visit the Teddy Bear Museum or the Ripley’s Believe-it-or-Not Museum. The organized half-day outing was composed of strenuous ravine and cliff walks in the 40-degree humidity. It almost killed us.

Anyway, Melania and Brigitte would have been welcome to join us on our improvised ladies’ program, but from what I’ve seen, wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

First of all, when travelling, NEVER wear a white dress: it makes you look like a nurse or an ambulance driver, and, of course, the tiniest little brush with the black slime of a cliff-wall, and it’s a gonner. Dark or murky-coloured baggy trousers are the best bet for scrambling around in an unknown environment.

But proper footwear is the most crucial factor. You are not going to make it on the crater paths or the ravine board-walks in six-inch heels. You’re going to keep the bus waiting. Put on your diamond-encrusted sneakers instead, and come along with us next time.

No one writes about business class travel except business people – Richard Quest (CNN) for example, considers it quite a grunt—speed, efficiency, and a secure computer connection being the main ingredients of a good flight.

Well, roll over business people, there is a more mature crowd moving in. Those of us who have paid top bucks for economy tickets all our working lives and have amassed an Everest of flier miles are taking over. We call ourselves the Hot Rolled Towel Generation.

And we deserve it. Bum knees, rotten eyesight, sore backs, occasional disorientation, and the imperative of sleeping lying flat all medically indicate that we are no longer fit for slum class. Who wants a rather rotund, occasionally drooling, rheumy-eyed old geezer sitting beside them? And the worst: he might even start telling stories about how things used to be—better/worse/different.

Shakespeare, as usual, was right. In his “All the world’s a stage” speech, the last stage of human development circles back to the first, and the old man becomes a baby again. Never has this been truer than on a good 10-hour business class flight.

You are cocooned like a papoose in a plastic cubicle. You are back in a roomy womb. (It is the same idea in coach class, but there it is more like being triplets.)  You are nurtured, cleaned, and looked after.

The impeccably groomed young lady comes and kneels in front of you (just like a kindergarten teacher), addresses you by name, and in a clear voice that you can actually hear assures you that she is your personal slave for the duration of the flight. You can eat and drink what you want, when you want. They give you chocolates and champagne and green tea and then ask if you would like more.

When you lower your mechanical seat into sleeping position you can snore, snort, drool, burp and fart to your heart’s content inside the comforting roar of the jets. Under the light-weight duvet, with your reading light adjusted just-so, you could even be forgiven for sucking your thumb.

Your clothes becomes crinkled, spotty and messy if you have chosen not to change into the complimentary pyjamas. Turbulence can result in a surprising little vomit in the handy vomit bag. You are not scolded, but comforted and protected. Macho is out. Maternal is in.

The washrooms are close-by, smell like roses, and usually empty. The toilet paper is constantly folded into peak ends for easy roll-offs. There is a button to call a cabin crew member in case of washroom emergencies.

Upon landing, you re-enter the cold cruel world. Your time of no-control, no-responsibility is over. You are heartlessly thrown back into the earthly morass of immigration line-ups, taxi swindles, and stultifying heat. You wonder where your next meal is coming from.

Again, you become a player in the Shakespeare monologue as you turn into the (tourist) soldier “full of strange oaths … sudden and quick in quarrel.”

The flight is over.

I have just visited the Gandhi Museum in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, and have made the startling discovery that Mahatma (The Great Soul) Gandhi and Donald (Make America Great Again!) Trump are political soul-mates. I hope you are reading this, Mr President, as I doubt that many people will have noticed your inner Gandhi.

It came to me as I was standing in front of a black and white photo of Gandhi wearing a loincloth seated at a spinning wheel. A master of media imagery, his message was clear – Indians must spin and weave their own cloth in the traditional manner. Imported British cloth must be boycotted.

Foreigners Out! Foreign Products Out! Make India Great!

Imagine if, some 85 years later, there had been a video clip (was there?) of candidate Trump in his red cap and a pair of worker’s overalls on a Ford assembly line in Michigan helping a robot mount an engine in the latest model of a (red) Ford Mustang. Every guy in the whole of the US would have voted for him (did they?).

Gandhi, vastly popular, devoted the last 30 years of his life to achieving Indian Independence. His thoughts, his dreams, his aspirations, his daily life became a purposefully open book. He slept little, rose at 3:30 a.m. and then filled the rest of the night with letter writing. This was followed by days of interviews, meetings, hunger strikes, long marches, spells in jail, and speeches. He was always doing something to maintain and increase attention and contact.

