ROMAN GAIETIES

We went to see the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum where an exquisite bust of Hadrian's Greek male lover, Antinous, provided a stunning centerpiece...

Details of Antinous' relationship with Hadrian are sketchy: according to one account Hadrian encountered Antinous when he and his entourage were accompanied him on his many journeys through the empire. A somewhat more romatic version tells how Hadrian (who was, incidentally married to Vibia Sabina, the grand-niece of his predecessor, Trajan) had the empire searched for the most beautiful youth, and chose Antinous.

The circumstances of Antinous' death during an imperial visit to Egypt are also vague: in October 130, according to Hadrian, "Antinous was drowned in the Nilus," but it is not known whether his death was the result of accident, suicide, murder or some kind of religious sacrifice. Whatever the truth, Hadrian was inconsolable and his grief for the loss of his lover and subsequently approved his deification.

Thus are - or were - gods born...

Talking of Roman emperors: overheard by David in the exhibition:

"You know Jane? Well, she's got Marcus Aurelius
in her conservatory..."

Stuffed?

And here's Buttons' (somewhat limited) view of the exhibition.

ART-BREAKING

Overheard recently in the showroom of a gallery specialising in exquisite (and exquisitely expensive) glass sculpture:

WOMAN (to Salesperson):
Yes, yes... it is very beautiful... But, you see, the trouble is, our cleaning lady is something of a one-woman demolition squad!



Sculpture (not the one under discussion, but exquisite nonetheless): 'Wave of Spheres' by J D C Roman at Luna Angelica

CLASS-CONSCIOUS

It's funny but people of a certain class seem incapable of speaking at any volume lower than a loud-hailer. Maybe this is due to having to converse on a daily basis along the full length of baronial banqueting tables.

At any rate, the Duke and Duchess were the only other people sitting in our local restaurant and seemed totally unphased by the fact that - munching away on our penne pasta - we couldn't help but hear every word of their conversation as they went through the next six months of their social engagements with reference to a gold-crest-embossed diary.

"So, next week we've the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Abbey - we have the tickets for that, don't we..."

"And we're confirmed with the Dean for afterwards."

"Excellent! Then it's just two weeks until Moscow. Of course, it's only for four days, so we shouldn't have to take too much. Then we've a bit of a lull after that, yes?"

"Well there's Roberta's exhibition preview - which we simply have to go to..."

* Grunt *

"And Philip's book launch at the Royal Institute or the Royal Society of Arts or wherever it is - the invitation is on the mantelpiece..."

"Yes, I'm rather keen to go to that - quite a coup to be having it there, I think..."

"After that, we can take things a bit easier - at least until the Sherbourne Abbey Festival and Glyndebourne..."

"That's the Monteverdi, isn't it?"

"Yes, we opted for that rather than the Britten. And if you remember we have four tickets because we didn't get to The Pearl Fishers..."

"Who are we taking?"

"Well we thought about Lucinda and Tristram..."

"Yes. That would be good. Haven't seen them in ages and Lucinda would love it..."

"Except - I think they may be away surfing that weekend..."

"Well, let's check and see and if not maybe we can think of someone else..."

We were on the point of volunteering when the Duke, unwrapping one of the mini-lollipops that the management always deliver with the bill, announced with determination and finality...

"Well that's all very good... Then all that's left to do is deal with America..."

Which, undoubtedly, they will!

LIKE NEW

Overheard on Bankside...

1st Tourist:
Shakespeare's Globe...

2nd Tourist:
Amazing it's still here!

HIGH ART

Overheard in an art gallery...

WOMAN (To Friend): Yes, well, he reminds me of Canaletto...

CHILD (Interrupting): Who's Canaletto?

WOMAN: You remember, dear, the painter who did all those pictures with water in them

CHILD: No...

WOMAN: Yes, you do! It was that exhibition we went to when you were too short to see the pictures...

WHEN IN ATHENS...

Overheard in the breakfast room of the Electra Palace Hotel, Athens:

1st American: So what are you guys planning for today?

