THE BIG ISSUE

"I'm dead, I'm dead"

The King of Pop is no more. I rather liked Michael Jackson's music, it certainly got you on your feet. I was working in an open-plan office once when the first bars of "Billy Jean" came on the radio. Nobody looked up, but one pencil started marking time. A foot tapped somewhere under a desk. A head started nodding in another corner. Within seconds the whole office were boogying in their chairs. It was like a scene from "The Office".

Mind you, I've always had my doubts about the extent of his involvement in the writing and production of his songs. Has anyone ever seen him play an instrument? Still, this is no time to speak ill of the dead. In a way I am relieved for his children who might start to live a more normal life now, and for Jacko himself, who has been a tortured soul all his life, and is now finally at peace.

Unfortunately the timing of his departure eclipsed that of lovely little Farrah Fawcett, who was the pin up girl of the 1970s thanks to her role in the original Charlie's Angels series, her marriage to Lee Majors and then her long relationship with Ryan O'Neal. But it is her hairstyle that she will be most remembered for. Babyliss should name the next model of curling tongs in her memory.


Rosie Boycott is someone who has nearly died on more than one occasion, but has survived in her uniquely British way and has been pimping her profile in a number of celebrity challenges lately. Have you noticed how all the contestants on these programmes are labelled as an ex-something? They should have called it the Ex Factor! Rosie was listed as ex newspaper editor but could equally have called herself an ex alcoholic.

I am particularly interested in Rosie because it was indirectly through her that I met my teenage paramour, comedian Arthur Smith. In 1972, Rosie and her co-editor at Spare Rib Marsha Rowe were the guest speakers at a sixth-form conference organised by Arthur and his school, to which I was invited. The subject was designed to provoke: "Will women ever be equal to men?" She went on to become Editor of the Daily Express which was a long way from her original feminist principles but hey. She has had her battles with the bottle and since a horrific car crash - which she admits was caused by drunk driving - she has taken up the cause of small-scale farming. I plan to read her book "Our Farm" in the idyllic rural cottage in France I have booked for my hols in a few weeks' time.

In that TV programme on BBC1 this week about homeless people, I think it was called "Celebrity Sleepingbag", she was one of the two celebs who did not embarrass herself by excessive sentimentality (Annabel Croft, who has "a lot of love" in her, she says), national socialist solutions (Bruce Jones, aka Coronation Street's Les Battersby, who thought all prisoners ought to be killed and the money saved given to the homeless) or complete tosspottery (Jamie Blandford). I think Rosie was the only one who didn't complain about the smell.

The argument between Singh Kohli and his rough sleeper "buddy" just started to scratch the surface of the real issues of homelessness. Whether it was better to leave a homeless person sleeping or wake them up to make sure they're still alive. At Brussels Gay Pride a few weeks ago I was standing next to a homeless person who'd fallen asleep in the street. I was close enough to see that he was breathing, and was just out for the count, allbeit in a rather busy spot. Only a couple of people stopped and looked more closely, and one lady seemed very concerned for his welfare. Somebody had left a paper cup of margarita next to him, which remained untouched. Later in the day I spotted him sitting up and enjoying his drink.

I found Celebrity Sleepingbag very moving and informative, and scribbled down the names of some Glasgow shelters for future reference. Rosie and Hardeep seemed to "get" the point of the exercise, which was to raise our awareness, not to find a quick fix so we didn't have to be confronted with it again. The problem's not going to go away overnight, but if the public at large have a more informed approach it might help some people to reintegrate society.

I was impressed by John Bird, the former rough sleeper and alcoholic who founded the Big Issue. I always buy at least one copy when in London. It's a good magazine, and the proceeds are in a good cause. I always try to exchange a few words with the vendor. Money, food, shelter are just sticking plasters. The real problem is their sense of not fitting in, not feeling "normal". We all pride ourselves on being liberal, non-racist, gay-friendly, tolerant, all-inclusive, and yet when it comes to mental illness or homelessness we are uncommonly squeamish. Myself included.

Rosie Boycott said that whenever she saw a homeless person on the street, she thought to herself "There but for the grace of God go I". If you think this fate could not befall you, remember - many of them thought the same thing once. A lot of homeless people are more compos mentis than Michael Jackson.

But, in a tribute to Jacko, let's remember him at his best:

GARDEN OF DELIGHTS

With the advent of summer, the garden has burst into life. I was careful to wait until the winter frosts were over to prune my bush. I have been back and forth to the garden centre to stock up with some leafy perennials to plug the holes in my herbaceous border: Fallopia, Clitoris, Cystitis ... not to mention Fuchsia. So many lovely bushes to choose from. I am having some trouble with moss in my cracks, that happens when they're not given a good scrubbing from one year to the next.



