Choral power

There's something so strong, breathtaking and compelling about a choir in full flight and today I was reminded how potent massed voices can really be at a St. Patrick's service held at Eton College.  Granted a great setting too helps where the sound resonates just right off the walls.  Stony amplification.

Two pieces of music that have no instrumental accompaniment keep popping into my head.

One was the Scottish choir singing at the Queen Elizabeth II September Garden in New York City on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 - they sang an extraordinary medley of Amazing Grace and Star Spangled banner al fresco (and in a studio - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YimrX3hxwhY).  The other was the London Youth Gospel Choir just belting out some tunes at a JazzFM Awards ceremony in London.  I think they were memorable because they were live, so very raw, human and uniting.

Coffee beans over tax

On a trivial afternoon six months ago, I trawled the coffee shops near where I work in the City of London for a brief price check of a double espresso.  The price band is quite tight.  My suspicion about Costa Coffee, Nero, Starbucks and all the other shops is about the freshness of the beans.  No disrespect, really, but Costa seems to have a bitter coffee, amaro.  I don't know why, but even at Linate airport in Milan, the coffee is strong, but the edge is sane, even creamy tasting without cream.

London coffees are suspect.  I am still arguing this with my colleague from Puglia, who may not agree with my fine Milanese friend who makes the coffee outside Mansion House Tube.  I am shy to call him a barista as I think that's phoney, but he tells me the taste I like is is also how he makes the coffee, it is not just the beans.  Anyhow. Find him outside in Bow Lane, in an "ape" in a churchyard space, a sort of pop up caff.  £1.80 for my double espresso fix.

Up in the attic at Westminster Abbey

What a privilege to mount seventy seven steps to be shown what is known as the Triforium at Westminster Abbey, a huge expanse of upper space that covers three sides of the inner Abbey walls and looks down on all the ecclesiastical fun and pomp below.  It's dusty, broad, hard to spot from below and with just a few metal bars to prop the television cameras that get those fantastic views of royal weddings and other ceremonies.  Unlike St. Paul's, the Abbey has no crypt, apparently it's marshland underneath, so the Triforium has served as an attic for bits and pieces that need storage over the years.  Through the windows are vistas of the Houses of Parliament and sights of the roofscape and other gargoyles within.  What an exciting space right in the heart of this Royal Peculiar.  The next level down you can see a library and a ground level there is now also a decent restaurant, where Benedictine monks would once enjoy their repast.

New York City: snap, crackle and pop (edited highlights)

Second day after the storm

The storm has passed so it's the mopping up in hand.  The private cars started reappearing yesterday, so that's a sign of recovery.

Once the subways, tunnels and trains re-open it'll be business as usual.  It's just that which is stopping the workforce getting in.  BUT the electrical damage means where you plan to stay will be important.  I was told it'll take "seven days" to get power back downtown.  And even 39th St where I was staying (near Grand Central) is dark.  I saw a group of Japanese queuing outside a Prada shop in the Rockefeller Center yesterday waiting for it to open.  Sort of surreal.  Once bridges and tunnels working, I think the City will come back to life - just a bit like a cardiac arrest I guess....

Day after the storm
Yes, chaotic.  The perfect storm combined high tides (full moon), a north eastern front clashing with Hurricane Sandy which meant the waves reached 14 feet and promptly splashed into subways, electrical sub-stations one of which blew up like a firecracker.  Darkness ensued.

I checked out of my hotel on 39th Street yesterday evening as it had no power, no telephone and no running water and even the lift with the local generator packed up, so we were using the service lift in pitch black darkness which meant the eighth floor had an edge of disaster movie to it.  So I left.

With half of Manhattan (south of 39th St) with no power, the tourists and locals all also tried to migrate to mid-town which has run out of space.  Nowhere to stay! After unsuccessfully pitching a Philly work colleague for her address book (she's spent the night at her Pennsylvania idyll with no power, under the stairs, trees toppling over her neighbours' houses) I successfully begged space in the end from a Canadian friend who has a condo.  Plan B would have been to  bunk with poor Adrian Lim who is also trapped in NYC.

It'll all take time to repair.  And the parks, schools, trains, subways, restaurants are all closed ("locked down").  Odd to see people herding outside shut Starbucks to get free wifi and tourists aimlessly photographing the devastation.  It's a movie town!  So the local economy last night was in the hands of the odd Mom and Pop stores, cab drivers.  Corporate America has vanished.

Oddly enough it is colder back in England and the rain is pleasantly vertical when it comes, barely a breeze this morning.  JFK is due to re-open today but the backlog will take some time to process. I'm due out tomorrow night but now need to know if the bridges and tunnels are re-opened or not today. That's it so far!

