The language of London…….the babel of London

English is, of course, the official and essential language of London.

Many other languages are spoken, around seven hundred, but without english you are a prisoner of your past, unfree to roam and understand across the great metropolis that is made up of so many peoples from so many parts of the world, united by the english language.

Male London Home would like to introduce learners of english to our new service - Blabmate.

Our web site is being built now and will be ready in about five weeks time.

There learners will find hundreds of native english speakers. Using Skype or similar means, they will be able to strike a deal and pay them relatively small sums to practise the english they are learning at school, language schools, or from on-line courses or books and CD's.

These native english speakers will be students, happy to earn money in their spare time to help you by just having a conversation, helping you with pronunciation or word order. They won't be language teachers - they are for you to practise not to learn grammar, but of course some of them might speak another language or two, and you will be able to search for these on the site.

So, if you are learning english and would like to practise with a native english speaker, see our Facebook page and find out how to get  started. https://www.facebook.com/blabmate

Thank you!  

America's secret Dirty Wars are exposed in Kilburn and the Rolling Stoned cheer everyone up in Putney… what a world…..

Up in The Lexi cinema, about the size of a small suburban front room, something very big is revealed by a documentary film called 'Dirty Wars'.

Reprieve executive director Clare Algar, director Rick Rowley and Mark Pyman, director of the defence and security programme at Transparency International

We had heard of the secret Drone wars, and the frequent Drone missile attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan that attempt, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to assassinate leading Al-Qaeda members. We can see the problem - Al Qaeda, after all,  has declared war on the United States but doesn't do so from a particular state or territory. But their response is dangerous, immoral, illegal and counter-productive.The USA is waging war in lots of countries without telling their own citizens or those of the country whose citizens they are attacking.
Naturally, in the course of these attacks, innocent civilians are often killed, homes are destroyed and lives ruined - that's what war does, especially since the 20th Century, which legitimised the industrial slaughter of civilians under the banner of 'Total War'. So the United States is now creating its terroristic enemies of the future which will justify even more surveillance and secrecy and more murder and mayhem. (Russia and the USA co-operate in this endeavour, despite appearances, and this hybrid is the Great Satan that will rule the planet in the era of nuclear terror which we are about to enter.)
We are depressed and disillusioned at the thought of president Obama signing execution warrants on the lives of individuals who are presented to him on a list composed by the CIA. Has he read McNamara's memoirs called 'In Retrospect?  McNamara was Presidents Kennedy and Johnson's Secretary of State. He wrote the most candid memoir ever written by a powerful politician in which he pointed out how all 'intelligence' is almost bound to be inaccurate and hence should not be used to launch aggressive operations without very careful scrutiny. It was wrong during the Cuba Crisis in 1962. A good job Kennedy didn't act on it and the recommendations of the Generals or I wouldn't be writing this and you wouldn't be reading it. But Obama seems to be the captive of his security and military elite. They tell him that the world is the battlefield and that they know who the enemy is, where he is and how to kill him. And Obama believes them whilst forgetting that the real enemy is an idea and you can't kill ideas by killing people, especially if you kill the wrong people.

Oh Lordy, if only you really were there and could pop down and bang some heads together!

Luckily, there are still people whose sole ambition is to give us a good time - and boy do we need them. Yes, at The Half Moon in Putney, London, we saw the Rolling Stoned perform their hilarious parody of The Rolling Stones. It was wonderful to see so many people enjoying themselves, letting it all hang out. Come on down, Obama, Putin and all you Taliban types and just rock with the sound. If you miss the joy of life, you miss everything. But maybe you don't know what joy feels like or looks like. See below.

Power corrupts us as we tour the Houses of Parliament, jazz revives us as we stay late at Ronnie Scotts jam session…..

Who wouldn't be impressed and overawed by the gothic splendour of the British Houses of Parliament?

Elena and her best friend, Tamara, visiting us from Arkhangelsk in Russia, and myself have joined one of the tours organised by the Palace of Westminster for those interested in the history, architecture and political origins of the Mother of Parliaments.

