FischGrätenMelkStand.

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When I said to Anna, let’s go out together and do something ... see something … one day this week, I wasn’t really thinking of something like FischGrätenMelkStand. Because that sort of thing is way, way outside my experience. Even Ian, who loved modern art, who used to traipse me round the Galerie Maeght, and who once made me stand and look at a vast and ludicrous Jackson Pollock in Venice (he did apologise later) would, I think, have been a bit puzzled in the presence of FischGrätenMelkStand. But, how do you know if you don’t try? So I put on my walking shoes, and headed off through the city – tiens! there’s the Gendarmenmarkt! I am beginning to see how Berlin’s bits fit together – to the Schlosspark and its Temporary Kunsthalle. It is temporary (and due to be demolished this week) because the whole area where the old ‘Schloss’ stood is under reconstruction. It would make a nice park, I thought, but I fear it is going to be a ‘reconstruction’.

 

The exhibition with the funny name (it means one of those milking parlours where the cattle stand interlocked, head to head) consists of a four-story metal jungle-gym (thus the name), built up with staircases and rooms, in each of which rooms is featured an exhibit of some kind. I’m not sure if there is ‘meaning’ anywhere in there: I didn’t try to find any. Once we were let in (there was a vast queue, as the construction can hold only 40 people), I just clambered up and down and looked. Quite a few of the things seemed to be damaged, or have their video and/or audio components out of order, but I just took what I was seeing for what I was seeing, and … When we emerged, nearly an hour later, and sat down with a quiet beer in the café, I said to myself: well? The answer to ‘well?’ was that, as a whole, the series of ‘rooms’ were just an ‘art gallery’, and the ‘art’ they contained? … twenty-four hours later, as I write this, exactly the same images remain, now as then, remarkably vividly, in my mind. A group of handbags on a wall, ‘magically’ tossing their own shadows – by some filmic process – round and round (and unphotographically) in circles

 

and a rough wooden room lined with rows of burned pizzas and entitled ‘Mutter Tod mit Pepperoni’ (Martin Kippenberger/Heimo Zobernig). I don’t know what Mrs Death had to do with things, but – in spite of the fact that the exhibit had suffered destructively from knees and shoulderbags -- the dilapidated rows of pizzas were strangely compelling!

 

There was an cleverly unpleasant-feeling piece, Vinyl Terror and Horror, featuring distressed electronic equipment enclosed in a filthy caravan, and Anna was particularly taken by the ‘Backstage’ which I imagine represented the ‘artist’s’ or ‘caretaker’s room and which enclosed a vast variety of crazed and crumpled and ‘rejected’ bits and pieces, which may or may not have been still where the creator had put them.

 

There was a good deal more, a great deal more, but those are the bits I remember. And only once did I sneer the sneer that says ‘oh this is just tiresome’: in an item called ‘sexy socks’ (the title already is wearisome) where, sadly, drearily, the creators fell back on juvenile ‘naughty words’ for their ‘cleverness’. Yawn… From the FischGrätenMelkStand we made our way the nearby Friedrichswerdesche Kirche. This C19th, neo-Gothic building was, of course, in considerable contrast to what we had just seen, but there was a surprise. It is now an art gallery, too, and its soaring space contains a selection of (copies of?) classical sculpture. But amongst those sculptures was a well-staged contemporary piece by Yinka Shonibara entitled 'Colonel Tarleton and Mrs Oswald shooting'. I found it very effective and, yes, perfectly comprehensible ... indeed, I was altogether pleased, until I read the heavy-handed publicity blurb, with all its effortful politics and points. I don't want to be told what to see, thank you. If the artist can't make his point in his art...?

 

This morning, I have also read the hand-out material on the FischGrätenMelkStand. And now I don’t like it nearly so much. So much pompous stuff about ‘spatial situations’ and artworks ‘fusing with space’ and … it is all so pretentious and unreadable, quite the perfect poison with which to eradicate the enjoyment one can get simply by looking at the works in question. I am binning it, as of this moment, wiping it from my brain, and I shall just keep my agreeable images of handbags and pizzas, thank you.

 

My day ended, in suitably ‘cosmopolitan’ fashion with dinner with Kevin in a Brazilian restaurant down near the Schwules Museum, where his exhibition has been breaking all house records of affluence. And, to end a colourful day on a high, the buffet eat-as-much-as-you-can meal turned out to be stunning – from a first-class fish soup, to a truly wonderful beef (?), black sausage and black bean stew that had me longing for a larger appetite. The Café do Brasil, 72 Mehringdamm, is unchallengeably the best value-for-money feast I have eaten, anywhere, since I set out from New Zealand … And then to bed, to dream of revolving handbags, burned pizzas, and delicious fish soup…

'At Home' in the Krumme Strasse

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When you are travelling incessantly, the nicest thing that can happen is to be invited to spend an evening snuggled up in the midst of somebody else’s quiet and comfy ‘home’ atmosphere…
Paul (otherwise PGB, otherwise Paul Graham Brown the musical-theatre writer) and his partner, Uwe, asked me around and ‘in’ for a delicious chick pea stew, imaginative ice-cream, a little vin rouge and, above all, a cosy evening of ‘en famille’ friendship and fun…
It felt soooooo goood …

A Visit to Sissi

I’d thought, when I returned to Berlin, that I would be carrying on my cavalcade through the restaurants of Europe .. but somehow, one way and another, that hasn’t come to pass. Give or take my Jamaican and Irish adventures, most of my food and drink jollification, over the last month, has happened round the picknick table, right here at no 32 Nollendorfstrasse.

Livia’s win, however, had to be fêted in suitable style, so – after a nice cold apéritif of French bubbly, round my little red table – PGB and I set out in search of a nice place to eat. And we found one. When first I came back to the Nollendorfstrasse, my friend Horst pointed me in the direction of a tiny, Austrian restaurant named – what else – Sissi. There it was, just round the corner in the Motzstrasse. And, goodness me, Horst was right.



Tiny, charming, delightful staff and ... well, I have honestly to say, better food than I have ever eaten, anywhere, in Vienna itself. And at very reasonable prices. I had a consommé with a nice light leberknoedel, followed by what the English menu described as boiled calf carpaccio. The mind boggled. But it was delicious thin slices of cold boiled beef, served with a tiny light salad … delicious, and you come out at the end (as I like to do) thinking you have eaten nothing. Paul had a gulasch. Now I’ve seen all sorts of gulasches in my life and most of them would sink a sailor. Not this one. This is food for enjoying, not for simply swelling your stomach. And that means, of course, that grown-ups have space for pudding: Paul could not resist an apricot dumpling…
Our meal was completed by a nice bottle of Pinot (28 euros, wines in restaurants and bars here are grotesquely expensive – 200 to 400pc markup), served with decided talent by a young waiter who made the single bottle last tidily and precisely through our meal, instead of slurping it forcefully into the glasses in the hope the customer will order a second bottle…
We saved ourselves for the Châteauneuf du Pape (11euros at Kaiser’s Supermarket) waiting for us, nightcappishly, back at the Nollendorfstrasse.
A delightful evening. A delightful restaurant. I am already booked for a return visit Thursday… and that will not certainly be the last during my month-to-go in Berlin. Would it be too much to hope that one of the horses might win again, too?

