Now that I don't live in London anymore, it's impossible for me to work at the Warrington, or to keep up on the latest info on the Gordon Ramsay progress on our beloved Maida Vale pub.
The last word I can give you is delays still continue with planning permissions to the feisty, Grade-II listed girl. This, in the long-run, will benefit locals who want The Warrington to stay as true to her skirt-tossing boozer self as possible. After all, no one wants a repeat of the Elgin gutting... Although that old place certainly needed an update, it's a good example of gastro-pubbing-gone-IKEA. It's the kind of revamp that, while interesting, will never truly capture the heart of locals and has all the staying power of a Top Shop t-shirt.
As for me, I've found another chef, restaurant and big project to slave over. Look for the details on my new blog, or come for a bite to eat at Dressing Room, a Homegrown Restaurant, whenever you are this way.
Where to Eat in Maida Vale whilst waiting for Gordon Ramsay and Holdings to get the Warrington Sorted
Or... Hello, lovely Idlewild, so long dodgy Truscott Arms...
Somewhere between the time Gordon Ramsay circled the Warrington last autumn in his 4x4 and this week's first big test match at Lord's, the Ruby Group of London has SOMEHOW managed to buy, close, gut, decorate, and re-open the council-housing hangout Truscott Arms on Shirland Road as the gorgeous Idlewild.
It isn't a miracle. It is just planning.
The Idlewild menu is British , with a range from Neal's Yard cheeses to Nettle Soup. It's available at socialable hours (usual lunch and dinner hours, and on Sundays you can eat from noon to nine), and the look of the place is elegant, (unlike the newest shade added to Dulux's "Colours that Don't Go": Skiddaw Purple).
In fact, Idlewild breathes sociability, with the doors cast open wide and the staff helpful and charming when you stop in.
Meanwhile, back at the Roundabout.... there's a new dartboard. And look! We've found all the old Truscott Arms kids, too! Ah, it's good to see the youth of today emulating the ways of their elders: smoking, sucking back Sambuca and whinging about everything around the beer-soaked bar. Now, the Warrington! That's what a boozer should be!
Yeah, it's true... the day of the traditional boozer is passing. And whilst I enjoy the good old British tradition of the empty-stomach swill-up on a warm evening, what I am really glad for, most nights, is a proper meal. Serve it with a truly great beer (looking forward to the selection of bitters and Belgians the Warrington will have on offer after this week) and you are close to achieving Nirvana. If only that idiot in the corner would stop smoking.
So whilst you are patiently waiting for a taste of Ramsay's pig cheeks -- due to Grade II listed building delays, the Olympics might be sooner -- then keep it in the neighbourhood and see what Idlewild, on Shirland Road, has going for it.
Psst... I'll let you in on a secret the French have been keeping from you: you can drink more and longer, if you would only eat! Eat isn't cheating.
The idiot who said that? The half-dead, single guy, smoking in the corner.
At a pub, I learned the English are hard to get to know.
But once you know them, it's hard to let them go. And they don't let go easy. They are like old dogs. Completely faithful. But they probably won't leap up when you come in.
In a pub I learned how beautiful cigarette smoke is, filtered in the late afternoon sunlight, or swirling around an old geezer's face, as he grips a warm bitter. He licked the paper of that cigarette himself. I watched him tuck the tobacco in with his thumb.
In a pub, I learned that some people don't live in their homes. They only exist there, alone and bored. Lonely and sad, making noodles for one. At their local pub, they have friends and there is always someone to drink with.
If I lived in London, I lived in a pub. If I drank in London, I bought one for the guys at the bar, and one for the barmaid serving me.
If I lived in London, I was happier in the pub with no music. I was honored when the governor himself served me, and wiped the bar up with a towel after the pint dribbled. I was glad because the doors were propped open 9 months of the year, the air blowing through, and dogs lay content and miserable all at once at the feet of their wobbly people.
The pub is home for anyone who is British, however temporary. I had one of my own, in Maida Vale, but there are plenty of pubs to go around. Everywhere you go. One for you and one for everybody.
If you must leave someplace, you should leave it sad to go.
After we left our Randolph Avenue flat, we were desperate to stay in Maida Vale. It isn't the best place in London, just as any single person isn't the best person in the world.
No. Just like a person, every nook of London has something charming and warm, someplace worth nuzzling. If you've made that place your own, you get attached, no matter how gritty or posh.
Maida Vale is our local.
It's where our halal, Soloman Supermarket, is.
It's where, at the Starbucks, I wrote two books.
It's where the recreation ground is, the one where I played tennis and made friends with Fiona.
It's where Leslie and his dog Thomas walk everyday, and we stop and chat.
It's where Frances and I found each other.
It's where we found another Canadian Colin, whom we like very much.
It's where we ran into the Bannermans on their way out, Steve drenched in sweat from his cycle commute.
It's where Tim and Peter lived on Elgin, and cooked for us, before they got married and moved to the country (not in that order).
It's where we lived, practically, with Soren for a year, who loved the Cubs and Wisconsin and one very long hallway and who helped up moved twice, and called Trivial Pursuit: "T.P."
It's where our London friends are, on Lauderdale, Essendine, Castellain, and Widley Roads, and Sutherland Avenue, Warrington Crescent.
It's where we met Penny, on the first day, who got me the job at the Warrington.
It's where I found my feet, and learned to appreciate a cloudy sky.
It's where we lost a baby, and Colin lost a job, and where we drank with our neighbours, who all walked home the day the bombs exploded.
It's where bowling became something done on a green,and al fresco parties were held on the rooftoop.
It's where foxes were our neighbours and horses trotted past our morning windows.
It's where we discovered how the question "You alright, mate?" could be a greeting.
It's where we drank too much and ate many packets of crisps for supper.
Maida Vale is our local. No blue plaques to mark the places where we've been. Too busy, too many others to remember and deal with and forget again.
Aimee came to visit me and, so, I did what I do when people come to visit... I made plans.
