It's All Over Now

I realize London may be a great metropolis, but it’s not very nice to people.  We’re not friendly.  Not that we’re rude, like the Parisians with their theatrical and frankly risible haughtiness; nor do we have New Yorker’s shouty impatience.  Londoners are just permanently petulant, irritated.  I think we wake up taking offense.  All those English teacup manners, the exaggerated please and thank yous, are really the muzzle we put on our short tempers.  There are, for instance, a dozen inflections of the word sorry.  Only one of them means "I’m sorry."

A. A. Gill writing in the NYT

View towards Hyde Park from my sixth floor room

To which I would add, only a dozen?  I heard so many sorry this and sorry thats at the 02, getting in and past others, standing to let someone out, and so on, to say nothing of the sardine can which passes as the Piccadilly line, that I could have catalogued them Professor Higgins style.  But at least the Brits know the word.  I’ll never forget bumping someone on the Milanese subway many years ago and saying “scuse, mi dispiace” and those all around me went silent and turned to see if there was an actual crisis to deal with.  Who in Italy would be sorry for anything shy of crime?  Not many; one famous Italian politician committed crimes and justified them as relevant to his class and status.  To which I must add perhaps the most candid Berlusconi quote: “When asked if they would like to have sex with me, 30 per cent of women said, ‘Yes’, while the other 70 per cent replied, 'What, again?’”

OK, nothing to add.  Two long haul flights.  Jet lag.  Six nights.  Four sessions of tennis.  Three plays.  One museum.  Saw Simon twice.  Saw Manuel.  Saw Fae.  Walked half the city.  Then just ran out of time.  Sitting here in the Heathrow lounge uploading the final blog post from last night and looking at video pictures of Venice, flooded, and reading a headline that says "Obama won—so just get over it!"  I’ll be saying the same thing about my Visa bill in three weeks.  Next stop Buenos Aires.

Dick and Liz loved it there

Remembrance Sunday

Gorgeous final day.  Clear blue sky, sun out in full.  I had the intention to walk from Holland Park to Kensington Gardens, the Serpentine Gallery, then through Hyde, Green and St. James Park, and then take in the original Tate.  But the crowds around Knightsbridge were ludicrous, worst at Duke of Wellington’s place across from Hyde Park where liveried regiments and marching bands, surrounded by police and crowds, were carrying out November 11 ceremonies.  So I beat it east.

The City of London museum is like a proper version of what the Vancouver Museum aspires to be.  Also, it’s free.  To the best of my faltering memory I’d never been, so I made the trip.  Their “special” exhibit, on doctors and dissection, was particularly good; it was a history of the advancement of medicine in the UK from the early 1700s on.  The focus was on early dissection and autopsy techniques (you should have seen the saws), the trade in freshly dead bodies, the murderous crimes that led to the Anatomy Bill of 1832 which eventually outlawed the grave-digging trade, and so forth.  A video presentation with voices recapping the parliamentary debate for and against legislation was a tribute not just to how much politics haven’t changed but how much public speaking has.  As in has for the worse.

On the way back I walked through St. James, Green Park, then back into Knightsbridge which was overflowing, still, with gawkers and shoppers and Sunday strollers.  I noticed in St. James Park a sign which read “Please leash your dog particularly near the pond to protect waterfowl.”  I saw another in a public toilet which warned against using the bin for “incontinence or nappy products.”  It’s almost alarming how much trust the English still have in their language and that this multicultural city could even begin to decipher intention.  In Canada, we have relinquished any possibility of seriously dealing with literacy and made every sign and warning and alert an icon.  Yes, we gave the world the universal M and F symbols for toilets, but we seem to have lost the skill to say what the icons mean.

See rant above...

 Tennis?  No Sunday tickets.  The semis were an exciting line-up, a dupe of the Olympics, I saw some clips on a monitor, but if I had to have one day free this was the day, no complaints.

It fits on the wall perfectly.  Now let me see, who do I know with twelve foot ceilings...