We're all volunteers now!

I have returned from sunny Spain to a transformed UK that is rejoicing in Olympiad fellowship. With no internet where I was in the Costa de la Luz, I feel I have missed something vital those few weeks away. Stories abounded of visitors happily picking up the litter of others at the games, opening doors for the elderly, a spirit of shared goodwill and bonhomie unheard of in contemporary inner London. 

So as I donned a corporate branded polo shirt for our yachting sponsorship yesterday, I too transformed into a "volunteer", with tourists smiling and asking me the way to the ferry, public loos and ticket prices.  Maybe it's the idea of a uniform, especially a casual one for baristas and holiday reps, but it's now a jovial universal passport to a sort of Big Society anonymity.  So a bloke winked at me in the Kilburn High Road last night, but wearing a jacket with the words "Sailing Team" on the back can carry a different, even metro ironic tone the further you get from the Solent and the Isle of Wight. 

Thunderbirds are go!

Oh wow.  They've landed the space shuttle, with its mothership 747, in a corner of JFK airport in New York.  No one knows whether this is a resting space, a permanent fixture, a fair or a funeral.  And I gasped as mad Pepe wove his yellow cab (bald tyres and all) up the slipway towards Terminal 7.  The shuttle is big and clunky, full metal-jacketed and built in an age where rivets still commanded some authority.  Should the day come when our ipaded, soft electronic devices with their squishy compatibility go zap and burn out, I sense the shuttle will be wheeled out sedately to save the world.  It's sort of admirable, not beautfully designed like Concorde, but broad-shouldered.  A sort of Amtrak for the skies. 

A brief taste of Caribbean life

Thinnking back on it, there's no reason why bits of the Caribbean should not embrace the sort of fellow traveller one tries hard to avoid at Gibraltar and Gatwick airports. Both are near-seaside sorts of places. I think it must be the sea, or the ocean, but there was a dispiritng number of tattoed men with metal necklaces at the back of the plane to Antigua. They seem cash rich. And why not?  Didn't Long John Silver cavort much of his piratical life in that neck of the woods ("pieces of eight")?  And hasn't the Caribbean always been a smuggler's delight, from days of the US civil war, running blockades, to money centres of dubious repute in more recent times.

The Dominican Republic now caters for mainly a North American clientele; most of the Brits decamped our BA plane which docked briefly in Antigua and we carried on to Punta Cana (inbound flights galore from Miami, even Moscow).  I now understand the meaning of all-inclusive resort living,which first involves being awestruck by the bright photoshopped blue skies and white beaches on websites, trying to figure out where would be a nice place to stay.  Then the experience itself ends as a Truman Show of predictability, nice at first in a sticky cocktail way, like visiting Disney, no thinking is involved, just a vague mindlessness and safe for the kids. Eventually sand flies (which bite aggressively) are a reminder that it is no dream. It was not without relief to return to the wintry chill of a damp British Easter.

Gasping in all that Swiss mountain air

The "fumoirs" at Zurich airport are so elegant, glassy and alluring that I half-wanted to take up smoking again last week.  I have staggered past their British airport equivalents catching planes, those sad little pens of shame and have felt comfortable with my decision to quit seven years back.  Zurich almost tempted me back into the fold.

The relaxed Winston room (see left) looked as cool and fun as a London boutique hotel's cocktail bar.  The etching of the brand and the well-typset English health warning, "tobacco can seriously damage your health" on the glass frontage just added to an appetising feel that dragging at a Winston is not only cool, but somehow cleansing and healthy, sensual, minty even.  Why is it that the idea of smoking up in the snowy Swiss mountains or down on a sunny Mediterranean beach might seem somehow less injurious than puffing away in the damp cities of the Thames valley?  

 

I had almost forgotten how powerful smoking is as an idea - 'Cigarettes are not positively beautiful, but they are sublime by virtue of their charming power to propose what Kant would call "a negative pleasure": a darkly beautiful, inevitably painful pleasure that arises from some intimation of eternity; the taste of infinity in a cigarette resides precisely in the "bad" taste the smoker quickly learns to love. Being sublime, cigarettes, in principle, resist all arguments directed against them from the perspective of health and utility.'  Lovely.  Better to have loved and lost. 

Failing beautifully in Bible studies

Myles Coverdale's English version of the bible apparently pre-dates the King James Version by one hundred years.

He knew no Latin, Greek nor Hebrew, had a little German but was undeterred in his translation ambitions.  The Etymologicon (2011) says he produced a psalter that is still used in Church of England services today.

In it, Coverdale has the line:  "The strange children shall fail: and be afraid out of their prisons."

