Apocalypse soon

Only a few short months ago some liberal British journalists were lecturing us on the superiority of American Democracy – the enthusiasm and commitment of the US public in the nomination process, compared to our laid-back and terminal cynicism this side of the Atlantic.

Well, things have changed now.

The committed and enthusiastic Americans are swinging behind the seriously frightening Sarah Palin, who may well become President if John McCain pops his clogs.

The end is nigh.

Scary quotes from the papers:

“My Republican friend emails . . . and makes a prediction: ‘Remember, since Kennedy, only three Democrats have been elected President: LBJ = Small town, folksy Texas blowhard; Jimmy Carter = Small town, folksy Georgia blowhard; Billy Jeff Clinton = Small town, folksy Arkansas blowhard.’ Sarah Palin will be next but one President of the United States”. – Linda Grant, Observer 14/9

“The more the New York Times and Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there’s a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are that she’s new, she’s popular in Alaska and she’s an insurgent. As long as those are out there, these little facts don’t really matter.” – John Freehery, Republican strategist, to the Washington Post, reported in the Guardian.

On a more entertaining note, you can find out what you would be called if Sarah Palin was your mommy here.

I am Snooker Hinge Palin. Kinda cool!

talk like a pirate day

Argh . . .

yo ho ho & shiver me timbers

me hearties

. . . another barrel of rum . . .

(hic)!

The Duchess

In which a spirited Keira Knightley as the eponymous Duchess is abused mightily by her mother, husband and 'best friend' – and even more grievously by the clunking script and pedestrian direction, cinematography and editing. To cap it all, a thousand violins interject themselves whenever they spot an opportunity. Usually at a point where we are enjoying yet another long lingering close-up of Keira emoting moodily with fantastic 18th-century hair.

How I longed for the wit and stylishness of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

Ralph Fiennes’ performance as the Duke is pretty magnificent. But then – perhaps an easier role? (the patriarchal insensitive oafish bully showing flashes of humanity now and then) – and a decidedly smaller one, meaning there is not as much for the production team to tamper with.

My google stats show a consistent demand for The Duchess of Devonshire and Keira Knightley, so to satisfy my readers I just had to see this film! The things I do for you.

meat free me

Last night I helped save the word by eating a meat-free dinner – liguine olivieto, with liquidised olives and garlic mixed with chopped tomatoes and balsamic vinegar. I love it, but just as well I was alone in the house last night as the garlic was somewhat overpowering. Even though I did stack the dishwasher before going to bed I came down this morning to lingering garlicy smells in the kitchen. Not good with oats for breakfast.

Boris Johnson hates being told what to do by the UN and insists we should concentrate on decreasing the rise in the number of humans, not cows.

I’m thinking the world probably already has more humans than it can sustainably support, so really everyone cutting back on meat again is a good idea, a well as practicing birth control.

Poor moos are a very energy-intensive food source, and moreover produce huge quantities of methane, which is 25 times more powerful than carbon as a global warming gas. Cows produce milk a well, so milk and cheese are off the menu too!

In the 70s, meat went out of fashion and all the trendy nutritionists told us to eat plenty of carbohydrates, especially pasta and potatoes. Now pasta and potatoes are BAD – the Atkins diet has pretty much proved they cause weight gain, not meat. With the rise and rise of “nose-to-tail” eating, meat has become intensely fashionable again. Personally I can’t get enough of it.

colonial exploits

Busy reading Thomas Pakenham’s excellent The Scramble for Africa; quite a head trip. The colonial antics of France, England, Germany etc would be comic if their consequences weren’t so tragic. Especially intriguing was the France v England match in the Sudan, which culminated in a face-off in the malarial swamps of the Nile, in a place then called Fashoda.

The Sudan itself had been carried away on a tide of Islamic fundamentalism – it was the first modern Islamic fundamentalist state. Despite the headline demise of General Gordon at Khartoum at the hands of the Mahdi’s army, the British seemed quite happy with the status quo, and were in no immediate hurry to avenge Gordon’s death.

Then some academic read a paper at a geography conference which claimed that a dam on the Nile at Fashoda could literally stop the river and basically hold Egypt to ransom. This news electrified both the French and British colonial departments.

