Britain's hopeless ruling class, Francesca Martinez and Lady Gaga

A sight you won't see in Britain - Daddy bulldozer and his son hard at work clearing snow from Gorky Park on the day we left Moscow - where is Mummy bulldozer?

Elena and I are back in London, so time for a few comparative impressions between The Great Bear Russia and Great Britain, once the title of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, now something of an ironic title, since whatever else it is, and it is very many very good things, it is surely no longer Great.

We land at Heathrow and are channelled into terminal 5, designed to much acclaim by the architect Richard Rogers.

It is a building of sepulchral steel, grey and gloomy, an ante - room of the after - life. We almost expect Barber’s Adagio for Strings to be playing as we shuffle like the walking dead towards the bowels of the building, hoping to come out into bright life, but this mournful canopy of a building keeps whispering  ‘prepare to meet thy doom’ as we wander lethewards.

‘I did not know death had undone so many’ wrote TS Eliot in The Wasteland, as he developed his theme of the unlived life, which he saw as a symptom of the decadence and spiritual emptiness of his time, the ‘low dishonest decade’ of the thirties.

Roger’s terminal would seem to be Eliot’s poem incarnate.

The living death theme is pursued down to every detail - the voice in the lift is a voice from the grave, completely drained of any human warmth or emotion, it is as if you are listening to a corpse that has been sentenced to a century of repeating ‘ doors closing’, ‘ doors opening’ as a punishment for leaving a door open in a sacred chapel.

A question occurs to us : is Britain suffering from a variation of Eliot’s spiritual bankruptcy?

Has half a century of welfare drained its people of any really creative edge?

Any spirit with which to demand and protest?

This Terminal building has been hailed as a masterpiece - but is it?

It’s so depressing and soulless, it is a joyless wasteland.

Things brightened up though at The Hammersmith and City Line tube - new trains which are clean and bright and have a continuous interior, without separate carriages so you can stand at one end and see the entire tube as it snakes along.

These are impressive, and cheer us up, maybe Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, is not a complete buffoon.

Whilst we were in Moscow The Guardian published a story that astonished us.

We expected it to drive the British public out onto the streets in protest.

It turns out that The Monarchy, The Queen and Prince Charles, do run the country after all!

The elected government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg regularly ask these lottery winners if they will approve the legislation proposed by The House of Commons.

Occasionally they turn it down flat.

Often, they amend it.

Amazing, but not a whimper of protest from the citizens, sorry subjects, sorry, consumers of once Great Britain.

We had seen the opposition in Moscow - where was it here?

Now let’s take a closer look at this troika that run Britain.

They were all born with a full matching set of silver spoons in their mouths.

Dostoevsky said that nothing creative or worthwhile can come from an easy life - struggle is what brings us to life and gives life meaning. Now we don’t agree with where he went from there, which was off to Jesus, but so far he definitely had a point.

Our British ruling troika haven’t really had to struggle against anything more adverse than a windy day and a couple of inches of snow, and when these coincide, the country collapses.

Notice too, the astonishing similarity between David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Price Charles and Tim Nice but Dim.

Here he is being interviewed with his fiancee about his forthcoming nuptials.

It’s not as if we don’t have people who are tough enough to get things done, who have struggled and made something of themselves and the added something useful to the world - it’s just that they don’t seem to get anywhere near to running the country.

Francesca Martinez, the comedienne with cerebral palsy is hilarious, original and courageous. She refers to herself as ‘ wobbly’ and refuses to accept victim status.

Asked about her views on abortion in the case of severe disability evident in the fetus, she replied that some people become disabled later in life - take that Nick Clegg for example!

We are not saying that she should run the country - only that she is emblematic of a lot of people in the country who are tough, original and capable enough to run it but are somehow kept out by the pale and sweaty softies who do.

In fact, if the Monarchy went back to just being a tourist attraction instead of trying to run the country, we could have Francesca for Queen instead of the overpaid manikin we have at present.

Nor are we saying that we want everyone to suffer so that the standard of creativity and governance improves, or that the welfare state should be abolished and that poets must starve to improve their poetry and painters their paintings.

