Strange times to say the least. As far as health goes Tony is in a sort of waiting room of indecision on the part of everyone concerned with his intended prostate surgery! The surgeon does not want to operate until the Neurologist has been visited and some sort of definitive diagnosis is made – does he have Parkinson’s or does he not? But the Neurologist isn’t available until November despite the urgency of the situation! Its another case of the one hand in the NHS does not know what the other is up to; we go around in circles.
So…a sort of limbo you could say.
My own health is very much improved and apart from residual bowel discomfort and a tiredness that comes over by mid-afternoon, all is well. TMI, Friends!? But spectacular weight loss what with the strict dieting required by this Diverticular syndrome! That is nearly 30lbs in old measurements.
We are hunkering in Mistley. Trips to London have usually been to see doctors or set up the flat for the imminent arrival of Grandson Tyger who will be living in the flat for the next three years while he completes his PhD at Queen Mary’s. Subject? Wait for it – “ an Investigation into Proto-planetary Discs” a subject that as far as Tony and I are concerned is so rarefied that our minds boggle.
I guess A Star is Born could explain it?
We looked it up after he had explained it and are still boggling :
A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star.
Make what you will of that! Anyway, he has to do it from our flat because Student accommodation is now so expensive in London as to be mind boggling as well! His grant simply won’t cover it.
The Baker’s Wife at the Menier Chocolate Factory is the only show we have seen since our hunker here started. Very disappointing, I am afraid. Based on the 1938 French film of the same name by Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giono, it pleased only as a tuneful moment in history and as a
well performed production; but it is astonishingly out of date and its inherent sexism while probably funny (and palatable) back in 1938 is hopelessly out of kilter with modern views, to the extent that it actually succeeded in embarrassing many in the audience, including our little party
of six, apart from Tony and myself, all women.This all succeeded in spoiling the simplicity and melodic narrative and we went away grumbling rather!
Limboland is the best place to catch up with binge-television and this we have been doing in spades! Breaking Bad has been revisited, all 62 of them, and we discovered that neither of us could remember any of them.
But it reminded us of Jimmy McGill alias Saul Goodman and that neither of us had ever watched Better Call Saul – another 63 episode marathon nearly completed.
But please help me here, Friends, those of you that know these series, what on earth happened to Kim Wexler?
I did a little research and was devastated to learn that after signing their divorce papers, Kim departs Saul’s office and meets Jesse Pinkman. Kim rejects her share of the Sandpiper settlement and moves to Titusville, Florida, where she lives a mundane life with a new boyfriend and works a boring desk job.
Jesse Pinkman is inherited by Saul. Such a dreary end for such a sparky character. Wow.
And in the end dear Jimmy gets put away for 85 years. What an end.
We are also hooked on Vienna Blood not only for the labyrinthine story lines but also for the locations in Vienna. Beautiful production values there even though some of the plots are a little far fetched. Each episode is film length at 90 minutes and it is a race to see whether we can stay awake despite their thrill since round ten-ish we both start nodding.
Books? Just finished Amore Towles’ Rules of Civility which I enjoyed very much; he evokes New York City in the 30’s beautifully in a good story with intriguing characters. I like his books.
Just started Robert Harris’ Precipice telling the riveting story of the affair between Herbert Asquith and Violet Stanley in the run up to the Great War, 1914 through to Asquith’s resignation. Really enjoying this too as I have done all his books.
Otherwise? All quiet on the Essex Front and we follow our Albanian Fellowship through the vagaries of that journey from which we were forced to withdraw. Looks like a beautiful place.
Tonto & Pedro : an imagining in the style of Piero della Francesca by Kath Lees!
The summer has not panned out how we planned at all. I write this really as an update and to thank so many kind Friends who have been asking about our health.
Covid dogged us on our trip to the US – like dominoes : friend Judith came down on the Queen Mary, Tony came down with it in New York and in Boston it was my turn. Not a pleasant strain; apparently a new one in the States, now running rampant. No-one these days takes it very seriously and no-one asked us to wear masks or isolate or any of those things we all had to do a few years ago. This doesn’t mean it is any less nasty!
More than one of our friends observed that since the Queen Mary crossing was postponed by Covid in 2020, perhaps we were never meant to undertake it in the first place. In the light of what happened after we returned, perhaps they were right. Six of us had a walking tour planned in Albania in 2020 too and that had to be cancelled as well. Vouchers flying everywhere! We rebooked for Albania again this coming September, though this time changed mobility circumstances meant no walking in the heat of the Albanian Alps, rather motoring around old-fogey style! This too has now had to be cancelled – or at least, Tony and I have had to pull out leaving only four friends to explore the delights of Albania without us. They leave on Saturday the 31st. Have a wonderful time everyone; we shall miss you.
We had to pull out because suddenly in mid-July I had a perforated bowel – a sigmoid diverticular incident – and was in hospital for a week, narrowly avoiding surgery. UCHL managed to treat the condition conservatively with massive doses of intravenous antibiotics and, 26lbs thinner, a week later, rather shakily, was discharged. The Consultant said there was no question of going to Albania with its dodgy, almost non-existent medical infrastructure, and we had to pull out of the proposed Albanian Fellowship.
It’s taken several weeks to recover from this unpleasant experience and there are to be some follow-up procedures to check that the system is up and running properly again.
In the meantime Tony, who in the same week had a routine biopsy as part of the wait-and-see procedures followed by our NHS, for prostate cancer. It was not pleasant. There were complications but the upshot is that he has to have it out and he is now in a queue waiting for this procedure, complicated by the fact that they are reluctant to operate until they know the outcome of neurological tests to establish whether he has Parkinson’s or not. It is all rather nerve-racking and has been a nasty blow to Tony’s morale. All his tests and appointments are immediately up-coming and this of course truly meant that Albania was kyboshed.
So we wait: in Mistley, where we have been hunkering down while all this dust settles; and we have cleared all our decks until next May 2025!
So very many of you have asked about us both and I write this as a sort of round-robin update and a thank you for your kind concern. Believe me, it is very touching and we are most grateful.
There was a window after the U.S. and before these events when the Summer looked full of promising excitements, better weather and lots of friends.
We visited the Palladium with Friend Laura T. to see Imelda Staunton rocking the West End with her brilliant Dolly Levi in a lavish production of Hello Dolly! that satisfied us on every level. Nothing in this production disappointed us least of all Imelda Staunton who once again surprised us with her gutsy, brave performance. One never thinks of her as a West End musicals star but by god she certainly is!
Then our dear friend Jane F. came to stay with us in Mistley from Cape Town for a few days, such a treat. Just great to see her again. We enjoyed several very hot days here and went to the beach at Wrabness and Frinton actually swimming in the sea – a rare event for me in England I can tell you!
Wrabness beachRiver Stour
At the Gainsborough House and brilliant Museum in Sudbury with Friends Lindsay Hoyer-Millar and Jane Rimington-Foster.
TRICK QUESTION :
Here are Tony and Jane under the famous Manningtree Clock.
Can anyone see the glaring mistake?
ANSWERS ON A POSTCARD…….etc…!
It was when we were driving her down to Eastbourne to stay with her brother, Peter, that I was struck down by “the incident” managing to enjoy a wonderful evening with them all, a celebratory re-union, before a nasty and painful night.
“Looking Good Houston!”
Thanks Friends!
PEDRO
STOP PRESS
The 16 year battle with Mr. Parker and his TWLogistics Limited stevedoring company in Mistley continues.
The Fence has still not come down but citizen action was taken at the weekend to remove the offending fence, to no avail. It was put straight up again.
The campaign has been re-invigorated. Maybe before hell freezes over or, with climate change, the ice caps melt drowning Mistley all together, the little man may perhaps win against vested interests!
Step out of any hotel, restroom, petrol station, restaurant, supermarket, ATM, NHS, you name it, and the emails chatter in, ping, ping, ping : rate our service, what did you think, feel, loathe, love, out of 5, 10, 50, 100. Trustpilot one, two, three, four, five?
Maddening. But if you fail to reply they go on and on, don’t they? But, after all, what are departure lounges for but to pick up the next John Grisham, buy a bottle of gin and catch up with those emails! Are bells ringing?
So in the end I do complete the wretched survey.
I never give 10, though. Never! That is always reserved for the surprise perfection which never is.
Until Queen Mary 2.
Queen Mary 2 berthed in Brooklyn.
Barely down the gangplank before the pinging started and while we were waiting for the 3pm slot to check into the Soho Grand Hotel in NYC, I looked at the survey Cunard asked me to fill.
Friends, for the first time, I gave them 10 in every of the 50 categories except on board entertainment which got an 8.
Spacious StateroomPrincess Grill
The fact is our experience of this beautiful ship was simply brilliant. The service was impeccable, the food was of the highest standard, their wine lists enormous, their cocktails supreme. The ambience was stylish, relaxed. There was space. You did not for an instant think that there were 2,343 passengers on board. Our stateroom with its balcony was gigantic – more than a mere nod in the direction of old fashioned cabin trunks with more storage, cupboard, drawers and hanging space than our tiny Easyjet-sized luggage needed.
The Maître d’ prepsCrêpes Suzette
Everything you could possibly want or imagine was catered for from Wellness centres and gyms to libraries and shops. A veritable floating town.
The “peeps” were nice too; and I can tell you that is unusual. We have been on some terrible cruises and many of you have heard our stories I think, Friends?
Nothing like that here and, to top it all, we got to travel with two of our dearest friends, Judith Krummeck and Husbando Douglas Blackstone.
I gave the entertainment on board an 8. All very cleverly and professionally put together but definitely what I would call “circuit three”. There are two enormous theatres on board with every mod. con. and sfx you can imagine. You could easily think you were in the West End – but of course you are not.
That we were all prisoners in a gilded cage makes none of this matter and it was very entertaining.
Atlantic full moon
Were there any downsides, Friends. I’m afraid so. The weather was not good. No sunshine and cold temperatures but fairly calm seas. We were late arriving in NYC; our Captain needed to plot a course much further to the south, off the circle route, to avoid bad weather and this meant adding several hours onto our arrival with the advantage that we were able to pass under Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and glide past the Statue of Liberty with that famous view of Manhattan, to our berth in Brooklyn, at 10 rather than 5pm.
We arrived in New York on 29 June 2024, docking in Brooklyn
And COVID.
Oh dear, Friends. I mentioned in my last blog that this crossing with Cunard was planned in 2019 only to be ruined by COVID in 2020. We are in effect re-running an old plan.
Three days in, Judith started feeling terrible. Long and short: and we don’t know where from, COVID struck her down and has dogged us ever since. Tony followed two days after we arrived in New York and I finally succumbed three days into our stay on Cape Cod. Only Douglas has resisted. Friends we made on board, contacted us from their home in Michigan to tell us they had both come down and given it to their entire
extended family all in Michigan for a reunion. I mean……..what is it with this nasty little monster?
In New York, on the day we arrived, fraught by a nasty little Uber scam dockside that raised our blood pressures, we arranged to rendezvous early evening at our favourite el cheapo Pomodoro Rosso a short walk from the Met. where we were all to see Woolf Works. There Judith collapsed, an ambulance was summoned and she was eventually whisked off to hospital for tests.
The combination of the dreaded virus and the heat having seriously compromised her.
Everything had to change. We went to the ballet, which we hugely enjoyed; they were in the hospital until 1am having decided that they would return to Baltimore immediately after breakfast by train and we would end our Cunard Fellowship early.
All a bit of a dampener. But it was lovely that they could be with us most of the way and even more special that on board I was able to read Judith’s latest book, The Deceived Ones published only in May and brought as a signed gift specially for us.
Friends it is a beautiful book. Judith is one of my finest friends; she is gentle and considerate; in everything she does there is a delicacy. Like Ikebana, every piece is placed with thought and care; minimalism is all. This story, The Deceived Ones, is a comedy in the Shakespearean mould. There are moments when the slightest wrong move could turn the story ugly and tragic. I will not say more, though its leitmotif will be easily evident to you, it is fascinating how the story resolves. I am of course, partisan but, hey, why not?
So they whisked off to Baltimore and we discovered ourselves in the midst of Gay Pride in NYC on my 72nd birthday. It was hot, humid and overcast. Millions of colourful souls everywhere of every shape and form. Our walk from Soho up and across town to the Whitney and the Hi-Line found us swept up by the parades right through The Village, Christopher Street and to a clogged little triangular square outside Stonewall where it all happened all those years ago.
Gay Pride NYC 2024
Made it through the press to the Whitney Museum, where Whitney Biennial 2024 : Even Better Than The Real Thing is on until August. We were not quite sure what to make of it actually. Its theme is the acknowledgement that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is complicating our understanding of what is real, “and rhetoric around gender and authenticity is being used politically and legally to perpetuate transphobia and restrict bodily autonomy.”
I suppose being swept into the museum on the tide of Gay Pride might have heightened the effect but I am afraid I was left rather underwhelmed.
The pouring rain stopped a Hi-Line walk in its tracks.
By now Tony is showing signs of wobbling toward COVID exacerbated by a nasty, septic finger nail infection, paronychia, which neither boiling water nor antibiotic cream seems to help.
On our last morning, cooler with clear sunny skies, we visited MOMA, a favourite, especially to see the Isaac Julian Installation which was worth every drop of sweat and to which we had been alerted by an installation of his the day before, at the Whitney.
Eating, drinking and merriment? Rather thin on the ground with all the illness about; but we met our dear friend Ira Silverberg at The Odeon (oysters and lobster-macaroni-cheese – sounds horrendous but hit the spot) over dinner and he regaled us with stories I could not print here! Naughty man!