The shining example of mediatic brilliance was Gandhi’s wearing his loin-cloth to visit England in 1931. This skinny, ugly, old guy with a towel wrapped around his privates was much-criticised for his lack of disrespect to the king. Bald and toothless, he must have been cold as he cheerfully commented: “The king wears enough clothes for both of us.”

Sound familiar? A popular reality TV show? The 3 a.m. Tweets? The odd hair? The shambolic suits and clown ties? The unnaturally white 70-year old teeth? Criticising the establishment? The pre-fuss about the possibility of the Ugly American meeting Her Majesty?

Just as Gandhi was a product of India, so Donald is a product of America. Gandhi was a cliché of poverty. Trump is a cliché of wealth. They are the two extremities of our pretend/wished-for/normal middle-class, middle-of-the-road world; and as such they both disturb.

Gandhi was outrageous taking on the British Empire; just as Trump is outrageous taking on the world. Gandhi’s dream that the untouchable/Dalit caste be abolished did not happen. Similarly, Trump’s promise that every American worker will have job in America making products for Americans will not be filled.

However, Gandhi’s wish for the independence of India did come about, and in the initial act—the 1947 partition—it is estimated that up to 2,000,000 people died in the religious genocide that followed and 14,000,000 people were displaced.

So, Mr President, living alone in your great white elephant ashram in Washington, be very careful what you wish for.

Having arisen from my New Year’s sick bed and adjusted my drug combination accordingly, I now find myself in deepest darkest Tamil Nadu.

It is a relief to have missed the hysteria surrounding the new American president’s inauguration. Searching hard, I did find a small article on page 16 of The Hindu which reported that Mr Trump has replaced the red curtains of the Oval Office with some drapes of his favourite colour – gold. There was even a picture to prove it. VERY Great Gatsby—and we all know what happened to him.

However, here we do not rely on international news for second-hand frissons and thrills. It’s happening all around.

The days do have their gracious moments – strolling the windy sea-front, admiring the sparkling saris and the police in their red képis. And there are also exciting protests against the attempted banning of the temple sport of bull “taming”. These feature bands of shouting/chanting young men throwing beer and coke bottles up in the air to smash back down on the sidewalks. They look and sound fierce and are filmed by a moving wagon full of TV cameramen. Together they are making tonight’s news.

Strikes are called and all shops shut under the threat of official strike enforcers with badges and big sticks knocking out their windows. Broken glass seems to be a leitmotif.

A group of ladies – dressed in red and pink and orange – march along the seafront under the slogan “We Will Go Out” claiming their right to non-harassment in public places.

The nights are long sleepless affairs. The music that drifts along the Bay of Bengal, pushed by the north wind loses very few of its decibels and reaches our room in pristine tone and volume. In the very early morning Allah calls and the church bells ring.

The street dogs that sleep placidly in the sun all day awake when the sun goes down and howl the night away. Likewise the cars, tuk-tuks, and motorbikes honk ceaselessly as they ply the streets communicating to each other like a flock of Canada geese on speed.

The little baffed-out Tata car that is driving us to the great temples of the south has a Ganesh on the dashboard, lots of dents and scrapes on all doors, and a driver with the three good-luck ash lines of Shiva on his forehead. We wear our frayed seat-belts on as we bash our way through the villages skirting trucks, buses, dogs, cows, goats, and humans. The driver sticks, cannily, to the centre of the road. There are no air-bags.

The birds are flocking. The music is rising. Evening is falling. Time now to check out the toilet paper situation in the thunder-box; turn on the geyser for a spot of hot water; find some fresh innerwear; and pour myself a chhota-peg.

I hate massages, so one good thing about living in the Swiss countryside is that this is not considered a social or mental shortcoming. However, having recently been in a town where every second person on the street offers you a massage (the other half offers transport) I eventually got snared.

Now this wasn’t your normally nasty sandy beach massage, or your cheap and cheerful downtown flea-pit massage. It took place in a respectable spa on the top of a windy ridge in central Bali.

The oils and lotions were smartly-packaged and you could choose your flavour. The delicate jasmine body oil was a far cry from an extremely unpleasant experience some years back involving a tar-like product from a bucket that was an indelible mixture of shoe polish and petroleum jelly.