Comes signed by Jenson Button

The carbuncle which is the hotel

Not affected

Wall of pictures

A clock shown at the 1862 Great London Exposition has GMT and eight timezones, from Constantinople to Sydney.

Scenic surroundings

As a gorgeous sunset glinted off the peaks of the Mandarin across the street I met, finally, after trying first in 2005, my friend the world famous make-up artist Fae C D Hammond.  In the flat I rented as an 18 year old on Holland Rd, I was on the first floor with two flatmates, Nigel and Simon, there were some Swiss we never knew on the top, an unusual character rarely seen on the ground called Clive and she had the garden suite.  Fae was a make-up artist at the BBC at the time and I went there once or twice, lost in the maze of windowless halls.  She told me it was the inspiration for Orwell to write 1984 which, true or not, is metaphorically apt.  Of course she has gone on to much bigger things, what they call movies; and lives, of all places, in Italy.  Hard life.

Sensitive surroundings

Sunday in the park

And it's not even her favorite home...

Fae's 35 Euro flight from Pisa ran late so it was not five but 6:45 when we met up and at that point we simply walked across the street to Bar Boulud, a buzzing hive of ins and wannabes at the Mandarin Oriental.  We had a very pleasant dinner at the bar, although she ate like a shrike and I like a gannet.  I had a roast chicken on Vichy (?) carrots, Brussels sprouts "fondue" followed by something called a Bogue which was a candied chestnut with gold leaf on top of an amaretti cake, caramel ice cream and tiny, wild blueberries that resembled currants.  

I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight...

Fae regaled me with tales of working with Ang Lee, Ron Howard, Gary Oldman, and the ilk, and I took her down memory lane with ancient memories of her west Kensington flat, her cooking, her influence on me and of course our trip to Paris.  Next time we will have to meet in Tuscany.

Fae C D Hammond, make-up artist extraordinaire.  Previously of W14.

 It was a wonderful close to a quick trip abroad.  Back at the hotel I caught the tail end of Federer Murray.  Amazing how faithful the English crowd was to Fed; cheered him on like a Brit.  And so, another year ends like the last: Tomorrow Fed will battle it out with Novak.  What goes round comes round.

Bad day for the elf who made this little chipper item

I don't think anything in this Harrods window would make Virginia happy

The Play is the Thing

Up late.  Was it any wonder?

Another cool windy day.  It had rained but was dry A.M.  Didn’t hear from my friend Jean Paul so decided to see about tickets for the theatre.  The two shows I was pining to see were Berenice at the Donmar and Allan Bennett’s latest, People, at the National.  No chance for either.  Decided to try the National anyway, so jumped in a cab at Trafalgar Square.  Didn’t know, however, that all the roads and several bridges were closed in preparation for Remembrance Day services Sunday.  Cab driver was pleasant, and gave me a special tour of the back end of Westminster, but ten pounds later I was only just over the Waterloo Bridge.  All was not lost as I did score tickets for Scenes of an Execution at the Lyttleton.

Arrived at the 02 with doubles underway.  Today, unlike all the other sessions, I was at the reverse end of the court, under the media booths.  That put me at a disadvantage to see the VIP section where, again, Sir Ian was in residence, as well as Richard Wilson, an actor I don’t know but who got huge applause and is much loved for an old catchphrase “I don’t believe it.”

The Bryan Brothers made a series of egregious errors and played lackadaisical but nevertheless brought it to a set apiece before the mandatory 10 point tiebreak.  At that point Paes/Stepanek stepped on the gas and brought it home.  It looked like Andy Roddick was in the player’s box, but why he would be in London is anyone’s guess.

Laziest flash-free no-zoom pic from a spectator seat ever.  Delpo in the near court, Fed receiving.

November 10, 2012, Roger Federer and Juan Martin Del Potro.  Fed can go 3-0 here and pull it out for the tourny.  He doesn’t, and that’s a shame.  He comes out first set with his A- game, some hot shots, some not so hot, and is ultimately Delpo’s toy.  His myriad unforced errors told the whole story.  But he was scintillating in the second.  One thing that simply doesn’t translate to TV is his touch.  You can appreciate his remarkable shot selection and the variety of his game, but you can’t get a sense of how he brushes the ball, pounds it, slams it, touches it, all in a single rally.  He really is a perfectionist.  But when it came to the third set he faltered at the start and never regained his poise.  His post-30 game seems to be characterized by flashes of brilliance rather than the pre-30 consistency.  A wide kick-up serve at only 108 mph or so served him very well, but he only went there a few times, yet each one was a winner.

