PIGMALION: PART ONE

The little chimney sweep stared up in awe at the great house, and wondered how he would reach the great brass door knocker.  As he wondered, the highly polished door opened of its own accord, and a well dressed Grande Dame swept out of the house, nearly knocking him down the steps.  

"Out of my way, boy!"  she cried, in a haughty manner.  She glanced down at him.  "Good God, child, you're filthy!" 

"I'm a chimneysweep,"  explained Gorbals (for it was he).  "I'm supposed to be filthy."

She paused, and inspected her bustle, brushing away imaginary soot.

"Hmm ..."  she pondered.  "We need the chimney sweeping.  Haven't you got one of those modern contraptions that sucks all the soot out without dirtying anything?"

"No, Ma'am,"  he murmured.  "I've just got ma brushes here.  But I'm cheap!" 

"How cheap?"  

"Sixpence, Ma'am."

"Sixpence!  You're hired.  Take your boots off first though."  

The lady turned on her heel and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, which she used to push him into the house.  Gorbals had never seen such a magnificent house.  The carpets were all white, and crystal chandeliers hung from the ceilings.  But when he entered the parlour, he gasped aloud.  The walls were lined with books.  Books ... he loved books. 

"Jings!  Crivens!  Help ma boab!"  he ejaculated.

Lady Daphne (for it was she) looked askance at him.  

"Where are you from child?   Romania?  Bulgaria?"  

Gorbals looked at her incredulously.

"Scotland" he replied flatly. 

She made a face as if smelling something unpleasant and made a sound which to Gorbals' untrained ear sounded like "Air".  

"Excuse me, Ma'am," he asked, "But how come ye've got all these books?  Is this a bookshop or what?"  

Lady Daphne's laughter was like the tinkling of a silver spoon against a crystal champagne glass.  

"A bookshop? Good Lord no.  These are all my books.  I am Professor Daphne Higgins, renowned expert in regional dialect and teacher of elocution." 

"Charmed I'm sure," replied Gorbals. "Mr Gorbals McChe at your service.  Scholar, chimneysweep, Scotsman on the make.  Just come doon from the Isle of Skye.  I'm no very tall but .....  "

"Get on with the job, will you?"  Lady Daphne cut him off abruptly.  "Mrs Pearce my housekeeper will keep an eye on you, and pay you your sixpence.   I must be off to the hairdresser."

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Gorbals set out his dustsheets carefully and set about preparing the first fireplace.  As he poked his brush further and further up Lady Daphne's chimney, he glanced around at the books.  There were hundreds of them.  What he wouldn't give for a library like this!  He dare not touch them for fear of dirtying them but when the housekeeper came in she found him standing gazing at a wall of books, his mouth hanging open.  

"Can you read, child?"  she inquired kindly.

"Aye, I can read." replied Gorbals proudly.  "And I can write my name."  he glanced out of the window at the building across the street with the word "GORBALS" tagged across it in graffiti style.  Mrs Pearce was a kindly woman and did not like to see child poverty (or graffiti). 

"When you've finished the chimney you can have a bath and I'll give you a meal," she offered.   Gorbals didn't fancy the sound of the bath much, but he hadn't eaten in days.  He decided the ordeal by soap and water was worth it. 

"Hae ye got that Wright's coal tar soap?"  he asked hopefully.  

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When Lady Daphne returned from the hairdresser, she called down to Mrs Pearce for some supper.  The housekeeper appeared a few minutes later with the newly washed and fed Gorbals following behind carrying a second tray.  Lady Daphne looked up briefly from her copy of Phonetics World. 

"Mrs Pearce, is this your new kitchenmaid?"  

Gorbals came out from behind the voluminous aprons of Mrs Pearce, and said shyly:  

"I wash me face an' 'ands before I come, I did."

Lady Daphne looked up again slowly, and stared this time. 

"The noble savage ..."  she mused.  "I do believe this creature from the wilds might be tamed.   Would you like to be a proper English gentleman, child?"

