Sunday 25 August 2013

What to do on a rainy day – Little London Club-Crawl



When students and the more irresponsible element of adult humanity want to fill a long Saturday night they embark upon a Pub-Crawl.  This means they go to a pub, have a drink, and then go to another pub and do the same thing, until they get bored or the pubs close or they can’t drink anymore.  Then they lie down on a bench in the park and sleep it off.  I have never done this, because I am physically weak and don’t stand up to that sort of rigor.  However –

Yesterday I felt like getting out of the house, I spent the last three weekends working and needed a bit of a break.  The weather was predicted to be rainy, so going for a long walk in the countryside was definitely out.  So I decided to go for a Club-Crawl.

My Club alas closes during certain times of the year, like August, Christmas, and Easter.  During such times club members are allowed to visit other clubs who offer ‘hospitality’.  Most of those clubs are closed on the weekend, but a handful do remain open, and I resolved to visit them and see how they compare to my own.

The rain was not just predicted but really kept on happening.  No sooner had my umbrella dried a little that the deluge started all over again.  Since I am loathe to ruin good shoes in the rain, I wore my bad weather shoes.  They are made of brown leather, and perfectly serviceable unless they get wet.  Then they immediately soak up as much water as is available, and remain so for the rest of the day.  I figure, they are ruined already so I might as well use them whenever it rains.  There are only two drawbacks; firstly, I run around in wet shoes all day, and secondly the brown die from the shoes is unstable and stains my feet a rich rusty colour.  Luckily no one can see this, so I managed to gain admission to the four clubs I had set my eyes on.  Outwardly I looked perfectly respectable, but if they had inspected my shoes/feet I would have probably been dismissed as a tramp.




The first club was just off Bond Street, very convenient for all the major department stores – I may go there more regularly in future!  The Oriental Club is full of statues of elephants and such like, has a very nice library, and cosy sitting room where I had coffee and read a newspaper.  There were quite a few foreign newspapers, well I assume they were foreign since the script wasn’t Latin but looked Chinese.  The place was almost completely empty, and the staff looked very pleased to see me – finally a customer!  I guess everyone was out shopping.  There was a large bowl of fruit at the reception counter, which gave a very welcoming feeling to the place.  This was easily my favourite among the clubs I visited yesterday.








Then I slushed through the rain to the East India Club, much closer to Pall Mall where my own Club is located.  It is a very grand affair, mahogany all over the place, and I would need a map to find anything in there.  It had the usual library and lots of meeting rooms and a huge Drawing Room, where I sat in splendid isolation and read another newspaper.  In the lobby there were several travellers who had just arrived with suitcases, but there wasn’t anyone like me who was just whiling away an idle hour reading the papers and musing about the meaning of life.





Indeed, most clubs seem to be utilised mainly during the week for business meetings and in the evenings for social occasions.  Solitary visitors like me, who just want to read the papers and have a drink and get away from the milling crowds that throng the streets of London, are few and far between.  Historically clubs were places where men hid from their womenfolk, but now that women are no longer excluded from membership grumpy old men had to find other places to hide and solitary seeking middle aged women like me reign supreme.


The Royal Automobile Club was next on my list and just around the corner.  This was just as well, since the rain had intensified its efforts to soak my shoes and I wanted to stay indoors.  There was a car in the middle of the huge lobby!  I was given a temporary membership card – in the other clubs I had just signed the Visitors’ Book – and looked around.  The place was heaving with people!  The drawing room was crowded with little groups of people taking tea or playing games or reading papers, so I got claustrophobic and escaped to explore the upper stories.  Loads of conference rooms, a huge staircase, and many rooms for overnight stays.  Every room has a little slate with a pen, so you could leave a message for the inhabitant!  I was dead impressed.




I stayed in this club for two hours because the rain just wouldn’t stop (I had found a little out of the way sitting room where I hid in a corner and remained unnoticed).  By now I had read all the daily newspapers, and started on The Lady magazine, which featured an article of how to deal with friends who never leave tips when they go to restaurants.  I perused this publication while watching the rain pelt a group of oriental tourists who were huddling on the other side of the street, and felt dry, protected, and outrageously privileged.  Of course I pay for the privilege with my annual membership fee, but still!




Finally the rain let up a little and I went to the last club on my list, the Royal Overseas League.  I expected something quite spectacular, given the name, but having just visited three rather large and splendid premises felt a bit let down by this last club.  The man at the entrance didn’t even want me to sign a Visitors’ Book, he just waved me through in a slightly bored disgusted sort of way – perhaps he had noticed my shoes?  The drawing room was quite small, and reasonably well attended.  I rang for tea three times but no one paid any attention, so I read yet another newspaper and after that snooped around a little.  I was impressed with the flower boxes and the stair-lifts – never seen one in a club ever before!, but otherwise was under whelmed and fled after an hour.




The whole experience was most entertaining and instructive, I shall have to do this on a weekday sometimes when all the other clubs are open.  I still prefer my own club though, since it has the best libraries and most opulent toilets, and, being frank, is probably the only one that wouldn’t blackball me!

Next Tuesday I shall continue my adventures in clubland when I meet up with my Ladies Who Lunch friends.  We are meeting up in the Institute of Directors Club and then mosy over to the Civil Service Club to have lunch – I am not the only clubbable women amongst my acquaintances!  And after then I shall have to knuckle down and prepare for my annual vacation in La Bourboule, where, for some unknown reason, there don’t seem to be any clubs at all!


Sunday 18 August 2013

I’m Better Than You, OK?