The sarong on the massage table was clean, and the subtly-muscled staff was dressed in matching business-like polo shirts. Before beginning, you had to fill out an official form on a clip-board indicating the strength of massage desired, and pointing out any areas that needed special attention. You naturally slip into your “fooling the doctor” mode and give nothing away.

We chose the Intuitive Heart Massage during which you are encouraged to drift off into a slumber-like state of peaceful bliss for 90 minutes, and to awake refreshed and reinvigorated. (My sister has since pointed out that they only give heart massages to dead people such as Princess Diana in the Paris tunnel.)

It started badly. As the nice young lady was wiping invisible specks of dust off the soles of my feet, my tickle-reflex kicked in. Fortunately, no lasting damage was done, but the next 89 minutes were doomed.

She intuitively started with my bad knee finding all the most painful acupuncture points. The Swedish-style hammering did not help. Her intuition held, and she moved right along to my bad back and turned her arms into rolling pins.

A good massage certainly takes your mind off things outside your skin. You become a ball of anticipation worrying about what painful thing is going to happen next. You mull over the possibility of actually dying on the massage table. You try to think Zen thoughts as the thunder crashes and the rain pours down – such as why you didn’t bring an umbrella, or why you didn’t wear your lucky purple underpants, or which is worse—here or at the dentist’s? You try to breathe calmly and quietly without gasping.

Leaving the massage table in a state of euphoria and mental confusion, you have to teach yourself to walk again.

As you sip your post-massage organic ginger tea, you notice that the people around you seem bouncy and liberated. They have probably slept through their dreamy massages and remembered their umbrellas. Perhaps they have even had the post-massage Singing Bowl Healing Vibration 30-minute treatment which sooths and heals.

They probably even love massages.

As a tourist you are perpetually dependent on the competence and the kindness of strangers—the drivers, the restaurant and hotel staff, your fellow passengers—all become part of a public puddle of general cooperation.

Usually, if your attitude is correct, and your luck holds, you swim about in a pond of congenial getting-by. Tips play a big part in this. In New York my sister taught me the fine art of pre-tipping the house-keeping staff, for example.  And writing bad reviews on an appropriate website also used to be an incentive for a reasonable standard of goods and service.

When the kindness puddle gets too polluted, though, it’s important to get to dry land as soon as possible. Everyone knows you can drown in an inch of muddy water.

Take the recent case of the Wild Boar Goulash Soup.

In one of Budapest’s best restaurants this local speciality featured as a course between the warm goose liver and the meat and dumplings. It was not even your ordinary goulash soup, but a special variety made with wild boar. (Query: is there such a thing as domestic boar?)

Anyway, it consisted of tinned cubed vegetables and meat. I know this as a true fact, as I grew up eating tinned soup and loved it. Like a gourmet who can separate a single pearl of Beluga Caviar from a crystal bowl full of lesser eggs, I can distinguish a rubbery cube of tinned beef from any carefully-boiled home-made product. And tinned vegetables have their own texture that simply cannot be reproduced no matter how long you boil a carrot.

By my reckoning, a spoonful of canned meat and veg had been ladled into each bowl, a spoonful of paprika had been added, and it was all topped up with hot water. I wolfed down as much as I could of the solid bits before stopping to reflect, and then left the rest. My more fastidious dining-companion left all of his.

The waiter refused to take our almost-full bowls away, and a rather large lady came to enquire what our problem was. She was not exactly confrontational, but the musician playing the zither definitely stepped on the damper pedal so he could follow the interesting conversation that was about to take place.

It was not to our taste perhaps? We were not used to the paprika? Ah, but, exceptionally, her husband-the-chef had not made the delicious soup today and a sous-chef had made it. She would check with the kitchen ….

She never returned to our table. Much like the Lobster Newburg in Aswan (no lobster and the shells smelled of bleach) or the fennel soup in Istanbul (fennel had been replaced by chopped grass) yet another tourist restaurant had cut the final corner.

When this happens, it is our duty to gird up our tourist loins and send the simple, yet brave, message to the kitchen to tell the chef that it’s not good.

The puddle of cooperation (and the soup) might be better tomorrow.

PS  We left a big tip for the zither man.

Well, I’ve just got back from a few days of wellbeing (the Long Life formula for guaranteed benessere) at the Italian spa of Castrocaro Terme. Completely shattered.

The problem wasn’t really with the mud mask treatment. I had thought that after it was over the girl would have come back to get me and show me the way out. Fortunately, the doors are only locked very late at night.