Everything in Gorbals' heart screamed "Would I fuck!" but his stomach and his head argued back eloquently.   Three meals a day, and all the books you can read.   He smiled in the most English way he could manage.

"Oh yes please Ma'am."  he replied. "Ah dinnae hae mich education but I aim tae improve masel.  Beggin yer pardon Ma'am."

"What did he say?"  asked the renowned expert in regional dialect.

FEAR AND LOATHING IN GLASVEGAS

We were somewhere around Falkirk on the edge of a trading estate when the referendum began to take hold...  we started seeing cars racing past with saltire flags fluttering oot the windy, and by the time the airport bus arrived at Buchanan Street you could feel the electricity in the air and my attorney, Dr Gorbals, a 49-kilo Scotsman, was screaming about bats.  


He had previously been boasting of how peaceful the whole run-up to the referendum had been, no violence, all very civilized.  And he was right. As we approached George Square we stepped aside to allow a guy in a T-shirt to pass, bent double between two Glasgow polis.  I checked into the hotel and as I closed the door behind me the fire alarm went off.  In our drug-fuelled paranoia we thought it was us, and the whole hotel started to evacuate.  One woman was walking calmly towards the exit in her dressing gown and bare feet.  We slipped out the front door just as two fire engines screamed to a halt in front of the hotel, and melted into the crowd before they could arrest us for wasting the fire service's time.   So far, so surreal.

We had been sent to cover the Scottish Independence Referendum.  The town was awash with over-excited  kids waving blue and white saltire flags, and soft-spoken Glasgow polis with big tasers telling them to do their shoelaces up.  The kids were convinced they were going to win.  The polis looked like they already knew the result.

We had to go and interview a bent lawyer who had voted "no" and was holed up in a safe house somewhere in the Merchant City under the pseudonym Saul Goodman.  It was pretty sordid.  There was not enough alcohol and no food in his fridge.  The interview took forever.   Dr Gorbals was on best behaviour, most uncharacteristically, considering he hadn't eaten for 24 hours and he knew the pubs were open all night on this historic occasion.  


We finally got back to the hotel around two and my attorney was immediately on the phone to room service, ordering four large bags of chips, four deep-fried Mars Bars, a bottle of Grouse and nine cans of Irn-Bru.  "Girrrders", he explained. "It's made with girrrders."  I tried to stay awake until the first results came in but only made it as far as the first three, which were "No", "No", and "No" in that order.   By 5 a.m. I was fast asleep and George Square was full of weeping teenagers wrapped in saltire flags having their shoelaces tied gently by motherly polis officers.

The next day all was quiet.  You wouldn't know it was anything other than a normal Saturday in Glasgow.  The shops were open, people were going about their business.  I was impressed by the high-end restaurants and bars.  Glasgow had certainly gone upmarket.  The only indication of anything remotely bizarre was that I kept seeing the Tardis here and there.  Still strung out from the night before, I could not decide if they were an art installation or if Peter Capaldi was going to emerge from one and beam me up.  I kept an eye out for a cheap towel shop.

That evening George Square was invaded by about 50 bull-necked shaven-headed beer-bellied tattooed Rangers supporters brandishing union jacks, one with the slogan “NO SURRENDER” emblazoned on it.  They were chanting “Rule Britannia” and “God Save the Queen”.  The polis formed a circle between them and a bunch of timid YES supporters wearing very little in the way of colours.  A few silly kids waving a saltire ventured up to they bad boys to provoke them.   The polis were on top of it immediately.  We could sense the tension building and drifted away to meet a contact in an Irish bar full of yessers.

Around 10 p.m. word drifted back from the Square that it had "all kicked aff" with the "Scotland Says Naw" brigade.  A bunch of tattooed shaven-headed neds stood around on the street shaking their heads and muttering how they were ashamed to be Scots.  It couldn't have been for my benefit, I hadn't opened my mouth up to that point.  I tried to soothe them with my dulcet Walford tones, and pretty soon was deep in conversation with a man from Govan who was more interested in what was going on in Albert Square.  I told him that nobody would judge Scotland on the incidents tonight, that the goons with the union flag didn't represent anyone, least of all the "no" voters, and that I, personally, thanked the people of Scotland for giving the Westminster establishment the shake-up it so richly deserved.  "Aye," he grumbled, as he stomped back into the pub, "I'll tell 'em.  I'll tell the Scottish people that.  Every one o' them.  Individually."   


