It’s looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll be able to take our annual holiday in Scotland. Here is the famous 9th / 18th par 3 hole at Durness, one of our favourite courses; it’s about as far North as you can go in Scotland. Always worth a visit. A ticket for a week costs £70!!!
Missing a Scottish holiday is a tough one for a golfer even though it’s unimportant on today’s grand scale of things. You see, I’m now 63. In my twenties, I had time and energy but no money. In my forties, I had energy and money but no time. Now in my sixties, I have time and money but energy diminishes a little year-by-year. And I don’t want to waste a minute.
Today, in the UK, there are celebrations to mark the 75th commemoration of Victory in Europe. Clear parallels are being drawn to an imminent victory against the current national threat, the COVID-19 pandemic. The news footage of VE Day is remarkable; hundreds of thousands of people danced in the streets of London for days. My father, who was a medical student in London at the time, wrote a truly amazing account of the events in a letter to his mother.
I find the breathless clipped accent of the news announcers of the day fascinating. Nobody speaks like that now. Britain is a country where people’s accents can denote not only where they come from, but also their social class and level of education. For us Brits, like it or not, our accent is like a badge that we all wear. There is even a police accent! (Go on… do it! “I was proceeding in a southerly direction along Primrose Lane when I recognised the unbecoming gait of a local felon by the name of Knosher Stibbs….) The good ol’ BBC cultivated it’s own accent in its early days which continued right through to the 1960s. Just listen to Valerie Singleton, and the most memorable moment on the BBC’s flagship children’s show of the day, Blue Peter.
A survey of Middle Eastern attitudes toward American culture found that only 23% of people in Qatar like the Flintstones while 75% of people in Abu Dhabi do(o)!
I would love to get away from “Today, President Donald Trump said…..” The problem is, that what he says tends to eclipse all other news. Despite wise people counselling caution he throws that caution to the political winds and continues his tirade against China and despite wise people pointing out that there is still no firm evidence indicating that the pandemic can be traced back to a laboratory in Wuhan. So…. Today, President Donald Trump said “We went through the worst attack we’ve ever had on our country, this is worst attack we’ve ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this. And it should have never happened. Could’ve been stopped at the source. Could’ve been stopped in China. It should’ve been stopped right at the source. And it wasn’t.” This is war talk. And he knows it.
So, battered and bamboozled by it all, I thought I would tell you a story of a hapless painter and a very big company.
In October 2006, I put on an exhibition of my paintings. I hung 74 large canvases on the theme of “XYXX: the Biology of Love.” I set out to tell biologically-based narratives about falling in love, couples, he and she, boys and girls, males and females, Mum and Dad, guys and gals and baby-making and all that stuff. The visual theme was an interaction of blue-for-boys and pink-for-girls in a square format. Gay themes were included.
I sent out 1,000 invitations. The event generated some interest in the local papers and radio. Friends pledged to come over from UK both to support me but mainly to have a jolly good laugh. Kick-off was at 18.00.
At the entrance, we put a painting called “Harmony” that had featured on the invitation.
Here’s the two metre square, principal theme painting, “XYXX” in my studio.
The pictures were hung tastefully thanks to the my amazing teacher, Guy. The wine was chilled and the exotic nibbles were laid out. At 17.30, I was sure nobody would come. At 17.45, I thought I would be sick. At 18.02 five people walked in. Guy told me he had come prepared to note any buyer’s name and contact details and to take a deposit. I thanked him and assured him that nobody would want to actually buy one of my paintings. He smiled. By 18.30, dozens more had arrived. By 20.00 the place was jammed.
We had one small rather uninteresting painting. I wasn’t sure I wanted to exhibit it. Guy said “Always hang the shit next to the bar. It’ll sell.” It was the first to be bought.
For the rest of the evening, Guy was surrounded by people with wallets open. The paintings sold like hot cakes both during and after the event. Eventually, through the XYXX paintings, I was able to donate over CHF 100,000 (about $95,000) to a special fund for people disabled in armed conflict.
Fourteen months later, I was dawdling around an airport duty free shop. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that Hugo Boss perfumes, a subsidiary of Proctor and Gamble based here in Geneva, had launched a line of perfumes: XY for him and XX for her.
Other advertisements for the same product claimed that “Harmony is overrated.” I thought that this really was quite some coincidence. I dug a bit deeper. Lots of other coincidences appeared: The lettering. Blue on the left, pink on the right. Square format with a border (boxing ring with the ropes’ shadows.) He and she kiss (top right is my painting called “Kiss”)
As I had a second exhibition on the same theme coming up, I wrote to Proctor and Gamble asking what they would like me to say if ever a journalist asked me about the similarity of my theme of paintings and their marketing campaign. In response, I received a polite letter from a legal adviser pointing out that I could not possibly claim intellectual property on XYXX, the genetic code for males and females. (I hadn’t.) The writer than invited me to slither back to my muddy pond and die slowly in pain. Those weren’t the exact words.
Thinking that was that, I carried on preparing for the exhibition. Here’s “Arrivals.” Isn’t it – or wasn’t it – fantastic to watch people waiting for their lovers at an airport? And isn’t it amazing how readily we have the ability to recognise that one special face among thousands.
Twenty four knotted ties went into “Man’s World”. Are women left crushed and bleeding by the male monster? Or are the women weeping tears of laughter at the guys’ ridiculous power plays? Or are they oozing excitement at men’s overpowering sexuality?
