Two Chaps Talking

Dear Boy,

A short summer break combined with moving house and the duties of Fatherhood have kept me too long from the keyboard. Consequently my mind is overflowing with unusual levels of hateful bile and closely reasoned vitriol.

Reinforce this with recent circumstances which clearly make us question every second of our lives we waste and I fear you're in for a rough ride...

As you may know, I worked or a while training boring business people in the dark arts of brainstorming. A large part of the work we did was to encourage an attitude of 'positivity' amongst our charges. There was, I recall, a section when one of my wilder eyed colleagues would illustrate the power of 'positive thinking' with a marvellous, though I'm sure, entirely apocryphal story.

"In a recent study at (insert name of academic institution here) two teams of golfers were set the task of improving their swing. Half of the golfers practiced for 15 minutes per day, the rest visualised successful strokes for the same period of time. At the end of the experiment the visualisers showed a marked improvement over the practisers. The reason was thought to be that the practisers would, quite naturally, have experienced a degree of failure whereas the visualisers would only have experienced 15 minutes per day of perfect strokes. They would thus believe themselves incapable of failure".

There you have, in a French-polished nutshell, the flaccid, weary, self-deluding doctrine that's the root cause of everything from shite novels, through reality TV to US foreign policy.

It comes, naturally, as most of the worst things do, out of America: a sort of cult of relentless, asinine positivity, which, serendipitously, yields the deathless acronym - CRAP.

CRAP is what makes any American, and increasingly most Englishmen, recoil in physical disgust if you dare to suggest that something can't be done, is a really stupid idea, has been tried and failed before or is just a plain, flat out physical impossibility. If you try and explain it their eyes cross and they suffer a spontaneous nosebleed as they attempt to assimilate such heresy.

"But, they stutter, how can you be so negative?"

Well I guess they have me there. Perhaps it's just a talent

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not suggesting moping around like a bad smell denying any possibility of change or success in life. Many good things happen. I'm a relentlessly optimistic person and can always be relied on to encourage and support wherever possible. I believe in giving it one's best shot. But I also try to be truthful.

In English schools, whole generations have been developmentally warped by a system that refuses to acknowledge the existence of failure. By years of frantic goal shifting it has become possible for everyone to pass everything.

Have you ever seen those little signs on the backs of trucks that enable you to dob in the driver? This very day, in the cab home from work I saw a sign on the back of a delivery van which said....

CALL XXXX_XXXXXX

IF MY DRIVING IS GREAT

I reached for the phone to tell them that, though their driver was entirely adequate, their utterly transparently ham-fisted attempt at motivational positive spin made me want to vomit my liver.

Why is this important? Because failure, we are told, is demotivating.

In truth, the reason our social educational system and our work hierarchy have purged the possibility of failure from our lives is that, if we fail at school or work we might just find ourselves saying

"actually, they're right. I'm rubbish at this - I think I'll try something else. I'm going to pack all this bollocks in and go and open a sub-post office in rural Dorset. I've never enjoyed being Sales Manager for this incontinence product conglomerate. I'm going to take my wife and kids and fuck off to Tuscany in a converted bus where I'm going to apologise to them continuously for being a souless yuppy shit until, pray God, they remember who I am and love me again".

And there you have it. The reason for CRAP is that it keeps us from questioning the status quo of tedious careers and pointless education.

Anyone I've ever respected has failed. Repeatedly. Day in day out until failure made them better or they quit and did something utterly brilliant instead.

CRAP gives us a World of staggering mediocrity, a world of micro-slebs who feel we owe them attention and airtime just because they want it so badly and are deluded enough to believe in themselves. CRAP keeps alive the notion that George W Bush in some way deserves his position. That his crippling stupidity was not an impediment because any American who believed in himself enough could sit in the oval office in his place.

CRAP makes it impossible for us to pass on experience, to motivate or to educate and, most heinous of all, it makes us feel guilty for telling the truth.

We have a unique opportunity, Dear Friend, to something great for the world.

Let's go out, this very day and make a difference. Let's stand up from our keyboards, put on our coats, select a tightly furled brolly from the rack, go out into the street and tell someone they're shit.

In the end they'll thank us for it.

Yours Aye

T

Posted by S at 09:18 PM | Permalink

Saratoga Springs.

Hello Dear Friend,

Five weeks ago today life changed forever as we know it. I don't propose to dwell on the tragedy of that but rather to celebrate those things that keep us going and make us the gentlemen and gentlewomen that we try to be. Bear with me Old Love for normal service will be resumed in my next missive.

Can anything on this green earth compare to seeing the correct break in the crease on a pair of dinner trousers? The amuse bouche on its wee silver tray offered at Le Gav? Or the burnished walnut dash in one's rolling gentleman's club? They are all things of great wonder and we should enjoy them while we can.

