North to South

A circuitous route from London to Cape Town turned out to involve a kaleidoscope of landscapes ...

Travelling via Amsterdam with an overnight stop, Citizen M at Schiphol was as unlike a functional, boring airport hotel as you could imagine. Bright, primary colours, quirky slogans, a welcoming, user-friendly interior .. 

and the most interestingly (though simply) designed hotel rooms I've seen ...

A daytime north-south flight of nearly 12 hours, all in the same time zone, is a pretty pleasant way to travel, and allows some amazing views as the continents go by, far beneath one.

We had breakfast over the snow-covered Alps ...

A movie later (I was watching Jane Eyre and immersed in bleak Yorkshire landscapes) I looked up to find we were traversing the Sahara desert ...

... for hours and hours, seemingly - there's an awful lot of sand ...

The Congo at lunchtime was invisible, covered in dense cloud, but half a book later (I was reading William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise, now engrossed in turn of the century Vienna) ... these lakes and a wide river emerged below the clouds over central Angola ...

(I liked Younger Daughter's reflection on this river landscape) ...

and over a glass of wine around 7 pm, having crossed two continents, we watched an African sunset over the coast of Namibia ...

Let's not dwell on the suitcase that was temporarily lost at some transitional point in the north ... Waking up the next morning to the sunshine in a lush garden at the tip of Africa felt very good indeed ...

... as did re-visiting familiar corners of my mother's indigenous cottage garden in its end of summer colours ...

... as always, a warm African welcome.

High School Dance

Half the fun is surely in the anticipation. 

Looking gorgeous, with the perfect dress, pretty hair ...

and a special guy.

At the pre-party ... young men (and one older) scrubbed up, handsome and happy with anticipation ...

Pretty girls who are young women but still like to throw a ball ...

and swing in a hammock ...

The details tell their own story ...

There are private conversations between classmates and good friends ...

and happy posing for group shots 

I suspect the real fun happened at the after-party, but there are some things a parent will never know ...

The Thames Walk that wasn't and an English pub lunch

Doing the Thames Walk is high on my bucket list, but takes time and organization ... and decent weather. The Thames starts life at its source near Cirencester in the Cotswolds and follows a meandering path for 294 kilometres, passing through Hampton Court Palace, then the heart of London, before rushing into the sea at the Thames Barrier in Greenwich.

You can walk it in a single stretch by overnighting at various points along the route or, as most people do, in stages over successive weekends, following the trail along footpaths alongside the river, through the villages and countryside of  Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire ...

A plan to walk one stretch, from Marlow to Maidenhead, a couple of weekends ago was scuppered at the last minute when fine weather turned to rain. Walking while soggy and wet is not my idea of fun, but that didn't mean we had to abandon the pub lunch that is an essential part of Thames walking ...

The Bounty pub, right on the bank of the Thames between Cookham and Bourne End, is only accessible by foot and boat (all their deliveries are made by boat) ... Just ring the bell on the jetty on the opposite bank and a ferry will collect you ... 

The Bounty is well used to Thames walkers and welcomes dogs and muddy-booted people

Don't expect haute cuisine, but hearty pub fare (a St Patrick's Day stew above, with a pint of Guinness).


After lunch, eight people and one large wet dog piled into the Bounty's little rowing boat ...

Having deposited us safely on the other side of the river, our gallant boatman sped away, fag in one hand, tiller in the other ...

From the Wolseley to Picasso

In the midst of a few weeks of doing little else but buckling down to work (no dallying in blogland), an outing to the Wolseley was a perfect treat. I met Paris Breakfasts blogger Carol there ... for breakfast, what else?

In a swish location on Piccadilly, across from the Ritz, the Wolseley was originally a car showroom (for Wolseley Motors) and later a bank - hence the cavernous interior, marble floors and walls, brass railings and vaulted windows and arches ...

It's a place to spot famous faces if you're inclined, though Carol and I were too busy yakking over coffee and hot chocolate to take much notice. 

After breakfast we took a walk down to the river, past Big Ben ...

and a grumpy-looking Churchill scowling at the world ...

(few signs of spring yet on these trees in front of the Houses of Parliament)

to the Tate Britain, to take in their exhibition of Picasso and Modern British Art

Picasso spent only one short period of his life in Britain, in the summer of 1919 when he came to London with Diaghilev to design sets and costumes for the Russian Ballet. He bought a suit and bowler hat in Savile Row, but seems otherwise to have been not particularly taken with Britain or British artists. On the other hand, he was a huge influence on many British twentieth century artists, which is what this exhibition sets out to explore ...

Seated woman in a chemise, 1923. Own photograph.


For the Picassos alone, it was a treat. 

Reading at a table, 1934. Own photograph.

Nude woman in a red armchair, 1932. Own photograph.


There were paintings from the full range of his different periods, seemingly to show not only his prolific output ...

