Category: The Green Diary

THE RING * ABBA * LA CAGE AUX FOLLES * RIGOLETTO * PIAF * DEAR ENGLAND * PATRIOTS * DR SEMMELWEISS*

We have waited sixteen years to get into Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuther Festspiele and finally, in March this year, we succeeded.

The other opera that’s impossible to get into is Parsifal, also included in this year’s festival along with Tannhäuser but we thought The Ring, coming in round fifteen hours over four nights was challenge enough!

Before I go another line further, do any of you remember, years ago a Comedienne called Anna Russell? She had an hysterically funny sketch explaining to a New York audience the story of The Ring.

Have a chuckle, it’s brilliant:

Lohengrin and, right, Die Meistersinger

works” too affected by Italian opera to be of enough significance, so never shown.

Having prepped ourselves on books, DVDs and CDs liberally provided by Friend John Core, an avid Wagnerite, we set off to Germany via the Harwich ferry to Hoek-of-Holland, driving a 1,288 mile round trip to Bayreuth with a stop each way, there and back, in Kassel and Clervaux (Luxembourg).

I have never experienced such rain – even in Africa. While Italy and Greece burnt and boiled, Germany was engulfed in torrents of rain, hail, thunder and lightening and autumnal temperatures, pretty much the entire ten days we were there. In fact my ageing Merc, Martita is her name – sprung a leak in her roof and we had to wear waterproof clothing some of the way!

The message from Schwarz’s production, as Goodyear saw it, can basically be summarised as follows: 

Society has been led by greedy men and their families, who have raised their children to be focused on useless, material things.

Over several generations, we have become more and more damaged and false in our priorities, as inherited traumas, poor upbringing and a lack of proper education pile on top of one another.

In the present, we – the well-off opera-going middle class – may consider ourselves relatively enlightened. But in reality, we are like the Gibichungs, content as a group to throw our support behind political leaders ever more craven and self-interested, and then swan off to watch the Ring at Bayreuth. We are fiddling while Rome burns, almost literally.

Consequently, nothing serious is being done about climate change. If we continue like this, there will be no “Liebeserlösung”. And those who led us there, will, like Gunther and Hagen in this staging, never be held to account.

So, take a look in the mirror.

Well all that may be true but I am afraid it didn’t work for us at all and fitted neither the Libretto nor the Score.

But, Friends, many of whom may by now be switched off, since Wagner is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, the overarching music and the singing performances were sublime and worth all the effort.

The most beautiful moment for us was the love duet between Siegmund and Sieglinde in Walküre. The hairs on my arms are still tingling.

Pottenstein

On the way back we stopped for ice creams at Pottenstein with its Medieval castle dominating the village. You can just see it in the photograph here.

Bayreuth and its surrounding countryside was ruled over by a series of Margraves, sort of Dukes or Princelings I suppose. Plenipotentiaries of the Prussian Hohenzollerns and latterly the Bavarian Wittelsbachs, Ludwig II’s family – Wagner’s great patron.

There was a Baroque flowering under the extraordinarily talented Margravine Wilhelmine (older sister  to Frederick the Great of Prussia), the wife of Margrave Friedrich, whose influence in matters architectural, artistic and cultural was immense during their rule, 1735-1763.

They left a brilliant, enlightened heritage and we visited The Hermitage just outside the city, the whimsical Felsspalte or Rock Garden of Sanspareil, the Neue Palais in Bayreuth attached to a park that stretches up to Wahnfried, Wagner’s residence and burial place; the Garden Museum of the Fantaisie Palace was another elegant visit.

Clervaux, Luxembourg

collection which can be seen from the central staircase and landings. The upper floors consist of exhibitions spaces and the atrium gallery, which has a glass roof, contains collections from old buildings. The construction is built with sustainability in mind. I know I over-use this word but the result is astonishing and the depot is where the entire Boijmans collection is currently housed.

Across the road from the depot is the Chabot Museum containing a collection including works from the 1920s, from the Schortemeijer collection plus 26  very disturbing works from the Second World War.

The white villa was designed and built  in 1938 for the industrialist C. H. Kraaijeveld in the style of the New Objectivity, a 1920s German movement.

A very beautiful construction we thought, full of light and space.

It housed the Gestapo and SS Offices during the German Occupation and from it you can see the vast new modern city landscape of central Rotterdam which was completely flattened by air raids. We like the wonderful, brave modern architecture that has arisen from the ashes.

And so to the Ferry at Hoek for the night crossing to Harwich. A great ten days we felt.

And of course……..ABBA!

Yes, dear Friends, I am afraid I am an unreformed, unrepentant ABBAfan, an ABBA-junkie!

This “Voyage” is quite simply jaw-dropping and combines live music with virtual reality to create a unique, immersive show with Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid appearing as digitally-mastered Avatars – or ABBAtars – in this purpose-built space using cutting edge technology and mind-boggling lighting effects.

It is true to say that you could not see the ‘joins’ in the effects, as it were, they were so real and, at the end the four stars appeared as they are today making the whole project even more impressive.

They sang all their famous songs and some new ones besides and the audience – all ages, from 16 to 76 – were in seventh heaven.

I have been an ABBAfan ever since.

***********

But we have never not turned up for a show at all, unless by an accident of omission; tickets drawing pinned to a corkboard concealed behind a recipe!

Until The Third Man – A Musical. To our horror Friends Lois and Helen, tennis fanatics, realised that our booking at that clashed with the Wimbledon Women’s’ Finals. In the meantime Tony and I had read so-so reviews and in fact could not understand why we had elected to go to this show in the first place.

Big mistake. Except that the reviews, actually, were okay: mediocre, 2** and 3 *** ; enough in fact to make the finals match between Markéta Vondroušová and Ons Jabour a more alluring drama than the one at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

And so it proved.

Dear England:

There have been other visits to the theatre: while Tony was off to Ibiza for a 50^th Anniversary school reunion – (in his hippy years, in the 70s, he taught English and History in Ibiza at the Morna Valley School for English ex-patriot children) – I was staying with Friend Helen and managed to fit in two visits to the theatre, both excellent, seeing Dear England a new play by James Graham, directed by Rupert Goold with Joseph Fiennes playing the controversial football manager Gareth Southgate and Patriots with Tom Hollander; a transfer from the Almeida Theatre to the West End, written by Peter Morgan and also directed by Rupert Goold – a busy man! He is everywhere.

Big Mistake! But a riveting evening in the theatre.

When I was 15 I won a prize at Speech Day for Reading & Recitation; these prizes were always books and, that year, one of my books was a Compendium of Famous Lives in History. I read all the lives but the one that most stuck in my mind was the story of the life of Ignaz Semmelweiss, the Hungarian physician and scientist who pioneered antiseptic procedures.

He proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctor/surgeons’ wards had three times the mortality of midwives’ wards.

He was eventually tricked into a lunatic asylum where he was so badly beaten by orderlies that he died of his wounds which, ironically, became infected with sepsis.

He was only 47 years old and his work remained unrecognized for decades by the Establishment, until the advent of Louis Pasteur who confirmed his “germ theory”, and Joseph Lister who enforced his practices with great success.

A great story for a play which one of our National Treasures, Mark Rylance, thought too.  He collaborated with writer Stephen Brown and Tom Morris, the Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre.

I couldn’t wait to see it but – oh dear, what a terrible disappointment.

It made me impatient to leave though one stuck it out of course; interesting that there were a lot of departures at the interval and the usual standing ovation now de rigueur, irritatingly, for all performances of every description everywhere, where not forthcoming here. A couple in front of us stood up and then looked round at our non-compliance, frowned in disbelief then looked sheepish when they realised how lonely they were!

I want to close with An Audience with Édith Piaf because this was special. I am also a great fan of the great French Chanteuse whose life was a huge drama, filled with passion and sadness. The tiny little sparrow.

I was for forty years a reader of audio books and on the panel of the Royal National Institute for the Blind’s Talking Book Service, variously in Great Portland Street and now at Camden Lock.

Anyway Dex finally left, moved to Brighton and went into the travel industry, was stationed in Tunisia for years,  came back, has always dealt with people and is a keen singer/entertainer in his spare time.

Pure pastiche but in the best taste.

FRIENDS – IT’S BEEN A LONG ONE! THANKS FOR STAYING WITH ME AND FOR ALL YOUR WONDERFUL COMMENTS AND MESSAGES.

NO EXAMS THIS TIME!

