Now we are 80 -- a Botero Birthday!

Yes, next week I shall reach my eightieth birthday. Improbable, unlikely but true. It seems such a short time that I celebrated (if that is the right word!) my seventieth ...

https://kurtofgerolstein.blogspot.com/2016/02/70-boys-70.html

 Big party? inquired folks. No. Wendy and I will share a nice evening bottle of bubbly, quietly, at dear old Gerolstein, and that's all. 

But you must do something! No. And I don't want anyone else to do anything either. No 'surprises'. And above all, no gifts. I am of an age where I am disposing of the accumulated stuff of ages, not accumulating ..  a hug or a message is all I want! On this semi-memorable occasion it is I who should be giving thanks for 80 relatively painless years, and a still lively mind ...

Thought. It is I who should be giving the gifts ....

Flashback ...

Some ten years ago I visited, for the first time, the delightful café called BOTERO in the village of Maclean, NSW. I have visited many, many times since. In fact, on very occasion I have spent time in Australia. Botero blends a particularly delicious coffee which has become my staple. And makes a splendid risotto! It also sells the most delighful hessian shopping bags, hand-made from coffee sacking .. and I couldn't resist a few of those.

Wendy at Botero

I was carrying one, a few weeks ago, when I went shopping at the deli ('Fresca') in Rangiora (we are on the other side of the Tasman now!) and Luna, the lady there, admired it largely. And CLICK! The idea was born ..

I got on Messenger to Australia, and commissioned a dozen bags, suitably inscribed, as gifts for those folk who have helped me get through these last ten years. 

They have gone off to Berlin, California, New York, Leicestershire, Rangiora ...

I am delighted beyond measure ...

My birthday has benefitted Charity, which is never a bad thing. Yes, Myra James, the lady who makes these beautiful bags donates all proceeds to local charities ..

Thank you, Myra. Thank you, Botero ... there will be folks round the globe who will remember my 80th birthday ...

And if anyone is looking for a novel gift ... try these ...

Hetty the little dancer from Philly

 

I've been 'visiting' Philadelphia a great deal in my various searches and writings recently. Occasionally I stop and investigate a little more deeply. Today this piece of music caught my eye ..

It is not exactly Mozart or Adolph Adam stuff, is it, but I wondered who was Miss Wilks, 'the American danseuse? So I looked, and .. oh dear ...

Henrietta Margaret Wilks was born in Philadelphia 1 January 1839, the first daughter of an Irish musician, Benjamin G S Wilks (1814-1890), from Dublin, and his American wife Marion Bates Packer.. Benjamin had been a singer and actor in the Philadelphia theatres. He also had something to do with firemen and proffered a song titled 'The Fireman's Barcarolle'. 25 April 1838 he married Maria Bates Parker, who apparently joined the company at the Walnut Street Theatre. Mr Wilks went on to become a company secretary (Hope Hose Company, Philadelphia Brass Band), his wife continued at the Walnut, and in 1855 a sixteen-year-old 'Miss H Wilks' made a first appearance in a pas seul. After that, Miss H featured on many programmes ...

She also featured in the marriage registers when she took to husband her young colleague, Mr Linington Roberts Shewell (17 June 1856). The couple appeared a little while at the Walnut, but ..

Henrietta died, aged just 18, on 15 May 1857. 

Shewell made himself a fair career, remarried ...  Father lived till 1890 

A short story and a sad one. I wonder why I picked that one.

Burning the Books .... my liber loathamostus

 

There is a 1933 memorial in Berlin's Bebelplatz, recording, very effectively, the Nazi 'burning of the books', the stark image of which has stuck in my mind over the fifteen years since I first saw it.

It seems, in retrospect, a terrible thing ... but, when one regards the question soberly, in 2026 ... well, I'm bound to admit there ARE some books that deserve to be destroyed. I have just had an encounter with the one which I would put top of my hit list. It does not deserve to have currency in any country in any time

No, I'm not talking about Mein Kampf or the latest Barbara Taylor Bradford. I'm not talking about any of the guns, guns, cars and sex rubbish-books that somehow still thrive, or even the 'I had sex with a spaceman' stuff. No one (I hope) keeps them (if anyone does) on any shelf but the 'imaginative f(r)iction' one.

My pet hate, my liber loathmostus is much more dangerous and frightening than they. Why? Because it is trying to pervert the English language, and force it into a kind of bland and incorrect kind of Amurrican dialect ...   Well, words are my business, my life, and to me this is 'life-threatening'.

Oh, the book in question is entitled The Chicago Manual of Style. Known in my circles and home as The Chicago Manual of Lack of Style. "Die, you creature of filth .." (Elektra 1966)

I have never read this Scheisterwerk. I don't wish to. And I shall continue to write AS I WISH without being 'instructed' by Chicago. But this abomination is a creeping ill. Even the editor (one of them) of my last book in England turned to this devil's dictionary for reference. And I have two works coming out shortly, both of which have suffered under its evil influence.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when I published my first books, we were not subjected to such linguistic tyranny. I remember how my editor laughingly queried my description of Katisha (Mikado) as 'dragonistic'. The neo-adjective was noted delightedly in a couple of reviews. 

I was inclined to errrrr .. I suffered from long sentences as a youth. The wondrous Caroline Richmond, my first and greatest copy-edior, gently modified them. I had the help of Caroline, blissfully, through my two biggest books, and Illinois wasn't ever mentioned. Oh! the good old days, before the era of fly-spotted pages!

But then .. the pc age and censorship (from America) arrived. You can't say 'aggressively Jewish' said Routledge. And well 'nigger minstrel'? Who is trying to change history? The minstrels, black or white, were America's first (and sole) original contribution to the world's musical theatre! EVERY abbreviation must have a fullstop. (Why?)

But back to the burnable book.

What good does it serve? Merely to make everybody's dicta just like everybody else's? What a ghastly, fascistic thought. 

In my youth Lady Chatterley's Lover and Another Country were 'banned'. I found both totally harmless. This monstrosity, attempting to impose montony and incorrectitude on the English (yes, English) language, is a threat to freedom of thought and expression ... not to mention good taste ...

BURN IT!

Immediate reply from a senior British publisher and writer: "I agree with you about the Chicago manual of Supposed Style, and I deeply regret that [you have] been subjected to the monstrosity.  It's all part of the reason why I prefer not to get involved with an American publisher"

BURN IT!