Delpo, who even at his best looks lazy (if he was an animal it would be Eeyore, his Spanish even has a bit of that drawl), had a determined focus and relentless returns despite the lope and sulk.  They both suffered bad line calls, Delpo once from the umpire even, and both three times wrong from a single linesman, and each gave us the tweener, Delpo successfully, Fed not, so it was up, down, entertaining and taut.  But by the end, the bitter end, Fed fell away and Juan Martin seized the moment.  Great tennis nonetheless.

Made my way back to the Sheraton but instead of transferring at Green Park I transferred at Westminster and stopped at Sloane Square to pick up some fruit and water at Partridges.  There was a Saturday market in the common area west, including of all things a children’s choir singing Christmas carols.  It did seem a bit premature for Good King Wenceslas...

Quick turn around for the theatre at, yes, 7:30.  Theatre is always at 8 Stephen says!  Howard Barker suffered great controversy in the early 80s for a National production of The Romans in Britain.  Or so I remembered having seen it.  But memory had played a trick; that was Howard Brenton.  Barker, an accomplished dramatist, not (apparently) much produced in the UK, is a different entity. 

Scenes from an Execution is, on the exterior anyway, a play about art.  Serious, with an intellectual bent, but passionate on its subject.  The thing about sincere attempts at dealing with art—think Pollock or Caravaggio—is that they have a tendency to either be theatrically indulgent or didactic.  It’s a trick to get it right.  Maugham’s Moon and Sixpence I thought was the perfect balance—and you could probably read it in less than two and three quarter hours...  I would say, on the level of being about art, SfaE wasn’t a success.  But of course, as a remount from the 80s, it must have something?  And, yes, metaphorically it’s all about politics, social and sexual mores, and much other of an intellectual vein, hung on the artist’s easel.  The crux is, though, whether truth is a service to society.  And in this sense, it is rather poignant, given Julian Assange holed up in an embassy for revealing secrets and one monumental scandal following another in China, the Arab world, India, etc., despite such ardent attempts to defend the status quo.  There is, too, a sort of Elizabeth Kubler Ross element, of moving through truth and its value (and this isn’t offhand; the dramatist literally shifts through denial, anger, bargaining, depression—“oh why am I being bad to artists, the only people I truly love”—to acceptance.  A little bit of an obvious yawn).  Even as society understands and accepts a new paradigm does it just become the ruse for which to hang another mythology on?  And so forth.  And you can see by my description that while The Bodyguard on the Strand was standing room only, Scenes from an Execution had good seats available right up until performance.

The artists considers the bum.  And lest you think I'm joking, I'm not.  That's the bit.  Geddit?

Fiona Shaw, best known perhaps for True Blood, gave a signal performance as a feminist artist, but the standout was Jay Simpson as The Doge.  For me, the play was erratic and at times artistically extravagant.  But the design was spectacular.  A much used third person commentator in the first act, a character called The Sketchbook, appears as if a video, suspended in a white box, to start.  The box is propelled toward the audience giving the impression of a zoom lens.  It was absolutely compelling.  Dramatic lighting, shadow, scrims and oversized set pieces were brilliant.  But the costumes, well the costumes, the rags which weren’t so ragged and the finery which was not so fine, and the shoes versus boots and the whole palette of the clothing was not only uneven but confusing.  Period piece?  Yes, no?

View From Waterloo Bridge, clipped by someone with the chops for night photos.

