Blood Moon 2015

I did not hear the alarm but was happily ensconced with the earphones listening to the World Service’s Hardtalk interview of Emmanuel Macron, the current French minister of Economy, and then The Conversation on Living With Elephants in Thailand and Kenya. When we realised the time, we quickly dressed and dashed outside. The police drove by as we were hurrying toward the river, and we explained that we were out to see the lunar eclipse. They told us that there were people still watching along the Embankment and that we were not too late. Fortunately we had not missed the maximum eclipse and the red moon. We then watched the culminating partial eclipse from the Albert Bridge over the Thames and got to bed just before the last lunar crescent disappeared.  Sarah Pike, who was staying with us, had earlier seen the full moon rise over Stonehenge.

We had got to Britain with the ferry from Le Havre on the first of September. So ended the long stretch of pure summer on the Continent. Basking in the sun was over, and it was a much cooler let alone wetter England that welcomed us. Marion and Leslie had lent us the keys to their home in Bath and visiting the Pump Room was a nostalgic joy. We were there for the MOT on the car, but Paul discovered that the car had no brakes at all, and so we were obliged to spend an extra day in Bath while he located the replacement parts.

And finally it was London – but only for two nights as we were next off to Canterbury for the British Association for the Study of Religions conference. I had, however, mistakenly booked us into the Castle House Hotel two days early, so we had a good chance to explore Canterbury and discover Pinocchio’s – an Italian restaurant we enjoyed so much that we returned the following night as well. The conference itself was delightful with a number of the same people who had been in Erfurt. It was also enjoyable to be not giving a paper but simply attending sessions and socialising.

After three days of conference, it was London again, and this time more permanently. Much of the immediate time was involved with sorting, cleaning, taking clothes and whatever else to the local thrift shop and basically setting up the apartment for the next five years. We had Prudence Priest, Melissa Anderson and Rowena Whaling over for dinner one night and then met them for another dinner four nights later at Flynn’s in Ravencourt Park. In between we had attended the Start Art Fair next door at the Saatchi Gallery. I was also interviewed via Skype by Terence Ward in connection with my Pagan Ethics: Paganism as a World Religion which had recently been published by Springer. Unfortunately, the asking price the publisher has put on the book is exorbitant and beyond the price range of just about everybody. After the interview, we drove to the Rixies for dinner and ate sparingly – not mentioning that it was one of our 5:2 fasting days.

For my birthday, we traditionally ritualised and went first to Conway Hall so that Richard could play the various pianos that were everywhere there on display for an annual piano auction. We walked after through a part of the City we had not known previously and eventually ended up at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society for the Rare and Old tasting (Mannochomore, Cooley, Miyagikyo, Glenglassaugh and Laphroaig). They were all stunning, and it was great fun.

The next night we hooked up – despite the ongoing rain, sometimes torrential – with Penny and Hamish to see Woody Allen’s Irrational Man and then had dinner at Kurobuta. Although the cinematography was lovely, it is not one of my more favourite Allen films. Two nights later, our neighbour Peter came over for dinner and to prepare us negronis. I roasted a chicken.  Somewhere about this time, the weather changed, and we began a nice abandoned stretch of virtual Indian summer. In all it became extraordinarily beautiful for two weeks with only two mornings of rain and the rest of the days of sun.

Became a Friend of the Royal Academy of Arts and visited both the Ai Weiwei and Joseph Carnell shows. Weiwei’s work is monumental and interesting but for me not particularly inspiring. The most impressive was the room in which his prison room was reproduced in miniature showing him eating, writing, washing, sleeping, shitting, showering, etc. with two uniformed guards always at his side. After cappuccini at ROSL, we found a theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue and saw 45 Years. It was fascinating yet vaguely unconvincing, but Charlotte Rampling was simply mesmerising.

For the equinox, we attended the Druids’ Ceremony on Primrose Hill in which Gin and Rix took part, and the following evening at Conway Hall the Pagan Federation performed Inana’s descent to the underworld. For Sarah’s first night, we had dinner at the Sloane Club for which Donna Seamone joined us – it being the eve of Donna’s birthday. While Sarah and Donna attended a workshop on Ritual and Democracy for the week, we continued with the flat and also attended the Jermyn Street Theatre for Michael John LaChiusa’s See What I Wanna See – a strange but enjoyable musical. Another night we had dinner with Chloe and Matt at Knightsbridge’s Hawksmoor just opposite from where I initially stayed in London. They looked good together. The following night with Sarah back, Sylvester and Rix came for dinner. And the night before Sarah left, with her, Richard and I had dinner at the Royal Academy’s Keeper’s House. That afternoon on the television, Richard and I had watched – and enjoyed – Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. The following day, our last of glorious sun, Richard and I walked to the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in Hyde Park to see two of Rachel Rose’s videos: A Minute Ago and Palisades in Palisades.

We’ve got Shostakovitch’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the English National Opera and the English Choral Classics concert at St. James’ Church in Paddington both coming up next week, and an afternoon with Meg, a day with Pennell, a lunch with Claire, a visit by Conway, and a dinner with Penny and Hamish before the month is out. Meanwhile the refugee crisis on the Continent and the American inability to work toward a solution with Putin in Syria plague the background. Here in London I see so much prosperity let alone beauty. It all works and is a ‘good life’. One continues to criticise and attempt to raise an effective awareness despite the unlikely odds against any sort of success, and it is easy to descend into despair, but happiness is each day at a time however ephemeral, and that at present remains my chief offering to the gods and cosmos.