Open Writing

The elections for the next Lord Mayor of London are taking place today. There are 10 candidates and the top three are 1. Ken Livingstone (Lab) retiring mayor who has served two terms, 2. Boris Johnson, flamboyant Tory MP, and 3. Brian Paddick, Liberal Democrat, a former high ranking police officer. At the moment Johnson has a slight lead.

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London celebrated St George’s Day, the Patron Saint of England, with the opening of the famous Borough Market in Trafalgar Square for the day,
a service at the Cenotaph by members of the Order of St George, a festival of folk dancing at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, ánd a huge party at The Globe, Shakespeare’s theatre---he was born on April 23.

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More than 100 police officers took part in raids on 24 houses in Paddington and another address in Surrey in an effort to break up brothels that have been set up and operate through the Internet. It is estimated that at least 60 women have been lured to London from abroad and coerced into taking part in these illegal activities and by midnight 30 women had been rescued. The raids follow four months of surveillance and 12 suspects were arrested---five men and four women were charged.

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Lords cricket ground is to have a makeover costing £200m. Five stands will be replaced and the grounds’ capacity will be increased from 10,000 to 38,500. Other proposals include underground tennis courts and a hotel.
Work will start in 2010.

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About 1,500 schools across 33 boroughs in London were affected by the teachers’ strike over pay. A total of 708 London schools were fully closed while another 769 schools were partially closed in the same one day strike.

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The most valuable street tree in Britain has been identified as a £750,000 plane tree in the heart of Mayfair. The 6ft wide tree in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, which dates back to the Victorian era, emerged as the most valuable tree in the capital, according to a valuing system by local authority tree officers. There are dozens more trees worth more than £500,000 in boroughs like Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster. In less fashionable areas a £267,000 tree has been identified in Southgate and a £200,000 plane tree in Epping Forest.

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New London hospitals are being designed with single rooms in place of the usual multi-bed wards in an effort to combat the spread of potentially fatal superbugs such as clostridium difficile and MRSA. First on the list with the new planning arrangements will be the North Middlesex Hospital. About one third of its patients will be treated in single occupancy rooms and the rest will be placed in four bed units which can be sectioned off in the event of an infection breakout.

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The number of first-time house buyers in London has fallen to an all-time low. In January only 13% of mortgages went to first-time buyers compared to 19% last year and 37% in January 1997. Property experts blame the increase in house prices and the credit crunch.

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Security costs for the Olympic Torch parade through London cost £746,000.

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Overseas shoppers are crowding into London and helping to offset a drop in
spending in the rest of the country. In March this year West End shops reported a rise in sales of 2% compared with a drop of 1% in the rest of the country. Shoppers from the U.S. showed the biggest fall. There was a big influx of shoppers from Russia and the Middle East and they increased by 4.3%.

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Manganese Bronze, one of the biggest manufacturers of the London black cab, has signed a deal to build a battery-powered taxi with no carbon emissions. It will have a top speed of 50 mph with a range of 100 kilometers on each battery charge and will cost 4p per mile to run. Normal black cabs cost between £28,000 and £33,000 to make but the green cab is likely to cost more.

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Poems for Posterity
Colours
by Henry Jackson

Red, red, red, deepest red,
The colour of fragrant roses
In a trim scented bed,
Blue. blue, blue,
The colour of your coat
When I first met you,
Green, green, green,
Greenest piercing green,
The colour of the Atlantic
In a stormy winter scene,
White, white, white,
Flashing bright white,
The colour of proud jasmine
A heart stopping sight,
Colours will stay bright in my head
When my eyes grow dim,
I am still full of hope
But the prospect is dim.
May 31 2000

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This Week in History

753BC. Romulus and his brother Remus founded Rome

1564. William Shakespeare born

1816. Charlotte Bronte, author of “Jane Eyre”, born

1982. Actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco

Famous Quotes

I have decided to stick with love---hate is too big a thing to bear.
---Martin Luther King

One may smile and smile and still be a villain---William Shakespeare

Make me immortal with a kiss---Christopher Marlowe

Love is friendship set on fire---Jeremy Taylor

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The Women in My Life--3 (Copper--3)

(Previously I described how we got married and began looking for a house within reach of London where we both worked)

Three months after the wedding I bought a 6-bedroom Regency house just outside the village of Flimwell on the Kent and Sussex borders with eight acres of gardens and paddocks, an additional bungalow and a swimming pool. We moved in one Sunday morning with the two sedated cats in a wicker basket and Copper with a blinding headache which she got whenever she travelled more than ten miles.

She became an enthusiastic country wife and her appetite for big time advertising dwindled. The demise of her company was inevitable and when it arrived I had to attend to the messy burial and paid the costs of liquidation.

What does a wife do in the country? She attends to the house, supervises the cooking and the garden and visits friends. At the beginning Copper was not enthusiastic but she had solid support from a husband and wife team that we had inherited with the house and they cleaned the house, tended the garden and did the cooking. The lawns were so big that we engaged a gardener from the next village and he did nothing except mow the grass and keep the edges trim.

It left us free at week-ends to go out and explore the local villages and towns in our search for extra furniture and antiques and to entertain. Our guests were mainly the advertising Mafia Copper had left behind in London.

