THE FINAL STRUGGLE

Where do old lefties go when they turn up their toes? No, not to the European Trade Union Confederation. I am referring to Highgate cemetery, which I visited on my last trip to London. My main purpose was to pay homage to Karl Marx, who is clearly the main attraction. But I was surprised by the number of luminaries, many of them with strong left-wing backgrounds, who share his last resting place.

Just across from the Father of Communism was Paul Foot, indefatigable investigative journalist for Private Eye. A plot facing Karl Marx must have involved either a large amount of money or some friends in high places. And when I say high ....

There were some exotic celebrities. Farzad Bazoft, the Observer journalist of Iranian origin who was executed by Saddam Hussein on trumped-up charges of spying, was commemorated with a headstone in black marble, although I'm not sure his remains actually lay underneath it. Another famous Iranian neighbour was Mansoor Hekmat, founder of both the Iranian and Iraqi Workers Communist parties, whose headstone below a bust of his handsome head bore a touching inscription from his widow: "To a great man, the essence of our lives, the polestar of my existence, the love of my life". Would that we all departed this world to such praise.

Redmond O'Neill sounded like a true Irish revolutionary, as hinted at by the quote from Che Guevara: "The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love". In reality his life was a little less exciting.

I couldn't find the graves of Malcolm McLaren, Beryl Bainbridge, Max Wall, Michael Faraday, or Alexander Litvinenko, some of which might have been in the West section, but did encounter the last resting place of Sir Ralph Richardson and - Lord preserve us - Jeremy Beadle, who is interred immediately adjacent to the esteemed literary agent Pat Kavanagh. In cemeteries, rather like on airplanes, you cannot always choose your neighbours.

I was touched by the small, plain, unassuming gravestone of Douglas Adams, author of my favourite book ever, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". All it said was "Douglas Adams, writer, 1952-2001". I said a silent, belated farewell: "So long and thanks for all the fish".

Highgate, which opened in 1839, is a beautiful cemetery and heavily wooded. It nearly fell into disrepair and was saved by donations from the Friends of Highgate Cemetery in 1975. There is a £3 charge to visit Highgate East, and £7 for Highgate West, which can only be visited with a guide. You might think this is a bit steep to visit a cemetery, but the people on the gate told me that Highgate receives no public funding apart from a small English Heritage grant. I was appalled to learn that not one of the three boroughs it straddles (Camden, Haringey & Islington) contributes a penny to its maintenance. I dare say it's not cheap to be buried there, but only 35 or so plots are purchased every year, and the areas off the "celebrity walk" are becoming quite overgrown. There is a chapel in the West part, but a generally secular tone to the burial ground, which explains the appeal to left-wingers and revolutionaries.

THAR SHE BLOWS!

After much deliberating, pondering, mulling, throwing ideas up in the air and seeing if they fly, getting our ducks in a row, lining up our apples, and trying names on for size, the hitherto New Unnamed Brussels International Ladies Ensemble (NUBILE) have finally come up with a name.




It conveys our maturity, our femininity, our style of playing.




It is short, catchy, punchy, and provocative.





We play like a cross between the Hot Club de France and Jumping Jack Flash.


We are .....

HOT
FLASH !!!

Ba-da-boom-TISH !

Ay thang yow.



Take it away, girls.

BLOWING YOUR OWN TRUMPET

Since our new lady orchestra leader Waltraud "Wally" von Klampwangler was brought in to pull the KNOB* out of a hole, so to speak, after our humiliation at Euroompah! 2011 in Athens, the image of the band has changed quite radically. She has sacked all the men! Bert, Wolfgang, Manfred, Siegfried and the others were literally drummed out of town by a muscular fraulein, and departed muttering unfavourable comparisons with Angela Merkel. It was unseemly to continue under the name of the long-departed Kurt Nachtnebel, so we took a vote on a new, modern handle for our all-girl line up. Irmgard's suggestion "Deutschland's International Ladies Dance Oompah" was rejected as too long. Marlene's "Blow Job" was considered a little on the risqué side. Inge came up with "Heavy Metal" which accurately represented the statuesque proportions of our members, particularly the percussion section. I was a little worried we might be confused with the band from the Kit Kat Club in "Cabaret".



