May the Best Man not win

Today, Friday 24 Aug 2018, the Angel attends a wedding (the ceremony starting in about fifteen minutes). One of his closest friends getting married. The Angel being one of three best men. Why anyone needs three best men to carry him to the altar I do not know – but maybe the groom was torn between longest standing friend, brother and, well, the Angel. That’s indecision for you.

In the motherland they don’t do “best man”. Bridesmaids, yes, but men? No. Neither does her father walk the bride down the aisle (in the motherland). Ridiculous. My father didn’t own me all my life; so why would he “give me away”?

Anyway, the English do have their ways in any given social setting and are most particular about it. If you’d like me to expand I will. I have more anecdotes (not least on hats) than I care to remember – though all of them, moderately, funny.

Be that as it may, before the Angel set off earlier he related to me what I had not known. Every time someone relates something to me I don’t know I am surprised (the older I get the more surprised I am at all that indeed I have not known, do not know and never will). So, apparently in an age long gone (don’t hold me to detail) the best man’s duty was not to ship the groom to the altar in time. Not at all. It’s so bad it’s worse.

Cast yourself back to a time when you had to negotiate Robin Hood and other daylight robbery in dark forests on the way to your destiny. Say you got slain. It happens. Then, please dear Readers, do sit down and reach for the smelling salts, the best man had to stand in for the groom. Yes, really. When a wedding was called it had to take place. Never mind about love and stuff. An understudy will do.

The Angel, being of an orderly mind, asked today’s groom (last night) why then he had appointed THREE best men. Were they supposed to battle it out between them should shit happen between departure and destination? Let’s just say that, as incentives go, the Angel was determined to get the groom to the altar in one piece. Not because the bride isn’t lovely. She is. But the Angel  knows he’d win the fight and does have other plans.

Yes, in slightly nostalgic mode; last couple of days letting all the weddings I have attended (not least my parents’ when I was four) pass by my inner eye.

Any memories of your own or others’ weddings you’d like to indulge me with?

U

Drawing a line (?)

You know how you can sometimes relate to people in that sort of “homecoming” way? Safe. Kindred spirit, and all that. It’s not that you “agree” on everything, it’s just a baseline. You like each other regardless, you trust each other. Even if the other person’s, say, politics stink to high heaven.

I did ponder the other day if you can be friends, I mean proper friends, with someone whose political views are diametrical opposed to yours and, by their nature, outrageous. Have since come to conclusion you probably can – until you have to draw a line. HA! But where is the line? Even real stinkers in world politics do have friends. Just stand by for the fallout. If, by way of example, you were two of the Mitford sisters who were friends with Hitler your reputation will suffer. Still, Hitler was human too. As was his Alsatian. And spare a thought for Eva Braun.

I wish I could let you into a secret of mine. But I can’t. It’s too risky. Only two people know about it (the Angel and my father). Anyway, to them I am more than the sum of my idiosyncrasies. Let’s just say it’s roughly on par – only worse – with admitting that you admired Margaret Thatcher. You will be feathered and tarred.

You know what’s so crazy about my “secret”? It shows my humanity. Yet, I’d be shredded for it. 

And with that thought I’ll leave you. Maybe you’ll be good enough to tell me about your own ideas where friendship has potential to end in terms of acceptable (to you) ideology, beliefs, politics, character traits, demeanours.

U

 

Ambition

Here is one to set a carnivore among the pigeons. You may weep.

What were your parents’ and other relatives’ plans for you?

U

Shades of white

I am no good at drawing. Which is rather surprising since I come from a long line of people who actually made their living painting.

