The damp, sullen skies of southern England met my bleary eyes this morning. Long trousers for today I think.
My room in Andrew and Stuart’s house is a cruel one: books everywhere – and I thought I was the only one with bizarre juxtapositioning of random volumes. The range is astonishing with the faded backs of proven classics rubbing shoulders with the most modern paperbacks. The “who-is-this-person-let’s-look-at-his-books” approach reveals some clear and other more subtle indications of personality and taste! It is a room in which I could be most comfortably locked up in for a considerable period – and the bed is comfortable too!
Today is the first day to try out the latest prescription for my contact lenses and as the saintly Andrew is driving I need have no fears about worrying about their suitability for the motorist. I do hope that these new lenses will finally be accepted by my brain and be the solution to the distance/reading conundrum that successions of opticians have been trying to sort out. One can but hope. And I do have six months supply (all paid for) which it would be something of a pity to waste!
It is now raining. It started in that soft, lazy gossamer drizzle which soaks you to the skin within seconds and has now developed into a more straightforward downpour: assertive and depressing. There is (what is often a deceptive) brightness in the complete cloud cover which, for those British born weather optimists, might betoken more inspiring weather later.
As a key component in the planning of Mary’s party involved The Garden it looks as though it may be more for contemplation and admiration rather than practical use.
I am at present drinking a cup brewed with a Yorkshire Tea teabag that I am informed by Andrew is designed specifically for use in hard water areas. As the rugged aggressiveness of the water in Castelldefels makes everyone else’s water look like pure liquid sissy, it might be an idea to ask for a few bags and try them out at home. Admittedly I have partially got round the problem of the water (safe but undrinkable from the tap) by making my cuppa with bottled stuff but a teabag which wages a taste war with calcium might be a cheaper eventual solution.
It has now stopped raining, but still looks as though it is: a particularly British form of climatic irritation.
That illusion soon gave way to the harsh reality of sheeting layers of water belting down on the car as it crawled through the traffic misery that is driving in London.
My dogged, and no doubt irritating assertion that was “brighter in the west” was belied by the soul-sapping drenching that we were getting as we made our delayed way to Reading.
However my irrational optimism was justified by the rains almost ceasing as we got stuck in our final traffic jam inside Reading itself.
The party was a great success. Mary was overwhelmed by the gifts that she had and most importantly she loved the Ceri print of Venice that I chose for her from the selection that I was shown. I also checked from Clarrie (who loved it instantly, made a decision about the frame and where it should be hung within two seconds of seeing it) that Mary was being sincere and not merely polite, so everything was most satisfactory.
Our own gifts to Mary included a pendant and perfume (both hostages to fortune when deciding for another person) went down well so I was then able to get on with the socializing that such an occasion offers.
Apart from Andrew, Stuart, Mary and Clarrie the gusts were those whom I had never met before or people who I hadn’t seen for years; some for many years!
Conversation was compulsive and, as often happens in parties in which I want to speak to everyone; I had to remind myself to eat. Especially as I had no trouble in reminding my self to drink the Champagne!
The food was exactly what one would have expected from Clarrie in its variety and presentation. The beef en croute was spectacular and I never did get to try the chicken terrine, but the prawns (thank you Clarrie) and the salmon were eventually tasted and approved of.
The cake (with an inscription in Irish) was bought it, but the other sweets were made by Andrew: a bitter chocolate tart for adults and a truly wonderful Summer Pudding with luscious fruit and a mesmerizing taste. I suggested that we steal the remains of this noble dessert but such boorish behaviour was dismissed by the boys.
By the time the Champagne had run out, the Cava had been drunk and we were reduced to drinking Jacob’s Creek fizzy it was obviously time to go.
Slumped in the back seat in a somnolent haze the first part of the return journey past swiftly and I only came back to my senses fully when we hit the Hammersmith flyover.
On our return Stuart took to his bed for a nap and Andrew continued the Russel Meyer Summer School for Stephen which started the day before yesterday with an enforced viewing of “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill”: a film of which I was aware but had not heretofore seen.
The film’s awfulness has to be seen to be believed and, while I can well believe that it has a fanatical cult following its blend of low budget ineptitude, wooden acting, pitiful script, big boobs and crass moralizing meant that I watched much of it with open mouthed amazement.
To be fair there are moments of camp humour, some of the cinematography is stagey but interesting and the female star looks like the creation from the combined brains of Bram Stoker, Edvard Munch and Hugh Hefner. She uses car, cleavage and karate to create chaos – but never fear all-American(ish) values triumph in the end.
As an extra I was made to watch an interview with the women in the film who now look, amazingly, even more sluttish than they did when “Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill” was made.
Yesterday’s lesson too the form of a viewing of “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” – a film whose virulent critical response I can still remember even though I am thinking of notices from forty years ago! Although I had no intention of going to a cinema to watch such gratuitous trash, I think that I indulged in a News-of-the-World type of censorious prurience in reading about the filth that I was never going to see!
The film has high production values and is in vivid Eastman colour but it comes as no surprise to discover that the script was made up day by day so the revelation that the Svengali-like male homosexual is actually a woman “seemed like a good idea” to the scriptwriter and was duly shot with no back story to give such a twist any credibility.
