Ostriches, Italians and the Vatican

I was hoping to start this post mentioning ostriches' habit of putting their heads in the sand.  But alas, the Daily Mail, of all papers, has just published an article refuting various animal myths, including the one about ostriches. 

In spite of the Daily Mail, the myth is likely to be around for a while.  And I've been thinking about it today, with the news coming in about the Italian elections and the unrelated event of Cardinal O'Brien's resignation at the request of the Pope.  Nothing surprises one about Italy, and a great part of the country's charm stems from the feckless unpredictability of the inhabitants.  So the results of the elections, with the significant gain in the vote by the new party led by the standup comedian Beppe Grillo, should not necessarily come as a shock.  But saying no to austerity and the structural reforms accompanying it is a bit like a bankrupt insisting on his daily diet of caviar.   Head in the sand No. 1.

As for the Vatican: conspiracy theorists claim that the Pope's sudden resignation is linked to a report detailing homosexual activity in the Church's higher echelons in the Vatican itself.  The allegations of "inappropriate conduct" (a phrase I detest for its preachy vagueness) against Cardinal O'Brien can't have helped.  The Roman Catholic Church is looking increasingly ridiculous as it preaches a message contrary to the conduct of many of its priests.  Deny the allegations as the hierarchy may, there's a bit too much smoke around for there not to be a fire.  It all needs to be brought out into the open.  Head in the sand No. 2.

And as if this wasn't enough, we have Rennardgate and the Lib Dems.  It looks as if Nick Clegg may be head in the sand No. 3.

The trouble with putting your head in the sand is that you can't see approaching predators line up to attack the body part most exposed to view.  I can't help feeling that even more backsides are going to feel the pinch they administered to others in the past - if you can sort out that series of mixed metaphors!

Antony Mair
    

Manet at the Royal Academy

 

 

I took advantage of my trip to London the other day to slip into the Manet exhibition at the Royal Academy.  I have always loved Manet, and this show lived up to all expectations.  Concentrating on his portraits - which is taken fairly broadly, so as to include groups and paintings such as The Railway, which you might not instinctively think of as a portrait - it is a wonderful selection of paintings both intimate and grand.  I had always liked his restricted palette, with much usage of black, but hadn't appreciated the infinite variety of blacks and greys and whites he is able to produce.  There is a restrained elegance without affectation, an artistry that seems natural but which is the result of enormous talent.

 

Manet's life - 1832 to 1883 - also spans the period of French literature that is easily as rich as, if not richer than, what was happening in England at the same time.  His portraits of Zola and Mallarmé are thrilling in that, looking at them, you feel in contact with the vibrancy of French literary life at the time.  I can't wait for all our books to come out of store so that I can get back into the Goncourt brothers' journal covering all this period.

 

There were one or two paintings I could happily have brought back to Hastings - the one on the poster is probably my favourite, showing the artist Berthe Morisot - Manet's sister-in-law - in black against a creamy-yellow background.  She has an intriguing look that is both confidential and confrontational.  The picture is just the right size to pick up and bring back to Hastings.  We could easily find room for it somewhere.  I suspect, however, that it's not going to happen.  Seeing it at the Academy was a joy.

 

Antony Mair

 

 

 

 



How not to treat your customers...

Two Bulls Steakhouse, Hastings Old Town

Successful restaurants make you feel they care, and that you're important to them. We all know the old trick of the doorman saying "Nice to see you again, sir", flattering the ego. If, on the other hand, you get the impression that they don't really care at all, the reaction is to turn away and shake their dust from your feet. Which is, I'm afraid, precisely what we have done with the Two Bulls Steakhouse.

We discovered the Two Bulls two months ago.  The steaks we had were excellent.  The manageress was charming.  We went back a couple of weeks later.  This time we had a table not far from the door.  There was a strong draught coming through, which slightly spoilt the evening: but it didn't deter us from going back a third time, two weeks ago.  I was told  that the only table available was close to the door.  "However," the lady at the end of the phone said when I made my booking, "it'll have warmed up by the time you come in."