PEDRO

 

We once saw an excellent production at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin of Three Sisters. Memorable because it was the first time either of us had ever seen a professional actor going on with a book.

Three Sisters at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin – 2008.

I mention this because last week we went to see a revival of Somerset Maugham’s 1921 romantic melodrama The Circle which, despite being rather clunky, had some excellent dialogue, amusing moments and some surprises. It survives somehow, and the Richmond Orange Tree Theatre gave it a good run for its money.

Jane Asher did not appear as Lady Catherine Champion-Cheney as she was ill; another actor, wearing the startling wig and costume of Lady Catherine went on with an enormous A4-size script, her part highlighted in pink.

Maugham is supposed to be the missing link between Wilde and Coward – and so it would seem. It was dated but nonetheless fascinating and hats-off to Miranda Foster (Barry Foster’s daughter I believe) for bravely standing in for Jane Asher at a few hours notice.

Tarry Tours – Madeira Mayflower Festival – a 16 kilometre hike along Levada do Norte

It’s been a while since I last posted.  The Easter holidays soon segued into a rainy, cold spring encouraging a quick ten-day visit with Tarry Tours to Madeira where the sun shone, the flower festival, rather underwhelming, paraded on unlikely floats but the walking was good, the Levadas abundant with new growth and colour-colour everywhere – trees and flowers. This is the first time we’d ventured there in Spring, it has always been in Winter; lots of people and we shall probably revert the next time. Mah deah – the Heat! The Crowds!

“Where the play comes alive is in Gielgud’s story and Gatiss’s performance. He sounds like Gielgud but captures something beyond imitation: the pained spirit of a great actor grappling with the ageing process – the old guard, reluctantly, giving way to the new. Gielgud admits to his envy of Burton and shows his insecurity as a director. We see the fear his homosexuality brings in an era when it was criminalised; a hotel room conversation with a sex worker carries great, subtle power. While Gielgud’s inner complications are slowly but searingly explored, much of what surrounds him feels emotionally sterile,” writes Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, “There is a real sense of remove too as we watch actors playing actors who, in turn, are playing characters in Hamlet, or unpicking the meanings of the play, scene by scene. Ultimately, this play-about-the-play leaves us wishing we had been there to see Burton in the real thing.”

We went round afterwards to see Allan Corduner and Johnny Flynn whose Burton impressed us, though how you play such towering personalities as these without sinking into impersonation I do not know. Impossible.

Great to see Allan back in voice and on stage again, playing Hume Cronyn.

Disabled people have sex. Meandering exploration of what dating is like for disabled people is the reality celebrated in Park Theatre’s latest show, Animal, an exceptional piece of theatre that is searingly insightful, soulfully intimate and utterly hilarious.  

ultimately, it is a zippy, poignant play about wanking, though the difficulties encountered by handicapped people are poignant indeed.

Donatello at the V & A, a superb display of some of the sculptor’s works. Great influencer of course, of the sculptors to come in the guise of Michelangelo among others – given that Donatello sculpted the first male nudes since the Roman era, his supposed sexuality, that he was gay, adds prurience to his story.  Apparently his lover ran off to Ferrara which so enraged Donatello that he asked permission from Cosimo de Medici, his Patron, to be allowed to pursue him there and to murder him in an act of passionate revenge!

This was at a time when sodomy or any related homosexual act could lead to hellfire at the stake; but Cosimo was indulgent in these matters and allowed his charge to run off to Ferrara where all ended happily and in much laughter.

This must surely be a topic worthy of a Netflix production! But it upped the ante of our visit to the V&A.

Next?

There have been other books too which I have enjoyed. I am now a Kindle devotee. It’s true I do miss leafing the pages and riffling backwards and forwards when I need to be reminded…but you soon get used to that with Kindle and it certainly helps reduce the weight on travel expeditions!

Another kind of Carr, Philip Kerr this time: a return to Bernie Gunther, this time in Argentina in a thrilling story of Peronista intrigue and vile politics, A Quiet Flame, just when you thought it was safe to venture to Latin America. Good airline lounge reading as is David McCloskey’s Damascus Station.

I am a great fan of Sebastian Faulks too. Where My Heart Used To Beat I discovered the other day though it was published in about 1915 I think. Another beautiful story “……love, loss and passion…..”!

And before I move to Vermeer, I must say that I have been privileged to read Tony’s latest work, finished literally last week, now warm in his agent’s hands, hot out of the Hewlett-Packard, If It’s Tuesday a whimsical, magical-reality story which you will have to wait to experience. I’m not giving a thing away here. Just to say I enjoyed it hugely. Fingers crossed for publication.

VERMEER

A glitch on the Rijksmuseum booking site enabled us to get three tickets for this spectacular exhibition in Amsterdam. The ferry to Hoek is at the end of our local line here, minutes from Mistley. We often use it to get to the Continent and set off a few weekends-ago, sailing on a day crossing and getting to Amsterdam in the early evening for a three night stay during which we walked the crowded city, visited the ever-shocking Anne Frank story at her erstwhile home on the Prinsengracht in its recently refurbished state.

The Vermeer Exhibition was simply breath-taking. 28 out of 37 known paintings, dramatically hung at the Rijksmuseum, leaving lots of space for the crowds: a little larger than we would have liked, I am afraid.

back almost out of existence. No-one seemed to know why though apparently in future seasons they will grow back.

The Mauritshuis, Den Haag.

I have never seen so many bicycles in one place in my life!

Back in Amsterdam then – our visit there was short but sweet and we were able to see friends, dining at the lovely Café Schiller Restaurant on Rembrandtplein on one evening and the oldest Cantonese Restaurant in A’dam on Oudezijds Voorburgwal, on another. Great food and good company; but it is a young person’s city we have concluded! I have never seen so many bicycles, you take your life into your hands when you cross the road! It’s also a victim of its fame and success. 18 million visitors last year and the city can barely cope with the masses and the mess; nevertheless it remains one of my favourite places. We could learn a lot from the Dutch!

Back in Blighty much else to amuse and shock not least the Westminster scene which seems to play like a TV Sit-com these days.

Will Boris… or won’t he…?  Will Rishi….or not? What will Reece-Moggie do?

And could one care less? We are used to being a laughing stock. A rant-in-my-pant is narrowly avoided!

Mincemeat, a Second World War British deception operation. It premiered at Southwark Playhouse as a small scale piece but its success moved it into the Westend; it has only five actors who interchange roles and sexes so that it never matters who is who, who is what and what is what – if you see what I mean. They were all extraordinarily talented and in the end we thought it a clever piece of theatre – even thought-provoking.

And don’t forget our dear Jazz Mentors, Richard & Cathie G. who took us to Jazz at Lauderdale House where  John Etheridge riffed with his friends, entertaining us lavishly with their incomparable talents. A great evening.

Simon Butteriss excellent as King Gama & The Narrator

Two  evenings of Gilbert & Sullivan from the sublime to the ridiculous: Princess Ida at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, an enchanting platform production by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under the brilliant baton of John Wilson.

Not a G&S that I know well but certainly one of their best.

Friends – the end is in sight. That is if anyone has ploughed this Bloggy field to its conclusion: but I wanted to mention the ballet rehearsals we attended at the Opera House. Not usually my thing at all as I am not all that keen on modern ballet. I prefer the grand set and frocks of the great classics – not to mention their romantic music; but this was a triple bill –  Untitled, 2023, a brand new ballet by Wayne McGregor; it fascinated with bleak landscapes “invoking infinity” and with music written by the Icelandic composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, itself conjuring the bleak spaces of that island. I don’t know her music at all but thought it beautifully evocative.

Using the five movements of Bernstein’s Serenade, Corybantic Games, conceived by Christopher Wheeldon, didn’t really float my boat but the last piece in the bill, Anastasia Act III most certainly did, ‘old hat’  though some may think it. The madness of Anna Anderson whose delusions really serve to underline the tragic awfulness of the murderous demise of the Romanovs in 1918.

Lets lighten up!

I know lots of you didn’t like it but I thought the New Hockney Exhibition at Lightroom in Kings Cross was spectacular. I know this so-called immersive art trend is the thing these days. This one is described as  “visually astonishing, alive with sound and rich in new perspectives”. Well – it is all that – and more; but do you know what: I sat in that four-storey hall for an hour watching the colours and shapes unfolding and it filled me with joy and peace – and not a little optimism. It had real love in it and I cared not a jot for any of the niceties of clever-arse criticism. Those of you who can – get on down there and have a look. It is fabulous.