It was too late for a restaurant by the time we rolled out of the Irish bar, so we repaired to the Buchanan Street chippie for a time-honoured jewel of the Glaswegian culinary arts, the battered sausage supper.  The batter was like deep-fried emulsion paint, the anaemic sausage contained no meat, but the chips were delicious and full of nutritious carbs.  We sat on the street like locals and ate our supper, offering words of consolation and the odd chip to the occasional tired and emotional yesser who staggered past.  I felt a bit of a fraud, being quietly relieved as I was that the union had been saved.  Not that I am against the idea of independence, you understand.  I just felt that it was not the moment for it yet.  Too many unanswered questions.  Not least of which was, what the hell was the name of my hotel? 

The next morning in my hotel room I heard a distant muffled thud at 3-second intervals.  I assumed it was road works and switched on the shower.  By the time I was dry and dressed, the thumping was still going on, and now I could hear the faintest hint of a penny whistle.    Intrigued, I leaned out of the window overlooking North Hanover Street from which I had a view of one half of George Square.  A smartly-dressed brass band in military style attire was playing in the square.  Now you all know how I like a brass band.  But there was something a bit odd about this one.  No-one was standing around to  listen, for one thing.  The Glasgow Orange Defenders Flute Band was pissing into the wind.  Having failed to annoy anyone, they marched off down George Street and Glasgow rolled over for another Sunday morning snooze.

The rumour mill was in overdrive by the time I hit Lauder's in Sauchiehall Street later that day.  A wee lassie had been "done over and taken to hospital" the night before.  There had been "200 arrests".  When the news filtered through on BBC, there had been 11 arrests (fewer than at a standard Celtic-Rangers match) and no records of serious injuries.  But never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, I filed my copy liberally splattered with tomato ketchup from the chippie and signed off "Your correspondent on the front line of the Glasgow riots".

ALL'S WELL THAT SPLIT ENDS WELL

Gottfried (2nd trumpet) getting a lift to the station

(Picture:  Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly)

I am not one for blowing my own vuvuzela, as you know, but as a reserve member of the KNOB* I was called up to help provide some musical accompaniment for the big trade union demo yesterday.    

I arrived at the Gare du Nord bright and early. where I was supposed to meet up with Wolfgang, Gottfried and the boys.   While I waited I practised my Lotte Lenya repertoire.  Hundreds of militant Flemings in their trade union colours (green = Catholics, red = socialists, blue = independents) and brandishing flags, banners and cans of Jupiler were pouring off the trains from Antwerp, Gent and all points south.  It was pandemonium!  How was I supposed to find my brass section in all this hubbub?  I pushed my way through the crowd, and found myself being carried along on a wave of discontent.  Before long I had acquired "colours" - a red rain jacket and a hi-viz waistcoat, which I donned in hopes that the KNOB* lads would spot me more easily.  From then on I was pestered constantly by commuters trying to find their way out of the station, who took me for an employee of the railways. Oh, the ignominy!

It all started to go a bit Charlie Chaplin from this point on.  I had my outsize gay umbrella with me, in the event of rain.  At one point I opened it and held it aloft to avoid it getting broken in the crush.  I had bought this umbrella many years ago in Sitges, on a holiday with Harold, and it has survived many adventures, so I was damned if I was going to lose it to a bunch of gobby metalworkers.  I let the crowd carry me forward, waving my umbrella desperately in hopes that one of the KNOB* might see it and rescue me.

I was quickly surrounded by the hairdressers' branch of the CSC-ACV, who complained they were being goosed by the rank and file, and wanted to start a splinter group rallying under my umbrella.  I protested that I was only hired to provide the music, but they had taken a fancy to my fruity hat, and were now clamouring for a Carmen Miranda number. 