I am a bit of a green goddess, as you know. I even compiled the Gardener's Year Calendar for the Sunday Times one year. 1994 I think it was. Plants respond to me. I'm sure they're aware of a maternal presence taking care of them. When I moved in just over a year ago, the garden was sad and neglected, and a bit of a waste land. This summer, with very little extra work, it's been transformed into a bijou urban courtyard garden. The peonies have grown bigger and flowered earlier and more profusely than last year, after minimal pruning the climbing rose has joined the Ramblers' Association and gone off to explore next door's garden, and my fuchsia is about to bust out all over.

Is this Ena Harkness?

Although I don't have enough room to grow vegetables, I have got a busy little herb garden going. One pot of mint has turned into a small forest, and another trough holds a mixture of chives, parsley, basil, dill, coriander and rosemary all fighting to out-do each other. The aroma is delightful when you're sat out in the garden smoking a fag.

With the fallout from the financial crisis, growing your own makes ever more sense. Even Her Maj has got an allotment behind the coal shed at Buck House. You'd think her son would send her up an organic mixed bag from Cornwall once a week wouldn't you? I have just joined an organic fruit & vegbox scheme, for 11 euros I get a large mixed bag of produce, grown as nature intended in sunny Flanders and delivered to my office every Friday.


Gardening shows will perforce return to our screens, with hopefully some hunky new presenters. In 1996 I mourned with the nation's matrons when the saintly -- and yes, rather sexy (to women of a certain age) -- Geoff Hamilton went to the great potting shed in the sky. I never took to that ageing organic hippie Bob Flowerdew and his stringy pigtail. Monty Don had something of the dissolute aristocrat about him which I found strangely alluring. As for Alan Titchmarsh, his scone-like features and adenoidal whine on Ground Force were a small price to pay for the sight of Big Tommy Walsh in his boots and leather toolbelt, and his enigmatic silent helper, ponytailed Will ("Willie") Shanahan. Tommy's Willie was often in the background, but once or twice was allowed to say a few words. Being from the deep south of Ireland, he was incomprehensible. And of course there was that dimwit Kiwi bloke with the man-boobs, Charlie Dimmock, who I never really fancied.




My favourite gardener of all is that bit of posh totty Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.(oh dear, I just know this is going to elicit a harrumph from Aunty M, apparently he thrust a fish in her face once). I can't resist an Old Etonian in wellies, especially when he's got shares in Tesco. He doesn't fart about with decorative stuff and goes straight for what you can eat, but the way he broke down in tears over those chickens made me want to ruffle his hair and clasp him to my bosom. With his air of a petulant spoiled brat, and the bossy Matron in me, we could do things with castor oil that Enid Blyton wouldn't have countenanced. Bedtime would mean bedtime, and no mistake young Master Hugh.


But I must settle for Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4. I dream of waking up and finding Tommy and his Willie giving my bush a good seeing-to, or Hugh with his huge cockerel flapping in my cottage garden. Instead I find a pair of tartan long johns hanging out to dry on my lavandula.

HOME SWEET HOME

I posted early last weekend and hence forgot to give you a heads-up about the film "Home" which was going out via various media all over the world on Friday evening 5th June, World Environment Day. It was on a big screen in Trafalgar Square, but I don't know if it went out on British TV. Did you see it? If not, the full hour and a half is on YouTube here until 14 June.

French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand - he of the "Earth from Above" coffee-table book amongst others - has made a remarkable film, of breathtaking beauty, about our beautiful planet and how we are destroying it. The astounding pictures, all filmed from a God's eye perspective and accompanied by suitably heavenly music, get the message across much more effectively than boring old Al Gore on his podium, and the soundtrack is a weld-music lover's dream, featuring musicians and singers from Mongolia and Iran among others.

Dashing Frenchman Yann Arthus-Bertrand (YAB to his friends)

The handsome young Arthus-Bertrand, son of a wealthy Parisian jeweller, started off as a movie actor, and at 62 he still has something of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. about him. But he gave up acting to manage a national park, and after a few years in Kenya photographing wildlife from a hot air balloon, returned to Paris to start up an agency for aerial photography, which led to the UNESCO-backed "Earth from the Air" project. The photographs of this collection were displayed free of charge all around the world.


