Greetings from Bogotá.
I am here on a sabbatical of sorts, taking a short break from the farm and spending a solitary sojourn in the city. It’s good to have a change of scenery after all the doings and drama of Christmas and New Year, and as much as I would like Adriano to be here as well, he currently has his hands full in the Bush, changing the scenery literally and not just metaphorically.
I would like to thank all of you who sent such kind messages regarding Torsalino. They were much appreciated. Of course what became immediately apparent was that so many of you have had the same experience, and often suffered much more significant loss than the untimely death of our furry, striped, cuddly comedian. We had a brief internment in the garden, which I watched from the back verandah, having no desire to see the inert form of my little mate.
Curiously, Mafeluchis, who hitherto had remained resolutely aloof from Torsalino’s attempts at companionship started meowing repetitively and uncharacteristically went through the fence that surrounds the house to get closer to the burial site. She sat under a nearby lime tree and watched, and when all was done, promptly turned around and returned to join me. Ever since she has kept an eye on me, from a distance, usually from her favourite chair on the verandah.
As if losing Torsalino weren’t enough, we then lost David Bowie, soon followed by Alan Rickman and Glenn Frey. It was sad about Rickman and Frey but Bowie was the big one for me. I grew up in Sydney rather than in London so missed his start, but I certainly did not miss his landmark ‘Hunky Dory’, chosen in 2010 by Time magazine as one of its ‘100 best albums of all time’. As our Dad was A&R Manager for RCA Australia, we got a sample copy as soon as it was released in December 1971. I think it was the first copy of the album to arrive in the country. Every song was good, but ‘Changes’ in particular struck a chord and has been a theme song for me ever since.
However some things do not change and that includes Christmas. It happens every year even if the details of the celebrations vary.
Again we had a Christmas party for our workers; lunch for 90, with families, on the 24th at Rancho Grande. We fed around 200 in all with chicharrón (fried pork belly and skin), sancocho (a stew of beef, chicken and pork), roast pork with rice, and Natilla (Colombian Christmas ‘pudding’ or dessert). There was nothing left. We had made 90 anchettas or goodie bags the night before and I got to give them out to each family, fortunately not dressed as Papa Noel this year. For the first time we had a DJ who, as well as decks and speakers, brought along a singer as well.
Adriano had helium-filled balloons and sweets for the kids but it was hard to keep them out of the hands of the adults as well. In fact in some cases it was hard to know who were adults and who were kids, which was necessary as I was circulating filling up their glasses. Some of our indigenous workers are well under five foot (150 cms) tall and look about 10 years old, but then turn out to be in their 20’s with several children.
Last year we had a dance competition; this year a sack race.
Horacio and the boys staked out a stretch of grass with bamboo posts and rope and the contestants had to race the length of the course, round a post, and get back to the beginning. Needless to say, the sacks we used for the race usually hold export coffee rather than competitive cafeteros.
We staged heats of three, with the winners going into the next round. In the men’s championship, Adriano was in a heat with Horacio, our administrator, and his 15-year-old son David. David won, which Adriano commented was not that surprising since he was only 15 and almost 40 years younger than Adriano, but at least Adriano beat Horacio, who took a tumble on the return leg. Men’s champion was a very fit 22-year-old who works at La Granja, and he received a very nice cash prize, as did the winners of the Women’s and Children’s contests. A good time was had by all.
We did nothing on the 25th, which is pretty standard in our part of the Bush. It is traditionally a day for families and friends to go by jeep, bus and/or bike down the valley to picnic by, and swim in, the river.
On the 27th however, we had a Galah Dinner (as an Aussie might call it) for 20 friends and senior staff and their families, for which Adriano created the most amazing ambience by hanging palm seed clusters from the ceiling and stringing them with lights of all description and Christmas balls. It was not unlike dining under a coral reef. Stuffed turkey and roast leg of pork were served, followed by my Bread & Butter pudding. The decoration was astonishing but I must admit to relief when it was removed after Twelfth Night. Every day it was depositing more palm seeds on the floor. It was like having the dining room awash with ball bearings; a bucket and a half was being swept up each morning. This is exactly what Nature intends of course, broadcasting seeds to provide the next generation, except in this case they were definitely being spilt on barren ground.
But back to Bogotá.
Here I lead a hermitic existence, writing by day (or more usually staring out the window wondering whether it’s time for another coffee), and then unwinding in the evening with a whiskey and watching TV, a regime I learned from the great David Beal, my former boss and mentor in Australia.