2nd American: First thing I'm going to do is find a Starbucks and get myself an large Americano!

And I'm sure he did just that, here...



Then, no doubt, he tracked down the Athens branch of MacDonald's - which, happily, I forgot to photograph.

So, hold the Greek Salad and the café Hellenico, please: we're tourists!

HI-DIDDLY-DEE

Overheard at the theatre...

Child (to Father): When I grown-up, can I be an actor?

Father: No, son, you can't be both...

MASS EXODUS

Two Irish women overheard in my local park on Sunday...

1st Woman: I've given up the Mass...

2nd Woman: Yes, I know what you mean... Sometimes, when my grandson goes to confession, I'll go along and light a few candles; but what I say is, you really don't WANT Mass every single week...

HELLO DALI

I spent a fascinating evening wandering through an intriguing new exhibition at Tate Modern devoted to Dalí & Film.

Again and again, I found myself being enticed out of a series of clinically white-walled rooms hung with classic examples of Salvador Dalí's extraordinary Surrealist vista-visions and optical illusions only to be instantly plunged into pitch-dark spaces where I was confronted by the flickering screen images of such grossly disturbing paraphernalia as severed hands, razored eyeballs, scurrying ants and dead donkeys from the shocking collabortions between Dalí and his fellow Spanish enfant terrible, Luis Buñuel.

As well as providing a rare oppotunity to view those terrifying Buñuel-Dalí avant-garde masterpieces, L'Age d'Or and Un Chien Andalou...


...the exhibition traces Dalí's early fascination with cinema and his later, less likely, filmmaking forays in company with two of Holywood's Masters of daydreams and nightmares.

For Alfred Hitchcock, Dalí created the famous dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) , starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman...


...and the same year Dalí joined forces with Walt Disney (whom Dalí called "a great American Surrealist") to make a film, entitled Destino, which was later abandoned, but finally brought to the screen in 2003 through persistence of vision on the part of Walt's nephew, Roy E Disney.


A powerful and evocative exhibition I thought of still-and-moving pictures, but Dalí dreams are not, it seems, for everyone...

Pausing before a typical Dalíesque landscape scattered with crumbling arches, soft watches, skipping girls and phallic fingers of rock, I heard one tired-looking lady saying to to another...

"...Yes, well, I think I really like the kind of art I can understand..."

LOOKING FOR VAN HELSING

You can't keep a good vampire-hunter down, it seems...

A recent day-trip to Whitstable brought to mind a man of whom I have many fond memories; for Whitstable is not only famous as the place where some of the tastiest native oysters snuggle down in their beds, but also as the residence of that pre-eminent vampire-sleuth-and-slayer, the most gentlemanly film actor of his age --- PETER CUSHING.

The fact that the Hammer House of Horror star made his home beside the long shingly shore of this little town on the Thames Estuary, has now been honoured by naming a street CUSHING'S WALK and designating a spot on what passes for an esplanade, CUSHING'S VIEW...

I first met Peter Cushing when I was in my early twenties. I had ambitions to write and came up with the (not very original) idea of a book about 'actors' and one of the people I approached for an interview was Cushing.

I had already written him several letters as a fan that had led to a correspondence and he responded to my request for an interview with an invitation to visit him at Pinewood Studios where he was filming what would turn out to be one of very few turkeys in his prolific career, Nothing But the Night.

On the appointed day, I was treated royally: given a seat on set to watch filming (I was fascinated by the fact that Cushing, a chain-smoker, wore a white cotton glove on his right hand when not on camera so as not to get nicotine stains!) and I was introduced to his co-stars, his long-time screen nemesis, Christopher Lee, and the pneumatic Miss Diana Dors.

Then I was toured round the studio lot and was shown all those wonderfully phoney facades (walk through the door of a Mexican town and find yourself in a Cornish fishing village!); taken to lunch in the commissary (sitting at the next table to one of my film gods, Ken Russell, who was then filming Savage Messiah); and, after the interview, given a lift back into London by Cushing and Paddy, his Irish chauffer/stand-in.