Shades Greenwich VillageAlbino Python
For my birthday? Martinis at Shade Bar – albino python present (don’t ask) – and spectacular dinner at Manetta’s Ristorante just off Washington Square.
Oh and I have to tell you about Gilligan’s abutting our hotel where friend Susanna Samson instructed us to investigate their watermelon marguerite.
Wow. Lethal. You think its a kiddies drink until halfway through and then…ka’pow! Try one. They’re easy to make.
Central Park by Trump Tower – so hot!
We managed a stagger across Central Park past Trump Tower to Columbus Circle in the heat. No sign of him though we have heard opinions. I fear he will win if the man in the Uber is correct. (Since writing this of course we have had an assassination attempt and Kamala Harris is now on the stump. So perhaps things are not so clear cut anymore – let’s hope.)
And on the 4th day, to Penn Station, newly vamped, since we were last in it, to Amtrak it to Providence Rhode Island there to meet daughter & son Sarah & Ivan, making the eight hour road trek from Ottawa to arrive when our train exactly drew into the station there.
The AirBnB at Sandwich
Tony’s finger looking bad, our lovely AirBnB hostess, Lyla, pointed us in the direction of an extremely efficient clinic which administered antibiotics quick-sticks to stop what Walter Mitty would call “choreopsis setting in”! Or septicaemia to you and me.
Then to Sandwich for the beautiful, clapboard AirBnB near the ocean on Cape Cod.
On the way to NantucketA Nantucket beach hutNantucketFerry
We didn’t go to Martha’s Vineyard but to Nantucket by ferry from Hyannisport instead. Mainly because it was ‘happy 4th July’ Independence Day weekend and the traffic was horrendous. It took ages to get anywhere; so no Provincetown; nor Martha’s Vineyard as they would have meant spending hours in the car.
Nantucket was beautiful but again, very crowded. We managed to have lunch there and some walking in the heat and humidity.
Our whole time in New York, Cape Cod and eventually Boston was indescribably hot and humid. With Covid in tow it made it all the more intolerable so that when Ivan and Sarah dropped us at our hotel in Boston it was my turn for the lurgy and I collapsed into bed and didn’t move for a day.
I never got to meet our friend Amit, at Harvard doing cutting edge oncology research, long in the planning. Sorry Amit. But at least Tony got to see you!
The weather, our health and loss of mojo rather short circuited Boston; but we managed to see a few things and had at least one special meal, ubering everywhere rather than our usual MetroTransit habits.
Grandpops bussing it!Tea Party Waterfront
Starting with the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, an extraordinary, eccentrically eclectic collection of European, Asian and American art set in a purpose built museum of the kind common in America where there is always a desperate hunt for historical connections and cultural relevance. Interesting this one but rather reminiscent of an ordered junk shop surrounded by a few imported European ruins. It reminded me of San Simeon in California or the infinitely superior The Met Cloisters in Washington Heights. There is not a small whiff of Disney in these venues!
Not so The Harvard Art Museums comprising the Sackler (Yes!), Fogg and Busch-Reisinger collections gathered under one roof right on the Harvard main campus. Now this happens to be one of the best collections we have ever visited. No theme-park here!
I was languishing in airconditioned splendour when Tony went by himself to the Boston Museum of Fine Art which he enjoyed. It has a substantial collection of “all the usual suspects”!
We managed a well conducted hop-on-hop-off trolley tour which hit the spot under our circumstances and, in fact, as we get older, we resort to more often. It got us comfortably round the old town with all its historic sites giving an excellent overview despite the oppressive heat and humidity.
And of course no visit to Boston would be complete without a visit to the spectacular – in all senses – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.
Designed by the architect I. M. Pei, the building is the official repository for original papers and correspondence of the Kennedy Administration, as well as special bodies of published and unpublished materials, such as books and papers by and about Ernest Hemingway.
Bearing in mind the significance of Boston in America’s history in it’s battle for freedom and democracy, we found this museum very moving and informative. But we both said how ironic it is that in this city particularly, where all the democratic values that
underpin the whole American dream are vaunted, while millions of Trump supporters are moving in the opposite direction towards the very forces that are inimical to the thrust of American history.
Sad.
Back to Blighty then. With some relief I may say as neither of us seemed much in touch with out usual energy.
And at home? All change……but that is another story.
We kicked off Midsummer with a week in Sicily where Friends Jane and Edward had arranged a wonderful villa, Poggia Pigio just under Pollina, on the top of a mountain along a hair-raising road, looking towards the sea in the north and Castelbuono in the south. Really the middle of nowhere, from our point of view; delightfully isolated and perfect for
R & R after an exhausting two months decorating the house! Friends Ian McD and Marianne Velmans made us six in this enormous, very comfortable villa with a pool of course, a welcome necessity.
Finale was our local town, down the terrifying mountain about twenty minutes away with supermarkets, butchers and other exciting comestibles to aid the considerable talents of all our cooks! Only one lunch away from home the whole week, otherwise a stream of haute cuisine, a tricolour of much wine, not to mention gin, gushed forth as the bottle banks got ever fuller! Perfect.
Cefalú was our nearest bigger venture; we had our away day lunch there. A beautiful if somewhat crowded little town founded by the Greeks in the 4th Century BC.
Terrifying moments
I’ve been to Sicily a number of times and had a few terrifying moments there. Two of these feature guns. On one visit Tony and I were driving from Palermo to Agrigento. It was a Sunday and on our way we stopped off in Corleone to look at a small market and have a coffee.
Everyone was dressed in black – except us. We were both wearing dinky little shorts and colourful shirts, clearly tourists as we swept into the main square in our little red Fiat hire. Straight into an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.
It was creepy, almost sinister. As we entered the café the room fell totally silent and all eyes gazed in our direction. Never have we drunk coffees so fast; we paid and retreated to the car to resume the drive.
The road winds up the escarpment to the plateau along the SS118, very isolated; here are still the remnants of the vast Latifundium, empty spaces where the landed estates run by the Romans with their slaves fed the needs of Empire.
Not a soul in sight. I have changed down into second and am traversing the steep, winding road which passes through the spectacular mountainous landscape; Tony is half asleep with the map on his lap. Suddenly without any warning, a man jumps off the embankment out of the maquis, lands on the bonnet of the car wielding a sawn-off shotgun.
It was terrifying. I do not know what he wanted or what he might do but we both shrieked and I accelerated up the hill, knocking him off the bonnet onto the road – and didn’t stop.
He dwindled in the rear-view mirror; I saw him get up, shouting and gesticulating with his gun. Soon a bend in the steep road hid him from view and we stopped to look at the damage: an enormous dent in the bonnet. We managed to press this out and spent the rest of the holiday looking over our shoulders for bandits and/or carabanieri . We eventually, in great trepidation, handed the car back to Avis at Catania Airport fully expecting to be arrested on hit-and-run charges.
On another visit to Sicily with Friend Loïs and Godson Guy aged 12 or 14 I think, again in a hire car, we were driving from Palermo on a sunny Sunday, to Cefalú, for a day at the beach and a visit to the spectacular Cathedral there, built by Roger II in 1131 after the Norman conquest.
There was a lot of traffic. It’s about an hour’s drive along the coast road. There was a wide, three-laned boulevard leading to a Tollgate; here these lanes squeezed to two, we are inching forward and polite merging is indicated – at least in England!
But this is Sicily where testosterone runs all motorcars and I am in the middle lane. The man on my left is absolutely not giving way and I am being dangerously squeezed.
His wife is in the passenger seat. He starts to shout across her at me.
I have nowhere to go.
He leans across his wife, opens the glove compartment and produces an enormous revolver which he waves across his wife, through the window, in my face.
I am electrified.
The wife starts to shout at her husband and pushes his hand up and away. The husband stalls his car and an opening comes up ahead of me which I shoot into, sweating.
There are two other gun stories, one in Libya and the other in a Greek restaurant along the Harrow Road near Westbourne Park. How prosaic is that? But it could have ended in tragedy since ordnance was let off.
Friends Dave Lucas, Sue Samson, Tony and I are eating a great meal at Dave’s local “Greek” the name of which escapes me.
We are sitting towards the back.
At the front, in the window, as part of the décor, is a table set with napery, cutlery and a bottle of Moët in an ice bucket designed to attract passing custom.
All very civilised and calm.
Suddenly a car comes screaming down the road, a man leans out of the window and fires off a pistol, shooting up the restaurant, the Threshers Off Licence next door and another shop down the road.
Two bullets penetrate the “Greek”. Both through the plate glass. The first bullet decapitates the top of the champagne bottle which explodes in a spectacular spray of foam; the second penetrates the floor boards literally inches from Tony’s leg.
Later, after the police arrived and the blue tape closed us in, the bullet sticking out of the floorboard could easily be identified as 9mm Parabellum. So, a Glock? A Luger? Who knows? And what was it all for?
We never found out.
One of the questions the cops asked us was, “Do you know anyone who might want you dead?”!
So, Friends, guns. You never know do you?
One more?
Rather tame this time: In Tripoli during a short window of cooperation between Colonel Gadaffi and the West during the Blair years. I was employed by Martin Randall to play Julius Caesar in a redacted, 90 minute version of the play of that name with a professional ensemble specially staged at Leptis Magna where there is a two thousand seat, ruined theatre by the seaside.
Martin Randall specialises in cultural tours. A truly brilliant tour operator, very high end, on this occasion a cruise visiting Roman remains along the North African Coast from Tunis through to Crete stopping in such places as Sabratha, ancient Carthage among several, and including Leptis Magna.
We joined the cruise after rehearsing for two weeks in London. Tony was able to come too which was nice. We rehearsed during the days leading up to arriving in Tripoli.
At Sabratha Martin Randall flew a Baroque Ensemble and singers out from Holland to perform Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas – just for one night.
So with us, for one performance only, can you believe, in the theatre ruins at Leptis Magna, Julius Caesar.
Just imagine the arranging? The bribes? The connivances and the intricacies involved in getting all this on the road, once actually in Libya? With different, warring factions within Gadaffi’s government – some didn’t want us, others did. It depended on which son was prevailing. Anyway for a while we were in but we had to have a series of minders from dockside to vomitorium. “Our Man In Tripoli” drove us in a protected minivan. I was sitting in the passenger seat. As we left the dock area he leaned across me to the glove compartment where there was an enormous and I mean enormous wodge of cash, $ollars, €uros and £ounds and an even more enormous Glock which he put between his knees for the journey to the ruins. Payoffs were made all the way down the line but the gun, thank heavens, was never used.
What an experience.
Back to Cefalú – on all of my visits there, guns or no guns, the Cathedral is the most beautiful building, Sicilian Romanesque; it’s presbytarium adorned by Byzantine craftsmen with mosaics quite as brilliant as the ones in Monreale, another Norman marvel in the hills above Palermo.
The exquisite Cathedral at Monreale.
In 2019 Friends Judith (Krummeck), Douglas, Tony and I hatched a plan to meet in Southampton and cross the pond to New York in one or other Cunard liner, it didn’t really matter which. Investigations were made and we were to have embarked the Queen Mary 2 in June 2020.
But along came Covid and that was the end of that – we thought. Cunard were extremely helpful, refunds were made and best wishes for another plan were expressed all round.
It all came together and now we are on our way in some considerable splendour, the four of us, to NYC where we will spend a day or two before they go home to Baltimore and we head north to Cape Cod where we will rendezvous with daughter Sarah and son-in-law Ivan who will be driving down from Ottawa to be with us for a week.
We put up at the shipshape Harbour HotelDockside SouthamptonAtlantic full moon
We boarded yesterday, the 23rd June. There was a terrible moment when it looked as though Tony would have to stay behind. Though he had a valid ESTA, he had forgotten that his newly issued passport and the numbers on the documents did not match.
Pandemonium.
Judith, Douglas and I board and Tony said he’d catch us up. The hours go by and no online approval is forthcoming on an emergency application. Cunard are adamant – no valid ESTA, no boarding! I am already planning an airfare for him to join us in NYC at the end of the week and having a minor nervous breakdown!
Stress levels are through the roof! But at last the site pinged and permission was granted, so we are all set.
Yesterday I waved goodbye to my beloved Martita on whom major electrical surgery has been performed to no avail. She cannot be revived. Her mighty heart still beats but her nervous system is shot and no MOT can be declared. Sadly I completed the SORN documentation and submitted it to the DVLA vehicle tax service in Wales.
Martita, named after Martita Hunt the famous actress whose heart broke in Great Expectations as Miss Haversham, was the most elegant of ladies; with her slightly faded black bonnet, traced with verdigris from the proteins emitted by Edme Maltings, and her soignee chrome wheel trims
she struck an elegant figure among her peers in Mistley and as she swept across the Continent, to Portugal, all over Spain; in France and Italy, through Switzerland, Germany and the Low Countries, heads would turn and hearts would burn in admiration and envy.
Martita was a lady; nothing woke about her; she had no transgender or transitioning issues, strong in her feminine identity she bore no grudges and was never a snob, rooted as she was in the sensible, vorsprung durch teknik of her Stuttgart Heimat. She took the slights that came from envious passers-by without rancour.
Even being rudely addressed as “that hair-dresser’s car” did not stall her. For eleven years she has carried us forth. Her marriage of eight years ended in divorce when a hire-purchase arrangement collapsed and she briefly attended rehab in Slough before I met her online. It was love at first sight, never once dimmed by clumsy supermarket trolleys, careless driving and bumper bumps, inflicted by others I hasten to add, and not me.
