March & April 2022
March & April 2022
I am beginning this one minute before our scheduled Eurostar train departs for Amsterdam at 18:04. Chaos would be the understatement of the whole procedure with, among many other things, Uber cancelling our pre-booked ride to the St. Pancras Station and my taking Richard’s bag from security instead of my own (eventually recovered). Nothing gets easier, and we are well aware that we have become two doddering old men. As Richard always says, “We always wanted to live this long.” An attendant at the station had to tell him to zip up his
fly. And looking just now at my previous Update, I notice that the very first word for that one is “Chaos.”
But briefly – and coterminous with the computer mega-difficulties and at least one further wiping my laptop clean by Apple’s Genius Bar and all that follows that, in March we celebrated the Roman New Year at Balans Soho with a pancake dinner (exceptionally delicious) after first feasting on Caravaggio, Titan, Tintoretto, etc. at the National Gallery, went on an LGBTIAQ+ guided tour at Tate Britain and also saw the “Life Between Islands” exhibition there, saw The Duke and Branagh’s Death on the Nile – both being excellent folms, reviewed an issue of Sophia’s Skylights journal, have had several 5:2 meals with Gin, been to a champagne vernissage at the Portland Gallery, immensely enjoyed a Royal Philharmonic Symphony concert of Vaughan Williams & Ravel with the City of London Choir and Hilary Davan Wetton conducting at the Cadogan Hall (the Piano Concerto in G with Llÿr Williams was absolutely fabulous)(and my Facebook comment on the Ravel piece was: “I have always remembered enjoying this work in the Fenice Theatre of Venice when I was 22. It is a supremely consummate and beautiful creation that Ravel completed just before the fatally debilitating five-years of aphasia that ended his life in 1937. With the reality of the aesthetic as among the most joyful things of life, the divide between it and such disgracefully agonising waste that we are witnessing in Ukraine is incomprehensible. How can beauty be sullied by twisted logic and political/military cruelty instead of being centrally celebrated and shared for the benefit and togetherness of all humanity?”), also enjoyed the “Whistler’s Woman in White” exhibition at the Royal Academy as well as the Tate Modern’s “Surrealism Beyond Borders” on Richard’s birthday. My comments concerning this last: “[I found it] magical. Perhaps a bit too political for me but inspiring all the same, and I think of Surrealism now as a quasi-religious movement. I would say that science, empirical knowledge and reason are vitally important and necessary but still need not be ‘the hallmarks of society’. I do like the challenge to modernism’s importance of categories and collecting knowledge by their seeking to expand ‘order’ by using visually precise techniques to create irrational images. The marvellous becomes understood as ‘an excitingly disorientating sensation [of] subjective forms as either emotional/mood entities or intellectual or idea entities’. The surrealist concern with hallucinatory landscapes, travel, its infusion with feminism, magic & natural forces, its automatism, and its finding of multi-dimensional spaces between different cultures and eras through the power of fragmentation and
juxtaposition are fascinating.”
In the second half of March we went to the National Gallery for the Virtual Veronese (disappointing and fuzzy for me) and Gainsborough’s Blue Boy (which for me is quite fascinating). There has also been at the Jermyn Street Theatre a performance of The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein which we enjoyed and laughed throughout a lot, a Zoom exchange with a researching student, a Zoom with Marie Laure for her birthday, an afternoon
tea at Padma’s which became a quasi-meal along with homemade gin, a lunch with Stephen & Hilary at the Sloane Club, a day with Carlo – meeting him at the Tate Modern and having a vegetarian dinner at The Gate, and a lunch with David and Dan at Vardo. My musing for the month has been: “Perhaps most politicians may be ridiculous, but at least they are ridiculous adults. Our present difficulty is with those politicians who are still children or behave as if they were. We must hope/wish that they will finally grow up - and hopefully sooner rather
than later despite the minimal prospect of such.”
For April Fool’s Day, we enjoyed a dinner with Patrick and Sue at the Delaunay on the day that the original founder and owner had been bought out. The next day was a Nonsuch concert at St. Paul’s, the actors’ church in Covent Garden. It was a refreshing to be going to the church rather to the Genius Bar. There was an interesting Soteria with Frank Gelli on Curzio Malaparte, a Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at the Cadogan Hall with Owain Arwel Hughes conducting (It was a delightful programme: Grace Williams Penillion, Grieg’s Piano Concerto – played by Jayson Gillham who also, as an encore, played a Nocturne by Grieg, and finally Sibelius’ 5th Symphony), my learning from the Royal Marsden that my PSA is still low (0.63), seeing The Lost City with Sandra Bullock and Tatum O’Neil which we both found simply enjoyable and laughing fun, reading Judy Wood’s Where Did the Towers Go? (finding the Hutchison Effect most intriguing and possibly something that was unexpectedly triggered on 911 but not planned), having Pavel & Teresa stay with us for two nights with
dinner at Vardo for one of those evenings, a dinner with Padma at the Sloane Place Hotel, beginning to read Robert Muchembled’s L’Orgasme & l’Occident that Gunter had given me, enduring another wipe-out of my laptop by the Genius Bar, enjoying Virgina Woolf’s Orlando at the Jermyn Street Theatre as well as Downtown Abbey: The New Era at the Everyman and the London Gay Men’s Chorus’s Sondheim Songtime at Cadogan Hall. And that finished for us the month of April.
May Day was an all-day struggle with the Macbook Pro. The following day was a rather explosive 5:2 evening with Gin – me being on the laptop and Richard & Gin having a toxic time in the next room. Eventually it was all resolved, and we were able to appreciate what it means to be family. The day after, Richard and I took the train to Moreton-in-Marsh where Chloe met us for a most enjoyable two night stay at the sumptuous Dormy House spa hotel. All the food was extremely delicious, and the time with my daughter was important for all three of us. The evening we got back to London – Chloe driving us, it was Handel’s Serse at St. Martin’s in the Fields with Paula Murrihy. She was terrific; in fact all the singers were terrific as was also the orchestra. All in all, it was another exhausting day – one that began with 30 minutes of cycling in the gym followed by 20 laps in the pool and then pancakes for breakfast. The next day with had a marvellous luncheon with our marvellous Gillie.
And then it has been packing, sorting and preparing the flat that has followed. I believe we have another two hours now on the train before we arrive at Amsterdam. Our scheduled arrival is 23:11. Today was hassles with our phone, the BBC, the bank, etc. and yesterday it was my bicycle seat support fixture snapping and then needing to get the bike repaired at the shop. But the weather has been encouraging and even mostly sunny, and how can one not be thankful overall?