Came across a listing in Time Out London magazine (the website is useful, but nothing beats the actual publication... it is original, poignant and catches the exact tone of London's edge. Not just a calendar.)
Back to the story... Caught my eye that the Westminster Abbey Bellringers were offering "An Evening with..." sort of thing... Wasn't sure what it would be but I am always game for anything "behind the scenes."
Turns out it was the some of the best spent money I have doled out in London. The event was not only intimate and informative (only 30 or so people attended) but they served wine and hors d'oeurves after. Here's some tidbits we learned:
1. Change ringing as such is different that the bell rungs at standard campus-type campaniles, which is actually an instrument; If you are interested don't ask me to explain it... click here and read this.
2. A "peal" is over 5000 "changes" long and takes about 3 and half hours to do... The Abbey ringers (who are volunteers) only do them for special events like the Queen's Jubilee, Prince William/Harry's birth; Royal weddings, etc.
3. The bells in Westminster Abbey are hung upside down and rotate once, all the way down then up again, on one "change"... Each ringer is only ringing one bell... the guy on the box is ringing the "tenor" bell, which is the largest bell (and the heaviest).
4. Most of the bells at the Abbey have been recast recently, but one of them hundreds of years old and dates back to Elizabeth I.
Oh, and it wasn't too loud in there... there is a chamber between the room we are in and the bell chamber, built to reduce the sound considerably. We did get to go up into the bell chamber for part of the talk and they did ring one bell for us while we were up there. It was VERY loud, so loud it was better with our fingers in our ears.
And yes, they did serve drinks and food after. It was all very civilised!
God, it's gorgeous right now in Maida Vale... I just glanced down Clifton Gardens one afternoon and, suddenly, every tree is in leaf and the air is full of the smell of hyacinths in bloom.
Ahhh, spring... a time for freshness, renewal, of kicking open doors, shaking out rugs, polishing windowpanes, letting in the light.
Meanwhile back at the roundabout ... Ramsay Holdings' poor, ignored Warrington, with the same beer-soaked carpet. The same dilapitated picnic tables. The same chained-up restaurant, windows tarped over. The sad dart board with its stuffing oozing out.
An odd sort of time warp that is draining the poor life out of Miss Thing right now. Increased drink and snack prices; a revolving door of trial staff members; a string of formerly barred customers and stragglers from the closed Truscott Arms breaking glasses and raising the volume and aggression level; and the latest round of confused Ben's Thai customers, still lost.
It's true, I know, that the execution of change -- and all great ideas -- never happens quickly. Impatience is the primary cause of stunted growth, I believe. There is something to be said, however, for attending to passion and feeding a flame. Once the locals were mildly convinced (and it did take some time and genuine enthusiam on our part) that although John Brandon could never be replaced, the Warrington would have a good life ahead, it was time to strike. Opening in April or May would have done that.
Now, as we Ramsay minions stare openly into the face of No-Plan-Land, I can begin to feel myself -- and my colleagues -- tiring, losing hope. We were in for the long haul, but with little support from the head office and the man himself, I can see us all starting to sink from exhaustion.
When one customer last night asked about the delay in the restaurant opening, I repeated, again for the thousandth time, with a worn but hopeful smile, the story of planning permission and listed building status. "We hope it'll be ready by the end of the summer."
"So," he said, grinning gleefully, "looks like your boss didn't plan things too well."
I didn't respond. My plastered on smile didn't move. I just shrugged. I couldn't help myself. Was it true? Probably.
He turned to his friends and said, "You hear that guys? Gordon Ramsay's %ucked it up! Haha!"
I would have argued. I always do. But we were swamped and understaffed, chasing ourselves coming and going. When we weren't explaining where Ben's Thai had gone, we were schpeeling about where the new restaurant (opening in April!) had gone, or where Martin had gone. Soon we'd be explaining about Justin, too.
I left it at that and didn't worry. My boss is a divisive character. You can't convince everyone you meet to like Man United, the New York Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys.
I'll go back to treading water better, on Sunday evening. For now, I'm going to barbeque with my friend's in the sun, in Maida Vale. And if anyone asks me anything about the Warrington, my response will be: "Get me another drink, will you?"
For those still looking for Maida Vale's favourite Thai restaurant, Ben's Thai, formerly of the Warrington Hotel, don't worry, it hasn't gone far.
Under the new name, Dang at Ben's Thai, Dang and her clan have moved above another pub, the Robert Browning, on Clifton Road. This gritty old man's boozer, situated on a properly posh throughfare, can only be improved upon with the addition of W9's most beloved Thai family.
And if you are wondering about the menu, have no fear. Colin and I ate there the other night. The duck spring rolls were just as crispy; the panang just as creamy and the pad thai as sweet and sour with the right spicy kick as ever. In fact, we think the cooks have stepped up their game even, probably not harmed one bit by a beautifully refitted kitchen.
The dining room, by the way, is gorgeous with its lemongrass-green walls and homage to lovely Mrs. Barrett Browning. Be warned, however, that it is only half the size of the old Waz space, with absolutely no smoking in the building at all (except the woks, of course). This means bookings will become even more vital as this place gets its feet under it. Prices are still as reasonable as ever.
Dang at Ben's Thai on Clifton Road... Yeah, it's moved, but it hasn't changed so much. You still have to pass through unsavory pub sort to get to, as one customer called, "a great cheap feed."
Dang at Ben's Thai 15 Clifton Road Above the Robert Browning London W9 1SY Phone: 020 72663134
Days and days of beauty and wonder in London... Shhhh!! Can't talk just now...
Too busy exchanging ideas with this flower...
"All the lights on and you are alive But you can't point the way to your heart So sublime, when the stars are aligned But you don't know You don't know the greatness you are
"Cause Blue Eyes You are destiny's scene Cause Blue Eyes I just wanna be the one
Bill Buford's recent article on Gordon Ramsay's slog in the U.S. ("The Taming of the Chef: Can Gordon Ramsay make it here?" April, 3, 2007 ) has me thinking again about the sins and virtues of the Ramsay Holdings pub venture, and the exhausting drive my darling head chef is taking into my homeland.