At Santander Ferry TerminalWaiting her turn to board
She has loyally carried friends low and high, old and young across Europe and Britain pre- and post-Brexit: Dutch aristocrats around the Castles of England, South Africans to the Battlefields of Flanders, doughty Welshmen to Snowdonia and beyond.
Martita……..never to be forgotten. How can you be replaced? And with what?
The main project this Spring has been the redecoration of our home on The Green. There has been much chucking out, carpets, curtains, books – plenty of “muckdungus” as my Scottish grandmother used to call it. The place has not been touched for 23 years as we have always believed that to travel is preferable than to make-over! But, hey………..
“There is a tide in the affairs of houses Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the colours of their rooms Are bound to fade; on such a full sea of Sudbury Yellow & Theatre Red are we now afloat; And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”
But I am fairly certain that Brutus was not advising Cassius on new color schemes!
So – out with the old and in with the new. Kevin Gleed our Maître Décorateur is undertaking this nerve-racking journey in three tranches: top, bottom and outside. He is on the bottom at the moment. The top was completed three weeks ago but it took us that long to empty the bottom to free up space for him to wave his paintbrush around and reach those parts that other brands could not!
The new carpets (Brian Birt Carpets of Clacton) are in; Lulu Meston from The Curtain Exchange has measured for drapes; Zoey Bates will re-upholster; Tom the Plumber, Jon the Carpenter and Bob the Electrician have all joined a cast of thousands in this projet de renouveau! And don’t forget Haj the Oriental Carpet Specialist enjoined to repair and clean 80 year old rugs.
We have retreated to London as Mistley is uninhabitable now – just when we really needed Martita to fetch and carry.
So in the interim Man-in-White-Van was deployed and we buzzed all over the place in our ULEZ registered diesel Ford Trannie. Friends it’s all true. The waves part in East Anglia for Essex Man in White Van. Nobody argues with you on the highways and byeways. Bliss
But eventually we were sensible; abandoned all romantic notions of fast, stylish open air travel and have adopted a grey, Hybrid Hyundai Kona called Henrietta who will carry us further into our 8th decade safely and anonymously. We shall be invisible in this sweet young four year old and will be happy to sing that famous song from Chicago :
Cellophane Mister Cellophane Shoulda Been My Name: Mister Cellophane. ‘Cause You Can Look Right Through Me Walk Right By Me And Never Know I’m There…
Henrietta Hyundai-Kona
OTHER NOTES
Drawing towards midsummer now and the annual visit to the Holland Park Opera with friends, Sue, Dave, Sarah and Hannah, a lovely tradition; with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and a fine picnic on the terrace what could possibly go wrong?
It didn’t!
Charlotte Corderoy conducted the City of London Sinfonia in fine form and at one point is evicted from the podium by Almaviva during the fake music lesson in an amusing take on his seduction of Rosina in the presence of her tyrannical guardian. The whole company played well together in a busy and amusing staging. One reviewer wrote “Rossini meets EM Forster?” Dr. Bartolo and his ward Rosina are English, he an irascible, selfish, sunburnt Victorian archeologist down in the Andalusian
heat looking at ruins and determined to have his ward for himself. Into the mix comes Paul Grant’s charming, wily Figaro with all his tricks and that wonderful aria.
Lovely.
Since we returned from the epic NZ-OZ-SA visit it’s been heads down with decorating but there have been some visits to the theatre, a good book or two, a few TV binges, a cinema or two and even a visit to the Jim Deakin Retrospective at Swedeborg House which I’d never been in before. It’s immediately opposite the British Museum and I must say I left it feeling rather depressed! He was an artist and photographer best known for documenting the Soho art scene of the 1950’s and 60’s. Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud, Edwardo Palozzi and Francis Bacon were among his subjects.
It was curated by the writer Iain Sinclair whose book Pariah Genius: John Deakin, The Psychobiography of a Photographer.
Oh dear. Not a cheerful visit.
As this is a diary I just want, really for my own benefit, to add a short list of things enjoyed this Spring, in between the sweep of paint brushes. I share them with you dear Friends.
Two books I found fascinating, both by Adam Sisman: John le Carré: The Biography published in 2015 and it’s “coda” published after le Carré’s death in 2023, The Secret Life of John le Carré. I had no idea what a complex individual he was, what a womaniser; how difficult it was to extricate fact from fiction in this inextricably interesting life. Great read.
Some Television:
Has anyone seen Mr Inbetween? Binge watching television. I couldn’t stop over three series billed as half hour comedies but much, much more than that. Darkly funny, deeply disturbing we follow the trajectory of a kind of Mr Fixit assassin, Ray Shoesmith, brrrrrilliantly played by
Australian actor Scott Ryan, who juggles his eventful line of work with fatherhood, a new romance and caring for his ailing brother. Operating his own moral compass and despite some of his terrifying actions emerges as an entirely lovable character.
Friends – give it a whirl!
Both Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s unforgettable and brutal Auschwitz drama and Occupied City Steve McQueen’s production of his wife Bianca Stigler’s book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945 are simply electrifying. McQueen’s documentary is well over four hours long, an exhausting but astonishing marathon well worth watching.
Then recently I saw the equally electrifying Hitler and the Nazis : Evil on Trial, largely based on the recorded wartime broadcasts of William Shirer and the witness of his diaries, which still shocked me. Especially at this time when liberal democracy is being bullied into
corners by unscrupulous autocrats, narcissistic, corrupt and self-serving politicians and an uncertain and potentially ugly future before us. This series has been remastered, largely rendered into colour, using actual newsreel footage and audiotapes to reconstruct some of the worst nightmares in world history.
And of course Shōgun! We read the book (no. 3 out of 6 in James Clavell’s Asian Saga) in 1975; we saw Richard Chamberlian as John Blackthorne in the mini series back in 1980 but this new series is a must-watch. More Japanese than English. With its exquisitely structured narratives and spectacular, rich and accurate production values. I would have binged again but this time I had to wait a little as Disney+ tantalised us with weekly releases. Lets hope they do the same with Clavell’s other five Asian stories.
Some cinema:
We both very much enjoyed Made in England: The Films of Powell & Pressburger, Martin Scorcese’s homage in a richly enjoyable documentary style to their glorious films and their complex relationship. It made us immediately want to see some of them again including I Know Where I Am Going which was new to us.
Ken Loach’s The Old Oak perhaps not his best but touching on very current issues in a moving way. It had mixed reviews but I see Rotten Tomatoes gave it 87. Whatever you may think of Ken Loach his movies are never boring. This one made us go all the way back to Kes for another look. Such a great film.
Then there was Alice Rohrwacher’s sweet, funny, sad movie La Chimera. Here magical realism looms large as we (try to) follow Arthur, beautifully played by Josh O’Connor, on his quest to find his lost love Beniamina via a seedy, tomb raiding group finding and looting Etruscan artefacts. Arthur has a talent for divining and this is exploited by opposing groups of looters.
Melancholy, wistful, multilayered, we were transfixed by this haunted, bedraggled story. Enchanting.
And some theatre too, Friends!
Enjoyed them all despite the flaws, starting with Opening Night, Ivo van Hove’s production of Rufus Wainwright’s over-extravagant, musical adaptation of the Cassavetes’ 1977 film about a Broadway star, Myrtle (Sheridan Smith) in a mid-life crisis meltdown on the eve of a Broadway Opening night.
What a stupendous ensemble, truly brilliant performances, Sheridan Smith glitters; but somewhere I couldn’t quite be convinced. Ivo van Hove always seems to over-embelish. His use of TV monitors and other digital trickery for me just confused the issues and, whats more, pulled focus. While I could see what he was trying to do, for me it just didn’t quite succeed. The play received mixed reviews and tripped at the box office. It was pulled early, sadly. I’m sure with more tampering it could have been fixed!
Then there was Nye at The National, an “epic Welsh fantasia about one man’s dream of the NHS” with Michael Sheen as the charismatic Aneurin Bevan in tremendous form. The theatre was packed, I am guessing with left leaning, NHS loyalists who all, like myself, ache to see the NHS survive. It received a standing ovation (not very unusual these days!) and Michael Sheen could do no wrong; but it has had mixed reviews too and Sheen in pyjamas throughout, on his deathbed, is infantilised to the point where the real life Nye’s charisma, sexual attraction and complex character rather gives way to two dimensions.
The staging was absolutely brilliant we thought, very clever and we came away completely satisfied and hope that the upcoming General Election where the NHS as an issue, has a premier position, may save its life somehow!
Then The Power of Sail at the Menier Chocolate Factory intrigued. Very contemporary moral issues underlined by murky motives and the pitiless passions of identity politics with a brisk and gripping plot in a play by Paul Grellong, directed by Dominic Dromgoole.
Originally from the Geffen Playhouse, New York where Bryan Cranston tests the bounds of free speech, it was recast here and played powerfully to good houses.
The Divine Mrs S(iddons) at the Hampstead Theatre where we joined our Jazz (usually) Mentors Richard & Cathie, explores the life of the Welsh actress, best known tragedienne of the 18th century. A bit of a curate’s egg perhaps but Rachel Stirling is riveting as Siddons in this play by April De Angelis. More mela- than -drama it packs some jokey punches, is layered enough to have a darker side and certainly raises questions about backstage sexual harassment – nothing seems to have changed there then!
An enjoyable evening ending in culinary triumph à la table de Cathie et Richard Griffin. Thank you both: looking forward to the next round!
And Friends, thanks for listening. Midsummer is upon us with more adventures.
PEDRO
This picture has no purpose other than that it amuses me!
It’s been a while, Friends! We have been away for sixty days; Spring is well sprung in Mistley!
Brother David died two years ago on the day we were to depart for Auckland to visit Other Brother Michael, wife Janine and nieces Caity and Laurien – all grown up, soon to be married.
David’s death meant an obvious and sad postponement.
Only one other person knows me as well as Brother Michael and that is Helena whose sandpit I shared in Cape Town 70 years ago. She lives in New Zealand, in Masterton.
And Stuart, too, lives in New Zealand. We were eight years old when we met, unwilling habitués of a prep school, Cordwalles, in Pietermaritzburg a long, long time ago. He a sad little chappie all the way from Zambia, missing his Mum and Dad, flown all the way to Durban with a label round his neck. Mine lived only 36 miles down the road but I missed them just as much. We were fellow mourners.
Stu,’Dina & Helena 1983‘Dina en moi, Xmas 23.
Only Friend Richard, well known to you all, Dear Friends, as the “CEO of Tarry Tours” with whom Tony and I have adventured many times in past years, is as old a friend – and his brother Jeremy.
Tarry Tours at Chichen Itza, Mexico 2017
The cast list continues: actor and yoga mistress Lynn Webster and husband Rod Oram** both dating from early London, LAMDA days and The Financial Times 40 years ago, now in Auckland.
Eileen and Zoe LavranosGranny Eileen!
And not to forget Eileen Thorns that was – Lavranos that is, once from Durban – mark that, Friend Diane Wilson – and formerly at the CAPAB theatre company where I started all those many years ago. She directed lunchtime theatre, school tours and library programmes and flogged our outreach talents across the whole of the Cape – thousands of miles of countless libraries and schools across a province the size of France.
A Diaspora of oldest friends and family, what a rich privilege it has been; New Zealand basking in late summer sunshine, perfect weather for a drive around North Island for three whole weeks starting up north with Paihia on The Bay of Islands next the Waitangi Treaty Grounds on the 6th February, a very sacred day, a busy Public Holiday for Maoris.
Ceremonial Waka at Haruru Falls
Exploring all the way north along the impressive 55 mile “90 Mile Beach”! to Cape Reinga.
Bay of Islands – 55 mile “90 mile Beach!” – Cape Reinga – Hole-in-the-Rock
Then down to Whakatane along route 2 through passes and mountain scenery along roads still showing signs of the terrible floods a year ago, to Gisborne now mended. It was completely cut off from the rest of the country for at least a week. Napier next where in 1931 the country’s worst natural disaster, the Hawke’s Bay earthquake, devastated the region killing 256. The city was prettily rebuilt in the low-rise deco style and every year the town holds its Art Deco Festival celebrating its rebirth.
We picked up a car there driving down to Masterton leaving Michael and Janine to their own devices for a few days agreeing to meet at the unpronounceable town of Taumarunui on the edge of the Pureora Forest Park.
Masterton: Helena is two years older than me. Her family where our neighbours in Pinelands, Cape Town. Her Dad was from Warsaw. Her Mum was Italian, from Turin. How they landed up across the fence from us is a tale on its own. How my own Mum and Dad landed up there is an equally fascinating story but it made them unlikely neighbours these Anglo-Scottish-Polish-Italians and that story will have to be told another time. Needless to say I was plonked into Helena’s sandpit along with Janek her brother. Apparently my Polish was better than his though I now remember nothing.
Years later, at UCT for a BA and a dramatic launchpad, I introduced Stuart to Helena, they partnered each other at a Rag Ball, fell in love and married; I was his best man. He was at the Medical School, became a Doctor; Andrina was their first and only born, herself my friend and sometime habitué of earlier blogs, living in London, teaching primary school kids.
Sadly a marriage that burned for thirty years but became a dying star.
Ce la vie.
Also in Masterton is EllaCapella, a special love from long ago at a time of confusion, or Elspeth, and husband Mike who showed us such lovely hospitality. Thank you sweet people. Helena took us to pretty places, particularly Greytown best known for its collection of beautifully restored Victorian buildings and boutique shops, one of the most complete collections in New Zealand.
It does to Victoriana what Napier does to Deco. The fascinating Cobblestones Museum showing an example of the early settler village shed light on how colonists managed to survive so far from home and in such a different climate. Here I succeeded in losing both my driver’s licence and Forex Card! “Age thou art shamed…..!”
