a Dirty Martini

Passions are likened best to floods and streams:

The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.

-  Sir Walter Raleigh,  1552 - 1618

 

Talk about Something Else. Knickers for Instance

Today’s lunch break was, unusually, an enormous irritation.

 

I made my way to a small boutique style café in Soho which serves particularly interesting vegetarian food - yet another diet direction of late. I looked forward to sitting in this pretty, peaceful little establishment, minding my own business. I arrived early to secure a spot and sat at one of only two high empty tables in the place (it's that cute) and ordered my lovely salad.  I watched various people come in and out of the café and order take-away or gaze lovingly at the beautiful arrangement of home-made cakes in the little window. Outside in the background people darted in and out of doors for cover from the ceaseless rain which seems to always decide to wait til lunchtime or home time to put in an appearance. Our Summery weather of late has crashed and died in a spectacularly grim fashion.

 

Eventually a group of extremely well spoken young women came in. Polished looking. Chatting away. They rather apologetically asked me if I would mind if they shared my table. The seating means you all become best buddies in a heart beat whether you want to or not.  Of course I didn’t mind since that was the nature of this little place and assumed the chatter would be low key and banal given our collective circumstances. I hadn’t bargained at all on them discussing in suddenly super obnoxious tones who they had voted for in the ongoing Labour leader elections. As Party members. And why. One of them was American. She listened and questioned her friends about the leadership contest. This went on for some time and for most of it I managed to escape into my food or click on my iphone and text or email friends. Anything to avoid being by default pulled right into the heart of their politics with no way of escape. Eventually  however the conversation turned into one where Boris our mayor was a posh cretin and Conservatives are all “disconnected Etonites”. Then to top it all off the American girl chimed in to open up a conversation about how racist Republicans connived to make a big deal of that bloody mosque. For no other reason than they were racist.

You have to appreciate that this was not a conversation at the next table or behind me. This was a conversation into which I was plunged whether I wanted to be or not as though I were one of their group.

 

I’m sick to death of the assumption in political conversation that everyone these days is a leftist and that right of centre must simply shut up and speak in hushed embarrassed tones or accept Left is the only polite political conversation to be had out loud these days. So that was my opening shot. “Ok I’ve had enough” I addressed them quietly, smiling.

 

“Just how unfeeling and immature is it to decide for some of the tragic families and co workers of 9/11 victims or anyone else opposed to this mosque’s location what they think? Or how stupid is it to assume that great swathes of people in America, some 60% who are opposed to the location of this mosque are irrelevant racists? Or that their feelings should be automatically chalked up as racist because you say so? What gives you the right to decide that the argument is about banning Islam in NYC? It’s not - even if your dimwitted President decided it should be. It’s quite possibly about tolerance of other people’s feelings outside of your selective leftist groups”. Stumbling over her words to find a retort I decided not to give her the chance and addressed her friends. “Unrelatably Eton eh? I’ve never heard anything quite so moronic as a bunch of upper class newbie graduates from the Home Counties who were undoubtedly funded all the way through University by mummy and daddy indulging the tired old class debate wherein you, ladies, you in particular sporting that whopping great Tiffany’s engagement ring and the Manolos, feel you can better relate to an out of work manual labourer up in Newcastle. Tyne and Wear ladies. That would be the area the Labour Party ruthlessly shafted, whilst pretending to be for the working classes. Before they were outright dumped out of government having left the country up to it's eyeballs in debt. Noone gives a crap who Labour elects as it’s leader. Least of all me”. “Next time you decide to sit this close to someone who can’t leave because she just ordered her lunch and is now wedged in with you lot don’t assume being in Soho means everyone shares the same dim witted liberal point of view. Speak in the hushed embarrassed tones you ought to given the mess your Party made”.  

 

Absolute silence descended on a table full of flushed red faces which I decided not to up and leave as I’d just ordered a cup of tea. After a minutes silence and some mortified looks the conversation moved on to knickers. Thankfully.

Locked in an Embrace

For 5,000 years. 

 Old news now I know but such a striking image. One I found when cleaning out files on my mac recently.

A Quote

I believe what really happens in history is this: 

the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.

— G.K. Chesterton

Summer

Summer bunting and flowers in our street - July 2010

In between hospitals and heartache, Summer has threaded itself effortlessly into my life and I am so very grateful. One American described this so perfectly today in a piece about enjoying life in Britain.

"British summers rarely deserve the opprobrium that’s so often laid on their short-lived shoulders. Compare them with those in eastern North America: a stupefying, three-month marination in a thundery haze of steamy days and nights that never cool down. Or East Asia’s metropolises, where still swampier conditions reign for fully half the year. I would never trade a London summer for a Toronto, Warsaw or Tokyo one. A good summer day in Britain is one of life’s finest pleasures: dry and warm but rarely scorching. Their very scarcity results in the sort of fevered indulgence you rarely see in California. And at Britain’s lofty latitudes the lovely, near-horizontal evening light, unlike the summer itself, seems to last forever"

It certainly does - even as the evenings are slowly starting to draw out. 