Why this need to assert superiority?

I have been reading ‘The Village’ by Marghanita Laski.  It is a novel published in 1952 and set at the end of WWII in a little village in England.  A daughter of the gentry falls in love with a member of the toiling classes, and is only allowed to marry him – after threatening to elope – if the couple emigrate to Australia, to minimise the shame for her parents of being related to the lower classes.  Never mind that the groom is more decent than the sons of the gentry, that the bride is incapable of holding down a job but loves being a housewife, that the groom earns three times as much as the parents of the bride – gentry and working class must not mix, on pain of breaking two hearts.

The gentry hold the working class and the trades people and the nouveau riche in contempt, the nouveau riche look down on the gentry and pity the working classes, the trades people look down on the gentry and the working classes while sucking up to the nouveau riche, and everyone despises the new cockney parson because of his accent and his wife, who used to be a primary school teacher.  The way people talk about each other, you’d think the classes belonged to different species!

Anyway.  You may think, ‘Serves you right for reading out of print novels’, but alas humanity has not changed since the book was written.  The tendency to look down on each other and – which is the real purpose – to expand one’s ego at the expense of others is flourishing to this day.

This has always puzzled me.  Of course I understand it purely intellectually, but on a deeper level it strikes me as just weird.  I remember a conversation I once had with someone who tried to convince me for a solid four hours that her university degree was worth more than mine.  Putting aside details, did she really think I would ever agree with her, regardless of her arguments?  I mean, why on earth would I?  And even if I did, through gritted teeth and with ill grace, I would hate her forever more for having cheapened my accomplishments.  What is the point of having such a conversation?

We have all succeeded in achieving certain things in life, why do we need to assert that some of them are more important than others?  We all have special talents, why do we need to assert that one talent is more important than another, and should be rewarded more than another, and make the possessor superior to others?  Is it only possible to be pleased with one’s life/ achievements/ possessions by denigrating those of others?  Can’t we all be brilliant, beautiful, successful, marvellous, and amazing in our own right?  Why this need to compare?  Why do we have to be more brilliant, beautiful, and successful?  Why this need to drag down other people?


Monday 12 August 2013

La Banne d'Ordanche 1979





Occasionally I come across an old postcard or magazine about la Bourboule and its environs, most importantly of course Glider-Mountain, or, to give it its native name, La Banne d'Ordanche.  The postcard above shows the very top of the mountain, which nowadays features a slightly larger orientation stone circle than the one shown in this postcard - my Facebook friends can see it featured as my cover photo.  What I like particularly about this image is the chap on his mobile - I guess some things never change!


 
 
1979 seems to have been an especially successful year for the model glider fraternity, I stumbled across not one but two magazines covering that year's Glider Moot.  I tried to scan the photos, quite successfully, actually, but when I tried to upload them technology defeated me.  So I took a few photos with my trusty Nikon.  They are not perfect, but I thought you might be interested.  As you can see, the postures associated with throwing a glider into the air, and the parties afterwards, are timeless!  Some of the clothes give the game away, however - did we ever really wore those flared trousers?




 

 




 


Saturday 3 August 2013

Charmes des Plages Normandes – Beach Holidays Anyone?



I am in the grip of a Summer cold.  I have a splitting headache and a very painful throat, but otherwise am much better.  Either the three days of eating super hot curries did the trick, or my threat of going on a hunger strike if the virus didn’t see sense has had the desired effect.  Either way the end is in sight, I hope.

The last few days have been disorientating.  During the day I am at work, all medicined up, in the evenings I lie in a darkened room, occasionally cooled by a slight breeze, imagining myself to be the heroine in a cheap historical novel.

‘Is Madame any better this afternoon?’ asks a solicitous butler as he hands me a slice of ice cold watermelon on a silver platter.  I just roll my eyes and languidly wave him away.  ‘So Madame can’t receive the Prime Minister?’ asks the subservient one.  I briefly consider throwing the melon at him, but decide against it – it looks rather delicious, and anyway it isn’t his fault I am indisposed.  ‘I assume the same goes for the Cardinal?’  If I threw the melon at him, would he bring me another piece?  Probably not; Gaston can get quite truculent when I throw things at him.

The great thing about lying in a darkened room on the edge of nodding off is that it is easy to imagine all sorts of things.  So I imagine I am just a short walk away from the beach, and too exhausted by the heat – that much is true! – to meander down there.  I can practically hear the tide come in, and the shouts of the children – the shouts are actually real, the ice cream van is here and his little customers are making a mean racket.

Where was I?  Ah yes, the beach.  My parents sometimes took us to the beach for the day.  German beaches are usually a bit rocky, and bracing rather than sunny, like the beaches in England and Normandy, which is why little beach huts are so important!

The scarf Charmes des Plages Normandes by Loic Dubigeon evokes those chilly beaches, except for the colours, of course – they ought to be blue!  But occasionally the weather is quite hot, like in this scarf, and the atmosphere positively vibrates with heat – I remember some of those summers, too!  I remember the ice cream, and the grilled chicken with sand, and the horrible black and yellow blanket we used to sit on.  And I remember my Mother carrying me in the shallow water, and suddenly we both fell like stones, because there are many holes in the ocean floor and if you aren’t careful you go under!  And I remember stepping on a jellyfish, and being bitten by a crab, and collecting lots of black mussels, which I kept until they stank to high heaven and I was made to throw them out.  Happy days!

I wonder whether my cold would combine well with a Strawberry Daiquiri?  ‘Gaston!'