The stay over at Miami was delightful. There are many wonderful, new restaurants I am discovering and the stay at Leopoldo's was serene; it has been years since an evening of mine was spent watching TV, cooking for someone at their home (it's better for the both of us), and watching a vintage movie in bed. It was not without incident, however; bliss seldom is. At the ungodly hour of 6.50 AM I found myself leaving to make sure of a timely arrival back on the island. Like most residences, L's property was surrounded by a wall, thickets, iron gates and a particularly viscous German Shepard, named Tara (or Terror, as I called her). Tara was no problem as she "took" to me the evening before (once a dog person, you usually don't have problems there). However, L's key wouldn't unlock the formidable gate no matter how much he tried. Try, try, try; no result.

"OK," Leopoldo said, "We will have to scale the wall." "Scale WHAT?!", I shrieked. He brought up a lawn chair and jumped over the wall like an Olympian. I threw over my Saks Fifth Avenue overnight bag, mounting the chair and crawled up the wall. Had I been wearing an appropriate outfit for that hour--linen, garden culottes--things might have gone better, but I was to meet a high Court official and I was in semi-Court dress. I was sixty percent over the wall with my train on one side and my pearls on the other. Leopoldo was tugging at my left, stockinged leg with one hand on--well--my rear side, and I was looking at the German Shepard, head cocked, staring at me thinking, no doubt, "I've never see them climb in this direction." There was every chance that my frail frame would collapse into my rescuers arms, or crush him. The only thing that came to mind was: "Don't tell me what the Berlin Wall was all about."

I made it over and into freedom to tell this story.

Fortunately for me, there were no photographers. The immortal words of The Countess de Lava from "The Women" rang: "La publicité!" Unfortunately for Princess Beatrice of York, the daughter of Fergie, photographers were there to catch her departure from a London club where she rang up a $10,000 bar tab and was not looking that well-groomed. Not bad for a country at war. And, just WHAT is that stuff on her left cheek? Gobbledygook, to be sure. The only saving image is the peaceful hand gesture; fingers meeting fingers, well almost.