(personal underlines)
Save our cathedrals!
My beloved 1967 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar is now locked away until December at the earliest. For the past eight years, I have had the terrifying privilege of dragging my axe (as we guitarists call our instruments) on stage to perform in a series of Christmas gigs (as we musicians call such performances) with the celebrated prog rock band Jethro Tull. Ian Anderson, who leads the band, has for years generously staged a series of pre-Christmas concerts to raise funds for English cathedrals. Our 42 cathedrals are some of the greatest expressions of creativity, imagination and hope (more on that later) which our nation has ever produced. They are also mostly bloody freezing, although this year the magnificent, but sadly underrated, Bristol cathedral approached cosy conditions. Sadly, though, rising heating bills are another burden for cathedrals already creaking under the weight of ever higher maintenance and conservation costs. Gravity and the weather never stop their war on our historic buildings. Does the wobbly hierarchy of the Church of England have either the talent or swag to care for these treasures adequately? I am delighted that my local cathedral, Gloucester, is energetically and successfully raising funds to restore its 1666 organ and extend the outreach of its music programme. Like local government, the future and usefulness of our cathedrals depends on great leadership. And great leadership is sadly unevenly distributed.
Back to my guitar. The beautiful tone of the Gibson Les Paul, as exemplified by such great guitarists as Peter Green and Eric Clapton, is partially attributed to its dense mahogany body. It means that my Les Paul tips the scales at 10.5lb, which is a considerable weight for ageing shoulders like mine. It took me about a week to recover from the last two performances. No wonder you see older guitarists caressing their Fender Stratocasters, which weigh in at a mere 8lb. Clapton switched to one years ago. But for me, the Gibson/Fender boundary is as uncrossable as the North/South Korean border, and I remind myself of ‘the beauty knows no pain’ mantra.
While unpacking some books, I came across something I wrote in 1987, The Harpers & Queen Guide to London’s 100 Best Restaurants. Out of the 100 listed, only 16 are still in business, mostly unrecognisably altered. I used to think that New York audiences were fickle, but we have become more so. Unlike France, we aren’t good at protecting our historic restaurants. We don’t feel they have the cultural gravitas of parish churches or manor houses. But they are monuments to our social habits and artistic, as well as culinary, tastes. I mourn the recent loss of the India Club in the Strand, which was an object lesson in the history of the Indian community – particularly the Indian legal community – in London. The great temples of the Swinging Sixties and beyond, like Mario and Franco’s trattorias, are long gone. I miss the prices too. In 1987, £25 per person was expensive. Today £50 a head seems to get you a pizza and a bottle of dodgy Valpolicella. The restaurant scene of nearly 40 years ago now looks primeval in its simplicity: only four regularly published restaurant critics (of which I was one), no celebrity chefs, no Instagram photos of bucket-list lunches and the horrors of Dry January unimaginable.
Once an assiduous listener to the Today programme and a reader of three daily papers, I am slowly becoming a ‘nonewsnik’. I find I am unable to deal with a daily diet of misery and despair. For the first time in years, the left and the right of the media agree that we are living in – and according to some, increasingly leaving – this blessed plot known as ‘Broken Britain’. You will remember the myth of how when Pandora defied the gods and opened the box which they had given her, all the evils of the world were unleashed, yet hope remained. Where is hope now? The sheer size of the American and Chinese populations and economies are daunting, but let’s remind ourselves that we have the world’s best universities and play the leading role in life sciences and the creative industries: not a bad place to be in the 21st century.
The National Gallery concluded its blockbuster Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers exhibition with an all-night opening. Final visitor figures are not in yet, but it looks as if Van Gogh will beat Leonardo as the gallery’s most popular ever show. It was an absolutely triumph of erudition, beauty and packaging, and well proved Marshall McLuhan’s remark that anyone who thought there was a difference between education and entertainment didn’t know anything about either.
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