What can a world-famous cabaret artiste do?  I pulled out my maracas from my Delhaize bag-for-life and burst into a chorus of "Brazil" - perhaps not the wisest choice, given that the Belgian national footie team has qualified for Rio 2014.  Pretty soon the whole crowd were doing the conga and singing "Brazil", and "Here's to you, Vincent Kompany", and some of the trade unionists were getting a bit cross, as we were supposed to be heading for the European Parliament with angry looks and waving fists.  Instead, I was in the middle of a swirling vortex of singing hairdressers,  one or two of whom were glancing at my grey streaks with concern.  "Stand still a minute, love," said one, whipping out his instant-retouch pen.  


Of course, it would have to be at that very moment that my own hairdresser, Nico Lala, spotted me being retouched-up by another.  He let out a piercing banshee wail, and pushed his way through the crowd like Alexis Carrington at her screechiest.  "How very dare you!"  he spluttered, "That is Madame Daphne, she is MY client!"   The other hairdresser pffffed with contempt.  "Get over it, girlfriend!"  he pffffed.  "All's fair in love and extensions.  Anyway, are you a union member?"    Nico blanched visibly under his Max Factor American Tan panstick foundation.  "That," he retorted archly, raising himself up on his high heels, "Is neither here nor there.  I just stopped off to visit the lavatories."  The next thing I knew, there was a catfight - hairspray canisters going off like Exocet missiles.  I had to grab Nico and haul him away from the enraged horde of crimpers and other revolting workers, who would have killed him for not having a union card. 

The throng started to thin out as the procession started moving, and we managed to make some headway.  We even had time to sit down at a roadside cafe for a quick chai latte while Nico tidied up my split ends.  In the distance I heard the muffled sound of a brass band and recognized the rather rude noises that Ulrich likes to make with his trombone.  We forged ahead by using an old student trick I knew (taking the metro), and wove our way through the crowd to get to the front.  Eventually I spotted the distinctive white and bald heads of the KNOB*, and managed to catch up with them.  Once they had finished playing "Ciao, Bella, Ciao" for the umpteenth time,  I joined in on kazoo, and Nico played my maracas with surprising panache.  He does a better Carmen Miranda than me!

  

I bumped into a number of people I knew on the march, including Millicent Tendency, Frau Dr. Von Klampwangler and the girls from Hot Flash!, and started for the first time to enjoy the walk.  I never used to approve of demonstrations, but now I was starting to see the point.  It's the social side, you see.  It's a bit like a massive ramblers' club, with the occasional loud bang.  A bit like rambling through a firing range.  I was delighted to find my former schatz Bert leading the KNOB* for the last time, as next month he is due to be crowned Kaiser of all the German oompah bands across the Vaterland.  Der Fuhrer, Gott mit uns.  

 

 Bert got a free short back and sides from my crimper contingent.

The procession was mostly good-natured although I saw the odd heated exchange, which was usually between a Walloon and a Fleming who had possibly got heatstroke from the unseasonably warm Brussels weather.  So much for El Pueblo, Unido.  "L'union fait la force" is the motto of Belgium, but I think it must be a surrealist joke.  Flares were being thrown with a total abandon - one landed on a balcony of St Jean hospital.  I do hope there was nobody with a heart condition inside the room.  Someone with more courage than sense (probably Solidarnosc)  lobbed a flare inside the grounds of the Russian Embassy.  However, it appeared the Embassy officials had knocked off early for the weekend, so there was no riposte and Mr Putin did not try to annexe Ixelles. 

There were a large number of burly chaps in orange workclothes, with "Haven van Antwerpen" on the back, who seemed particularly vociferous.  I'll walk with them, I thought, for safety.  I noticed many of them were wearing those Palestinian chequered scarves across their faces, and complimented them on their foresight in dressing to beat the Brussels pollution levels.  

 Safe haven?  Perhaps not.