Independently wealthy, he has relinquished author's rights on "Home" so that it can be shown to as many people as possible via TV and internet. He has been awarded a number of ecology-linked prizes and various French gongs including the Légion d'Honneur and the Ordre National du Mérite which may even have been made by the family firm! If he stood for President of France right now, I reckon he'd be in with a chance, Carla Bruni notwithstanding. He is the natural successor to St.Jacques Cousteau, and his fizzog is now up on my pin-up board alongside Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, the Dalai Lama and Daniel Cohn-Bendit.

It was no coincidence that this film was released two days before the European elections. As a result, the green parties picked up a good chunk of the disgruntled vote in France and Belgium. If you must make a protest vote, make a useful one! Voting UKIP or - God help us - BNP, smacks of turkeys voting for Christmas.

Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Mt Kilimanjaro today

Arthus-Bertrand's own website has all his photographs from "Earth from the Air" and other books, which you can download as wallpaper. He also has launched a foundation called GoodPlanet.org which is worth a visit, even a donation if you can afford it. You know it makes sense.

Here's the trailer, to give you a taster. Watch it (in HD if you can). That's an order.

This was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Daphne Wayne-Bough Campaign to Get A Date with Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

GREASE IS THE WORD

Heart attack on toast - but what a way to go

I decided to celebrate my __th birthday abroad this year, to mitigate the potential humiliation of only getting 2 birthday cards, like last year. Air travel is so tiresome these days - whatever I wear, I always seem to set off the metal detectors. Next time I'm going to go naked, to save time. How can you set off the alarms with one shoe and not with the other? McChe, who is far more dangerous than I, sailed through unmolested whilst I was being manhandled by security. We eventually arrived in Warsaw courtesy of Wizzair late on a Friday night, and on the Saturday morning set off bright and early to visit the Old Town. Warsaw's Old Town is a replica, rebuilt in 1947 after being completely destroyed by the Germans, and is fairly convincing, give or take the odd bit of Soviet cement peeping through under the peeling paint.



Imagine my surprise and delight when we arrived on the Old Town Square to find it invested by the KNOB!* in full Bavarian tracht, playing "Happy Birthday to You"! Wolfgang, Manfred and the boys had kept secret from me that they were touring Poland (or "East Prussia" as they still call it) and sprung a surprise on me. Wie schön ! They had found it quite difficult to find appropriate tunes for their Polish repertoire Their playlist now only has one song: "Sorry seems to be the hardest word", after the Polish Ministry of Culture insisted they cut out "These boots are made for walking" and "Under my thumb".

McChe displayed a remarkable facility with the language. He learned to say "vodka", "beer" and "maer drink the noo" in Polish within 24 hours. On our first evening, we found ourselves, inexplicably, in a Polish karaoke pub, where he got his first exposure to Zywiec, the pearl of Polish breweries. He even found himself a girlfriend, although I didn't know how to explain to him that she was just a plastic blow-up doll brought along by a stag party. He's been writing to her ever since we got back. Her name is Malgosia.

Despite intermittent showers, it stayed dry on Sunday for the Chopin concert in the park, where we found a spot on the grass under the big tree on the left in the video clip I showed you last time. You could have heard a pin drop as the pianist delivered the Warsaw Concerto. The rest of the first weekend was very changeable. It was snowing fluffy cotton from the horse chestnut trees when it wasn't chucking it down with rain. The gay umbrella was up and down like a tart's knickers.

Our flamboyant friend Tarquin de Folle arrived from London on the Sunday night and we went to meet him at the gleaming new airport terminal and took him straight to "Pub Lolek", the Flintstones-like beer garden in the middle of the park, where you can grill your own sausages over a barbecue. Tarquin looks like a typical Pole with his shaved head, singlet and combat pants, although admittedly you don't often see them in fuchsia pink when Legia are playing at home.


Everywhere we went we saw posters of Pope John Paul II, the Poles don't seem to know that he died and has been replaced, and I for one wasn't going to tell them. Statues of priests and primates (the frocked type, not GB's relatives) are dotted all over the city, often adorned with votive candles and the occasional beer can. However, they don't let their piety interfere with their devotion to spending their new-found wealth, and shops are open seven days a week.

The rental apartment we had found on the internet turned out to be superior to expectations, and was spacious, modern, beautifully furnished and centrally located. Tarquin and I took a double room each, and McChe slept on some straw in a cardboard box on the balcony. Glass and chrome towers are shooting up like asparagus in the city centre. A spanking new glass-roofed shopping mall thumbs its nose at the dirty grey bunker of a railway station (a present from the Russians). All the new buildings have been constructed and fitted out with great taste and using high-quality materials. We are not talking Arndale Centre here.

