Respect

No, the young people of today have no, or perhaps very little, understanding of what respect means, a limited and possibly skewed comprehension of the essence of the word. It may be partly our fault - those of us who were young in the sixties and early seventies led on a revolution that wanted to overturn 'outmoded' thinking and break new grounds for a new generation. It turns out that we were wrong in several ways, despite being very well-intentioned, not so much in the concepts as in the execution.

It is extremely important when you attempt to tear down something that you be ready and able to replace it with something viable that can stand in it's place, but in the enthusiasm of youth and the moment we never considered that. We were all for tearing down the old and bringing in the new without much thinking about what that new was going to be, other than different (we thought better, of course) than what it was replacing. It is now obvious that we - and all like us at the time - were monumentally naive. The result is a gap in standards in society and a confusion on how to behave.

Please let me explain the following:

Respect is about
1. Understanding and accepting the processes that make society function, though willing to change and improve same when needed.
2. Accepting the democratic process and abiding by it, win or lose. If we desire change from the status quo we pursue it within and using the democratic process.
3. Understanding that our elders and predecessors, for all their faults (whatever they may be or we may perceive them to be) have preceded us and provided us with the opportunity to live and thrive - WE OWE THEM OUR LIVES AND, FOR THAT, MASSIVE RESPECT! We are, however, allowed to criticise and judge them for committed wrongs/sins/whatever but not without reasons.
4. Whether we like it or not there is a hierarchy in life based on various criteria. We are welcome to fight to change these but must understand its existence and the reasons for it.
5. Our actions and general behaviour, not wealth or power, show whether we are wise and/or worthy.
6. Balance in everything.

Respect is not about
1.  Being aggressive and domineering.
2.  Shouting the loudest.
3.  Demanding plenty of rights but accepting few, if any, responsibilities.
4.  The biggest knife/gun/fist/bank account.
5.  Entitlement - respect must be earned and maintained.
6.  Colour, shape, ethnicity or exceptional physical characteristics.

And finally, if we are reluctant to treat others as we want to be treated ourselves, we are being disrespectful irrespective of other criteria; formal circumstances may alter this to some extent but do not, fundamentally, negate it.

Goodbye to a good friend

Yesterday we gathered in a simple, small chapel at Eastbourne Crematorium to say goodbye to a dear friend and all-around good guy - Colin Barnes - whom I met through the wine trade many years ago. The ceremony was simple and touching, with a small number of his friends joining his family for the final adieu; we were lucky that sunny weather took away some of the deep sadness of the occasion. Afterwards we all gathered in a local hostelry where nibbles and refreshments including - and how could it not - some wine, helped to loosen tongues and allowed us to talk about our now absent friend and reminisce a little.

One amazing thing for me was seeing Colin's children again, as I hadn't seen his daughter in a decade and his sons in nearly twenty years, when they were little boys and we used to play football on their lawn. Well they're not little any more, but charming young men, tall, bright and vigorous, wearing bright smiles despite their pain. And Colin's daughter Samantha, a clever accomplished young woman, with tears lurking in her eyes but a warm smile ever present and concern for her mother - the wonderful Pat - evident despite her own pain. It was both devastatingly sad and uplifting to share in their tragic loss, especially as only a few years ago (or so it seems to me...) we had been sharing joyous moments.

Colin was very proud of his family and loved them all a great deal, as I know from the long conversations we had either on our infamous tour of suppliers and customers in France or the times we ended up working together, including the Christmas delivery spree for my customers in the mid to late 1990s. Yet Colin was not just a good family man but also an astute and creative businessman, who discovered his love of wine relatively late, then turned it into a business, winning awards and looking after many satisfied customers as a wine merchant, first in London and then in Sussex.

