Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

While the better angels of my intellect tugged me towards the historic Portuguese quarter, my feet took on a bloody-minded life of their own. They insistently appropriated my visceral side and dragged me towards the towering presence of the Hotel Lisboa. It dominated the Macau skyline, a great gold Mayan god its multiple glistening arms reaching up to the heavens in insistent welcome. It was why many people come to Macau. It was a casino. Or, if you were to believe in the swaggering self-aggrandisement of its improbable design, it was the casino.

I could resist no longer and was drawn into the lobby. Was it a museum? Or was it the ante-chamber of some gaudy Byzantine emperor’s palace where humbled subjects crouched respectfully before being granted audience? Uniformed flunkies paraded dressed as if belonging in a Georgian salon, powdered wigs and skin-tight white stockings. They mixed incongruously with tourists swathed in photographic equipment wearing those multi-pocketed trousers donned for serious walking. A couple were dressed in Tyrolean gear – short trousers, green felt pre-war hats with feathers and anoraks carrying the word ‘Pontresina’ on their lapels – squinted quizzically at the cabinets filled with a miscellany of jewels and a golden Ferrari.

My feet relentlessly dragged me towards the main body of the casino with the power of two small boys tugging a wizened grandfather towards an ice cream seller on a cold day. I passed small rooms where Chinese gentlemen huddled silently, conspiratorially over a Baccarat table. They were devout and inscrutable and pursued their game with the respectfulness of a religious service. There were no sounds. No cries of joy or murmurs of anguish. There would always be another time.

The brash ‘come-on’ of the temple and its reception had now given way to starched functionality. The pleasure dome outside had become a vast, sterile operating theatre. Or was it a torture chamber? Its ceiling reaching to heaven with light so bright that it stung my eyeballs.

What really struck me was the kaleidoscope of sound. It was a symphony led by the ‘ker-ching’ of mechanical fruit machines, the violins and string section, the woodwind marbles dancing across rotating roulette wheels and the percussive rhythm of defeated chips being raked into the croupiers slots. There must have been a thousand people assembled in the room and yet human noise was curiously muted.

I moved closer now wanting to run my hands over the experience, feel the action. I settled at a roulette table and dangled a few apologetic squares of high density plastic in front of me. They were my permission to be there. I am a pusillanimous gambler. But I wanted to watch.

The audience was largely Chinese and their expressions were unfathomable. And their impenetrability seemed to spread to everyone else at the table. I was surprised. Roulette is a game of you against the house. Inscrutability only belongs when it is man against man. But what did I know?

The croupier, who had appropriated expressionlessness as if he owned it called for bets to be placed. His look, if it could be called that, raised the lack of enthusiasm to the level of an art form. He had sailed past boredom, kicked on way past ennui and his face finally fixed in a paralysis of unconcern. Objectivity personified.

Hands scrambled towards the green baise, greedily edging each other to find their wagers’ intended places. Scary bony arthritic fingers pushed $1,000 tokens towards ‘Impair’. A stubby hand with fingers flashily adorned with rubies the size of quails’ eggs irrationally pushed a pile of chips towards ‘black’. The fingers flailing became more urgent as the croupier started to turn the wheel, a circle of polished beauty, its numbers and colours gleaming with invitation. The croupier rolled the marble against the spin of the wheel, anti-clockwise and it began dancing promisingly, invitingly amongst the numbers. It bounced and jumped and began to slow.
The expression of the players did not change. The turning wheel was framed by a wall of impassivity. Where was the excitement, the irrational encouragement that involuntarily shoots out when you try to influence something you can’t control? Nothing : silence : Mount Rushmore in China.

The wheel relaxes, slows almost to a halt and the marble takes one final insouciant hop, settling triumphantly in red 36. Nobody won. Nobody cried. Nothing changed.

My feet relented and tugged me out towards the street. I was a willing accomplice.

An artist called ‘Chicken’? Forget it

Of all the painters he represented, Tiberius Levinson found the Frenchman, Nicolaus Poussin to be the toughest to handle. It started out early on when Poussin first came to see him in Paris. He strode into Levinson’s office on the Rue St-Honoré, sat down on a chair and folded his arms. “Who are you?” barked the irritated agent. “I, am Poussin,” said the artist flourishing his right hand like a King’s musketeer.

