Esquire — June 2018 113
his instigation that the Lego bust of Churchill
was placed behind the reception desk; a litle
reminder, perhaps, that even the most exalt-
edly aristocratic among us can still be perfectly
realistically depicted in... plastic.
But I spent most of that day in a sort of
pinkish haze anyway. The previous evening,
surfeited with fine dining, we’d repaired to the
Shrewsbury Suite, choosing the route which
took us outdoors, so I could feel the cool night
air in my revivifying air-sacs. The last thing
I’d noticed before we went in again, was the
ornate, 100t-high clock tower that looms over
the stable block of the house. With its half
open staircase and four, golden clock faces,
it’s an arresting sight, but more striking still
is the statue that surmounts it: a reproduc-
tion, I later learned, of the one that tops off
the July Column in the Place de la Bastille,
Paris. This winged male figure seems a lit-
tle too revolutionary for such a context, espe-
cially given it’s an allegory: the chain in its lethand representing the struck-of feters of slav-
ery, the torch in its right the very flame of lib-
ery itself.
Still, coating the thing in two layers of
23-carat gold leaf helps to bling Le Genié de
la Liberté up a litle and besides, since this lat-
est iteration of the sculpture (which keeps get-
ting hit by reactionary lightning) has only
been in situ at Cliveden since 2012, I decided
it was entirely aimed at... moi. After all, had
I not struck of the feters of my nicotine addic-
tion, and had my large collection of disposable
butane lighters not been repurposed into a ver-
itable beacon celebrating my freedom?
And so I had slept deep that night. At least
until the small hours which was when, in the
recent past, I’d have awakened to have a ciga-
rete. Why? Because as anyone with a scintilla
of medical knowledge can tell you: smoking
at night doesn’t count. But in the plumped-up
darkness of the Shrewsbury, as tightly
wrapped up in the four-poster bed as a hand-
rolled Havana cigar, I came to conscious-
ness in the midst of a full-blown panic atack:
gasping for air, and spluttering to my long-
sufering companion: “I’m dead! I’m dead!” It
was the unaccustomed darkness of the suite,
I think — only the very rich can bask in such
Sygian interiors nowadays, the rest of us have
to sufer light pollution infiltrating our cheap
drapes — this, and yes, I had died that night.
By which I mean that the smoking, chew-
ing, snorting, vaping I died that night, the
I who believed nicotine had anything to ofer
him beyond blood, sweat and the misery of an
early grave; the I that had posed with a ciga-
rete in his lips, imagining himself some sort of
suburban fucking Steve McQueen, ever since
he was tall enough to put his 26p on the coun-
ter and ask for 20 Players No 6. Yes! I arose the
following morning the strong and perfect man
that Alex Bilmes so envies.
And remained that man for the rest of my
stay at Cliveden, during which we had a t’ai chi
session with a soon to be 80-year-old woman
called Judy who looked 20 years younger than
that, while moving with the coiled strength and
suppleness usually attributed to James Bond.
Unlike 007, though, I suspect Judy had never so
much as seen a handmade Balkan Mixture ciga-
rete, let alone smoked pushing-60 a day.
It’s customary when you leave rehab to
undergo a simple ceremony during which your
peers wish you well, and ofer their continuing
strength and support, while you, welling up
with tears, tell them how much you love them,
and that you’re a changed man. Well, consider
this article to have been that ceremony, and
remember, dear, dear readers, don’t be suck-
ered in by any talk of spartan fitness regimes,
or harsh psychological cleansing, you heard it
here first: luxury is indeed the new rehab.
Will Self stayed at Cliveden House hotel, Berkshire,
England SL6; clivedenhouse.co.ukhe French Dining Room at Cliveden House, ypical of the opulence in which
the author immersed himself to complete his self-managed rehab programmeTrue, Cliveden doesn’t have any special-
ist staff on hand to deal with the horrors of
withdrawal, but it does have Mr Chaloner,
who, on the second aternoon of our stay, took
us for a ramble through the extraordinary
house, stopping here and there to remark on
some ancient peccadillo of its previous own-
ers, whether it be Lady Astor’s son’s penchant
for members of his own sex, or the back pas-
sages of the great house itself which vermic-
ulate its thick walls, such that a staf member
can pop up more or less anywhere, then disap-
pear just as readily. he aim was, of course, to
keep downstairs downstairs, even when it was
— so to speak — upstairs. Now, if you’d have
told me I’d be undertaking a tour of a National
Trust propery less than 48 hours ater quit-
ting the gaspers, I’d have asked you for a fag,
so shocked would I have been. If you’d have
told me I’d actually be enjoying it, I’d have lit
it. True, Chaloner was an exemplary guide,
wity and just a litle irreverent: I suspect it’s at