Gerald Westminster

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: London 2OO5


The navel of the Universe

A blog is a blog, while a political column disguised as a cool, trendy blogspot.com diary is a total different animal. I would like blogs to keep their, so to speak, purity. But sometimes it might look callous or plain silly not to speak at all of what's going on in the world out there, around us. Famously, Louis XVI's entry for July 14th in his Journal was: "Rien". A lot has happened in London the other day. Besides I lived there, in the blissful RBK&C, for five happy years.

When I was a Londoner myself, the Provisional Irish Republican Army was still active, and even managed a rocket attack against Whitehall. Later on I lived in Jaffa, at the time bus-deflagrations became part of terror war tactics. More recently, I watched from my Grokholsky pereulok viewpoint the Dubrovka Theater massacre, the Beslan massacre and all the black, sad things that were happening in Chechnya. Tellingly, to deal with terror attacks has been part of the internal scene whenever I lived, for the past twenty years. Including, obviously, where I'm staying now, since everything happening here is, when not directly ETA-related, a kind of grief-work for the 11-M .

My dear London, the only place on Earth where an eccentric with a un-heard of hobby can find plenty of soul mates. The vibrant proof that cultural diversity not only can work but that indeed it mutually reinforces those different cultures. I prefer a sushi bar alongside a Mexican nachos joint and a Alsatian regional restaurant to a fusion Asiapacific choucroute. London is like that, a New York in Old Europe ( Thank the Lord!).

Both the etiological and symptomatic treatments of Islamist Terrorism will have to pursue. Not an easy task, and at times perceived as boring when one considers how difficult it is to focus the attention of a TV-addicted population for more than a fortnight.

But if there are anywhere balanced and efficient professionals, in and outside politics, that can pull it off, it will be the Brits. They live in London and they know what's at stake...

Mark Spitz

A swimming pool in Puerta de Hierro...



waterpolo as a warm up for the aperitif...

When you find yourself stucked up in downtown Madrid in a July Sunday, with celsius figures going largely further than 30, an invitation to a lunch-by-the-pool comes as bliss.

The hosts, Blatand and Garbo, are a true cosmopolitan couple with graceful outlook, refraining admirably from speaking the mother language of the overwhelming majority of guests at the lunch table (a temptation my countrymen seem unprepared to resist, when in analogue circumstances). Mirabello arrived in a huge motorbike. The fourth waterpolo player, Tancos, arrived with wife, Presepio, and dog, (Manfred) in matching colours.

The Eden-like tranquility of the garden was only shaked by the shooting competition (with compressed-air carabine) and the occasional diving of Manfred, either voluntary or enforced.

At lunch, the gazpacho was served with the full ceremonial traditions of an High Mass in Latin, and the poussins stuffed with mushrooms were exquisite. Cooking abilities were discussed. Why Spaniard young married-not-long-ago women do not cook anymore? Presepio defended herself claiming that a mere organic, non-canned tomato sauce takes about two hours out of her alloted lifetime, let alone more elaborate receipes. Mirabello entices us with a description of his risotto al fungi porcini abilities and tries to convince the audience that cooking should be added to the Secondary School obligatory curriculum. Blatand remembers how perfectly happy were his children when given a canned meal without removing the can (therefore avoiding the accusation of cheating when you just transfer food from can to plate and pretend "heating" is "cooking"). This blogger of yours timidly confirmed that he can cook too, having stressed, once again, that a creative combination of tastes, textures and colours on a given kitchen effort is quite close to artistic endeavours.

The recent scandal involving a Very ImportantCEO of a German carmaker and his Brazilian escort to several working visits to different points of the globe was also discussed. Unacceptable behaviour, we all agree. Private life and corporate life should not go hand in hand ( to put it prudly). But what really killed the culprit's reputation for good was Garbo's comment: "What a stingy, mean, little man he reveals himself to be! Hundred of thousands of Euros in yearly salary and bonuses and still he has to fill his Brazilian pleasure-hours under corporate expenses!". Unacceptable behaviour, we all shake our heads in agreement.

Manfred stretches himself on the lawn to speed up the drying process after his latest dive into the tempting swimming pool...

Georgia O'Keeffe

Blue has some redeeming features too...