“Chicken?” snorted Levinson. “Chicken? What do you think I am – chopped liver? How can I sell an artist called Chicken to my clients? They’re courtiers, men of the cloth and even the king himself. Would they want to be painted by a chicken? Forget it. You need a name change. Your work looks OK. I can sell it. But chicken indeed. If you’re going down that route, how about something like ‘Poulet de Bresse? Now an ‘Appellation Contrôllée’ chicken – that’s got class. And it’ll help raise your prices.”

But Poussin stood firm. He was like that. Levinson would pretend to clients that it was a nom-de-plume and since the work was good, he became a steady seller. Poussin did much of his best work in Rome but in 1660, at the age of 65 he achieved a real breakthrough. He was invited to Versailles to paint king Louis XIII. It was the chance of a lifetime. Levinson was on tenterhooks. He could see a massive payday coming.

Two months later Poussin marched into Levinson’s office followed by two men carrying a huge canvas covered in a shroud. Tiberius puffed nervously on his early-morning cheroot. With a cavalier flourish Poussin unveiled his masterpiece. Levinson looked at it open-mouthed with amazement : “What the hell is that” he barked on seeing the painting. Poussin replied sheepishly. “Look. The only chance I was given to paint the king was when he was visiting his chiropodist, so that’s what I did. And here it is. It shows the king’s human side. Ordinary people will identify with it.”

The pictured showed the king reclined on a chaise longue attended by a scantily clad male chiropodist who was hollowing out his majesty’s verruca and sweeping away fingernail clippings and dead skin. The king, crown on head looked languidly down at him.

Bubbling with rage Levinson challenged Poussin. “What are you going to call it – ‘The King’s Verruca’? You can’t show him that. Let me think. O my God.”

But Tiberius was not without resource. He disappeared into his stock room, rummaged around and emerged a few minutes later with an appalling ‘Landscape with Cherubs’ painted by his nephew, Myronius at summer camp near the river Pactolus in Turkey. He had been meaning to get rid of it.

Levinson carefully detached the figure of the king and the young chiropodist from Poussin’s original. He then placed the cut-out figures over his nephew’s painting, adjusted its position, retouched the edges and then stepped backed and admired the work. “Now that’s a painting!” clucked a triumphant Tiberius. “We’ll call it King Midas at the Source of the River Pactolus. The king will love it. Not bad for a spring chicken during an afternoon at the chiropodist.”

Poussin fainted.

(See ‘King Midas at the Source of the River Pactolus’ on Google Images)

BRING ME THE HEAD OF NERO SHAPIRO

Over the centuries there has been much speculation about Rembrandt’s poignant painting ‘The Jewish Bride’. Who was she? Who is the man in the picture? What exactly is the occasion? And how can you tell she’s Jewish? The recent discovery of a cache of Rembrandt’s letters provides incontrovertible evidence on the origins of the painting and its intriguing relationship to one of Rembrandt’s most celebrated works, ‘The Night Watch’.

The subject in the first picture was indeed Jewish but the bride-to-be as the painting was completed on the day before her wedding. She was Calpurnia, the daughter of Rembrandt’s agent, Tiberius Levinson. They were close friends and Rembrandt honoured Levinson with this painting on the day before his daughter’s wedding to an Amsterdam herring mogul, Nero Shapiro. Tiberius was never totally convinced by Shapiro and over a Jonge Genever with Rembrandt he confessed that “there was something piscatorial about the man”.

If you look closely at the painting you can see Levinson tenderly caressing his daughter’s bosom in a none too subtle attempt to determine whether she is with child.

The day did not turn out to be the joyful occasion the Levinson family were expecting. Shapiro did not make an appearance at Rotterdam synagogue leaving Calpurnia abandoned at the altar. After waiting two hours, father Tiberius, incandescent with rage, called out the local militia, known as ‘The Night Watch’. Rembrandt, who was caught up in proceedings, took quickly to his easel and recorded the event in another fine painting. In it you can see the distraught Calpurnia Levinson looking pleadingly at the posse and an incensed Tiberius furiously directing the militia to “bring me the head of Nero Shapiro”.

The sorry tale ended happily, at least for the Levinson family. Calpurnia mourned for a while but the upside of Shapiro’s defection was her escape from the aura of herring he permanently exuded. She soon met and married a more fragrant option, a deft Delft dentist called, Flavius Fayvelson. Shapiro managed to avoid the clutches of the Night Watch and escaped to Spain where he was captured by the Inquisition. He survived the rack, converted to Catholicism and re-opened his herring business but with a difference. Shapiro’s ‘Challah & Herring’ restaurants were soon to appear all over Spain. But he never married and became known in his declining years as ‘the loner from Gerona’.