Zloty Tarasy shopping centre, downtown Warsaw

The old and the new

On the one extremely hot day of the week we took cover under the trees in the old Jewish cemetery. It is the biggest Jewish cemetery in Europe, but is rather neglected, given that there were not many descendants left after the war to tend the graves. One of the pre-war tombs was that of Ludwig Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto. His thinking was that a common language would discourage people from fighting each other. What is Esperanto for "Civil War", I wonder?

We took a ride on the tram across the river to Praga, where the 2012 World Cup stadium is being built on the ruins of the old "Stadion" where the 'Russian' market used to be. There is a tradition of Russians on that side of the river. In 1944, having trundled all the way from Moscow, the Ivans stopped their tanks in Praga, got the deckchairs out and sat there eating their sandwiches and reading the Sunday Sport as the Polish Home Army insurgents got mown down by the Nazis and the city's cultural monuments were systematically blown up. When it was all over and the centre of Warsaw was reduced to a pile of rubble, they packed up their picnic and rumbled in over the bridge in the tank tracks of the departing Germans. There is an excellent new museum in Warsaw dedicated to the Uprising where we spent most of Friday. We all came out rather quiet with sombre faces.

Scene from Polanski's "The Pianist" showing the devastation of Warsaw

In the evening we'd perked up enough to go for dinner at a lovely place called Honoratka, near the old town, which is reputed to have been frequented by Chopin. It's very "old Polish", all flowers and lace and candles, Tarquin absolutely loved it. We got the party started with Tatankas - Bison-grass vodka with apple juice. When in Rome, etc. It's a very pleasant summer drink, if you can get your hands on the bison vodka - your local Polski Sklep should stock it. Proportions much the same as G&T. The menu was very Polish: I had tartare of smoked salmon with capers followed by zeberka, or suckling pig ribs in a beer and honey sauce, which came clean off the bone. Tarquin ordered placki, or potato pancakes with sour cream, followed by chicken breast with spinach, and McChe had pierogi for the third time that week, followed by chicken livers wrapped in bacon. We shared some typically Polish vegetable accompaniments: stir-fried beetroot, "kopytki" or potato dumplings, and tomatoes with onions and cream.

We skilfully averted the waiter's attempts to steer us to the expensive imported wines and plumped for a half liter, then a full liter, then another half liter of the Moravian house red. Very drinkable, and light, a bit like Italian wine. The waiter confessed halfway through our meal that it was what he drank. In fact, I think he'd been drinking it since he came on duty. Complimentary cherry liqueurs rounded off our meal quite nicely. The background music was eclectic, to say the least - first a sort of electronic Mantovani which you can listen to on their website, followed by some old pre-war Polish torch songs, then hip hop. By our third carafe of Moravian we were singing along to Polish reggae, and the bill only came to about ₤70! That's what I call a good night out.

As we were leaving, the waiter told me that I had been sitting in the VERY CHAIR where Chopin had sat. Fancy! I almost felt moved to give everyone a blast of Chopsticks on the Joanna before departing. I saw our waiter give Tarquin a broad wink over my shoulder. I think my gay umbrella might have turned into Cupid's arrow, readers!


I resisted the temptation to stock up on any more blue and white Boleslawiec pottery (of which I have half a ton at home), discouraged by Wizzair's baggage restrictions, but couldn't resist a couple of large Polish sausages and a tub of smalec (seasoned pork fat, the original schmaltz, also known as heart-attack-in-a-tub and totally delicious). Coming through security at the Warsaw end I had to take off coat, shoes, belt, and then open my case, whereupon the security man pulled out my Big Polish Sausage and started squeezing it curiously. "Kielbasa" I whispered, shiftily. " Chmnszk" he replied sternly, and replaced it carefully without unwrapping it. I think he suspected it was a sex toy. Thank God he didn't find the smalec, or I might have had to give a demonstration.



* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

BEIRUT

I've just got back from Polska and haven't had time to write up my hols, so until next weekend get your earholes round this band out of New Mexico who sound far too European for their own good. The combination of street brass band style, original composition and the amazing instrumental talents and pure vocals of young Zach Condon have left me quite gobsmacked. I haven't been this surprised by a band since I discovered The Blue Nile about 15 years too late. In my inimitable missing-the-boat fashion I find Beirut played Brussels at the beginning of this month. WHY didn't somebody tell me how good they were??? They're like the Divine Comedy meets the Ukelele Orchestra.

I couldn't decide which song was the best so here are three for your delectation. Tell me what you think.