The History of Me in Cocktails: No. 2 – The Buck's Fizz

I think this is the first true cocktail I ever had: concentrate orange juice and South African sparkling wine, to celebrate something at work.

While drinkable enough, these days there are other mixers I prefer with champagne. But then, it was the height of sophistication for a spotty teenager.

I had a part-time job in the very lush HQ of a multi-national cement company, doing the weekly filing for their accounts department. My supervisor Antoinette taught me my first lesson in business: when your boss takes you to lunch, always order the lobster.

Buck's Fizz

Freshly squeezed orange juice
Champagne

Really, mix to individual taste. OJ in first, then champagne, to minimise a potentially explosive bubble situation.

The History of Me in Cocktails: No.1

The History of Me in Cocktails: No 3

This Election is No Joke

The Evening Standard reports that Boris is ahead in the opinion polls. The Standard is pretty desperate to get rid of Mayor Ken Livingstone – I think it goes beyond ideology; it’s deeply personal too. Ken has said some nasty things about the Evening Standard himself. Hard to believe he was once a (presumably paid) columnist for the paper.

I think Ken has actually been pretty good for London on the whole; however his response to the recent corruption scandal has been less than inspiring. One also must ask just how long he can stick around being mayor.

He is such an oversized personality the two other parties have been forced to put up ‘personality’ candidates to run against him. However, Boris Johnson has been terribly careful so far to reign in his jovial personality for fear Ken will succeed in labeling him a clown. Ken’s own dry humour also seems to be taking a holiday, so what at first promised to be a scintillating campaign season is turning out to be boring. I’m constantly wondering when the fun will begin.

Brian Paddick is no slouch at attracting publicity either; and he is definitely the candidate easiest on the eyes. I think his strategy of presenting himself as the sensible one is quite clever.

I really haven’t decided yet who to vote for; and to make matters worse, we have two votes each! Too many decisions.

The Orangery @ Kensington Palace

"Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea."

With these lines Alexander Pope forever linked in my mind Queen Anne and tea. So it is only appropriate that Queen Anne’s little palace conservatory extension at Kensington Palace (1704, Sir John Vanburgh designed, no less, and three times over budget) now houses one of London’s great places to take afternoon tea.

The Queen’s orange trees were housed in a sumptuous baroque space – soaring ceilings, windows and Corinthian columns; classical statuary and Grinling Gibbons carving. Apparently, she hosted al fresco summer supper parties here as well, hence the decoration. The all-white space works well for the modern café, with its rows of decorative metalwork furniture and dainty miniature orange trees on the tables. It seems to aim for the luxe tourist and/or well-heeled local; it is so nice to see this sort of thing being done well in this sort of location. The café certainly lives up to its elevated architectural surrounds. Service was very friendly and obliging but perhaps a little off-focus: but the place was hopping all afternoon (Anne and I settled in for a lengthy gossip over pots of tea and cakes; there was no pressure on us to move out)

We ordered the exclusive Tregothnan tea – the first tea to be actually grown in England (in Falmouth). One has to applaud the ambition – at 50º N it is the most northerly latitude at which a tea garden has been planted. However, great flavour requires high altitudes and – even as someone who prefers weak tea – I found this one slightly underpowered. Our cakes included lemon meringue (a generous slice with a tart lemon curd filling and just right crisp and chewy meringue topping), chocolate fudge cake, and an apricot and almond slice. A plate of prettily arranged dainty finger sandwiches included cucumber, smoked salmon and ham.

A very successful afternoon, and I am sure Queen Anne would approve of her Orangery’s modern incarnation. I’d definitely go again.

The Orangery @ Kensington Palace
(High Street Kensington tube)

Affordable

Credit crunch, what credit crunch? The Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park goes from strength to strength – I have never seen it so heaving. This year showed strong evidence of infiltration by a hard-core Art Crowd, almost overwhelming the always strong contingent of South Chelsea yummy mummies with baby buggies and soy lattes. They all seemed to be buying like there was no end to the boom.

An international flavour to the galleries as well – great to see galleries from the USA, France and Germany in attendance. And the art? – a really invigorating mix of approachable contemporary art; something for everyone to hang on their loft wall.

The Affordable Art Fair
Battersea Park
13th-16th March 2008

Rockferry

Channel a 60’s vibe – listen to this album. A turbo-charged retread of classic divas from the Swinging London decade. Duffy’s voice is too extraordinary to miss, and the album is beautiful and comfortable listening. Looking forward to her developing her sound.