Heidi, who is quite a young thing and influenced by hippity hop and all that, wanted us to cover some rap music: all very well, but a bunch of mostly middle-aged, German and rather buxom matrons are not going to be able to convey the oeuvre of Snoop Diddly Dogg very effectively, even if I did, as suggested by Heidi, change my name to "Mos Daph". Our following is not so much from Compton as Old Compton Street. We racked our Alzheimer-raddled brains. It has to convey our female nature, our international line-up (11 Germans and me) the metallic shininess of our instruments, our contemporary non-bierkeller dynamic and our sturdy corsetry. I'll leave it with you.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble - nice boys but not a lot like us

The downsizing is opportune in view of the economic climate, and means I have been promoted to First (and only) Triangle. It's an ill wind, and all that. Bert has bequeathed me his instrument, and every time I do a little 'ting' I think of him. Wally has revamped our repertoire - no more Oktoberfest drinking songs, she wants to turn us into a sort of brass section of the Ivy Benson orchestra. Wally is determined that we can successfully combine traditional instruments and modern music within a gender perspective.

Who would have thought the trailblazers in all-women brass ensembles would hail from the land of the geisha? Tokyo Brass Style give coloured tights a whole new lease of life. Hit it, girls.

*Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY

Mr and Mrs Helle Thorning-Schmidt

The newly-elected Danish PM is married to the son of Neil and Glenys Kinnock, heralding a new age of political interbreeding not seen since Princess Maud of Wales married her first cousin Prince Carl of Denmark, later to become King Harald of Norway and echoing the tactical alliances of the descendants of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (including Wales) and King Christian IX of Denmark into virtually every royal house in Europe. It makes one wonder about the political possibilities of betrothing (for example) 11-year-old Leo Blair and 10-year-old Sasha Obama.

This also puts young Kinnock into a position of "First Husband". He could do worse than to consult the Duke of Edinburgh on the duties of a male consort (since Denis Thatcher is no longer with us). Philip, of course, knows all about this as well as the dangers of inbreeding. He is a cousin of his wife thanks to the generations of strategic coupling that went on between descendants of Queen Victoria and King Christian IX of Denmark.

In recent years some younger royals have avoided the temptation to inbreed by choosing muscular sportsmen or women as spouses - Princess Cristina of Spain courted controversy by marrying a Basque handball champion, Princess Anne's daughter Zara Phillips tied the knot with rugby captain Mike Tindall, and Prince Albert of Monaco has recently married South African swimmer Charlene Wittstock following in the Grimaldi tradition of marrying for looks rather than breeding. This of course can backfire - as seen with Albert's youngest sister, Her Serene Chavness Princess Stephanie,

Which of Albert's two escorts do you think was born into a royal household?

Political dynasties are crumbling in the Middle East, where the last of the Assad crime syndicate is clinging on by his privates, and it looks like the Gaddafi boys are not now going to inherit the earth. In the moderate Arab monarchies such as Jordan and Morocco, the smart young kings know it's a case of modernize or die, and are keeping their turbans down.

But elsewhere dynasties are back in fashion. In France, Marine Le Pen, daughter of the odious Jean-Marie, is now at the head of the National Front and looking like a serious threat -- to France as a whole, not just to Sarkozy. She may find herself up against Socialist Martine Aubry, herself the daughter of Jacques "Up Yours" Delors.


The Americas favour a Mr & Mrs alternation -- particularly in Argentina where President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, the wife of previous President, has followed in the teetering stilettoes of Eva Peron, as well she might; and north of the border we all know about Billary Clinton. The Far East likes a bit of sibling rivalry - 44-year old Yingluck Shinawatra, sister of the disgraced and exiled former PM Thaksin, has just won the Thai elections. Some cynics have inferred it's a way for politicos to remain in power past their mandate. I couldn't possibly comment.