Wrong.  Call me a wimp if you like, but I emerged from that evening with a frozen back as if I hadn't been wearing any clothes at all - in spite of my customary three layers.  The cold back became a streaming cold, which Paul then caught. 

The food at the Two Bulls is good, and the service pleasant.  So yesterday afternoon I called to make another reservation, for the evening.  I explained our previous experience.  I was told there were only two tables available - one upstairs, and one by the waitress' station, in the middle of the restaurant.  Upstairs is soulless and draughty, as well as being a passage to the loos, so I asked for the one by the waitress' station.  I gave them my phone number.

Last night an Arctic wind was blowing from the east.  When we arrived at the Two Bulls, we were offered the table upstairs that I had refused.  I told them about the phone conversation when we'd booked, but was told that they'd "had to rearrange" things.  Sorry, ladies: not good enough.  We sacrificed our health before for your food, and don't want to do so again.  So we took our custom elsewhere, and had an excellent meal in the comfort of the Dragon round the corner.  I'm not sure when we'll be returning to the Two Bulls.  June, perhaps?

Antony Mair

   

Reading at the Poetry Café

Stanza poets reading at the Poetry Café

 

Jo Grigg, who runs the Brighton Stanza group that I go to each month - she's the happy smiling face second from the right in the front of the picture - kindly sent me this today, following our reading last night with poets from Walthamstow's equivalent group.  Looking at it objectively, I can safely state that - Jo apart - poets do not go in for chic (I'm not singling anyone out in this comment, tempting though it is).  Also, as you can see from my being half-hidden at the back, not only do I not go in for chic but I never enjoy having my photograph taken.

  

But the happy smiles are an indication of the cheerful good nature that characterised the event.  Poets of very varying gifts in both groups read their poems admirably to a sympathetic audience of friends and poetry-lovers in a rather cramped basement of the Poetry Café, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it building in a little-known sidestreet on the fringes of Covent Garden.  What's good about the poetry world is its generally inclusive nature: rather like painting, there's room for everyone.  In this way it's perhaps less like the music world, where you at least need to play or sing in tune before getting off the ground! 

 

Reading one's own poems is a pretty daunting experience, and there's that usual detachment between what you hope you're conveying and what the audience is actually receiving.  So the opportunity to read is useful, since - like so many things - there's a skill needing to be learnt, which you can only do with practice.  All thanks to Jo and the Poetry Society, without whom it wouldn't have happened.

 

Antony Mair

Foretaste of Spring

2 Pleasant Row, Hastings Old Town

The weather has been stunning since Sunday.  Today we had lunch at the Jerwood Gallery's Café, which has an unrivalled view of the fishing boats on the beach.  People were eating out on the balcony, enjoying the sunshine.  When we returned, one of our neighbours in the cottage just behind us was doing the same in her small back garden.

There's still a nip in the air early in the morning, but that first hint of Spring is nonetheless welcome.  What it also does is bring in the trippers, like returning swallows.  Trippers to Hastings are not, on the whole, well-heeled glitterati coming here as if to their natural habitat.  Hastings is edgy, a sort of Hoxton-on-Sea, so the mix we get is Bohemia plus denizens of the Sarf London suburbs.  Bikers abound, as do families bringing their children down to the coast for a breath of sea air.  Parking is difficult, so queues of cars start to form around midday.  Come the evening, it all quietens down again: the Harley-Davidsons and the four-wheel-drives with their stickers saying "Baby on Board" have all rumbled back to Bromley and Orpington, leaving the locals to do some serious drinking in the pubs.

Of course we know that this sunshine is all a bit of a tease: that Spring is some way off.  But it's still encouraging to get a whiff of it.