As the Etymologicon explains, '[the line] is beautiful and mysterious.  Who are the strange children?  What's so strange about them?  And what on earth are they doing in prison?'

The answer is that the line should have been more properly translated as:

"The foreign-born shall obey: and come trembling from their strongholds."'

Coverdale's mistranslation however seems rather more post-modern, filmic even.   Oddly I could imagine myself just nodding along to hearing it in a reading in church without even wondering what it means.

"Always keep hold of nurse, for fear of holding something worse"

The economics of the eurozone condition at tonight’s seminar spun my head in circles, the sheer vastness of the billions swilling about, the slipping macro-economic charts of many countries, the decline of the "garlic" nations and the messy interdependency of "butter" nations.  But the subject line above raised a laugh at the seminar.   "Always keep hold of nurse, for fear of holding something worse."

 We were reminded of Hilaire Belloc's nonsense verse which seemed a neat summing up of behaviours surrounding the state of the euro.  (I am kindly reminded that the line comes from "Jim, who ran away from his Nurse, and was eaten by a Lion".)

Aha.  Nurses, not nannies, I thought - and the playfulness of English Edwardian verse. Both one step away from natural affection I suspect, but neat at explaining authority in distress.  Do the British prefer their austerity politicians as nannies or nurses?   Would Germany eventually accept higher inflation as a way out of the mess?  Are  we back to the 1930s where the countries that will come out best are those most easily able to devalue currencies?

Our speaker was rather mesmeric. And I reeled with the thought of it all. The bells of Bow Bell's church tolled for at least fifteen minutes as the seminar got into its prime.  Ask not, for "it tolls for thee.”  Brits quite like "moody" I think.

Variously moulded and often differently handled

After re-reading this, it's hard not to blush about internet shopping.  And e-bay.  Hmm.

"Though it may be unessential to the imagination, travel is necessary to an understanding of men.  Only with long experience and the opening of his wares on many a beach where his language is not spoken, will the merchant come to know the worth of what he carries, and what is parochial and what is universal in his choice.  Such delicate goods as justice, love and honour, courtesy, and indeed all the things we care for, are valid everywhere; but they are variously moulded and often differently handled, and sometimes nearly unrecognizable if you meet them in a foreign land; and the art of learning fundamental common values is perhaps the greatest gain of travel to those who wish to live at ease among their fellows." 

Freya Stark, Perseus in the Wind, retold by John Julius Norwich in "A Christmas Cracker" in 2007.

Guessing what is at “the other side of the hill”

“All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I called ‘guessing what was at the other side of the hill.’”  

So said the Duke of Wellington.  I have misquoted this so often that I am finally at pains to write it down properly.  I have mistakenly used the “other side of the hill” analogy to counter the business challenge that there lies a squadron of enthusiastic buyers of one’s products, all waiting out there, but they remain annoyingly unidentified and unapproached.    

Yet no matter how many missions are sent galloping over the proverbial hill, sometimes there just aren’t more mystery buyers to unearth.  Beyond the hill is sometimes just more uninhabited land.  

The proper quotation is more profound than my misreading of it.  I do like the Duke for acknowledging we use what we know to find out what don’t – a pretty fragile basis but it is all that we poor humans have.   Past knowledge might be the only guide to the future, to paraphrase.

Modern times

"Gaddafi would arrive at summits of Arab leaders in a white limousine surrounded by a bodyguard of nubile Kalashnikov-toting brunettes. At one non-aligned summit in Belgrade, he turned up with two horses and six camels; the Yugoslavs allowed him to graze the camels in front of his hotel – where he pitched his tent and drank fresh camel milk – but refused to allow him to arrive at the conference on one of his white chargers. Several of the camels ended up in Belgrade zoo. " - Telegraph

Meanwhile back at St Paul's, the Times reports on the growing conurbation "...there is also a meditation tent and a piano tent."  The portable lavatories were recently taken away.  

"Everyone had to use the toilet in Starbucks," said one protester with a look of despair.  "Yes, it's the symbol of capitalism, but everyone needs a wee and a coffee sometimes,"   Donations to the cathedral are said to be down 50% and trade at its cafe has slumped because its street entrance has been blocked by tents.  The cathedral warned it might have to close for the first time in memory because tourists and worshippers were reluctant to pass through the tents.

Silver linings for some.  Black's the camping shop is doing a roaring trade and now offers special discounts on sleeping bags.