Some months later, I was dawdling around a department store. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that Mexx perfumes, also a subsidiary of Proctor and Gamble, had launched a line of perfumes: “Nice” and “Wild” – XX for her and XX for… well… her as well. Two girls hanging on to each other. Buy the perfume and you get a strappy little pink bag for free.
In the first exhibition, I exhibited a painting called “XXXX” – top left here. It was painted as a gift for two lady friends who were about to celebrate a civil partnership. I was the witness at their ceremony. (That’s me… the tiny little blue entity bottom left.) It’s most unlikely that including the girls’ pink bags would have been influenced by my “Pretty Women” painting and and all its luscious Julia Roberts shopping bags!
So I carried on painting. This is “Fantasy” A kind of fly-away-on-a-ballon romantic notion for the happy XYXX couple at centre. I got the idea from seeing a hot air balloon being inflated in the park near here.
Of all the paintings I did at this time, I enjoyed doing “Nocturne” the most. I loved laying out the regular key board geometry on the sheet music of Chopin’s nocturnes. Great music for people who have been in love for a long time.
Some months later, I was flicking through a glossy in-flight magazine. I was more than a little surprised when I saw this image promoting Hugo Boss’s “Boss Pure” because….
….. “Dream Diver” (below) was my first ever oil painting. It has never been exhibited.
But I did have a party at my studio once. I didn’t recognise all the guests.
We went through the worst attack we’ve ever had on XYXX, this is worst attack we’ve ever had. This is worse than Pearl Harbor, this is worse than the World Trade Center. There’s never been an attack like this. And it should have never happened. Could’ve been stopped at the source. Could’ve been stopped in China. It should’ve been stopped right at the source. And it wasn’t.
All XYXX photos thanks to Peter Hobden (pic2d.com)
There is great excitement in the kitchen. My wife’s sourdough starter, Boris, has delivered a lethal blow to my bubbly champion, Donald. Having changed on-line bread gurus, she put Boris through a much less disciplined regime that is clearly to his liking; together they have produced a pearl of a loaf. It has a light crusty crust and a creamy crumb with that delicious faint vinegary after taste. A masterpiece. I admit defeat. Donald will have to make do with pancake duty from here on.
Lockdown painting: I couldn’t let go of the theme of “Some Fruit on a Plate.” My wife described an earlier version as “insipid.” This one is “pretty.” Things are looking up!!
I saw a clip of Sir Paul McCartney, at 77 years of age, singing “Lady Madonna” for the One World: Together at Home concert. He dedicated his performance to his mother who was a nurse. In 1963, the Beatles twisted and shouted their way into our hearts, our homes and our lives. If you had told my mother then, that one day, the cheeky young scouser would become a “Sir,” she would have fallen to her knees and wept.
I was six years old in the year that Beatlemania swept the world. My first memory of this has my parents, my brothers and I watching the BBC news on a small, grainy, black and white TV. The Beatles were singing “She Loves You.” The “fans” (the first time we had heard the word; short for “fanatic,” don’t you know!) were screaming as if their young lives were under imminent threat. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. My father declared the whole thing disgraceful. “And on the BBC what’s more!!” My mother was too stunned to speak. We and all the other kids on the planet loved them and lapped it all up; above all, we loved how they shocked our parents. And the more the fab four shocked, the more the world went crazy for anything that had their stamp on it. Equally difficult for our parents to believe was that the Beatles actually had talent; albeit very cleverly marketed talent. Mum and Dad thought the music was anyone-could-do-that noise with absolutely no redeeming features. It was nothing like Glen Miller or Benny Goodman (let alone Mozart!).
So what was it that so shocked my parent’s generation other than the fact that the music was simply beyond the pale. The disapproval went way beyond. It was the whole package represented by these brazen young superstars. They were clearly about to hack away the moral pillars of society. These were the post World War II kids who had been too young to fight; they were just so ungrateful. They showed no respect to their elders and betters. They were unembarrassed by accusations of having sex before marriage. Believe it or not, those hair cuts were totally outrageous; any boy sporting his new Beatle-cut meant trouble from the get-go. And check out those heels on the Beatle-boots! The moment that my mother believed the world really was about to end was when it became known that John, Paul, George and Ringo, when invited to an audience with Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace, nipped into the gentlemen’s conveniences and smoked a joint.
In retrospect, Beatlemania was just one of the heralds of the huge social revolution that shook the establishment in the 1960s. It must have been in the mid-1990s when I asked my mother what it was that her generation had found so distasteful about the Beatles and their ilk. She had obviously given this considerable thought. She said with clarity “They terrified us. They threatened our values. They threatened our society and everything that was important to us. We couldn’t see any future for you kids in a world that adored them.” Fair enough!
If, in ten years time, you were to ask me what three things have really changed western society since World War II, I might say the rock and pop culture. I would certainly say the internet. I wonder if I will say COVID-19. With one song performed live on-line, Sir Paul McCartney is entwined in all three.
And how about this….? Donald Trump has declared that his pandemic task force will now focus on “re-opening” the economy just a day after upping the estimate for total American COVID-19 deaths from 60,000 to 100,000. Yesterday, he left the White House for the first time in weeks and made a highly publicised visit to a mask-making company. Music blared as he made his tour and many commentators have pointed out that the factory’s chosen soundtrack was inappropriate: the theme song to the 1973 James Bond film “Live and Let Die” written and performed by…. you got it, Sir Paul McCartney.
My wife beat me in today’s putting competition 2 and 1. The running total is now 20 – 11 in my favour.