Our infamous trip to France in January 1995 in my Alfa Romeo 164, an ageing but still solid beauty, was intended as a cost-saving and amusing expedition - I would visit my air filter customers, he (with me in tow) would visit wine suppliers and we would share the transport costs while trying to have some fun on a budget; this nearly ended in tragedy after a Swiss man crashed into us on the slip road coming off the motorway to look for a hotel at Valence. The front passenger's door - on the left in a right-hand drive car - was hit hard and it was a miracle Colin was uninjured, but you could not say the same for my lovely Alfa Romeo which went from ageing beauty to practically a write off on the spot. Undaunted we continued our trip and managed to have a good time, even staying in the fabulous medieval city of Carcassonne (in the news recently when a Daesh terrorist killed several people nearby) and enjoying memorable meals and wonderful conversation. The return to England was made brighter when his family, who had been told of our ordeal, greeted us with 'welcome home' posters, relief and affection.

We shared many other moments, and I want to always remember them all, but Colin is now gone; he and I will never do the 'remember the time when...' bit ever again. I hate losing friends but am ever so grateful to have had them in my life, enriching me with their laughter and friendship, and I know that I am at the time of life when I will lose more friends sooner or later. It really hurts, as I have said before and will say again.

Goodbye Colin and thank you for enriching my life with your friendship.

I'm angry, so very angry!

Western societies are heavily involved in recycling rubbish involving material separation, often involving detailed separation of materials before they are collected. In many places, indeed, people and companies are fined, with specialist investigators going through their rubbish and/or recyclables in order to check if they have done the right thing. Yet as far as I can see this approach is not solving the fundamental problem we face as a society, which is that we throw away far too much material, including packaging, for little reason and with hardly a thought about the consequences of our actions.

This makes me angry, of course, as it may many (some?) of you. What makes me far, far more angry is the fact that so many of us seem indifferent to the problems faced by our society; so many of us seem unwilling to even move our little finger to help. The excuses are many and various but unconvincing as it takes little effort to do things properly rather than not but it seems even that is too much. This indifference makes my blood boil and, I admit that I react badly - the words I use are choice, so much so that I was recently taken to task for swearing by someone who heard me and was offended by the words, but certainly not by the fact that people were messing up the recycling system.

And that, I'm afraid, seems typical of our approach to the problems or the rubbish mountains clogging our planet - as long as we cannot see them or we weren't the ones being stupid and inconsiderate we can ignore the problem, and never mind the plastic choking our seas and being buried to last for a few thousand years... Not our problem!

I will continue getting angry, continue to swear and continue to fight for people to use the systems already put in place correctly, with respect. But I have no intention of stopping there, as I want to see the whole recycling system overhauled, made more realistic, effective and easier to use, otherwise it will be far less effective than it can and should be.

Protecting our planet takes a bit of effort on our part, as I've probably said before and will certainly say again, and again, and again, until people accept it and do their bit. Our planet is the only one we have and it's there for our children, their children and hopefully many more generations to come, but we urgently need to improve the way we look after it. No, it will not heal itself though it has certain self-healing powers; we are introducing materials to it that are alien and cannot be absorbed. We are responsible for a lot of the damage done and must do better... MUST DO BETTER, no ifs or buts!

I will continue getting angry, very very angry, until we do. So don't worry about my swearing, worry about why, and do better. That'll keep me quiet.

What a Difference a Day Makes...

Straight away I have to start by confessing that the difference in the photographs is, in fact, two days; this does not alter the basic sentiment of the post, so stop complaining already.

 This was the image at Paddington Recreation Ground (known familiarly to locals as Paddington Rec) on Monday morning, the 19th of March, and it was far from spring-like; by London standards it was positively deep winter, a direct result of the second (and, hopefully, final) Beast-from-the-East, the mini one, coming straight from Siberia and giving us more to blame on the Russians and Putin, as if we didn't have enough already!

The snow which fell throughout last Sunday and overnight into early Monday was nothing like as bad as the snow of about three weeks ago, so covering on the ground is thin, but Monday morning was bitterly cold with a bit of a wind blowing. The day continued cold but then, as if a magic wand had been waved, Tuesday was a good deal warmer and Wednesday, when I took the next set of photographs from more ore less the same position, was truly

lovely, a proper English spring day. Why even the sun was shining!

My purpose for bringing this to your attention was not simply to state the obvious by means of some photos but to use it as a metaphor for life. One day life can feel unbearable with our problems weighing us down, strangling us and robbing us of the joy of being alive - we all have days when everything seems cold and joyless, and we feel truly miserable, unable to see how things could possibly improve. It can be a cold, empty feeling, often leading people to do desperate, sometimes irreversible, things.