Colour-manipulation of a non-blue painting

by Georgia O'Keeffe

The Honourable Reader might remember that sometime ago I declared my intention to fully review Ms. Maria Tereza Gonzalez latest exhibition. As an artist, Mate, also known as Bright in the columns of this blog, has some direct relationship with audacious flowers. Not because of some edipo-artistic hidden rapport with Ms O'Keeffe (which I quiz her about) but because her father happens to be an expert in orchydology. To spend most of her lifetime in the Caribe (although in the "wrong" type of coast...), doubly exposed to orchids (both in Nature and among Family) must mean something when it comes to artistic output.

I think Mate's paintings on the walls and the installation downstairs give the full flavour of an artist that knows both what she's doing and where she intends to go - without forgetting, paradoxically, that every artist is also a caminante that will have to do much of his camino while "walking" (al andar, to finish quoting Antonio Machado).

I spend a very pleasant lunch hour sushisashiming and tempuring while Bright tells me all about her life in Iberian-America and Iberian-Europe. When I assume the "sake" has performed its task I ask her for the price of a piece I am coveting ( three three-dimensional huge paper petals that together make some kind of tropical dark-red carnivorous floral installation). We make a deal. I think we are both pleased to having reached a deal.

Why have flowers being intruding in my mind lately, I ask myself? Rather roses than orchids, though, I might add..

flor3.jpg from Mate Gonzalez

In the meantime, Ms. Gonzalez has send me by e-mail this proof that the War of the Colours doesn't have to follow the pattern of the War of the Roses... Peaceful Co-existence and Harmony are possible, at least on the canvas..

Anne Bancroft

Back to a botoxed Future?..

The Four Ages of a Woman:
Post-adolescence, Prime Time, Maturity and Museum Piece.
(Featuring Miss K. Kuznetsova, Ms. E. Green and Mrs. A. Bancroft)

So many dinners are full of inconsequential chatting, loaded with meaningless charming words that when a serious issue, bang!, explodes on the white tablecloth, we all stare in disbelief. Surely, she will not go that far, we say to ourselves... WoodyAllen-Manhattanite dialogues in a warm windy night, on top of the chocolate-diving sherries? It can happen, the Honourable Reader can rest assured. Thanks to the courage of Taurina, a fully blooded espanola like don't do them anymore. Thanks perhaps also to the "albarino" White and to the post-dinner Bombay sapphire..

A small perfect-sized dinner, two host and four guests. Outside, in a corner of a peaceful courtyard, with rhododendrons around and as the centerpiece of the circular-shaped table, there we were. Rupert, the host, very early forties, was managing with soft efficiency the delivery of "caipiroshka". His wife, Girissima, (near to forties?) was wearing a turquoise blue Ibiza-acquired top with matching beautiful smiling eyes. The Porteño-Salamancan glamorous couple, Taurina (fortysomething) and Thelaw (early fiftysomething) with Candidata (early forties). Plus this blogger of yours (undefined age, glamorous 40's perhaps?).

Why did the conversation took that particular turn? Why that irruption of female nostalgia for the hips, culo and breasts of their respective Youth Self? Why dit it became the leitmotiv of the tertulia? Because they could not accept the Moscow story of a love affair between their contemporary bull T-bone and a tender young veal medallion? Perhaps. But, as I say incurring the risk of repeating myself, Taurina had guts.

She recalled the last time she tried on a new bikini, under the unforgiving surgical operating room crude lights of a Zara dressing booth, with excruciating detail. We were laughing like mad to her cold cynical auto-critique, inch by a inch, of a no longer post-adolescent body. She stopped, looked at us, in a comic-tragical way, and described, with abundant southerner waving of arms and hands, how a bunch of young insistent guys used to follow her on the beach whenever, in those golden years, she wore her daring bikini. When, as she put it, she was monissima and the chance of touching her culo was to die for. Nowadays, things changed. Taurina could have kill the fucking taxidriver who, the other day, dared to say to her: "It's thirty euros, Señora". She would have been prepared to pay one hundred fifty euros, for Goodness sake, to be driven to that very same spot in Calle Serrano if only the taxista would have used "Señorita" and made her day. Instead, she paid the taxi and left with a hesitant unbalanced walk, feeling like crawling close to the burning asphalt, like an escaping salamander. Was that really her, that dinosaur crossing Serrano in that instant bound to the Zara shop? What business for a Dyplodocus to go and try to find a suitable bikini? Why not a full-length tunic, she felt like asking the shop assistant? When did outlook became so crucial? Surely, at least, the inner beauty can remain young? Candidata interrupts and says with near-desperate anger: "I'll give you all my youngish inner beauty, I don't F%$#$$ care to be ugly or old inside, as long as I can get back my turnonian attractive body of my twenties!" Now, was not that a pure Faustian Challenge, if I have ever seen one? Are we that ready to quickly get rid of our immortal soul, in some Mephystophelian rebajas, in order to regain the slender curves, the pecak-like skin?