But something seems to be amiss, and we suspect it’s something to do with the fact that Britain’s ruling elite has had it too easy, it’s managed to lock out the competition from below.

If they fail, it’s off to The House of Lords for most of them.

Or a premature drawing down of a huge pay-off and pension.

Britain needs to get a grip, get a plan and stick to it.

As Churchill once said of his opponents, we are ‘adamant for drift, resolute for irresolution’

And we are saying that suffering does sometimes give creativity the spur it needs.

President Putin is not everybody’s glass of vodka, but he is definitely tough enough to run Russia and doesn’t care if you don’t want him to.

Here he is throwing a few people around.

Somehow, we have the feeling that we need a bit of Putin in our system - our version would have a better sense of humour and not take themselves so seriously.

We used to have Lloyd George as Prime Minister, a man who left school at 12 and came from Wales - talk about disability, or Ernest Bevin, a cockney trade unionist and Defence Secretary who when told that a rival for office was ‘ his own worst enemy’ replied ‘ not while I’m alive he ain’t’.

Those were the days.

Before we left Moscow, we visited the Tretkayana Gallery of modern Art.

The Soviet Realist school gets a pasting from most art critics, but the period from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, the period of the purges and war and reconstruction, produced an art which throws out a powerful magnetic field as you stand in front of it. They may have been wrong to glamourise Stalin, but they did feel strongly about their country, they wanted to build it with socialism, out into the steppes and into the future.

Alexander Deyneka and Petrov-Vodkin are typical, Petrov-Vodkin of the early Bolshevik idealism and and Deyneka of the optimism and belief in post war reconstruction, itself represented by the Tselina movement after the second world war when thousands volunteered to go east out into the steppes to build the new Russia after the ravages of the Nazi invasion.

As you stand in front of this work it seems to be straining to clamber out of the frame, you can feel the muscle ripple and sense the minds absorbing and reflecting.

A. Deyneka 'The Defence of Petrograd'

K. Petrov-Vodkin 'Red Horse'  (source: Internet)

Do we have anything this good?

This strong?

Do we believe in anything beyond ourselves as consumers?

Did you see the Damian Hirst exhibition at The Tate, which was given pride of place over the summer?

We did, unfortunately.

It was a nice day out for the children.

That shark didn’t frighten me for a moment, and Damian has never succeeded in making me worry or think about death at all.

Except his.

Here is an artist who has been featherbedded by the long suffering British consumerate, who have funded the insult to their intelligence and taste that was his retrospective without complaint.

We should have just turned the gallery over to the work of Lady Gaga, a truly great artist who needs no subsidy from taxpayers, an artist who is an activist and philanthropist and a courageous one at that - it takes guts to go to Moscow and tell Muscovites that whatever they are: gay, lesbian, transgender or cross-dresser, they are welcome at her gig.
Lady Gaga believes in equality.

I’d like to see Kate Middleton say anything like that - relax, it’s not gonna happen.

She doesn't believe in equality.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

A new opportunity for Prince Harry, Sergei Yesenin, Boris Yeltsin and other party animals

Here in Moscow, Prince Harry is in the news.

Harry is the son of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, the ‘Peoples Princess’ and of....well.....….he does not show any signs of Prince Charles - ness, as his older brother William obviously does - you know, that well meaning but not quite comprehending smile, the patronising grimace upon hearing of the suffering of his subjects.
No, Prince Harry is a ‘Peoples Prince’, he likes drinking and dropping his trousers, he likes shooting bad guys that do bad things to our guys, he wants to take them ‘out of the game’, he wants to be young and free and live on state benefits at taxpayers’ expense, just like other ordinary young people in Britain - no wonder the British people love him, he’s one of them, he wants to play video war games from his helicopter and bone a babe when he comes down.
But the future of the Monarchy in Britain is uncertain - the country keeps trying to cut its budget, and let’s face it, like the Royal Navy, sooner or later it won’t be able to afford it, especially the live it up on the razzle version represented by Harry - and he’s the only one we really like.
William and Kate are boring, so square they are cubes, and their honeymoon, desperately extended by the tabloid press, can’t last much longer, despite the forthcoming princess.
(They are anxious to change the law so that she can take over when William has shuffled off)
 

So what can Harry do - a guy has to drink, after all, and party.