I discussed the issue of the Ramsay brand back in October, with Fiona, a brand consultant friend of mine. This was just after Gordon and company bought the Warrington Hotel in Maida Vale and just after his tie with Thresher’s was launched, thus plastering his mug all over every corner of London.
I said: His brand needs revising. It needs to be pulled back. He is in danger of over-exposure with a limited audience. His edge will lose its charm, and it is in danger of suffocating his skill.
Fiona said: No, not necessarily. He is highly-identifiable. He reaches a broad market with passion and strength. His brand is on the up.
Gordon Ramsay, the Shape Shifter The difference between our viewpoints is global exposure. Whilst Fiona was thinking about the European market, where Ramsay’s history is known, I was thinking about the American market, where Ramsay was about to turn the American concept of London on its ear.
In New York, Ramsay is investing millions of dollars trying to convince a very limited American audience – and very particular one, the finicky New York restaurant crowd – that Great Britain makes Great Food and Great Chefs. Well, at least one.
Unfortunately, The Great Chef is busy building himself up as the next Posh, the Great Celebrity, and his modus operandi of training up other Great Chefs (or hiring them, in the case of Angela Hartnett at Claridge’s) is slowly waning, as was seen at the almost ignored opening of the Narrow in Limehouse.
Ramsay is spreading himself out in London, to make the most of the limited time his brand has value. He is turning his obsessive eye to the original Frontier, as if it were virginal, as naive as most Brits believe it to be, back then and now. He assumes his same concepts of conquest will work in the U.S. market. And that the same cooks will succeed in a U.S. marketplace.
The Grand Delusion Why, you ask, is this occurring? Gordon is a certified celebrity here in the U.K. and a hometown boy. Whatever the individual opinion of him, there is still a staunch dedication to his essential Britishness. And naturally there will always be hangers-on willing to splash out the cash to eat at a table marked by his name, even if he hasn’t set foot in the place for months.
And whilst the Brits look the other way, for the next phase of his life, like his friend Posh, Gordon is interested in the new America, to expand his empire. The realization I believe he is slowly finding over there, is that his “eff-ing” brand won’t sell his tranquil and modest food to Americans, even if they would surely love the stuff if they ate it.
Expectations are a funny thing. We can get food anywhere, but it's the show that has us hanging on. Delivering American palates from the divisive foul-mouth/fine-food paradigm will be his biggest challenge.
I Heart New York Buford’s observation in his long and complex New Yorker piece of Ramsay’s London opening paints our Gordon Ramsay exactly right: a manic chef with a spotted history who— like so many Brits— doesn’t understand America but is obsessed with owning their ideal of New York. They have to have it.
But it isn't American New York they want: it's some movie image of the city, their New York, with its glittering wet streets, luminous yellow cabs, the dizzying heights of sculpted metal. The tough parts: the muggings and the race issues and the insufferable English tourists, they are always hidden from the postcards.
And, of course, when you have a particular British attitude of suffering and privilege, and you live on a particularly isolated small island where the currency is particularly strong, well.... all of this can lead to a particularly big surprise when your Big Chef head doesn’t fit into the four-star mold of New York fine dining.
"The past is never dead, it is not even past." ~William Faulkner
A woman I served at the Warrington said hello to me on the street today. I was walking to Starbucks to get started working. I thought, as I saw her: She drinks gin and soda and fresh lime, loves a man who drinks London Pride ale. They'd both be so much handsomer if they didn't smoke so much. I don't know her name, offhand.
We exchanged a little holiday small talk. Then, pause, and she asked me the question everyone seems to, finally, ask:
"So how's the book coming?"
It's just a question about work, really. "So Elizabeth, how's your job?" only more specific. My job is something tangible and intangible all at once. "Elizabeth is writing a book. I've seen loads of them in Borders. I am even reading one right now. Well, actually, its a magazine." Like knowing the local weatherman, stopping him on the street, then asking him how the weather is. Only slightly less interesting than that.
So, Elizabeth, how is the book coming?
The book is coming. The book is here. The book is written. The book is waiting for me to find the answer, to stop dawdling, to decide that I, in fact, do know what I am doing, since I have been doing this for 15 years. The book is living, and lives in my memory and actions, a part of who I am. It died over the summer, or so I thought. It wriggled itself out of its cocoon and is sitting on the branch now, fluttering its wings.
It is memory, carrying it forward, and me backward, on the days I am working. I remember scents, and patterns and voices and numbers, and I want to write them. I want to write about the texture of a back of neck under my fingertips, or children's bodies crammed on a carousel spinning, or the sound of a heart, straining toward love.
"It's fine. It's going really well, thanks."
She wants to know when, of course, and so do I. I have to practice answering that question, while not listening to it. It is all here, in front of me, and trapped, behind my eyes.
"Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?"
In the off season, all things gay and wild and full of choleric swirl give way to a hangdog mood. No pink flying discs or overturned sandcastle buckets.
In the off season, there are silences in unexpected pockets. Silences filling the wide open days, broken only by a gull cry, a car door, the once or twice splash of a startled, choking wave on the sand.
Off season there are no shoeprints. Only birdtracks.
Off season, windless day, sunless day, empty sea. A sea on its back, floating and unconcerned, staring at its reflection in the empty sky.
In the off season, the moves are subtle, pleasures simple. Enjoy the beach. The sand, the grit of pounded coastline, years of pressure, eons of battered edges, pliable edges, corroding one into another. Soft and softer, saturation of one element into another.
All this will be noise. All this will clatter again, soon, with the slashing of plastic shovels, rubber rafts humping the tide.
But in this day, the off season licks the salt from the rim and sips. Time is down and the beach is here, to enjoy.
Despite the fact that Ben's Thai in the Warrington closed JANUARY 31, and Ramsay Holdings have owned all of the Warrington Hotel since October 31, 2006, many guests are still caught unawares, wandering up the stairs of the saloon bar for that reliable local Thai in Maida Vale.
