Last week saw the 50^th anniversary of the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes International Powerboat Race.  Created in 1961 by the legendary fighter pilot, playboy and Daily Express newspaper proprietor Sir Max Aitken, the race is the most prestigious of its type in the world.  And this year, befitting its status as the 50^th anniversary it certainly lived up to expectations with some of the roughest seas ever raced and some of the most glamorous parties.

There are probably two people who should be the most thanked for making the 2010 C-T-C such a success and they are Tim Powell, Chairman of the BPRC, (British Powerboat Racing Club) -just because – and everyone knows why- and Laura Levi (daughter of the late Sir Max Aitken), Director and Secretary, who knitted and knotted everything together so amazingly- and everyone knows why too.

For me, whose father Gordon Procter raced a Class One Powerboat, Passing Cloud which was powered by Rolls Royce helicopter engines, back in the 70’s and is credited with achieving the first 100 miles an hour on the water way back when; it was a glorious and gigantic blast from the past.  Everywhere I looked there was evidence of my teenage years.  From Tim, himself, or rather TP, who owned and raced such notable boats as Tramontana, to Maxwell Beaverbrook, aka Lord Beaverbrook, son of Sir Max who raced with Sir Bill Shand-Kydd on Cigarillo to Keith Dallas, who raced on the cats Wiggins Teape and Penthouse and who at the age of 75 was back racing on Gee.  Keith bought Gee back in the 80’s from Edward Greenall, renamed it Melodrama and used it as a family cruiser.  Ros Nott the former Editor of Powerboat magazine who is now married to Shaun, the Earl of Normanton, one of powerboat racing’s more distinguished former drivers was there too and as happy as can be to be attending.  Ros has the accolade of holding the record as the fastest woman on water and was wearing a star shaped pin to acknowledge it.  Sadly neither the Earl nor the Countess were in good enough health to take to the water and watched the racing from the comfort of The Squadron balcony.  The only man missing was Lord Lucan, who raced in 1964.

In many ways the real stars were the classic powerboats.  The seventies superstars designed by Don Shed, Don Aronow of Cigarette, Sonny Levi et al were all represented and many of the most exciting classics were still sporting their seventies livery.  Uno Embassy the gas turbine powered boat piloted by Harry Hyams and Ronnie Hoare in the seventies and now driven by Rob Gray and Aldwin Drummond and navigated by Mike Mantle finished in the silver.  The gorgeous Cinzano with former CTC champion, Markus Hendricks in the driving seat took a well deserved third place.  And then there was Dry Martini – how evocative does it get?  If you’re are over about 22 and a half – add a decade or three and you only have to look at a cigarette boat in Dry Martini livery and you hear the song “it’s the right one, it’s Martini” playing in your ears and you drift off to some glorious bar in St Moritz with para-skiers gliding in or to the aft deck of a huge motor yacht moored off the Costa Smeralda – such was the power of advertising back in those just-post Mad Men days…..

The boat was brought over from Castle Rock, USA by Mike Bontoft in honour of his father, Alf, who raced and tragically died, the first fatality in the race’s history, in the 1976 race.  Mike completed the2010 race, despite suffering two broken ribs and came in a creditable 12^th place.

Anyway, the parties were great – especially Wednesday night’s hosted by Laura Levi at the Sir Max Airken Museum which is housed at her family home, The Prospect.  Not even torrential rain could stop play and a welcome for the overseas contestants was a splendid way to ease in to the festivities.  The dinner at The Royal Yacht Squadron on Friday was charming and Ray Bulman, former columnist with The Telegraph and Motorboat and Yachting did a great cabaret turn with a two-handed interview with former world champion the Italian, Dr Carlo Bonomi and world-famous boat designer, Sonny Levi.

It was an awesome weekend and curiously one of the bits I loved most was escaping the thrills and spills of the engines and all the high octane stuff and roaring across the island to Bembridge to join a friend who needed a bit of ballast in his Redwing.  The Redwing class is made up of highly-strung, classic, wooden yachts that have rather too many bits of rope to pull on for my taste. Luckily for Tom, my husband, and me, we were racing with a master of the genre and we had a glorious afternoon tacking, beating, jibing etc etc in the wind, sun and salt air.  Then it was back for another party.  At the Cowes Corinthian Yacht Club this time, where winning rib-racer John Caulcutt and his old Harrow school friend, Baz and their band played some much needed live sixties music.  The dance floor was packed with 9 to 90 year olds thanks to both Johnnie and the sponsors of that evening’s event, the Clayton brothers, the new owners of Gee.