Time to Go

 

 

Hastings Miniature Railway

 

We used to clutch our tiny sides at the thought of aging French rockstar Johnny Hallyday still strutting around in tight leather trousers.  But, alas, here in the UK we seem to have more than our fill of aged singers refusing to quit the limelight.  There's something quite sinister about Cliff Richard or Paul McCartney as their increasingly wizened faces loom in the spotlights.  (For the record, they're both older than "Johnny" as he's affectionately known in France.)  It's time to leave the stage, gents, and spend more time with your family.

 

The same goes for some of the radio presenters.  I've gone on enough about Radio 4, which is now a temple to boredom.  But I've indulged myself in a little diatribe against John Humphrys, who could, for my money, get a oneway ticket to almost any destination other than Hastings, on a train larger than the one in the picture above.  Here it is - I shall have to amend the stanza about horsemeat, since it looks increasingly as if he may be right on that one, though I hate to admit it.

 

 TIME TO GO

It’s time that you went, John Humphrys –

we’ve heard you on the radio long enough.

Your interviewing skill

is now an urge to kill.

You obviously get kicks from being tough.

 

It’s time that you retired, John Humphrys –

your hindsight and your preachiness can go –

"You could have” and “You would have”

and “Don’t you think you should have”,

“Don’t tell me that you didn’t even know.”

 

It’s time you left the air, John Humphreys.

We want to eat our muesli and our toast

without your needling questions

or your snide oblique suggestions

that there’s foreign horsemeat in our Sunday roast.

 

It’s time to leave the floor, John Humphrys,

and let some younger people run the show.

We’ve heard you put the boot in

to Nick Clegg and Mr Putin

but aggression’s had its day, so now please go.

 

It’s time you said good-bye,  John Humphrys –

you’ve covered news since Mikhail Gorbachev

- the cold war, the tsunami,

defence cuts to the army,

Conservative conspiracies

and ministers’ periphrases

devolution, revolution,

convolution, involution:

we’ve heard it all, it’s time to turn you off.

 

Antony Mair 

 

Horsemeat? processed food? forget it

Sea angling boats drawn up on the beach at Rock-a-Nore, Hastings

 

I don't know why anyone's surprised by the horseburger scandal.  As the old saying goes for builders - pay peanuts and you get monkeys.  What amazes me most is how anyone has been making anything out of the business at all.  In today's Guardian there was reference to no less than five middlemen before the product even reached Findus.  You'd have thought the transport costs alone would have obliterated the profit.

 

When we returned from France I was gobsmacked by the extent of processed food in Hastings supermarkets.  Any temptation to get a ready-made Beef Bourguignon for two was removed by a quick scan of the additives on the packet.  Now it looks as if it probably isn't even beef.  Last week I picked up a packet of what were described as "Venison Burgers" in the supermarket and discovered that they were 20% pork. 

 

In Hastings we have one colossal privilege: the availability of fresh fish, seven days a week.  Last week I was experimenting with some Nigella Lawson recipes, and was able to buy fresh squid and local scallops from one of the three fishmongers fifty yards away.  This week we had some cod fillet in a recipe we agreed was unnecessarily elaborate, since the fish was so good in its own right.  

 

Meat's expensive in the UK: prices at the excellent butcher we go to in Pett, just outside Hastings, are about 20% more than I would have paid in France.  But I know where it's come from, it's not pumped full of chemicals, and not packaged in cardboard and plastic.  We eat less of it.  Risottos, pasta, couscous and veggies are staple elements of our daily diet.  But local fish, in all its forms, is the star ingredient.

 

Antony Mair

Fat Tuesday in Hastings

Outside the Dragon Bar

 

 

After the rained-out Umbrella Parade on Sunday, it was at least dry for last night's Fat Tuesday festivities.  Hastings Old Town was packed with people: the event focussed on half a dozen hostelries who imported live bands.  The Dragon, which, it was rumoured, had brought in some well-known musicians at the last minute, spilled out into George Street, where the tide merged with the overflow from the Hastings Arms opposite.  The main pubs were impenetrable: when we walked up the High Street, Porters and the Jenny Lind were both crowded out.  We thought we'd try the so-called Filo - nothing to do with pastry, it's an abbreviation of the pub name First In Last Out.  On arrival they were allowing one person in for each one leaving.  I'd say that makes the evening a success.  I hope that the local charities set to benefit were pleased.