Afterward I did a very sentimental thing, from back in the days when I lived in Fulham.  I walked across the Waterloo bridge—maybe the least architecturally interesting bridge in Europe but with the most expansive view of the glorious London skyline, from St. Paul’s to the Eye to the HP—and caught a bus home.  Of course when I was young and broke I would walk as far as I had to before boarding the 22 or 11 (to pay a lower fare), but I hopped on an 11 on the Strand which beckoned, it jetted past the Savoy, turned towards the Thames at Trafalgar Square, whipped past the HP and Westminster Abbey, and then sped through Victoria towards Sloane Square along tony Hospital Rd.  There is nothing quite like the top front seat on a double decker wildly negotiating the twisty terrain of central London (not in traffic).  Back at the chic hotel there were young elites teeming through the common areas at, what the signage proclaimed was, Anissa’s 18^th.  It seems impossible to get to bed before midnight; at least I'm not alone.

Different versions of the lights around and on Sloane Square

It Gets Betterish

[The title is stolen from a wonderfully acerbic YouTube site.  Pregnancy: It get's betterish.  Karaoke: It gets betterish.  Drag Queen: It gets betterish.]

Friday another day of sunny breaks, cloudy periods, London overcast and chilly, but never wet.

James Bond drove one.

Into St. James, Regent St, Liberty, Soho.  One shoppe was selling the (overpriced) bathing suits Daniel Craig wears in Skyfall; is it a conversation piece or do people actually think they’ll pass?  The spectacular new Whole Foods off Piccadilly Circus (the old one in Soho was a bit of a rabbit warren) has not transformed British food halls in general but was a welcome opp to get something decent for lunch at tennis where the food options are myriad and limited if you get my drift.

The doubles, Bhupathi Bopanna (quite a mouthful for the Portuguese ref) versus Mirnyi Nestor, was surprisingly engaging.  It seemed the veterans had the edge, mentally if not physically.  Nestor, after all, is 40, and I guess until Raonic can rack up the stats, remains the most accomplished Canadian tennis player to date.  It was, after all, his eighth ATP Tour Final appearance (even Djokovic has only done six).  I remember Mirnyi as a singles player, with flashes of John Isner talent, mixed in with Pat Cash-like faltering.  No, Aaron Krickstein unevenness, for those that have been watching tennis long enough to remember.  Max's erve held up well, I think both teams were in the 78 per cent range on first serves, but neither Max or Daniel could eke out the winners.  It was theirs to lose and they did.

Doubles here, and whether this is standard practice outside the grand slams I don’t know, but doubles here are final point on deuce, “receiver’s choice,” and in the case of split sets, like this match, which went both ways, a final 10 point tiebreak.  It seemed, given the volume of deuce points, and especially with Mirnyi’s strong serving, that had the Russian/Canadian been able to play out the Indians they could have won.  They didn’t.  10-5 in the tiebreaker.

The 320 m covered walkway from the tube to the entrance

Where are they stored?  What happens to them when retired? How can I buy one?  Where will Stephen let me put it?

The feature singles was a battle of the itches: Tomas and Novak.  Truthfully, Djokovic’s reception rivalled Roger’s the day before, which caught me off guard.  While they were warming up and while the lights were flashing statistics and the Compere as they call an MC here blasted win loss info, boxing match style, I thought of the poor Brazilian sponsor RJ.  Lacoste got the ref chairs.  Corona got logos on the net.  Fedex got the players seats.  Ricoh got the ump’s chair.  But there was nothing left for RJ (the national sports logo of Brazil), so they gave them a box.  Just a plain white painted box plunked centre court left side.

The first set Djocco as many called him played spot on focussed tennis.  He is slighter in person than you would imagine, lithe, and although Berdych is no giant he did look hulking comparatively.  His ability, consistently, to play the lines, within an inch, and his seeming fearlessness at running down balls, was much better appreciated live than televised.  I begrudgingly have to admit, he played like an actual number one player, ego or not. 

