"You may think the Grand Tour is about politics, and culture and art---and you would be quite right. But it is also about gambling, drinking and sex. Particularly sex"

"You may think the Grand Tour is about politics, and culture, and art---and you would be quite right. But it is also about gambling, drinking, and sex. Particularly sex. Young grand tourists came across it everywhere, lively, in prostitutes, and given some sort of authority by the works of art at which they looked." That is exactly the effect of Makart's Summerhouse in Berlin, or his Four Senses in Vienna, or of the Wiertz Museum and the Delvauxs and the Last Temptation of St Antony and the Tresors de Satan in Brussels. It gives 'authority' to my search for sexual pleasure at night. 

"Unlike Rome, Naples was ruled by a royal court. And where there was a king there too was opera. In innumerable letters, journals, and diaries, opera is mentoned far more often and far more specifically than art or architecture. It was, apart from sex, their most fervent passion. They adored it. Some rode halfway across the country to hear a soprano of new reputation. And in Naples opera was said to be the glory of the country. Young grand tourists fell in love with these people...with their voices rather than their bodies." How else to describe my repeated visits to Berlin, for Die Ferne Klang, Salome, La Traviata? For one night only to see Elena Prokina? Maria Grazia Schiavo 

"To Vesuvius the grand tourists were drawn like bees to honey." 

"When they went back to England, they knew how to gamble, they knew how to drink, they knew how to fuck." 

I gamble with my life. Every time you go out at night looking for someone, you are gambling. Like on a roulette wheel, you put your money down on a number black or red, & spin the wheel. Most times you will lose, but once in a while you will win, and the win makes all the losses worthwhile. All the innumerable small losses are more than made up for by the occasional spectacular win, and that is what you keep doing it for. It is to be learned--this cleaving and this burning, but only by the one who spends out himself again. Oh 

I so much want to resume my Grand Tour: to go back to Brussels now, for the Radisson SAS, for La Monnaie, for the Empire and the Gare du Nord. I so much want to go back to Berlin for the Berlin Plaza, for the Staatsoper, for the Oscar Wilde, for Ciro, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate & Monte Carlo. I so much want to go back to Vienna for the Dorint, the Belvedere, the KHM, the Butterfly House, and the Gurtel. And the videokabins! The videokabins are the glory of Europe. 

THE ONLY WAY I CAN GO TO EUROPE AGAIN IS IF I HAVE GOT PLENTY OF MONEY IN MY WOOLWICH ACCOUNT. ONLY BY NOT GOING TO THE FLYING SCOTSMAN WILL MY BUILDING SOCIETY ACCOUNT START TO RECOVER TO GIVE ME SOME SPENDING MONEY.