Quote London

“I slowly limp back toward Chelsea. I wander about in the semi-darkness once again filled with a kind of indescribable love for this gorgeous, rotting, progressive, sprawling, crazy, wonderful city. And love, my friends, does not suck. I promise you that.”
~ Neil LaBute

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia

I don’t get Surrealism. I was persuaded by the Marxists at University that Paris in the 1920s and 30s saw the final decadence and collapse of the French avant-garde; the Bauhaus (German) was the real deal. Surrealism was just so much bourgeois wank.

Unfortunately, this thesis is undermined somewhat by Surrealism’s continuing critical and popular success. In recent years one can’t move in London without bumping into a Surrealism exhibition: Surrealism at the V&A, Dali at the Tate last year, and now the current troika at the Tate. And whereas the acknowledged ‘greats’ of the twentieth century, Picasso and Matisse, are still admired today, the artists whose influence is current are all the Surreal – as Andrew Graham-Dixon points out in his review in The Telegraph, “the work of almost every British artist of note to have emerged in the past 20 years – from Damien Hirst to Sarah Lucas, from Gary Hume to Tracey Emin - is visibly anticipated here.” (No link – can’t find it on their site)

Catriona and I went off to the Tate members’ private view last night. My scores are as follows:

Duchamp

9/10

Considering his influence, I think he’s massively underrated. He’s an extremely intellectual artist, yet very capable of arresting visuals – all his greatest hits are in the show, which is wonderful. The Philadelphia Museum of Art especially has been a very generous lender. Nude Descending a Staircase is a fabulous early work influenced by stop-frame photography; wildly controversial at the time but rapidly surpassed in notoriety by Fountain (1917), the ceramic urinal which launched the ready-made’s career in art history. It’s actually quite thrilling that two groundbreaking iconoclastic modernist icons are both currently on display in London – Duchamp’s Fountain at the Tate and Malevitch’s Black Square in the Royal Academy’s Russian show.

Man Ray

9/10

No matter what the ideological underpinnings, as long as the visuals are great an artist will always have admirers – Man Ray was incapable of producing boring work. Even his solarised photographs of nuts and bolts are formally gorgeous pieces. The entire exhibition kicks off with a ravishingly beautiful profile portrait of Duchamp I’ve not seen before, and also contains his wonderful portraits of lovers and my favourite, the soft-focus porrtait of Marchesa Casatti with four eyes. The Marchesa felt he had captured her soul.

Picabia

3/10

In comparison, Picabia comes off badly. His work reminds me strongly of Pulp’s song “Common People” – he’s the original rich-kid wannabe. He was the son of an extremely wealthy Cuban-born Spanish aristocrat, and liked to collect racing cars (especially Hispano-Suizas) – apparently he had over 100 cars. That says pretty much everything you need to know about him. He was clearly very lucky to link up with serious artists; he’s benefited greatly from their reflected glory. It is quite comic how in every room in this exhibition, with every development of style (and Picabia dabbles in many styles), his work is by far the weakest.

If you have by any chance any random Picabias in your collection, my advice after this show is: Run, don’t walk to Christies or Sotheby’s and Sell! Sell! Sell! Sell! Sell!

After the show Catriona and I repaired for a restorative glass of wine and some nibbles to the Tate café on level 7. The view at night-time is utterly fabulous – London glittering magnificently over a dark river; St Paul’s spotlit sublimely on the skyline. Sad this wonder is busy killing the planet – turn off those lights!!


Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia: The Moment Art Changed Forever
Tate Modern
21 February – 26 May 2008

The End is nigh, continued

James Lovelock, maverick independent scientist, predictor of our current eco-crisis 40 years ago, and author of the Gaia theory (earth is a self-regulating super organism), tells Decca Aitkenhead in the Guardian that global environmental catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke, and ethical living is a scam. Recycling is almost certainly a waste of time and energy.

“Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan”.

Happy Monday.

twelve

One post in the first week of February; two posts in the second week; two posts in the third week; and seven posts in the last three days. We can see what’s happening here, right?

This is not quite what I anticipated when I set the rules for my blog this year (12 posts on average each month, but not to fall below nine or exceed fifteen to improve consistency). Must concentrate more on an even spread across the month!

I could blame my lack of posting on work commitments, but really I’ve just been feeling a bit blah and meh. Almost gave up on the aim of twelve posts. However, that part of me which does pep talks explained I would be feeling even more meh and blah if I didn’t keep to my commitments; hence my late spurt.

So, hurrah, yay me for me, etc etc. Onwards and upwards . . .