 

The Venetian mask business didn't seem to have taken off.  We'd had a bite to eat in the Black Pearl, where some heavyset chaps were sitting at the bar in surprisingly ornate masks - a curious mix of Don Giovanni and the Godfather.  But most people were interested in goodnatured drinking.  A lady shaking a collection box outside Porters allowed me to take her picture, though, just to show that some people made an effort.

Unable to get in anywhere, we went along to the Stag Inn in All Saints Street, which was not one of the official Fat Tuesday venues.  Now the Stag Inn is special.  It has regular folk music and shanty nights, and a loyal clientele drawn from the local population.  As newcomers we always feel slight outsiders, but that's more to do with our lack of facial hair than the welcome, which is invariably warm.  Last night there were about eight musicians sitting round a table playing a variety of instruments - clarinet, guitar, concertina, violin, flute and what looked like a couple of lutes.  It was brilliant diddly-dee stuff and we loved it.  The high spot was probably the lady who sang a sad shanty with a refrain that we all joined in to sing - "They won't let us go to sea any more".   When I asked if I could take her photo she insisted on displaying her Fat Tuesday T-shirt.  Her smile says it all.

 

Antony Mair

Mardi Gras - Hastings style

Gathering for the Umbrella Parade

 

 

Hastings has more than its fair share of festivals and celebrations.  I have never known people more fond of dressing up.  So I suppose the idea of Carnival, with all its implications of costume and general malarkey, was irresistible to the locals.  Think Venetian masks and gondolas, grotesque masks from Cologne's Faschingszeit, or the swaying floats of Rio.

 

But this is Hastings, and it's February.  Venice somehow manages to make its winter fogs and mists romantic at Carnival time, when masked figures slip down picturesque alleyways.  In Hastings the wind is howling off the sea and the rain edging into sleet.

 

A great part of Hastings' charm is that it doesn't try to be other than itself.  Mardi Gras would be a bit posh, so the festival here has been renamed Fat Tuesday.  A not entirely felicitous title, since it implies lardies wobbling from pub to fish and chip shop rather than svelte figures glittering with sequins.  But tasselled bosoms and scanty clothes would have laid participants out with pneumonia today if they'd tried it for the so-called Umbrella Parade. "All you need is an umbrella or parasol" the website said.  Actually, you needed a full set of waterproofs over your long johns as well.

 

Your humble servant got the timing wrong, alas, so went down for the gathering at 11 a.m. but had failed to note that the procession was scheduled to set off an hour later.  The cold and rain drove me away  before things got going.  However, I noticed that the small crowd was Blue Peter meets Hammer House of Horror: decorated parasols flourished by children in colourful wellies beside people in reinterpreted Victorian costume, out of the pages of Edgar Allan Poe.  I went and had a cup of coffee and on my return noticed that some of the black-coated Goth types were slipping into a local hostelry to fortify themselves for the off.  I suppose that's what Carnival's about, really: dressing up and drinking oneself senseless. Just like Rio.

 

Antony Mair        

 

 

More poetry coming up...

I know, I find it pretty surprising too.  Fortunately, I've heard of hype before, so am not too carried away by the description, hoping instead that anyone turning up on the 20th February is not going to be disappointed by the performance.  In reality, Robin Houghton and Joanna Grigg write so well that it's worth coming along to listen to them, let alone the rest of us.  After the scary experience of Brighton, which was the first occasion on which I'd read my little poems in public, I feel better equipped to stand at the microphone in front of all those upturned faces with their expectant look.