Oh, Livia!

Back in May – goodness, how long ago was that -- I blogged hopefully, from the northern hemisphere, about the latest addition to the ‘Gerolstein’ stable of racers .. our little Australian filly, Livia Degerolstein.
She had begun her baby two year-old career quite promisingly – four starts for a third and three fourths, which looked as if they could be fairly soon improved on. The idea of a first ever Gerolstein juvenile winner, and of my first harness-racing win in Australia – to add to those already scored in New Zealand and in France -- didn’t look impossible. But it didn’t happen.
Without ever running badly, Livia just didn’t seem to make that extra bit of progress necessary to snare her a race, and, after a couple of nowheres, instead of lining up for the big races we had looked forward to, she instead went out to have a little rest. All our rosy hopes looked doomed: the season was drawing to its end – soon she would no longer be a two year-old.
Then, suddenly, last week, as I scanned the Down Under racing pages from my flatlet in Berlin’s Nollendorfstrasse, I noticed … Livia was back! With a fortnight to go till September 1st. Was there still a smidgin of hope?
It didn’t look like it. She went to Geelong August 16, and finished seventh of nine, she went to Maryborough, just three days later, and got fourth of six. She was, as ever, running on at the end, but why oh why, no matter where drawn, did she always seem to end up at the too-far-back of the pack in the running?
One last chance. Geelong again, today 26 August. And the competition included the two horses, Blissful Kisses and Saunders Girl, that had dead-heated for second when she had been seventh there ten days ago, as well as a filly dropping back from the classic races we had once eyed hopefully for Livia. The public took the obvious view, and Livia, sporting a nice new red nose-roll, went out at odds of 20-1. Sixth fancy out of eight.
The classic filly blew up at the start, an outsider hooned suicidally to the front and .. sure enough, as they got to the bell, Livia had managed to get herself into second last place, maddeningly off the slipstreaming back of the one in front of her. Happily, the one behind her was Saunders Girl, and she was pulled swiftly out to loop the field as they headed into the final section. Livia tagged gappily on to her wheel, followed her around, three wide on the last turn, and as Saunders Girl and Blissful Kisses settled down, it seemed, to battle it out, down the middle of the track came stomping Livia! There was a heart-stopping second as she put in one short stride, but then she stuck her tough little head forward, bullocked on, and several strides before the post she elbowed past her rivals to hit the line with nearly half a length to spare!
Within ten days, she had turned round a distance of ten metres on the two runners-up, in the respectable mile time of 2mins 02.4. That ‘improvement’ we had been waiting for had well and truly happened, and that two year-old win, which had seemed so improbable just days earlier, had actually come to pass!
So, tonight – while Wendy (give or take the time difference) raises a glass to little Livia, and to trainer-driver Graeme Lang, down in Gerolstein, New Zealand – I and my pal PGB will do the same at the Nollendorfstrasse …

Goodness, what a horsey year! Elena wins (in NZ while I’m in Australia), Tenor wins (in France while I’m in Australia again), Seppl wins twice (in NZ while I’m in the Isle of Wight) and now Livia wins .. in Australia while I’m in Germany! I’m not complaining, but hopefully, one day soon, my winners and I may be in the same place at the same time? But as my friend Jack – who last week scored a zinger at Cabourg, France -- says, they never are.

http://www.harness.org.au/video/vic/GEC26081006.wmv

Life is a Kabarett

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When Hannes told me that Cabaret was playing at TIPI am Kanzleramt – that delightful ‘tent’ venue in the Tiergarten -- I have to say I didn’t rush there. How many times have I seen Cabaret over the last forty years? I can’t count. And Cabaret in German? Ah well, I guess its part of the same ‘good old days’ thing that I recognised in this afternoon’s 'Modernen Zeit’ exhibition. But then other folk, too, told me I ‘should’ see it (why? I wondered) and so last night I strolled up to the grand, green Tiergarten from my home in the Nollendorfstrasse (30 minutes flat, even with the ghastly pedestrian lights), and met up with Hannes and Anna for a night ‘at the musical’. TIPI is, in fact, an ideal venue for this show. It is sufficiently compact, and it has the right ‘Kabarett’ atmosphere. Even more ideal, to my thinking, would be the companion Bar Jeder Vernunft, where this production was originally staged, in a version that has been (sometimes too obviously) now opened out for this larger platform … and, of course, auditorium.

 

The original stage musical Cabaret was not a huge success, and it owes its continuing life very largely to its film version and the performance therein of Liza Minnelli in the role of Sally Bowles. The filmmakers, alas, in search of youth and beauty, destroyed the show’s two most interesting, central – and ageing -- characters (Herr Schultz and Frln Schneider), so I am always very happy indeed to get back to the original theatre text. Or something like it. The TIPI version – and boy! how many ‘versions’ of Cabaret have there been, tacked together by royalty-chasers and usually involving chunks of the film – seems to me to be sufficiently back-to-basics (I admit to a groan when a yowled chunk of ‘Maybe This Time’ was tacked in), but there were some bits which I didn’t think I recognised. This may simply be because it’s so long since I heard an un-butchered performance of Cabaret. This production’s principal curiosity was to have the text in German, and the lyrics sung in either English or German or, in the disastrous case of ‘Cabaret’, half and half.

 

The stage production was suitably ‘of today’. The first half was slick, quick-moving, occasionally visually arresting (a practical train outdid Miss Saigon’s helicopter easily), it didn’t seem to run nearly 100 minutes, and it was pretty loud and pretty soulless. But, come half time, the whole thing changed gear. Suddenly the audience (mostly ladies with hair, why?) was no longer giggling at the romantic and emotional Schultz-Schneider scenes, but cooing; suddenly the Sally, who had done little more than shout and flail her way through the first half, started to act; suddenly we had a play. A musical play. Instead of an agreeable but pretty banal heap of lively camping and leaping around. And I cheered inwardly. I guess it depends what you want Cabaret to be. For me the Schultz/Schneider story is the heart of the show. Miss Bowles is a supporting character. But, of course, since Liza Minnelli, the musical and the character are no longer allowed or expected to be like that. We don’t get the silly little English Sally Bowles as written by Isherwood and van Druten, we get Liza Minnelli Bowles. Topbilled. And there aren’t a handful of performers, maybe even a fingerful, in the world who can ‘be’ Liza Minnelli Bowles in such a way as not to suffer horribly in comparison with the lady they are apeing. I was pretty sure I was in trouble as soon as tonight’s Sally (Sophie Berner) walked on. She was wearing a Liza Minnelli wig. Oh, dear, I thought. It is going to be a that sort of production of Cabaret. Well, happily, it didn’t turn out quite that way, and that very largely thanks to some decidedly fine performances elsewhere in the cast. 