Then via Palmerston North for a reunion with Friends Dominic and Elin, to the tiny hamlet of Rewa along Route 54 where Stuart and Carole live in their beautiful Heritage farmhouse in the middle of a perfect landscape. That New Zealand can be described as bucolic is an understatement!
We met with Brother Michael and Janine in Taumarunui, that unpronounceable town on the little north-south railway line between Auckland and Wellington. They’d found the most fabulous place to stay: Omaka Lodge.
Here in this beautiful location we were the guests of hosts Scott & Chris, gardeners and chefs of note; a boutique experience. This picture does not do justice to the garden which reminded us very much of Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter, not the house but in its landscape layout and style.
Down the hill and round the corner is the Forgotten World Highway a spectacular journey through some of the country’s most beautiful and remote locations with its backcountry ghost towns, pristine native bush, rugged hills and deep hidden valleys, along the now-abandoned Stratford to Okahukara railway line; a 142km construction through 24 tunnels, 90 plus bridges – all hand-built.
This little clip gives you a taste. At each stop for teas, pees and lunches we were told intriguing stories of people from a bygone age, of local histories, some funny, some tragic but all dramatic. Our journey started at the Whangamōmona Hotel, headquarters of the self-proclaimed and quirky Republic of Whangamōmona!
Three weeks flew by and it was time for a last few days in Auckland and our flight to Sydney. Thanks lovely Friends & Family!
I have to intrude here and sadly tell you that after I’d written this section and soon after our lovely meeting, we were horrified by the tragic news that our friend Rod Oram, husband to Lynn and father to Celeste had a fatal accident on his bicycle In Auckland. Some of you may remember him when he was with The Financial Times. A vital force and wonderful man. It seems inconceivable. Our hearts go out.
Australia couldn’t be more different. We have been to Sydney before but not to Melbourne or Adelaide – now on the radar. Once again Friends and Family in different places: Allan Momberg in Sydney was our cultural signpost and culinary advisor. We visited Art Galleries, walked our socks off round the city, the botanic gardens, the older bits and the modern pieces.
We revisited the Opera House this time to see Opera Australia’s La Traviata – it was dark last time – impressed by the ambience, the Orchestra, the Dancers and Sophie Salvesani playing Violetta and Luke Gabbedy as a powerful Giorgio but underwhelmed by Tomas Dalton’s Alfredo which though sung well, especially in Act III, lacked passion and an electricity between the lovers.
We found the design somewhat clunky too. But what a stupendous building!
We chased Pat Tucker around too but had no luck! She was a step ahead of us in South Africa! As Pat Schwartz she wrote a wonderful, illustrated book about The Market Theatre, Johannesburg, copies of which we stumbled across on our travels!
Back to Sydney! We were so struck by several art galleries in all the cities. Whoever curates these in Australia do so with incredible sensitivity and imagination.
Bearing in mind the difference in collection sizes across the world, their talent to make a little go a long way is actually more satisfying in many ways that the ocean of visual plenitude that Europe and America provide. There is a greater use of thematic display of cross-disciplinary artefacts. Somehow this makes periods in cultural history seem more accessible and we found this technique being deployed in all the galleries we visited. The added dimension of “First Nation” cultural contribution in these times of more concern over the European penetration of culture in the imperial/colonial past also adds richness. Aboriginal and Maori histories are often prevalent in New Zealand and Australia.
Louise BourgeoisMaman
In Sydney there was an exhibition of Louise Bourgeois’ work in the astonishing postmodern, glass and steel Art Gallery of New South Wales Extension itself built over an old World War 2 oil bunker buried in the hill (Domain) beneath and part of the exhibition space – The Tank. This was drained and cleaned up. It reminded us of the huge Basilica Cisterna built by Emperor Justinian in the 6th Century.
Personally, apart from her sculptures, I find her works rather impenetrable and was more impressed by the building that houses them than the exhibition itself!
Basilica Cisterna, IstanbulThe Tank, Sydney
We were struck by The White Rabbit Gallery too. Startling to say the least – The White Rabbit Gallery was opened to showcase Judith Neilson’s White Rabbit Collection, which has become one of the world’s most significant collections of Chinese contemporary art.
Carved from marble!All paper…….!
This is the new extension on Domain. Impressive to say the least though controversial. I need you to note, dear Friends, the Westfield Skytower on the left, location of a recent terrorist outrage. We went up it in an attempt to conquer Tony’s vertigo. 268 metres above sea-level, the highest open platform in the southern hemisphere! Great views! He was very brave!
With our Cultural GuruBotanic Gardens: note the whale.
We took the train to Melbourne proud of its new status as the largest city in Australia having overtaken Sydney – but in area alone, not population. The train took ten hours. Very comfortable; great views though the landscape was fairly gentle – and very brown and dry. Eucalyptus everywhere of course with its gentle green colour. In my whole life I’d never seen either a kangaroo or a koala bear, except in zoos; and after this trip can boast that I still haven’t really! A glimpse of one maybe in the Cleland National Park outside Adelaide but I don’t think that counts. I was expecting them to be jumping around the countryside in their droves and nibbling away in the eucalyptus tree – but not a sausage! Well we shall just have to go back again one day soon and say “third time lucky”!
Melbourne feels totally different to Sydney. As a South African I’d say Melbourne is to Sydney what Cape Town is to Johannesburg (though Johannesburg, frankly, is a dump compared to the glories of Sydney. More of that later!).
It’s a laid back city. We wandered around it and along its riverbanks, galleries, and gardens; there was lots of good food.
And company. We met more friends, notably (Dr) Matthew Pitman and friend Maxime from Paris. This was by way of a preview because we later spent a week in Adelaide with his parental units, Julia and Guy! Matthew beguiled us with his charm and zealous commitment to research into HIV and the incredible vagaries of academic research. I must say the more I hear of academia the happier I am that I was an Actor. My profession sounds positively gentle compared to the cut and thrust of academic research, publishing and achievement.
We went swimming from the beach at St. Kilda and found Jake Schulmeyer whom absolutely none of you, well, apart from two, know; I mention it because it was one of those beautifully serendipitous moments, touching and sweet.
Jake is Friend Stacy Schulmeyer (née Jenkinson)’s son. Stacy was a recording engineer at the RNIB studios for years and years, where I recorded hundreds of books. We have remained friends. I remember her marriage to Frankie; Tony and I attended their wedding reception in Drury Lane; we remember Jacob’s birth and Tilo too! Suddenly in the midst of Australia it transpires that Jake is now an undergraduate artist, exploring the world, a twenty-something gentleperson on a mission and, like millions of young, paying his way with odd jobs, a barista in this instance, though homesick for Europe in general and Munich in particular. So……we went to find him and it was sweet. Thanks for the coffee, Jake!
So far so good. Australia is going down extremely well. We saw no live shows in Melbourne but did see Dune Part 2 in a vast cinema somewhere. Very impressive, very visual; huge picture, very violent; very, very impenetrable – we still didn’t know, really, what was going on! We are told we should read the books again. Well…….we know Paul Atreides is on a mission to revenge the murder of his family but we both felt that talented and handsome as he may be, Timothée Chalamet did not convince as a messianic figure. He is too pretty, too slight and lacks the gravitas of a Harris, Shaw, O’Toole or even a Connery or a Caine.
The Overlander
Another ten hour train journey across Victoria and South Australia to Adelaide; more delights in store. Here are Friends Guy & Julia Pitman, Laura Tomlinson and the Adelaide Festival: theatre, music, dance and Writers’ Week, putting up at the amazing Oval Hotel immediate across the river from the Festival grounds. Apart from the usual visits to galleries, drives in the countryside (notably through the Cleland National Park to Hahndorf) and a sunny day away in Carrickalinga where Friends J & G have a chalet de plage, our time in Adelaide was dominated by several visits to Writers’ Week part of the Adelaide Festival an annual event rather along the lines of the Edinburgh Festival that takes place each March.
It was extremely hot and most of the writers’ events took place under the trees on the old Torrens Parade Ground where
we were transfixed by some rather excellent conversations between the likes of Kathy Lette (The Revenge Club), Suzie Miller (Prima Facie), Anne Enright (The Wren, The Wren), Édouard Louis (Change) in conversation with Ruth Mackenzie.
The Arab-Israeli conflict and Gaza were well represented and there were interesting talks and debates involving Avi Shlaim (Three Worlds : Memoirs of an Arab Jew), Tareq Baconi (The History of Hamas) Ilan Pappé (The Israel/Palestine Question) and of course our own Mary Beard & Polly Toynbee were there, also Yanis Varoufakis, Richard Denniss, Joëlle Gergis and Thomas Keneally – by now a ‘national treasure’ – all Straight Talking!
And don’t forget Richard Ford!
A Grande Dames of Letters at the town hall included Mary Beard, Anne Michaels, Jane Smiley and Elizabeth Strout. An interesting evening. The entire writers week well represented women who dominated throughout. Yay! For a change!
And don’t forget JM Coetzee!
My name drop, you see : Dorothy Driver, married to JM Coetzee, is an old friend of Tony’s from Rhodes days. They have lived in Adelaide for some years and we were invited to dinner at their home one evening, enjoying their company. John was also part of the Writers’ Week nomenclature but he was ‘on’ after we had departed to South Africa so we couldn’t see him perform.
JM Coetzee2003 Nobel Prize
Back to the Festival:
There were operas and plays: The Berliner Ensemble were at Her Majesty’s Theatre in a quite impossibly awful production of The Threepenny Opera directed by the self proclaimed “Gay, Jewish, Kangeroo” Barrie Kosky. Usually so brilliant, we hugely enjoyed his production of Die Meistersingerin Bayreuth in 2019 and his Carmen at Covent Garden was a great hit, but this was dire.
All five of us sat gob-smacked and were the more so the following day when much of the press both international and Australian seemed to think it was brilliant. How could we be so wrong; though it was clear that many in the audience were with us in their confusion and disappointment.
Let me hastily move on to an altogether different and lovelier event at The Adelaide Festival Centre where Igor Stravinsky’s The Nightingale & Other Fables directed by Robert Lepage wowed us “with a fairy tale unfurling through acrobatic shadow play, Taiwanese hand puppets, Vietnamese water puppetry – exquisite music, all telling captivating stories” : the programme notes were not wrong, it was beautiful.
Also at The Festival Theatre, at The Space, was that “pioneer of performance art”, Marina Abramović Institute’s Takeover: conceptual art way beyond my pay grade or understanding for me to offer either an explanation or a criticism!
Marina Abramović Institute’s Takeover:
There would not be a proper visit to Australia without a vineyard; so we headed for McLaren Vale where the Osborn family have been tending the vines for wines at the d’Arenberg Estate since 1912. There we attended tastings held inside the astonishing d’Arenberg Cube (see the pictures!) enjoying fine wines with names like Hunjee Heartstring (a Montepulciano), The Dead Arm (I kid you not – a Shiraz of note), a Riesling called The Dry Dam and an unlikely, low alcoholic Sauvignon Blanc, The Low Life.
A Grenache, The Custodian hit the palate well too.
On one of the floors at The Cube was a sale of “Limited Edition”, posthumous casts by Salvador Dali. One was a snip at AU$1,500,000! So, after you have tasted and purchased your wine you simply slip downstairs with your credit card and pop a posthumous Dali into your trolley. Easypeasy!
While we were in OZ the AU$ was about two to the pound.
At The d’Arenberg Cube
But time to move on. We loved Australia; much of its landscape and the way of life, the weather and general rhythm speak to our ‘SouthAfrican-ness”, I guess. It is a far more relaxed society than Britain. Blimey – we are so uptight and wound up here with our extraordinary preoccupations with class and privilege. I’m sure no-one here will deny that Britain is not a comfortable place at present. Our ruling classes are getting it all horribly wrong and muddled up. Nothing works without some sort of problem!
This is not to say that Australia does not have its problems too. Like New Zealand there are burning race issues that percolate their societies but it seems to me that next to other parts of the world these are as tiny drops in the ocean of trouble and strife.
Yes – Australia is like South Africa but without the massive guilt we carry as Europeans for the appalling impact our arrival in Africa caused.
On the way to Carrickalinga
And then we arrived in Johannesburg. Oh my God! The long, exhausting flight didn’t help our shock at the state of the city. It was never beautiful but at least it functioned. Now it doesn’t any more. There is no water because the systems have been burglarised. You turn the taps on and nothing comes out; there is no electricity because of the uselessly corrupt power distribution company Eskom’s on-going inefficiencies and the perpetual, greed of the Kleptocratic State, the ruling nomenclature having by now, thirty years down the line, accrued quite literally trillions of Rands at the expense of the very people whom they are meant to protect and represent.
The roads are ghastly; the traffic is dirty and messy; there is rubbish and graffiti everywhere; the railways have collapsed because the overhead copper wiring has been stolen – miles and miles of it; and the rails too.
Burglarisedand Wrecked
Some 3,000 kms of rails have been ripped out, melted down and sent to China (probably); there is murder and tragedy lurking. We know because we have been first hand witnesses. There has never been an incident-free visit to South Africa!
Towards the end of our time there Tony and I drove up from Durban to Hilton along the old R103 route, once the road linking Durban with Johannesburg and roughly paralleling the original single track railway line as they both meander up from Durban through the kloofs – Wyebank, Hillcrest and Botha’s Hill overlooking the extraordinary beauty of the Valley of a Thousand Hills, through Drummond and Inchanga. When we travel this route I always think of the opening paragraph of Cry, The Beloved Country which still makes me weep:
There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles into them, to Carisbrooke; and from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys of Africa.