Clan bang in New York

There are over 150,000 people with my surname in North America.  I disbelieved I had a "clan" as we're lalland not highland, so when one emerges to take one in the fold, it is quite a surprise, especially when this charming tartan-clad American lady introduced herself to me at a gala dinner at New York last month.  So it was a delight to meet her husband, my clan chieftain, yesterday, at Harry's bar opposite the British Garden in Hanover Square, for a spot of lunch.  Bob, who hails from Summit, New Jersey, is steeped in clan history and shared valuable insight into clan history that was unknown to me.  I had assumed the clan were rather a dour, ineffectual bunch who sang songs to praise the grander MacDonalds of the Isles for their vital deeds and battles.  Nothing of the sort, retorts Bob, our clan leaders were kingmakers and valued for their literacy.  I liked the "our".

I was delighted to note that Bob is somewhat short-sighted, is a head of marketing and public affairs in his day job and once fell over badly near a pub in the Scottish isles and broke his spectacles. Bob and his clan team support a commendable charitable event called "Pipes of Christmas" which helps give scholarships for piping students back in Scotland.  I was reaching for my credit card by the end of lunch.

No riots yet in downtown New York

It was a beautiful sunny New York morning to behold rattling in on the train from Phillyworld and Wall Street is just humming with office workers carrying their precious polystyrene coffees to work, but there's little sign of the rioters that were exciting the news channels yesterday.  My hunch is unless they plan to kip in the few squares in the area, rioters tend to get up late, not really being in their prime until mid-morning at the earliest.  This may be a slur and I am happy to be challenged, but I suspect here the rioters are older than the median 12-year olds in London.  No sign of that big blow up rat either, so maybe the union protesters and rioters have gone to the beach for that last gasp of summery weather.

Mad British taps in baths

A Canadian colleague, now that we are collecting things of strangeness, pondered why British baths need to have two taps with two spouts.  In Canada, he said they would blend to allow the right temperature of water arrive into the bath in a single stream. This seemed very logical and I tried to battle an answer, for example for the convenience of a cold tap to brush one's teeth.  But brushing teeth in the bath is sort of absurd unless you are using the basin to clean your socks or something.  Still, he makes a valid point.

In the Navy: white T-shirts under shirts at work

Another mystery of corporate dress etiquette in America is the t-shirt under the shirt particularly in hot weather  One old timer suggests this saves on laundry costs and the shirt may be worn for some extra days as the t-shirt soaks the daily grime. Yick.  The corporate dress code includes suit trousers typically two inches higher than in the UK, flapping around the ankles is acceptable.  Blackberries may be worn in holsters, like a gun, with no sense of irony.  And haircuts are short, short, like you've joined the Marines.  The military-industrial complex may be a faint echo of the post-war prime of this fine nation, but corporate America still tips hats to it. 

Labor Day: when swimming pools turn green

So Labor Day is the official conclusion of summer in the United States.  Dress codes are strict and woe betide the hapless summer enthusiast still to sport whites now that the Fall has descended and the serious business of returning to work has begun.  From the thirty something floor of our office in a fine mid-town city, it is possible to see the swimming pools at the top of skyscrapers turn green as no one uses them, for they are now closed.  Some drain the pools, so there's a turquoisey gleam still to be had from a distance.  Others just leave the water and the vibrant green is also quite striking as mother nature and algae begins to work its stuff.  Apparently the form is to wait until Memorial Day when fresh chemicals are added to turn the water blue again.  There's something oddly disturbing and quite believable about such muscular economics that reminds me not to accept an invitation to a swimming party next summer.  Even if offered.

Simply stateside: strange gaps in lavatory doors in America

Some excitement in our US office with the installation of new lavatory doors that now reach to the ceiling and the ground.  This closet discussion has been running for some years and its resolution marks a heady advance in transatlantic negotation.  The story begins with the bewildered British wondering why the cubicles need to show the shoes and feet of the poor user in the office loos.  It transpires that the landlord states it is a union regulation and indeed these gappy cublicle doors seem to be a feature of public buildings in the US.  Some believe this is because it makes for easier cleaning with a mop.   Others speculate that the cost of repair to the units (that are typically unloved as there is no private ownership of them) is cheaper than if a full door was available.  Or that the cleaners charge piece rate by the room and that a full door would mean each cubicle becomes a room. Privacy has now been introduced which is considered no small triumph in the land of insistent rules and regulations in office life.  Nothing petty about that.

Little black straws 1

So the question was why do Americans put those little black straws in alcoholic drinks with ice and hot coffee?  Which plastics producer cunningly persuaded a nation it really was the best way to sip ice-chilled spirits of scalding coffee drinks.  One office colleague in Philly suggested it was to protect teeth as after bleaching, the straw protects the pearly whites.  But the case for the opposition says, oh really, then why don't they serve red wine with the little black straws?