Easily my favourite performer of the evening was the Cliff (Guido Kleineidam). How often does that happen? That Cliff is the strongest character in this musical? Almost never, I would say. And, guess what, it gives the piece a great focus. The 'I' who is 'the camera' is important and central, and not just an 'instrument'. Unlike the lady, Kleineidam never forgot to act for a second, and he established a credible, interesting and moving personality right from the start. And in the tiny bit he has to sing, he even turned up with a most agreeably uneffortful baritone. It was thoroughly due to him that the Cliff-Sally relationship developed any shape and any interest at all, and his final departure from Berlin, surrounded by the debris of his Berlin life, was decidedly the most moving moment of an evening which didn’t go in for very many moving moments. A first-class performance. 

Frln Schneider (Regina Lemnitz as replacement for Maren Kroymann) and Herr Schultz (Peter Kock), who turned out, miraculously, both to have wholly agreeable singing voices, played their scenes well – though they were left standing curiously ‘undirected’ in the middle of an open stage during confrontations which cry out for intimacy. They made ‘Heirath’ into the musical hit of the night ... I was humming it in the interval and again after the show. They also both played their characters as pleasantly ‘ordinary’ everyday people: the role of Frln Schneider, often star cast, can easily become overcooked. She is a boarding-house keeper. Here, reality remained, and the show gained greatly. So much for the ‘real’ people of the tale. Except, of course, Sally should be one of these, too. I haven’t enthused over any Sally since I saw her played, with touching naivety (and plenty of voice), by a little blonde ex-chorine at Farnham Repertory Theatre in the 1980s. I guess that lass hadn’t seen the movie, or else she had the sense to know that she wasn’t equipped to compete with the Minnelli image. So much the better for her. And me. Tonight’s shapeless Sally was all over the place. She blasted her way through act one, with nary an ounce of light and shade, and just when – in the second act – one started to feel that there was a real and sympathy-worthy woman hiding under that tacky wig, she came out with shudderworthy, draggy, misshapen versions of ‘Maybe This Time’ and ‘Cabaret’ which seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of the show or the (otherwise very effective) orchestrations. No. As the youth of today say: ‘fail’. 

 The role of the emcee (Eric Rentmeister) was efficiently played – in song, speech and dance – in the established, but now rather uninteresting, Joel Grey style, the four Kit Kat girls (one an extremely clever male, Mogens Eggemann) were choreographed, in the manner we are supposed to believe has something to do with the 1930s, in a most lively, vigorous and enjoyable set of routines, and the small parts were all competently played. Except one. How on earth did the director permit the amateurish, end-of-the-pier portrayal of Frln Kost? Has he (and she) never heard of ‘less is better’? This woman’s pantomimish antics took the edge off the scenes of Frln Schneider’s romance and also off the climactic end of act one. The two key moments of the evening’s drama were almost ruined by an inept clown. 

I realise that my comments here do contain a lot of negatives. But, at the end of the show, I am happy to say that (as the ladies with hair squealed out jolly volleys of hoorays) I really didn’t feel too bad at all. I wasn’t complaining about the sum total of the evening's entertainment. Cliff had been superb, Schultz and Schneider very fine … and that meant that the show’s heart had been sweetly and dramatically solid. Sally? I’d more or less given up on her as soon as I saw the wig, and I simply didn’t let her bother me too much. She was back where she should be: a supporting character. Frln Kost, of course, did bother me .. but then, to make up for her, we had the train! A Cabaret with a solid heart will do me. Especially when it is as vigorously enlivened by its Girls and by its orchestra as this one is, and especially when it is played in such a friendly venue … but I think I may now go for a few years without seeing another version – any version – of this musical. Enough is enough is enough.

Berlin on a roller-coaster

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Yes, that means what it sounds like. My budding love affair with this city has not run altogether smoothly.
What went wrong? There was I on a huge high after my Best Concert Night Out probably ever … and the next thing …
Friday. Arrangements awry and suddenly … unreasoning panic. Alone in a big city, where I can’t speak the language, and where this machine is my only contact with an outside world which seems to have vanished… Where is everyone? Anyone? Living their own lives, of course. Off on holidays, away or out on business, other folk to see, but not around ... Probably someone was on the end of a sanity-saving txt, but I don’t have a phone.
The sky clouded over, and the rains came down, and as I sat imprisoned through Saturday and half of Sunday, in my normally beloved no32, listening to the man next-door doing loud repairs, the man downstairs doing ditto ... with no escape to .. where? .. through the storm … uselessly spiralling into a real and wholly untypical tempest of lonesome blues … I could only think: I want to be back at Gerolstein. Have I stayed away too long?
And the realisation punched itself into my brain: how could I ever, ever have imagined that I could make a home base in a city where I don’t speak the language? Where I can’t even go out to a bar or a resto, if I should want to, and chat to some jolly company, on a horrid weekend like this one, because I’m half-deaf and foreign and, anyway, too many places here don’t take credit cards? The Berlin real-estate books, which had, in my imagination, been invitingly half-open since I got back here, closed that weekend with a definitive bang. What was I thinking of? End of dream. End of wonderful but foolish dream.



The mean blue moment passed, of course. Dear PGB arrived back in truly timely fashion from his hiking in Croatia, and we dined out in the Winterfeldstrasse on Sunday, picknicked on floods of bubbly and smoked salmon and a whirl of gossip on Monday, and on Tuesday I went out on the town, for a delicious night out with the boys … Life was back on wheels again, but that wicked wet weekend had left its traces. I was going to have to work at it, to once again feel as wholly comfortable here as I did a fortnight ago. Needless to say, I am winning the war. But I’d rather have not needed to.

My night out with the boys – Thomas H, Thomas Z, Christian and Ollie -- was a treat. We started off at the Soho Club – an up-to-date version of the old English ‘Gentlemen’s Club’ (though they have ladies as well, now) implanted semi-congruously into the heart of Berlin. On the superb ‘roof-terrace’, a delightful rounded bar, a swimming pool, and a view out over the Berlin rooftops, which the rain rendered rather surreal …



From the Soho Club to the Chamaleon, a proper European-style cabaret room – central platform surrounded by tables -- where the entertainment was an act named ‘Versus’ – eight young acrobat-dancers in a very strenuous, skilled, agreeable and sometimes even imaginative modern version of the circus routines we’ve known since circus was invented. My mind flew back to Barnum days. Where were young folk like this when I was casting in the ‘eighties?
From the show, on to a real Berlin gay bar, by the name of ‘Betty F’ (in homage to Mrs Ford) .. and hey! not only could I hear in the small room with its moderate music, but I found I was thoroughly enjoying myself amid our delightful company. Still, elderly gentleman have to take care, and I tip-taxied away at midnight, leaving the lads to their foreseeable long, long night..
Thursday, out to Kreuzberg with Ollie to ... wait for it ... a Jamaican restaurant. Well, why not? Delicious spicy food, a touch of genuine Jamaica rum to finish … thank you Kirk and Troy of the Rosa Caleta, Muskauer Strasse, a grand evening … with a surprising result. Next day, Ollie turned up at no32 bearing the prophylactic for the previous weekend’s blues … a mobile phone! After all these years of saying ‘I can’t’, I have already learned to text! Slowly. Maybe next week I may see if I can hear a call: but I find it quite hard, already, to hear the thing tinkle ... so we shall have to see.