Thaksin's little sister

Everyone loves a grieving widow - Sonia Gandhi is the President of the Indian National Congress Party and de facto Mother of All India, Corazon Aquino surfed into power in the Philippines on the waves of grief following her husband's assassination, as did the disgraced husband of the late Benazir Bhutto. India is into its fourth generation of nepotism, Nehru-Indira Gandhi-Rajiv/Sonia - Rahul, whereas in Pakistan there seems to be a power-sharing agreement between the Bhuttos and the Zias.


All this is quite unBritish - we haven't gone in for political dynasties in this country since the William Pitts Elder and Younger.

Milibands minor and major

Benns senior and junior

Sir Herbert Morrison - former Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Deputy
Prime Minister (1940-51) -- remind you of anyone?

Grandson Mandy - a chip off the old block (except grandpa was a Socialist)

NOT WITHOUT MY TEAPOT

People are sometimes very critical of immigrants who do not integrate into their host society. As an immigrant, I feel I must defend my right to my own culture. The older I get, the more I revert to the national stereotype. I drink tea, watch almost exclusively UK television, read for pleasure in English, and even do a large part of my shopping in the UK these days. They tried to make me eat mussels, but I said no, no, no.

It was not always thus. As a young gel, with the ink still wet on my advanced typing certificate, I hopped aboard the Hovercraft with gay abandon, eager to cast aside a lifetime of cultural conditioning and embrace the world of wine, all-day smoking and Edith Piaf. Like many Brits at the time, I thought France was vastly superior to the UK in virtually everything, especially Sacha Distel, and that I could shake off my adolescent problems by adopting a new identity.


In Paris I remade myself in the image of Juliette Gréco. I learned to eat cheese before dessert, drink tiny shots of strong coffee, shrug and go "pffffft merde alors", and push old ladies off the bus without a backward glance. (I would recommend several years in Paris as a self-assertion course). When women on the bus gave me the Paris stare, I returned it eyeball to eyeball, and won. I walked quickly everywhere, eyes fixed on the ground, in order to (a) avoid eye contact with predatory men of dubious means and (b) to avoid stepping in dog poo. I flirted outrageously with complete strangers - as long as they were not the aforementioned predators of dubious means.


I learned how to fashion a silk scarf into an elegant accessory with a couple of deft twists, and became a French wine and food snob (and still am, when I can afford it). I went to the hairdresser regularly, never so much as took the milk in without makeup on and started to fancy I looked a bit like Jean Seberg with freckles.

Like any self-respecting Parisienne I thought the world stopped at the périphérique, and that bread was baked freshly five times a day as a matter of course. (What a surprise when I went into a 'bakery' back in Blighty and asked what time their next baking was.) The French are blessed with an innate sense of superiority, and do not shilly-shally about customers always being right or any of that old nonsense. In a restaurant once with English friends, we were running late for the theatre and asked the patronne if she could possibly serve the cheese and dessert together to save time. She bristled and said: "Non! You will have your cheese, THEN you will have your dessert." We got our revenge the only way we could, by not leaving a tip. At the time, I admired this kind of arrogance. However, it palls after a few years.


I went to a Communist wedding, where the happy couple tied the knot under a portrait of the right-wing Mayor of Paris (Mr Chirac at the time I believe) while the congregation fanned themselves with copies of L'Humanité and sang the Internationale on the steps of the Mairie. I realized that in France, socialism does not rhyme with austerity, and their version of communism is "champagne for all", although they're pretty vague about who will pay for it. Even the concierge would invest in a few bottles of Veuve Cliquot at Christmastime. I found it a refreshing change from the rigid class structure of England. I used to take a very posh bottle of bubbly back to England for Aunt Flossie every year, until she finally confessed: "Actually, dear, I've always preferred Asti Spumante".