We are greeted by the enormous emptiness of Westminster Hall, so vast it seems almost to be open to the elements, but as your neck strains upwards and around the ancient timber roofing and surrounding stone walls introduce themselves and ask you to bow in reverence to their antiquity - they have stood since the eleventh century on this spot. Kings and Queens have been made and unmade here.

Shuffling slowly inwards, we are made humble by soaring perpendicular vaulting which rises up from slightly parted holy hands, the fingers of which touch gently together in prayer as sublimely as in any cathedral in Christendom.

But all is adorned by gold leaf and the Kings and Queens of the past are raised up as idols, so we' re reminded that it is in the service of mammon that these stones were set up over us.

And Kings and Queens and the greatest nobles are but human, which means that biology rules even they: The glorious Royal Robing Chamber has a secret closet in which The Queen, when she visits to open Parliament, is able to evacuate that which unites her with us, and St Stephen's Chapel, when it was used as the chamber of The House of Commons, had a screen behind which Pitt the Younger dashed in order to throw up after an excess of port wine the night before. Having 'yielded up his malady' he returned to the debate, perhaps with less eloquence than usual.

The story of British democracy shows it to have been a slow, corrupt and painful process. This beautiful building is propaganda in stone and art. Charles II was a greater traitor than any commoner - only a King could have done the deal he did with Louis IV of France whereby in return for a subsidy he promised to hand England over to France and abolish the House of Commons!

Ah well, he was only human, and he was a bloke, and he was broke. Like a lot of us, he just couldn't handle money but he loved wine, women and song, and they don't come cheap. Kim Philby was a commoner but he was another great traitor, and he wanted to give us to the great Dictator of the Proletariat Mr J Stalin. Busy in this work, he too showed an excess of zeal towards women and wine, befuddlement from which probably led to his blundering off to Moscow for the rest of his days just before the British establishment were about to offer him a pardon and a pension.

Marx was completely wrong - it is not class, or class struggle, which is the motor of history. It is human nature and the struggle within it between the kindness instinct and the passionate urgings of ambition. These two wrestle each other as we stagger through life.

There is, of course, some ambition which we can't do without. Einstein's kind, or any great artists' kind, especially jazz musician's kind. We ended Tamara's visit with an evening at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club's late show.

Three of the young artists there were known to me from our days with Hot Dog Jazz, which we set up to promote young jazz talent. They are still young - 20 - but boy have they grown. They were good then, but now they are brilliant. Jazz is humanity expressed spontaneously, the kind and the cruel, but the kind always wins because you can't make jazz without listening to your fellow artists and even to your audience, and you can't do anything with what you hear unless you are sensitive to the soul, so at least for the duration of the performance you are expressing the hope of mankind. I'm serious.

So thanks be to Ruben Fox on tenor sax, Mark Kavuma on trumpet and Shane Forbes on drums, and a great pianist and bassist whose names we have lost, for being a part of that which will save us all. And thanks be to Ronnie Scott's Club.

Luxury and lunch at Muscat's most magnificent ministry....well, hotel, palace and temple

Our taxi slowed respectfully as it passed though the elegant entrance of the Al Bustan Palace Hotel.

The lawns rolled and stretched away on either side and the palm trees bowed in welcome as we slowed before the magnificent edifice before us - The Al Bustan Palace Hotel.

It was built as a palace and it remains a palace, the hotel having merely moved quietly and discretely into the vast and airy canopy and its adjacent wings without disturbing its serene cloisters and princely passages.

Inside, we almost genuflect - it is a temple too, a vast dome soars up and shafts of divine light slice through the fragranced atmosphere.

If you've been having a tough time of it, and you need a break, this is the place to come. The staff are razor sharp on every doubt and potential need, solicitous without being in the slightest bit oleaginous or Uriah Heep.

We were welcomed by Mara Isono, EAM Secretary, who introduced us immediately to Mohammed, sitting with his friends who immediately become our friends, and served us Arabian coffee and dates.

We were overawed by the infinite sense of indulgence promised in every stone and every friendly glance.