If you are one of the many who hasn't noticed that Ben's is no longer "THIS WAY ►" in the Warrington, here's a hint on where to look. The beloved ol' standby is rekitting out the old Robert Browning on Clifton Road, only one street away. I hear they should be opening end of March, but call and ask them.
If you are wondering where the Robert Browning is, there are probably one of a few reasons for that:
1. You don't like Sam Smith's beers. 2. You don't like being insulted for asking for a clean glass for your drinks. 3. You don't shop at either Tesco or any outrageously overpriced organic food markets. 4. Your other local is the Chippenham, and you are too drunk/high to roll all the way down the "HILL" into the Vale. 5. Your other local is the Elgin, and, you are too stiff/paralyzed from sitting on footstools to walk all the way to Clifton Road.
Any of these reasons might have caused you to overlook the Robert Browning, one of the three most prominently located pubs in the Maida Vale (the Warrington, naturally, being number one and the Elgin dribbling in at second on that list).
So, since I work for the competition but I love my old friends from Ben's, that is what you get in the way of info. That's all I am going to say about it.
Enjoy, and oh... if you get lost, it's fine to go eat at Street Hawker. Their spring rolls are delish!
At the last minute, Colin and I decided we couldn't leave Europe without a trip to Amsterdam.
This is the sort of trip that makes me wonder about all those OTHER places I haven't seen yet: what IF? What if I am missing out on the place of my dreams? What if home is around the corner, or in this case, just over the North Sea by 40 minutes, and I never ever knew?
Amsterdam, it seems, has officially usurped Paris (sorry Mme. Ségolène Royal) at the top of my list of favorite city... Or, rather, I think the list should be renamed, and here it is, with the top five, or so:
Top Cities that Are Better to Me than London, (in My Poor Hacked-off and Sadly Jaded Opinion)
1. Amsterdam 2. Paris 3. New York 4. Salzburg 5. Kansas City, MO
I also have had minor love affairs with cities like Minneapolis, Florence, Luxor, and Colorado Springs, but the scale of my attachment to these cities hasn't quite been the same. With them, it was always more like a fling, not the sort of city you'd like to take home to Mom.
Amsterdam, though? It's the perfect combination of pretty virgin and secretly dirty girl.
I have more to say about Amsterdam, but for now, enjoy the photos and please send me your own Amsterdam stories, love or otherwise.
It's a good time to be sentimental about the Warrington. After all, the bar staff hasn't changed much. The regulars like Bill and Tony and Stan are still propping up their ends of the bar. It's smoky and that one ceiling fan always looks like it is ready to fly off and shoot across the room.
Old pubs... old, grade-two-listed pubs -- no matter who owns them -- are all the same. They are bitchy and sweet and demanding. And they take a hell of a lot of time getting ready to go out.
These are the days of the time warp, like those last seconds before you open the Tardis door, not sure at all what will be on the other side. It is scary, but aren't you curious? Isn't it going to be good?
Now that Ben's Thai has found itself a new home at the friendly, ne'er-do-well boozer the Robert Browning (or at least, so they say), things have settled down. The less-than-regulars still stream in on a Friday night, clomp upstairs, and turn back again, befuddled and wondering. But they have a drink, both of the booze and of the atmosphere.
The more the time goes by, the easier it is to love the Warrington exactly as it is now : not John's, not ours, not Gordon Ramsay's, not theirs. Right now, it is a ship at sea, with old barred customers drifitng in as new, posh guests are finishing up. New quiz nights and wine lists are coming in as broken fittings and useless furniture -- inanimate and human -- are going out.
It's easy to love the Warrington right now, while the past and the future are right here , sizing each other up.
There's nothing tastes as sweet as a well-mixed drink.
I tried to make it into Starbucks today, to my usual table.
It was so full. Every table, with a long queue too, of all sorts of people in grey and chalk blue and black.
It must have been the wet day. We were all chasing our heavy spirits inside, somewhere warm, with warm drinks. If we huddle close, our stranger bodies will still make enough fire to keep each other warm.
So I passed on that. Instead I went around the corner. I left a note for the woman I miss, the woman I've been wanting to talk to, now for weeks. She won't get it until next Wednesday, and by then I will have forgotten. By then, probably, the sun will be shining again. But I've left it anyway, and it helped to write it.
I stopped outside the Elgin Bar, looking at all its empty tables and stupid footstools. I opened the door to go in. Empty, all except the wall of grey smoke that hit me. I fell back and ran away quickly.
Crossed the zebra crossing and stopped the other side for the wild-eyed girl and her slumpy boyfriend. "Boosz? Boosz to Weemblee Centraal?" I didn't understand her, two times. She stirred her finger around. I had to look at their map.
They wanted a bus to Wembley Central and I just wanted to give them 10 pounds to take the Tube six stops instead, but they wanted a bus and I wanted to shake her and shout: "It's all too hard to explain, in the three or so words we mutually understand! Take my money!"
"Number 16," I said, and pointed toward Maida Vale Road, because I knew they wouldn't take the money and they wouldn't let me walk them there, no matter how much I wanted to.
I walked on, hiding myself under the tiny umbrella. When I don't have anywhere else to go, I go to the Warrington.
The grey man came over and sat down next to me, even though I was working, and I was wearing my earphones.
"I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt." And then he went on, for an hour, while I listened, twisted in my seat, my back aching. The sailboat to Antigua. The NHS doctor who didn't care. The years of undiagnosed chronic fatigue syndrome and the 150 aspirins he swallowed and vomited again. The black blood and the rotting longboat and solicitor who charged £88.13.
The hard breaths between the sentences and his refusal to hope. The 13 courier jobs at 5 p.m. that made him so angry. I listened, and so did the others, eavesdropping nearby, those other singular men drinking alone, the ones who knew me from the pub, who were near enough to hear. To keep watch and take care.