It is difficult to know where to start in a critical response to the turgid morass of half-baked acting and ideas that “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” comprises. John Waters has called this “the best film ever made and will ever be made” and it features in the best 100 films of all time in The Village Voice, but for me it remains what I suspected it would be, a woeful piece of sexploitation.
There is clearly some attempt at parody and the use of music is part of this self awareness of the medium but I don’t think that the film is good enough to be ironic; its humour seems to be sloppiness rather than observation.
An interview of Meyer by Ross brought out the auteur’s interest in women from the waist upwards but said little more about what he brings to the cinema.
I remain a rather sceptical student in this Summer School and will take much more convincing before I become a devotee of the film of Mr Meyer!
Sunday was notable for the gentle introduction to the day that the boys insist on and a later visit (in the rain) to the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
This unprepossessing building houses not only a rather surprising above ground crypt in the middle of the gallery but also a very impressive collection of art.
The special exhibition was of the art of Poussin and the recently deceased Cy Twombly. Anyone who knows anything about these two artists might suspect that they have little real in common and that would be a point of view which the exhibition does little to alter.
Twombly’s work is a series of daubed scrawlings and Poussin is an acknowledged master of Classical order. The fact that Twombly went and lived in Italy – just like Poussin - does not make for a convincing comparison of shared artistic achievements!
Monday did see me make a halfhearted effort to indulge in some culture. The weather was miserable and I was conscious that I only had thin shirts and no coat – it being July and all!
I eventually set off on the train to Victoria and then the underground to Embankment which I (wrongly) thought would be within a light step of Tate Modern. Many, many steps later and in light drizzle I finally made it to see The Money Hanging on the Wall – or Picasso’s “The Dream” as it is called which is at present the most expensive painting in the world to be sold at auction.
Of course to see this painting you have to pass a lot of other art most of which is excellent and some of which is the sort of gratuitous rubbish that gives modern art a bad name. To my horror I saw a selection of empty gestural scrawls of my current bête noir Twombly “gracing” the walls of one gallery. I won’t even waste my time by describing the vacuous ineptitude masquerading as art that he perpetrated in the canvases that were but a hiatus in seeing something better!
And better there certainly was. The whole of my Making Sense of Modern Art course for next year was hanging on the walls!
I made an executive decision to go to the National Gallery as well to check up on my two paintings – the Terborch and the Van Eyck.
It is impossible to see these paintings in a limited time without ignoring some of the finest art in the world which, with siren calls, tries to deflect me from my purposes. And indeed succeeded to some extent. You have to made of stronger stuff than I to ignore Holbein’s Ambassadors, for example. Anyway, I just managed to get to the Van Eyck before the stern guardians of the galleries started herding us to the exits.
Dinner was in a local restaurant in Herne Hill and (tempting fate) tapas! They were delicious, though I think that we might be able to duplicate some of them here in a slightly different form for slightly less!
Packing was the usual nightmare although the expansion of the suitcase did provide a lot of extra space but it was virtually impossible to move when it was filled.
The journey to the airport was circuitous as my GPS decided to avoid “heavy traffic ahead” and so I saw much of the suburbs of south London before I finally ended up in an interminable traffic jam as the powers that be decided to replace a gas main on the approach road to the M23.
I had, however left enough time to compensate for delays and hot and bothered as I was there was plenty of time to check in and wait for the call.
As usual the best value in the airport was the meal deal in Boots at £3.79 and I thoroughly enjoyed my British sandwiches before settling down to the tedium of travel.
The numerical ordering of the gates is designed to confuse those who have never been to the airport before flying with EasyJet. Suffice to say that I walked confidently in the wrong direction because I understood Gate 57 to be included in Gate numbers 50 odd to 60 odd. Wrong. Elusive Gate 57 was alone with a plethora of alphabetical adjuncts, the important one (mine) I could not find. But I went with the flow and found myself at the end of a very long queue.
It seemed as though my chances of finding a seat with adequate legroom were stymied by my lack of Gatwick experience, but I always have hope when I travel alone as a spare seat is sometimes available as a couple bag two of the three seats.
I stepped inside the plane and imagine my delight when I saw the evidence of lost hope: two men sitting either side of the seats at the entrance with a book, newspaper and pen resting on the seat in the middle. I almost laughed as I asked innocently if the seat was taken. Their combined looks of pure hatred could have felled lumbering rhinos, but I merely took the seat and fitted my Nano to fill the ferocious silence from the gentlemen on either side!
The flight was only 90 minutes long and that was almost the time it took the baggage handlers in Barcelona to get our luggage onto the carousel. When it eventually emerged it was greeted by an ironically ragged cheer.
We went out for tapas almost as soon as I was in the house and an early shower and bed was my welcome home.
Today, after the light tidying of the rubbish I have brought home we went out to our local restaurant for a menu del dia in the bright sunshine.
An excellent two-centre holiday with exemplary hospitality and much buying of clothes for the next year.
Now the reception of guests for the summer is about to begin!
Please let there be sun for my friends!
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