Yet look at the bright, joyous photographs so full of colour and vibrant life, taken such a short time after the bleak snowy ones. They show a different world, like the one we would see if, when having a bleak moment of our own, we give ourselves the time to recover, to see things in a different light, to breath again with the realistic understanding that life can and will get better and is rarely entirely and completely desperate anyway.

Use the 'good' days to imprint the wonders of life deep in your essence so that you can drag them out during the 'bad' days to remind yourself, to show yourself that there are things that make life worthwhile, however small. Colours and brightness always help us to feel better, feel alive - it is no coincidence that our blackest thoughts come during the hours of darkness, during the night.

Look at how bleak, almost black and white, the top two photographs seem, then look at the bottom two depicting virtually the same scenes and taken from more or less the identical spot - they are just full of colour, with life just bursting out of them!

If only our life could be full of vibrant colour every day, making us feel good, but that may be unrealistic. So remember that brighter days are on the way and take courage to survive the bleak times - survival is the name of the game!

Stephen Hawking - mind over matter

You know the feeling - you wake up and from then on everything that could go wrong with your day does: your train is late and overcrowded, your manager is unreasonable, your date with the lovely blond from the advertising company across the road is cancelled, then your credit card is refused at McDonalds. By the time you crawl home you are tired, frustrated and think that life couldn't get any worse. You almost feel like you want to die.

Well, think again chummy, and read about Stephen Hawking, his life and amazing achievements; if you don't already know who he is, find a photograph or two, or even a video of him. See and try to understand how a man virtually condemned to death at the age of 21 (given two years to live) through a degenerative illness lived a productive and amazing life and died a national (and international) treasure and inspiration despite his wasted body at the age of 76, despite the myriads of problems he encountered.

I am not for one moment suggesting that we could all emulate him, as we probably all (most?) lack not only his brain and power of thought but his incredible determination as well. What we can do, though, is to take courage and inspiration from the life of a man who appeared to have it all (well, almost, he was never exactly good-looking even before his illness...) only to have it snatched away from him by the cruel hand of fate at a very early age. He appeared to deal with his disabilities as an inconvenience and concentrated on what he could do rather than on the things that were now denied to him.

In today's culture, obsessed as it is with the body and its beauty almost above anything, Hawking was a complete anomaly and, had he not achieved what he had, would probably have been ignored as just another handicapped person in a wheelchair who cannot talk normally but only through a device. Some of us might have pitied him, some written him off, others just ignored him. Yet today, only a few days after his death he is providing inspiration to millions across the world with his indomitable spirit.

This piece is not to tell you of my admiration for Hawking over the years, nor of my detailed knowledge of his writings and scientific discoveries; for years I ignored him out of blindness and stupidity, not understanding the greatness of his achievement in surviving and thriving. Hawking's life and legacy is the triumph of mind over matter, of thought over body activity, of humanity over senselessness, and in his triumph I now find inspiration, perhaps due to the fact I now am in need of inspiration! And may I put on the record the fact that I have never bought or attempted to read his famous bestseller 'A Brief History of Time', much purchased but rarely finished masterpiece of scientific thought according to those in the know - more fool me.

So chummy (a.k.a. my dear reader), you too can be inspired by the man, even if like me you lack the equipment to operate at his level of thought or, even, courage. Remember that most difficulties and setbacks that you face will be as nothing compared to what Stephen Hawking had to face, that courage comes from within and that you do not need to be bodily strong to be brave, that beauty can equally be found in thought and expression as in a beautiful body.

As I said earlier it may not be easy, or even possible, for all of us to show the qualities of a Stephen Hawking, but he inspires me to try in situations where previously I may have been quick to give up, and for that I thank this extraordinary human being from the bottom of my heart, ooops, I mean mind!

The heroes in my life are few, my complete admiration limited, but seeing the video of Stephen Hawking flying about at zero gravity with a big smile and twinkly eyes, clearly loving every second, inspired me beyond belief; a new hero has joined my Pantheon and may he rest in peace.