The book never got written but we maintained our correspondence and, years later when I was presenting a book programme on the BBC, I twice got to interview Peter when he published two volumes of autobiography.

My last memory of this warm, courteous and generous man was of his going through the second volume, Past Forgetting, correcting various typos in his immaculate copperplate handwriting - to the complete frustration of his publicist, who wanted to whisk him off to his next appointment!

Anyway, back to Whitstable...

I am sitting propped up against one of the groins on the very windy beach when a man with a loud know-it-all megaphone-voice scrunches over the shingle, holding forth to a companion who hangs on his every word. "Oh, yes," says Megaphone, "I know this beach like the back of my hand..."

I tune-out for a while - to avoid crucial levels of boredom - but then, suddenly, pick up on a name that I know...

"Peter Cushing?" Megaphone is saying, " Oh yes, that's his house over there - the black weather-boarded one..."

"Do you ever spot him?" asks his friend eagerly.

"Well," replies Megaphone, "of course, he's a bit of a recluse, you know, so we don't see him about much nowadays..."

Hmmm! Not too surprising really... Not when you think that the dear man has been dead for almost THIRTEEN YEARS!

BAD PLANNING

Overheard in Edinburgh...

1st American:
Sure is a beautiful castle!

2nd American:
Yeah... but a real pity they built it so close to the railway!



[Image: Stuck on Scotland]

'EAR, 'EAR!

It is truly amazing what you can overhear if, as I am, you are a dedicated eavesdropper...

Now, I know all about eavesdroppers never hearing any good about themselves but that's just a ruse (dreamt up by sniffy moralists) to discourage us from tuning-in for a bit of light entertainment to conversations that quite often sound like early drafts for a play by Alan Bennett.

This shouldn't be too surprising, since Mr B has admitted to doing a bit of eavesdropping himself... How else could he have come up with lines like, "I think at our time of life it's probably a bit late for branching out into yoghurt"?

Anyway, there we were in our local restaurant, enjoying marinated chicken breast with new potatoes and fine beans, when a woman at the next table suddenly announced:

"So, I said to her, 'Please remember that I know you didn't discover vaginal ecstasy until the mid-sixties!'"

All I need now is the rest of the play!

GETTING YOUR MONEY'S WORTH

I recently noticed that Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories is now selling in ‘all good bookshops’ at HALF-PRICE!

How on earth do writers ever earn a living......? Oh, sorry! I forgot, most of us DON'T!

Anyway, seeing Bennett's latest tome consigned to the Bargain Basement - after a mere eight months on the regular shelves - brought to mind an exchange witnessed in the bookshop of London’s Royal National Theatre last year, shortly after the book’s publication.

A tottering ziggurat of Mr Bennett’s chunky volume had been erected surmounted by an enticing notice reading, SIGNED COPIES.

An elderly theatre patron hovered by the table, clearly debating whether or not the necessary outlay of £20 for a SIGNED COPY was justified.

His wife joined him. “Well,” she asked, “are you going to buy it?”

“I don’t really know,” he replied hesitantly, opening one of the books at the title-page and closely scrutinising the autograph. Then, replacing the book on the stack he said, in a line that was almost worthy of an Alan Bennett character, “No... I don’t think so… it’s a very SMALL signature…”

THE PERFECT FOOL

Having supper last evening in The Saint, our favourite Brighton restaurant, I overheard one of the people at the next table say:

“You see, he has to remember this instruction; ‘The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!’ Then something happens and he has to forget it and remember something else... but the trouble is I can't now remember what it was…”

I readily admit to habitually eavesdropping on other people’s conversations in restaurants, but I seldom if ever ‘join in’… However, on this occasion (having already briefly - but passionately - spoken up in favour of the chilled beetroot and cucumber soup when they were debating what to order), I felt comfortable enough to lean over and say:

“I can tell you what happened… They broke the chalice from the palace and replaced it with a flagon with a dragon! And now the pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon and the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!”