It is at moments like these that I know I will never rid myself of the beautiful and tragic effects of this land, once my home.
On this day we climbed up through the hills along the old road which was in surprisingly good nick. Until Camperdown and Cato Ridge that is. Here the new main road, the vast, multi-lane motorway to Johannesburg is undergoing major changes and the green signboards along the R103, never good anyway, simply vanished and, along a route I must have driven hundreds of times, we got lost fetching up in a terrifying township, Mpumalanga (the name means ‘sunrise’ in Zulu), once Hammarsdale, invisible on the map, a throwback to the Apartheid years when such ‘people dumps’, part of the vicious Group Areas Act that ensured perpetual poverty and exploitation of Blacks, were established. Now grown into a huge, ghastly menace on the land. The roads almost impassable; poverty a malevolent presence where deep hatreds brood, where there is no work, no hope and too much Tik.
A sort of terror grips you when you start to realise you are hopelessly lost, you are the only Whites and you pray you will not be stopped. We have been there before. Last time. In Mthatha.
We were not stopped but two days earlier we later found out that another man, confused by the appalling road signage, had also fetched up in Mpumalanga, lost, and tried to get his SatNav up on his phone. His car was attacked, he was beaten and his phone taken.
Then they cut off his hands.
But this was all later. Back in grubby Jo’burg we are fortunate to have lots of lovely and close friends and you fall into their generous embrace with relief though the realities are never far off. We stayed with Anthony Akerman and Andre Hattingh in gracious Greenside where every infrastructural shortcoming has been trumped by installations – JoJo Tanks, Solar panels, generators, gas-fired demand heating, lots and lots and lots of keys, of security, of entry codes and security procedures.
Anthony’s new memoirIvan’s latest book
Anthony’s new memoir Lucky Bastard was published while we were with him – a very moving account of what it means to be adopted and Ivan Vladislavic’s new book, The Near North, is about living – and walking – in Johannesburg, was released in the same week and here we are below at the Johannesburg Country Club with Minky Schlesinger, his partner. Minky had not a little to do with the founding of The Market Theatre as Pat Schwartz’ book, mentioned earlier, attests. And who should we find among the pictures in Pat’s book but none other than Edward Russell-Walling! On the right and back in the 70’s!
At the JCCEdward Russell-Walling on the right!
Anthony arranged a lunch and, Friends, we saw some of you and loved it. Can I name you? Kathie Satchwell (Constitutional eminence grise), Jan Kennedy – an intrepid traveller and only person we know to have been airlifted out of Libya by the Italian Airforce – Peter Terry of course and Phil Godawa. All with stories which I wish I could tell but can’t.
And Kate – can we call you Searle again? – at Kolonaki for lunch, with her new man, Etienne. So happy for you. Has your golf improved?
And Cousin Avril with Peter de Montille at Nice on 4th – so great to see you cuzz. Avril is a cousin on my Mother’s Scots-Rhodesian side of the family. There is never enough time, is there!
Alison Lowry dear friend and ace-editor – so elusive but will we ever forget the frogs in Goa?
We’d not been in Jo’Burg since before Covid so this was a real catch-up with many missed friends and family.
Clan Heaney, Linden 2024!
An amazing evening with Clan Heaney in Linden. An explosion of energy across such a big, loving family with you, darling Julia, calmly sitting at the centre of it all in this your 70th year. What a lovely evening. The Ubers come and go…..”talking of Michelangelo” Ha!
Actually thank goodness for the Ubers. There is no public transport to speak of anywhere in South Africa, well, none that I’d feel confident to travel on without being murdered. So, yes, the Ubers certainly did come and go.
Off to KwaZulu-Natal, flying to Pietermaritzburg in a little Embraer that barely fitted us and our luggage : I must tell you that when we boarded at Oliver Tambo, the biggest woman, very jolly, with the hugest embonpoint, draped in swathes of colourful silk tulle was cantilevered up the tiny fold down stairs and took her place across two whole seats in the front row, the seating in an Embraer being 1, 2 across, whereupon a special, long seatbelt was installed to enwrap her vastness. It was whispered that she had indeed paid for two seats. Amazing.
We picked up the first of our rentals at Oribi Airport (Pietermaritzburg) – yes, there is yet another drama involving rentals in SA, there is always one every time we visit – and drove down to Kloof to be with Sister Sally, Bro-in-law Alan and Nephew Jamie for a day or two before an early start to drive up to Phinda in northern Zululand, picking up Friends Penny & Nick at Shaka International, they having just jetted in from England, to join us there, putting up at the matchless Phinda Mountain Lodge.
The whole point of the Phinda experience is the drives. Early morning and evening, two a day, we completed six of them with our brilliant Ranger, Declan and incredible Tracker, Menzi.
This zebra became dinner minutes later!They ate the zebraThat she killed!
Between them we saw everything despite the recent rains and the consequent long grass. Leopard were elusive but on our last evening we did have an encounter.
Funny though because the last time we were there we had a leopard to ourselves literally all day. She was completely unperturbed by our presence and seemed not to care whether we followed her about. My favourite, and we saw lots of them, are Cheetah.
Cheetah – Beautiful creatures : my favourite.
During the day at these lodges you loll about by the pool reading books and generally eating far too much; a gentle, restorative experience tucked away in the deepest bush. Though nature is red in tooth and claw, there seems to be a coexistent peace, trembling on the edge of the next natural drama.
And there can be dramas, often! Look at this clip taken at Pilansberg where a few days earlier Friend Helen Bourne had been visiting these very elephants!
Sometimes Nature can be scary but, hey, they’re wild animals not Beatrix Potter creatures!
And there are surprises too. Just don’t go fishing around where you shouldn’t!
We dropped Penny & Nick off with their friends in Glenwood, Durban, once a genteel rather plush, old part of the city just below the University campus, now a terrifying jungle of appalling roads, rubbish, threat, razor wire and electric fencing. No-one leaves their cars parked outside – they’d vanish in minutes! So we didn’t stop too long there and anyway the rental had developed two slow punctures and we had to change cars at the Avis depot in Pinetown before driving up to Hilton, kuiering with Friends Lorenza & Mike Cowling, hooking up with Bobby & Kippie Keal plus Clan and with Sarah ‘Chinese Bangles’ Carlisle.
Sarah’s family have a house in Underberg, in a large garden with spectacular views towards the whole Drakensberg range along Garden Castle, Rhino’s Horn, northwards towards Giant’s Castle and Njesuthi. There was much walking, talking and conviviality – the endorphin-junkies among us putting the sloths to shame. Sorry Friends!
Such a wonderful family of friends; what a special time it was.
With Nigel Bell now 87, my English teacher, director of Henry IV Pt. 1 (Falstaff), The Merchant of Venice (Shylock) and The Gondoliers Don Alambra del Bolero – “The persuasive influence of the torture chamber will help to jog her memory!” Michaelhouse circa 1967 through 1969. I suppose in many ways, where it all began. We are very close friends.
He lives in Glenwood, Durban; that terrifying part of town!
No Cape Town this time – it’s impossible to go everywhere and see everyone though I wish we could.
That is one of the problems of having a Diaspora of Family and Friends.
This is a green Mamba. They are found in southern and eastern Africa, and are shy, evasive creatures. It’s possibly one of the most poisonous snakes on the planet and its neuro- cardio-toxic venom is lethal.
They won’t seek out human interaction. But if cornered or confronted, they will strike.
But here is a thing:
In 1957, when I was a little boy of five or six, my father was sent from Cape Town where we lived, to Durban in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, to help run the shipping division of John.T.Rennie & Sons which, after the Suez Crisis, was expanding rapidly.
I’d never seen a snake before. My mother had of course, having lived partly in Southern Rhodesia. There are plenty there.
There are plenty in KwaZulu-Natal too, of every variety imaginable; and they terrify me.
My father and mother found a beautiful house in Kloof on the escarpment, facing east towards Durban and the sea, which could be clearly seen twenty miles away. They made a garden out of the large tropical grounds, much of which sloped to the edge of the kranz plunging a thousand feet to a wild valley.
It was a beautiful place, Casetta Rondini, so named by the owner builder, Noël Hobbs, an Italophile from London, and Professor of Architecture at Durban University: Swallows House because of the annual arrival and departure of the migrating swallows that built their mud homes under our eves and dipped in and out of the swimming pool morning and evening during the hot humid days of summer.
A big pantechnicon arrived one day from Cape Town and all our furniture was brought into the house. We moved from the Moorlands Hotel and came to our new home in Peace Road, Kloof along by the golf course.
One morning I was with my mother in the kitchen watching her tenderise some steaks with one of those little wooden mallets. I could just see over her arm, past the counter and into the dining room a few feet away where my little brother, David, not much more than seven or eight months old, was happily googlygurgling away with some toys and that is the moment vividly imprinted on my mind.
That is not my mother, nor brother David but the dining room and the playpen looked exactly like that.
Towering over him was this enormous green snake it’s head in the classic raised position that I later learned meant it could be none other than a Mamba. To this day the memory chills me.
My mother saw me looking, turned and in an instant became a shrieking banshee.
With the ridiculously inadequate tenderiser-mallet, a short handled affair, she ran to the dining room with every protective, maternal instinct on high alert.
David was afflicted with polio and could not stand up, something at that age that, anyway, babies find difficult to do unaided.
Thank goodness. Had he moved or reacted with fear things may well have ended differently; but my mother’s shrieking appearance distracted the snake which turned and slithered at lightening speed across the carpet and out through the French doors into the rose garden, never to be seen again.
This is not David either, nor is that a Mamba. It looks like some sort of constrictor. David was unable to stand like that either.It’s a stock photo.
That is the day, in my memory, that anxiety first made its presence felt. The fear of the moment was palpable; I have always been terrified of snakes.
And there were lots of them in that garden. During the cooler months in Natal, that we were pleased to call winter, dry and not at all humid, the house seemed to be a magnet. I remember an enormous puff adder sunning itself in the laundry, my mother oblivious of its presence, her back turned away as she bent over the Hoovermatic; the gardener was
always coming across them and in the bougainvilleas of which we had many and which my father pruned every season, there resided the nastily venomous Twig or Vine snake, perfectly camouflaged in the tangle of branches and leaves; a back-fanged snake to be sure but for which there was no anti-serum.
The Boomslang that resides in trees is another back-fanged, highly toxic creature. Here is another story even more fantastic:
Gladys Suttie lived next door. She was a formidable but kindly person who owned among other things, a small department store or Algemenehandelaar called Adams, in Eshowe, a hundred miles up the Natal north coast, in Zululand. She spoke fluent Zulu with a Scottish accent and belonged to another time in the Imperial Ascendancy. We’d not been long in Kloof but already, in that colonial way, neighbourliness had given way to friendship and she and my mother go on extremely well.
A poor photograph of David & Gladys Suttie. (née Adams, a well known Natal family of missionaries and entrepreneurs, of Scottish descent.)
She invited us to tea one afternoon. It was served with some ceremony under the Jacaranda tree on the lawn that sloped down to the 16th green of the nearby golf course. A beautiful, peaceful summer afternoon. The tray was laid out on the garden table, a beautiful china tea service, there were some biscuits and a cake; all very proper.
Gladys was wearing a broad brimmed straw hat and a summer dress, she was bare-armed. She leaned forward to start serving, my mother sitting opposite. A branch of the Jacaranda was inches above her hat and out of it came, unnoticed at first, a Boomslang which slithered onto the brim of Gladys’ large hat.
My mother saw it but remained calm, “Gladys………..” she said, but got no further.
“I know dear, I know its there, just stay still for a moment.”
We were electrified.
The snake slithered along and off Gladys’ arm in amongst the china laden tray.
In a trice Gladys leapt to her feet and rushed into the breakfast room along the veranda. On the wall in a special cradle was a small shot gun used for scaring off rodents and other creatures.
Brandishing this weapon she advanced rapidly down the garden, “Marjorie, move the children, get out of the way!”
Once we were clear, Gladys let both barrels off directly into the tea things. There was a spectacular explosion of shot and chinaware, smithereens doesn’t do it, and a very broken, dead snake.
I think we came to tea on another day!
Talking of Boomslangs, my brother-in-law, Alan, is a wild-life enthusiast whose favourite animals are the big cats – lion, leopard and cheetah which he photographs and follows all over Africa. Alan’s other favourite is the Black Mamba which he says is one of the most beautifully evolved creatures on Earth. He knows of my fears and constantly teases me about “arboreals” when we visit KwaZulu-Natal. Many of our finest adventures have been in his company, arranged and conducted by him, in Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.
He has taken us twice to Phinda, a private game reserve set beautifully in three camps among the green-clad, granite kopjes and sand forests of northern Zululand.
I say ‘camps’ but they are more than that; ‘glamps’ doesn’t do it either. Luxury in the bush; fine dining on decks overlooking waterholes where all the big five gather – and more besides.
Breakfast is served on such a deck and on one of our visits as we were enjoying fresh croissants, coffee, confitures, toasts and eggs surrounded by linen napery and Carrol Boyes cutlery, from the canopy of the Mopani tree above us, into this plethora of luxury fell a Boomslang. I am not sure who was more terrified! The snake or me but before either of us could move, the creature was deftly and gently removed from the table by a passing waiter no doubt trained in such things, and replaced in another tree off the deck.
I only know of three people ever actually bitten by a snake. Funnily enough two of them were in Europe – not Africa at all.