Sunday was the most important of the three days of racing and the weather was foul; lumpy as hell out off the Needles.  All the small, or rather the clever boats mimicked Tommy Sopwith’s 1968 win with the tiny Telstar, who, spotting bad weather ahead, abandoned the fastest route straight across Lyme bay and hugged the coast and came home to take the laurels hours before the big boys arrived back bruised and battered.  Even though this proved to be a smart tactic in 2010, first over the line was the inimitable Fabio Buzzi in Red FPT a big man with a bigger boat – 46 foot to be precise.  I think we need one…….

After that it was prize giving back at The Squadron where Tim Powell did a superb job dispensing the huge array of silverware to be photographed with and the specially re-introduced newsboys to keep.  (Richard Desmond, please note, thank you).  He was ably assisted by the stalwart and still beautiful 84 year old Lady Aitken who as a pioneer, with Lady Arran, of the sport, is a veteran of many a CTC and was a contestant in the notorious 1973 Round-Britain-Race.  She told me that she was rather mystified by the new drink-drive race laws.  “Lord, “she exclaimed “in my day, you needed a quarter of a bottle of brandy just to get one into the thing!”

And it wouldn’t have been Foreigner if they’d passed on the iconic ballads  like ‘I Want to Know What Love is’ and ‘Waiting for a Girl like You’ – both written for Mick’s ex-wife Ann, but there were some wondrous new tracks too.  ‘Can’t Slow Down’ and ‘Fool For You Anyway’ just go to show that true talent doesn’t die, it just gets a bit more mature. 

The outing organiser on this occasion was the inspiration herself, Ann Dexter Jones.  So suitably festooned with Access All Areas stickers and plastic bangles we found the balcony VIP area and great seats. 

My daughter, Tabitha, was as usual running late.  She texted to say she was inside the building so I rushed to a public area to grab her before anyone realised that she was one pass short of all areas.  Silly me, she’d charmed the guy at the box office who had given her the whole nine yards and even found  her an iTunes necklace.  Tabitha gracefully bequeathed this to Ann on arrival.

At one point as I was rocking my head from side to side to catch the gyrating rockers in their skin tight trousers, I mused that it would have been good if they could move a rather large pillar 20 foot in front of me, but realised that it was, in fact, holding up the roof.

Foreigner play real foot tapping or rather stomping tunes and I feel confident that my feet somehow have rhythm – not so my hands – ask me to clap and they take on a pace all of their own.  Later Kelly Hanson, Foreigner’s lead singer told me not to worry.  My lack of timing is “because I wasn’t born black……”

Less than Zero was my favourite book in the 80’s and having previously met Bret Easton Ellis at a party I threw for Tatler in 1992 in New York, I was delighted when my husband and I were invited by Richard Caring’s Birley Group to attend the GQ party to celebrate the publication of his new book.

Imperial Bedrooms is the re-visit of all time. BE Ellis returns to the same characters – to Clay and the band of infamous teenagers whose lives weave sporadically through his – but now they face and even greater period of disaffection: their own middle age.

The party was held at Marks’s – the smartest of the Mark Birley clubs and the one with a smoking terrace – a totally necessary invention for Bret and for a least half of the invited guests. Champagne flowed and the canapés – lobster and pineapple, pate de foie gras on toast and mini Peking duck pancakes were gratefully received – especially now that being thin is so ageing (only W11 yummy mummies aspire to size zero).

Picador the publishers had generously donated the books so absolutely everyone was clutching copies and praying for a gap in Bret’s circle so that he could sign theirs for posterity or for added-value presents.

A guy from the publishing company gave a nice speech and then a laconic Bret took the floor reminiscing about the launch tour for Less than Zero when he was squirted in the face by Jools Holland and later offered the works by a very considerate Paula Yates. Perfect.

Who was there – well Florence as of and the Machine. She and her sister Grace just happened to have been at prep school with my two children. The Welch children had a manny, (male nanny) and our two had an Australian girl nanny who became great friends. At the time we had a beach house on the south coast and I remember the manny and the nanny taking their charges down to stay during the Christmas holidays and being snowed on. About the only snow in the last 50 years and a complete joy for our Antipodean.

I introduced myself to Florence – as “I’m Tabitha’s mother” – and she looked suitably bored – I followed up with – “you stayed at our beach house in the snow” – and the animation was amazing. God the gorgeous, super-talented redhead has a memory and a good one at that.

Peter York, fresh from the Mitford Book launch at Heywood Hill. Simon Mills, basking in the praise for his Evening Standard article about the Bugatti Veyron owners et al parading, parking and posturing around the Lauduree cafe at Harrods which had appeared the evening before and of course, Dylan Jones, the Editor of GQ who assured me that the Evening Standard going free has produced a reverse snobbery. “If you read it, it means that you take public transport……..”