The answer is Russia.

The family connection is well known : the Romanov’s and Windsors are two names for the same family. They straddle Britain, Germany and Russia.

Look at this happy family photograph taken not long ago.

And let’s consider other things that link the two nations.

Harry has just returned from Afghanistan, just as many Russian boys did many years ago.
( and many did not )
Just like them, he is convinced he killed some bad guys, although he admits he can’t be sure that they were all bad guys, because he was a long way away from them in his helicopter.
And just like the Soviet army, despite the good work done of killing bad guys, Harry and his army will soon be home, leaving Afghanistan as they found it, except with more rubble than before.

The connections are deep in the hearts of both peoples.

Russia’s most popular poet was a Harry from the last century - his name was Sergei Esenin  ( 1895 - 1925 ) : a self confessed hooligan, a spectacular drunk, a serial adulterer, bi-sexual or gay, but anyway a swinger, good looking and totally irresistible to women, even if he did beat them up once he’d married them for their money.
He was a loveable rogue, just like Harry, but he was a fabulous poet, so they loved him, and they still love him very much, even though he committed suicide at the age of thirty.
He had another source of appeal too - he was from a peasant and rustic background, and  the combination of this with an early suicide is irresistible to the Russian psyche.

Now if Harry could only write a poem, or show a talent for more than putting his foot in his mouth or dropping his trousers, the Russians might fall in love with him too.

After all, Harry may have a posh Mum, but we suspect that his Dad was of plebeian origin.
What’s more, although he has shown no sign yet of poetic talent, like Esenin, he’s a babe magnet, and he has a kind of poetry of dance which he revealed in Las Vegas, sans pantalons.

Perhaps one can say that his life itself is a poem?

The moment for Harry may be ripening - Russian politics are brooding with uncertainty.

And people everywhere yearn for the kind of certainty that monarchy can represent, particularly the ‘Peoples’ Prince’ kind of Monarchy.

Why do you think the hopeless Windsors have managed to hang on for so long in Britain?

As The Soviet Union collapsed, Russia toyed with restoring the Czardom.

But the scheme collapsed - they chose a young boy Gregori Romanov who was destined to be a sober square, and he has fulfilled that promise.

Russians, like the British, like a drink and they like a drinker.

Perhaps they booted out Gorbachev because of his anti - alcohol programme?

Closing distilleries, pulling up vineyards and making it illegal to get a drink before 2pm, let alone banning alcohol at official receptions, is the equivalent in Russia of a long political  suicide note.

Boris Yeltsin came dancing in to rescue Russia from Gorbachev’s Prohibition, and boy could Boris drink.

For a little while, until he lost it completely, Boris was very popular.

Have a look at this - Boris and Harry could almost be twinned, like a town in Britain might be to a town in Russia.

Now, the Russians’ have got another sober square running the show, and they are not entirely happy.

A Party Prince could be just what Vladimir Putin needs to win back the hearts of his people.

Harry, sign up to Busuu.com and get started on the Russian lessons.

Catherine the Great was a German, and so are you really, and she couldn’t speak Russian when she started out on the job.

Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality, the slogan of Nicholas 1st and the subsequent Czars, makes for easy work for you, Harry.

You will be the Father of all the Russians, and you will let them have their fun, as long as they let you have yours.

Is there a better job?

Keep an eye on the guards though.

Otherwise the early exit overlap with the great poet Esenin may kick in, which would be a shame.

Strange connections : Gerard Depardieu, tax, patriotism and Mayakovsky

Gerard Depardieu is a badly behaved actor.

He has has been convicted of drinking and driving and is alleged to have assaulted somebody that he crashed his scooter into.

On an aeroplane, he appalled his fellow travellers by urinating in the aisle.

He is incontinent generally, it would seem, being unable to control his appetites.