Our friend Stanley Uys, the legendary journalist who ran the London Office of South Africa’s Morning Newspaper Group was one of them. He and his wife Sarchen Burrell had a house on Cyprus for many years. In his eighties Stan decided to wrap up the property there and they went for a final visit one summer. Knowing the house well he didn’t need the lights on and when he went for a pee in the middle of the night he was bitten by a blunt nosed viper
wrapped round the toilet base and was rushed to hospital where he spent a few very uncomfortable days. Interestingly, he told us that the doctors there had said that he would never be ill again due to the immense boost the venom gave to his anti-body supply. Stan died in 2014 of a heart attack aged 91.
[Notes: Bites from Blunt Nosed Vipers usually cause life-threatening systemic hemodynamic disturbances, reduced functionality of the kidneys, and other serious symptoms, including hypotension shock, oedema, and tissue necrosis, at the bite site.]
The other European bite was in France. Be careful where you picnic, Friends, on your way south! The wheat fields of northern France have all sorts of creepy things hiding in them, including the common adder. One of these shot out of field near one of those Aires that we all enjoy picnicking in and bit my Friend John’s niece on the leg landing her in hospital for a few days.
Who would have thought!
Do you want any more? I have a few. Okay. Let me tell you about the Fezi:
Mpumalanga
Our friend Carol Hayman introduced us to a lovely couple, neighbours and friends of hers in Dullstroom, Mpumalanga. During dinner I couldn’t help noticing a vivid cicatrix on his wrist.
In a moment of complete insensitively I blurted, “What happened to your wrist?”
“I was bitten by a Fezi at Ulusaba Game Lodge,” he said, in a very matter-of-fact voice.
A Fezi belongs to the cobra family and is highly toxic, “Good God!” I said.
He and his wife were staying in Richard Branson’s luxury, private Game Lodge at Ulusaba. In the middle of the night he was woken by a severe stinging sensation and there, lying on the bed between them was this snake which bit him twice above the wrist.
Ulusaba
The whole place was woken up. The nearest hospital was in Nelspruit (now Mbombela) ninety miles, a good two hours away by Landrover – far too late to save his life.
Richard Branson’s helicopter happened to be on the stand nearby and he was flown the distance in forty minutes where he was treated.
A near thing, Friends.
Why am I telling you all this? Probably because it is a diversion from the nasty news that has welcomed us into 2024 which we may see & say but which is certainly not sorted! By the way have you ever tried texting or calling the numbers they endlessly broadcast? In the tunnels? Not a peep, Friends. Not a peep! How do you sort if you cannot say?
Christmas has come and gone and here we are at the end of January. Tony’s whole family, the whole bang shoot – Canadians jetting in to join – gathered. It was great. We looked across at this brood and could not believe our eyes. Seventeen of us sat down to dinner.
I have had my knuckles wrapped, Friends, by several of you who complain I don’t mention enough intimate, small scale events. Some of you hate being mentioned at all. Others don’t mind as long as surnames are kept out.
While I was cat sitting HRH Charlotte allowed me several outings playing away and it was lovely to lunch with Rodney P, play bridge with Jane & Edward – albeit only half a rubber, far too much chatter and catch-up – the best; and always great food and wine. Thanks.
Dinner with Dina – at The Ivy: daughter of my oldest friends – from New Zealand. Thanks for the Japanese Gin, Dina!
CleatingSheeting
Not forgetting dearest Sue or “Cleating” as I call her – and I am “Sheeting”. That’s a story for another time! Quite a funny one. To do with sailing and how bad we were at it!
And Jane B. too – the movies of course. We are more than making up for the effects of Covid and lock down on our movie-going habits. Much better than streaming.
The Lesson with Richard E. Grant & Julie Delpy being rather good in this witty and entertaining gem.
The Finnish Auteur Aki Kaurismäki’s gently comic Fallen Leaves we adored and it inspired us to track down other films of his.
Looking back at the BBC’s Arena found us being transfixed yet again by the brilliance of Billy Wilder and the Volker Schlöndorff documentary made in 1988, recently re-broadcast, had us downloading The Apartment for another look. [Have any of you read Jonathan Coe’s wonderful Mr Wilder & Me published back in 2020? A great treat.]
A Nearly Normal Family. Riveting Scandi-noir from Sweden. The lengths families will go to cover up their crimes.
Though I nearly didn’t watch it, speaking of normal families, The Crown turned out to be a good one, hats off to Imelda Staunton. The same could not be said for The Tourist which bemused us even more than the first series set in Australia.
Shetland has been our belated discovery which we have enjoyed having never seen it. A catch up decided us that we’d not want to live in such a bleak place where so very many murders within convoluted stories take place!
How the production team managed to find enough still and sunny days considering the realities of the weather there, is nothing short of miraculous; and once Douglas Henshall departed it rather lost its allure.
Hansel & Gretel at Covent Garden was beautiful – the ROH’s Christmas opera and designed for children, sung in English, unusually for them. The sets were glorious. Like a pop up picture book. No modern publisher would offer this grimm story to children today with its terrifying undertone of bad parenting, torture and death in the gingerbread machine at the hands of a cruel witch who gets a sticky comeuppance among other unsavoury events. But the savoury events are beautifully told within the magnificent Humperdinck score. My favourite is the pantomime at the end of Act II. So tender. My only criticism was the actual gingerbread house which should have had more of a gingerbread and less of a Rocky-Horror house look.
Pop up books apply also to the traditional and now annual Nutcracker ballet which never fails to please; particularly with daughters Julie and Sarah in tow. A perfect afternoon with the usual tears of joy during the pas de deux.
Crazy for You, Ira Gershwin’s romantic comedy musical at the Gillian Lynne Theatre was another pleasing treat. A “joyous love letter” one critic wrote – and it’s true. Every song is great and Charlie Stemp as Bobby Child with Carly Anderson as Polly Baker made it all look so easy.
There is nothing easy about Richard Strauss’ Elektra. Definitely from a dysfunctional family. The tragic shenanigans at the court of Agamemnon: regicide, adultery, betrayal, revenge, incest and even, yes, love, make this the perfect platform for the largest orchestra in opera (110 pieces) with a huge, emotional sound that literally tingles the blood. The last, vast notes fade as Elektra leaves a blood spattered stage in a dance of madness and, though one is not sure, goes to her death. How Nina Stemme finds the sheer strength to project this vast role over such an enormous sound I do not know, and she is on stage for pretty much the entire 90 minutes of this one act opera. Brava…. Bravissima! It was under the direction of Antonio Pappano, the darling of Royal Opera audiences, soon to be departing for the LSO. So, not too far away thank goodness.
I was intrigued at the age restriction placed on it. Suitable for children 12+? I would have put it at 18! There was no restriction on Hansel & Gretel!
And what of Faggots at the Southbank? Our friend Joy Smith, a harpist of note and poly-instrumentalist was in it and invited us along. Based on Larry Kramer’s 1978 novel of the same name, we were not sure what to make of this piece finely executed by a talented and clearly committed ensemble. It’s themes in the frame of a musical drama-comedy seemed to us curiously quaint and out-of-date, with Woke and gender orientation squashed into a theme that was once purely gay. Homosexuals reclaiming Faggots. I am not sure it quite knew what it was trying to say but enjoyable nonetheless.
NEW ZEALAND
Brother David’s death a year ago put an end to our visit then to New Zealand to visit Brother Michael and the nieces (all advancing in age on every front!) – so we have revived plans and arrived here yesterday for three weeks; then Australia for two and directly on to SA after that, returning at the end of March. Our families are in such a diaspora. Two months away from the cold, grey mudflats of Essex can’t be a bad thing.
Onward and upward my dearios, in this dangerous and sad world.
Baroness Estée Lauder-Blackwell of Lower Chedworth RIP
Over sixteen years ago my Cousin Rufus heard scritchings and scratchings in the ceiling cavity above his head in his office in Ho Chi Minh City – Saigon to you and me.
He moved to Indonesia many years ago following his immense talent in SFX where he has worked at the cutting edge of digital special effects in the film industry and deployed drone technology with stunning and beautiful effect, forming his Company RUFUS.STUDIO to platform his formidable talent.
When Cousin Rufus was a little boy I remember his great love of all things animal. Age has not diminished his care for the defenceless creatures of the world so when he heard the scritchings and scratchings above his head in his Saigon office, he immediately investigated and found a tiny, tiny hatchling, a teeny-weeny baby Indian Mynah apparently abandoned by its parents who were either irresponsible or had met their fate in the deadly skies of Saigon………………whatever.
The first person the squidge of hatchling saw in its tiny short life having stepped out of its egg, was my Cousin Rufus and, common to a lot of birds and fowls, ducks and geese, it assumed he was her parent and latched onto him forever.
I say ‘her’ but of course at that stage no-one had sexed ‘it’ though it turned out to be a ‘her’ in due course and her pronoun safe in this brave new world of gender assignment!
Her beautiful eyes gave her the name Estée Lauder and she has grown in love and in loyalty for her father who is My Cousin Rufus.
Estée has travelled the world. Cousin Rufus was mocked by his co-workers for his persistence in rearing this tiny, new responsibility: she would not last the day; she could not be force fed with a dropper, she confounded the cynics and grew into a formidable presence in her Dad’s life.
She is the only Mynah I have ever heard of that has migrated by jet as she was whisked to and from the humidity of Vietnam and Indonesia to the damp chills of Gloucestershire and to other destinations besides.
For sixteen years!
Incredible.
What a character. Her bond with Rufus meant that she did not see herself as a bird but as human; no matter how long Rufus was apart from her, she would always welcome him back with hysterical adoration, recognising him the instant he appeared at the door of her home in Lower Chedworth.
And she disdained other birds. Cats feared her. Dogs were easily mastered. Her door was never shut and she did not escape or even want to escape into the foreign skies of England.
Now Estée, beloved of the whole family of Blackwells, Keith-Roachs, Cartwrights – and many others besides – has passed from us into Mynah Heaven.
So sad.
With permission from Cousin Rufus I would like to publish his
Eulogy for Baroness Estée Lauder-Blackwell of Lower Chedworth
RIP Estée Lauder.
You tiny little massive legend.
My beautiful little Myna Bird I rescued as a tiny, featherless chick,
And hand reared in Malaysia.
I couldn’t possibly say goodbye to you, so brought you back to join the Blackwell Family.
An epic character weathering 16 winters in the Cotswolds,
A part of the a world no Malaysian Myna bird has known but you.
Estee: you lived the most incredibly vibrant life,
Surrounded by cats, dogs and other animals,
Yet somehow you always came to no harm.
You escaped more times than we can remember,
Your cage fell from a tree, setting you free,
And you turned up at the neighbour’s,
Yet somehow survived to live a full, utterly unique life.
We will miss your amazing repertoire;
But most of all we will miss your call, “Wicked! Wicked!”
But now, in the words of Monty Python, you are deceased, you are no more, you are an “ex-parrot”, you have rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible.
As we bury you in this, your favourite patch of the garden,
You will forever be pushing up the daisies.
Fare thee well you tiny magnificent creature.
We all love you and will remember you forever.
Bravo, Cousin Rufus, Bravo!
(Vimeo kindly provided by Cousin Wendy Keith-Roach)
Once more I am at the beck and call of HRH Charlotte, Dowager Duchess of Kensington Olympia DCMG + Garter. Her only staff through these chilly times while her personal secretariat suns herself in Cape Town – until Christmas! No doubt needing a long rest from the demands of Royal Duty.
Since my last appointment here, I am afraid her ladyship’s interpersonal skills have declined and rather like the late, great Garbo seems to need to be alone much more!
Friends. Greetings. It’s been a while……
It’s difficult to know what to say in these dark times.
Perhaps silence would be best? The crisis in the Middle East dominates everything at the moment. Since my last post when none of this had happened -though of course the indications, historically, were all there – the world has changed.
On the 7th October Hamas made its beastly attack on Israel.
So much has been said, written and opined. Modern media makes everyone know best, know what they want to say, know-all.
It is almost obscene as the bandwagon of views parades across our devices in all shapes and forms – and it’s oppressive too.
Only one thing is sure: there is no agreement anywhere; no meeting of minds; no inspired leadership; not a shred of tolerance; no largesse; compassion is not the name of the game and ordinary people – as always –are the bloody victims in the macro/micro-geopolitical games played by leaders cashing in on the fears that have arisen, usually from the lies that are told them by men and women who should know better.
Tell the lie – manipulate the fear.
This video is horrendous but unsurprising. I never disbelieved the Israelis on this.
A lawyer Friend has written, and I repeat it because I think the same way:
“If Zionism is a militant form of Judaism, then at the end of the day Islam may think it is under threat but in truth the only challenges it faces are internal sects competing with each other – as they have done for millennia. I ask you to look at the Millet System by which the The Sublime Porte governed the fractious sects his huge empire encompassed.
Israel on the other hand rightly or wrongly is under threat. Their struggle is existential. Islam’s is most certainly not. One may choose to examine the historical reasons for that but whatever the root causes may be (I take these back to before the Crusades) the fact remains that Israel faces extinction at the hands of its neighbours. And at the end of the day you cannot escape the fact that Hamas began the fight. They had to know that the Israelis were not going to take this lying down, so the question arises : just what were they hoping to achieve? They had to have predicted the dreadful and inevitable civilian casualties so whatever political aims they had in mind those had to have been significant in order to justify the cost. The Middle East induces a deep sense of doom and gloom. It is interesting how the Ukraine has ceased to be the main talking point. A nasty and uncomfortable thought emerges for me : did Putin have a hand in setting Hamas off as part of his Cold War offensive by focusing Western attention away from the Ukraine? I would not put that past him. Also he may wish to drain American resources funding more warfare, making it easier for his old buddy Donald “the Orange One” Trump, to withdraw America from foreign adventures (assuming he gets to being in a position to do so).”