P.S. I can do colours now. Wooo!

Evolution

Marc Quinn’s latest exhibition at White Cube’s Mason’s Yard Gallery (25 Jan – 23 Feb) was superb. He’s a very interesting sculptor, directly confronting the canon of classical western sculpture with his exploration of the human body.

Evolution presented 9 huge sculptures demonstrating the development of the human embryo. Each showed the embryo emerging from its marble bedrock, directly referencing Michelangelo’s Slaves, right down to the unpolished artist’s chisel marks (these get progressively more polished away as the embryo develops). I thought it was a very beautiful and major work; he is certainly developing an amazing oeuvre. One of our best and most underrated sculptors.

The History of Me in Cocktails: No. 1 – The Beer Shandy

Now, I have just bought a very definitive book of Cocktail recipes, and the Beer Shandy doesn’t feature (from this I deduce it must be utterly utterly uncool; don’t order this at Mahiki). However, this was the first alcoholic mixed drink I ever drank, aged three-and-a-half and upwards. My mother was partial to the beer/lemonade mix and I used to have a sip or two. I also remember enjoying the froth on my dad’s beer, and apparently in solidarity with my granddad’s mates demanded Guinness at the pub aged 2. I think though I may have ultimately settled for smarties and a coke.

These were the glory years of my beer consumption: can’t stand the stuff now; I swear I’m allergic. Can only drink wine or gin or vodka. Doesn’t make life easy at the pub after work; although I am an exceptionally cheap date – I’m usually drunk after half a glass!

Thank heavens for Wikipedia – more about Shandies here.

The History of Me in Cocktails: No.2

Overheard

Last night, in the ticket queue at Norbiton Station:

Silver fox lady: A return to Waterloo, please. Can you put tomorrow’s date on the receipt?
Ticket seller: I’m going to have to see your toyboy.

Earthquake in London!

Both the Evening Standard and BBC London relate that residents in London felt the earthquake that hit the UK last night (5.2 on the Richter scale, the biggest in almost 25 years). The epicentre was Market Rasen in Lincolnshire.

I was awake at 1am and definitely felt nothing untoward happening. Maybe it was just West and North London that felt anything? Growing up in Johannesburg, we frequently had tremors, caused by the gold-mining activities thousands of feet down.

Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group

Went with Catriona to the private view. Have always avoided the Camden Town group wherever possible in the past, and the first room reminded me why! – they are all so reductively derivative; aping the concerns and style of French post-Impressionism. Yargh!

Luckily, the Tate peps things up a bit with contemporary documentary film footage of London. I enjoyed seeing a top-hatted gent descend the (open) rear staircase of a horse-drawn omnibus as it pulled up Whitehall into Trafalgar Square – all the buildings remain recognisably the same, but everything else is so different. I wonder how this stretch will appear in a hundred year’s time? A glowering, attitudinal bowler-hatted boy was clearly just waiting for hoodies and the onset of Catherine Tait. Chavtastic before his time.

Refreshed by the film footage, the following rooms were far more enjoyable. Especially, it was charming to see familiar London sights expressed Post-Impressionist stylee. Charles Ginner’s Piccadilly Circus (1912) depicts another London bus: the 19 to Clapham Junction!

The most distinguished Camden Groupie is, of course, Walter Sickert. Catriona was intrigued by Patricia Cornwall’s theory he was the real Jack the Ripper. Apparently, Cornwall spent $6 million of her own money investigating this theory – controversially, she even destroyed a Sickert painting she bought searching for forensic evidence!!

Sickert’s prostitute paintings and paintings of the Camden Town Murder can easily be explained by his French Post-Impressionist influences: Manet, Toulouse Lautrec and Degas all painted prostitutes and sometimes violent scenes of ‘real life’. Also, it is unclear why Sickert, if he really was Jack, would wait 20 years after the Ripper murders to start painting such scenes. Also, has anyone checked out Sickert's knowledge of the backstreets of Whitechapel? In justice to the unfairly accused Sickert, let us hope this exhibition causes his prices to rise and Cornwall to regret her misguided iconoclasm.

The exhibition ends with more newsreel footage. Be warned, though, that footage of the suffragette Emily Davison throwing herself in front of the King’s horse at the Derby horse race in 1913 is included, and is pretty shocking: think frog in a blender. I’m amazed such an event was caught on camera at the time. I don’t think she meant to kill herself, just interrupt the race. A glancing blow from the leading horse knocks her right in the path of the horse following and down she goes, in a welter of hooves and skirts. What this has to do with the Camden Group, who knows, but it is interesting.