Another Portuguese Tasting

Every year for the last few around this time I attend a tasting of products run by an enterprising company named after one of the great oceans of this world - Atlantico - which tends to feature some fine Portuguese wines and some interesting, often exceptional, Portuguese delicacies. An ex business partner of mine (we jointly created a company called Wineforce many years ago, then went our separate ways as often happens) is somehow involved with the firm - I know not in what precise capacity - so it's fun to see him working away and to taste the company's wares.

The Portuguese seriously love their food and wine but they are low-key people so there is little boasting here, unlike their southern European counterparts, but often their products speak for themselves. I worked for over ten years with Portuguese wines and encountered many top producers, mainly modest to a fault and extremely dedicated to their product; they can now shine, having upgraded their technology and approach, so produce individual, delightful wines at many price points.

Wine producers everywhere tend to be - sweeping generalisation alert!!! - kind, passionate individuals who love their industry and those involved in it, who are proud of their products and keen to show and share them, and to learn more. The growers I was privileged to work with were all very good, passionate people involved in a business they loved and intent on producing the most interesting wine they could; to say I enjoyed working with them is a massive understatement.

Atlantico have a decent wine range that contains a few real gems, including the superb red wines from Cartuxa in the Alentejo, the lovely range of wines and port from one of the pioneers of the Portuguese wine revolution (Quinta da Pacheca from the Douro) and the individual range of wines made by the passionate Domingos Alves de Sousa and his family. There were also some proper 'Green Wines' (Vinhos Verdes) on show, light and attractive as they are (I am referring to the whites, the reds are an acquired taste, perhaps interesting but rarely entirely pleasurable)
, though they seemed to have upped the alcohol level a bit, perhaps acceding to market demands.

Many years ago I used to represent Quinta da Pacheca in the UK and we had some, rather limited, success with their range of table wines - at the time they sold all their port in bulk to the big shippers, so we were only able to try some as a curiosity. Well now they bottle and market their own port, and pretty glorious it is too; despite the aged tawnies being my favourites (fabulous, unctuous, seductive wines of great character and complexity, still relatively modestly priced) their rubies are also a force to be reckoned with, being far more complex at junior level than those their better-known competitors. The wines are now made by Maria, the grand-daughter of Eduardo Serpa Pimentel who first bottled the wine there and established it as a force to be reckoned with. On this showing he would have been impressed, pleased and proud of what Maria is now achieving with his beloved vines. Their table wines (everyday and premium) are also notable, clean and well made, show excellent local character, class and are well worth the price - seek them out, all of them!

As I've written before, Domingos Alves de Sousa of Quinta da Gaivosa is a force to be reckoned with, making interesting wines of individual character based, liked Quinta da Pacheca, in the Douro valley. He presents his wines and ports - a good combination of modern techniques and old-fashioned character - with fierce pride but endearing modesty and great charm that sums up the best people of the great world of good wine. What his wines lack in subtlety they gain in character, being big and complex at the same time, unlike many chunky but clunky 'New World' wines. The Alves de Sousa wines are a true labour of love, born of respect for the conditions and the raw materials and not formulated according to marketing needs and wants. That is not to say that they will be unappealing in the marketplace, far from it; they are just made the right way around - great products that will make great brands, as it should be! Alas I have not been able to gather enough information in time to allow me the long-promised dedicated post, but maybe soon...


I also tasted two wines called blog (see photo) which for obvious reasons are close to my heart. Not so obvious to the naked eye is that they come from the Alentejo, literally the area beyond the river Teju (Tagus) and south of Lisbon, where the Portuguese say their dimmest compatriots reside - I was told that a famous saying of the Alentejo is 'If it rains in November, Christmas will be in December'. In reality it is an area of rolling, fertile, green countryside with some of the country's most beautiful and picturesque towns; it also is home to some outstanding wines, primarily red. The blog wines, made near Estremoz, continue this tradition with two big red stunners (other than the bottle they vary slightly in the types of grapes used) full of ripe fruit and plenty of alcohol. With the finesse that will come from maturity and experience these could be very good indeed.