The French sent a secret expedition to Fashoda. Two hundred French forces traveled up the Congo, then dismantled their steamer and hauled it up over the Congo/Nile watershed. Then they reassembled it and sailed down the Nile to Fashoda, carrying with them crates and crates of champagne (how they kept it chilled is anyone’s guess).

Meanwhile, The British sent an army into Sudan under Kitchener – ostensibly to assist Italian forces who were escaping from their defeat in Ethiopia. When he arrived at Khartoum he opened further secret instructions to sail up the Nile with a fleet of gunboats and occupy Fashoda (and if the French were already there, to take it without firing a shot).

The French expedition refused to surrender and the whole thing kicked off, with the two countries coming to the brink of war. Eventually the French backed down. This was so humiliating for them the British changed the name of Fashoda, wiping it off the map. General de Gaulle regarded Fashoda as a massive setback for French prestige and honour, and apparently “the Fashoda Syndrome” still lurks in the depths of the French psyche.

hip hip hooray

Good to know.

Howeve, Metro says the black hole might take 4 years to appear.

Let's see, 4 years - - - that takes us to 2012.

Isn't that when the Mayans predicted the end of the world???

Cy Twombly

Members’ private view at Tate Modern last night with Catriona. I remember being completely ravished by Twombly at the Whitechapel (I think) years ago – after this, I still like him, but there is a quantity of decidedly questionable stuff included in this show. The final “Bacchus” paintings disappointed me with their inflated size, reductive scarlet colouring and vapid brushwork – they seem totally devoid of the subtlety Twombly at his best so seemingly effortlessly achieves. Wincingly embarrassing too is the untitled series of nine paintings for the Venice Biennale – botched monochrome Monet lily ponds, some in 18th-century rococo formats which bring absolutely nothing to the experience.

The Quattro Stagione paintings in the room between these are hugely better; both versions elegiacally beautiful and evocative – Twombly at his best, creating a magically unlikely fusion of abstract expressionism with European classical reference.

Afterwards, we had dinner in the 7th floor café. This was my second time in a row to be given a window table with THAT view! Sublime! And the food was good too – a short list, but well selected which made it hard to choose, especially on the pudding front. I had smoked duck, salmon and an elderflower panna cotta with berries and a brandy snap. Catriona also had the salmon but started with mackerel pate and had a chocolate tart with espresso icecream. Yum!

We knocked back a bottle of Viognier and gossiped about our ex-company (now very ex). Very last days of the Reich. As it staggered towards its nemesis, with the writing on the wall for all to see, and the MD blatantly stealing commission money from the employees, it had a series of burglaries. All the macs were stolen. The police couldn’t be less interested. Ha ha ha.

Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons
Tate Modern
until 14th September

notes on plastics

My world view has been thrown into confusion. Plastics are supposed to last for ever in the oceans, landfill, etc – this really has been reiterated again and again and I’m sure it must be true.

But how do we actually know??

Here at Hedgie towers, we are very good and have our own communal compost bin. So we actually throw away very little – five flats fill 1-2 wheelie bins a week on average, but we fill loads of orange sacks of recycling, and most of us throw organic waste in our communal compost bin for eventual use in our communal garden.

I reused a thick, sturdy plastic bucket (of the type dishwasher salt comes in) as my organic waste container in the kitchen. Potato peel, banana skins, coffee grounds and tea bags are the sort of things that have been deposited in this, prior to twice weekly visits to the compost bin.

It gets a wash every now and then when it gets too yucky (the compost bin outside is absolutely yucky; the flatmate has avoided compost duty like the plague since his initial visit to the bin some months ago; he was greeted too enthusiastically by all the wildlife that has taken up residence there).

Yesterday, to my horror, I found that my kitchen container was leaking. Its bottom has eroded in two places. I think our potato peels, etc, have eaten their way through the plastic. But surely this isn’t supposed to happen?

Have I found the solution to plastic pollution? A high strength solution of teabags and potato peel will soon dissolve the toughest plastic!

Hadrian at the British Museum

Many years ago, in York, I bought a silver denarius (or sestertius, can’t remember which) featuring the visage of this august Roman emperor. My plan was to buy two and turn them into cufflinks. But the second has not been bought (finances; worries about desecrating heritage) and the coin lurks to this day in my cuff-link box.