So, it went on like that, whisky after whisky, gin after gin, until in the end the dinner turned into supper. A very friendly session, very comical most of the time, tragical now and then, of social group-analysis.

We all grow old in due time, we should just try to laugh about it...

Rita Hayworth

Farewell to Rita...


An anti-apples version of Cézanne's "Apples and Oranges"

Blogs can be very handy. What shell I give, as departing gift, to Rita, a diplo-colleague who's cocktailing us all, later this evening? I've already signed up for the collective chancery offering and I don't feel that inspired to identify THE appropriate personal gift under the circumstances. What about a blog celebrating all the Ritas that were relevant or meaningful to me? How "Lovely Rita" by the Beatles was for weeks my morning shower tune? How Rita Mitsouko's punkish singing saved the face of French pop music for me during my Paris stay? How Rita Lee's lyrics helped my courtship of Miss M., a plumcake with cream type of adolescent girlfriend that doesn't exist anymore? Well, I think the point that this particular arrangement of the letters (by alphabetical order) A, I, R and T sounds very pleasant to me, full of down the memory lane associations.

I have asked this smiling and gentle outstanding professional, a sweet wife and proud mother of two toddlers, to consider working alongside me if I ever get to the Ambassadorial peaks. Her answer was not the grateful acquiescence I kind of expected but rather the starting of a selling herself hard process. She told me what is the city she is interested in, and that, if Fate will ever take me there, yes, she might consider my offer. What a cheek!

I hope she will be happy in the coming years back at the Mother Palace.

I think I'll print this blogtext and give it to Rita later this evening. An original gift, no? I told you, a blog can be a very convenient thing at times..

David Lean

Blog-marketing


The Penguin edition of the "Passage"


If you wrote the novel or saw David Lean's film why not reading "A Gourmet Passage to India" at www.praiagrande.blogspot.com ?

V.S. Naipaul

Blog-marketing


Biriani rice is yummy!

If you like Indian Food why not reading "A Gourmet Passage to India" at www.praiagrande.blogspot.com ?

Alexander of Macedonia

Blog-marketing


Photo landscape of Forster's greatest novel...


If you like E.M. Forster's novels why not reading "A Gourmet Passage to India" at www.praiagrande.blogspot.com ?

E M Forster

A Gourmet Passage to India...


(Indian) Food for thought ...


The Honourable Reader having been a faithful follower of this blog knows by now how it works. A blog is also a kind of velvety sofa in Prof. Freud's Viennese apartment. Free association is encouraged. Our brain has been working by following "links" long before nerd builders of operating systems and software geeks invented the concept. So, I was invited to a dinner where Indian food was served and "India" becomes the Key-word. What bells start ringing when "India" enters one's conscience? "Blog-Read all about it!"

First things first, the dinner.. Right. Fellini, a fellow-diplotraveller who returned recently from a three-years stint in New Delhi has brought in his luggage a fully-trained cook. An Hindu Indian citizen that has learned the curry alchemy with his own father, a cook, I'm told, of near mythical reputation when it comes to the lamb korma with biriani rice. So, Fellini decided to invite some friends for his sleek Ethnology cum Modern Art Museum-type apartment to be the guinea-pigs of his cook's Madrid début.