Saturday, a lovely family evening with the Leclair-Clarkes – dining on a real ‘Ulster Fry’ (the children are just back from holiday in Ireland, and brought the stock of the local butcher’s shop with them) and -- this you are never going to believe – watching not only the holiday snaps of beautiful Ireland but … a movie! Kevin and Maxime biked to the store to get the ‘for hearing-impaired English-speakers’ version of Hangover, and I got used to ‘listening’ to it quite quickly. The film was American-silly-funny (and laced with plot incoherencies) but I can see it will be much liked by filmgoers.

Sunday night, a picknick with Kevin – music and bubbly and a whole fortnight’s worth of catch up -- and today, out to the new Nationalgalerie for a very fine and admirable exhibition entitled Modernen Zeit.



The times it dealt with were, happily, not so modern as that: it was an exhibition of art from the first 40 years of the 20th century, a period which this country seems now to have idealised as ‘the good old days’. I don’t know a heap about German 20th century painting – one knows the name of Grosz for not entirely pictorial reasons, Kirschner and Dix ring a bell, but the French artists of the same years, when they were busy inventing cubism and the like and lunching out at St Paul de Vence, are obviously much more familiar to me. So I was rather delighted to see a great deal of strong and often colourful painting in all sorts of styles, which seemed to show that the German painters of the time had perhaps more individualism than their French counterparts. I particularly liked one room of elbow-to-elbow portraits, all from the same years but yet all so contrasting in style … alas, I couldn’t stop my camera flashing, so one photo was all I got … this is only a tiny sample of the collection … but the bug-eyed family in the middle is the star exhibit…



Alongside the exhibition, a multi-part silent film of Berlin in the 1920s was playing. I watched about 20 minutes of it, and could only think .. 1920? those men could be my grandfather, and oh! how different the world was…

Tonight, back to the Tipi .. the tent-theatre .. to see (is this an anomaly?) a German-language version of the musical Cabaret …
Oh yes, my Berlin is well and truly back on wheels and, as September looms, my dance card is filling rapidly with opera, with theatre premieres, with coffee dates, lunches and events, the colourful memories of which I shall be able to live on for many a quiet country month ..

I shall enjoy Berlin in the summer, I just sha’n’t get involved.
And next time I come here, I shall, I think, avoid August. I don’t ever want to live another weekend like that one I just lived…

ESPANA ... one hundred points!

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It is summer in Berlin. Everywhere you look, vast bunches of sunflowers symbolise the fact … and I am riding high on Berlin in summer.
So far, it’s been largely Picknicks at number 32, catching up with those friends who aren’t out of town for the holidays: on Friday Kevin and sister Sandra called by, and nephew Maxime got his first taste of Châteauneuf du Pape (‘its never too early’), and Saturday, my dear friend Ollie came and we chatted and drowned ourselves in bubbly way, way past the witching hour and my usual bedtime. On Saturday Paul returned bearing the almost final cut of the CD he has been working on, and no32 became a sound bowl as we listened to the recording which we hope will take Montmorensy, his name and work, to the millions. I am quite staggered with what he has done and, even though I have heard all the material before, I was overwhelmed by the effect of hearing it en dazzling bloc. God, Gänzl, you most absolutely can spot talent!



Off to Winterfeldplatz market to buy flowers for my room, to order some more of the delicious hand-made visiting cards I discovered here in April, to investigate the charcuterie and the cheeses and all the other goodies. Tragic, that this market is only here one and a half days a week: if it were permanent I’d be moving into this street for good! Which I even may, yet…

Monday 9 August. I’ve been here a week. And – even though PGB and Kevin are away -- the planning of my summer is well under way. It is going to be a summer of music. It is about time that music found its way back into my life, after those years in the sad wilderness, and I have found myself a very darling Dante (or did Virgil do the leading?) to guide me …
As we nibbled our picknick, after the Montmorensy concert, last week, Paul and I began to plan 'summer music in Berlin’. Well, the bollard outside this flat advertises the Young Euro Classic series of orchestral concerts at the Berlin Konzerthaus. Sounded good, so we pulled up the programmes on the web. Lots of fun stuff, lots of new music, but the concert that leaped out at us was the one to be given by the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España. And it just happened to be on Monday night. It also happened – hey! Kurt the Victorian – to be made up entirely of twentieth-century music.
So this evening, off we set. A little visit to the record store for some educational material – four Händel oratorios and a disc of Janácek piano music. Then to the delightful Café Augustiner am Gendarmenmarkt for a pair of delicious boiled white sausages (me) and a heap of mountain cheese (Paul). And, finally, the Konzerthaus.



The Konzerthaus still has the old ‘Tageskasse’ and ‘Abendkasse’ system (2 euros cheaper for ‘standby’ tickets with no 'booking fee'), but I don’t know why they bother. The first thing that is blazingly obvious when, having negotiated the horde of little men in red bowties who infest every corner of the magnificent Konzerthaus, doing nothing but look bored, we entered the top tier of the salle (only seats available, 17 euros), was that there was no money in the house. It was assiduously and utterly papered with other young musicians and with members of the local Spanish community. But, as Paul remarked, if you are going to have paper, have Spanish paper: this audience gave the concert a howlingly enthusiastic reception. Which, I am here to say, it absolutely deserved.
However, when paying customers end up in the slips, gazing down on the tell-tale gaps in the papered stalls, it does give an unfortunate aura of unprofessionalism. Some sponsor is doubtless paying the whole jaunt for the young Spaniards.
The air of unprofessionalism, alas, continued a wee bit longer, for after a wholly splendid opening with a specially-written brass fanfare (my second this year!) by Manfred Trojahn, echoing down on us excitingly from the organ loft, we were obliged to suffer twelve and a half minutes of self-indulgent chatter from a certain Herr Lange of the Komische Oper, 'godfather' for the evening. Having quite destroyed the atmosphere created by the fanfare with his banal football jokes, he finally got off and the music was .. at past 20h15 already .. actually able to start. But it turned out to be worth the waiting for.