Modern Painters: The Camden Town Group
Tate Britain
13 February – 5 May 2008

Oscars 2008

I am absurdly pleased and proud of Europe’s success – all four best actor prizes went to America’s foundation colonial powers (UK = 2; Spain = 1; France = 1). However, can’t say I’m planning to see any of the films – they are either too scary or too worthy. Two of them (There Will be Blood and No Country for Old Men) definitely have very scary haircuts and moustaches.

Javier Bardem’s haircut mercifully was vastly improved for the Oscars. However, can’t say the same for Daniel Day-Lewis – he was channelling Elizabethan travelling player style with lank locks and earrings. I do not agree with all the flak Tilda Swinton and Marion Cotillard got for their frocks – I liked both their outfits; it’s nice to see individuals expressing their own taste rather than displaying the safe stylishness imposed by stylists. Julie Christie especially looked great.

Quote London

I can walk about London and see a society that seems an absolutely revolutionary change from the 1950s, that seems completely and utterly different, and then I can pick up on something where you suddenly see that it's not.
~ Penelope Lively

Bad water

So, after last night bottled water is now on every eco-warrior’s hit-list: it’s the new Chelsea Tractor or patio-heater. BBC’s Panorama programme made a really strong case against – the transportation and (plastic) bottling of water is a real ecological nightmare and complete waste of resources. Discarded plastic harms wildlife and pollutes the oceans an will hang around for hundreds of years.

Fiji water turns out to be quite a bad deal. Originally funded by the EU to source fresh water for the islanders, the government now licenses an American company to bottle and export the water to North America and Europe. But a third of the islanders do not have access to safe water and typhoid is still quite prevalent. The Fiji water company is doing something to help this situation, but obviously as a private company doesn’t have the responsibility to supply the islanders with their water needs. One wonders what their government is doing with all the royalties from the export of their fresh water.

The Rules of Shopping

1) Sainsbury’s guarantees never to have the crucial ingredient Hedgie needs. This ingredient will always be the last item on Hedgie’s shopping list.
2) Hedgie will always choose the wrong queue at the check out. This effect will be magnified when shopping on limited time at lunch hour, when there will be a confused moron in front of Hedgie who queries a £2 special offer, causing spiralling confusion amongst the till operator and her supervisor, finally resulting in an IT meltdown which will take 20 minutes to fix. It will then be found that the moron was mistaken and the bill was correct all long.
3) And what is it with Asda’s bread? It certainly wins the prize for most bizarre baguette ever. A bouncy, chewy texture much like a doughnut, with a sugary crust much like a doughnut. Not unpleasant, but definitely weird and definitely not ever to be given to French friends.

Made in the Dark . . .

And should have stayed there!

☹

V. disappointed with Hot Chip’s new CD – it’s massively different to The Warning, their excellent 2006 release, and to my ears not as good. At first listen I like only two tracks: the first single “Ready for the Floor” and “Don’t Dance”. About 3 or 4 other tracks are ok; the others are either dismal dirges or just noise. Some Sunday paper reviews felt it was “more commercial” – not so!!!

I’ll give it a few more listens to give it a chance, but in the meantime, disgruntled of Clapham signing off . . .

Tube Rage

Blissfully, I have managed to avoid rush-hour tube travel for almost 25 months. Unfortunately, however, I had to take the tube up to Euston on Monday morning at 7:18 am.

From previous experience, I thought this would be early enough to at least be able to squeeze into a carriage at Clapham Common station, if not actually get a seat. However, we were packed so tight I was able to identify people’s preferred toothpaste brands. At least, and thank goodness, people on the southern end of the Northern line use toothpaste in the mornings!

Well, things were fine if tightly packed ‘till Stockwell, where I changed to the Victoria line. I then unwittingly stood in the personal and private space of someone else on this packed platform (he had followed me closely all the way from the Northern line platform, huffing and puffing). When the train came in this gentleman elbowed me roughly in the ribs in order to get into the carriage first, then deliberately blocked me off from getting a seat (unsuccessfully). He glowered threateningly at me. I glowered as fiercely as I could back, and thankfully before things escalated the carriage became packed and we were separated.

So – beware of Mr Angry on the Northern line: a middle-aged gent with a few wispy ginger curls clinging nostalgically to his bald pate. Doesn’t look like a yob but is a total psycho. Hope he gets seized by the authorities and forced to watch Ken’s “courtesy on public transport’ video back-to-back all weekend.