With Don Al, the young FilmProducer, about to embark in a five-weeks long South American tour, came three nicely looking chicas. Gema, Clavellita and Bright were all there, all artists of the Painting persuation. Bright has a exhibition in town, which I intend to review without pity for the enjoyment of the Honourable Reader. She has DNA from a Latin-American country with a coast, Hélas!, with no chance of a decent sunset (Only West-oriented coasts, like California's or Portugal's, experience the real thing. One cannot take really seriously a country without an Empire in his past or without a sun diving slowly into a proper Ocean - Anatolia coast or the Lebanese one are disqualified because the pitiful Mediterranean is not a real sea) . Gema, whom I would swear would not touch figurative painting with a barge pole has been doing a kind of Garcia Marquez-inspired 'magic realism' figurative stuff. Another paradoxical surprise was that she starts an argument seeming about to make a slightly superficial point and ends up demonstrating a deeper insight about the issue at stake than the rest of us. A telling sign of pure intelligence as we all know ( It's not processing speed but complexity-management that defines the true Giga-byte human brain. ). What about Clavellita, the Honourable Reader anxiously asks? Well, I'm reserving my opinion for after a promised guided-visit to her atelier. Although this L.A.-educated painter is a user of a large palette of colours she finds blue one of her core-colours, which came as a big disappointment. (It's well known that Humanity is divided between Blue-Lovers and Red-Worshipers and that each tribe does not accept easily the other's chromatic idiosyncrasy). Clavellita is dangerously guapa, with honourably handsome greenish eyes, long ethnic skirts and Argentinean Heritage-related MegRyanish blondiness.

India's contemporary Art Scene was discussed (brain-link: "India Ink" by Tom Stoppard, London some years ago, witnessing Felicity Kendall (as the painter Flora Crewe) going for both East and West leanings). Goa was mentioned (brain-link: the stored imagery of Old Goa, with the surrealistic mix of tropical jungle and baroque Portuguese churches; the fall of Goa in 1961 at the military hands of Ghandi-inspired pacifist Nehru). The Raj was referred to (I linked to one of the foremost TV series of all times, "The Jewel in the Crown" , based on Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet novels.). Fellini stands up and goes to his bookshelves and returns with E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India" (the link this time is Alexandria, of course, where Forster lived and about which he wrote probably the best travel book-as-literature of all times. Forster is for me for ever associated to Alexandria's Holy Trinity of Cavafy, Durell and Forster).

Another theme which was inevitably discussed, the cause célèbre of our times, was, of course, Gay marriage. One should never discuss sex, politics and religion at table and this issue is, for sure, the most potent cocktail of religion (in this catholic country at least), politics (the issue is a substitute for the lack of ideology in modern dull political struggles) and sex (including all the possible sexual orientation variants that are encapsulated by constantly changing acronyms) . Forster would have been flabbergasted to realize how quick things have changed since his highly repressed times...

Joao Filipe Osorio de Menezes Pitta

The Count of Praia Grande and His Court met ...



A sunset in Praia Grande, waiting for the Green Ray...

As this blog is also something of a journal, depicting the day-to-day main activities of this blogger of yours, I cannot fail to mention the last weekend in Praia Grande. Very difficult to put into words (how to describe the Glastonbury-like communion feeling when the sun is about to set in the Atlantic and we are all waiting for the one in a trillion chance to witness the Green Ray?). The Praia (as we all say, for short) is about a tribal bond, plenty of booze and a weird and beautiful ecosystem.

What are the little square boxes of the check-list, to tick whenever one returns to the Praia after an enforced separation? The mothering cliff in the end of the beach? Tick. The red-to-yellow flag on the bathing areas poles? Tick. The foaming roaring ocean, with or without courageous surfers? Tick. The poor uniformed sod who tries to prevent parking outside authorized spaces? Tick. The smiling and gloriously inefficient waiters at the "by-appointment" restaurants, waving at us? Tick. The un-Portuguese sky with charges of light brigades of clouds, a threatening halo of mist on the ege of the horizon, and a general sense of weather instability? Tick. The dinosaur fossil steps immortalized in stone ? To tick later. The incredibly beautiful faces of young flowering girls? To keep on ticking. The freshness of the coastal seabass, of the reddish soft crab or of the strangely phalic barnacles? To tick when meal time comes. The ravages of Time, and salt, and white nights on the faces of our Friends? Never to tick. The overwhelming nostalgic taste of Lost Youth? Unavoidable tick.

One's own golden generation of hippie-ish beach boys is approaching the time it will have to gracefully bow out and hand over its place to a new unelected Board. Or, rather, a Court. Our tribal Praia has a near feudal tradition and is neither a kingdom or a principality but an Earldom. The Count of Praia Grande is an honourary title, legitimized by blueblood and by the tacit acceptance of his prominence by us the Barons of the Good Life who until recently could muster the admiration of the Knights-Surfers, and of part of the suntanned female population.

