Open Writing

Christie’s, the London auction house, is putting on British Art Week next week in a series of auctions of British art that is expected to raise up to £30m. The items include works by Lowry, Turner, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

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A petrol station in Finsbury Park, North London, has installed a spike device to stop motorists driving off without paying. The owner who invented the device says that he has lost £20,000 in the past five years by drivers who avoided payment. The device marks tyres that can be identified later by the police.

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An average of eight crimes take place on London buses every day, reports Transport for London. They include knife attacks, sexual assaults and
beatings. In addition there are 160 cases of criminal damage, fights, fare disputes and drunken clashes. Peak periods are between 3 and 5pm as pupils return home from school.

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London’s historic Savile Row is to instal new lighting that will take it back to the era of gas lighting. New electric street lights that look like Victorian gas lamps designed for Parliament Square will make a reappearance and will bring back the old atmosphere. The street will also be cleared of signage clutter and old posts. Savile Row houses 32 tailors making more than 3000 bespoke suits every year with an annual turnover of £21m. Among its clients are Prince Charles and the Prime Minister and in the past the rich and famous including Winston Churchill, Ian Fleming and Napoleon III.

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The City Golf Club in Brides Lane, off Fleet Street, was granted permission to open a lap dancing club despite strong opposition from the Vicar of St. Bride’s Church in Fleet Street as well as residents who live nearby.

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Several volumes of rare books have vanished from the Royal Horticultural Society offices in Vincent Square, Victoria, and the police are searching for a man who had been arrested but vanished while on bail. The works include 13 volumes of a rare collection on the camellia flower valued at about £50,000 and several other rare volumes.

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De Beers, the diamond corporation, is moving part of it diamond sorting operation from London to Gabarone, the capital of Botswana. It had been established in London since the 1930s.

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Ten artists from all over the world have provided new exhibits at London’s Hayward Gallery to mark its 40th anniversary. The exhibition opened on Wednesday and is named “Psycho Buildings”. Among the attractions are a one-metre deep boating pond located on a terrace outside the gallery and a transparent inflatable dome that people can enter from ground level.

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Janet Dewers, an East London street trader whose family have run a street market stall for 60 years, is to stand trial for selling vegetables from her stall in Dalston Market in pounds instead of kilos. Mrs Dewers has been hailed as a “Metric Martyr” to challenge regulations originating from the EU which were aimed at outlawing the use of Imperial measurements.

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Poems for Posterity

The Last Kiss
by Henry Jackson

I kissed her breasts each time we met,
It meant more to me than any phrase
Or all the words
That crackled in the air
Like lightning in the morning haze,
` Not that I scorned her lips
Or the tips of her fingers,
Or the tiny sculptured ears,
For me the final zest
Was her beautiful breasts,
Each time her breath halted
And her eyes weregot lost in space,
She sighed right from her soul
Stirred slowly and gently
And a smile lit up her face,
But this was the final day
The day it would all end,
A time for tender parting,
A time to remember for ever
` The scar that would never mend,
She was dressed in black
Like a tall shadow by the door,
Her eyes dark pools of light
And a smile of invitation
Pleading for attention,
I wanted to talk about love
And the beauty of fine wine,
She held a finger to her lips
Then stripped off slowly
Until her breasts stared at me---
I kissed them for the last time.

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The Women in My Life---5
Marie-Francoise---(2)

(Last week I told how I was joining a car rally to the French vineyards taking with me Marie-Francoise, a 19-year-old au pair girl as passenger at the request of a member of the Secret Service. She arrived at my Chelsea flat and we talked until 1 am).

Chapter 2

The next morning Marie-Francoise knocked gently on my door at 8 am.

“Coffee in kitchen”, she announced. “Good French coffee an’ good English bac’n eggs an’ good English toast an’ marmalade. Come straight away, everythin’ ready”.

She had found it all and coped because her training in Hampstead had been thorough. My first breakfast with Marie-Francoise was a dream.

When we finished she stood up and told me to get ready.

“I wash up because I have lot practice”, she explained as I pointed to the dishwasher.

“Better by hand, like mother”, she insisted, and I gave way.

We made a quick start and she took a little bag with all her belonging and sat in the front seat of the Jaguar, stretched her long legs and kissed me gently.

“I veree ‘appy”, she breathed and closed her eyes.