We arrived at the rallying point to find a battle raging - flares and paving stones were being met with CS gas from the riot police.  And who was in the middle of the fray?  The hairdressers, assisted by Scrumpy and his dreadlocked friends, who were inexplicably lobbing oranges at the police.  The police were catching them and peeling them, eating the segments in a languid fashion, before turning the water cannon up to level 7, and giving the protesters a good old Brussels downpour.   Just to make them feel welcome.  This only served to enrage the hairdressers - all their blowdrying instantly undone - and they piled in with thinning scissors and curling tongs.  The dockers, who had planned to storm the barricades themselves, were understandably miffed, and set about the hairdressers.  They were perhaps not ready for the resulting squeals and giggles and shouts of "Ooh you're a big boy!".  Meanwhile, the riot police were drinking Buck's Fizz on top of the water cannon and enjoying the show.

(Photo:  Berlaymonster)

There were some refreshment stalls set up at the end of the route, offering burgers, frites, and welcome drinks.  Thorsten, 3rd trumpet, who's a bit short-sighted, came back with a case of Jupiler.  "Belgian coca cola is very good!"  he announced happily.  I hadn't got the heart to contradict him. 

Belgian Coca Cola

A large amount of "Belgian coca cola" was being consumed, especially at the end, when the majority of the rank and file abandoned the speeches to go and watch the infinitely more entertaining running battles between the hairdressers, the dockers and the police, although some of the dockers had abandoned the fight and were enjoying head massages from the hairdressers.  So if nothing else was achieved, the workers of InBev are secure.  And I gathered up enough squashed oranges to make a whole batch of marmalade.  Our musical performance was much appreciated by the crowd and we played loud enough to drown out the screams of pain from fallen policemen.

That second hand copy of "The Communist songbook" was worth every penny. Take it away, Uli!

* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

THE SILVER SPRING

Alas!  The Curse of Daphne strikes again.  No sooner had I mentioned Paco de Lucia than he plucked his last plink, riffed his last riff, strummed his last, er, strum.  This has happened before.  Princess Diana, Colonel Gaddaffi, and Petite Anglaise all came a cropper after I mentioned them.  (Petite Anglaise, I hasten to point out, is still alive:  she just stopped blogging after I decided to pimp her).  

I swore not to do it again.  But the word of an over-50 is not worth the shopping list it's written on.  We forget things, you see.  Our brains start to erode.  We have more and more of those 'senior moments', when we get all the way to the end of the road under our own steam and then find we're still in our dressing gowns.  If we're lucky we can turn back before we get to the office.

And yet we can remember the name of every rock musician who went mad or died, or where Mick and Bianca got married, or exactly what happened to Gram Parsons' corpse.   We can wallop the youngsters in quiz nights - as long as the questions are not about computers, video games or rap music.   We can remember HOW to do the Funky Chicken, we just can't physically do it.  Bob Marley's "Get up, stand up" is just a song title now.  We don't go to rock festivals because it takes too long to fight your way to the loo.

A recent study by Belgian academics came to the alarming conclusion that older workers cost more than they are worth in terms of productivity.  I would like to vehemently disagree.  I would like to, but unfortunately I think they're probably right.  They keep telling us we'll have to work until we're 70, but who would want Mrs "Two Soups" Overall for a secretary, slopping the coffee in visitors' laps?  

These Belgian academics came to the conclusion that the only solution to this dilemma was to reduce workers' salaries in line with their performance.  Which will, in turn, have a reductory effect on their pensions.  Nay, nay, and thrice nay!  First they want to make us work till we drop, now they want us to do it for less money! 

This will bring the oldies out in their droves, waving their walking sticks and garden implements in the air and holding sit-down demos in the street.  They can hold out for days, even weeks, as long as they've got somewhere to sit down.  Such a shame Tony Benn has just gone, he would have been the perfect champion.  In his absence, perhaps I should take on his mantle and marshall the old fogeys to revolution.   We could call it the Silver Spring!  (Rather good that, better write it down before I forget it).  

As the La Pasionaria for the Third Age, I would stand proudly with my megaphone atop the barricades built from garden sheds and zimmer frames, and exhort older workers to rise up, or if they couldn't manage that, sit down vigorously.   Picture the scene:  hordes of angry sexagenarians, shuffling down the main boulevard.
 