Our writing this will not offend him in the slightest - he is the sort of person who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, which is probably just as well.

Now we don’t really care much about him either, but we were struck by the claim that M. Depardieu made, during his dispute with his own government over taxation, that he is a creative person.
And since he is now a Russian citizen, and has been welcomed personally, and endorsed as a model citizen, by President Putin, we thought it might be interesting to reflect on whether M. Depardieu’s legacy in Russia will match that of the great Russian poet Mayakovsky (1893 - 1930) - a man who really was creative.

Why make such a comparison at all?

Well, M. Depardiue deserves to be brought down a peg or two, so comparing his claim to creativity to someone whose claim is not in doubt seems to be a good place to start.
Secondly, M.Depardieu’s publicists call him ‘larger than life’ (a common euphemism for overweight actors) so perhaps the comparison will make him look like a pygmy, which can only be sobering for him, which in turn can only be good for his health.
Thirdly, Depardieu claims now to be a Russian patriot, and to regard the Russian people as beautiful and creative, although this compliment does not extend to the opposition, whom he regards as unpatriotic.

‘Judge not, that ye be not judged, for measure for measure shall ye be judged the same....’

I hope these reasons suffice, but there is a fourth, which is simply that we love Mayakovsky’s poetry and admire the way he lived.

M. Depardieu, his art or life, we do not.

M.Depardieu, like a lot of movie actors, just plays himself. And like a lot of movie actors who just play themselves, he has eventually become a parody of himself.

Mayakovsky, on the contrary, was a creative genius, who could write lines like this, which even in translation stir the soul :

You can forget
              when
              and where
you stuffed
               your craw
               and your belly,
                               but
the land
    you hungered with
        you can never
as long as you live and breathe
                     forget!

Mayakovsky knew something about patriotism that Depardieu will never learn.
Although the poet of the Bolsheviks, Mayakovsky, who worked hard for the revolution, and spent time in prison for his work for it before the revolution, became disillusioned with the turn towards authoritarianism and began to write satirically of the regime - a risky business.
He didn’t, though, run away to avoid paying his taxes, despite the fact that he was allowed to travel and did so widely.
He also had a strong, deep and resonant voice, strangely reminiscent of Tennyson reading The Charge of The Light Brigade - both great men, a generation and a continent apart, but conjoined by the art of poetry.

Mayakovsky has been memorialised by Russia in many ways - in Moscow, he has a museum and a theatre named after him and a Metro station dedicated to him.
This station is magnificent, a palatial corridor runs between the main platforms and the ceilings are decorated by mosaic renditions, in the style of orthodoxy itself, of bolshevik iconography.
The entrance vestibule is equally splendid, a gently rising and arching dome decorated with lines and words from his most famous poems.

Here is a question for the Russian Government of today : imagine that you need to increase the level of taxation from its current level of 13% to cover some emergency - perhaps another currency crisis, or the return of the oil price to $25 a barrel. Do you then imagine that M. Depardieu will still be a Russian patriot and stick around to share the pain?

He hasn’t got the bladder for it.

The only memorial he is likely to have erected is a temporary public lavatory.

Last year, Russians took $560 billion out of the country - it's called Capital Flight, and it's serious.

What do they know that M. Depardieu does not?

Oliver Wendell-Holmes, the great American jurist, said ' Tax is the price you pay for civilisation'

Russia is almost alone in having a flat rate of tax which is not only very low but does not graduate at all as income increases.

This is a right wing libertarian American's fantasy. Why aren't they all here.

They too, must know something that M.Depardieu does not.

Me at Mayakovsky Metro Station impersonating the Wi-fi and Police sign and generally avoiding tax in the United Kingdom by being here and unemployed!

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

Moscow madness, beauty, piety and the occasional sniper and acid attack

There was snow everywhere and it made everything beautiful, as if everything had been cleansed of every stain, and every sinner could start again afresh, holy and happy.

An Azerbahjani mafia boss lay dead in the snow on the pavement outside a central Moscow restaurant, a snipers bullet in his head, and a waitress from the same restaurant lay injured in hospital, having caught a bullet that missed its target.

