New Year Blog

 Dishoom, Covent Garden

Where to begin? Perhaps with a Gelukkig Nieuwjaar to all. I returned two days ago from two festive weeks in England. I slept in five beds, travelled quite a few miles, had such fun and warmth with family in various locations, finishing with the Annual Theatre Trip following The Annual Lunch, normally in Italian restaurants in Soho. Perhaps it is every year that we say 'That was the best ever,' but it was definitely true this year. Grandson Tom, as befits the oldest and wisest of his generation in the family, took over responsibility for finding a restaurant and reserving, this year, 19 places. Dishoom proved to be amazing; an Indian restaurant offering what can only be described as truly and deliciously authentic food. The restaurant seemed enormous but the waiter told us that it is the smallest of the three Dishooms in London. I was bemused and impressed that as we arrived there was a queue outside soon after noon. This was reduced and augmented at intervals and numbered around twenty when we left after 2.00 pm. The weather was Cold and Dishoom served hot drinks to the patient queue!

Kinky Boots in action

 Five year old Genevieve, noticed by the Leading Man
in Kinky Boots!

The musical, [it is Always a musical] was Kinky Boots by popular request. I could not believe how incredibly vital, silly, over-the-top, extravagant and gorgeous it all was. One of my nieces met a woman in the Ladies who was on her sixth visit and I can understand that enthusiasm and devotion. The show imbued the spectators with the most splendid and spontaneous, hard-to-contain and involved joie de vivre. As usual, we had drinks together afterwards in a nearby bar before we all split for home, or hotel in my case. Gathering outside the theatre to marshal the troops, as it were, a little group of us bumped into the leading man, off for a break before the evening repeat performance. After our excited compliments he mentioned that several of them had noticed the pretty little girl in the third row of the stalls and said,  'Aahh' as children feature rarely in the audience. It was Genevieve [5 but nearly 6 as she would have it] over from California on her first family theatre outing to what was deemed probably not quite ideal-for-that-initial purpose but nonetheless desired by the majority's [i.e. everyone else] theatrical choice. She too had loved the noise and the excitement, the dancing, the singing and the glitter without necessarily appreciating the story line or the transgender aspects of the narrative! It is only now that I notice that the publicity advises the show's suitability for the ages of 12+ for viewing.


Bruxelles Midi, scene of my non-Celia Johnson moment.



Next day I caught an early Eurostar and as we approached Brussels, I struggled to take my large heavy bag down from its high perch to which someone had moved it. A youngish rather shabby man, also waiting to arrive, offered to pull it down after which we chatted in pigeon French until arriving in the Bruxelles Midi where he kindly offloaded the luggage. I thought it rather odd that after this brief encounter, he didn't immediately dash off for his train and so instinctively refused his offer to pull my case along saying untruthfully, how easy it was for me. Around ten minutes after arrival, he was still around, despite voluble thanks and hand shakes of farewell and I felt more uneasy. This situation is normal for young and middle-aged women but odd for someone of 82 so antennae were in position. As we ascended on the escalator for my train he said something quickly and in response to my Pardon?, informed me that he was a gigolo. I laughed in disbelief but he repeated himself and I quickly told him I had no need of his services and we parted on Platform 7 with yet another handshake and my thanks! After which, I savoured the moment and wondered if this was my lowest point in ageing, yet or perhaps my highest. Probably the lowest I decided.

 A minutely-observed portrayal of Ostende beach full of
uninhibited people enjoying Life.

While in England I spent a day with a girl friend in London for lunch and a visit to the James Ensor exhibition, curated by the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans at the R.A. Despite being well recognised in Europe, Ensor is almost unknown in Britain; I was introduced to his often strange images by an artist friend about five or six years ago when we visited the James Ensor Museum in Ostende, the seaside town where he was born and lived all his life. I bought a handsome sketch of him [from a flea market] by David Laing, with the inscription in Laing's handwriting, inscribing the portrait to 'Madame la Marquise Massoni avec mon plus grand respect et toute ma reconnaissance.' It is marked 'Bruxelles le 20 Okt 1951.


 The R.A. exhibition, entitled Intrigue, takes its title from the major painting by the same name which depicts a carnival of eerie, somewhat menacing, figures jostling for a place in the foreground and emitting a sense of unease and theatricality. It is strangely disturbing as are many of the paintings and drawings on view. Ensor remained an odd, eccentric outsider all his life, ignored in his self-chosen isolation during WW1 but enjoying a burgeoning of his reputation during the Twenties. He became feted as Belgium's national artist and famous people courted him in his unfashionable seaside citadel with the King ennobling him as a Baron in 1929. Before he developed his penchant for the macabre and grotesque, Ensor painted conventional, if dull, interiors and still lifes but during the 1880s and 1890s, he freed himself of the bourgeois shackles and embraced the strange, the political satire and blasphemy, the menacing and unsettling, the naughty and irreligious studies of what became his typical oeuvre.

There were several canvasses in the exhibition of crowded scenes and one in particular caught our eye. It was of Ostende beach full of joyful uninhibited people enjoying their moments in the sun [see above] though the Ensor self-portrait in his gorgeous hat remains No 1 in my wish list!

 Possibly my favourite Ensor painting.
Self portrait with Flowered Hat 1883