We met a terrific girl who is the managing editor of The Independent who was bemoaning all things on-line. “How” she said “could intelligent people have invented a system where they created a business model where everyone worked extremely hard and then gave away their products for free”.

I don’t really like champagne. One glass I can stomach, but after that it has to be still wine. Mark’s had not been instructed to cater for people like me. Thank God for the divine Nicki Eaton, Communications Director for Condé Nast (the owners of GQ) who secured the services of a wine and ice provider toute de suite.

Dinner called and at 8pm we left clutching both a book signed and dedicated to me and one to our son Rollo.

Photographs courtesy of Dominic O’Neill.

Were we at Nikki Beach in St Tropez or perhaps a scene from The OC? No we were on the beach at Sandbanks in Poole for the annual Beach Polo Championships.

Now in its third year, the championships attract world class polo players including England Captain Henry Brett who plays off a 6 goal handicap and the Argentinian 6 goaler, Adolfo Casabal.

However, this is not an event that take itself too seriously and also features the distinctly lugubrious Camel Polo, where world-class players swap horsebacks for humps, and the rather more exhilarating Beach Volley Ball.

The sun is seriously shining and while the Sunseeker motor cruisers are swooshing across the bay, the girls are out in force. Gaggles, groups and even a gallimaufrey or two of them.

The fashion is fabulous. We’ve nearly seen the end/best of bum-scraping, body-con and perilous heels, but there are still lots of exponents of this eye-catching look on display. The fashion –forward have opted for long, floaty maxi dresses with flat sandals and the best dressed “boys” sport seersucker shorts suits and canvas lace-ups.

The hair is about 80% blonde, about 40% extensions and 100% long. Nails are manicured, bums are pert and limbs are bronzed, buffed and beautiful. Here we have a stage set and the central matting makes a perfect catwalk. The parade is endless and many of the girls walk the runway over and over again. Everyone appears to be smoking – mostly Marlboro Menthols – and the drinking begins in earnest at midday. There is the VIP, Hotel du Vin enclosure, dining room and lounge; the Priva day club – (I think that’s what you call a night club with £1500 Methuselahs of vodka and Pommery Champagne stacked up in ice buckets at lunchtime) and an upmarket burger-bar and three huge bars dispensing jugs of Pimms, Mohitos and Vodka and Cranberry. Plastic flutes of Pommery are £9, but the Hildon Water is complementary.

There is a parade of shops. At the Pounberry Gardens from Dorchester stall I buy two bunches of fake peonys at £6 a pop and then at Kingspace Outdoor Living I ponder the merits of artificial grass. Further along the parade I discover Shoes Glorious Shoes and pick up a charming multi-pastel-coloured-kid leather wallet for £28.

On to the beauty salon. At Tuttoluxo , I am given a complimentary hand massage, and taking a look at the state of my nails, the lovely technician from Nailtalk in Burnham tidies me up beautifully and paints my nails scarlet so that I feel like the elephant who painted his toes nails red so that he could hide in a cherry tree.

Tuttoluxo is a Swiss beauty brand only available on-line. It’s all organic, all stuffed full of anti-oxidants and full of good things that grow on Swiss mountainsides like Echinacea and Edelweiss. As well as addressing your skin concerns the folks at Tuttoluxo recommend that we drink water all day to keep us hydrated. Glancing around I feel that many of the other spectators have put the wrong sort of liquid in their plastic cups. I came away with lots of samples and instructions to wear rubber gloves.

Oh and the Polo. Well it was very exciting to see Jack Kidd, handicap 6 and Jamie Morrison, handicap 5 battling it out with the Argentinians Matias Ballesteros,6, and Adolfo Casabal,6 for the Gaucho cup (www.gauchorestaurants.co.uk). The Brits won.

The Camel polo was spectacular – spectacularly languid. The gloriously curly-haired Harriett Kay was the star of the match – even though the camels were striving to out-do her.

I’m sure it didn’t matter, but I did get the feeling that there were an awful lot of girls and guys at the event who didn’t know that it had anything to do with horses, but what the hell……

We made our graceful exit at 7pm and left the golden ones to gambol and grind into the night to DJ’s Jade Jagger and her fella Dan Williams. I’m told that many of the teetering heels – Lord alone knows how the girls managed to totter in them, I dispensed with even flat sandals after 2 minutes and spent the afternoon barefoot – led to some ungainly sprawls, but there were no major mishaps. Dancing went on till 3am and the balmy night made Sandbanks in Poole not only the most expensive real estate outside London in the UK, but the most self-indulgent, decadent and delightful place to be.