Outside the Marfa and Mary Convent of Mercy in Bolshaya Ordynka, old ladies cross themselves and bow before the domes of their deity as the snowflakes bless them in return, gentle missives of forgiveness from on high.

There are churches everywhere in central Moscow, domed and fantastical, confections of pink or white or blue,sounding their bells mournfully, reminding us of our mortality, especially from icicles falling from the roofs of buildings.

There are as many 'Healers' which some people, especially those with medical training, call charlatans, working in Russia as there are medical doctors.
The greatest of these was Anatoly Kashpirovsky, who attained rock star levels of adulation as a 'Healer' in the 90's, and is now back in the country after a period in the USA. We look forward to a general improvement in the health of the Russian nation.

Last night,thousands drilled holes in the ice in ponds and rivers and immersed themselves fully in the belief that this will help them to understand the Peace of God, which passeth all understanding. The Orthodox Church and its priests officiate at this act of mass hysteria once a year on the 19th January by making the water sacred.This they achieve by immersing a cross in it and intoning prayers. The priests are fully clothed.

At the Bolshoi Theatre, some of the dancers feel that their director is being too firm with them, and one of them throws acid in his face.

The victims mother knows who the attacker is, and says she will inform the police.

We tried to visit Lenin in his mausoleum.

I wanted to ask him about the concept of democratic centralism and if he ever imagined this morphing into democracy, or just plain old centralism.

But we weren't allowed in - we asked why not.

'It's a war secret' replied Lenin's guard.

'Oh, I see,' we replied,'thank you'

On the pavements of Rublevka, where we live in pleasant surroundings, a mini-bulldozer chased us along the pavement as it cleared the snow behind us, and I wanted to tell its driver that if he keeps up this good work, one day he will drive a full size bulldozer.
It's lucky I can't speak Russian.

At the Tretyakov State Art Gallery, there are not many visitors, but there are guards everywhere.

Everything in Moscow is very well guarded, except Mafia bosses.

These silent, usually solitary, suffering sentinels must be a drain on the Russian exchequer, and the work itself must lead to thoughts of suicide, so obviously  pointless and boring is their duty.

As we leave the gallery for the second time, having paid two visits to its splendours, we encounter by the exit door, another dead soul in full military attire staring into his hands and ignoring us as we cheerily say Do sveedanya.

Young couples stare in pity at the fate of the young girl forced to marry a very old man in Vasily Pukirev's Unequal Marriage, painted in 1862 as part of the 'New People's' movement to expose the iniquities of life for the poor and women in Czarist Russia.

Outside, by the gate to the entrance courtyard, we notice in the mist and the curtain of falling snow, a guard's hut with a large pane of glass that faced the gallery.
Pressed against this was the face of another guard.
It was a face of utter despair, total ennui, it must have belonged to a man who had the answer to the great question in philosophy which is ' Why is there not just nothing?'

His answer was ' There is just nothing but it's a war secret'

By this time we need a drink, and we are in luck.

A few hundred yards away is The Fullers Bar, where beckons a pint of London Pride to remind us of the CCTV security we enjoy at home. We feel ignored here, the guards that are everywhere pay us no attention and don't speak to us. At home, we know we are being scrutinised all the time, and it feels good!

We manage to get past the man employed by the bar to reduce business and turn customers away ( a lot of Moscow establishments employ such a person ) and we get a table and a couple of pints.

People all around us are drinking, smoking, laughing and chatting.

Arsenal score the winning and only goal with three minutes to spare against Swansea.

The waiter, a nice young lad, gives us two cigarretes when we ask him if it's possible to buy them one at a time.

We smoke these when we have finished our superb Lamb and kidney pie.

And we say to ourselves, what a wonderful world!

Wandering out into the night, the dark and cold wrapped themselves around us and we wrapped our arms around each other, keeping the warmth in and the madness out. Then, as unto a vision of heaven, came upon us the fairy tail tower and domes of the Temple of Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow".

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

Happy Moscow, Sea Buckthorn Tea and the opposition.