Berdych, alternately burr-ditch and beer-dick by the umpire, was sluggish.  It looked a little disappointing to the crowd but he came alive second set.  It was one of those moments when commentators speak of a change in on court energy, something hard to sense on a screen.  Tomas simply began hitting every ball back with finesse, he played cross court to cross court and set up well-constructed points which left Novak helpless.  Still, he couldn’t sustain it and Novak moved up.  Tomas came back strong and evened it to a tiebreak.  He went up two breaks in the tiebreak.  The crowd was shockingly rapt, peace to a pin drop, as he attempted to serve it out for a third.  But ultimately he was playing against the number one.  And, just like that, in seconds, the breaks disappeared and Novak served it out.  We were on the edge of our seats and then we were out of our seats.  It was two sets in under two hours but exhilarating.  I don’t think anyone left feeling as cheated as I did with Janko yesterday.

Fan zone.  The 02 is a bit of a matryoshka doll, brilliant in its execution.

Back to the hotel then to meet Manuel at six.  Of course Spanish six p.m. isn’t necessarily GMT, so after a bit of waiting I called his mobile only to find out he was still at his parents.  His suggestion was that instead of him coming to my hotel and us going to the bar in Knightsbridge that we previously agreed to, instead we both walk halfway between his place and mine and meet.  Well that is a recipe for disaster in London.  I could have been waiting on Pont Street half the night.  Instead we agreed to meet at Joe’s Caffe.

It’s a lovely walk down Basil St, behind Harrods, along Walton St, through the mews, and into South Ken from the Sheraton.  There were many curiosities to behold, all over the top eccentrically displayed and price prohibitive.

Well protected artifact

 I was the first bartender to work at Joe’s Caffe, when it opened, in 1986.  The late clothing designer/owner, Joseph, was in daily, we entertained many big wigs, Paul Smith and wife were in several times a week, indeed staff wore Paul Smith clothing (I may still have the blue polk-a-dot tie), the Saatchis were regulars, etc.  The design was austere and modern and I will never forget the short, succinct wine list that was the epitome of French-ness.  Nor, during fashion week, when David Bowie came by for dinner.

General store: Stuffed rabbits and Serge Mouille lamps.  Also, porcelain terriers.  Go figure.

But that was then.  Joseph is dead, the restaurant has long past its glamorous heyday, and is now a friendly local haunt for locals and wannabes to sip Aperol spritz’s and peruse their Brompton Rd shopping.  I had a nice chat with the bartender and manager because, naturally, Manuel had been detained.  But he did show.  And we had a nice chat too, coffee klatsch style, no focussed Martin Amis Christopher Hitchens debate here.  First at Joe’s, then around the corner at part of a mini-South Ken empire, Zefi’s, where over an hour and a half Manuel attempted to eat dinner while regaling me with stories of fashion, family politics, colonialism, neurotic Canary Island divas, property values, the friendliness of Albanians, shopping, VAT, the attitudes of Catalans, the virtues of the Galicians, the peculiarities of the English, the ups and downs of Italian relationships, the authenticity French can bring to a pub, the unpredictability of Romanians and Bulgarians, the intelligence but distance of Canadians, the methods and means to ingratiate yourself with restaurant owners, debt, parental issues, fraternal tension, three euro shirts from Benneton and fine Saville Row tailoring, use of the term salve as opposed to ciao.  Among many other topics.  I did mention at one point that the tennis was good.

Manuel Cortes Mesa aka Tom

Antony Sebastian Ashley

We eventually got through dinner, then returned to his place so he could change, we tried to get into “Tom’s” party, whomever Tom was, although throughout the evening Manuel did pretend to be him, he spoke to me at length about world history with a BBC series on the subject playing simultaneously on the iPad, self-medicated, tidied and untidied, opened shopping then put it away, applied eye drops, then we up and returned to Zefi which in an hour or so had transformed from a Sloane Ranger-ish hotspot restaurant to a full on club with DJ, packed, noisy, and not a UK born national in the lot.  To say that I can enjoy this sort of thing anymore is like saying Sarah Palin had the stuff of the presidency.  I did have to call it a night, but there was a certain pleasure in the walk home in the cool quiet night, especially when I ran across both an Airedale and a wire-haired Fox (although the walker was staff, and didn’t actually know the breeds; it was, after all, South Ken.  Studio apartment for 1.75 million quid anyone?).

Early storyboard for The Shining