Thanks for being here, dear Friends. Enjoy the summer now that the Solstice is upon us.

Pedro of the Green

With Friend Jane Balfour at Kings Cross for the Hockney.

March/April 2023

Back in London for a few days. Some excellent theatre, a book launch, Hot off the Griddle – the Alice Neel exhibition at the Barbican and “putting on the Ritz”, a thank you to Tarry Tours for our wonderful Colombian adventure.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge at The National kicked us off to a good start. Originally staged in Sheffield, in 2019, aimed at transferring to The National, it fell victim to Covid but was resurrected last year and now fits perfectly on the Olivier stage.

by its inhabitants ingeniously choreographed as they pass each other across 60 years. We see how the nation’s political gyrations leave their marks on the lives of three families and the city, from 1960 to Thatcherism, Brexit and beyond. The estate chugs inexorably towards gentrification until it becomes the Grade II listed trophy building of today.

student housing while around a quarter of the units in the development will be social housing.

It is funny, and moving and do you know that feeling when an author so absolutely says what you think and feel about so much but you simply don’t have the words, the articulacy to express them? Well, that’s what Sara’s beautiful book does for me.

We are friends and concomitantly spent a week recently in Mompox, one of our stops in Colombia, where I noticed, and I hope Sara does not mind my saying this, that note book and pencil were always to hand, not a camera, (am I betraying a modus operandi?!) and I longed to have a peek at how she does it. On page 15 in the Introduction to the book there is a photograph of a shelf-full of the notebooks on which she based her book. She is brilliant. All her reviews have been too. How lovely. I wish I could travel like that.

Talking of books the other one that I have read that impressed me was Joshua Cohen’s The Natanyahus for which he won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize.

It’s a great read. Go for it!

What can we say about Guys & Dolls?

Everything!

At The Bridge Theatre and wowing London, we adored this promenading  production with its gutsy enthusiasm and the immersive effects of the staging in a radically re-arranged theatre. Nicholas Hytner directing.

The last time I saw Guys & Dolls was in 1982 when Ian Charleson and Bob Hoskins, both now, sadly, no longer with us, were brilliant as Sky Masterson and Nathan Detroit. Julia McKenzie and Julie Covington were Miss Adelaide and Sarah Brown. It was directed and choreographed by Richard Eyre and David Toguri, FORTY-ONE YEARS AGO! I can hardly believe it.

It was also a brilliant show which transferred into the West End with my friend Lynn Webster playing Sarah Brown where I saw it again.

Here at The Bridge Theatre Daniel Mays and Andrew Richardson were stupendous too as Nathan and Sky. Like Charleson and Hoskins, neither Mays nor Richardson have much experience in musical theatre at all. In fact for Richardson this was his debut on the London stage, making his performance the more amazing.

The Dutch actor Celinde Schoenmaker as Sarah Brown was perfect but Marisha Wallace’s Adelaide stole the evening for me. Wow.

Some of the reviews said they thought the re-arranged staging cramped the choreography. I agree. Richard Eyre’s production back in 1982 on the Olivier stage had space for David Toguri’s routines and the iconic Sit Down You Are Rocking The Boat was better there than at The Bridge. It was far more opened out and could breath better.

Nicholas Hytner’s production hints at the possibility that Sky might just be gay and “creates a thrilling spark of subversion but is an isolated moment, gone in a flash, as if a scene from a far more daring reconception” (The Guardian)

Yes!

Tony and I did not promenade and don’t think we missed anything by not doing so.

It was a great evening.

And what about Philip Glass’s Akhnaten?

processes, exploring small amounts of musical material used with extensive repetition.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed minimalism.”

But the story is interesting: Pharaoh Amenhotep IV ascends the throne in the sacred robes and double crown of Upper & Lower Egypt, symbolising power over all. In an act of hubris that will result in chaos and tragedy, he becomes Akhnaten and forces monotheism and the worship of the Sun’s disc on pantheism being the old religion, the old order.

The ENO’s production was beautiful to look at but I came away thinking of Opera as an Art Installation.

did not begin to gain critical praise for her work until the 1960s. She was considered by some as “one of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century”.

She was a member of the American Communist Party and came to the interest of the FBI and HUAC at one point. This may also have explained why it took a while for her to get recognition – she was already in her 70s when that happened.

We both loved her paintings – for us a new discovery: always a good thing.

Meanwhile back in Mistley a trip to the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich proved amusing. Given the effect of Covid, Inflation & Brexit on the Arts, for a long while the erstwhile Repertory Theatres have been creating cooperative productions to stretch shrinking funds. Ramps-on-the-Moon is one such and we went off to see Village Idiot written by new writer on the block, Samson Hawkins. Presented by Theatre Royal Stratford East, Nottingham Playhouse and Ramps on the Moon, a collaborative partnership of six National Portfolio Organisation theatres led by the New Wolsey, funded by the Arts Council, and including Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Leeds Playhouse, and Sheffield Theatres.

We weren’t quite sure what to make of it.

The play is set in the Northamptonshire village of Syresham where compulsory purchase orders threaten to tear apart a 1000-year-old settlement to make way for HS2.

Like Jerusalem, Village Idiot has serious questions to ask about identity, nostalgia and modernity.

subsides and the HS2 bulldozers move in, you are left wondering who the village idiot really is.

We enjoyed it.

We have never seen Prokofiev’s Cinderella although of course have heard the music before – so not at all well known to us really. The Royal Ballet’s new production at Covent Garden is sumptuous to say the least and looks good with sets and costumes newly designed by Tom Pye and Alexandra Byrne though some might say a little overdone perhaps.

Russia was in the throes of a fight for survival during the Nazi invasion and there is a darkness in the music that I felt belonged more to tragedy than the fairy tale qualities of this magical story. Romeo & Juliet remains by far my favourite though I am very happy listening to all his music.

An interesting evening and possibly one of the last appearances of the ENO here in London before its forced removal to Manchester.

It won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival last year and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film Feature this. A host of other awards have been heaped on it. With justification.

Thank you Friend Mary Mouse for recommending this – heads ups are always welcome, dear Friends.

Francis in A Little Life (see below) – and doesn’t.

The performances in Girl boggle the mind. How does Dhont do it and, indeed the actors too?

‘shifting narrative perspectives’ very confusing. Who is talking about whom and what, for goodness sake, happened to Jude that should cause such trauma, pain, self-harming and eventual suicide?

All this has now been put on stage at the Harold Pinter Theatre where £195 bought me the last seat in the stalls at a Saturday matinee.

It was three hours and forty minutes of gut wrenching  blood-soaked brutality and misery directed by Ivo van Hove, originally in Dutch with sur-titles, now in London in English with James Norton as Jude and  Luke Thompson as Willem. 

There is no question that the staging and performances here are brilliant and brave; the play is true to the book, obviously mightily compressed, but neither Yanagihara’s writing nor Norton performance convey Jude’s inner life and though others round about were weeping and covering their eyes, I did not and remained unmoved by what seemed to me a ‘naïve and psychologically incurious narrative of abuse’ aimed at manipulating my sensibilities.

Like the book it has had mixed reviews but it borders on pornographic and there was a taste of guilt in my mouth at the voyeuristic implications of the play.

These four friends are all supposed to be genius Ivy-Leaguers ; but their responses to the difficulties and horrors of their lives would not indicate that they had any sense at all!

I remain, I am afraid, very unconvinced by either the book or the play; and now I understand there is to be a TV series?

Strewth!

Jonathan Coe Tweeted: “Such a joyous 2 hours of theatre watching The Unfriend last night. Brilliantly funny writing from Stephen Moffat, expert direction by Mark Gatiss, comic performances par excellence from Reece Shearsmith, Frances Barber & Michael Simpkins who practically steals the show …”

It’s a comedy, which follows Reece Shearsmith’s Peter and his wife Debbie, Amanda Abbington, an uptight middle-class couple who go on a cruise and meet Frances Barber’s Elsa, a kooky old American who invites herself to come and stay with them for a week. I cannot begin to describe the situations that arise.

It was hilarious and I am sure may well return to the West End in a longer run sometime in the future.

I hope so.

Thanks Friends. Hope to see you soon.

Pedro.

PS No exams this time, it’s the Easter Holidays.

