Architecture does not really tell us much about the quality of life it surrounds or encloses — A palace may be a gilded frame for a cold and loveless life. A peasant’s cottage might be a cosy nest of marital bliss. Wars and cruelty may rage as glorious gothic cathedrals reach up for heaven. But it’s hard not to believe that architecture does not say something about the human spirit.
A short stroll in London took us past some typical London shop fronted streets, probably built in the 1920's and 1930's. These are pleasant to the eye, well proportioned and spacious despite their humble roles. Yet Londoners walking past them in their time were walking as the General Strike split the country and later, the Fascist Mosley’s thugs fought running battles with the Jewish community of East London.
Later, we came across some fairly bland apartment buildings, probably built in the 1980's. Nothing but mediocrity and consumerist complacency reflected in these dull blocks. But it was a lively time in Britain. The miners were on strike and the bankers were starting to make their fortunes.
Now, we come up to date — a mean faced monstrosity of an office block near beautiful and posh Holland Park. It looks like a prison. It is dull. And the world is on fire.
Finally, we are back in Kensington Gardens outside Kensington Palace, home to William and Kate. It is a fairly dull brick building. It was built in 1899. Britain then was in the grip of labour unrest. The dockers were often on strike for good reasons. The ruling class was finally losing its hold over the country as the Labour movement fought for its rights. But this building was designed as a stolid and complacent affirmation of privilege. Some things don’t change.
Through a great city like London the River Thames has always been a source of renewal and of escape. Single drops of the clear rain that falls on the hills of the west of England meet others and run together to nose finally into the great city in a great scourging snaking run all the way down to Greenwich and out to sea. This whale like monster slides by us in Fulham, conscious that it will still be doing so when the babies we push in their prams will have lived and died.
It carries on its vast back the fresh air of the countryside that makes it possible to live in London. My Mum grew up in Fulham in the 1940’s and 50’s. That was a time when its streets were those of the English working class. Flat caps for men and scarves for the women. ( Now they belong, mostly, to the global bourgeoisie and its service class ) Factories and warehouses hid the river from view.
But it’s as if the river has brought urban renewal with it too. Some things do get better. Now you can see the river in a blue blaze of glory. What were mean streets and ugly patches of derelict industrial land are now green spaces and parks surrounding brand new apartment blocks for those riding high on the global markets - while they last, anyway.
My mum, who left Fulham in 1952, was amazed and delighted. My wife and her daughter in law, as they took the new arrival to the family out in his pram, were happy. Just to stay here would be to feel renewed. And the prospect of escape and change would gently beckon as well.
PS. Please visit Blabmate.com where you find online English teachers
We must begin by saying sorry to those of you, if there are any, who have been wondering where we have been and why we have not written anything for so long. So here we are - sorry!
One fairly good excuse we have for temporarily abandoning Make London Home is that we have been very busy with a new venture called Blabmate. Pop along to www.blabmate.com and you will be able to see what we have been up to. Getting this site built has been expensive and time consuming. We got the idea of a website that made it easy for learners of English to practise with a native English speaker whilst we were living in Moscow. There were not many native English speakers there and learners were keen to meet me and others. Skype is a marvellous thing and so are the other variations such as Google hangout. Since there are about one and a half billion people around the world learning English we thought that online video learning must get bigger and meet a demand. But we didn't want to be a school. We just thought we would make it easy for online teachers to find learners and learners to find teachers.
Things have evolved. Now we have native and non-native teachers advertising on the site. Many are qualified TESOL teachers and some, who are native English speakers, just provide conversation practice.
We have a lot more to do to improve the site and make it easier for learners to find their perfect teacher and teachers to find their ideal student. Things like an App and lots more revisions to the design.
Anyway, we are based here in lovely London and life here goes on despite the drumbeats of terror. Those of you who have followed our postings here know that we love London because it is home to every nation and religion under the sun. We hate the idea of grouping and discriminating people on any basis at all and we know that most people here get along well and don't want to mock other peoples religion or lack of religion. Our view is this - if you would feel uncomfortable saying it to someone's face, don't hide behind a cartoon or newspaper. Attack the high and mighty where they abuse their power - fine. And if someone abuses you, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Remember Ghandi. And Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King who said we must have non violence or non existence. Yes, can we please spread this message along. Non violence or non existence. Peaceful protest. We must love one another, or die.
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 pageand find out how to get started. https://www.facebook.com/blabmate
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.
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.
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.