Head of a woman, 1924. Own photograph.

... but also making the point that by the time his imitators had caught on to a particular style or new idea of his, he had already moved on to the next.

Woman dressing her hair, 1940. Own photograph.

And this is the trouble, because the exhibition becomes a bit of a cruel contrast for the British artists concerned, who, when you see their work juxtaposed with selections of Picasso's, begin to look like massively unoriginal copycats.

Picasso: La Source, 1921. Image source: www.theartsdesk.com


So Henry Moore's Reclining Figure (below) is seen as a straight copy in a different medium of Picasso's La source (above) ...

Henry Moore: Reclining Figure, 1936. Image source: www.guardian.co.uk


... and Francis Bacon's grossly distorted mouths and figures ...

Francis Bacon's Head 1, 1948 (left) and one of Three studies for figures at the base of a crucifixion, 1944 (right). Own photographs.

... are so obviously derived from Guernica, below. And so on and on. 


(Guernica is shown only in reproduction at the exhibition, but see this interesting story here about the only time the original Guernica was brought to Britain under quite amazing circumstances) ...

Picasso: Guernica, 1937. Image source: www.pablopicasso.org

In the words of one critic, the exhibition is "a huge own goal for 20th century British art, allowing everyone to see just exactly how dull and minor Moore, Graham Sutherland and others actually look beside Picasso." Ouch!  

David Hockney: Harlequin, 1980. Own photograph.

The British artist who seems to suffer least by comparison is David Hockney. Interestingly, he is the one who acknowledges most openly the huge debt he owes to Picasso, as shown in these etchings/homages ...

David Hockney's The Student: Homage to Picasso, 1973, and Artist and Model, 1973. Own photographs.

... yet seems to have gone on to do so much more in a unique style. Next up in my diary is a trip to the Hockney show at the Royal Academy.

What (who) I'm reading now

Antonio Tabucchi is an Italian writer who describes himself as 'in love with Lisbon'. An expert on Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa, Tabucchi spends half of each year in Lisbon and the other half in Tuscany (hmm, I want his life) where he teaches Portuguese language and literature at the university of Siena. 

Photo credit: http://www.listal.com/

Appropriately enough, then, Pereira Maintains (in the English translation from the Italian original Sostiene Pereira) is set in Lisbon, though it is Lisbon in the late 1930s, under an oppressive, fascist regime. 

Pereira is editor of the cultural pages of a daily newspaper, at a time when cultural and intellectual life is stifled, government informers are everywhere, and resistance brutally quelled. He's an entirely unlikely hero, which is part of the great appeal of his character ... an overweight widower who talks aloud to a photograph of his dead wife, harbours stoically his private losses and regrets of the past, and generally keeps his head down in the political climate, dutifully translating 'safe' French novels and writing tame obituaries of famous writers. 

His perspective begins to shift uncomfortably when he meets a young writer and his girlfriend who are involved in subversive activities, and a doctor who stimulates his political conscience through a series of conversations. Ultimately Pereira is moved to commit himself to a single act of great bravery. 

amazon.co.uk

It's a short but entirely memorable book, written with understatement and humanity. Even the minor characters have stayed with me. 

I'm now struggling to get hold of the film version, in Italian, with Marcello Mastroianni as Pereira and the wonderful Daniel Auteuil and Marthe Keller as co-stars. Amazon appears to be out of stock, and the best I've managed is to get onto a waiting list for it at LoveFilm ... if anyone out there knows of an alternative source to try, I'd love to hear it. 


(Photos above, except where credited otherwise, were taken by me in Lisbon last summer)


Another good recent discovery for me was Siri Hustvedt (below) - a writer (most well-known, I think for What I Loved) who I've been meaning to read for ages. My introduction came through her latest novel, The Summer Without Men, another short book with a big impact.

Photo credit: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/

Poet Mia Frederiksen's equilibrium is sent into turmoil when her solid scientist husband Boris, requests a "pause" in their 30-year marriage ... the Pause turns out to be "French with limp but shiny brown hair ... significant breasts that were real, not manufactured ... and an excellent mind."  

Mia goes briefly to pieces, then retreats to the small hometown of her childhood for the summer to lick her wounds and reflect on her past and future. There she makes unexpected connections with, amongst others, a lively group of octogenarian women (in a home for the elderly) with varied and surprising pasts, and teaches poetry to a group of pre-adolescent girls with whose personal dramas she becomes involved. The summer becomes a reflection on the stages of being a woman and a gradual reconstitution of her self. What strikes you most is the intelligence of her writing - reflecting an extraordinary breadth of knowledge and interest (this is also evident from the range of articles on her interesting website here) - and secondly, her empathy and humour. I am definitely going to read some earlier Hustvedt now.


And finally, here is her writer's room from the Guardian series, and you can read her description of her writing space by following the link below ...

Photo credit: www.guardian.co.uk/books