The first piece on the programme was Cristóbal Halffter’s Tiento del primer tono y batalla imperial which, as far as I could work out from the programme (1 euro and carelessly misprinted), is based on 15th and 16th-century Spanish music. It is, however, ‘retold’ here in a thoroughly modern style. I fell utterly, enthusiastically and totally for this picture-piece with its screamingly vibrant clashes between ancient and modern. I have never heard a piece of music which portrays the conflict of man with man so searingly. And the young orchestra flung themselves into its strident and violent emotions with the most amazing vigour and with evident enjoyment.
And now, I was delighted to be up in the slips, peering down over the orchestra, able to watch every soloist and section … unable to take my eyes from the young lady on the contra-bassoon, the much-used timpaniste, or the beautiful-toned horn player …
How to follow such an evident success? Why, with Strauss’s Don Juan. And they quite simply did it again. I don’t think I’ve ever heard this piece played with such warmth and vivacity. ‘This is what orchestras were invented for’ ran irreverently through my head… ‘This is the concert of my life’.
It probably is. Though the second part could never hope to equal that dazzling first. A group of songs by Xavier Montsalvatge, sung by an attractive mezzo, Magdalena Llamas, showed up for the first and only time the disadvantage of our seats. The lady played solely to the radio mike and the front rows: we saw little and heard not much more of what seemed to be an unexceptional group of rather ‘film-musik 1945’ songs, of which a pretty lullaby made most effect. The stalls, I need to record, went mad for the singer. The slips, of course, couldn’t.
And so to the final item on the bill: Petruschka. I’m not sure quite why – everything else had had a Spanish connection. Also it was the orchestral suite manufactured from the ballet music, rather than the real thing, so I – who know only the ballet – did get rather confused. The thing seems rather shapeless without its story and its visuals. But maybe this is part of my learning curve. What Petruschka did do, was allow the whole panoply of young principals each to have her or his moment, and in that it was well chosen, for each and every one of them – especially the wind players, and a remarkable set of horns and cornets – took that moment skilfully and gleefully.

Gleefully: that is what made this concert so special. The young players were so evidently having a most wonderful time making music together, and their joy was wholly infectious. Since the programme chosen was (mostly) marvellous, as well, the result was an evening of the most enjoyable music imaginable.
The audience (and the orchestra!) stamped and cheered and applauded fit to bust at the concert’s end, leading to first an encore with a rather common march, and then – o wise judgement – a repeat of the second part of that wonderful ‘klingendes’ Halffter piece. What a note to go out on!



They almost didn’t. In the dreadful habit of this part of the world, the band lingered for just one too many a round of applause, one too many set of bows, and the thrilled atmosphere began to sag as half the audience wandered from the auditorium. But then, in a wonderful finale, the players each hugged his or her neighbour and put a splendid Punkt to the proceedings, a fullstop to a wonderful musical night.
Paul and I proceeded back to the Augustiner for a cold beer, and of course a look to see what other joys this Festival may hold for us – between his music-making and my social and writing schedule – in the days to come…
I wonder if I can make sure that Mr Lange’s peroration isn’t a nightly affair. I wonder if I can get on the ‘paper’ list for Austria or Bulgaria or Azerbaijan. Actually, unless there is a singer, I ... a life long habitué of Row G in the stalls ... might prefer to climb again to the slips ..
Gracious. Music is coming back to me .. I can feel it … I went home on the U2 to Nollendorfplatz singing the tenor aria from the Rossini Stabat Mater! Well, Halffter is a little tricky to hum…
So thank you Spain, thank you Konzerthaus, thank you my Magister Paul ... I think I’m on the road back!

Museums, Musicians and More...

or Protégés and Picknicks

So, my bags are unpacked, my clothes stored away, Kaiser’s supermarket on the Nollendorfplatz has been raided -- my cupboards are stocked, the wine-racks o’erflowing – and the No 32 Picknick Sommer Series is under way!

My first Berlin ‘appointment’, however, was at a Museum. I have related already how Kevin (‘Dr Kevin Clarke’ to the uninitiated) has – under the auspices of the Berlin Schwule Museum (Gay Museum) -- been busy through the spring organising an important exhibition, ‘Glitter and be Gay’ (ah! how Mr Sondheim’s phrase has installed itself in the English language), around the life and career of director Erik Charell and the largely homosexual set of collaborators with whom he worked in revue, Operette and film in the 1920s and 1930s.

Charell, for those of you who don’t know, is internationally celebrated as the original conceiver and director of the exceptionally famous Operette Im weissen Rössl (White Horse Inn) and of the hit musical film Der Kongress tanzt. In Berlin, however, he has a wider claim to fame, having mounted here first a series of spectacular revues, and then another of equally spectacular and sometimes idiosyncratic Operetten, including versions of The Mikado and Die lustige Witwe as well as the Strauss pasticcio Casanova before his apotheosis with White Horse Inn.
Jewish and homosexual, his career was brusquely interrupted by the rise of Nazism, and he left Germany to continue on to London, New York and Hollywood. He did not have the same success there – his trademark, as Kevin explains, had been to introduce the ‘Ziegfeld brand’ of glitz and glamour to the Berlin theatre, and that could scarcely re-export. However, an attempt at a black musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Louis Armstrong starred, on Broadway, proved that he had imagination and enterprise of his own.



I have never been – as I admitted thoroughly in my opening to Kevin’s anthology on homosexuality and Operette, also entitled Glitter and be Gay – a particular fan of spectacular theatre. I’ve always preferred to listen first and look (much) later. In fact, I have quite an aversion to ostrich feathers and spangles, vast chorus lines and vaster scenery. Nor do I care for jazzed-up and remade versions of the great shows of the past. As a result, apart from Im weissen Rössl – now recognised correctly as a masterpiece of the musical theatre – I have never paid too much attention or consideration to the work of Charell and his teams. Kevin has gently berated me, over the years, for my predilections, and today he put forward his most convincing argument yet.

The exhibition.

It is a first-class exhibition. A model of the genre. Done in a wholly scholarly way, yet a feast for the eye as well as for the historian’s brain. The two large rooms of material are laid out in chronological order, the first dealing with Charell’s early career – as a dancer, and then in revue and Operette, mostly notably at the Grosses Schauspielhaus (a wonderful scale model of the famous theatre is on show)



There is a welter of photographs which I have never seen before, there are posters, music sheets and costume designs – all the paraphenialia and ephemera of the theatre and its creators – everything explained (alas! in German! but my tour guide translated) in a series of precise and historically correct pink panels.
Amongst my favourite items, were some delicious costume designs for the Schauspielhaus version of Der liebe Augustin and a splendid portrait of Rössl composer Ralph Benatzky.






Amongst the vast variety of material from various Rössl productions – stage versions from round the world, and the several film versions – I particularly liked this photo of the making of one early black-and-white movie. I’ve no idea who this Giesecke is, but he looks quite marvellous. Alas, trying to photograph glassed photographs is not easy: apologies for the quality, but I love the subject.



The second room carries on the tale to the end of Charell’s career, and a particularly interesting wall features photographs and biographies of his collaborators. How splendid, especially, to see the handsome Hans Müller and his partner .. I had no idea what he looked like, nor anything about him, he has always been just a name on a playscript. The author of Rössl deserves surely to be better know?

In sum, a really outstanding exhibition. I not only enjoyed it, it also taught me – I who am supposed to know everything – and informed me, and helped me understand rather more of the nature of this man and his work. And that, surely, is the double aim of any good exhibition. To please, and at the same time to educate.
Kevin, my dear ex-protégé, now grown great: I congratulate you from the bottom of my heart.