I bored you rigid previously with my analyses of Graham Norton and Top Gear, so I will not subject you to such vapid ramblings this time, save making one observation.
This time I enjoyed Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond making a ‘dream road trip’ along the Côte d’Azur in the south of France. I happen to know the area quite well, having in a previous existence attended MIDEM (Marché International du Disque et de l’Edition Musicale … the music business version of the Cannes Film Festival), held in Cannes each January, first as a music publisher and later as manager of the Australian music industry stand.
For a number of years I worked with the lovely Denise from the Australian Embassy in Paris, and when we were not working we would find things of interest such as: the Chapelle Saint-Pierre in Villefranche sur Mer which is decorated by Jean Cocteau; the Villa La Mauresque on Cap Ferrat which was the home of writer W. Somerset Maugham; and the Chapelle du Rosaire de Vence decorated by Henri Matisse, which was unfortunately closed; all of which were followed by a meal at La Colombe d’Or in Saint Paul de Vence.
Some years later Adriano and I joined brother Chris and sister-in-law Penny in Monte Carlo to celebrate Chris’s birthday with a dinner at Alain Ducasse’s 3 Michelin starred restaurant Louis XV, located in the Hotel de Paris. I well remember Chris being bowled over by the entrance of a stunningly beautiful young blonde dressed in yellow leather who was accompanied by a thin, very unattractive, old white-haired gentlemen in a black Versace suit, his solid gold Rolex outshining the smaller version that adorned the wrist of his gorgeous partner. Chris was aghast: “She is stunning! What could she possibly see in him?” Penny, Adriano and I looked at Chris as one and in unison said, “Guess!”
Anyway, it was outside that same Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo that Clarkson and Hammond made the observation that amused me.
It was to do with the fact that when guests arrive at the hotel they give their car keys to the valet parking attendants who, if the car is impressive enough, leave it parked in front of the hotel, but only until something better comes along, at which point it is banished to a multi-storey car park.
Richard Hammond was driving a Lamborghini Aventador Roadster (price GBP 295,000) and Jeremy Clarkson had a Bugatti Veyron Vitesse (circa GBP 1,500,000) and they wondered what sort of car would stay standing in front of the hotel, as even the cars they had would eventually be eclipsed by some Kazakhi arms dealer in something even more outrageous … like the USS Enterprise. Their solution was a Model T Ford, which stayed there all night, but only because the parking attendants couldn’t figure out how to drive it.
Which, believe it or not, brings me back to David Bowie. He was the least pretentious of all the great stars, a thoroughly nice guy, who was well aware of what he was going through but never really lost the plot … well except for a couple of years infused with drugs, but that is hardly unusual in the rock world.
The real impact of Bowie was that he gave permission / made it possible for misfits and outcasts and rebels to feel good about themselves … to be individuals … to be able to weather the ridicule or disapproval of those who castigated them for being different.
Curiously enough, I saw a programme on Superheroes on the BBC, and discovered that the comic book heroes that now dominate our cinema screens were doing a very similar thing to Bowie in the US in the late 30’s and 40’s.
Written and drawn predominantly by young Jewish boys, like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who created Superman (an immigrant from Krypton who left everything behind, and who gives himself a gentile name i.e. Clark Kent), they celebrated the aliens/weirdoes/misfits and made them great icons of truth, justice and the American way. However as their influence and popularity soared these heroes were subsumed into espousing the “American Ideal” and became instruments of the same system that had originally marginalised them.
And this is where Bowie and US Superheroes differ.
Assistant Film Director Michael Dignum wrote recently about a conversation he had with Bowie in 1993 on the set of the video for Bowie’s ‘Miracle Goodnight’. He asked Bowie what was the biggest moment in his career.
Bowie referred back to 1980 when they were shooting the video for ‘Ashes to Ashes’. He said he had got caught up in the hype of being a young pop star and had acquired a bit of attitude. For the video he was dressed as a clown and was being filmed on a beach singing and walking in front of a bulldozer. As soon as they had started, an old man and his dog walked between Bowie and the camera. They stopped shooting and Bowie sat down next to the camera to wait until the old man was out of shot. As the old man passed Bowie, the director said to him “Excuse me Mister, do you know who this is?” The old man looked Bowie up and own and said to the director “Of course I do. It’s some c**t in a clown suit”.
Bowie then said, “That was a huge moment for me, it put me back in my place and made me realize, yes I’m just a c**t in a clown suit. I think about that old guy all the time.”
A true hero … and not just for one day.
Love from him and me
Barry