HAS OBAMA EVER HAD A BAILEYS?

What really scares me is a drinks party where the only people I know
are the host and hostess. I’m a bit late and I walk into a room full of people, maybe 30 or 40. Everyone is going at it full tilt and all the separate cadres of friends have formed into tight little phalanxes which appear almost impenetrable. How am I going to join in? How will I look cool and at ease when I am all on my own and don’t know a soul? It is a truly daunting experience. It was a bit better when I smoked. My cigarette could keep me company. But I gave up years ago. And nobody smokes at parties any more.

Then rescue : the host appears, he’s been pouring drinks, and he forcibly insinuates me into a small group of men and women. “This is my friend David,” he says, “He has a really interesting job.” “Oh my God”, I think to myself, “Not again,” and then out it comes. As instructed by our host, one of the group asks me what I do for a living. Someone has to ask. It’s been set up by the person giving us his drinks.

“Actually this may surprise you” I respond with a face so blank it conjures up the character ‘Nothing’ Yonson from 1950s Dick Tracy comics. (He was without features.) “I’m an….. undertaker. I run a small family business that has been established in the profession for over 80 years. It was started by my grandfather.” My audience looks utterly nonplussed. Remember, we have just met and it’s London, one of the centres of the universe.

I begin to warm to the story and the tempo quickens. “It’s a really exciting business to be in and I’d like to think that we are a forward-looking company, always experimenting with new ideas. We’ve recently introduced a ‘Burial at Sea’ package, out of Newhaven on the Sussex coast and it’s really taking off. We think it’s a major growth area in these ecology-conscious times.”

The momentum builds and my eyes gleam with manic enthusiasm. My audience becomes morbidly fascinated. Or are they embarrassed? I try to keep within the boundaries of good taste and omit to discuss my disappointment at Bird Flu’s failure to help us achieve our forecasts. My audience remains quietly gobsmacked.

But, of course, none of this is true though I did try it once at a drinks party outside London where I was confident that I would never meet any of the other guests again.

This is what really happens.

“And what work do you do, David?” asks a mildly interested fellow reveller. “Well, it’s a rather strange occupation” I reply diffidently, hoping to cut the conversation off at the knees, or that someone will interrupt with a tray of canapés. But no such luck. So with all the enthusiasm of someone on the verge of root canal work, I mutter “Actually, I invent drinks. I’ve spent the last 40+ years doing it. It’s been an interesting way to make a living.”

“You invent drinks?” is the usual puzzled reply. “Do you mean cocktails? Are you some kind of barman who has this lab where you experiment with exotic concoctions? Or do you invent soft drinks like Red Bull? Are there any drinks you’ve invented that I might have heard of? This is really weird.”

By now I am becoming pretty embarrassed by the whole thing – which is why I invented the whole undertaker get-out ploy. But, in the words of Mastermind’s Magnus Magnussen, “I’ve started so I’ll finish” and I reluctantly soldier on.

“Well, actually, I invented Baileys. You know, Baileys Irish Cream. I did that back in 1974.” If one of the unfortunate listening group is a woman – and this is based on actual past experience – she is likely to respond something like this : “Oh-my-God. Baileys. My mother absolutely adores it. Did you hear that, Jocasta? This man invented Baileys. It’s unreal. I don’t believe it. He must be terribly rich. Baileys Cream. Wow!”

And it’s not as if these rather posh people really adore Baileys. Or even hold it in the same esteem as say, Bunnabhain (a distinguished, but not widely-known, Islay Malt) or a fine white Burgundy from Meursault. Not a bit of it. They might have respected it years ago but most people of legal drinking age regard Baileys as rather naff. It comes in loads of flavours, at Christmas it sells in Tesco for under a tenner a bottle and a call for a Baileys in a smart West End bar has about as much chic as a call for a suppository at a séance. Offering a Baileys after dinner is on a par with serving Coq au Vin made with pickled onions.