My father who inherited that most remarkable talent – though never made anything of it because he was more interested in pursuing other interests, once helped me out. I was about twelve. Our art homework was to do a portrait of a pirate (water colours no less – the smudge’s devil of all inventions). We had a few days. The worse and the more dreaded the task the more it’ll spoil not only your life in the interim but you’ll put it off to the last minute (deadline by another name). (Un)fortunately my father passed my desk (Sunday afternoon) as I was putting the finishing touches to a half hearted attempt at conveying both the cliche and the menace of a pirate (Johnny Depp my creation wasn’t – it was before his time). So, in a moment of charitable (or was it) intent, my father chucked my effort into the nearest waste paper basket and conjured up the most magnificent pirate ever. Took him zero time – not that he meant to ram home that I most certainly had betrayed the creative family line (on both sides). Not at all. He was far more interested in taking all my essays and other writings apart – even if they rated A* by assorted teachers. You want to know what my father called my teachers? Don’t. Repeating it would be flying in the face of my genteel upbringing and the manners my mother instilled in me.

So Monday was grand. My art teacher’s face lit up. He studied my father’s effort in detail. He was chuffed. He smiled. At me. After an artfully executed theatrical pause  he said: “Do tell your father that, on account of fraud, I’ll only give him a two” (a one being top mark). After that I can’t remember anything. Other than that I was always tops in the theory of art and art history. Brush to canvas? Forget it. Why would I? Know thy limitations.

Not to sell myself short and as befits my temperament, I did and do passable caricatures (of people). That’s about it.

As Karma has a way of biting you unawares,  most nearest and dearest to me, friends and assorted family, are masters of their chosen art. Occasionally forced to remind them, ever so tactfully, we can’t all be artistes. Some of us have to be the appreciative audience. The ones who do the clapping, the stroking of ego, the catchers of tears, the slayers of tantrums, the ones who write the critiques, facilitate you, marketeer your stuff.  And, BUY IT.

Whatever you do, please do not talk to me about gallerists. It was Basel/Switzerland, ca. 1997, when I fell off my chair on learning that a gallerist (the marketeer and provider of large swathes of wall and the monied) will take a  cool 66 % off your sales for services rendered.

Titanium white greetings,

U

 

Hop Scotch

What of the theory that certain character traits and talents do tend to skip a generation? Do you think it bollocks or can you cement the above with examples of your own life’s experience?

U

Royal Flush

Dearest sweetest Hearts, please absolve me from all evil as you will be absolved from your own misdemeanours. Not that it’s a bargain, neither am I mercenary.

Why? Why? Oh why, don’t ask Merkel, did this have to become public? The Orange one’s grandfather of German descent? I have never disowned anyone. But am perfectly unhappy to make an exception .

This really takes the Ginger (bread man).

For once not easily consoled, yours,

U

Valour and to debase

Picking a few of a plethora of notable quotes in the British press:

“The leave campaign is a revolution, and like all revolutions, it will eat its own.”

Maybe, though I think evoking the French Revolution’s big players is a little far fetched in the context of British politicians turning into Pinocchios, chameleons, piranhas, Judases, downright chancers and slime.  Leaving Jo Cox (England, shot 16 June 2016) aside, no one has yet been stabbed to death in the bath (reference Marat, Paris, July 1783).

“Democrats have no duty to endorse democracy’s every outcome.”

This one I love.  It’s an epiphany. Whoever wrote it I could kiss. Think about it: “Democrats have no duty to ENDORSE democracy’s EVERY outcome.”  Genius.

And then there is, the relatively harmless:

“People want to be lied to“, Johnson. No, not Boris, 2016, who proved the point; the other one, Samuel, ca mid 17 hundreds, who made an observation.

I have a special relationship with lies/lying. I do concede that a white lie, in order to avert unnecessary harm and judiciously applied, does have its place in social relations. The blatant lie, the misleading, the blinding, the up and down the garden paths, the self serving, the coward’s way out? No. Not in my court. Which is not the same as saying that I don’t understand those who are trapped in a corner and make deals with the devil. It happens. And let no one cast the first or any stone.

Premeditated lying? There is no excuse for it. Even the most optimistic, “well meaning” and accomplished liar will have to accept that trust – once broken – is just that: Broken. Or in the words of Bertold Brecht, loosely translated: “The ends of a knot severed can be spliced together again but you won’t find me where you left me”. In other words: Rain doesn’t return whence it came from.