I had to queue up for months to get a French ID card, and once obtained, learned to carry it on me at all times. The French may criticise us for our surveillance cameras, but they are one of the most controlled societies in the so-called free world. You need a bit of paper for everything. I even heard of a man being asked to provide a certificate to prove he was still alive - a "certificat de non-décès". I can quite believe it. The French would not accept a British passport as an ID document -- they said it was a "travel document" and did not carry the requisite details (address, etc.) to serve as an ID document. They could not believe our UK driving licences which folded out to A5 size and carried no photograph. A policeman said to me: "But how do I know it's you?" I replied "Because I say so." He looked baffled.


I learned to drive in Paris, and had to tackle the place de la Concorde on my second driving lesson -- this exercise alone managed to kill any instinct I may have had for self-preservation and to this day I drive like an architect (Belgian epithet, not very flattering), which has come in handy in places like Warsaw, Lagos and Accra. Meanwhile, post 1981, Mitterrand was turning France into a showroom of excellence with his "great works" such as the pyramid of the Louvre and the Arch of La Défense, not to mention innovative projects such as Airbus and the TGV. All Britain had to show for itself was the Angel of the North.




The new wave of stylish French cinema threw out groundbreaking directors like Luc Besson and actors like Isabelle Adjani and Christophe Lambert. Café-concerts were a precursor of today's comedy clubs, and even French stand-up hit a peak with Coluche. It was an exciting time to be in France, which couldn't seem to put a foot wrong in the 1980s. I went to avant-garde theatre productions, saw tattooed men juggling chainsaws and other men dressed in frocks with no knickers on, caught fleas in insalubrious cinemas showing bizarre "art-porn" films, went cruising in the Bois de Boulogne at night to see Brazilian trannies, drank absinthe and lost my integrity in various bars, which I could never find again in daylight. The bars, or my integrity.



I embraced the whole je-ne-sais-quoi, looking askance at my fellow Brits and failing to see what was funny about 'Allo 'Allo. I read Libération and sneered at Le Figaro, smoked incessantly, talked politics and religion at dinner parties and -- short of the black polo neck sweater - became a French poseur par excellence. I even came to think that French pop music was quite good -- it did hit its peak in the 1980s -- and started collecting the works of Serge Gainsbourg and La Compagnie Créole. I could even sing the Marseillaise all the way through. By the time of the Bicentennial in 1989 I was almost totally brainwashed and was even thinking about taking French nationality.


Only when Harold swept me up and rescued me on his white horse (well, red Ford Fiesta, right-hand drive) did I realize the extent to which I had been hypnotized by Gallic cultural imperialism. It was Stockholm Syndrome, only in Paris. I had become enamoured of my captor - my captor being the city of lights. Oh tempore! O mores! I should have stayed in Sidcup.


After a few years back in Blighty I started to hanker for the other side of the Channel again. More than hankered -- I pined. But the old adage is true, it's never as good as the first time. Paris took on the personality of a spurned lover who wanted to punish me for walking out on her. (Yes a spurned lesbian lover). We had a number of unsuccessful trysts, and eventually I got the message and accepted that we were no longer an item. I moved on, but I always kept a photo of the Eiffel Tower in my wallet.




When I came to Brussels, therefore, it was on my own terms. There's no way I was going to try to become Belgian. Luckily, I didn't have to. In Belgium there is no pressure. Particularly in Brussels, where something like 50% of the population is non-Belgian. I have cable TV with all the BBC channels, order my English books by post from the UK, and make occasional trips out to Stonemanor to stock up on Bisto, pork pies, Branston pickle and Robinson's barley water and generally do not make the slightest effort to integrate. Worse, I flaunt my difference -- I wield my Union Jack umbrella (a gift from Gorilla Bananas) with gusto and try to poke out the eye of passing Frenchmen.

Photo credit: G. Bananas

I have no plans to remain here beyond retirement, which as things stand, if they don't move the goalposts again, will be some eight and a half years away. I like Belgium well enough, but I'm going to remain a tourist this time. The chips are great, but I keep a bottle of Sarson's in my kitchen.