I have just started an online course with the Poetry School, which seemed a good idea at the time.  It involves submitting poems over a period of five weeks to the scrutiny of a wellknown poet-tutor (in the present case Catherine Smith) and one's fellow-students.  The course starts with people introducing themselves online.  This has revealed the eclectic mix characteristic of the poetry world, including a woman in Canada who was given the course as a Christmas present by her son, another woman who lives miles from anywhere in the Highlands, a couple of people who have already published collections or pamphlets and a singer-songwriter in his thirties who has turned to poetry from composing lyrics.  We're in the process of uploading poems onto the site this week, and then the comments come in next week.  I am preparing myself for amiable brickbats.

Just like other interests, writing poetry is like mountain-climbing.  You get up to the top of a hill and there's a higher one ahead.  Put another way, "Un train peut en cacher un autre".  I'm still in the foothills, or in front of the level crossing, as the case may be.  We'll see what lies ahead.

Antony Mair

 

The end of builders is in sight...

Newly painted front doors at the Shoebox and the Matchbox

 

Yes, the end of this refurbishment project is in sight.  With the repainting of the front doors and the finishing of paintwork round the windows (needless to say, there has been a last-minute discovery of some hitherto undetected rot in a sill) we shall be in a position by the end of the week to ask for the scaffolders to come along and remove the structure that has covered the façade of both houses for over three months.  Phew.

 

Not that that spells the end of everything: the new bathroom in No. 7 is in the process of being installed, and bookshelves constructed for my study; after which floors have to be sanded and oiled and the new bathroom redecorated; then carpets go down on halls and stairs - and then - wonder of wonders - we shall be able to move back in.  It looks like the end of February.  After all this time it is difficult to believe it is going to fall into place: but my optimism is such that I've even been looking at some lastminute.com offers for a city break in March.  We've not been out of the UK since the end of May last year, and haven't been away from Hastings much either, so need a break, however short.

 

The trouble with building work is that it is totally absorbing: we have been living in what I describe as "builders' warp", in the sense that nothing seems to have any importance or relevance other than the immediate task, combined with keeping builders happy with tea and coffee etc. and at the same time trying to keep track of costs.  Every now and again an important event in the outside world breaks through, but generally we live in a capsule apart.  The sooner we manage to enlarge our horizons the better.

 

"How are the dogs coping?" some people ask.  As you can see from the picture below, Oscar for one is overcome by stress.

 

Antony Mair

 

The wheels of justice

Bones found beneath a Leicester carpark: Photographs by University of Leicester and Jeff Overs.

 

Last night we watched the DVD of "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest", the third part of Stieg Larsson's trilogy about abuse and high-level corruption in Sweden.  Seeing Lisbet Salander acquitted and the villains arrested gave us the usual satisfaction of a happy ending to a cops-and-robbers type movie. 

 

An ending that, in these days of conspiracy theories and socalled investigative journalism, always seems to be postponed in real life, when the baddies appear to be winning.  Today, however, has produced a couple of satisfactory outcomes that lift the spirits in the same way as the goodies' triumphing at the end of a movie. 

 

First, the politician Chris Huhne has found himself obliged to enter a guilty plea to the charge of perverting the course of justice, following his lying to the police about who was driving his car when speeding.  I have heard stories in both France and the UK about people pulling strings (i.e. dropping names of friends in the police or gendarmerie) when caught speeding.  It gives me some satisfaction to see justice being strictly applied.  A custodial sentence seems likely, which is a mighty fall for an ex-Government minister.

 

The second event is in some ways more satisfying: the probable reinstatement of Richard III's good name, following the discovery of his skeleton beneath a carpark in Leicester.  Famously portrayed as the darkest villain in Shakespeare's chilling history play, he has been for most of us the incarnation of wickedness.  The possibility that he may have been the victim of Tudor propaganda has been around for decades - I remember reading Josephine Tey's book "The Daughter of Time" fifty years ago, and finding its arguments convincing.  It would have been exciting enough to find that the bones were those of the dead king; but to be able to deduce certain facts from them that could re-establish his reputation is a triumph of justice that warms the heart - particularly since we are talking about real life and not a Stieg Larsson fiction.  The wheels of justice may move at a very slow pace, but it's nice to think that, sooner or later, they arrive at the right place.  

 

Antony Mair