By now the conversation has developed a life of its own and I become surrounded by people who start asking me about other drinks I have created. If they are over a certain age, then Aqua Libra will ring a few bells. And Purdeys too, which is still around today. Piat D’Or? Well a few of the older ones remember it. Or if the group is younger, modern and hip, then drinks like Ciroc – a Grape vodka known to the cognoscenti in New York as ‘Diddyjuice’ – and Tanqueray Ten, the world’s first Fresh Botanical gin will evince nods of recognition.

A few years back I read somewhere that on 3rd December 2007, Diageo
announced the sale of the billionth bottle of Baileys since it was first introduced in 1974. That’s a thousand million bottles. And they will have sold at least a further 150 million bottles in the five years since then, bringing the total up to something in the area of 1,150,000,000. That’s one hell of a lot of bottles.

And if we then assume that every bottle of Baileys delivered 8 generous
servings that means that over ten billion glasses of Baileys have been
poured since it all began.

The next thought was about which people might have tried Baileys. Who might they be?

Did Gorbachev and Reagan study a bottle up-close and ask each other “who
exactly were R&A Bailey?” Has Vladimir Putin tried it? Or Madonna? David
Hockney? And how about the world’s most famous man; has Obama ever had a
Baileys? With more than ten billion glasses, the possibilities are enormous.

It all came about through a chance meeting with a man called Tom Jago in Stresa on Lake Maggiore in Italy in May 1969. Having muddled through both my academic and working life till the age of thirty, I suddenly found myself presented with the opportunity to do something I really enjoyed – to create new products, and especially, new drinks.

It has been the most thrilling working life. And my story will unfold in the months ahead.

ICARUS, SMICARUS. WHO’S COUNTING?

YOU’LL NEVER COOK LUNCH IN THIS TOWN AGAIN

I’ve been a journo all my life but when you hit the slippery slope in my profession, there’s no way back.  In my pomp I had it all, interviews with emperors, dinners with senators and an open ticket to any Bacchanal that was going.  But my fondness for the grape was eventually my downfall and I became unemployable in Rome and its neighbouring provinces.  A change was needed and I used up my balance of ‘Chariot Miles’ to make a clean getaway.  I landed a job as a restaurant reviewer with the ‘Jerusalem Journal’.  No Pulitzer for me there, but the pay was OK and the cost of living a fraction of what it was in Rome.

It was Passover.  Things were quiet and my editor invited me to run my palate over a new home-delivery restaurant that had recently opened.  It was called ‘Judas’s Carry-out’ and while their focus would be on home deliveries, they were holding a special ‘eat-in’ launch that night and I had a ticket.   To provide some visual interest I was took along our artist, Lennie Davinci.

We got there at about 7 and were confronted by a very strange scene indeed.   It was an odd assembly, a group of 13, all men. Lennie thought they were a football team as he heard someone mention the word ‘Corinthians’, which reminded him of a Brazilian team with that name.

The seating plan was weird, everyone sitting side-by-side as if posing for a team photograph.  We thought they may have been a pub team because of their varying ages, from the skipper in his early 30s to some much older men.    One of them, Judas, was the restaurant’s owner.  A sneaky looking guy he kept moving amongst them pouring drinks, I assume to juice up his bar takings.

The evening kicked off with a guy who seemed to be the skipper, they called him ‘JC’ and, wait for it, he washed everyone’s feet.  Maybe this was some kind of club ritual.  (I remember the club I played for had fines for various errant behaviours, so perhaps it was something like that. But it was a strange thing to do inside a restaurant.)

The room was incredibly noisy.  The table was about 30 feet wide and guys had to shout to talk to their mates at the other end of the table.  Judas would have been far better advised to have had three tables of four, but he had clearly never run a ‘sit-down’ restaurant.  Lennie wasn’t complaining either as he was able to paint the entire team without having to move his materials around the room at all.

My brief from the editor was to concentrate on the food.  There hadn’t been a new restaurant launched in Jerusalem for quite a while and Tiberius (Levinson) fancied himself as a bit of a foodie.  He was expecting great things from ‘Judas’s Carry-out’.

As I said earlier, this Judas was pretty clueless when it came to seating arrangements.  But the cuisine – the main reason for our being there – was even worse, a disaster.   I was expecting some excellent Phoenician wines but the Corinthians seemed to concentrate on ‘House Red’, and not a particularly good one at that.  But nobody seemed to mind.  And the food was hardly a triumph either with the only fare we saw being served up being dry white bread. Sports teams can be pretty voracious when it comes to food, so maybe all the good stuff had gone before we got there. Given that we were on the threshold of Passover some matzos with chopped liver would not have gone amiss. Maybe a nice chicken soup with matzo balls?  But nothing doing.  I suppose the terms ‘gourmet’ and ‘footballer’ don’t go too well together and perhaps their end of season do was a budget affair.  You would have thought they might at least have had a starter.

