Just Before We Set Off

Just before  Flash, her apprentice and I (all perfectly dressed, of course), set off on our annual, mid-Atlantic rendez-vous  - here are Jack and Binnie: our chosen recording for the flight:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fulGrFgMy-I

Above is Binnie, just before the take-off, so to speak.
Blessed Be!

Flash's Apprentice Familiar

It's that time of year again and the broomstick has been buffed-up by a 'daily' hired specifically for the purpose and Flash and I will be setting off again in that moment that does not quite exist and returning before it has passed, for the Coven's annual Mid-Atlantic Meeting. However, this year, at her insistence, Flash has an Apprentice Familiar onboard. As yet unnamed, and all black (a big advantage for a Familiar), I'll try to get a picture later today when the nest is less guarded.

Gertie

Although she was extremely stylish and could give the impression of a great beauty, Gertrude Lawrence (1898-1952) was only just the right side of pretty and had nothing much more than a sweet voice. However, those who saw her on the stage said that she lit it up: a living example of 'It' in action. It doesn't really come across in the few films that she made and (The Band Wagon aside), a similar thing can be said of Jack Buchanan. They had a stage presence that was largely lost on celluloid. The affection in which she was held was so great that Noel Coward could not trust himself to attend her funeral.

Sheridan Morley, one of her biographers, shrewdly put her presence down to her compassion and, to my mind, in saying this, he half draws back the curtain on 'It'. I also think (and it has to come from sound recordings), that she had extraordinary senses of timing, irony and wry humour. The recordings show how she could bring her audience onto her side; see her point of view and like her. That George and Ira Gershwin wrote Someone To Watch Over Me for her also says something; not to mention all the Coward songs and plays, written for her to perform. Here she is singing it a year before she died.

Maybe I am just a sentimentalist - but I don't think that anyone could ever sing it better than she:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZDQKlYMcG0

My favourite story about her is that, after she was bankrupted over her wildly extravagant spending habits, she bought a house in England but then went to live in America. Her agent asked her whether this was sensible. Her response was to ask him to look into the cost of installing a swimming pool.

London Pride

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-pYvloAADg&feature=related

More on The Gates.

Metalurgica Max arrived early to repair the gates and did a stonking job, in surprisingly little time (a couple of hours). He is not cheap but it is so well done that I asked for a quote for him to renovate the other parts, which the aggressive, salt-laden winds have corroded. It is just over half as much again as it was five years ago but then there is probably more to do. A less sensible choice than Buckingham Palace-style iron railings to bound a property forty metres from high tide mark, with a notorious Spring sou'-westerly, I cannot imagine and more sensible neighbours have wooden fences or concrete 'railings'; still they were not our choice as they are a part of the house as it was built for the original owner.

Skilled craftsmen in Brazil are not as rare as they have become in the UK (and, probably other parts of the so-called 'first' world), where most modern buildings comprise mixtures of pre-fabs of some kind and kiln-dried green softwoods, stapled onto thick cardboard; all contributing to the dull sameness of modern 'design', and more or less guaranteed to crumble and fall apart once the mortgage has been paid.

Brazilian trades and crafts run in families and Metallurgica Max's sons will probably become metal-workers. What is astounding about these people (and most admirable), is that they arrive with an exiguous array of tools and hardly any materials and achieve, in short order, extremely satisfactory results; they also give you a quote and they stick to it, even if the job turns out to be trickier than, at first, assessed. There is no knowing shaking of the head and apprehensive sucking of teeth, accompanied by the cynical, British: "OOh! I don't like the look of that Guv!" to exaggerate the extent of the job and to inflate the price. Moreover, it is satisfying to have reached the stage of being able to communicate reasonably effectively in Portuguese, and I am sure that this means that they no longer quote me a 'Gringo price'.

I strongly dislike being addressed as 'Patrao'

roughly equivalent to 'Master', something more than 'Senhor' ( a business-like 'Sir') and smacks of flattery; it can, sometimes, presage a rip-off but not this time. Incidentally, if tradesmen or business people here declaim that you are 'familia' after you have struck a deal with them, you just know for certain that you have been well and truly screwed. Again, though, not this time.

Well done! Metalurgica Max!

I have a friend who has a farm in Dorset and he employs a farm manager who, in best Thomas Hardy tradition, addresses him in a thick 'Dosset' accent as 'Maasterr' - and my friend seems to revel in this. I just cannot understand it and the offering or the acceptance of such a degree of obsequiousness in our age makes my flesh creep; after all, some people with real titles let them lie idle.

Budd Shirtmaker Dragon Chairs

I have just learned that the pair of dragon chairs are still in the shop (in the windows) and that their importance to the history of the shop is appreciated by the new owners.

The Harry Potter Factor

Randall Couch: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/popescu/popcouch/

He recently wrote, on another site, of the internal 'regeneration' of the the charming old interior of Budd Shirtmakers in the Princes Arcade off Piccadilly and mentioned the Harry Potter factor. Budd were recently bought from the Webster family by the corporate group which owns (and, in fairness, saved), the tailor Huntsman in Savile Row.

As it used to be, the shop was a bit of jumble of fine things; the paintwork was old and the fixtures and fittings were of the dark wood that one would really expect from shirtmakers beloved by everyone from Terry-Thomas through to John Hurt; Edward Fox, and Hugh Bonneville as well as professionals, politicians and tycoons; in fact everyone with knowledge of this gem of a shop, managed by the venerable Mr Rowley, with veteran cutter Mr Butcher.

I rather regret the introduction of light wood fittings and order to the place, and the removal of anything (such as the dragon chair, in the picture), which might be reckoned, by the new owners, to intimidate the sort of people who, they miss to notice, will never become Budd customers anyway. They have indulged in an exercise to broaden the customer base: to attract all the monied celebrities and barrowboy traders who might have been put off by the old shop. But it's a short-sighted exercise because it entails the loss of the kind of magick that inspired the Harry Potter stories. Randall Couch properly observes that these stories, which hark back to the mysterious nature of the existence of all things, are immensely popular with the young and I am quite sure that the senior tutors at Hogwarts are all Budd customers.

So why do business purchasers have to tinker with a winning formula? Is it just because they have been on some dumb management course, learned a bit of jargon and have to set about applying the newly learned marketing techniques; quite missing the point that what they are actually doing is rubbing out a real attraction to new customers and things of affectionate remembrance for older customers? I can remember old Mr Webster sitting in that chair in the 1980s and I'm going to ask them to put it back.