Three weeks ago my friend and I arrived in La Mole, a small hamlet over-looking, but mercifully far enough away from, the gauche-fest that is St Tropez. We'd driven in his open-topped hairdresser's two-seater for two days and were staying in a Belle Epoque palace with peeling paint and torn upholstery. The view from my garret was of the hills and bay around St Trop. and the gardens and pool beneath me. Almost perfect. Almost.

When we arrived at the hotel in the late afternoon the fey French receptionist had looked a little crestfallen when we asked for separate rooms, he perked up a bit when he saw us fully dressed and off out for a romantic dinner together. We'd had time only for a quick dip in the pool and an hour's dressing.

L'Auberge de La Mole has only one menu. They don't do anything less than the five stated courses. They don't do substitutions and they've never heard of doggy-bags. Upon selecting your wines for the evening, from a cellar laid down over fifty years, you are presented with four large terrines of pate: boar's head, fine goose liver, coarse rustic pork and something so unspeakable it must remain anonymous for fear of EEC regulations. Sublime, and more than enough to sate even the most voracious of appetites. Ha. It was but the beginning.

Have you ever, my Dear Friend, experienced an omelette avec ceps, made from ingredients gathered not half-a-mile from the restaurant? You probably have, and so can share with me the wonder at such an otherwise ordinary dish. If there was a god I might cite his or her name in its praise. I shall never again eat an omelette without feeling cheated and lost.

Full surely? After a pound of pate and five eggs? Oh dear me no. Next we have the tournedos Rossini avec fois gras et pommes de terre gratinees. Pardon me for a moment while I weep quietly at the splendour of this. Even to utter its name brings a tear to my eye. I don't believe it could be improved upon by anyone, ever. That the wine was like angels dancing on my tongue was almost lost on me.

Fetch the wheelbarrow for I cannot rise and so intend to stay recumbent for the foreseeable future. Oh, what's this? Of course. Another course. Egad. Les Fromages. Now I mentioned that one of the pates may have skirted certain Euro Dictats, well these cheeses were kept in a lead container and could only be handled by experienced cheese-handlers with full chemical protection suits. Each taste took me to places I had never even dreamt of; inside a goat herder's ancient leather bag; wrapped in vine leaves and soaked in oil; ponds where sheep had bathed since Roman Times. At the end of this adventure I felt acquainted not only with the land of the cheese maker, but also his dietary habits and those of his wife and nineteen-year-old daughter.

Having gone far beyond any kind of normal consumption I had loads of room left for the mousse au chocolate, cr�me caramel, poivre en calvados and plums in Sauternes. Easy. I think perhaps had I not burned a hole in my insides with eau de vie I might not have found space for the chef's signature desert of slivers of roasted apple with a tiny smudge of ice cream. But I had, so I did.

It wasn't a happy meal, or god forbid a Happy Meal, but it was a proud one. We were there to celebrate one who couldn't join us, and we did it in a way of which she would've heartily approved, aside perhaps from the inevitable comment about soft southern pooves who couldn't finish the second bottle.

I'm going to say it was the best meal of my life, and the saddest. And I'm going to recommend that everyone go there and experience it. Not in the same circumstances, for they can never be repeated. But perhaps in the same spirit.

Should I pause here and leave it for the nonce? Or can I just slip in a comment about something I experienced this Saturday past? Have you ever heard of a September Song Party? No nor had I. Knowing of my apparent ignorance a couple of very good friends invited the OB&C and I along to an enormous res. to observe this cultural phenomenon.

Imagine a town house the size of a decent pile in of Eaton Square. Rip everything out and refit it with 'original style' wood fittings. Spare no expense apart from that of taste. Buy the ground floor of next door and knock through for who after all can manage without a room the size of two school gymnasiums? Oh, and have a touch-screen computer terminal in every room, even the bloody shower for gawd's sake. After all, you never know when you might want to look at the rooftop hot tub security cameras, check you email, or turn on the lights in the downstairs loo.

Now if this riot of tack weren't quite enough let's invite assorted bankers and their trophies and use our untold millions to feed them chip-fat Chardonnay instead of good old honest-to-goodness Champers. Getting the picture?

It probably didn't escape your notice that the party featured the word song in it. Alas one of the hosts once had aspirations to be an operatic singer and so invites others around with various instruments to sing-a-long to show tunes and top pop hits. Perfectly camp one might surmise. But what self-respecting friend of Mandelson or Spacey would be seen dead in a place with a Cats The Musical poster on the wall?

At 11.30pm the host asked everyone to sing Gawd Bless America and I was swept to the door for fear of my reaction. Our friends had already scarpered and so the OB&C and I headed north to the official res. enlightened and er, entertained, or do I mean bewildered?

It's a funny place this New World. They do strange things with each other.

Ah well, one must play the hand one is dealt.

Dum vivimus vivamus, now more than ever.

Love,

S

Posted by T at 09:11 PM | Permalink