My Friend Callum added, “….Hamas patently has little interest in the wellbeing of the citizens of Gaza. They are intent only on the destruction of Israel. The Instagram piece speaks for itself…….I rest my case.”
Those tunnels are a disgrace to humanity.
At the time of writing the first group of hostages are being exchanged – but war will continue.
I say no more.
On the 7th October, too, our friend and neighbour, the Auteur Terence Davies died suddenly after a short illness. He was in mid-project with his latest work, a Noël Coward biopic, Firefly. I have included a short piece here by Nick Newman who turned out to be the last person to interview Terence. I should also add that the James Dowling Nick refers to is also one of our neighbours and very much part of the special family of friends that inhabit our village on The Green.
Terence was an exceptionally complex man inhabited by many demons. One look at all his films show just how personal his work was. Despite the many years on and off that beset Terence in his search for funding, backing for his work, the notorious processes of film production, he remained utterly true to his personal vision and would never deviate from the truths he perceived.
On location here with Cynthia Nixon in A Quiet Passion
He refused to compromise this integrity during the lean times; he would not direct other people’s scripts; he would not undertake the lucrative possibilities in commercial-making, advertising; nor would he suffer the slightest interference with his work. This could often lead to much tension on set and in the production offices among actors and producers alike. There could be tearful tantrums.
With Gillian Anderson on the set of The House of Mirth
But he was a gentle and loyal friend; much loved on The Green where often talk of the problems of film production were far away and a mischievous humour prevailed. “Oh….the Minx…..” he would often say. This could cover a lot of things! Tony was his literary agent and I worked with him professionally once in his radio adaption of Virginia Woolf’s The Waves:
With Janet Suzman as the Narrator, Myself as Bernard, Geraldine James as Susan, Anna Massey as Rhoda, Peter Guinness as Neville, Jane Lapotaire as Jinny and Don Warrington as Louis. Broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2007.
If you have a spare two hours, Friends, do click on the link!
We had known Terence for a long time and we loved him and shall miss him.
Adieu, dear Friend.
We have very suddenly been to South Africa for two weeks; an unplanned event to see close family and friends in Pietermaritzburg – or “Hilton actually!” – Durban and Cape Town.
We found the KwaZulu-Natal midlands looking wonderful in an advanced southern hemisphere Spring.
It was an intensely personal visit, some friends and family are troubled by illness and it was a precious time to be there with them.
Benvie and the Azaleas
We shared the loveliness of the Midlands at the spectacular Benvie Garden founded by John Geekie from Dundee, Scotland who settled in Pietermaritzburg in 1860. Among the farms he collected was Nooitedacht where he created an arboretum importing sapling and seedling stock from around the world through Howdens & Co in Inverness. The nursery still exists today.
Benvie Garden is still maintained by the Geekie family and the estate is open to the public. We were in time for the Azaleas – just – and enjoyed a perfect walk there in complete solitude.
Abundant rains have kept the Midlands looking wonderfully green and fresh; the dams are full – though some would say too much rain and at the wrong time.
Winter rainfall in KZN is not usual. The quirky weather of the world continues – as we all know.
Midmar Dam
One special, rather overcast and rainy Sunday afternoon was spent at the Hilton College Chamberlain Music Centre where Christopher Duigan treated us to some spectacular pyrotechnic playing in a recital of works by Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin and Mozart. We met afterwards. He is a Pietermaritzburg man and manages a busy career from “Sleepy Hollow” that made my eyes water.
It turned out he knew one of the loves of my life, the pianist Melanie Horne who died tragically young at 43 at the height of her powers in 1998.
Christopher told me of Melanie’s
talented son Albert whom I met a long time ago when he was just eleven years old and who has now been chorus master and conductor at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden since 2014.
Melanie plays Variations on a Nursery Tune, Op. 25 “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star ” by Ernst von Dohnányi . A very mischievous piece with an unlikely beginning. Have a listen!
Thanks Christopher. A great recital. Bravo Bravo all.
To Cape Town for a brief few days visiting friends Ross & Charles who wined & dined us lavishly at Marina Da Gama before a fine long walk out along the vlei; staying with Damon Galgut and Riyaz & Tobassum in Greenpoint.
Such a poignant visit.
Friends Jane R-F, Liz & Adrian B welcoming as ever and a noisy lunch with Sarah C. at Den Anker – in perfect weather too.
But no visit to South Africa these days is without its adventures: on the morning we left Cape Town the car
was burgled and yet another cell phone bit the dust! Our insurance company grows impatient with disbelief!
That was on our way to brunch with Helen B. who arrived in Cape Town the day before we left. We went to see her newly refurbed flat. And now I am looking after her London home – and Charlotte too, of course.
I’m not quite sure why Ludwig Minkus’ Don Quixote is called that; there’s a slim story about a barber called Basilio and his high-spirited love Kitri. There are matadors and street dancers, tradesmen, serving girls and beggars, and a visionary Queen of the Dryads. Then there’s Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, and his sidekick Sancho Panza stealing chickens and any resemblance to Cervantes’s novel is entirely accidental!
Carlos Acosta choreographed this version which was originally by Petipa in 1869 and much revised by Alexander Gorsky thirty years later; but the music is luscious, the dancing sublime and bewildered or not we came away with joy in our hearts.
Not much theatre this autumn though. I refused to see the new House of Bernarda Elba. Tony went off to the National Theatre with Friend Margz to see it (he is very partial to Harriet Walter!) and, as I feared came back in despair.
Why does everything these days have to be “re-imagined”? Why bother to bend the classics to your own idea? We’ve seen a lot of these sorts of plays in recent years and I am afraid they leave me increasingly unmoved and unimpressed – not to mention rather out-of-pocket! So it was with this version of Lorca’s classic, and the reason why I refused to spend exorbitant funds on it.
One asks the question why would a consummate and extremely intelligent actor like Harriet Walter agree to be in a version like this. She surely needs neither the fame nor the money – she already has both in spades – I imagine?
If you want to say something yourself, write it anew! Don’t bend the classics. It simply doesn’t work. Speaking of bending, if you have not read my description of The Ring we recently visited in Bayreuth, look:
“Sublime music and singing but there was no Gold, no Ring; the Rhine was a large, private swimming pool presided over by the Rhine Maidens whose charges were not gold but young children. It is one of these children that Alberich kidnaps and who is in turn stolen by Wotan and handed in payment to Fasolt and Fafner, the giants and architect-builders of Valhalla who are not giants and arrive in a Range Rover. I could go on but you get the drift.”
The Child is the Ring. I mean……..I ask you?
I didn’t last the course of Lyonesse either, I’m afraid and left Tony behind at the interval. It was a muddle of ideas and I was not well! The play didn’t help. So I left. Lily James hopelessly miscast – please stick to the likes of Downton Abbey – I didn’t believe that she was an upcoming film producer at all. Kristin Scott-Thomas always pleases but
as I say, the play was a muddle and had I stayed on this would apparently have been confirmed! One critic said, “Lyonesse feels trapped between a crowd-pleasing, celebrity-tastic comedy with feminist undertones and a much bleaker answer to that. Both sections
are effective in their way, but as a whole it’s disjointed.”
Movies? Quite a few. We are at last getting back into the habit and it is much better than streaming. Covid gave us bad habits!
Anatomy of a Fall impressed us both. In fact I saw it twice. No spoilers Friends! It is more than a courtroom drama murder mystery; much more. The anatomy of the multi-layered dynamics of a marriage; everything is shiveringly ambiguous and Sandra Hüller’s as, yes, Sandra, has to be one of the greatest film performances I have seen – in three languages! An actor who can perform in three languages. Fluently. A testament too to the brilliance of Justine Triet and Arthur Harari’s screenplay.
I didn’t go much for Todd Hayne’s May December : based on a true story, a strange, confounding mix that didn’t really enlighten.
All lovely to look at and with some interesting performances but the notion that an actor can move in and study someone as complex and confused as Gracie just left me cold.
It’s had mixed reviews.
And then Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. It reminded me of a publishing friend who told me that Nadine Gordimer reached a point in her writing career where her editors
quailed to give advice or even attempted to edit! So they let things go. This film is far too long and has the same whiff about it. Did the studio simply quail to tell Scorsese to cut, cut, cut, I wonder? There are loose ends as the hours go by. But having said that the true story – and it is epic – of the greedy Osage County murders in 1920’s Oklahoma is truly horrific and this film was riveting. Both Leonardo Di Caprio and Robert De Niro give brilliant performances, as does Lily Gladstone. It hardly seems credible that these events actually took place. It is a large and impressive canvas filmed almost as a Western.
Napoleon felt like a popcorn movie. Beautifully shot, glorious battle actions, though bearing little truth, on a vast screen, lending itself to Ridley Scott’s epic canvas, to real events.
But Joaquin Phoenix was far too tall, far too old and, poor fellow, far two-dimensional. Or at least the script was.
Where was the politics? Where were his reforms of the legal system, the land system, the honours system, the civil service? Where was there any indication that he was much more than a tyrant? That he was trying to protect the benefits of the Revolution from the Ancien Régimes hell bent on restoring the old ways? That these regimes were openly hostile to France.
The fact is that whether he won or lost, after Napoleon Europe was never the same.
So, yes, I enjoyed the movie for what it was, a shimmering love affair with Josephine and an obsession with the tactics of battle.
But Austerlitz did not end on an iced over lake at all, nor did cannonballs smash that ice and sink the Allied cavalry! But it looked good.
Now….Maestro ! I am in ecstasies! If you do nothing else try and see this in a good cinema; hurry because it’s a Netflix production and I think may soon be streaming. I went with Friend Jane B. to the Renoir in Bloomsbury where they have brilliant sound and projection facilities. I was blown away. We both were. Bradley Cooper, director, actor and writer of the whole shebang, prosthetic nose and all, along, equally, with Carey Mulligan as Lennie and Felicia produce a moving, complex, passionate double-act that does great justice to the life of this iconic man.
There is one particular scene which finished us both off when Lennie conducts part of Mahler’s 2nd, “Resurrection”, Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra, filmed in Ely Cathedral. Exuberant doesn’t cover the energy and musical commitment.
Oh joy! Oh rapture! The hairs on my arms……etc etc. Try it Friends and take some Kleenex.
And what of Saltburn? I thought I was being original in describing this highly entertaining film as sub-Brideshead Revisited meets The Talented Mr. Ripley but seeing the reviews, everybody has thought of it!
Well….it is; but no spoilers other than to say I was completely fooled by it and did not see the twisty ending at all. Barry Keoghan’s Oliver Quick shows us a great new talent on the block.
Quite a special evening actually because I went with grandson Tyger who is at Imperial at present and round the corner from Kensington Olympia, the home of HRH Charlotteet al , and afterwards he introduced me to Sushi which believe it or not in my 71 years I have never before experienced! Just wish there had been a conveyor belt! Not a great picture of you Tyges and everyone must know that you are supremely good looking and not as narrow as this strange photo! Don’t understand the distort.
This was the first course
Loved it! Thanks Tyger!
Two visits to the Festival Hall!
Look after a Duchess in London and you get to enjoy a lot of ‘kultcha’. David Butlin, Friend Loïs’, nephew is here from the Cape and we enjoyed an afternoon with the Philharmonia with works by Claude Debussy (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune), Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, Canadian James Ehnes playing and on top form, and Prokofiev’s 6th Symphony created shortly after the end of World War 2.
Here he is with his “Marsick” Stradivarius.
The programme notes said it was later banned but this is not true, though Prokofiev along with many Soviet artists fell foul of the looney-tune guidelines for artistic expression: “…too avante-garde and not aligned with the ideology of socialist realism……”
I ask you….? We thought the afternoon sublime.
A week later and I went again, this time with our Tarry Tours Leader and dear Friend Richard, for an evening with the London Philharmonic Orchestra who were playing Tchaikovsky again though this time, his Symphony No. 1 in the first half, and then a miscellany of songs sung by Angela Gheorghiu who came on stage with a flourish in billowing gowns and an ample embonpoint to delight her many fans who welcomed her rapturously. There were two outfits during her recital!
She has great stage presence though we felt was somewhat underpowered in some of the songs. It’s a huge auditorium and she was not miked (naturally), so it was difficult to hear her. She was completely drowned out in The Godfather’s Love Theme, one of her four encores and her rendition of Granada(really for a tenor) incensed the Spanish family sitting in front of us who booed and shouted at the end, “Sing it properly. No this is not a good choice for you….” A moment of high tension in row NN with other audience members perplexed by their disapproval!
Her most popular encore without a shadow of a doubt, was O mio babbino caro. Which you can see here taken, illegally by an audience member.
I should say that we were plagued by people around us thrusting their cameras rudely into the air, filming against the wishes of nearly everybody and generally pissing us off! Sorry for the language but hell’s-teeth they are so insensitive and annoying.
Here is an official one:
And just for fun, here is nine year old Amira Willighagen’s rendition in 2013:
Amira Willighagen, Amsterdam 2013.
Just come from The Kiln where the unlikely named Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) is bursting with surprises. It is such a sweet treat: Salad Days meets Home Alone 2. It’s a British musical by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan fresh, funny, ironic, inventive and moving. Cleverly staged with a playful set by Soutra Gilmour with an inner and outer revolve piled with suitcases that themselves are pop-up story books in the action; a two-hander with Dujonna Gift (apt that) and Sam Tutty who are perfect foils for each other. Such a lovely afternoon at The Kiln – matinees for seniors: £20 a pop. Great stuff.