FROM ONE PROTÉGÉ TO THE NEXT

Home I rumbled (in spite of the fact that U-Bahn Line One has been inconsiderately closed for repairs for the summer), to prepare for the evening and the opening of my Picknick season. The No 32 Picknicks are mostly tête-a-tête affairs – and the first five nights are already ‘cast’! – because my hearing problem goes blurringly into overdrive in anything resembling a group. So it’s finger food – salmon, ham, melon, cheeses, salamis, olives, cornichons etc -- and champagne a deux! Chuckle, given that this is Berlin and the Nollendorfstrasse, an eyebrow or two may be raised as a different young gentleman or lady climbs my stairs alone and punctually each evening at six or seven – Paul, Kevin, Ollie, Amélie, Horst, the other Paul …

Now if you go back in this blog to May last year, you will read my stunned review of a concert given at the Bar Jeder Vernunft by a young Australian calling himself Montmorensy. It is what may be called an unmitigated rave. And I guess you could say that I quite simply fell in love (in the nicest possible way) that night with … well, his real name is Paul.



We met again, briefly, when I was in Berlin this April, and I expressed my determination to do anything that I might be able (and I am not quite sure, given my time out of showbiz, just how much that is) to encourage and help him on his way to Real Success. For if there is any justice in the musical world (OK, I know there often isn’t) this young man simply has to make a mark..
And I want to be there in the wings to see it and share it.
Am I soft in the head? I who already escaped from the music world … ?
I can’t help it. I do love a protégé. Folk helped me to get where I have, now, in my ummm 'middle-age', it's my turn to do the helping. Anyway, I now have my protégé (I actually have two, the other will make his entry in due course, when he comes back from tramping through Croatia). A protégé and a purpose. Which is decidedly, I think, healthy.
So Paul and I picknicked, chatted, caught up, planned and flung tales and ideas joyously around for three and a half hours ... before he headed for the U6 (not closed) and I for a weary old man’s pillow! Boy! Keeping up with the young …
So, the Series of 2010 has opened splendidly… and now I’m off to Kaiser’s to re-fill the fridge .. for the next Picknick may be as early as .. this evening!
Hello to Berlin!

Back in Berlin!

Yes, I’m back! I back, and installed once again in my delicious little apartment at the no32 Nollendorfstrasse which, the way things are going, is going to end up as eventful and famous as the ‘Sally Bowles house’ just down the same street, which was the one-time Berlin home of Christopher Isherwood.
Getting to Berlin was a bit of a trial, mainly because, not having done said trip before I left enormous time buffers between the various stages (car-train-ferry-minicab-plane-taxi). So I spent 1 ½ hours awaiting my minicab on the pavement outside Portsmouth Station (where Sean of A1-Sunset Cabs, came valiantly to my rescue) …



I spent five hours at Heathrow, where everything has changed since I was last there, but which was surprisingly less ghastly (going out!) than I feared. Mind you, four of those hours were passed in the pub, getting rid of my English small change. Tegel airport was, as ever, an efficient delight – I shall go into mourning if they close it down! – as was the poor taxidriver who buzzed me to Kevin’s house and gave me – twice! – too much change.
A reunion with most of the Clarke family, a night on Kevin’s couch, and the next afternoon, southwards to the Nollendorfplatz, to meet my ‘landlord’, Andrew, and gather up the keys to my Berlin home. And the sun shone, and it was as lovely as ever and .. well here I am! (No photo until I can shop for flowers!) And into action!

I have a strong feeling -- I do hope I am right! -- that I am going to have a very happy time here!

The Isle of Wight: Over and Out

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My days in Wight have been wittering away, one by one … and very soon my stay here will be done. Tomorrow, I’ll be on my way back to Berlin.
To be truthful, I haven’t paced myself very well during my stay here. Equipped with that pseudo-youthful vigour that I seem somehow to have discovered in myself this year, I hurled myself into action from my first days on the island – dining, wining, gallivanting, socialising and exploring – and once I began writing my daily pieces for the VentnorBlog, the tempo only increased. And, after six Wightish weeks, gentle signs of Kurt Implosion started to show. Time to slow down!
But ‘slow’ doesn’t mean ‘stop’! So I do have a few more restaurants, a few more dinners and lunches, a few more outings to add to my score for July, from Quarr to Totland – one end of the island to the other.
The visit to Totland was a lunch out with Richard, a new VB pal. I said ‘pick a place’ and he opted for the High Down Inn, way out beyond Dimbola, in a part of the island I had never penetrated. Excellent! The Inn – which has a somewhat colourful and drug-stained past history -- turned out to be a very jolly place indeed. Properly pubby, not too big, light and comfy, carpark not coachpark, ale from the barrel. Nice. We had an agreeable ‘pub lunch’ – having seen the world-record doorstep sandwiches, I had a neat smoked mackerel with my shandy – and a good time was had by all. I’d pop in there for a quick one any time.





I have been told for a long time that I, who love Quarr Abbey so, ought to go there to hear the monks sing vespers. So when my friend Gilly said she would like to go too, it seemed the good moment. Red Fred was called into action and off we trekked. Quarr was looking its loveliest in the semi-dusk..
What did I expect to hear? As a heathen, I suppose I didn’t know what Benedictine monks do for vespers. But somehow I expected singing. Alas, I didn’t get it. If this is what is called ‘plainsong’, then rightly so. It is very plain indeed. Most of the time on one note. Unfortunately, not all of the seven and a half mostly elderly monks performing seemed to agree on quite what that note was. Nor on the timing. Nor when to come in together. And, well, I have an MA (Hons) in Latin, and I had the text in front of me … I could barely distinguish a word. It sounded like an unenthusiastic washing list. An out-of-tune-and-time washing list.
Benedictine vespers are not for me. But Quarr Abbey is. Once again it moved me hugely. And, as the sun sank behind the spire, I snapped it one last time before leaving …



Quarr day was a big day, for on our return I dined on luscious, plump local plaice with Gilly and Chris at Jasmine Cottage. And before our jaunt, I had lunched with Simon and Sal, the owners of VentnorBlog at their palazzo in Medina Road. I didn’t take a photo, so here’s one taken a few days earlier, when I introduced them to what every Wightman and WIghtwoman should know: the Royal Hotel’s famous Gallybagger soufflé!



I have a wonderful souvenir of my visit to Medina Road, and of my stint as ‘boy reporter’ on the VentnorBlog. Simon and Sal manufactured me two delicious commemorative tiles to take back to Gerolstein. Oddly enough, they are just the right size to take a wine glass..



The round of goodbyes continued, but my ‘last lunch’ had to be saved for the Bay Grill. I’d intended to visit Ryan Burr’s resto regularly after my first fab feed there, but geography and my ‘indisposition’ meant I’d never even got back once. So, yesterday, off I set. I arrived well and truly early, so as to have time for a nice long chat with Ryan and his team before things got too busy, the ‘star’ cooked me my favourite chicken dish with his own fair hands .. and yes! it was just as good second time around! ... and he even let me try his Raybans. Well, every star needs them these days, yes? He does the sulphurous look that goes with them much better than I..