It took less than two hours to get to the Shakespeare Hotel in Dover where Geoffrey was waiting in the lounge with 50 others taking part in the rally. Marie-Francoise gave a little gasp of surprise and embraced a French friend.
Her name was Madeleine and she was also driving down to Sete but on her own in a battered Ford Prefect.

By a strange coincidence Madeleine was living in a large Elizabethan house on the edge of a lake in Kent only two miles from a house that I bought later. She was a Parisian married for the second time to the wealthy Englishman who invented Simoniz, the car polish, but never got used to living in England. She took every opportunity to go back to France and this was one of them. We became instant friends and she started a little game of swapping cars and drivers that became very popular on the trip. She spent many hours in my car.

Marie-Francoise followed her example and did bits of the journey in other cars. But she always asked my permission and, of course, I always said Yes because I had no right to say No. During the week long trip she greeted me every morning with a kiss and kissed me again before going to bed. Tender kisses that worried me.

First stop on our trip was Boulogne where the Mayor held an official reception in the Town Hall, then on to Epernay in the heart of the champagne country, where we stayed in a large old wooden galleried hotel and were guests of Jacques Mercier, the champagne king of France.

Marie-Francoise was apprehensive at attending the official Mercier banquet where the festivities lasted six hours and where every 15 minutes a trumpeter sounded and a team of leather-coated bearers walking behind flaming torchbearers brought more champagne.

“Mercier is big aristocrat”, she explained, ‘an he no like peasant. I am peasant.” She put her hand on my arm, which she did every time she spoke to me, and was filled with anxiety.

“Don’t worry, Marie-Francoise,” I reassured her. “I also peasant.''

She laughed and squeezed my arm fiercely and spoke to no-one else during the whole evening. The next day we drove to Clermont-Ferrand which was filled with lush trees and flower-filled squares and stayed in a crumbling hotel that had a gallery running round the top of the ballroom and we had dinner.

Wine flowed freely and spirits ran high as well. The music boomed and Madeleine began a single file crocodile dance round the dining room and we joined in and tried to dance up the stairs to the gallery but the staff formed a barrier and stopped us because the gallery would have collapsed.

As the music got louder and then out of control the line of dancers moved faster and faster. I was behind Marie-Francoise and held on to her swaying hips which made my heart race. Then she broke the line and made me join up with another line while she held on to my hips and there was noise and laughter and desire.

The next stop of our trip was Carcasonne, an ancient walled city 500 miles away and a tough drive. But it was made easier by the warm and sunny weather that was full of the seductive perfume of the ripe countryside and the chirping of cicadas. The local wine growers entertained us in a huge underground cellar filled with enormous pungent wooden casks brimming with wine that breathed silent messages of indulgence and luxury.

(Continued next week)

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Somali born Shaarnake Hassan, aged 17, of Camden, North London, died in hospital after being found in the street with gunshot wounds. Hassan was a convicted drug dealer and is the 16th teenager to be murdered in London since the beginning of the year.

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The Royal Institute of British Architecture has named the new St Pancras Station and the refurbished Royal Festival Hall among 20 winners of the 20th London awards. Another winner was the Sackler Crossing at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Westminster Academy at the Nairn Dangoor Centre was named building of the year. Other buildings named include the new Wembley Stadium and the LTA National Tennis Gardens Centre.

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Arsenal Football Club is handing out £500,000 to 20 local community groups situated near their Emirates stadium.

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Today in History

1701. Captain Kydd, notorious pirate, was executed at the London Execution
Centre near the Old Bailey..

1819. Queen Victoria was born.

1883. The Brooklyn Bridge opened spanning the East River in New York.

1887. French Crown Jewels went on sale and raised 6m francs.

1931. Whipsnade Zoo opened at Bedford.

1976. Britain and France flew the first Concorde service to Washington.

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Famous Quotes

When a man steals your wife there is no better revenge than let him keep her.
---Sacha Guitry

Talk not of wasted affection---affection was never wasted.
.---Henry Longfellow

When the power of love overcomes the love of power we will find peace.
---Jimi Hendrix

Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.
` ---John Motley

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like an hour---sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minute—That’s relativity.
---Albert Einstein

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Five men are to stand trial on charges of trying to steal £220m from the London branch of the Sumitumo Mitsui Banking Corporation by hacking into their computer system.

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More than 300 lorries blocked main roads into London on Tuesday as a protest against rising fuel costs.