Gift & Tutty at a ‘pop-up book’ Chinese eaterie.
Last year and this, incredibly, son and daughter Zac & Julie turned 50! Our celebrations only took place – jointly – at the end of October: a weekend at the Ingham Swan, ‘restaurant with rooms’, in Norfolk.
Sea Palling Beach
They have a brilliant chef there, Daniel Smith, and his menus – we had four meals there altogether including breakfasts – are uncomplicated but well beyond the gastro-pub level, attested by the Michelin Guide.
It turned out to be one of the highlights of our celebratory weekend along with the walks along sandy beaches and visits to both Felbrigg Hall & Sheringham Park Gardens and Blickling Hall and Estate nearby; not far from Cromer. The weather held, intermittently enough, but we were glad not to have been in the area earlier that week when low-lying Norfolk was badly inundated.
Sea Palling Beach, Ingham.
Water, water everywhere; many roads closed. It is not easy to forget that parts of Norfolk are below sea-level and protected by canals and dykes which the Dutch taught us how to build in the 17th Century. Through to the 18th Century Norwich was the second city of England; a busy cultural capital, wealthy and heavily settled by those, including Dutch and Huguenots escaping religious persecution and even émigrés from the French Revolution. Flemish and Hanseatic architecture is everywhere to be seen. Very flat, Norfolk but handsome!
Blickling Hall Estate
At Blickling HallBlickling Estate GardensBlicklingFelbrigg
Dutch Fair, Great Yarmouth
Have you had enough, Friends? Probably! Thanks for getting this far.
I just wanted to add two more quick recommendations though. At the Tate Modern: Capturing the Moment – A Journey through Painting and Photography was extremely worth a visit and at the recently re-furbed National Portrait Gallery, David Hockney’s miraculous Drawing from Life consumes time deliciously.
To you all, Dear Friends we wish you a Happy Christmas
Tarry Tours have come to Iceland. Richard got a Home Exchange in Akureyri, the second largest town in Iceland after Reykjavik, in the north of the island, at the top of the Eyjafjörður fjord.
We came hoping to glimpse the Aurora Borealis but so far have been visited by impenetrable rain clouds, mist and drear.
No Northern Lights yet – if at all.
We are here for ten days and keep our fingers crossed.
The Tarry Tour Fellowship of Four has now, over the years, covered upward of 100,000 miles. Mostly we have
been lucky in our adventures but you cannot win them all and the weather forecast indicates we shall lose this one!
Richard, Tony & I flew from Stansted with Christoph joining us from Berlin.
We squashed into a Dacia Duster at Keflavik Airport and drove for two hours, skirting Reykjavik to Borgarnes on the fjord the town it is named after, putting up at the small Hotel Hafnarfjall for the night – overlooking the Sound across the causeway towards the town.
Hotel Hafnarfjall Borganes
Spectacular landscapes here. Vast volcanic upthrusts, lava fields, waterfalls and rivers softened by green, cultivated fields dotted with cows, sheep and horses. A treeless bleakness reminding us of the Hebrides and the Highlands of Scotland. Beautiful in their rugged grandeur. Lonely. Isolated.
Such a small population too – only 372,520 – it’s difficult to see how such a small tax base could sustain what appears to be an excellent standard of living. Taxes are high and it is expensive, it’s true. They have one enormous advantage though: an inexhaustible supply of geothermal heat and power, generating by far the largest amount of electricity per capita in the world. None of it fossil fuel.
Haukadalur Geothermal Park
This enables the production of round 800,000 tonnes of Aluminium each year from several smelting works which, along with fishing, tourism and farming seems to pay the national bills. Vast glasshouse farming produces 45% of the vegetables and fruit consumed locally, from – yes – bananas to lettuces, potatoes to greens of every kind.
The financial sector we don’t mention. The failure of three banks dabbling in sub-prime debt in 2008 and the inability of the government banks to save them almost did for the country.
But they seem to have bounced back nicely.
From Borganes it is almost a four hour drive to Akureyri along the N1 via Hvammstangi and Blöndós. Don’t ask me to pronounce these names! I keep thinking of ScandiNoir and sinister conspiracy theories, Trolls and Elves.
Strict speed limits here, 30kmph in town, 50kmph on the outskirts and only 90kmph on open roads.
Traffic is non-existent but speed cameras are not!
Akureyri sits at the top of the Eyjafjörður Fjord, the longest in Iceland, smaller than Colchester with a population round 18,000 yet it has a University, a variety of schools, museums, a Botanical Garden, an interesting cathedral, shops, cafes and restaurants. Small but surprising. But not cheap! Wow – it has to be one of the most expensive places we have ever visited!
Tourism is high on the list: there is a cruise terminal and an airport; fishing is important.
We put up in Richard’s Home Exchange in pretty-much the centre of town and near – vitally – the local Netto Supermarket in a nearby shopping mall which supplied us with all we needed for the self-catering we rapidly realised would be vital if budgets were not to be broken in a matter of hours!
The weather so far? Not encouraging. Overcast, raining with outbreaks of sunshine when mists lifted. A lovely gentle light. The purples and russets and pale greens of the bracken and heather giving the landscape a gentle bleakness.
No trees, though there is a programme of planting wherever they may take hold – we are after all a few miles from the Arctic Circle – the old lava fields rocky waves of moss and lichen given an almost luminous green glow in the sometime sunshine.
It is very, very beautiful.
On one day we drove 100 Kms to the glorious thermal spa at Mývatn to soak in the sulphurous warm waters there – the Jarðböðin við Mývatn – these are part of the craters, steaming rocks and boiling mud pools surrounding Lake Mývatn which itself abuts the spectacular lava field of Dummuborgir a few clicks south of the nature baths.
Getting to the lake from Akureyri takes just over an hour through a beautiful landscape of shallow valleys, fast flowing rivers and an obligatory stop at Goðafoss, an impressive waterfall (though there are many of these) carving its way through the basalt.
Back in Akureyri we investigated various museums, the botanical gardens and the Lutheran Akureyrarkirkja or The Church of Akureyri built in 1940 with an interesting story surrounding its stained glass windows: generations of Icelandic children have been taught the windows came from Coventry Cathedral before it was ruined in World War II; that as the war began
in 1939, the people from Coventry decided to remove the windows, store them safely and that they chose a farm in the countryside not far away; cheap glass windows temporarily replaced them but these were destroyed in the famous 1940 bombing raid.
Then, mysteriously, pictures from three of the windows got separated and ended up in an antique shop in London for sale where an Icelandic antique dealer found them and shipped them to his shop in Reykjavík.
Long story short – they exactly fitted the measurements of the new windows behind the altarpiece and one of them was used behind the altar – the one in the middle.
BUT – wait for it – all change in 1914 when research made for a BBC program called The Great Glass Mystery revealed the tale to be a myth.
Historian Dr Jonathan Foyle met up with Canon Kenyon Wright, who spent 11 years as a minister at Coventry Cathedral. Dr Foyle came to the conclusion that the Icelandic windows were not actually from Coventry at all but from another church somewhere in London; that no Victorian windows were saved or stolen.
The documentary shows the glass was simply destroyed in the raids. A myth may have been scotched, but the friendship between Coventry and Akureyri continues.
A sweet story.
Goðafoss – Richard and Christoff being two of the Tarry Tour FellowshipRichard at Mývatn
On another day we drove over the causeway, down the eastern flank of the fjord to Laufás and Grenvik, tiny communities in this vast landscape. At Laufás we saw examples of turf and timber dwellings underlining the harsh conditions that the very earliest settlers suffered to survive, and those not so long ago. These dated from 1866, .
GrenvikTurf homes at Laufás
Wood is scarce and much was made of the vast quantities of driftwood that fetched up all over the island, mainly from Siberia. There is still and amazing amount of it being washed up today. But here is an interesting thing, apparently drift wood may look attractive for a lot of things but it is no good for home fires: because it is saturated by salt water and contains a high chlorine content, giving off chemicals and toxins which, apart from being poisonous, also wreck the stove! But you can build houses, furniture and boats from it.
There are other interesting things in Akureyri: Jón Sveinsson – Catholic Pastor, affectionately called Nonni – was a writer of children’s books that were immensely popular and have been translated into forty languages including English. The little home he lived in is there for inspection and next to the little church he guided, in the grounds where a handsome Deco building houses the Cultural Museum.
Jón Sveinsson – Catholic Pastor – “Nonni”Nonni’s House
We made a diversion to Westfjords on our way back to Reykjavik, basing our two night stay in Hólmavík, a small fishing town by the large Steingrímsfjördur, and easy access to some of the most beautiful and, certainly, least visited corners of Iceland. It is dramatic, rugged, nearly on the Arctic Circle, only narrowly connected to the rest of the country, historically difficult to access. Tiny communities. Isolated farms, unpaved roads – and cold. In summer it never gets much above 10ºC and the heating is permanently in the ‘on’ position, in the car and in the buildings!
Rugged is the word…….Hornvikdir
Hólmavík is small, quaint and feels like a frontier. The Riis Café, where we ate out twice, rates as one of the most expensive restaurants we have eaten in. Excellent lamb but at about £100 per head – on the first night – we only shared pizzas on the second!
The other attraction was The Icelandic Sorcery Museum: Strandir was the setting for a witch-hunting craze in the 17th century. Due to its isolation, the locals have throughout the centuries preserved stories of strange beings, ghosts and everyday witchcraft. Hólmavík boasts two centres of research related to folklore and the history of Icelandic sorcery; the well-known Museum of Sorcery and Magic, and the University of Iceland’s Folklore Research Institute.
The creepiest thing there were Nábrók (necropants, literally “corpse britches”) – a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead human, which are believed in Icelandic witchcraft to be capable of producing an endless supply of money.
It is highly unlikely these pants ever existed outside of folklore, says Wikipedia, and I believe them!
And The Northern Lights?
A drive out into the darkness from Hólmavík rewarded us with a very faint luminescent weave of light, oh so disappointing and not at all what we hoped for!
Absolutely nothing like this!
Apropos this visit, at the airport, Richard picked up a book called The Almost Nearly Perfect People by Michael Booth, “Behind the Myth of the Scandanavian Utopia”, a sometimes amusing, certainly interesting account of the Scandinavian cultures. I have been enjoying it hugely.
Other books also worth visiting: The Plot, one-time associate editor and columnist at The Guardian, Madeleine Bunting’s moving account of her stormy relationship with her father, the sculptor, John Bunting – “A Biography of My Father’s English Acre” – I have enjoyed.
Antony Beevor’s latest : Russia – Revolution & Civil War 1917-1921 I have found riveting especially in the light of the latest autocratic visitation by Vladimir Putin. Poor Russia seems never to have anything other than cruel autocracies of one sort or another. Pity for the world too!
I’m afraid on the movie front we have both been unimpressed by Oppenheimer, such a missed opportunity for an excellent moral debate, and Barbie, all pink and silly and old fashioned. Far better is the 1980 BBC Sam Waterston series available on the iPlayer.
Don’t laugh but I have also enjoyed for completely different reasons Mission Impossible and Indiana Jones. ‘Nuff said!
And then we stumbled on the wonderful Sidney Poitier, Oprah Winfrey documentary which led us to revisiting two of his famous movies which it turned out Tony had never seen: Lilies of the Field and In The Heat of the Night. Good stuff there.
Try and see Maigret the 2022 Gérard Depardieu version. Though it only got a three star review from Wendy Ide in the Guardian “…..of all the many adaptations of Georges Simenon’s detective series, for both big and small screens, it’s hard to imagine many were as achingly world-weary as this latest.
Directed by Patrice Leconte and starring an uncharacteristically glum and muted Gérard Depardieu as the eponymous policeman, the film creaks along on busted knees and broken spirits.Even the richly textured period details of 1950s Paris have a slightly moth-eaten quality. It’s dour, certainly, but the sense of bone-tired exhaustion and crushed hope that linger like pipe smoke works rather effectively for this particular case: the murder of a sad, lonely girl in a rented designer dress……”
I prefer the late departed and lamented Michael Gambon in the role myself but still enjoyed the new version though the subtitles were utterly appalling and seem to have been generated by some sort of AI device, incapable of anything other than a non-colloquial, direct translation. Often meaningless.
Of couch-potato territory we have both much enjoyed the shocking disclosures of the Sackler Family’s promotion of opioids in Painkillers.
And I have really enjoyed catch up with infinite episodes of the Scandi-detective series Beck, how I missed it first time round I do not know.
Also on the Scandi-detective-noir front DNA has had me going. Diabolical entertainment!
Did you all see The Woman in the Wall? The BBC’s latest mini-series about the horrors of the nuns of Ireland and what they did to the “unwanted” children removed from their unmarried mothers?
“……A suspense-laden, psychological thriller set in the fictional village of Kilkinure in Ireland, this BBC One show tells the story of Lorna Brady, a chronic sleepwalker who wakes up one morning to find a dead body in her house. She has no idea who the woman is, or even of her own culpability…..”
Gripping and shocking. Brilliant performance from Ruth Wilson.
So it was off to the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Little Bromley, in the rain, to see their latest offering Robin Hood.
And last but not least. We have a wonderful, talented small-scale theatre company based here in Suffolk, though they tour all, called This Is My Theatre who pride themselves on creating work for all spaces from historic buildings and churches to purpose built theatres and open-air venues.
So it was off to the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Little Bromley, in the rain, to see their latest offering Robin Hood.
Gratifying to see how many young were mingled with the “cotton-tops”!