Cartagena – St. Barths – Miami : The Last Leg

The way to St. Barths from Cartagena is an adventure in itself. One in which you pray that any of the dominoes will not fall; for if they do, you are up the proverbial creek with no paddle and knocking vainly on the doors of the travel insurance companies.

So, this is how it worked, and because there are no services of any kind to either the Dutch or the French Antilles, these were our dominoes. From Cartagena we flew to Miami; there we put up at an hotel for one night, more-or-less at the end of the runway. The following morning American Airlines flew us to the island of Sint Maarten where we spent another night in the Holland House Beach Hotel a hundred yards from the little ferry terminal for St. Barths whence we wheeled our katunda next day for the 45 minute transfer to Gustavia.

Our friend Laura has the most beautiful home on top of the hill above Colombier, at the north-west corner of the island,  with a 360° view. It is a paradise. For a whole, glorious week she introduced us to her special places, the beaches, the restaurants and bars, the shops, markets and even the little Anglican Church where on Tuesday evenings in candlelit quiet (busy nightlife outside notwithstanding), Taizé music takes place; and Friends Penny and Nick H. were there to share. They flew from Guadeloupe into the terrifying little airport at Gustavia – which confirmed us in our ferry decision as it is the ninth most dangerous and difficult airport on the planet!

We felt extremely pampered and spoiled. What a privilege to share even for a moment such a place.

We know it well! The airport I mean. It is a half completed, extremely noisy echo chamber reverberating with incomprehensible announcements by officials with no microphone technique whatsoever. It was a nightmare.

In all my years of travel this has never happened to me. I once spent an uncomfortable and cold night in a snowed in Geneva airport; there have been flights that were cancelled and we were immediately found alternatives  – but not this. Of course you read about these sort of things and I often wonder what they would do if there were no empty hotel rooms to accommodate such a large group of people on the spur of the moment.

30 hours late we finally took off into the night, a day wasted, champing at the bit in Immigration, luggage astray but not lost and the most terrifying experience yet, the Yellow Cab ride to Miami Beach conducted by an affable driver from Mumbai. The ancient Ford Crown Victoria (1992, V8, 4.1 litres) on soft, squeaky springs and shot shocks, vroomed us in bursts well over the speed limit, our driver hunched over the wheel frantically steering and peering past other speedsters while we clung for dear life to our broken straps in breathless expectation of imminent death. I was reminded of Bob Newhart’s Bus Driver Training skit:

“That’s it…….accelerator, brake………accelerator, brake……..you got it…!”

But we did finally get to our hotel, the Albion on the corner of James and Lincoln so the last domino did not fall though the gap narrowed and the stay shortened.

We have never been to Miami before; only passed through it several times on our way to other places; to the home of that mouse, with the grandchildren; to Key West; cruises leave from here of course; and along the panhandle through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana to New Orleans – but never Miami proper.

We thought it was fabulous. We stayed in Miami Beach which has the largest collection of Art-Deco buildings on earth, beautifully restored and saved from the wreckers who nearly swept the whole thing away for a Riviera of high rise hotels and apartment blocks. Much is pedestrianised and all of it pristine. There was a Miami Beach Walking Tour which Tony enjoyed. There are 109 listed Deco buildings in Miami Beach alone; many more than the impressive collections in Tel Aviv, Prague or Napier New Zealand. Interesting that originally they were put up in that style because it was cheap;  many were only three storeys high, needing no elevators, obviating extra expense. 

We were struck too, by Miami City, also immaculate.

The Pèrez Art Museum was an excellent recommendation from Friend Helen B. who knows and loves the city, the building an artwork on its own, featuring two special exhibitions alongside the permanent collection of modern art, we found fascinating: Leandro Erlich’s Liminal and Yayoi Kusama’s Love is Calling.

“Liminal has been conceived as a sequence of spaces that one might encounter in the course of an ordinary day: elevator, subway, classroom, hair salon, sidewalk, swimming pool, laundry room – even a window through which the neighbour’s windows can be seen. Each space is fabricated to serve as a precise simulation of the place it references so that the encounter with Erlich’s illusion tends to occur as a surprise on the viewer’s part that such an ordinary spot should conceal such extraordinary qualities.”

 “Love is Calling is the largest and most immersive and kaleidoscopic of the artist’s Infinity Mirror Rooms. Representing the culmination of her artistic achievements, it exemplifies the breadth of her visual vocabulary – from the signature polka dots and soft sculptures to brilliant colours, the spoken word, and, most importantly, endless reflections and the illusion of space. The darkened, mirrored room is illuminated by inflatable, tentacle-like forms – covered in the artist’s characteristic polka dots- that extend from the floor to the ceiling, gradually changing colours. As visitors walk through the installation, a sound recording of Kusama reciting a love poem in Japanese plays continuously. Written by the artist, the poem’s title translates to Residing in the Castle of Shed Tears. Exploring enduring themes including life and death, the poem poignantly expresses Kusama’s hope to spread a universal message of love through her art.

Interestingly (and shockingly too) the Weiss family were the first Jews to live in Miami. No Jews were allowed in Florida until 1797.  They had a torrid time of it. By 1915 there were only 55 Jews there. They were prohibited to live north of 5^th Street in Miami beach, nor could anyone of colour, Hispanic or otherwise. Only in 1949 were these restrictive barriers removed though in reality many of the Art Deco buildings were designed, built and operated by Jews and it was a Jew who launched the campaign that established, restored and preserved the Art Deco District.

They just couldn’t live there.

Tony went on his walking tour on our last morning while I packed up, had a last swim in the hotel pool, a last bask in the warmth before returning to the hypothermic depths of Essex!

-mated ePassport Gates working perfectly for once.  We both said we thought this incredible efficiency couldn’t last – after all, we were back home in strike-torn, post-Covid, stagflated, understaffed, underpaid Britain!

BEST WISHES AS ALWAYS, DEAR FRIENDS – PEDRO

I kid you not, dear friends.

My friend Ross Devenish sent me this quote from  Travels with a Donkey in the Cèvennes :

“Why anyone should desire to go to Cheylard or to Luc is more than my inventing spirit can embrace. For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go; I travel for travel’s sake.    And to write about it afterwards, if only the public will be so condescending as to read. But the great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of life a little more nearly; to get down off this feather bed of civilisation, and to find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.”

Robert Louis  Stevenson

“I’m uncertain about leaving the ‘feather bed’ but the sense that you just want to go, rings a bell with me,” Ross added! 

I agree.

I’m not sure either about the ‘cutting flints’ though I did succeed in dropping and shattering very impressively, a bottle of Canada Dry Tonic Water in the supermercado yesterday and promptly created a bloodbath when glass got into my foot! 

Mesitas del Colegio

Richard came to live and work in Colombia back in the late 1980s. He taught maths to the sons and daughters of wealthy Colombians, in English, at the Colegio Anglo Colombiano, considered one of the elite schools.

Richard met José Mosquera during these times. They became friends. José now has a beautiful home, to which he and his partner Hans-Peter Balle come every English winter and which is generously shared with friends and which is also home to sister Doris and brother Carlos and three beautiful dogs, Shakira, Zeuss and Max. It’s name is Finca Pradera. We were made very welcome.

For five wonderful days we were royally treated. José is a superb cook and introduced us to many traditional dishes and others besides. The garden is rich in every conceivable fruit you can imagine and the Jugos flowed. This climate in these latitudes, on this soil just produces an endless variety of flowers, fruits, tubers, maize and beans. Chickens peck about and there are fresh eggs every day. It is genuinely a little Garden of Eden.

There is a pool too, who could ask for more, and we were shown around the plateau, taken into Mesitas and across the valley to La Mesa. Baudilio came from Bogotá a day early to fetch us and especially to drive us all on a massive circuit to Anapoima and La Mesa, swooping down the valley and up the other side on the return to Finca Pradera.

Thank you friends for making us so welcome in your beautiful home. We especially hope that Shakira’s injured leg has by now healed and we look forward to seeing you in Cartagena – and London too.

Baudilio drove us to Bogotá on our last day, for our flight to Cartagena where we picked up our rental for the next stage:

Santa cruz de Mompós (or the disease-sounding Mompox as it is called!)

The road to Mompox from Cartagena started with promise but soon reminded us of the San Agustín to Popayán odyssey. To be fair, this time the distance was 329 kms though we cheated slightly by stopping the night at Turbaco, itself only a 25 km drive from the airport where we had picked up our rental, a Renault Duster into which we managed, just, to squeeze us and all our luggage. From Turbaco the next morning it took us nearly six hours to this enigmatic, magical town in the middle of the vast marshlands through which the Rio Magdalena, now miles wide, presses. It is hot and humid. 35°C on average but feeling like 40°C. Barely a breeze.