Elena and I set out on a freezing Sunday to meet the brave and doughty opponents of President Putin.
Although freezing, it was a beautiful and invigorating day,a crisp and deep carpet of snow lay across all the big spaces between roads and paths,small children were being pulled along on toboggans by parents mummified in woollen caps and scarves and the occasional flurries of falling snowflakes made everyone look around and wonder what more the heavens had to decorate the city. 

source: Internet

But it was cold, and the doughtiness of the opposition was proven by their willingness to march through central Moscow for three or four hours.

Yesterday, we had met Katya Zatuliveter, whom some of you may know because the British Government accused her of being a spy for the Russians whilst she worked as a researcher for a Member of the House of Commons. She won her case and the authorities were unable to offer any evidence that she had been spying.
Katya is now happy in Moscow and firmly convinced that it is a much more interesting place than London.

In many ways, I am sure that she is right, if by interesting you mean alive, contentious, energetic, direct, candid and with an infinite and eclectic range of freely and volubly expressed opinion about everything under the sun.
Here, you know what people think.
They will tell you to your face.
The reason there is an opposition is that some of them have been killed for doing so, and no-one knows who does the killing.

Our route to the rendezvous at Kafein Cafe at Checkhovskaya took us once more through the great gallery of immortalised proletarians, immortalised by statuary, at Revolutskaya Square metro station. 

This time, we were struck by the visionary soldier, grenade in hand on bended knee, whose knee had become polished away by travellers over the decades hoping for good luck. And we were struck by how smart the policemen looked today, on the day that they were due to keep the opposition demonstrators in order. 

Pushing gratefully into the warmth of the Kafein Cafe, we needed refreshment and rejuvenation.
This we achieved with a pot of Buckthorn tea, which is made of a pot - pourrie of fruit and sea buckthorn (oblepiha), which warms the soul and restores the flow of blood around the body.
Once able to speak, we met a merry band of young people selling the Calendar called 12 Free Women. Each woman represents a different strand of the opposition to Putin, and each photograph symbolises each cause.

Katya had earlier remarked that there are many strong women in Russia, probably more strong women than strong men. A vivid example is highlighted by just a silhouette instead of a photograph of Anastasia Rybachenko, an activist who could not attend the photo-shoot for the calendar because she had to flee Russia, having been put on the most wanted list for her participation in the 6th May Day of Protest.
We spoke briefly to Julia Galiamina, one of the women who founded the 5th December Party.  (It was founded after the December 4th 2011 Presidential elections in which it was alleged that Mr Putin and his United Russia Party had rigged the result) Julia features in the calendar, as do two other founders of this party. 

Julia Galiamina with her photo in the Calendar

The other women featured include an environmental activist, founders of the Libertarian Party, The Russia Behind Bars movement, anti-corruption activists, Krymsk Aid, A Russian Nationalist and a member of Pussy Riot- they are all brave and strong, they must be, if only to be able to work together across such a spectrum of opinion - a Russian Nationalist and a Libertarian put tolerance to the test!
Are they friends, we wonder?
They surely testify to the infinite variety of the human mind and temperament.
If you know your revolutionary history, you might find an echo here of the ill-fated Constituent Assembly of January 1918 with its tropical range of political groupings.
The Bolsheviks closed it down.
They had won the election in St Petersburg and Moscow, but not in Russia.
This was not an acceptable result for them.
History, as Mark Twain, said, may not repeat itself but it does rhyme.

We have found conversation here in Moscow to be lively and intense.
Convictions are deeply held.
And it seems to be the case that recent developments whereby Mr Putin and United Russia have consolidated their hold on power and restricted opposition have politicised Russian life to the extent that whether you are opposition or not may affect your choice of company, commercial as well as social.

 These two photos were taken before the march got underway. The atmosphere was cheerful and friendly.

Of course, the shame of this sort of development is that reality is not black or white, or not all the time and not at every level, so good things done by bad people get squashed and bad things done by good people spring forth.