Hadrian made a bit of an impact on Britain, with his wall, of course. But he seems to have been very fond of building projects all over the empire, and with the Pantheon in Rome achieved a whole new category of architecture.


The British Museum’s exhibition brings together wonderful sculptures of Hadrian from across the empire (making our bronze head dredged out of the Thames look of decidedly provincial manufacture). The most exciting of these is also the most recent – fragments of a giant sculpture recently discovered in Turkey in Sagalassos and now standing at the entrance to the exhibition.



There are also fantastic architectural models of the Pantheon and Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli – as big as a small town. The Tivoli model was made in the 1930s and lacks the recent discovery of a massive shrine to Antinous, erected prominently next to the villa’s main entrance (and where a highly eroticized massive marble Antinous in the guise of the Egyptian god Osiris was discovered back in the 18th century). Hadrian famously had his boyfriend declared a god – clearly, this is archeological proof. One wonders what Hadrian’s wife must have made of it. Also, why did the shrine remain ‘undiscovered’ for so long, when the pretty amazing sculpture had been found there hundreds of years before? Clearly, classical scholars felt more comfortable not unearthing evidence of Hadrian’s passion. I’m sensing homophobia at work.

The exhibition interestingly had a section on ancient Roman amphorae (Hadrian’s family was big in olive oil). The Romans were pretty organized – each amphora had information enough about weight, origin, packaging etc to satisfy the modern Brussels bureaucrat.

The most emotive section was one containing personal belongings of Jewish rebels found in the cave they hid from [genocidal] Roman troops.

I’m not sure about the reading Room as a temporary exhibition space. The circular ground plan fragments into awkward spaces and bottlenecks occur everywhere. The dramatic lighting plan casts your fellow visitors’ shadows onto the information labels, making progress really difficult. On the plus side, Panozzi’s wonderful dome pays appropriate homage to Hadrian’s prototype, its ancestor, in this interesting and worthwhile exhibition.

Hadrian Empire and Conflict
British Museum
until 26th October 2008

it's all over!

Well, what a spectacular Olympics we’ve just had – superbly done, China. I’m glad the Chinese made sure there was something for everyone – including gorgeous architecture and huge helpings of awesome spectacle for us less-than-sporting types.

Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt were the magnificent stars of the show, but of course team GB did us extremely proud. I’m also thrilled with Australian Matthew Mitcham’s gold for the 10m dive – the only out male gay athlete of the games (17,000 odd contestants) and he got the highest diving score ever!

Given the standard of the Chinese performance I was pretty much dreading the London hand-over bit. Given the scale of the venue even a London omnibus looked a bit lost; I was not at all convinced by the dancing element – what was that all about? – but things improved when the bus opened up and the dreaded Jimmy Page let loose with his guitar. And our own secret weapon, the man Beckham got one of the biggest cheers of the night from the crowd. So, in my view an honorable attempt overall – let’s hope we build on this for 2012.

Another real worry was our very own dear mayor, Boris Johnson. Let’s face it, anything was possible. But Boris behaved himself beautifully – very polite and proper but nevertheless managing to inject a pleasing informality into the IOC’s overly grandiose ceremonial. One had to marvel at the contrast between the communist Chinese mayor’s suave elegance and Boris’s very own trademark disheveled look.

He had his own classic Boris moment later back at GBHQ – “Ping Pong is coming home” indeed. Hilarious, and actually politically quite clever in that it quite upstaged Gordon’s more predictable attempt to bask in Olympic glory.

dogs and druids

Last night’s tv gave lots to think about: an exciting Channel 5 documentary basically corroborating Julius Caesar’s assertion that the druids were human-sacrificing cannibals (although the academics were trying desperately to find excuses for them: on the lines of “Poor things! They couldn’t help it! They were being stressed out by the Romans”). The Victorians felt the druids were quite bloodthirsty; the 20th–century remade them as gentle eco pacifists; now the pendulum swings back again.