So, I shudder to think what is flowing past us here in Santa Cruz de Mompós though all the locals swim in it, all the fish we are eating comes out of it, all the thousands of Brahman cattle graze in, on and around it, all the local produce, the yuca, maize, plantains and the rest comes out of it;  it teams with iguana, howler monkeys, electric eels – apparently lethal – and the most fantastic bird life of every size and colour. Further upstream  Pablo Escobar’s Hippopotami are thriving after their release from his private zoo though we’ve not glimpsed them! 

The first thing that crossed my mind was how on earth did those Conquistadores manage to navigate up this vast river with its myriads of channels in their 16th Century ships, the current against them, barely a favouring breeze and then establish a foothold on the banks where there is nothing except excruciating humidity, flat as far as  you can see, and mud, mud glorious mud. They had armour can you believe and were dressed in Spanish clothing of the day; they’d come a long way; two-thirds were wiped out by diseases and yet here is the proof of their persistence – Mompox, this little gem of a town built of brick in the Spanish Colonial Baroque style, whitewashed walls, terracotta roof tiles, wrought iron grills over glassless windows for it is far too hot to close anything here. The slightest breeze is a gift.

The Plaza Santa Barbára next to our hotel, not much changed and here is Simón Bolívar looking a little like David Suchet

“Does the clock stand at ten—to-three?
And is there air-conditioning for tea?”

“Sorry, air-conditioning’s off dear!”

And it was! There was a power cut and our rooms at the San Rafael Hotel were like ovens. Thank heavens at 5pm everything whirred into action though it took several hours before caliente became frio.

Outside the San Rafael Hotel on the Albarrada. Best walks are early in the morning when it is cooler. A small ferry for a few cents can take you across the river where the farms and small holdings hint at a simpler life. Tony is with Sara Wheeler.

Our hotel is right on the river front in a beautiful line of old palaces, homes and warehouses that were part of this entrepôt all those years ago. Now making up a collection of boutique hotels, bars and restaurants, the rebuilding and rapid renovation is reviving the fortunes of this faded town. 

No Evinrudes, Yamahas or suchlike for him he declared in Spanish rather enigmatically.

We returned to the hotel as the sun set over the river in that fast way it always does in the tropics.

The Cemeterio Municipal and the Casa de la Cultura, an original building.

Our friend, Travel Writer Sara Wheeler is here and we have enjoyed her company very much. Her book Travels in a Thin Country  all about Chile, is one of my favourites. She recommended Wade Davis’ Magdalena: River of Dreams which we found and downloaded to our Kindles. It looks fascinating and now joins a queue. She and Tony visited the extraordinary forgotten theatre of Mompox, the once grand Teatro Colonial, built in 1942 and abandoned more than twenty years ago, its roof partially collapsed and its faded grandeur now home to several, squatting local families. It’s a totally bizarre, crazy looking place, with home comforts lodged in between the old balconies.

We spent almost an entire week here. At first we thought that too long but in fact once we had been lulled into the slow pace induced by – and got a little more used to – the heat and humidity it turned out to be a good choice. We loved it here.

Time to pack up the car and drive back to Cartagena de Indias for our last week here.

I have been thinking so much about my dear, late brother David. He and I stopped off here on our way through the Panama Canal, on the Celebrity Infinity out of Miami, fetching up in San Diego, just three years ago. With his compromised health he was unable to disembark in Cartagena and decided to conserve all his strength for the main event – the Canal. I have been reading my diary. I went ashore on my own:

“Cartagena is a beautiful city, at least the tiny part I saw. Of course you are given very few hours to explore these ports we visit; but enough in this case to encourage another, longer visit at some other time. The city was of vital importance to the Spanish political and economic control of its colonies here. It is one of the oldest. It is dominated by an impressive fortress, San Felipe Barajas, and the Old Town is surrounded by a ten kilometre wall. The natural harbour is beautiful. It is made up of a maze of islands and large bays and inlets. Beyond the Old Town is the New which is reminiscent of Miami. There are wonderful beaches and it is a tourist paradise! Well, I only had time really for a good wander through the Old Town and the Barrios, after the obligatory visit to the Fort. No time even for the Convent occupying the highest point over the city; a look in at the creepy Inquisition Museum on what is now S. Bolivár Square – a sort of early Lubyanka you might say, except it was religious commissars who undertook the purgings. Time too for some churches and the impressive Monesterio de Pedro Claver, redeemer of slaves and now a saint. Before long we had to return to the ship in a torrential tropical downpour. It was hot and humid and the air conditioning was a welcome relief; but I definitely want to come back here.”

And I am back here, with Tony this time, for nearly a week. Tarry Tours have put up on the Bocagrande in an AirBnB at Palmetto Beach. One of a forest of shimmering white skyscrapers, we occupy a three bedroom apartment on the 15th floor with spectacular views towards the Centro Histórico; the beach is across the road and there is a swimming pool on the rooftop, floor 38.

We have been keeping up with various museums of course, and also re-visited (for me) the Museo Histórico once the Palacio de la Inquisition and the Santuario de San Pedro Claver whose actions partially off-set the appalling policies of the Catholic Church and its main instrument of terror here, The Inquisition. Don’t get me started.

There is a lot to soak up; a great atmosphere; people are more off-hand here than in the other towns we have visited. It’s a busy tourist entrêpot and for the first time we have encountered the dreaded hawkers who, thankfully, are not as oppressively insistent as their counterparts in other parts of the world, notably Araby and India. It is so difficult to explain that I already have a hat, a T-shirt, fridge magnets – yadda yadda. Endless, cheaply made tchochkes usually in the worst taste and which Christoph calls Schnick-Schnack‘s . Far rather you pointed me in the direction of a good Margherita or Mojitos or a vacant taxi, my good man!

How poncey is that?!

And what about this: my paternal grandmother was Cecily Cartwright née Drake. She claimed descent from one of the many Drake Brothers of whom Francis was the oldest. There were twelve of them. Poor Mrs. Drake had a torrid time of it. This would make Francis Drake a distant uncle but I am not sure how proud to be of this dubious fact bearing in mind the mayhem he caused in the Spanish colonies. He was basically a legalised pirate, slaver and plunderer of note. Forbes puts his wealth in today’s terms at $144,000,000 most of which came from his dubious deeds. He famously sacked and occupied Cartagena in 1586 in The Battle of Cartagena de Indias all in the name of Queen Elizabeth I who was at war with Philip II of Spain. I won’t mention what Drake did in Ireland else I’ll have no friends left.

José and Hans-Peter have flown down from Mesitas for a few days. They took us last night into the throbbing heart of the narrow streets of Getsemani, once murder alley but now far less edgier, where things are very lively, full of young people, and foodstalls, bars, clubs and street performers. Gentrification is on its way – a pressing issue for the district’s remaining citizens.

To-day, 25th February, we fly out of Colombia on the next stage of our journey, to visit our dear friend, Laura T in her island paradise at St. Barthélemy : usually just called St. Barts. Quite difficult to get to from here and entails a flight to Miami, a one night layover, a flight to the Dutch island of St. Maarten – or half of it at any rate – another layover, and finally the ferry to Gustavia. Laura thinks we are nuts but it should be intriguing.

More news from there, dear Friends All, and once again thank you for all your responses. Some of you have done very, very well in the multiple choice exams and seem to have at least enjoyed the pictures!

Pedro.

Popayán

The road to Popayán from San Agustín is an adventure on its own: a gruelling 126 kilometres of mainly dirt road over the mountains, through the impenetrable Parque Nacional Natural Puracé, it took us nearly eight hours to negotiate, with Adrian Cordobá’s brother Carlos at the wheel. Mudslides are endemic here and an already poor road network, hopelessly inadequate for the country’s transport needs, means that often roads can be closed altogether and are in a terrible condition.

Long, one way stops where repair works are being undertaken can mean extending the journey by many hours and it is certainly true that we were able to read books and things at these long waits! The road through the Parque itself is the worst section and the impenetrability of the bush on either side mean that you cannot really see down the vertiginous sides. A good thing perhaps, though we were able to espy the active, Puracé Volcano, after which the park is named, in the distance.