My last evening was saved for my friend Debby. She’s had an ‘indisposition’ of her own, as well as being occupied running three businesses and the town of Ventnor, so we’ve missed each other quite a lot. So where did we go? To the Hermitage. The Hermitage is 500 metres from my ‘home’. It’s the original early-19th century mansion that throned over all the lands round here, and its now an hotel. Very recently, Debby’s friends Ian and Jo have taken over the day-to-day running of the place so .. why not?



I could write a whole article on this place. The building is lovely, the grounds are lovely, the lounge was comfy and the dining room delightful. With very little expense and effort (and some is sorely needed) this could be an absolute top-class luxury small hotel (10 rooms). At the moment, it falls somewhere in a stylistic and characterful no-man’s land. Everything is very pleasant (especially my definitely home-made soup!), but all I could see .. all I could think .. was what it could be. Heck, give me (and Mr Burr?) a free hand here for a bit and .. wow! the possibilities are huge.
An impossible rumour says the owner thinks to install a helipad. He’d be mad. He hasn’t got (yet) a place that helicopter-style people would find even nearly up to the mark. Spend the helipad money on getting The Hermitage right, sir … and then … then invite me down from my luxurious suite next-door.



So, come the morrow, I’m off. Down to Shanklin to return Red Fred. The little train to Ryde, and the FastCat to Portsmouth, where an Airport Transfer minicab (55 quid) awaits to take me to Heathrow. At 5pm, I fly by British Midland (I wonder if they can get everything right this time) to Tegel, Berlin .. sigh .. by the time I roll in to Kevin’s flat, it will be some 14 hours from Hermitage Court Farm …
Such is the traveller’s life.

Kenny Ball and Me.

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I’ve talked on the air, and written here, there and everywhere, about what seems to be considered (although I don’t quite see it that way) My Fabulous Life, rather a lot over the past twenty years or so. In English and once, marvellously, at great length in French. I’ve been a good fellow, and I’ve always told only the truth. And I also haven’t spilled any of the beans that I have in the depths of my pockets about others with lives very much more fabulous than mine … although, as an historian, maybe I owe it to posterity to empty my pockets one day.
The latest, and one of the most enjoyable – for me – of these broadcasts was recorded this week, right here in my suite at Hermitage Court Farm, Isle of Wight. Local ‘Interviewer to the Stars’, John Hannam – host of Britain’s longest-running radio chat show, on 107FM – turned up with his portable studio, and we spent a very merry hour and more putting down a programme which will air … maybe fortunately ... after I have left the island.



Why was it one of the most enjoyable? Because you so rarely meet an interviewer who has so thoroughly done his homework, who doesn’t ask such foolish and inapposite questions that you have to twist things round frantically to get the interview back on sensible wheels, who is self-effacing to precisely the right degree, so that it is his guest, rather than he, who ‘shines’ … I’ve met far too many of the other kind of interviewer in my life, not to appreciate a consummate professional when I meet one.



When we were done, I signed my name in the Guest Book that John has kept through the twenty years of his show. The last name there inscribed was that of actress Harriet Walter. Further back appear such memorable men and women as Charlton Heston, Stirling Moss, John Mills, Alan Rickman, Anne Shelton, Jeremy Irons, Cliff Richard, Michael York, Vera Lynn … and as we chatted, after the recording, there came a call arranging his next appointment. With Kenny Ball.
Oh, heck, thirty-five years ago, I was the ‘boy from the office’ when Harold and Ian presented Kenny Ball at the top of the bill in Sunday Concerts at the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It makes you want to blush.
Or laugh out loud.
But, hey, if other people think my life has been fabulous enough that they want to hear me talk about it, that’s fine by me. Me, I know just how fabulous it has been.

PS The famous forty-minute French interview actually still exists! In these days of the World Wide Web, it has been enshrined on the website of Paris’s Canal Académie, and leaps up before me every time I google myself to make sure that I am still alive!

The Return of Elena

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The story of my beautiful Elena ... no, not story, ‘saga’ … has, during the four and a half years since I brought her home from my first visit to the yearling sales, been what can only be called colourful, and her adventures and misadventures filled many a page of this blog, up till the day that she finally made it to the races, and then, earlier this year, at the age of five and at only her seventh raceday start, scored her maiden victory at Addington.
However, in four subsequent starts, she behaved rather badly at the start and, as a result, she was listed as ‘unruly’, and condemned to start from the back row in her races.
We puzzled over her misbehaviour. In her first trials, she had gone away securely from a standing start: now she was being difficult from the theoretically ‘easier’ mobile gate. Gear changes didn’t see to help. So Wendy decided on ‘back to basics’. Elena was put out to spell and, a few weeks ago, she went back to the trials .. back where she started out. The standing start. And she did it. Two ‘safe’ runs, and if she was beaten 15 lengths ... well the horse in front was a Derby horse and a multiple high-class winner.

17 July was our local Rangiora raceday, and Wendy – why not? – decided to enter Elena. She was probably not ready to run anywhere near her best, but she needed practice ... this was to be her first raceday start from a stand. So why not? Still, one way and another, I was barely confident, and the betting public agreed. In a fourteen horse field, Elena went out … fourteenth favourite!
Things began well. Gavin (Smith) got her away nicely, although her draw meant that, when they settled she was at the rear of the field. The pace, however, wasn’t too hot, and when Paul Borcoskie chose a wise moment to take his horse round the field, Gav latched on behind. My eyes boggled. Look at Lena! Round she swept, and when threatened with being left three wide outside the favourite and leader, she and Gav simply went straight on and, as they hit that last hectometres, into the lead. Into the straight she even skipped a length or two clear .. could this be another 100-1 winner for Wendy?
Well, not quite. In the very last metres her condition – unsurprisingly – gave out, and she was pinned back, a length and a bit back, into third. But a decidedly impressive third.



Stoked owner and trainer! One on each side of the world…

Well, if Elena can keep on running like that, this could be a merry season! I hope she can. We know she can do it – Wendy and I have always had faith in her, even through the darkest days of her medical problems – but there were moments when I think we were the only ones. Were we right? The next months should tell. Fingers crossed.

Lasagna fantastica!

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A BONZER TIME AT THE BONCHURCH INN

After the Help Beyond the Call of Duty rendered me the other day, in my vehicular distress, by the lads of the Medina Monarch, I reckoned I owed these Jolly Young Watermen a shout. Pick your place, I said. And so, last night, Matt, Ian, friend Carole and I headed for the Bonchurch Inn. ‘You’ll like it’ said Matt in a tone of voice that showed that he wasn’t wholly sure. Why wasn’t he sure?, I wondered. I’m a Very Open-Minded Person. As long as the food’s good, the drink’s good, the service is good, the atmosphere is good..
As soon as we walked through the door any doubt on the last count blew away. Triple Yes! A Proper Pub. With, good grief, barrels of ale! So who cares if they don’t have Guinness on tap, or if mine host admits shamefully to having drunk the entire stock of Chardonnay himself: a pint of Best from the barrel will do me splendidly.