On to the BBC, where Aunty blew the pedigree dog business to smithereens. Geek. Pedigree dogs are now going to join fur coats, intensive battery hens and veal farming at the apex of animal welfare concern. It really was pretty shocking, and made great TV in that Kennel Club officials and pedigree breeders in general are so far in denial they’re oblivious to how they come across, which makes brilliant TV. Poor doggies. Over-breeding has created a situation where about a third of Cavalier King Charles spaniels have a congenital condition where their brains are too large for their skulls. The programme also featured a Pug which was bred from a champion and had ‘perfect’ pedigree features but whose back legs dislocated when it tried to walk; had breathing troubles, stomach troubles, in-grown eyelids and a backbone twisted like a corkscrew. Great.

The Crufts 2003 Champion, a Pekinese called Danny, apparently had had surgery to correct a congenital deformity to its nasal passages and even then had to be sat on an ice pack after winning to prevent it overheating during the press photoshoot.

It pretty much stands to reason, when you think about it. The breeds developed quite happily without the Kennel Club’s interference. For the last century, breeders have been trying to conform to artificial and frankly arbitrary written breed specifications – based on appearance only. BUT judges judge based on a subjective understanding of those rules; if the rules say a flat nose is required, the flattest nose wins. That animal goes on to breed more; the next generation will have flatter noses than their forebears, but the flattest nose out of the new generation will win the prizes, and the process continues. Eventually you end up with the bizarre mutations we get today.

My parents had a pedigree boxer but thank heavens he didn’t have epilepsy. I can remember a friend who was a boxer enthusiast being very excited to see a white one. Now I know why these are so rare – white boxers are verboten according to the breed rules; those unfortunate enough to be born white are ‘culled’.

Yay, George!

My new discovery George Monbiot gives it to the USA:

"If we seek to understand American foreign policy in terms of a rational engagement with international problems, or even as an effective means of projecting power, we are looking in the wrong place. The government's interests have always been provincial. It seeks to appease lobbyists, shift public opinion at crucial stages of the political cycle, accommodate crazy Christian fantasies and pander to television companies run by eccentric billionaires. The US does not really have a foreign policy. It has a series of domestic policies which it projects beyond its borders. That they threaten the world with 57 varieties of destruction is of no concern to the current administration. The only question of interest is who gets paid and what the political kickbacks will be."

Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957

(Matt Houlbrook, University of Chicago Press, 2006)

The beautiful image on the cover seduced me into buying this book (and I felt the need for some educational reading). It’s a fascinating read; most enjoyable and informative. I loved the way Houlbrook itemises the particular geography of queer London, and has even sourced photos of historic queer places (largely from police records, it would appear). Knowing where these old clubs, bath houses, urinals etc actually were will definitely add another dimension to my experience of London.

The book is (fairly obviously) based on his PhD thesis, so is written in full-on academic-speak. Houlbrook does manage to enliven this jargon-heavy discourse with some wit and flexibility; I just feel an opportunity to reach the general reader has been missed. There is certainly enormous human interest here, and loads of original research. As it was, I felt like a student at the back of queer-studies class.

My other issue is that he imposes an off-the-peg Marxist analysis on the history: not particularly convincingly, in my view. Slippery queer men evade the class categories he constructs for them at every turn. He nostalgically looks for a moment when the [queer] proletariat storms the gates of the Winter Palace – the closest incident he finds is a massive police raid on a proto queer club-night in a Holland Park Street Ballroom run by “Lady” Austin for her “Camp Boys”, in the 1930s. The police gained undercover entrance to this by dragging up and passing as queer. One policeman enthusiastically boasted about “trading twice” with “my boyfriend” – this part was subsequently suppressed at the trial.

Houlbrook clearly shows the camp boys had a vocal and articulate critique of their arrest and the laws which led to it. However I think he overemphasizes the differences between the camp boys and middle-class ‘respectable homosexuals’: the camp boys clearly were trying to keep their night as private as possible, given that the police had to go to extreme lengths to gain entry. Moreover, the camp boys clearly supported the abolition of the Act, following the call of the middle-class Oscar Wilde and prefiguring the middle-class 'respectable homosexual' lobbyists at the Wolfenden commission.

These lobbyists clearly did create a mythical ‘respectable homosexual’ – but surely as a deliberate ploy to counter the demonized stereotypes then prevailing in public discourse. They needed to speak the language of the law-makers in order to persuade them to change the laws.