Mara led us into the gardens, which must have been sculpted by the same landscape gardeners responsible for the Elysian Fields and The Garden of Eden, with maybe a contribution from the Augustus golf course in Atlanta.

Lunch was a buffet, but that term is inadaquate to the task of conveying the exquisite range of texture and flavour that we were treated to and the genuine attentiveness of our waiter.

 The great philosopher Wittgenstein said, 'Whereoff you cannot speak, thereoff you must remain silent'.

He also said that somethings cannot be said, they can only be shown.

Until today, I didn't really know what he meant by either of these statements.

I do now.

By bus to Dubai from Muscat, the world's tallest building and biggest shopping mall loom up from the dunes..........

The bus from Muscat is a bone shaker from the 1970's - we were travelling with the people, well, a couple of Indians and an Omani woman or two. The conductor was exhausted by his labours of checking the passengers' tickets and soon fell asleep, abandoning his main job of keeping the driver awake with conversation.

The Omani desert and scrubscape is littered with half started motorway projects and half finished houses.

An embryonic freeway flyover stands starkly over an intersection, its angry steel support joints snarling at the indignity of being left naked and useless, with no sign of its connecting companions.

Oman aims to tarmac the desert and recreate Los Angeles' in the Arabian Peninsular. They will get there in the end as they seem to be as determined as los Angeleans to create a car based world of lonely isolation in which every human feeling is mediated on four wheels and all the public spaces are roads.
We fall asleep as the bus grinds and growls forward on the eight hour trip.

When we awake, we are in Dallas, Texas, or Houston, but as our eyes find their focus we realise our mistake - an easy one to make - we are in Dubai, which is Dallas or Houston or any number of US cities, transplanted to these Arabian sands. Maybe it's all the oil, but the Emir must be suffering from the same sort of affliction that has blighted America - Giantism, or mine is bigger than yours syndrome.
But we must concede - in its gleaming glass erectile style, it has an eirie beauty and efficiency that is a pleasure to experience.
The taxi's arrive as swiftly as yellow cabs in New York City, but they are cleaner and the drivers' are polite.

We arrive at the world's biggest shopping mall and, despite ourselves, we are seduced immediately, even buying a jumper for Elena, and a bag of souvenirs in a gift shop.

The fountain display comes up like a ballet and we eat a delicious spaghetti pesto and miso soup in a strange hybrid restaurant of Japanese and Italian food.

From the top of the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, we are humbled by the engineering involved and the almost impious achievement of this recreation of the west as an oasis for global trade in the middle east. This is globalism, and it's for making money. It represents an Arabian vision and was realised by a global collaboration, which itself must be a hopeful sign.

Here comes everyone, you might think, and they are all well dressed and well off. But globalism floats on a sea of human struggle as men and women are separated from families by the necessity to find work thousands of miles away from home. Pockets of unemployment and poverty drive millions across the skies to staff the service army recruited by Dubai and other pockets of posperity in the Middle East and around the world.

Our waiter Leo Bonillo is a charming young man from Manilla, where there is no work. His children are at home with his mother. And this story can be found over and over again, in Shanghai or Dubai, London or Moscow, New York or Mumbai. If home is where the heart is, there is a lot of heartache in Dubai.

The Red Arrows over the hot blue skies of Muscat, musings on Machiavelli and The Sultan, happiness and where it comes from....

Elena and I take a taxi from our hosts' suburban Muscat home to The Intercontinental Hotel, from where we will crane our necks up towards the dizzying blue above to catch sight of The Red Arrows jets beginning their precipitous formation dives down to earth, or just above it.

On the journey, there are Omani flags flying from the cars which also proudly display portraits of the handsome Sultan, his grey tinged beard (of formal cut) symbolising both vigour and the wisdom of age.
In the backs of cars, children smile and wave at us. Why?
They don't in London. And we would not dare to smile and wave back in London.

We take a photograph of two young men walking on the side of the road. They smile at us and wave. Why?
We have travelled widely in this whole wide world, but rarely have we encountered so much smiling. Why?
Perhaps they are pretending to be happy but we doubt that. It's not that they want anything, since we are not offering anything.