Given the limited menu, Lennie and I finished early and repaired to our local pub before filing copy.  My review was none too complimentary but Levinson was happy to receive it well before the press deadline.

Talking to fellow reporters next day at the office, it seemed that things didn’t turn out too well after the dinner.  Judas sneaked out early having delivered up this travesty of a meal and reported JC to the Roman authorities for something or other. Money had obviously changed hands.  I’m not sure how things ended up.

My review appeared in the paper under the heading ‘The Last Supper’.   It summed up my opinion of Judas’s cooking. He would never cook lunch in Jerusalem again.  But I gathered later that Lennie’s picture went down well. Very well indeed.

WOMAN TO PLAY CRICKET WITH MEN. PERISH THE THOUGHT.

Back in January I attended a Guardian Masterclass on cricket writing hosted by Mike Selvey and Andy Bull.  Our first task, against a 40 minute deadline, was to write a piece arguing against women playing cricket with men.  This had been the subject of a front page article on England wicket-keeper Sarah Taylor in the Guardian on January 14^th.  Seemed like an interesting challenge.

 

 

 

Out they came, the England openers skipper Joe Root and his partner, in life and batting, Beatrice ‘Beet’ Root, the first woman to open the batting in an Ashes test.  As they descend the pavilion steps and look skyward at the uncertain cloud cover, nearby spectators can detect a frisson of tension between them. They cross onto the outfield.  The Australian bowlers pace out their run-ups and scrape the turf threateningly like eager hunting dogs marking out their territory.

 

As they approach the wicket the Roots turn to one another and start arguing : “I’ll take the first dig” says Joe, “I fancy a bit of Siddle this morning”.  Beet’s hackles rise visibly and she barks back at him within the umpire’s earshot.  “You most certainly will not.  You’ve done nothing in the house all week and here you are in front of 30,000 people expecting me to play second fiddle. Or do I mean fecund Siddle? (There had been rumours.)”  She turns to the Australian captain and calls over, ignoring her husband.  “Michael (Clarke)” she bleats cheerfully, “At which end are you starting?”

 

On receipt of the information, she strides purposefully towards the Pavilion end and asks the umpire for middle and leg.

 

Well, you know what I’m getting at.  Women playing a man’s game?  Ridiculous. We had Smokers v Non-Smokers in the 1890s. There was even Married v Single at that time.  No more. We got rid of Gents v Players back in the early 60s and now it’s starting all over again.  We’ve had brothers playing first class cricket, sometimes cousins, even fathers and sons.  But imagine a situation where you get a demon fast bowling woman turning out against her ex-husband.  Or worse still, against her ex-husband’s new girl friend.

 

Imagine skipper Joe Root returning to the dressing room after winning the toss before the start of the Lord’s test.  His wife has to be consulted in a separate dressing room.  She lambasts him for his decision.  “I told you we should field first” when he returned from winning the toss.  “Look at the cloud cover.  It’s going to swing all over the place. And you’ve got egg on your jumper.  You can’t go out to bat looking like that.  You’re captain of England.  Try to look the part.”

 

The first ball of the Ashes series. Siddle starts with a gentle loosener which Mrs Root plays comfortably off her pads to Mitchell Johnson at long leg.  Her non-striking husband and captain calls for a leisurely single and ambles up towards her end.  Beet doesn’t move a muscle blanking her husband as he reaches the crease.  Johnson’s throw arcs into Siddle’s hands and he nonchalantly removes a single bail. The Australian fielders euphorically exchange ‘high-fives’ and Clarke hugs Evelyn Waugh, Steve’s younger sister. Some in the crowd thought the hug went beyond Platonic. England 0-1.

 

When asked about the event after the close of play, the England skipper was rather sheepish. “We’d had an argument about the car that morning and she hadn’t simmered down.  So she took it out on me. We might have been better off fielding first.  But her innings of 73 made up for it, I suppose.  The big challenge tomorrow will be to stop her opening the bowling.  But that will be really difficult, as we have her mother staying at the same hotel. ”

 

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