Édgar Negret the Modernist artist, is a native of Popayán; his former home has been turned into a museum exhibiting his work from abstract prints to twisting, layered, painted sculptures. He is everywhere in Colombia, every city seems to have his work. Not entirely my cup of tea but the rest of Tarry Tours with higher brows enjoyed the museum and his work.

Onward dear Friends – to Villa de Leyva from the tiny airport, via Bogotá where you must always go to get anywhere and where the trusty and kind Baudilio was waiting to meet us with his equally trusty VW people carrier and drive us north to this showcase of colonial architecture with its whitewashed houses and cobbled streets.

Confusion over our hotel when we finally arrived in “Vi de Le”! We had to be relocated and there was much humming and hawing with credit cards that wouldn’t work. Baudilio was supposed to drive the four hours back to Bogotá and return three days later to pick us up. He said he couldn’t be bothered and if we needed, he’d drive us to some other sites out of town if we were interested. Turned out to be an excellent idea. “Vi de Le” is beautiful but not very big – it is walked easily and we had plenty of time to see the amazing Museo del Fósil a few miles away where the star of the show is a 120-million-year-old Kronosaurus, a prehistoric marine reptile that has occupied what was once a huge flood plain revealed by the retreating sea. Here and very interestingly displayed, is the country’s largest repository of marine fossils.

Baudilio next drove us on to Santo Ecce Homo Convent. Founded by the Dominicans in 1620 completely constructed from stone-and-adobe and indicating a dedication to their faith and shear perseverance in the face of every odd. Why didn’t they just go back to Iberia and give up their quest I’ll never understand. No gold for them just rewards in an imaginary heaven for reaping the souls of Amerindians. Extraordinary.

And then the most eccentric of all. The Casa Terracotta. A house made out of 400 tons of baked clay designed by architect Octavio Mendoza. Very Gaudi-esque. No straight lines, no right angles and built-in furniture to boot. Tiled floors. An impractical experiment in local raw matériels it took 15 years to make, each small section baked in situ with the architect and his family giving up on actually living in it due to the public interest and perpetual intrusions.

And last but not least, Baudilio took us to the source of all terracotta at Raquira where colourful houses blended with endless artisanal terracotta works and bric-a-brac beyond your wildest imaginings!

Baudilio then transferred us via the Rio Bogotá valley to our next port of call : Mesitas.

But you will have to wait breathlessly with your pens and pencils poised for the next exciting episode in the Tarry Tour Itinerary 2023 which will soon be brought to you by the proud makers of Blog, Blog and Blog a unique company showing all potential travellers the way to fun and frolics.

Tarry Tours have come to Colombia:

Tarry Tours are Richard, Christoph, Tony and myself.

We have been successful travel partners since our first venture to Mexico in 2017.

Since then the four of us have visited Thailand, Laos and Cambodia – Ecuador and Peru – and Madeira – twice. 

Good wintering places.

Richard and I are childhood friends. I was 5 when I met him and he was 7. Our families were staying in an hotel in Kloof, Natal back in 1957; both families had moved there from Cape Town and Johannesburg and were waiting to move into new homes.

Our fathers worked in Durban.

We grew up in what is now KwaZulu-Natal and have remained friends ever since.

He is a Wallace-Tarry and that is why I call our group Tarry Tours. Richard has enabled much of our travel through the Home Exchange Programme, a wonderful way to live in foreign places for nothing and there have been some handy homes in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Oaxaca – both in Mexico, Chiang Mai in Thailand, Quito in Ecuador to name a few.

And now we have come to Colombia.

Christoff speaks lots of languages, in the European way, but not Spanish.

First stop Bogotá:

View from our 13th Floor hotel room.

It’s a grubby city but a laid back and friendly one too. Besides if you visit this country there is no avoiding Bogotá. It is a hub.

We confined ourselves to La Candaleria  and only ventured forth to the northern suburbs where the rich and famous live in the  Zona Rosa, once.

The city backs onto the Cerro de Monserrate, a mountain ridge topped by a church which can be reached by funicular and cable car whence are afforded spectacular views all around.

It is a great setting for this historic city.

La Candelaria centres on the Plaza de Bolívar dominated by the cathedral, the Palace of Justice, the National Capitol and the Palacio Liévano. Much history played out here, some of it bloody. ‘Chequered’ is a good word to describe Colombia’s history. Fraught with civil wars, revolutions, guerrilla movements, drug wars and the actions of Imperial Spain and its surrogate the Catholic Church, it is a complicated one to follow – like the histories of most of Latin America and, indeed, all the Americas north, central and south.

We Europeans certainly have a lot to answer for! 

So we headed for the museums to have a lot of what we think and feel, confirmed.

There is a plethora of museums and galleries and we visited several but were most impressed by the Museo del Oro (Gold Museum) and the Museo Botero, a gallery dedicated to the works of Fernando Botero and his personal collection bequeathed to the nation.

There is a great deal of blood and horror. It is shameful. But the museum is brilliant.

stop now: Miró, de Chirico, Delvaux, Braque, Chagall – nearly finished – Freud, Henry Moore, Klimt, Dégas and Matisse. Phew!

Paintings and sculptures. Many of his own works are homages to certain artists executed in his own particular style. 

The collection is housed in a colonial mansion three blocks up from Plaza Bolívar but there is a modern annexe at the back housing the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República where largely contemporary Colombian art is displayed, ranging, though, from 17th Century religious art through to modern canvases. Another gallery attached houses contemporary, temporary, largely installation art works. Very edgy. I never understand them but still, interesting.

This is one of the best museums I have ever seen and certainly along with gold, the other best choice for us here in Bogotá.

There were other museums including the rather quaint Instituto Cultural León Tolstoi which seemed to be a hangout for aged Communists! Started in 1944 and heavily subsidised by the Soviet Government, it was meant to foster cooperation and cultural exchange but seemed keen to promote pre-revolutionary culture as much as Marxist dogma. We asked if there were still any Communists left in Colombia but received evasive answers. How it has survived the right wing era from 1948 through all the troubles, dictatorships, juntas and the powerful oligarchs is amazing.

Lower than Bogotá and breathing slightly easier.

But – San Agustín:

was happy to supply us with any number of these while admitting that it is a mystery as to how a largely hunter-gatherer community without access to sophisticated tools of any kind were able to lift the enormous stones, often weighing many tons, carry them up from the bottom of the Rio Magdalena gorge whence they originate, deposit them on the required sites, sculpt and shape them and place them on the levelled mesitas in specially created underground caverns – no decent digging implements, no blocks-and-tackle, no written language and no evidence of sedentary farming even, or any sort of economy to back up the endeavour. 

We have been to many archeological sites all over the world, in Peru, in Mexico and Egypt; to Angkor Wat, Petra and Ecuador, Stone Henge and others – menhirs and dolmens propped in peculiar places but never to a site where absolutely nothing is known of either the coming or going of a whole people.

On our last day Adrian, as we liked to call him, moved me much by saying that it was evident that whoever they were, material wealth appeared to mean nothing to them and that the spiritual intention of these sites and their emphasis on a natural balance in the world between nature and man, a knowledge of this balance, was the most important thing of all. Adrian was once part of the business world in Bogotà where he worked successfully for Microsoft but suffered an early crisis, giving up a lot of his material obsessions, returning to a simpler life at this time of environmental crisis. Perhaps, he said, we have something to learn from these tombs and the sculptures in them.

San Agustín. A special place. 

Next time, dear Friends, Popayan, Villa de Leyva and Mesitas. Plus THE ROADS!

No exams this time Friends. There will be three modules before the next tests.

I started the Pedro-on-the-Green blog in 2020 during the height of the pandemic primarily to keep in touch with you my Friends, all over the world.

It has been phenomenal. It means a great deal to me that so many of us remain in touch at a time when great distances and circumstances separate us all.

It would be useless to sweep global affairs under the carpet; to pretend that all is now well in the world, for it is not so. The troubles that confront many, many millions of us are mainly man-made: it is human stupidity and human choice that have the appalling results we experience today. You all know what they are and I won’t have a little rant here about them. It is bad for the blood pressure!

But this is why I persevere with Pedro-on-the-Green :  

To keep in touch. 

It also serves as a useful diary for myself. Are you finding, Friends, that as we move forward to the “sunny uplands” of age, that detail and memory fade a little? 

I get a little frantic when I can’t recall something and when I think of how many years have quicksilvered tantalisingly away – how many mixed metaphors is one allowed?. 