Immediate smiles of recognition! Gales of laughter!

No doubt, had any of the other diners heard this exchange, they would have put it down to a touch of the sun - or just the usual kind of eccentricities one runs across in Brighton!


But WE knew what we were talking about! This was the most quotable quote from one of the most hilarious films ever made: The Court Jester (1956) with the incomparable Danny Kaye as Hubert Hawkins, an inept member of a Robin Hood-style gang of medieval freedom-fighters, who impersonates a jester (and assassin) called Giacomo in order to infiltrate the castle of bad King Roderick.

Songs by Sylvia Fine and Sammy Cahn, gorgeous costumes by the great Edith Head and a classic cast - Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury, Cecil Parker and Mildred Natwick - effortless managing to play high-camp farce with total straight-faced seriousness!

In the case of Rathbone, as the villainous Ravenshurst, he also simultaneously succeeds in engaging the lunatic Kaye in one of the finest, fastest (and funniest) sword fights ever put on film.

If you’ve seen it, you’ll undoubtedly not only agree but already be chuckling at the memory of scriptwriters Melvin Frank and Norman Panama’s string of witty bon mots - such as Hawkins' observation: “A jester unemployed is nobody’s fool!” - and their rapid-fire comic dialogue:

KING RODERICK: The Duke. What did the Duke do?

HUBERT HAWKINS: Eh... the Duke do?

KING RODERICK: Yes. And what about the Doge?

HUBERT HAWKINS: Oh, the Doge!

KING RODERICK: Well what did the Doge do?


HUBERT HAWKINS: The Doge do?

KING RODERICK: Yes, the Doge do.

HUBERT HAWKINS: Well, uh, the Doge did what the Doge does. Eh, uh, when the Doge does his duty to the Duke, that is.

KING RODERICK: What? What's that?

HUBERT HAWKINS: Oh, it's very simple, sire. When the Doge did his duty and the Duke didn't, that's when the Duchess did the dirt to the Duke with the Doge.

KING RODERICK: Who did what to what?

HUBERT HAWKINS: Oh, they all did, sire. There they were in the dark; the Duke with his dagger, the Doge with his dart, Duchess with her dirk.

KING RODERICK: Duchess with her dirk?

HUBERT HAWKINS: Yes! The Duchess dove at the Duke just when the Duke dove at the Doge. Now the Duke ducked, the Doge dodged, and the Duchess didn't. So the Duke got the Duchess, the Duchess got the Doge, and the Doge got the Duke!

KING RODERICK: Curious… All I heard was that the Duchess had a siege of rheumatism. She's 83, you know.

Brilliant stuff!

And if it just so happens that you HAVEN’T seen it, well, what are you waiting for? It’s a gem! Hire it - better still, BUY it - immediately!

It’ll certainly provide a far less stressful way of passing the afternoon than sitting through the England v Portugal World Cup match!

CHRISTMAS IS COMING…

Just seven months to Christmas! That's only 211 days! Almost time to start getting ready!

You think I jest? Well, the young couple at the next table to us in a restaurant the other evening were doing exactly that. For more than an hour, they plotted and planned their family Christmas with the desperate feverishness of those scarred by previous seasonal get-togethers.

There was much talk about the days on which the various family members would arrive and where they would be accommodated (a futon in the sitting room, an inflatable bed in the study) and detailed plots involving enticements and compromises: “We’ll get Mother to make one of her special potato-salads...”

Their increasing anxiety was disturbingly infectious and it was difficult to resist the temptation to try and make helpful suggestions such as: “Do you really think that making the potato salad is going to compensate for the fact that your mother won’t be cooking the turkey and Christmas pud this year?”

When we left they had reached the point of discussing how they were going to “sell” the plan to the various family members and who needed to be won over first…

What we knew, and what they were closing their minds to, is the fact that, however relation-proof they imagine their scheme to be, it will without doubt go horrendously wrong - somewhere between 24th and 26th December…