And it also wasn’t the dagger glares that we received as we slid gracefully into the spa’s hot mineral pool. No one had handed us the obligatory shower cap, and, anyway, you would never dream of putting your head anywhere near the green sulphur water with its icing of brown froth.

And it certainly wasn’t the reserved breakfast tables in the most convenient and beautiful spots. We were fine down the corridor behind the pillars.

No. It was the clock tower bell.

During the daytime, I swear, it was silent as a tomb. However, there were a few hints around town that things were not quite right. For example, there were ashtrays on all flat surfaces.

There was also a suspiciously well-attended thé-dancant in the hotel gardens. Couples danced their afternoons away to Italian versions of gentle nostalgic songs.

And the fruit and vegetable lady shut her shop firmly for the day at 9:30 a.m.

What happens, is that starting at about 11 in the evening, the clock bell begins to chime. It chimes the hour, and then it also informs you of every 15 minutes that pass.

For example, at 12:45 there are a grand total of 15 loud resonating gongs and you have exactly 14 ½ minutes to firmly doze off before the single chime at 1 a.m.

The stress is enormous. If you can get enough of the Long Life rosso under your belt, then you might have a chance of some refreshing slumber. However, if you accidentally wake up any time in the night you’ve had it. Willing myself into deep sleep within 15 minutes was beyond me.

You think of the pleasant things that have filled your day: the cobbler who has repaired your unstuck sandal for 1 euro; the delicious meal of fresh greens and porcini mushrooms up in the hills; your excellent purchase of a big blue glass Murano bowl. And then you start to think about smoking (for your nerves) dancing (to tire yourself out) or a double espresso (to sharpen up).

Leaning out the window at first light (6:15 a.m.) you see the fruit and vegetable lady open her doors, and her customers immediately start to flock in. The bar in the corner of the square opens with instantaneous clientele. All these people are not up early, they have been up all night.

Purchases made, coffee drunk, and dolce eaten, the town inhabitants will sleep the day away, until it’s time for the dance in the park and the night starts again.

It used to be that a summer in the French Alps in your old farmhouse was a time of mythic tranquillity: very Pagnol with shades of Manon des Sources. Oh yes. In the old days there were really fights about water—but that’s another story.

Only the seriously un-cool used to come here to this dead-end valley on vacation: the pudgy summer-camp kids from the suburbs of Paris, the national workers spending their two-week holiday in their government-built apartments, the tall Dutchmen swinging a gallon jug of rosé from one hand and rouge from the other strolling contentedly back to their campsites.

These days, though, the place is popping and the excitement of the valley is squeezing up the mountain sides. Down at the bottom to provide evening entertainment there are many exciting choices. The Zavatta Circus is in town for three days and this year features Tarzan (the real one).  You can buy tickets at the bakery but it is, sadly, already sold out.

There is also the Hell Drivers Show—Le Festival des Cascadeurs—with their Road Monsters – truck cabins mounted on wheels as high as the ceiling. The poster pictures show them squishing normal cars flat. As this is all taking place down in the ski-lift parking lot, I suppose the most prudent of spectators walk to the show.

During the day the mountains have become a huge open-air fitness centre. Paths are filled with members of the millennium-generation—now approaching their 40’s—that we made the mistake of raising on orange juice rather than water.

They indulge in power-walking, trailing, racing, rock-climbing, parapenting, horse riding, canyoning, and mountain biking. They carry maps in special water-proof cases, wield high-technology walking sticks, sport athletic outfits that breathe, and wear expensive shoes filled with air. They are full of beans and power-drinks and vitamins and carry water on their backs like camels. In deep-sea diver-mode they actually suck on plastic tubes while asking directions. This is extremely disconcerting as one’s mind goes back to dusty hookahs in old Istanbul cafés.

They are determined to bend the mountains to their individual will. They pass their holidays in a whirl of self-centred physical exertion and emerge at the end stronger, better, fitter–more of themselves than they were before.

They have become holiday consumers and Brave New World-like have lost the idea of the holiday as a time of looking outwards and considering a completely different world. A holiday, at its best, makes you forget yourself along with your quotidian concerns and activities. It can make huge chunks of time and organization simply disappear. It is refreshing rather than exhausting.

I did, though, see one young man, walking up alone in rather ordinary clothes with only his smart phone in his hand. He kept stopping and looking at things strangely. I realized that he might have been wandering around inside Pokémon Go. If so, he had at least found a parallel world.