He left because I made him. He would have talked until he was empty. And he was packed full, stuffed with sadness and despair. I looked outside and couldn't hold anymore of that. Not today. Not this week. Not this year.
It's the hard season. You wake up and look out into sameness, so same it blurs. After days of that, years of that... it becomes simple, unkind water torture. No one is immune to it.
It's harder to see. You can look, but the reflection erodes.
If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul. -- Jerzy Kosinski
There are lots of good reasons to love guys... My husband is SUCH a guy.
He and I went to meet the OTHER Canadian Colin for coffee Sunday lunch-ish... I didn't stay long as I had to go to work at the pub. "Well, guys, I'll leave you to it," I think were my parting words.
So I go home, change, fluff my hair, etc. and pop out the door round about 2:45 p.m. I am about to take off left but for some reason, I look right. What do I see but Colin and Colin (peas in pod) coming toward me... I've recorded the exact moment here for your delight. Colin's words were "I thought you'd be gone by now, hee hee."
Guy's will be guys...
Oh and just to ease the minds of all you proud Canadians out there... Colin's -- the other Colin-- partner Kate won a year's supply of Bud at her Christmas party. Hence the reason they are drinking Bud.
I've been a rabid subscriber of Orion Magazine for over two years now. It's that sort of relationship, the kind you can't remember how it started, and you never ever want it to change or end.
There's all too much going on the in world. So much so that word itself has become overinflated, then squashed, a overcooked soufflee. Bart Simpson has more existential meaning to us than our own political leaders. I love Bart.
I wonder, why. But then as I sit with the latest issue of Orion, I understand again why. Bart, the South Park gang, Trailer Park boys, and Orion magazine. They do things for me that mainline politics don't. They make me think.
In James Howard Kunstler's article "Making Other Arrangements" -- with stunning photographs by David Maisel -- he talks about the American view of the future as "wishful thinking," a wonderful analogy to the psychological concept of "magical thinking" -- that kind of denial that people go into when they face horrible grief and pain. Kunstler is talking about America's inability to imagine a world without cars -- and to plan for it. Not in a gloom and doom way, but in a practical way.
American suburbia represents the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. The far-flung housing subdivisions, commercial highway strips, big-box stores, and all the other furnishings and accessories of extreme car dependence will function poorly, if at all, in an oil-scarce future. Period.
These ideas, this kind of direct speaking -- without the dance of idiocy, without the ridiculous fear and grovelling that seems to have overtaken mainstream media -- makes me want to sing. It makes me want to walk to work, ride a bike, plant my own sustainable garden (and yes! -- my family -- learn to eat from it!).
Most of all, it makes me realize that I am responsible.
"Ask not what your country can do for you..." one President said, and a country answered.
My mom always reminds me that when the oil crisis hit in 1973, President Nixon persuaded Americans to drive less, to get rid of their gas-guzzling automobiles for more fuel-efficient cars. And people listened to him. People do listen to their leaders, if only their leaders would lead and say useful things. The environmental crisis today is far more serious than the oil crisis of the 1970s.
But for me, reading Orion isn't about environmental issues. It's about Different Thinking.
People often ask me -- especially now that I live in England -- who I voted for, what party I represent, where I stand. The more I walk, the longer I live in the EU, the more I read, the more consolidated my understanding of my own "politics." Here, so you know I am using this definition: "the process and method of making decisions for groups. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions including corporate, academic, and religious." Because words have the meaning you assign them. You. The reader.
My politics are not party defined; they are not about governments or about power, per se. But they are about thinking differently, so in that sense, they are "liberal." Here I defined that as "tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition."
Conversatism is often used as liberal's antonym but it isn't. It is suited for many areas of the social and governmental arena -- the definition I found that works: "in politics, a loosely defined term indicating adherence to one or more of a family of attitudes, including respect for tradition and authority and resistance to wholesale or sudden changes."
For sudden change is not always good. However, being unwilling or closed to it -- the name of family, tradition, religion, or worst of all, freedom -- does no one favors. Just as wild change and reform in response to fads or knee-jerk reactions, also does not suit us.
That is why, I think, I have become obsessed slightly with Orion. It represents the kind of politics that work: the politics of personal revolution, of Gandhi and Jesus. The writing is defined not by "traditional liberalism" or even "radical conservatism," -- two hybrids which have gotten American politics stuck in the flat, slap-happy, name-calling, do-nothing state that it is in.
The people behind Orion are people acting, then writing or showing in it, in complex terms. They are everyday leaders and activists and artists, whose politics are not governmental. They are personal. They use that complex, critical thinking we are taught in univeristy, then seem to ignore forever, as we spend our days cultivating friendships with the same photocopied people: overselves, in different clothes and different houses.
I am one of those contrary people. I like to argue. I like to meet people and poke at them until I find the similarities in our differences. Even in a city like London -- 280 languages -- I have managed to survive.
Read Orion... But don't think the writers are on your side... and don't think they aren't.
Because for each other them, it isn't politics. It's personal.
Colin and I went for a walk to Hyde Park last weekend. We've been having beautiful sunny weather here so far for most of the winter. Temperatures in the 40s and 50s . We can't complain. It's hit or miss, of course, as some days it pours with rain and there is even the occasional snow. But this is winter in London and it really is the best time to be here.
The city is empty of tourists and Londoners come out to walk and enjoy their city. Sure they go and escape on holiday too... it is that time of year, when the sameness of the weather can start to make you a little bonkers. But on days like this when the sun is starting to stretch itself back out long into the later afternoon, Londoners are out everywhere.
I've never been a huge fan of Hyde Park. It doesn't have the soul of Central Park in New York. Parts of it are wild and unkempt, but some of it, like this area, it is just flat, open and empty, with views of the buildings and the traffic around. Guys play football here and it's the area where they hold concerts in the summer. But it is sort of gaping to me, too empty. Green Park and St. James Park, which carry on from Hyde Park, are more modest in size, more treed, and more beautiful.