"What do we want ??"   

" Oh, er, wait a minute ...... what DO we want, again? "  





 

 How to be an annoying older worker

Employers might complain that their older workers are already on a go-slow, but with age comes wisdom and a wiliness grown of experience.  Older workers know there is more than one way to skin a cat. We would start with a campaign of annoying behaviour in the workplace:  calling out the IT department several times a day because we've forgotten our password;  forgetting to flush the loo; audible belching in meetings;  slurping our tea; smelling slightly of wee, that sort of thing.  We would have to recruit some younger elements to take care of the Twitter account.

We would then move on to Phase II of our campaign involving civil disobedience:  clogging up nightclubs with seventies nights; taking ages to get change out at the cash desk to pay for one small jar of jam (you might say some do that anyway, but imagine 50 of them in a supermarket at the same time); driving up the wrong side of the motorway, or driving at all; attempting citizens' arrests for ageism; dancing to Black Sabbath; buying up all the tickets to Justin Bieber concerts; going naked on the beach in Ibiza; cooking cabbage; wearing leather trousers; and mowing the lawn on Sundays.    Of course the public would be taken hostage, but this is a noble cause that concerns everyone, and the public would have to bloody well put up with it.   One day this will be your problem. 

Cliff could be our Bono

 

In Phase III, if our demands are not met, we would be obliged to violence as a last resort.  Bombarding the Pensions Office with used incontinence pads as an opening salvo.  Drunk on sherry, we would loot surgical appliance shops and make IEDs out of the hollow tubular legs of commodes.  Suicide missions would be launched at the Ministry of Social Security, using wheelchairs piloted by the recently deceased.  This would have the double advantage of eliminating funeral expenses for the families, so it would become a point of honour to volunteer grandad for the final push, so to speak.  Elastic stockings could be used as catapults to lob Molotov cocktails made out of empty Sanatogen bottles at government offices (a younger person might need to be on hand to remind us to set fire to them first).    Hearing aids could be synchronised to bombard the European Commission with white noise - imagine half a million decibels of feedback. Alexander de Kroo (Belgian Minister of Pensions) would be kidnapped, tied up and subjected to 24-hour loud recordings of Eddy Wally at full volume until he agreed to our demands.

So think again, Belgian academics and government, before you attack older workers.  We have methods of persuasion that make waterboarding look like a fun day out.  Take it away, Eddy: 

ADIEU LA FRANCE, HOLA ESPANA

I have been an unrepentant  Francophile for many years, almost since the day, aged 7 or so, that I discovered old uncle Algernon's dusty pre-war Hugo's French Primer in the bookcase at home and started teaching myself phrases such as "Pardi! Otez votre haute-forme, Monsieur, avant de descendre de la calèche" *   By my teens I was nuts about all things French - Sacha Distel particularly.  At 15 I won two tickets to his concert at the London Palladium in a Daily Mirror competition, where a terrified Sacha was mauled by me and Aunt Lucy, and 48 other middle-aged women.

I am in here somewhere

I visited France at every opportunity until the age of 23, when I set off to seek my fortune as a danseuse exotique at the Folies Bergère.  I had no idea how long I would stay, but it turned out to be the equivalent of two seven-year itches.  However, in recent years I have become increasingly disillusioned with the Hexagon.  For the past eight years I have been on a catch-up exercise visiting all the bits of France I didn't have time to see when I lived in Paris.  I have been to Brittany North, Brittany South, La Rochelle, the Vaucluse, Corsica, the Loire Valley, Cathar country, Alsace AND Lorraine, Champagne country, the Nord-Pas de Calais and of course countless visits to Paris.  I have been searching for that corner of France that beckoned winsomely, the place where I could hang my béret, take off my Christian Louboutins and pour myself a glass of Chablis.    Unfortunately, eight years later, I find French towns looking more like Slough than Shangri-La.   Sometimes you wonder if there's not a case to be made to Angela Merkel to send the Luftwaffe back on an architectural mercy mission.