And then above us, as the red jets roar and scream around the submissive skies, we find the answer.

Love. All you need is love, as Britain's greatest musical export sang.
But this can only be one piece of the answer. If it's true that Omani's have more than their fair share of the elusive elixir of a happy life, where do they get it from?
Here is our theory: We must learn how to love from our Mother's milk and every moment of infancy upwards, by example and by precept, every single day. A long time ago, in the searing heat of the Omani desert, a tribal leader realised that the only way to survive in the barren and lifeless terrain around was to harness all the life force of all the people, and the strongest of these was love.
And so it began.

Niccolo Machiavelli, when he wrote his handbook for Princes in 1506, advised them that it is better to be feared than loved - if you cannot be both. Now nobody would pretend that Oman does not have problems and some consequential unhappiness. This is the real world, despite the almost unreal sea of good nature all around, and men still steal, cheat and thieve and the life of man would be 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short' without the potential use of force. We believe The Sultan knows that he needs be feared and loved because the wisdom of the Sultan is not in doubt. He was very impressed as a young man by British freedoms and democracy but he wisely observed that they had been achieved over an 800 year period of evolution and struggle, including a violent revolution and a military dictatorship. Armed with this self observed insight, he began his careful work of introducing Oman to the responsiblity of freedom. We wish him well on his anniversary, and recommend Machiavelli to him. It's a dangerous world.

A modern medieval paradise of empty beaches and different degrees of freedom - Oman

Here in Oman, the laws of economics have been refuted convincingly. We observed it ourselves. Walking in the searing heat along a wide boulevard, we flagged down a taxi. We had no idea where we were or how to describe where we were going. The driver was patient and kindly. He slowed at every junction and landmark that we thought we recognised. Eventually, after about fifteen minutes of driving around in circles, we realised where we were and asked to be dropped off.
How much is that please? I asked.
No, I cannot charge you, he replied, it is my pleasure to help you, you are a guest in my country.
I could not persuade him otherwise.

According to all the laws of economics this should not have happened. Adam Smith said that it is not to the kindness of the baker or candlestick maker that we should look for our candlesticks and bread, but to their looking after their self interest.
What are we to make of a taxi driver who displays more kindness than self interest?
Perhaps culture is more important than economists have noticed.

And here the culture must have been at least partly formed by emptiness, the emptiness of everywhere. Vast stretches of beach, beautiful and deserted, stretch for miles and fringe the city of Muscat with a brocade of yellow sand and blue green sparkling sea. Beyond Muscat, empty square miles of flat scrub and desert with an occasional eruption of bright green palm trees and isolated villages. Behind this, a lunar landscape of slate coloured mountain, sharp and jagged, implacable and barely penetrable.
Of course, there are people, men in immaculate white and women in solid black, Indian migrants in clothes of many colours and westerners in their uniforms, but there is empty space between them all, even in the most populated of places. The space between them is respect, a different kind of mutual respect than we see in London because here it feels more gracious, polite and friendly.
Perhaps space itself is a form of prosperity. And prosperity provides the wherewithal of kindness, though not the motivation.

Elena and I have been spending our time on a deserted beach in Muscat. It's not completely empty. There are fishermen who wave at us and ask us how we are. There are occasionally young lads who swim in the mostly empty sea as we do, or cartwheel and cavort on the beach. And there are cars and trucks that drive along the beach, to our surprise, but most of them belong to the fishermen who use them to tow their boats up the beach.

Staring at the men pulling in their nets I could not but help thinking of Jesus approaching the disciples as they too pulled in their nets. Come with me, he said, and I shall make you fishers of men.
Perhaps, perhaps, the message of gentle Jesus, meek and mild, not he that came with a sword, but he that turned the other cheek, only really got through here in Muscat, where today the muezzin call all to prayer five times a day.
The citizens of Oman live with what we might think of as restrictions - drink and dress, for example, but they also live with a sort of freedom that we in the west have lost to the reduction of everything to impulse and instant gratification.
 How much can I respect you if I must have what I want now?