Still Hyde Park has all kinds of charms and weird beauties, like horses, a rowing lake; Speaker's Corner; an elusive putting green -- which we have never found; a lovely rose garden; and even a lagoon, for swimming in the summer. Hyde Park is the center of London, and if I were a famous celebrity, I'd come here, because it would be easy to be anonymous in all this space, on roller blades, on bicycle, or at the Saturday and Wednesday running clubs.
Why do I get up early on Friday mornings? Am I gunning to save my soul?
What do I really LIKE getting up early on Friday monrings?
It's a good cup of tea, really. At The Passage. Now that two years or more have passed here in London, I can say one thing I love about London is going to the Passage.
Volunteer work is a weird sort of thing. It's a hard thing to talk about.
Sometimes people think you are so good for doing it. They sort of coo when I tell them about my two days at the Passage. I can tell people that I volunteer at a soup kitchen and that excuses the fact that I don't have a "real job."
Or some people immediately leap with excuses for why they don't do it. Or can't. Or won't. I don't mind, I think. You do what you can, or what you will yourself to do.
But if I ask myself why I go, it's really because, I like it there. I like everything about it. I like the people at the Passage: the chefs and the staff, David the volunteer coordinator. I like the other volunteers: Francesa who comes in to wash the pots and pans; Mary, the cleptomaniac, Brian the toast maker; Andrew the nervous CFO; Tom, the full-time volunteer; Nishi, the "hot-hot-hot" mute wonder; Anita and Patrick and Sr. Joan and Sr. Patricia and all the sisters whose names I get mixed up but, when I think about them, I know exactly who they are in my mind.
I love the clients too, the mumbling cranky, smiling blokes who still want their hot toast served on hot plates, who pay for their tea, just like you and me. They look so happy after they have had a shower. They remember my name and ask about politics, just like the boys down at the pub.
Is it alright, to love, selfishly, the work you do selflessly? I suppose that conundrum is the best part about it.
It's my birthday week (yes... I do get a whole week. Why? What do you get?) so naturally friends have been gearing up for a month or so with plans, even though I told them not to (ha ha).
Actually, in light of the developments surrounding my dysfuntional body, I wasn't feeling much up for any kind of celebration reminding me of my age progressing naturally. But fortunately Frances didn't listen to my morbundity talking. She had a "just us" girls night planned for Saturday, the 3rd (she was leaving town the 5th and wouldn't be here for next Saturday) and ordered me to make sure I was dressed up.
I had no idea what was planned except I had to get dressed up. As my raging hormones have ensured that I am 15 pounds heavier than I would like to be (what woman isn't though?), I had to go shopping for something that fit. Fortuately I found not just one, but three cool, hip-forgiving dresses at H&M ... a shopping coup if ever there was one. A lovely black taxi avoided traffic and wove its way through Marylebone and Mayfair to the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz (the first surprise), where not only did we throw back a couple Dirty Sanchezs (served by gorgeous foreign men in white jackets), but we walked through what could only be described as a scene from a Bond film.
On the settee in the lobby bar, an aging Duchess in a pistacho silk gown and ruby and diamond tiara sat with a much younger nephew/consort/son?, dressed in full foreign military regalia, flowing hair, and handlebar mustachio. They held court to a half dozen or so friends, while the room spun with men in tuxedoes and overcoats. Tuxedoes that they clearly owned and wore often.
As we left the Ritz for our second destination (while Frances was texting Alex about the babysitter -- he and Colin were going out for a movie together), a little Spanish doorman in a grey tails and striped waistcoat held the door for me. He had a spanking white pair of gloves buttoned to his shoulder. "Thank you," I said, "Nice gloves."
He chuckled. "They are only for show. The ones I wear are in my pocket."
My head was spinning over the glitz. It was London and it was like nowhere else. We crossed Piccadilly and headed up a sidestreet. For me, already it was pure luxury. It was people-watching to the hilt; I was dressed up and wearing gorgeous shoes with three inch heels that were somehow, miraculously, comfortable; and best of all, I was so completely and utterly NOT in charge. I didn't have to think. I didn't have to decide. I just had to follow Frances. And, at the end of the night, another black taxi -- that most magical of time and space portals -- would whisk me home.
We didn't have far to walk, but on the way, Alex called again. Frances answered him in clipped phrases as I watched my feet and the taxis go by. "Here we are," she said, opening the door for me.
Alloro was the restaurant name, I saw as we walked to the desk. I only had time to think "Oh, good. Italian," as we approached the hostess.
The couple in front of us handed their coats to the woman who disappeared with them, then returned a second later. As she was returning, Frances pointed at the bar, in the room to my right, and said "Why don't you go wait in the bar and I'll take care of the coats?"
I don't know why I didn't argue, but I did what she said. I just slid off my coat and handed it to her and walked into the bar.
And there they all were: Colin, Alex, Tim, Peter, Michele and Michael, just hiding in the corner, waiting for me. I was dumbfoudned. For a second I just stood there with my mouth open. Then, naturally, I started jumping, and jumping, and probably squealing too. The English men smoking a cigarette just in front of me slid away as I sqealed and jumped more: "I win! I win! I win!" There were even a gifts! I am not sure if you have ever considered hosting a surprise party for a friend or loved one. But I can tell you, if your lover or friend is anything like me, they will never forget it. I think, because I was single for so long, living a "city life," my friends in my life are very important, I consider them family. Only they can say, for sure, how important I am to them and this was a great way to show it. Gosh it sure was nice for all of them to come out for dinner with me. Especially when they are all hiding in a bar and I had no idea they are going to be there and I looked good in my brand new dress.
I should say that the restaurant, Alloro, and its staff played a big part in how much I enjoyed my evening. Being a server and control freak in terms of service, I was literally floored at the style and sophistication at Alloro. And the cake, as you can see, was gorgeous. I even got to make a wish and blow out the candle, something I haven't done in years.