I have mentioned the Portuguese specialty hams and charcuterie before and I will say it again - they are producing outstanding stuff and, without the 'big name' power of the Spaniards and the Italians, they are more more attractively priced. The ranges I tasted (repeatedly, I might shamefacedly add...) from producers in both the north and south of the country were quite superb in both taste and texture, well worth pursuing (more details on Atlantico UK's website). This is another range of Portuguese products that will give you better 'bang for your buck' than most competitors and I can recommend buying and consuming them without hesitation.

The cheeses I was less taken with. They are perfectly decent, well-made things and are even occasionally interesting, even exciting if you are eating them with knowledgeable Portuguese friends in Portugal. In London, with cheese on offer from around the world they are less attractive to a non-Portuguese - as a rule interesting to taste but not exciting to seek out.

The dried and salted cod (bacalhau) is an interesting product whose culinary treatment in Portugal is an art form, with hundreds of different recipes in existence. The simple bolinhos de bacalhau (fried codfish cakes) can be exquisite, and there were some good ones here, but as the subject of bacalhau is so vast I would like to do a separate post one of these days, maybe soon.

Should I be privileged to visit the Atlantico tasting next year hopefully I will get a chance to focus a bit more on the food side of things, or maybe look at wine and food separately. I will also take care not to lose some of my photographs, ending up with almost all from a single producer...oooops. Be patient, my poor reader, and kind!

Geneva, Switzerland

Geneva is not unlike Edinburgh, subject of my most recent post, in that both cities are of a certain size that makes them walkable, human and beautiful. Both boast Old Town parts, complete with gorgeous buildings evocative of the distant past but very much alive and buzzing with life; both also have their share of modern buildings, some more successful than others.

Unlike Edinburgh I had not known Geneva particularly well, having visited a handful of times from the 1970s through to the 1990s, so had little attachment to the place and thought little of it. When my friend Nicholas moved there a few years ago for work I ended up visiting him (as is my wont), enjoying his kind hospitality, visiting relatives down the road as well and, in the process, discovering a bit more of Geneva. Fickle thing that I am, it won a bit of my heart with its beauty, orderliness and efficiency, though the cost of everything is indescribably high, even to a Londoner.

Architecture in Geneva is not uniform, though the majority of the older buildings have a symmetrical, austere and rather heavy, but elegant, style. A few extravagant buildings of gothic influence lurk, as do utilitarian, plain others, with a few classical facades thrown in for good measure; the modern buildings, generally glass and steel, are not entirely unsuccessful even if they do not quite fit in with their neighbours and the pervading Calvinistic air. Monstrosities are few near the city centre but abound on the outskirts, evidence of the need for inexpensive space and the lack of appreciation of beauty in the years following the 2nd world war and up to, I think, the 1980s. Society has become a bit more discerning since, I feel, and a bit more style is creeping in once again, even to buildings at the lower end of the market spectrum.

This is a city with a big heart and an even bigger mind, as it has in the past been a source of radical thinking within (Calvinism, Reform etc.) and without (the United Nations have a significant base here) religion and now houses CERN (the European Nuclear Research Centre, just outside), where scientific research is taken to new heights. The good citizens of the place have been proud supporters of Geneva's independence of thought and remain so to this day, with their quiet determination. It is this quiet way of going about things that creates the illusion of a boring city where little happens and not a lot is produced, a sleepy, prosperous backwater, a hive of inactivity. In reality this is a busy city under the surface, being an important banking centre, probably the most important watchmaking centre and, of course, the city with the greatest number of international organisations in the world. The international character of the city means that something like 40% of the population are foreigners of some description, which is good and bad in certain respects but contributes to its prosperity.

Prosperous it is, massively expensive too as mentioned earlier, but as just mentioned it is also a hive of activity for business and commerce, not to mention diplomacy. With a long tradition of independence in thought and allegiance, Switzerland in general and Geneva in particular often features as the base for conferences aiming to help resolve international disputes, more often than not under the aegis of the UN. True to say, though, the Swiss banking system in the past has also provided refuge for the ill-gotten fortunes of many international rogues, despots and what-have-yous, leading to accusations of aiding and abetting in international crime. New banking regulations involving tighter controls on the movement of money, high costs and better international cooperation mean that this issue is on the way to disappearing, to the great relief of the Swiss in  general, and bankers in particular. This may limit their income somewhat but improve their standing and cooperation with the rest of the world.

