WIVES OF BATH

I visited Bath for the weekend.   It's similar to Richmond in that I'm not sure who the tourists are and who the residents are, but am sure there were more tourists there than there were residents. It was a whistle stop tour but I managed to visit the Jane Austen museum which is worth seeing for listening to the guide alone. I studied Austen at school and although found her heroines irritatingly meek, with a few exceptions, understand that women in those days were entirely dependent on getting married in order to secure any standard in life.   I learnt that although in Georgian times everything looked rather wonderful, with pretty Laura Ashley/Cath Kitson styling draping hanging on everything from windows to women, and men all dressed like Darcey even if they looked nothing like him, the reality is that they all stunk to high heaven.   Austen intensely disliked Bath and I think it very big of the city and the tourist board to promote albeit a very celebrated resident who felt such disdain for the place and above all the people who visited for the season. She disliked the snobbishness and effected social graces of the 'vulgar rich'.      It was the place women in society met to network to marry men with money.  Or to take their daughters to meet men with money.    Austen herself was proposed to by a man six years her junior and said yes, only to cancel the engagement 12 hours later because she 'could not envisage marrying a man without affection.'   Her two books Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were set here, neither of which were her greatest works, but she was a wonderful observer of life and people and conversation.   I felt Austen was trapped in the wrong time and it's a pity she couldn't have met Virginia Woolf, another author who utterly detested where she lived (she famously said ''between Richmond and death I choose Death.)'  But both of them were inspired by their intense dislike of the place and people that surrounded them because they provided unintentionally such wonderful material.  If you live in a place that is always heaven on earth, you end up 'writing white' and life is not like that.     I always remember that when I meet someone odious. 

Another highlight was being told an ever so charming way of describing hookers.    Forget women of easy virtue.   No, my guide on the hop off hop on bus quaintly described the hookers of Bath as 'ladies of negotiable affection'.  Makes them sound like city traders, or corporate wives, doesn't it?   Austen would have approved. 

BELLY

I watched my best friend in a belly dance extravaganza in Basildon last night.    I never thought I would a) do that and b) write about it, but it was brilliant.  I loved every moment of it, even the very surreal and perhaps unintentionally funny bits.  Three hours long give or take an interval, the story revolved around an Egyptian king trying to find a silver ball which he gave to his Queen and annoying the Gods by doing so.  They travelled to Spain, India, Tahiti and Egypt and I think the moon but I'm not quite sure about that one but there was a large photo of the moon in the background.   This could be wrong, but following the story wasn't really the point - it was watching the performers.  They swirled and twirled and undulated their tummies and belly buttons and smiled and stamped and gracefully moved around the stage shimmering all over the place their ribbons and bangles and sparkly things, some of which fell off during the performance but it didn't matter.    Their ages were I would say, from 20 something to 70 something.   There were all shapes and sizes, and I mean all shapes and sizes.   Benny Hill would have absolutely loved it ('I like 'em big').     It was very much a celebration of women, about women and their femininity, which is I am told what belly dancing is all about.    There were only two men in it (although there could have been one under the pantomime camel costume) who stood around and did sweet FA bit like at an Essex disco where the girls do all the work and the men just stand round the edges and try to pick up enough courage to join in so that they can ask a girl to dance a slow walkie around dance because that's all they can do.    The men were well and truly outdone by the seventy or so female performers.   As for the performers, well, some had been on the sunbed far too long, some needed to put on weight, others loose it, and none of them in any way cared.   They were marvellous, colourful, entertaining and courageous.  And they all looked as though they were having fun.  I sat next to the choreographer's dad who was so proud as he should be.    And oh yes, forgot to mention, my friend was definitely the best of the lot.     

BE WHO GOD MEANT YOU TO BE..AND YOU WILL SET THE WORLD ON FIRE

That was the first line from the address given by the Archbishop of London at Kate and William's wedding.   I'm not really sure what it means but perhaps that's the point. When we find out what God has meant us to be, and we accept it, then we can get on with living life rather than trying to survive it.    I thought Kate looked stunning, William handsome, the bridesmaid looked as beautiful as her sister, and the Middletons dramatically outshone the Windsors in both dress sense and genetics.   I thought the trees and sense of nature in the cathedral wonderful which I'm sure the Windsors thought weird and bohemian, and the music they chose haunting.   Diana was there because the sun shone in and out of the church.    Beatrice and Eugenie looked dreadful.   Everything was discussed and analysed in detail at the street party afterwards and everyone became philosophical about love, life and what's important.  Hope it lasts.  

BOING, BOING, BOING

Just read a book Woman vs Womaniser.    I met the author J C Johnson, who is a very interesting likeable character and kept asking me 'have you read the book?'  I admit, I hadn't but I just have, this weekend.    'You'll think of me differently when you read the book,' he kept saying as though I would read it and not want to know of him, let alone know him, once I had read about his life story.   I don't think of him differently. He is still a very interesting, likeable character.    