Of course, you know the best part of the evening was Frances. Not because she booked the evening and made diabolical plans behind my back. Not because she was so thoughtful and knew EXACTLY the kind of night I would want out for my birthday.
No. It was because she was just there, sitting beside me at the restaurant, the same Frances after everything. My friend, who opened London up to me. Happy birthday to me!
It's been three months since Gordon Ramsay Holdings took over the Warrington Hotel and everyone still seems to be on pins and needles about the changeover.
Last night was packed to the gills with regulars, neighbors and new friends, everyone trying to catch hold of a piece of what they fear might be lost as restorations/renovations go ahead in the next few weeks.
They ask me questions about the future, variations on the same theme of "What is going to happen?" but I know what they are really asking: "Elizabeth, please tell us it isn't all going to be gone, won't you?"
Anyway, I smile and tell them about the dates (they keep changing) and the plans for the decor (they keep changing) and try to soothe them with any information that will help. But none really does. 'Cuz we all know the Warrington won't be our Pretty Woman, that same old high-class call girl of a boozer we have all been frequenting for a many odd decades.
After all, Eliza Doolittle was not the same cussing flower seller after Henry Higgins did her in. Probably Holly Golightly had to change too.
Holly Golightly: Ahh... Do I detect a look of disapproval in your eye? [spays perfume in Paul's direction] Holly Golightly: Tough beans buddy, 'cause that's the way it's gonna be.
Estimated Warrington-Ramsey makeover end date: end of March.
It snowed in London overnight... the first time Colin and I have seen it in three winters.
The view out my office window, over the tennis courts at the Paddington Sports Club. Guys were playing tennis just yesterday, in the 34 degree temps.
The tree and the BBC studios out the front window. The cars had about a half inch on them. And, for some reason, of course, there were major delays and closures on the Underground. Guess it snows underground here too!
My good friend, disgruntled commuter has been having a hard time these days being disgruntled of late. I know the feeling.
I was out, with a friend at a gallery. We were talking loudish (comparatively, as Americans are wont to do) about the American-themed exhibit, when behold, a stranger.
"So," he said on his distinctly British accent, gesturing at the photo, "how are you finding it?"
Hmmm... I am still in London, am I not? The city of cold, reserved, angry people who wouldn't talk to you on the Tube if you were politely "ahemming" in order to indicate that their knapsack was on fire?
Since the autumn, as the days have started to shorten -- and I have known we won't be living here much longer -- I have begun to notice the rosy flush in London's cheek. Of course it doesn't surprise me. This is how I have always lived my life: looking back in with longing, with perfect rose-colored hindsight.
Michele and I stopped and chatted with the man, who was (don't worry) not a Londoner after all. But suddenly I was glad to be out and to be in the city. And I find, now, each day, I want it more, like a drug.
So I'll be busy, these next few months... out and about with my old lover, this new found fling, gitty and gritty London. Never liked its smell or its grey old creak, but something about it has a twinkle.
Besides, you know what they say: love the one you're with.
Where: Photographer's Gallery, 5 & 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7HY When: Through 28 January 2007 How Much: Free
In my mind's eye, The grapes of wrath are not purple or red or green. They are always charcoal grey.
I must have imagined that the days before color television the whole world was an absence of color. I thought Dorothea Lange was working in the palatte of the Industrial age. Cars were black. Movies were black and white. Even the history I learned about that time had two shades. Like the people too.
Michele and I went into the Photographer's Gallery just talking about our colorful Christmas holidays with our family. The usual crises of life: fathers and uncles and cousins dying; sisters arguing; friends bashing it out and mothers and daughters sighing over each other.
That is what was on my mind, looking at these photos. They were commissioned by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) -- just as Dorothea Lange's iconic black and white images were -- to garner support for Roosevelt's New Deal.
From 1939 on, all the photos were taken with a new cutting edge technology: Kodachrome colour film. They were taken,says the curators, "to show the improvements the New Deal had made, whilst acknowledging that there was still work to be done."
The curator uses the words "immediate" and "fresh" for the way the colour strikes you when you see it. But it is more than that. Looking at the history of my home country in such perfect color, with faces so familiar, it isn't fresh at all: it is like looking at an adverstisement. It is modern and weird.
The clothes (four sisters wearing dresses cut from the same piece of fabric) and the set pieces (cars, old farm equipment, mule-pulled wagons, silos, juke joints) look so perfectly unreal, as if staged. The boys fishing with cane rods... it is almost as if they are being iconified. It is hard to believe that these are real boys at all, and that they might still be alive, and still be living in the wealthiest country in the world, in poverty. Maybe even ignored and left to die on rooftop after a hurricane.
I am not sure what the title of this show wants to glorify, most especially as it is staged in the UK, a country that seems to despise American values and politics more and more.
Is the glory in for the individual art? If so, these photos are only marginally interesting as photographs. That they were taken in color signifies a striking intersection of art and history perhaps, but this should not give greater value to the art itself.
Is it for Roy Stryker, who ran the Information Department of the Farm Security Administration and who hired the FSA photographers. Is his idea to record the time in photographs seen as any more visionary in this show as it had been in other photographic exhibits of the era? What is his value as the original curator of the Great Depression?
I wonder, maybe, if the "glory" isn't a this show curator's longing for a bygone time when film photography was still untouched by computer media and digital imaging systems. Still the prints in the show are slide film printed digitally. Photography is a stolen and changing art, and the poor and the downtrodden are always an easy subjects. It isn't a particularly surprising or challenging show to take on.
I am not saying these photos should have been left in the Library of Congress archive. They are beautiful and true to life. But it chills me a bit to see them on the walls of an international gallery under the titled "America in Colour." Because somehow it feels as if the curators want to say "This is the truth of America," as if they have any idea.
I can tell you, we all have our own truth. But own thing I do know: there is no glory in poverty.
I drove by 4245 Wyoming today. It was still brick and stucco and the porch that was all mine was still there.
Yet it was like an amputated body part, lifeless and still, in the wet December rain.