Before Christmas we managed to catch up with friends not seen for a long while and how refreshing and wonderful that has been. I want to mention some of you by name because it has been a special privilege to be back in touch. I hope you won’t mind? I’ll not mention any data – mainly because I have none! 

Joy and David Willers were in London from Wales: thank you for a great visit; and Cathie & Richard Griffin in fine fettle, also from Wales. Food glorious food, “Gin was mother’s milk to us all!” Thank you friends, thank you. Next time it’s our turn to head west which we long to do; to Dolwyddelan and Menai Bridge, with a look-in at Glaslyn, Llanwrthwyl and  Stretton Sugwas (you know who you are!).

Train strikes meant that we had to hang onto the rental instead of returning it at Waverley Station. We drove straight through to Durham Cathedral to meet our guide and comforter, Cathy W. 

Terrible driving conditions. Clear blue skies; icy roads; the sun in the south and dazzling windscreen reflections; gritty slush splashed across glass and, suddenly no wash in the windscreen reservoir; smudged mess and no vision – just as we approached the Queensferry bridge.

Frightening. Couldn’t see a thing. Towering container lorries gushing muck.

We managed to get off the road and find a service station where we discovered the Kia rental had a reservoir about the size of a thimble!  This needed topping up all the way via Durham, Thirsk and York, to London over two whole days while wretched headlights and glaring instrumentation meant night vision was almost nil. In the end we had to put a jumper over the dashboard so that we could see the way! Very poor design. 

I do not exaggerate this when I say it was one of the worst road journeys we have ever had –  and I can assure you we have travelled some!

Cathy guides at the York Minster too so we tailed her to Thirsk for the night and then drove the next day down to York for a very different architectural experience.

To London. In the dark. With poor headlights and muffled instrumentation, handing the car back at Sixt under St. Pancras Station. We think we saw the flash of a speed camera in the icy fog on the Firth of Fourth. Will there be a fine eventually?

A few steps to the Royal Academy for William Kentridge – just in time as it closed the next day. The largest exhibition of his work here to date. billed as “an experimental voyage through the last 40 years of his extraordinary career.” And so it proved. We saw his Thick Time at the Whitechapel Gallery six years ago, an altogether smaller though fascinating exhibition. If I had any criticism of the Royal Academy presentation it is that there was too much! We were overpowered by the film clips, the drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations displayed through twelve rooms and spilling out into public spaces. Eclectic. Overwhelming – but ultimately fascinating, clever and energetic. We took a grandson and his girlfriend to see it and they were impressed. (Nice to see them too. Tyger is at Imperial and Zoë at Bristol. Physics and Medicine.)

The grandchildren all went on about how he distracts you, and guides your thinking, yatta-yatta-yatta. That all may be so but in the end we had a truly wonderful evening in the theatre and came away with light hearts and good feelings. A nice pre-Christmas state of affairs in crisis raddled Britain.

A plethora of dinners and lunches towards Christmas & New Year:

Thanks Gina & Andreas – great lunch at Hereford Road,

And Sue, Dave and Sarah at The Chelsea Arts Club,

Jo & Sacha at No. 12 The Green,

Jenny and Richard at Lawford House ,

Joy, Jorgè and Kate at The Sun in Dedham,

Kathy & Trevor – well met at No. 11 The Green,

The Finks at The Stable by Lawford Hall – the most amazing Bastila, my favourite– and for the movies too!

How wonderful to see you all in this post pandemic year,

Thank you, thank you all.

To all of you, dear Friends, all over the world, I wish you only the best for this New Year 2023. Thank you for keeping in touch. I wish I could embrace you all.

Pedro

There will be multiple-choice questions only in the exams to follow and you will be able to complete all the tests on line! No black pens or pencils required! No discursive essays, parsings  or provings. You will not even have to drop a perpendicular or use your geometry set. There will be no Algorithms!

David died two months ago. 

What can be said?  

Loss is immeasurable. Grief inexplicable. It works in many ways for all of us. The image I still carry in my mind is of that frozen face asleep in a cheap coffin, traces of the mortician’s art mocking my memories.

And look at this: the fate of the ship we would have been on had David lived:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-63605824

It is certain he would not have survived that.

“God works in mysterious ways….” someone said. 

“It is written, then?” asks Auda Abu Tayi in Lawrence of Arabia.

But to the living!

 

On the day, the 4^th November, all the important players went into hair and make-up first and at 4pm sharp the show kicked off; we processed out of the house to take our places overlooking the dais and the woods and fields; bride and groom entered separately at the end, Jacquie coming in last and looking gorgeous.

There were touching moments but for me their promises to each other were very moving – neither of them had any inkling what each would be saying to the other.

There were tears. It was lovely. 

And so to the Reception in the Barn

TO NEW YORK!

How nice to be back in New York. It’s been a while: four years for me and ten for Tony.

Tony had read a review in the TLC of the Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum (almost opposite The Met on Columbus) of “the uncannily original work of a self-taught painter saved from snobbish neglect”. Hirshfield was a Jewish immigrant from a shtetl in Russian-ruled Poland. Escaping the pogroms he came to New York where to cut a long story short he made a fortune in the garment industry using his tailoring and cutting skills to invent boudoir slippers which established his E-Z Walk Manufacturing Co.; but all he ever wanted to do was paint and at 65, after his slipper company went bust, he turned to painting., having never picked up a brush in his life. His auto-didactic talents were looked down on by the contemporary art establishment and he only achieved fame in the last nine years of his life after he was discovered by the wealthy Jewish collector, dealer and curator, Sidney Janis. 

It is a striking collection and a fascinating life. Entrance to the museum, unusually, is free.

The weather in New York was unseasonably warm while we were there. In fact hot. We set off across Central Park to visit all our favourite Klimts and Klees at the Berner Museum only to find it shut and prepping for a new exhibition opening, you’ve got it, the next day!

Serafina, a franchise, was good value too. On Long Island – we visited friend Ira in Bellport – the seafood at Varney’s was great as was Eataly’s on Madison Park under the Flatiron.

We saw three shows:

And then the revival of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man at the Winter Garden, a vast hanger of a place, packed to the ceiling with enthusiastic fans of Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster playing Harold Hill and Marion Paroo. It was a Broadway production at its best, immaculately staged, choreographed and sung; one of those shows you come away from with your heart strings twanging!

So it was back to chilly damp London, and Mistley on the  12^th November where we have been on and off ever since – with a broken boiler here…..and a broken boiler there: Yes! Both addresses have broken boilers.

Last weekend we camped on ice for various dates – seeing friends and visiting some theatres. Can you bear a full report. Read on if you can!

as a self-pitying, unredeemed speculator who frankly elicited not one jot of sympathy from me. 

Ibsen in the 19^th Century where Norwegian Calvinism, prejudices and suppressed emotions work much better. Tony saw Richardson playing it in the 70s and I saw Scofield play JGB in 1996 at the National. Both productions were left in the 19^th Century. Both performances achieved an epic quality absent from this one.

And Grieg was in all of them!

And The Sex Party at The Menier Chocolate Factory? Oh dear, wake me when it’s over! At least, wake me only at the interval because this so-called comedy elicited not one laugh and we sat in embarrassed silence watching a crescendo of  sexual innuendos, clichéd romp-com situations and double entendres, wondering what on earth we were doing there. That is, as I said, until after the interval with the arrival of Lucy, a transitioning male with breasts and a penis who it transpires is shortly to complete surgery and her gender-reassignment. 

At this point the play became extremely interesting and I am glad that we resisted the impulse to leave the theatre at the interval. The tension between the different opinions and prejudices pushed the piece into didacticism of the kind I love, and it is brave of Terry Johnson to take on this subject – or should I say, these subjects since there was a lot flung at us on an uneven trajectory!

Oh Wow, what a contrast. I said I love didactic theatre and here you have it in spades in a brilliant rendering of the famous ABC TV debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley during the 1968 Republican and Democratic Conventions in Miami and Chicago  https://youtu.be/0XGpc8gnc-Q . Playwright James Graham has added another title to his oeuvre well worth visiting and the two contenders,  Zachary Quinto and David Harewood as Vidal and Buckley Jr. were riveting.

Afterwards we visited Sheekey’s, where we have not been in years! Excellent fish and the juiciest oysters; we were amazed to get in at a moment’s notice as London is jumping at the moment; in fact I’ve not see it this busy for years. Everyone wining and dining and looking at the lights and visiting the theatres and clubs; very festive; quite like old times and certainly despite the prevailing terrifying global circumstances of war, famine, inflation and disease.