A cosy table in a corner, and a menu which I don’t even open, because Il Signor Besozzi (for, yes, there is an ancient Italian influence here) is telling us what he’s cooked today. Cannelloni spinaci .. oh yes! Or, what? Lasagne with chicken livers and chorizos .. unheard of. Impossible. Who dreamed that up? This creation simply has to be tried.
Salad? No. I explain my allergy to lettuce. But Carole is having salad, so one comes anyway. And Il Signor presents me with a magnifying glass, so I can check it for lettuce. I almost choke with chuckles on my second pint of Best. Oh, what fun eating out can be!
Even better than fun, of course, is good food. And I can tell you the Lasagna Fantastica is good, good, marvellously good food. I almost wept that the helping was so enormous that even with the help of the third pint of Best, I had to leave too much of it on my plate. Next time I shall ask for a Pensioner’s Portion.



Eating done, I had no wish to leave this merry place, even though it was dangerously near my usual bedtime, and so a fourth pint of Best was called for …
Matt need not have worried. One can love Tio Pepe and soufflé, as served by the suave Buggy at the Royal Hotel, and love Lasagna Fantastica and a barrel of best bitter in a cosy pub just as well. I know one can, because I do.
My evening at the Bonchurch Inn was a total success. The food was grand, the drink was grand, the room is grand, Mine host Adrian is veritably ‘a host in himself’, and his supporting cast help keep the atmosphere humming merrily.



What could one ask for more? The day when I whinged about having nowhere to eat in Ventnor is a century away.

PS I’m told that ‘Jolly Young Waterman’ won’t ring a bell in the 21st century. It’s the title of a very famous old show song, the sort of thing that most of my books are about. Using C19th expressions has almost got me into trouble in recent days. Twice, words I’ve used have had to be edited because the 21st century has given them a new blue meaning of which I wot not. So I can’t say nonce’ anymore, and I can’t say ‘hummer’ (see Urban Dictionary).
PPS ‘Bonzer’ is New Zealandish for ‘terrific’

In Pursuit of a Picnic

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Sunday evening. And I’m starting to feel just a bit worn and torn with all this lunching and dining and zooming around the Island. I’ll have a couple of quiet days ‘in’, with just picnics on my hilltop.
No.
Monday, young Mr Ryan Burr had an evening off, so I zoomed away in his dashing coupé – occupying for the nonce the seat usually, doubtless, occupied by the latest blonde – for a splendid evening out. Where does one go with the Rising Young Chef of the place? To the Established Star Chef, of course. So, once more, back to the Royal Hotel and ... well, I don’t need to tell you.

Tuesday I shut my ears to all offers and ideas, and around midday snuck quietly and quickly forth to gather picnic materials for the evening. I returned home four hours later. I’d got my picnic, but I’d also got sidetracked. Because I went shopping at Farmer Jack’s. And, since I was at Arreton – this time well-populated with coaches and many more than 77 cars -- I naturally popped into the Daughter for a pint, and couldn’t resist a return to the ‘machines’.
Well, I was wrong – most of them are post-Victorian – but hey! most of them are also in working order. And were they working! Happy punters, equipped with handsful of old pennies, crowded the two rooms, merrily playing machines that are ten times more fun that the flashing-light gizmos of today. I felt I was back in the beloved Blackpool of my twenties! Brilliant.
I should have put a penny into ‘The French Execution’, which I assume is – behind its secret doors -- a gory guillotine exhibition, I should have tried ‘The Drunkard’s Dream’ and watched the room go round, or ‘The Spiritualist Room’. I wonder what happens there. I am too modest, of course, for ‘The Peeping Butler’ (‘adults only’).



From the machines, I continued on, this time, to the Shipwreck Museum: a splendid collection of maritime memorabilia – even a Feejee Mermaid! -- put together over half a century by Mr Martin Woodward, and supplemented by all sorts of exhibitions of rural machinery and tools. I was a bit alarmed to see the tractor I still use on my farm classed as an antique, and several of the instruments in the ancient forge also looked all too familiar, as did the heap of rusting horseshoes, which gave me just a twinge of ‘homesickness’.



I reckon personal collections always make the best small museums, and such museums – from Dimbola to Brightstone to Arreton – the Island seems to have a fill of.

Before I knew it, more than two hours had gone by. I don’t spend two hours in the Louvre. And I don’t spend ten minutes around ‘the pokies’. Two hours and I hadn’t bought a single picnickable item. I hastened on to Farmer Jack’s.

So here I am at Farmer Jack’s. Nice cheese counter, with familiar French cheeses, but for once I’m not buying French. While I’m here, I’m strictly on ‘local’. Alas, there is no such thing as a local saucisse (although the lady behind the counter tells me it’s been tried), so in that department I have to go foreign.
A rather original looking and slightly floppy cucumber. Heavens, these days a little cucumber costs a pound. It’s a while since I veggie shopped in England. They were 20p in those days.
I’ve been told that they make nice sausages here. None in the cabinet, but the lads are on the ball, and I get sausages made for me, while I wait.
Down to the bakery for some rolls, and – are those cheese straws! .. my picnic is looking OK. However, Farmer Jack, for all his delights, doesn’t do alcoholic beverages so, before I head on home, a small detour is needed. I shall pop quickly down to the Godshill Cider shop and grab some of their ginger beer and cider.



I realised, as soon as I turned into the High Street, that I’d miscalculated. And there was no turning back. If Arreton was buzzing, Godshill was shrieking with activity. The threatening thatch towered over Fred and I, the thronged tearooms tentacled towards us, cavalcades of coaches promised simply to crush us, and people! People wandered unheedingly down the road as if it were a walkway, or simply loitered chattily in front of my moving bumper ... I headed cravenly for the safety of the nice big (free) carpark and … I couldn’t get in. A huge blue bus was stuck in the exit. Traffic piled. Cars wiggled hopelessly. I couldn’t. The bus was in my face and another car two inches behind me.
When finally I managed to get into the parking area, it was full and customers were cruising for a spot. Too much. I would go round and out, I would flee this terrifying place. But a gap opened and in I dashed.



Finally, I arrived at Godshill Cider, and pried my way in. Push and shove, I got to the relevant shelves and loaded my basket with as much as I could carry. ‘Is it always like this?’ I puffed to the lass who took my money. ‘Oh, its busier in the summer’. ‘But this is the summer’. She shook her head as she put my bottles into a carton, ‘next month’.
I shall be in Berlin next month. I’m sure there will be less people, and certainly less coaches, and probably even less money changing hands per square centimetre, there.

Getting out of Godshill’s nice big free carpark was as crazy as getting in. Getting out of the village, similarly. Some of those tea-takers must surely have a death wish. Why did I get the feeling that, if they were squashed, the next squad of tea-takers would just walk unseeingly over them?
But I had my picnic, and enough in reserve that I sha’n’t have to go back too soon.
When I do, I shall do it at dawn, before the tearooms are stirring and while the coaches still sleep ... and never, but never, in the month of August!

I am, however, happy to say that it was all worth it. I had a splendid picnic and the delicious, cold Godshill cider just topped it off nicely. But ..

Until when the Godshill bypass?
Or a ten-story parking building?