Greetings from Bogotá.
It has been a long time, I know, since I last accosted you with my musings and I must apologise for what undoubtedly looked like laxity. I haven’t forgotten you or been overly idle but have been grafting away at my book, ‘Passion, Pleasure and Peril: Learning to grow coffee, and live, in Colombia’, striving to shape it into something that will, at most, maximise your reading pleasure, and at least, help it see the light of day.
We have also been travelling, mostly to and in the U.K. Gave us a chance to see two of the Godchildren, catch up with some of the usual suspects (although nowhere near as many as I would wish), and attend to some ongoing business.
This time we were staying in East London, in Stepney Green, and what a revelation it turned out to be. I always thought that Kensington and even Shepherd’s Bush were central, but to be able to stroll to Tower Hill and Shoreditch and St Paul’s and Tate Modern and the Inns of Court put everything in a new perspective, and actually made me realise what Central London really means.
And in the course of that stroll, I kept coming across interesting antiquities that were just sitting there as part of the streetscape.
For example, just along the Mile End Road from us was Trinity Green Almshouses, the first almshouses to be built in London. They were built in 1695, by the Corporation of Trinity House (which regulated all things seafaring) to provide housing for “28 decay’d Masters and Commanders of Ships or ye Widows of such”. The two rows of houses face each other across a green, with a chapel connecting them at the far end.
Trinity Green faced closure in 1895 when Sir Frederic Leighton proposed the almshouses be destroyed but they were saved through a public campaign led by Charles Robert Ashbee. They were the first buildings to be put on his newly created preservation register, which eventually became the listed building system.
Sir Frederic Leighton lived in West London in Holland Park. He was a painter and sculptor associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and was the first painter to be given a peerage. On 24 January 1896 he was created Baron Leighton of Stretton. He died the next day of angina, and his hereditary title died with him. It was the shortest-lived peerage in history.
Trinity Green however is still with us.
On another stroll I wandered into the Temple Church, which lies between Fleet Street and the Thames. It was built by the Knights Templar and consecrated in 1185 by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, in the presence, it is believed, of King Henry II.
I was last there in 1985, prompted by my long lasting interest in the Templars, Henry II, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his son Richard I.
Back in 1985 it was just a quiet, beautiful, ancient church with a brace of knight’s effigies clustered in the original Round Church, which was designed to recall the circular Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The effigies mark the resting place of various Knights Templar and contemporary worthies.
These days it costs five quid to get in and there are glossy information panels and sophisticated LED lighting everywhere. The nice lady at the reception desk told me that from around 2005 traffic increased dramatically, with individuals and groups arriving clutching copies of Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’, looking around in a slightly bewildered fashion, and leaving very soon after.
For me, this time, the highlight was reacquainting myself with the effigy and burial place of William Marshall, 1st Earl of Pembroke. Also known as William the Marshall, he served five English kings: Henry II and his sons; ‘The Young King’ Henry, Richard I, John; and John’s son Henry III He died in 1219 at the age of 73.
Bet you never guessed I am that weird.
Of more recent historical artefacts we also saw the Hockney retrospective at Tate Britain, and the Robert Rauschenberg at Tate Modern, amongst others delights.
One other observation of life in East London concerns the Mr Whippy Ice Cream vans. In Sydney I remember they used to play ‘Greensleeves’ (which we renamed ‘Creamsleeves’) to announce they were in the neighbourhood. In Stepney Green they play the theme from Match of the Day.
So now I am back here, and in about two hours I will be flying to Pereira to meet Adriano and return to the Mykanos.
Some might wonder why have I not gone already?
Last Thursday I was involved in quite a complex online discussion with some other Aussie expats concerning the media coverage (particularly in Australia) over the arrest of Cassandra Sainsbury, the Australian girl caught with 5.8kgs of cocaine at El Dorado airport.
They bemoaned the image of Colombia that the press were painting: a drug infested, lawless, corrupt, third world country, when these days it is nothing like that, and it would deter visitors. I said it was a hangover from history and it was changing as more people came and experienced Colombia for themselves. Some countered with the fact that the only thing most people around the world knew about Colombia came from watching the Netflix series Narcos, which I have never seen. (I did however see the local show El Patron de Mal, on which Narcos is based).
“You can’t have it both ways,” I observed. “Make a big series featuring Pablo Escobar and the cartels and of course people’s perception of Colombia will be affected.”
And the next day I was asked to be an extra in the final episode of Series 3 of … Narcos.
That was shot yesterday in a courtroom in central Bogotá, made up to look like a courtroom in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I was a lawyer assisting the Attorney General and although I didn’t say anything I did get to hand the AG the paper showing the secret payouts of the chief accountant of the Cali Cartel. So they can’t really cut me out.
Today I am just a simple campesino coffee farmer and am off to the Bush, from whence I will report on progress, pets, and the price of coffee.
Love from him and me
Baz