U

Shakespearean

You have to hand it to Britain: DIVIDED they stand.

This is personal, I make little claim on rhyme, reason or rationale. For that I am too upset. A snapshot in my time.

Having stocked up on an hour’s sleep before British voting closing at ten o’clock BST I turned on the TV (BBC1) at five minutes to ten.  Big Ben makes me quite emotional at the best of times. So when it chimed as voting booths closed I welled up a bit. Now? Now, my tears are rolling. Involuntarily. They just keep coming. They say there are five stages to grieving. Denial (in this case) was relatively short. Shock features majestically. Acceptance (the last stage)? I guess that will be a long time waiting.

After the future father of son proposed to me 26 March 1982 in Paris, I arrived in England 4 April 1982 for good. I have always been a foreigner – albeit a “well integrated” one. FOS saw to that. I couldn’t so much as open my mouth before he corrected any mistake my early shaky English made. And that includes apostrophes. Might sound harsh to some of you. It wasn’t. I am hugely grateful to him for his relentless pursuit of perfecting my English. Don’t laugh, and as an aside, it’s probably why I miss him most when – to this day – I have a question on where to insert a comma or what the plural of bonus is.

Where was I? Yes, a foreigner. Now? Now I am a true foreigner. An alien. For those of you musically inclined listen to Sting’s “An Englishman in New York”. A legal alien. The melody alone conveys all there is to know. And before any of you point this out to me: Yes, I am perfectly aware that here, in this post and in my heart, there is a soupcon of self pity. Not least because someone recommended to me (in a national newspaper), and as I don’t hold a British passport, to return to “whence you come from”. Sweet. Thirty four yours on.

Never mind. I will regain composure.

The result of this vote has opened a massive a can of worms too cramped to not spill. Whilst – to some extent – I do feel sorry for Cameron having to resign in such an undignified way, what he needs to ask himself why the hell he did authorize this referendum. So terribly terribly shortsighted.

Yes, I promised you a snapshot. And that why I’ll stop now. Otherwise this post will become an oversized oil painting. No, make that a bewildered Jackson Pollock. Not that I deaden any pain with whiskey.

U

Napoleon

Sweethearts, you think I am low on the ground? I AM FLATTENED. Finito.  Basta. Ende. You name it as long as there an end to it. A hedgehog crossing a busy road has nothing on me.

Let’s apply a bit of American speak: I am “challenged”. Which I’d normally welcome but not with my comp crashing every seven minutes. It’s difficult to think when rushed.

The Angel put his friendly face round the door the other day, looked at me, shook his Viking head, complete with long locks,  and said “Mama. The Keyboard Warrior”. The Keyboard Warrior. I should be so lucky. Win a battle, try and invade Russia (in winter). You may lose the war. At the moment there is a truce. Kissinger notwithstanding. Never mind Hillary’s emails being made available for public consumption. I can’t send any. As to playing cards: Trump ain’t ace.

Never mind fracking. Let the best woman win. And it’s only March. Ides of.

Upshot being that the only reason I don’t wish I were still five because then the Angel wouldn’t exist. Logistically, biologically impossible. So I am what I am. And what I am is both totally happy and totally disenchanted.  If anyone had forecast this x years ago I’d told them to go away and revisit me in x years. Well. You can beat the hell out of an optimist (physically) but you can’t darken my sun.

Other than that: Everything is fine.

Hugs and kisses,

U

 

 

Archives

Sweethearts, cry with me.

Just found some old school reports in quest to bring order to chaos.

Whilst ‘behaviour’ was consistently marked as “Very Good”, ‘participation during lesson time’ as “interested, but too quiet”. You wouldn’t believe it, would you? I know when to hold horses and unleash dogs.

My low point no doubt the year which shall remain unnumbered when I scored so low in English and Physics even I find it hard to believe: “Her efforts in English are barely noticeable”. Fahrenheit plummeting. The same year the sky was my limit in Latin. For my sins I have spent most my adult life in England, not in ancient Rome.

U