We couldn’t resist The Nutcracker at Covent Garden with the Royal Ballet. How very many times have we seen this ballet? When I was growing up in Durban the local ballet company put it on at Christmas as Cassa Noisette. I loved it then and I love it now. A pop-up book of perfection; a magical, jewelled music box; a confection of sweet sentiment and all to the timeless tunes Tchaikovsky gave us where to this day the glorious   Sugar Plum pas de deux makes me cry. 

Just beautiful, Friends. Beautiful.

HAVE A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS DEAR FRIENDS, WHEREVER YOU ARE

AND BE PEACEFUL IN THE NEW YEAR

Pedro

Last week on Thursday the 22nd September I was to have met my brother, David, in London. We were to fly to Los Angeles to connect with a Princess cruise across the Pacific to New Zealand to visit our other brother, Michael and his family, not seen for seven years.

This was a journey I would have shared with you, dear Friends, as I always do. It was long in the planning and much anticipated by us both.

But last week on that same day, Brother David died and a new and very sad journey has been undertaken to KwaZulu-Natal instead. He was 65.

Tony and I flew out to Durban last Sunday the 25th coinciding with the arrival of Brother Michael and Janine after a gruelling 38 hour flight from Auckland.

It has been a great shock to us all.

You think that in life you know someone well, especially a brother, but in death you find out how little you really do.

David was a private man; he was a bachelor who, though he wanted so badly to share his life, never found anyone to do so. He was lonely and to a certain extent a recluse and our family shared in wishing him happiness and fulfilment but were saddened that this never happened.

During this horrible week dealing with the bureaucracy of illness and death, we have uncovered some of the life of our brother we never knew. He seemed to have few friends; we agonised over what to do to celebrate his life? Would we have a wake? If so, who would come? His Will indicated the simplest of funerals, no services, no church and no medical prolongations that would lend indignity and pain to what turned out to be a horrible end, gasping for air after a long struggle with emphysema.

He chose cremation and the Funeral Company, Doves, performed this rite, slotting in a “viewing” at 12.30pm last Tuesday the 27th., in the absence of a chapel service.

It was ghastly.

Even accessing the Doves facility on the east side of the Greyville race- and golf-course had a grotesque, Kafkaesque quality. Everything in South Africa is behind bars, electric fences, coded entry pads; nailed down against theft, vandalism, corruption and death. We drew up outside the facility before an iron gate barring entrance to the dedicated car park on the roof. It took a phone-call and a visit to the front desk to get this opened remotely before would could park – the only two cars on site. The gate slid shut, effectively imprisoning us. It was impossible to gain entry to the premises through the small, revolving gate without biometric recognition, a thumb print, and eventually a phone call had to be placed to central office in Johannesburg who in turn alerted the front desk in Durban as to our predicament.

Someone came and let us in to what I can only describe as a broken down, empty factory, reminiscent of SingSing. We were eventually ushered into the “viewing” room, a small, bare, unadorned, scruffy space in corporation colours where David was perched on a plinth in a cheap, deal coffin.

I have never witnessed an open coffin before and I never want to again. I do not know why we agreed this awful procedure. He was ice-cold, not defrosted, the coffin still perspiring. Sister Sally said that at least he looked more peaceful than when she had last seen him struggling for air, ashen faced, thin, exhausted, pipes protruding, and had whispered in her ear, “Please put my shoes on and take me home”.

We were ushered out and returned through the complicated security to our cars and let out through the sliding gate to the humid heat of a dirty Durban street.

Then an extraordinary coincidence occurred. My niece, Caitlin, messaged Michael from New  Zealand. A friend had texted her from Durban to say that she had seen in an Instagram that Tina’s Hotel were arranging a farewell get-together for David that very evening. We knew nothing of this at all and this underlined the disconnect between the various parts in David’s life.

Tina’s is a small hotel in Kloof where David or ‘Doc’ as we have always known him, always came for drinks. It was his watering place. We’d known he went there but had no idea how often, for how many years or how many friends he had there.

We went along to what turned out to be a most moving and revelatory wake. About thirty people, none of whom we knew, attended; the manager of the bar, Rachel, was a sweet person who knew Doc well. She gave a spontaneous eulogy. She explained that for years David would attend at Tina’s, he had a reserved stool at the bar, his own beer mug and shot glass kept behind the bar, a heater specially installed on the wall behind, for he felt the cold; he would sit there quietly on his own, pen in hand, with the newspaper, the crossword or sudoku on the go. Windhoek was his tipple and he always ended the visit with a shot of Zambucco. Everyone liked him. She described him as a gentle man and a gentleman, with a sense of humour and a kindliness. Everyone there agreed with these sentiments. They agreed he was a private, sensitive man who had let on that he had been much bullied by life, that he had loathed boarding school where his physical disability had been much mocked, that he had extraordinary knowledge about many things.

We knew none of this. The evident respect and affection in which he was held was very moving indeed. That he had loathed his time at Michaelhouse was news to us though we knew that his disability had always figured largely in his life, forming much of his personality.

His disability precluded much of the obligatory sporting activities at school but he was an enthusiastic member of the Michaelhouse Venture Club which arranged weekend expeditions to the Drakensberg and other places in the Natal Midlands and was run and often led by his Housemaster, whom he liked very much, Hugo Leggatt. Longer more complex expeditions were mounted during school holidays and Doc very much enjoyed these too. He grew to love the Midlands and the Midland Meander was one of his favourite routes when his breathing difficulties forced him to rely on his car. When we started clearing his home we discovered that his new BMW bought exactly two years ago had clocked up 93,000 kilometres during the pandemic – many of these on solo trips visiting and revisiting the wilder, higher places in KwaZuluNatal.

He loved travel. Cruising worked well for him because of his health issues. He visited, usually alone, many places in Europe, often along rivers, and seemed happy with his own company although I joined him enthusiastically on a successful cruise round the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal – which excited and impressed us both very much – up the west coast of Mexico, Baja and San Diego. We very much enjoyed each other’s company and loved the whole experience; it was good to be so close.

It was a similar plan we hatched together now, though this time to New Zealand, to visit family, which was aborted the day before he died.

Doc caught polio from his Godfather at his Christening six weeks after his birth. He had a pronounced limp and a weakened left side, had always had balance issues and could fall easily. This lead to many scrapes. Mum was a physiotherapist and worked on Doc during his childhood so that at least he never had to wear callipers. But the scars from this disease had a lasting effect.

The staff at Tina’s all came up to speak with us and all his friends too. Here at least was a genuine wake filled with affection which by sheer luck and a message from New Zealand we stumbled across and found a side to our brother we hardly knew and could celebrate.

We decided that there would be no further service and that we’d scatter his ashes when they were “ready for collection” at a site to be chosen.

In the meantime it has been a week of packing up a life, rationalising belongings, visiting lawyers, making claims to insurance companies. Uncovering little projects Doc was working on, discovering other characters in the great drama that is Life. We have laughed too and reminisced well. There have been many tears for this was a life cut short and Doc was very much loved by us all.

Today we scattered his ashes. 

When our family moved to Natal from Cape Town in 1957 and Doc was only four months old, my father found a beautiful house in Kloof on the edge of the escarpment with views to the south east towards Durban. Our parents made a garden out of the large tropical grounds and outside the wall planted six London Plane trees, saplings, carefully transferred from the nursery to the garden in the little Fiat Topolino they owned, with its canvas roof down.

These beautiful trees have flourished and grown tall in the sixty five years since then and it was along this shaded line that we sprinkled Doc’s ashes today. He loved our home there where he felt happiest and safest – at 53 Peace Road, Kloof. 

Dear Friends this has been our latest journey then. So unexpected and unwanted. Many of you did not know Doc but many did and I thank you for you all for your kind thoughts and condolences at this sad time. 

This is a new era. The Queen has died, a madman is running Russia and in England we have a nutty Prime Minister with idiotic policies presiding over a broken down Britain. The seas are rising and everywhere there is anger and protest, cruelty and greed.

And My Brother David has died. I am glad on two counts, that he did not die on our cruise and that he does not need to see any more of the mess that the world is in.

Tony and I are returning to Blighty this week on separate days.

Thank you all for listening.

Dearest Brother Doc, Rest In Peace. With love from your boeties Peed & Miggy and Sister Sal.