They were enthusiastic guests and eagerly travelled up from London to the country to eat, sit and drink to the full, but mostly drink. They clustered round my big, well stocked bar in the conservatory like bees around honey. And their good taste guided them towards Chivas Regal when it came to whisky and Plymouth when it came to gin. I drank wine. Others sneaked off to my billiards room with a full size table where they knocked the balls about but the main attraction was another magnificent bar with every known drink.

Of course, many of them did not have cars so we collected them at Sevenoaks Station in my newly acquired Rolls Royce Silver Shadow (PLK 49) driven by a chauffeur who was on the staff of my publishing company.

What else does one do in the country? You have children and Copper wanted children. I already had one of my own, a son, grown up and doing well as my assistant, but Copper craved for her own little bundle of joy. But it did not happen so she went to our doctor who advised me to take part in various physical processes and told us that there was no reason why there was no baby.

For Copper this was not a satisfactory answer so she decided to adopt a family. I did not agree at first but succumbed to her pleas later and it made her happy. The doctor had warned us that if we did succeed in an adoption she would immediately become pregnant but we went ahead and adopted
Samantha, aged eight, and Richard, aged four, and we now had a family. Three months after the second adoption Copper became pregnant and she had a baby son we named Giles. Now we had a family of three children.

Copper became the model mother but she brought in help to assist in the task. She engaged a professional Nanny, who had to be waited on hand and foot herself, and we had to find schools, uniforms and esoteric necessities like name tapes, hand brushes, face flannels and suitcases. The cases had to be labelled in large letters and fitted with padlocks. Then we had to take the children to school and pay the bills.

This short cut to motherhood enabled Copper to throw herself into local life and she organised a village art show, bazaars and sales of work. I was pressed into organising and putting on the Flimwell Fete with roundabouts, coconut shies and contests which only narrowly escaped making a loss because most of the takings went to local gypsies.

Then came Copper’s most ambitious effort which was to raise money to provide a swimming pool at a local orphanage. She thought up the idea of holding a midnight variety show at the local Odeon but it was boycotted by the locals because the people who ran the charities had not thought of it. It was a big flop and made a huge loss.

But no matter. I entered the fray and organised a “Costerrmongers Ball” in a mammoth marquee on our front lawn and so many rich Cockneys came along from London and spent money like water that it made a large profit, eliminated the loss and the pool was built.

Copper also developed a passion for a lavish dinner on Saturday evening or an equally lavish lunch on Sunday. And they became sought after social events marked by wonderful food and wine and a meeting place for interesting people.

She also took advantage of her new access to luxury travel and took many trips into London in my Rolls Royce Silver Shadow (PLK 49) that was driven by an ex Guardsman who took her to Harrods several times every month and she insisted that it was parked outside the front entrance while she went inside and decided to buy what took her fancy. It was a long way from the Gorbals in Glasgow.

Her imagination which had played such a big part in her former commercial life ran riot. She confided to her buddies that the strong room in the basement was filled with Czarist treasures and silver so valuable that it could not be put on display. She also told very close friends in even greater confidence that she owned the house and had bought it with her own money. It never occurred to her that she was telling lies.

(More next week)

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Money launderers are using children some as young as 12 to pay for goods with fake £20 notes. Shops in Holloway, North London, have been the main victims. The shopkeepers complain that if they refuse to serve the children they become abusive.

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Wembley Stadium lost £22m in its first year of operation.

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A new three storey underground theatre seating 600 people has been built on the site of the former famous Collins Music Hall on Islington Green in North London. It is part of a £20m property development of luxury flats and bars with the theatre in the basement. The exact nature of its shows has not been disclosed although permission has been sought from the local Council to stage 12 sports events plus three boxing or wrestling shows every year.

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Me

Since arriving at my new flat I have developed a persistent dry cough that has been causing a lot of distress. I suspect that it is caused by the very warm and dry atmosphere and I tried to counter it by filling jugs and bowls with water and placing them in all the rooms but it made no difference. Then Lorraine came along with another solution. She installed a dehumidifier that puffs a cool dampness into the air and after 24 hours I can feel the difference.

I attended an eye examination at the Royal London Hospital where a young Indian lady eye specialist conducted a lengthy examination. After she finished she gave me a hand torch that magnifies and illuminates small print plus a prescription for new reading spectacles. My eyesight has deteriorated recently and I hope that it will help.

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Inner Circle
(Friends and family)

Giles (East Ham)
Took the family to stay with friends in Hampshire for the week-end. On the way they looked in at Southampton and saw the newly arrived 115,000 tons P & O liner Ventura.

Camilla (Palma Mallorca)
Has just started a new travel agency named “La Paloma Event” for visitors to Mallorca. Husband Mikhail’s catering empire is expanding and he has opened a second restaurant and a pub.

Ariane & Fritz (Olhao, Portugal)
Have been risking their lives trying to secure a new mooring for their catamaran “Papricat”. They struggled in muddy waters up to their necks for hours but finally had to give up because a violent storm blew up.

Gillian (Totnes, Devon)
Gillian and Alan dined last night at a former local brothel now converted into a swanky restaurant called The Blue Bicycle and tomorrow Alan is taking the boys to watch Plymouth FC play at home.
Gillian is off to York for a week-end reunion with five old school friends.