 

Cergy-Pontoise

In addition, I am coming to the conclusion that France isn't all it used to be.  I notice a growing trend for Starbucks and Claire's Accessories.  The food isn't so good any more.  It is generally accepted everywhere - everywhere except France, that is - that you'll eat better in London than in Paris these days.    The French have lost that je ne sais quoi.  400,000 of them have buggered off to London.  Most café-tabacs in Paris are run by the Chinese.  And there are roundabouts everywhere.  You might as well be in Milton Keynes. And now it looks as though the dreadful Le Pen woman and her odious cohorts may be running the place before long.   The last bastion of the Fronde is about to fall.  I am throwing in the torchon.   It's time to find a new hunting ground. 

                                 The old Spanish mission ... no bullet holes in this one

Gorbals and I made an expeditionary trip to Andalusia last November.  It's no country for old women down there - it's where Sergio Leone filmed his "Dollars" series of spaghetti westerns, and every petrol pump attendant looks like the illegitimate son of Lee Van Cleef.  Added to that, we were staying 600m up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and it was freezing cold.

I had been to Spain seven times before, since 1986, and therefore am not a total virgen in matters Iberian.  I had picked up a little Spanish on my travels.  I am a great fan of Spanish food, although I do wish they would eat at a reasonable hour.    The Spanish breakfast comes a very close second to the Full English in my book.  You can keep your cappuccino, a Spanish cafe con leche accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice is the best way to start the day.


Many years ago I had a plan to visit the three great Moorish cities of Andalusia. On previous visits I had been to the Alcazar in Seville and the Mezquita in Cordoba.   I finally completed my triathlon in November, with the breathtaking Alhambra in Granada. 

I stood on one of the verandahs of the Generalife and gazed out over the palaces, transported back to a previous life as the Sultan's flame-haired favourite, floating about in fuchsia chiffon harem pants bearing silver platters of Fry's Turkish Delight, or occasionally treating him to my old routine from the Folies Bergere.

"Come to me, my little loukoum" he called, looking a bit like Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia.  "You must show me that thing you do again with the ping pong balls."  I fluttered my eyelashes over my yashmak and shook my head demurely.  "Sire, you are confusing me with that bint from Bangkok," I protested.  "I only do it with Maltesers."    Only I could get away with contradicting the mighty Sheikh Ahmed Bin Liner, anyone else would have been beheaded for such lèse-majesté.  But he could refuse me nothing.  My lustrous curly locks - the colour of tangerines, he wrote in his poetry - and my alabaster skin fascinated him.   He called me Rebekah, which in his dialect means "She who listens in the shadows".   I sat at his feet in rapt attention while he recited his love poetry.  Unfortunately his voice was so mellifluous that I fell asleep, and when I awoke I had missed the guided tour of the palaces and nearly missed the charabanc back to our hotel.

Of course there is the problem of the 1 million Brits already in Spain, and it would seem that no corner of Iberia is untouched by British hand.  Still, I'm not as purist as I used to be about being an emigrant.  I would of course learn Spanish should I decide to live there, but I would not turn my nose up at having a British supermarket within walking distance, Tetley's tea bags and tapas are not mutually exclusive.


And then there's the music.  I am, as you know, a great fan of flamenco.  I have seen Manitas de Plata in concert twice - and actually met him once - as well as Antonio Gades' dance troupe and Paco de Lucia in concert, not to mention a good few tablaos in Madrid and Seville, and almost became engaged to an accidental member of the Gipsy Kings once in the South of France.  The flamenco is a dance which is designed for a woman of my calibre, shoe size and temperament.  Stamping my feet is something which comes very easy to me.

An early addition to my musical education

 The formidable and elastic-stocking-defying Blanca del Rey, about whose 
live performance I reported in 2011

On the whole, there's a lot about Spain I like.  I shall be taking my investigations further in future years, and to France I say "zut alors".   Spain has much to recommend it.  I am sure you will agree, ladies.

*  I say!  Remove your top hat, Sir, before getting down from the carriage.