The Count had brought a wild boar from the North, in honour of Lou Parrot, the Jester, the Baron with an unforgiving awkward cannabis-like unfocused humour who was birthdaying this very weekend. As good as a pretext to gather the Court. Some Ladies were present, including Saint Magdalene and a couple of non-Praia Witnesses. Youngblood Baronets were allowed at the High Table, as part of their graduation into power. One of them contributed with an awesome seafood soup, from "navalheiras" (Macropipus prestandrea) , a elongated cockle clam with a knife-box shape (a macho knife is called 'navalha). But all made the time-honored biggest contribution of all. They came armed with Stories, not to lay down as offers, but as precious proofs of their right to be there.

The menu was hyper-deepfried minuscule saurel, we call "Little Joaquins" (we eat the entire 2-inches long fish, head and tail finn and all); followed by the above mentioned wholesome sea soup; followed by the roasted boar served with a fried rice cooked by Philomena. The wines were rich and abundant.. the sunset glorious .. the Stories flowing.

Most of the Stories are drunkenness-related? So what? What about the best anecdotes of the Russian classics, aren't they all cognac (Tolstoy) or vodka (Dostoevsky)-related? Most of it is spoilt-child preppie boys stuff? And your point is? Haven't we all delighted with TeddyBear-carrying Oxford students whereabouts? Not really working outside the non-verbal enchanted aura? For sure.

After the ending bottle(s) of Famous Grouse and the final pyrotechnics of story-telling we all went our ways, journeying into the night. Happy that Praia's magic still marches on. (The Witnesses' smiles attested to it) . And the Court understood that the upcoming generations were almost ready to claim their inheritance.

How many Summers are left before accepting that silver hair and softer bellies will dislodge us, Barons, of our sexual charisma-related prominence? I'll have to ask the Count.

Choderlos de Laclos

Valmont, a Romantic hero with very bad press...


Mme de Merteuil in Les Liaisons Dangereuses at Sadler's Wells


I'm eager to visit London before August 14 in order not to miss a ballet adaptation of Uncle Choderlos' masterpiece. Another example of these private collections one ends up engaged upon in one's life. After the novel-in-letters itself, the screen adaptations, and the West End theatrical production, I think the no-words choreographic approach might bring something fresh and new.

My own "reading" of Valmont is not shared by everyone including, from what I've read , by Adam Cooper himself, who will dance the Vicomte at Sadler's Wells. The luciferine traits of Valmont, his "fucking bastard" quality, the amorality of his behaviour as a cold seducer - that's what almost everybody chooses to underline. I tend to be less harsh in my appreciation. For me the death-wish (fulfilled on the final duel) that follows the desperate realization that it is too late now - that he hast lost for good Mme de Tourvelle who was indeed his one great Love - has all the marks of Early post-Classical Romanticism at its very best. Classical literature, for all its wit and luminosity, lacked something that a wise portion of over-the-top romanticism could remedy. A century later, or so, Romanticism had degenerated (like Baroque into Rococo) and was no longer palatable outside adolescent tastes. But Valmont, like Oneguine, is what Casanova would have been if only he had been born a noble, or what Byron almost managed to be (albeit with the club foot as the albatross he had to carry around his neck all his short life). And that is what? Well, the classical rational elegance of a French formal garden with symmetrical bushes and clipped hedges plus the romantic generosity of heart, the abandonment of reason in the pursuit of the last chance of redemption through unique, unheard of, love.

On the Ballet version we are promised a "rape scene" involving Valmont and Cécile. I must object to this interpretation. "Rape" is too loaded a word to use without proper consideration. Some boundaries cannot be crossed: if you label Valmont a rapist you cannot even consider that the man has any of those post-Tourvelle redeeming features.

Under these circumstances I'm considering going to London in order to boo the ballet, and to organize a anti-globalization-type demonstration against the maltreatment of my dear old Vicomte.

Tabitha Getty

Mute, Blind, Deaf...



Monkey-business



Some Honourable Readers have been curious about how do I look like. Semi-anonymity was a starting point of this blog, so let's have a semi-anonymous photo. With Marrakesh monkeys, on New Year's Eve.

Rita Barata Silvério

A blog-star was born...



rititi@blogspot.com



I was curious in meeting a Madrid-resident fellow-blogger who made it into media stardom. Is it easier to be outrageous when you're a manager in a serious bank or a HeadOffice public servant? There was a consensus that I should refrain from the more heavy/hard four-letter words. She, on the other hand, will go on enjoying the freedom to curse and to slang as much as she wants. Joder!