The book is about J C Johnson's life as a womaniser.    The book gives tips on how to detect one, how to avoid one, and how J C found self esteem really through the love of women who had plenty of self esteem of their own.   Although it focuses very much on helping women to identify the traits in men, it also firmly points the finger at women themselves and saying that womanisers can detect vulnerabilities, 'blind spots' as JC calls them, and that this is all to do with not controlling our emotions.  Women are prepared to put up with a lot when they are in love with someone, not using the rational part of their brains to identify that a man is a womaniser, and run.  Or that they have identified that he is a womaniser but that they can change him. Save him from himself.    The book tells women to trust their instincts.  Not their emotions, their instincts.   I agree with most of what JC says and found some of his sexual exploits intriguing, reminding me a little of my own book LAST YEAR OF BEING SINGLE. I will never think of the word 'boing' in the same way again.  It's a pity he hasn't gone more into the sex scenes but then that's the point of womanisers - they don't get into it long enough to get into it.   It's sort of next, next, next, next.   Boing, boing, boing. 

According to JC, womanisers only go for women who are vulnerable - correction - they only 'get' women who are vulnerable, but they will try their luck at anything. I knew someone who would ask any girl out at work and say the law of averages one would always say yes.    Reading through, I definitely met one when I was going through the divorce but then I knew that at the time.  According to JC they tend to have an oversized ego, be vain, tell them that you can trust them, have very good empathy but use it to their own ends and never introduce you to their parents.  Oh, yes and they never stay after sex.   Unless, JC suggests, you happen to marry one, and then they just stop having sex with you all together.  Good book, go buy. 

THE KNIVES ARE OUT

Mothering Sunday and my son is in Barbados playing cricket with his friends and just knowing he's happy is enough.  Well, a card would have been nice, but any way, the sun is shining.   My lovely friend Sara invited me to exhibit some of my paintings and several of Tom's in the Church nearby.    It was a pleasure and I found myself helping with the cake sale after Mass.    I should have attended the mass but wanted to change and shower but the snail's pace of Richmond Park traffic meant in the end I didn't manage to do either.    But I helped out with the cake sale, talked about the art and chatted to photographers and the other excellent artist who's work was on display there.   And then this guy came up to me, all six foot four of him, and told me off for leaving kitchen knives on the counter.  Told off.   I was actually told off.  I couldn't get into the kitchen so left them on the counter for the women to take them to the sink but they hadn't.  I didn't explain this to him because he didn't want to know, he was talking at me.   He told me his child could have picked it up.  He reminded me of that time when that man chided me for not letting Tom and his friend get up from their seats and offer them to him - despite the fact there were others to be had.   At the time I stood my ground as the man was a nutter and a banker (the two are not mutually exclusive but am increasingly feeling they could be), but this time I was taken by surprise.  A church goer having a go at me. OK, he had yet to go to church so perhaps he was full of angst and aggression and hadn't yet off loaded it onto a forgiving all knowing God.    But this man was having a go at me for being a bad parent (leaving the knives on the counter when his child could have picked them up and danced happily round the room with them. And it's Mother's Day!).  But it was the way in which he did it.  I know I should have said that as a father he should have picked them up or the women behind the counter should have picked them up and that perhaps as a church goer he should pray for improved communication skills, and perhaps so should I, but I just took it. 

I don't know anything about the man and he knows nothing about me, other than the fact he suspects I want to harm his child.    He was Korean and my only previous encounter with a Korean was at a dinner party with a divorcee who told me that the North Koreans invented the seedless water melon.   So my knowledge of all things Korean is limited and to date, not very positive.  

But as I drove back through the park, pissed off that I was pissed off, I felt this is the problem I have with church goers.     And actually the whole experience of going to church.    As a child I went to church and believed (and still do) in God, and naively felt those involved with the church are somehow wiser with all their learning and compassion.    The Father at this church is a lovely interesting, intelligent, funny, compassionate man but I feel much of that stems from the fact that this is innately what he is and who he is, and less stems from the fact he is connected in any way to a Church.   

I expect church goers to be somewhat wiser, more at peace with themselves than the rest of us, but the ones I've met, and it's always the most zealous ones, are usually the most sanctimonious, self validating sinners on the planet. They pray for their sins to be taken away totally unprepared to do anything about it themselves, as though by sitting down and putting their hands together will take all the crap away, after all, that's what they've been told.  Point is, it doesn't.  God may forgive them, which is what matters, but it doesn't stop them being obnoxious arseholes and I would like sermons one day to shoot from the hip and not call the congregation 'sinners' but 'arseholes'.   That would wake them up.  Calling it sinning makes being an arsehole acceptable.    You have to be more self aware than that and I don't think the church, any church, teaches self awareness, it teaches dependence and disempowers those who are already afraid and needy.    And it enables arseholes to continue to think being that way is OK.  