Restaurants are plentiful but it is not easy to enjoy them fully, as their - sometimes breathtaking - prices make it difficult to order to one's heart's content in both food and wine. Maybe, just maybe I'll write about that in a separate post, especially as kind friends have fed and watered (yeah, right!) me decently in the last few days.

Be patient, dear reader. It is a virtue that I'm sure John Calvin would have approved of.

The Athens of the North - Edinburgh

I have just been fortunate to spend a few days with my great friends A and H, whose younger daughter is my goddaughter, and who for the last five and a bit years have lived in Edinburgh. They kindly decided that they had missed me (encouraged by me, I hasten to add) after around ten years of enforced separation of our ways and invited me to visit with them and stay in their flat in Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities in the whole wide world.

Why do I rate Edinburgh so, you may ask, ignorant of the fact that it and I go back a long way - I first came here to sell wine in the mid-1980s with a great deal of success, counting most of the city's top wine merchants as customers and/or friends, falling in love with their city at the same time. While the volume of business was never staggering it was always ticking along nicely, giving me a reason to visit this beautiful city. All that ended for me in the mid 1990s when my wholesale wine business had to be scaled down in the face of insurmountable commercial difficulties created by one of my main suppliers. I was still able to visit Edinburgh for joyous events such as the wedding of my friend Ian, and a subsequent magnificent 50th birthday celebration, but no more on an annual or regular basis.

But I have come back at last and in the last few days I've enjoyed walking around Edinburgh in glorious sunshine but crisp, even cold, weather, reacquainting myself with the place and soaking in the local atmosphere and culture to my heart's content. And what a lot of bits of both one finds here, some obvious but others less so.

First things first: At its heart Edinburgh is a gloriously beautiful city, with notably beautiful buildings belonging to several periods; several public buildings had a heavy Hellenistic influence, leading to the city acquiring the soubriquet of 'the Athens of the North'. This is somewhat ironic given the very different quality of light between Athens and Edinburgh, but probably richly deserved from the philosophical point of view - Edinburgh was at the heart of the Enlightenment movement in the British Isles, much as Athens led ancient Greece in the philosophical stakes.

Edinburgh is not all beauty, of course, and has its fair share of ordinary, indifferent or even unsightly buildings, some out of step with their surroundings, others just plain ugly; it is not some earthly paradise where only beauty reigns. By and large, though, the central bits are diverse but gorgeous in a way unique to Scotland, marrying different styles with local stone and a utilitarian elegance seldom successfully encountered elsewhere. This is not light, ethereal beauty but dark, less airy and open but beguiling nevertheless, with the older styles marrying effortlessly and modern buildings at times sticking out like sore thumbs and occasionally fitting in beautifully, even if their function is alien to the fabric of the place, like the mosque you will see in one of my photographs - architecturally it blends in quite well, but culturally it may be less of a fit. But, of course, the new world reality is forcing us to reevaluate the blends of local culture and expand our horizons in ways previously thought impossible; time will tell if this is truly successful for all involved.

One of the lovely things of a city the size of Edinburgh is that you can walk most anywhere if the weather is not too extreme, giving the place a more human feel. It may be a capital city and a seat of power but it is not huge by size and, therefore, not intimidating for the visitor; loads of overseas visitors seemed to be enjoying the sights and sounds of the place during my time there. Certainly the central bits around the Old Town, the Castle and the New Town are eminently walkable and allow the best perspective of the place. Beauty is all around, sometimes marred by modernist ugliness, but generally homogeneous enough to give a period feeling and to encourage the sales of tourist tat, as in so many other tourist destinations.

Edinburgh bars and restaurants are interesting and, while the chains are represented quite well, there are many independent establishments worth a visit I'm sure; unfortunately I was not able to do so myself, as we had quite a full program, but hopefully my friends will invite me back at a time when I will have more time and money to spend. If you know them too, perhaps you can put in a good word for me...

And don't be too surprised if I have more to say on the subject of Edinburgh - I do and I will, soon!