We intend to squeeze in some camping. The closest experience I will get to this is Herefordshire and the River Wye. I won't wish it upon us too quickly as that will mean wishing on the end of Summer. We aren't going til September 6th. And between now and then is one big old project that is causing us a fair amount of stress right now if offering up a welcome distraction: Buying our first appartment. The project resides with the bank at the moment. Sigh.

Taking Liberties

That mosque represents everything that's wrong with the modern world. The perpetually infantilised, rights-enshrined "up yours we're doing it because we can" brigade. 

 

I discovered the pretty statues of Liberty in a Paris jewellery window, standing proud in front of the famous church in St German des Pres which you can just make out in the window. I realise you in America greatly value freedoms enshrined - but I feel the same way about that group of christian nutjobs rocking up to the funerals of dead American soldiers as I do that bloody mosque being built close to Ground Zero. It's obnoxious, selfish and wrong.
 
 

Two Quiet Corners of London

Our BorisBikes 

On a little trip courtesy of Boris Bikes this weekend I was struck by two quiet corners of London dedicated to human kindness and selflessness.

 

One is a monument to George Peabody, an American entrepreneur, capitalist, banker with business links to London who established the first social housing here and is generally described as the first great philanthropist. He was struck by the growth of London’s ghastly slums alongside it’s sudden prosperity. Some of his properties sit along the bottom of our street and are now owned by the local Council.

“More than 20 organisations in London and America owe their existence to George Peabody and reflect his interests in education, music, science, banking and housing. Ironically, given that he had volunteered as a soldier against the British in his youth, he became an unofficial diplomat and during the Civil War he helped ensure that Abraham Lincoln's emissaries to London won the continued support of the British government for the abolitionist side. After the war, horrified by the devastation it caused, he made his largest single benefaction to set up a public education system for the Southern States. He insisted that these opportunities were provided for black people as well as white. 

He is best known in the UK as the founder of Peabody estates. Through the Peabody Donation Fund, founded in 1862, he gave £500,000 to tackle poverty and poor housing in London. Queen Victoria herself acknowledged the gift as 'wholly without parallel' and the Prince of Wales unveiled a statue of Peabody on Threadneedle Street to commemorate the event.  Among his many honours, he was the first American to be awarded the Freedom of the City of London. When he died in 1869, the Queen and the Prince of Wales sent carriages to follow the coffin to Westminster Abbey, where Gladstone was among the mourners. He is buried at Salem, Massachusetts”

It was interesting to watch the few tourists idling along who would stop to gaze at the magnificent statue, read the inscription, kind of shrug their shoulders and move on. 

I enjoyed finding his statue and reading about George Peabody. He seems to represent the kind of special relationship Britain has with America that needs no parenthesis. It was also interesting to read of his endeavours given the renewed interest in philanthropy right now.

The second quiet corner exists under a covered gallery in Postman's Park. It’s a memorial erected to the memory of the heroic deeds of ordinary people which ended tragically.

 

George Watts, a respected painter of the late Victorian era, attempted to garner support through The Times newspaper and many other initiatives, but received little interest and support. Undeterred, he championed the project over a period of 34 years, completing the memorial just four years before his death. Postman's Park is so-named, because the site of the central sorting office of the GPO (General Post Office) bordered the former graveyard, and with open spaces within the square mile (City of London) being at a premium, the small patch of greenery was a popular place for local post office workers to unwind. Postman's Park is walled and against one of these walls, under a loggia, are the memorial plaques. The inscriptions are printed on Doulton tablets, with each describing some random act of bravery that resulted in the person's tragic death. The language employed is succinct, owing partly to the restrictions of space - but also manages to convey in its spare prose, how selflessly they acted. There are dozens and dozens of them.

 

 

 
 

It gets you thinking. Human beings are more often than not prone to acting selflessly and kindly. People want to act for good simply because the gesture is an instinctively human one. They want to contribute to charity, they want to volunteer, they want to get involved and they will also act so selflessly that it results in tragedy. When they do noone assumes any politics because frankly the damned State isn't involved. Noone questions whether they vote Left or Right. I don’t subscribe to the point of view that being of the Left makes one more generous, benevolent and kind hearted. Or that voting Left means you are able to proscribe human kindness or are acting for social justice. I certainly don’t believe that taxing kindness out of people is the answer to all of society’s ills. Yet in an interesting debate I had recently with someone, that is what was suggested. It's all nonsense really.

 

Away from absurd political hubris and life's sharp edges these past 3 months at the very least cycling around London exploring all it's hidden treasures with A turned out to be a simple frankly life-affirming act.

Redux

Probably not a great idea to throw a lengthier post up here without checking to see who's out there first...if indeed anyone still cruises by this place.  So. Hello? How is everyone?!