The lovely Father followed me to my car and thanked me for not stabbing the man, (it hadn't entered my head) or telling him to eff off, (too close to the church) and I admit I was on a high from people liking the paintings and enjoying the cakes and sunshine and then this sanctimonious arsehole burst the bubble with the knives.    Perhaps God was punishing me for not attending the Mass.  Perhaps I should have urged the women, despite the fact they were busy to put the knives away.   Perhaps I would have done the same as him (I wouldn't. I would have just put the knives away, knowing that no one would have done it on purpose, and thankful no one got hurt.)   Whatever, the knives burst the balloon and I drove away a little less of the day and the sunshine.  I suspect he was a banker. 

MAY BE IT'S BECAUSE I'M A LONDONER...

Today I walked by the river past the Tower of London to take a brief tour of the HMS Belfast which is fascinating and I highly recommend.   A battle ship that is no longer at war, although this weekend London seemed to be in the midst of one.  This wonderful city can be a lovely, very interesting and dynamic city.   In places obscenely expensive but then in truth only the obscene can afford to live and go there so perhaps that's for the best.   

I have enjoyed living on the outskirts at the SW side, driving in along the river on the occasions I have worked on radio and been blessed with a night slot so avoided the Chelsea tractor driving plummy mummies picking up their Cordelias and Arabellas, and the road rage that ensues.    The bridges are beautiful, the architecture fascinating and we have some of the best arts and theatre in the world, and wonderful street markets.   The river running through it is the pulse and increasing the developers thank goodness are making sure that everything turns towards it rather against it.

It was an interesting weekend.   Full of extremes of conspicuous wealth and conspicuous resentment.     I watched the Oxford Cambridge boat race.  Wanted Cambridge to win, Oxford won, but they both won really.   They took part.      Then up to town narrowly missing the march and the riots to see Aida at the ROH.   I think I was supposed to feel sorry for the heroine wailing her heart out about a man who loved her but also wanted to be with her father who was the enemy of the man she loved. Any way, there was not enough jeopardy, she looked as though she'd had more than three good meals a day,  and I didn't care about any of them.    I just wanted to slap her and tell him to get a life.    But the dancers were absolutely incredible and the singing sublime and as opera tickets are ridiculously expensive unless you get standing room I was amazed the rioters didn't target the ROH instead of Fortnum and Mason and the Ritz.  But I suppose they deduced the ROH pay their taxes.

Any way, after returning home, I watched the march on TV and looked at the faces of those who quietly protested.  They were good people I saw, with honest faces.  Something ironically I would never describe the likes of Bob Diamond nor the former chief of RBS as having, but hey, appearances can be deceptive.   Speaking of which, I felt for the police who were being attacked in the riots.  They are just doing their jobs. They are being impacted by the cuts as well. They are in debt, their livelihood and families.    

What I suggest, and it is only a suggestion mind you, is that we get those who work in the City (traders, only top level who made the decisions who assisted in the financial crisis. And ideally their CEOs and MDs) and the politicians who allowed them to get away with it. And next time there is a march we put them in the front line.  They don't have to say sorry or be forgiven (as Bob Diamond was asked to do at that ridiculous inquest not so long ago by the politicians trying to 'speak for the tax payer', and they don't even need to say sorry).  Words are meaningless and the banks will always find a way to claw in the money they are being asked to pay back.    No, I feel these people should stand in the front line. Then the rioters would be attacking the right people. Of course they would fight dirty as they always do but perhaps we could do what we did in Libya and declare a no fly zone to back up the rebels.    Did they but know it, by attacking the police, the rioters yesterday were really attacking one of their own.   

SEIZE THE DAY...

I presented to the Womens' Institute in Surrey last week.  In Surrey, they audition for speakers and I don't know if I was good enough but it was an interesting exercise of precis - turning a forty minute int a twenty minute without missing out the relevant bits.  Admittedly rather formidable, I enjoyed it.  A buzzer for the last sixty seconds ticked loudly which was a little disconcerting but good for the time keeping.   My talk was about the art of storytelling and writing your first novel.  And I felt there were so many stories those women could tell, if they had the time, made the time, or had the confidence to type or write out their story.  So many would learn from their experiences, their mistakes and wisdoms.     You can see sometimes in those old black and white photographs the echoes of stories - and I always remember that scene in Dead Poets Society when the Robin Williams (can't remember the name of the character he played) whispering in the ears of the watching boys 'carpe dieum' (?) seize the day.   Whether they chose to put me on their books or not, I hope at least some of those who were at the meeting, start to write....