Ghandi, Martin Luther - King, where are your apostles now? Peace, non-violence and compromise are difficult to disentangle. Compromise takes courage and skill. Non - violence is not a passive strategy, it takes discipline and strength.
Let's hope everybody involved has enough of everything required.
Some say it was The Beatles that brought down the Soviet Regime.

As John Lennon sang, ‘ We all doing what we can’

We didn't go through the security gates and march for three hours through central Moscow.

It was too cold.

We went home and had a cup of tea.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce

Shakespeare's spirit banished from Stratford - upon-Avon

‘A thousand townsmen, gentlemen and whores, porters and servingmen’, would ‘together throng’ in Shakespeares day, to watch his plays, according to a poet who was there.

Other sources have the audience including the 'Groupies' of that time, keen to share their favours with the stars, including Shakespeare himself, who began his theatrical career as an actor before graduating to become the world’s greatest playwriter. (There is no evidence of plaster casts being taken, but lack of evidence doesn’t mean lack of the action - like the elusive Higgs-Boson particle being searched for at vast expense at CERN, near Geneva.)

The rumbustious and turbulent spirit suggested by these observations cannot be felt in the birthplace of Shakespeare: Stratford - upon-Avon has been stripped of any character and authenticity it might have once carried, any remaining socially seditious sentiments have been air blasted out like the last few feathers of a Bernard Matthews mass market turkey, leaving it a tasteless lump of a town - with one exception: the rejuvenated Royal Shakespeare Society’s Swan Theatre, or at least the recently revamped interior, since the exterior still looks like an early multi-story car park.

The stage and auditorium, whilst being completely covered and protected from the elements,unlike the theatres of Shakespeare’s day, still manage to convey to the audience a sense of being almost in the action,on show to the other members of the audience in the way that the gallants of his day were as they sat on stools at the edge of the stage, commenting on the action and the poetry.

Elena and I had booked a bargain break in Stratford to catch The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare’s feminist comedy, in which the women come out on top and the men are mostly fops, or seedy sots, debauched or dolts, deluded or deranged.

There is only one real man among this lot, the young Fenton ( his name immortalised by the eponymous dog of YouTube fame who chases the deer on Richmond Park, chased in turn by his irate owner who succeeds only in compounding the problem ) who gets the girl that all his rivals want to marry only for her money, although he is strikingly frank in admitting that he too had this for his first motive, until love eventually blinded him to the pecuniary component of her attractions.

The production was hilarious, chaotic, tears and laughter nearly had me tumbling from my steep and precarious cheap seat onto the stage below. We had the feeling that had this happened, the actors and audience would have merely guffawed and dragged me off the stage, but only if I obscured their view or their movements, otherwise I’d have been left to enjoy the performance from there.

After the show, emotionally and physically satisfied in a way that one rarely is by the cinema, we went off in search of a good traditional pub and some good pub food. But Stratford has succumbed to the temptation to appeal to the lowest common denominator rather than do a bit more work in search of the highest common factor of the tourist market. Tat and trivia everywhere, the pubs more like big TV viewing rooms than restful drinking dens, which is what they should be, surely?

In these sad surroundings, from the verbal gymnastics of William Shakespeare we were now confronted and assaulted by the inane and moronic bleeps and blasts of the world of screen entertainment, to which were glued the dull and glassy eyes of the screen based generation.

We fled from these hollow shams and eventually found the oldest pub in England, built in 1470- The Old Thatched Tavern, which had resisted the temptation to modernise itself with plastic and interactive entertainment. 

We had found an oasis of authentic fifteenth century England, and all we needed was a decent genuine ale and some traditional food. But they had run out of beer, and we couldn’t get a table.

‘Oh there’s nothing so dreadful, morbid or drear,

as to stand at the bar of a pub with no beer’

 So goes the traditional Australian refrain, which sprang into my mind, and which we sang to the astonished barmaid, because back in WS’s day, folk lived, we believe, more intensely, always closer to the edge and end of life, they were hence more alive, they shouted, and sang and swore, fought and fucked, laughed and loved.

Inspired by The Merry Wives of Windsor, we were in the mood.

Unless otherwise stated all photographs by Elena Bruce