In the end, the tragic Lady Austin saga had no effect on the liberation struggle one way or the other. By contrast, the arrest and trial for cottaging of the middle-class war-hero, sportsman and public schoolmaster Frank Champain (at midnight, in one of London’s most notorious urinals under the Adelphi arches just off the Strand) had a dramatic effect on police activity after Mr Champain was spectacularly acquitted on appeal.

It is quite clear that he must have been totally guilty, but his solicitor skillfully spun his arrest as police entrapment and this so enraged the appeal judge he berated the policeman involved. The police were so cowed by this that arrests for cottaging fell dramatically after this trial and stayed well down for years afterwards. So, by helping to minimize persecution during a lengthy period of oppression, this has to be counted a small tactical success.

In the final analysis, the Camp Boys protested but did not physically fight their arrest – very much unlike the New York Stonewall Bar gays of decades later. Stonewall became an iconic and liberating moment for gays all over the world. Why didn’t this happen at the Holland Park Ballroom? - are our police less brutal? are we too respectful of the law? Whatever the answers, it would seem that the European reformist strategy has overtaken the activist tradition in the States. Despite the explosive and psychologically liberating Stonewall moment, America today is massively behind Europe in awarding equal rights to its gay citizens – and even has a fundamentalist and activist right-wing trying to turn the clock back even more.

smelling dirty

Popped into Kingston yesterday lunch time to buy a few bits and ended up in John Lewis's ground floor, where I never usually go. There is a huge section devoted to male colognes, so I had fun browsing a bit. Squirted some Paul Smiths before noticing a display of Juicy Couture's new fragrance, Dirty English.


This was a surprise, because all the advertising I have seen says it's exclusive to Selfridges at the moment. The advert is fab: full marks for creativity. Apparently the whole deal is referencing the Sex Pistols. The fragrance would be a great gift for that Australian Olympics official who was making remarks about English soap earlier this week.

Anyway, as it was there I had a squirt of that too. Smells nice, sort-of like gingerbread I thought. Couldn't really decide if I would like it; whatever.

Went back to the office, washed hands, had lunch; washed hands several more times in the afternoon; went home, washed hands, made dinner, watched tv, washed up, brushed teeth, went to bed. Dirty English still on my hands, noticeably. The scent just never dies. Use with caution!

Monkey Olympics

If Olympics TV coverage promos were an official Olympics sport, the BBC would win gold!

This is soo much better than the tedious ol' Olympics will be . . .

Well done to Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett and the BBC team (inspired by the Journey to the West opera)

The Revenger's Tragedy

I’m a bit of a scaredy-cat and avoid violence in entertainment, so the National Theatre’s Revenger’s Tragedy was not for me, so I thought. I only booked to go after the disappointment of Afterlife (all the Revenger’s reviews I read were brilliant – typically my luck to go for the dud instead). I finally saw it last night.

Wow! Interval saw me hurtling forth, highly discombobulated, in search of strong drink – but in a good way. This production is simply sensational. Absolutely fantastically designed and acted, with sublime use of the NT’s revolving stage. The sound and lighting was especially good too.

This is a very louche 80’s Versace sort-of Renaissance Italian court – sharp sexy club clothes; maximalist interiors featuring massive blow-ups of the most salacious bits out of Titian and Veronese. Gender-bending minions and principals in search of perverted sex. Murder and necrophilia. Huge animated skulls. The end of the first act sees the revolve go hyper-drive, with the duke savagely murdered by the protagonist to pounding underground club beats while watching his duchess having very noisy athletic sex with his bastard son. Phew! How very unlike the home life our own esteemed monarchy.

Absolutely wonderfully directed (and co-designed) by Melly Still. It ends this month, so catch it fast!

let's all go nuclear

George Monbiot is the latest eminent environmentalist to come out in (qualified) support for nuclear power stations. James Lovelock of course has been vocally advocating nuclear for some time. Newsnight debated this last night, and poor George was attacked quite personally from both sides – a governmental nuclear apparatchik called him a “slow learner” on the one hand (one would think they would have welcomed his contribution – Mr Monbiot potentially can deliver millions of Guardian readers to their cause) – and on the other Jonathan Porrit castigated Monbiot for selling out. In fact Porrit seemed far keener on castigating Monbiot than on addressing environmental causes.