You cannot go back, I think. Even though I love old things: old house, used cars, antique furniture, vintage clothes. What is left in your hand is only the dust molecules of the past, like dead skins cells.
I am safe, right now, inside Ford's new house, and inside the moment. That is, after all, the only safe time. This breath. This blink. This sigh. I listen to Ford and Colin laugh in the next room and I am safe: between today, yesterday and tomorrow.
Tell me what it is I am supposed to do, when I come back. When I step back, inside the fast-forwarded, ongoing lives of my friends, left here.
I never know.
I still love them like brothers... I just don't know if we can make music again. --Beanie Sigel
Here's the first of the Mia Fullerton series, Mia the Meek, by an old school mate of mine, Eileen Burke Boggess.
There is something about life in Catholic school that is both iconic and precious. If you were part of it, maybe you loathed it and loved it all at once.
If you are one of those people that have only experienced Catholic school through movies and TV, here's what I have to tell you: it's wild and wonderful and probably just as torturous as any other high school experience. Only, in concentrate. Smaller school. Everyone knows everyone's business. Nowhere to hide, not in study hall or the library (Sister Liz had eagle eyes!) and least of all for a 14-year-old girl.
Mia the Meek... Can't wait to read it. Hope you will too. Buy the book here.
Christmas in London is here... though it isn't quite what I am used to from home in Iowa.
This weekend, my sister and her family (and likely my parents too) are out on the hunt for their Christmas tree.
They do it the way you see in old movies: out to tree farms in their boots in and coats and hats, all bundled up. The kids run ahead as they wander the rows and rows of evergreens until they find the perfect tree. Then Dad rolls in the snow under the tree (or maybe now it is the guy who works there, in his snowsuit) and they tree comes down. Some contraption -- maybe a sled with runners -- is used to drag the tree back to the car.
Christmas in London is noisy and less colorful, but it is still throbbing and joyful. Eyes still shine -- adults and children alike. Trees unnaturally spring up in tiny forests on tree corners and in front of pubs (like in front of the Old Cock in Kilburn). Dads and sons, like this one here, come and choose the perfect tree and carry it home.
I agree with dry old Ben Stein who, as a lifelong Jew, has never been bothered by a Christmas tree or a "Merry Christmas" greeting. Any holiday that makes people happy to greet each other, to decorate their homes and gather with family and friends is a good one.
So if you ask me how I greet people at this time of year, yes, Ms. Liberal from Iowa will always say Merry Christmas! Because to me, the holiday isn't defined by a word made flesh ie,"Christ" a concept that has been hijacked by fundamental Christians in the same way the wonderful American flag has been kidnapped by "patriots."
Merry Christmas is a way of saying YES! to the actions of the season: yes, I will participate in peace, love and hope for the future.
So sorry folks... for me, Season's Greetings just does NOT cut it.
P.S. Click here to read about the false Ben Stein email that has been circulating.
Why Gordon Ramsay Buying the Warrington is Good... And Bad
I work behind the bar at the Warrington. So, theoretically, I should be able to answer questions about the future our beloved Maida Vale pub.
We do get such strange people that come in.
"Um hello. Is the Gordon Ramsay restaurant open yet?"
Both Miriama and I are standing there when the woman asks. Miriama takes a deep breath and says to me, under it: "You answer Elizabeth. I can't take it any more." And she walks away.
I smile and lean across the marble bar."No. Sorry ma'am. The restaurant will open upstairs in February."
"And what about down here?" She looks around at what is clearly a pub, not changed much at all since John left.
"The pub will be undergoing refurbishment, but it won't be closing."
Sigh. "Oh. All right then. Thank you."
And she leaves. Without so much as ordering even a single Campari and lemonade.
There are two things that come along with a celebrity chef: money and idiots.
Having been listening to whispers of plans, and also studying the Ramsay track record for refurbishment and dedication to pub ideology, we staff are beginning to be less concerned about the fate of the Warrington. Ramsay Holdings have made a big investment in the Warrington Hotel. It has always been a moneymaker. It isn't sad little place that needs saving, but it can use a cash infusion for refurb that a cow like Ramsay Holdings can afford. So celebrity power isn't all bad. It isn't Wetherspoons after all.
Still, even the most handsome, prizing-winning cows are followed by a wake of smelly pies. Hence the idiots: the fame seekers, the clutchers, the hangers-on, the name chasers, the overly-sensitive man snobs and the huffy-puffy ladies who sip and gawk. The irony, of course, is that Gordon and his partners would not be in a position to buy the Warrington, if it weren't for such people. Thank god for tiresome turds and all the energy and money they spend at hyped new restaurants.
So Gordon can have his pub and eat it too. The food will be Ramsay-delicious and the Warrington will always be beautiful, a glorious centerpiece to a charming neighborhood. And the work the Ramsay design and refurb team does, we can only hope, will preserve the life of a beloved pub for a hundred years more.
The dark cloud the local sense is this: That while Good Gordon is accustomed to the dance of fools, Maida Vale is not. This nook of London, while a bit swank, has always been a secret. Local celebs could come and go without any fuss. Name dropping wasn't our bag. Being at home and having a pint, then wandering home. That was the charm of the Warrington.
Unknowingly, Gordon may have just sh*t all over that.
On the Piccadilly platform at South Kensington, I wondered. Which work is more meaningless?
a. The (nearly) blank poster box, pictured here.
b. The person whose job it is to make a sign that says "Awaiting Posters"?
This is not to say that meaningless work is useless work. Ironing is circular. Iron, wear, wrinkle, wash. Repeat. The tao of ironing.
Even with food, I sometimes think "Why bother eating, when you are going to have to do it all again later?"
Still, I am thinking about an apple tree again. I look at this poster box, see myself in the glass. I count. The tape and the ink and the paper. The printer, the printer cartridge. The desk and its chair , the computer, and its Word program. And finally, the woman -- or most likely, the woman -- who sat down and turned it all on and typed it and printed it. Then handed it off, with tape, to be hung.