Newsnight presenter Gavin Esler did nothing to moderate these personal attacks (even appearing to find them quite funny). George kept his cool and came out really well, I thought, especially in the face of Porrit’s provocations. Perhaps Mr Porrit is a little envious of Mr Monbiot’s environmental star status.

Anyway, even Julie Burchill is attacking him now – he replies to her criticisms in today’s Guardian:

“The environment is inseparable from social justice. Climate change, for example, is primarily about food and water. It threatens the fresh water supplies required to support human life. As continental interiors dry out and the glaciers feeding many of the rivers used for irrigation disappear, climate change presents the greatest of all threats to the future prospects of the poor. The rich will survive for a few decades at least, as they can use their money to insulate themselves from the effects. The poor are being hammered already.

In reality, it is people like Julie Burchill – who is, incidentally, far richer than almost any green I have met – who treats the poor with contempt. So that she can revel in what she calls "reckless romantic modernism", other people must die. But at least you can't accuse her of hypocrisy: she cannot fail to live by her moral code, for the simple reason that she doesn't have one.

Sure, we are hypocrites. Every one of us, almost by definition. Hypocrisy is the gap between your aspirations and your actions. Greens have high aspirations – they want to live more ethically – and they will always fall short. But the alternative to hypocrisy isn't moral purity (no one manages that), but cynicism. Give me hypocrisy any day.”

Quote London

“I personally can only write in London. I love the noise and the squalor and the perpetual distractions and the temptation to take an aircraft somewhere else.”

- Penelope Fitzgerald (1916 – 2000)

Gehry in London

Gehry’s 2008 Serpentine pavilion is a masterful answer to his recent archi-critics, who can’t stand his popularity and have accused him of being a ‘one-trick pony’.

The pavilion is wildly different to Gehry’s recent buildings – not a curve or titanium tile in sight.

It is still wildly modernist, yet pleasingly references history (Gehry said on tv he was intrigued by the Roman invasion of England; hence the catapult-like form) and pays flattering homage to the Serpentine Gallery. Looked at frontally, the pavilion forms a delicious, wildly eccentric frame for the classicizing older building.

Some of the initial drawings show the shattered roof line was going to made up of curved panels – the built version has flat panels; by far the better aesthetic option.

It is also the first pavilion to have a lift!


Great stuff. A really wonderful addition to London summer ’08.

Journey to the West

This classic Chinese text’s title is pretty confusing to Westerners – the tale tells of a journey from China to India, both countries very far to the east of us. Calling India ‘the west’ just feels wrong, but of course to the Chinese it is quite simple fact.

Personally, I blame Diocletian’s division of the Roman Empire into “East” and “West” in AD285. To us Europeans, the East will always begin in the eastern end of the Mediterranean.
Heavens it’s been a while since I was last at the Royal Opera – to my shame, my last visit was pre-rebuild/extension, which puts it at least 8 years ago!

- But I was there last night for the London premiere of Damon Albarn’s, Jamie Hewlett’s and Chen Shi-Zheng’s opera Monkey: Journey to the West. It’s fabulous – the Floral Hall is a fantastic ‘see and be seen’ sort of space, and the terrace overlooking Covent Garden piazza and central London’s roofscape is just lovely for a snack or drink pre-performance, especially in the evening sun; the terrace catches soothing evening breezes. The Opera house was decorated monkey-style for the event, and was serving monkey cocktails. The capacity crowd was really buzzing with anticipation.

The opera itself is visually spectacular and very beautiful; brilliantly conceived by Jamie Hewlett. Chen Shi-Zheng directs the cast of thousands with amazing control – the focus on the story is sharp despite a cast of thousands doing absolutely stunning things – awesome acrobatics, aerial ballet, exciting kung-fu fights etc etc. It’s actually so complicated it’s remarkable the whole thing went off without a single apparent mistake.

Damon Albarn’s music is gorgeous; individually the numbers are very beautiful. However, as opera one can’t compare it to Verdi or Wagner – it’s fairly episodic, and there isn’t an arc of musical development over the full piece. However, I’m still looking forward to the CD being released.

I have to mention Fey Yang as the Monkey King – he was absolutely magnificent; endearingly cheeky, yet acrobatic and superb at the fighting (in character). An incredible performance, giving out 100% energy from beginning to end.

The three co-creators came on stage at the end of a well-deserved standing ovation.