We gotta get out of this place...

It was 1965. The Animals.

We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
'Cause girl, there's a better life for me and you

These are the words which became the theme song of the Vietnam War and are burnt into my brain.

Every time I get away for a break, note - not a positive thing like a “make” but a break, a destruction of something that works I resolve it’ll be the first of many. Never is. 

This one’s hardly a summer holiday. We’ve already had one of those but as I recall – a rather fuzzy memory -  I had Covid and spent most of the time asleep. No, this is a retreat to a quiet apartment overlooking a nature reserve and a stream.

In Canterbury for glorious choral music, Elizabethan architecture, lazy lunches and bison. Virtually extinct in Europe and pretty well unknown in Britain these creatures, the heaviest living wild land animals, are like powerful demolition machines. In a rewilding experiment  at Wilder Blean in Kent they are turning jungles into parks. And a baby bison has just been born so things are looking up.

And everyone else seems at it too. Good friends have just returned from a brilliant trip to and around India. It’s strange that when I was there a few years ago it seemed somehow familiar as though I’d lived there in a previous existence. It smelt wonderful and mysterious and was exciting in a way China, although fascinating too, somehow wasn’t. Poetry as opposed to prose.

And our daughter, son in law and grandchildren are in New York doing what we all do in the most thrilling city in the world. Walking. Walking. Walking. Walking through diversity. Chinatown. Harlem. The Financial District. Brownstone buildings. Central Park. The High Line. The Staten Ferry. Broadway diners where resting artists are now waitresses who suddenly burst into song. The biggest burgers ever. Whale sized Lobsters. And Walking. Walking. Walking.

What we missed through the drab days of lockdown was travel, experiences and change. In those same as, same as days of imprisonment that sixth sense of discovery and change was turned off which was tragic because ultimately it’s that sense which we need and which turns us on when we get weary.

So we are getting away because there’s a better life than Brighton great as Brighton is. But right now it feels like this dirty old part of the city where the sun refused to shine. Living in Brighton is like a never ending dish of scampi. Delicious but occasionally I need steak or – can this be me – tofu. 

I’m looking forward to rediscovering deep sleep and getting rid of mental cobwebs. I’m also looking forward to learning a few new things – I don’t know what yet but when I find out I’ll be sure to tell you.

Have a great week. Have fun. Plan your next adventure.

WE SHOULD TALK MORE (AND OTHER PANDEMIC LESSONS)

We are about to take a break. It’s not a full-blown, duty free, “do I have enough books and suntan lotion?” holiday. But I still have that new-chapter-in-my-life feeling.

My stark realisation is the past months have disappeared in a mess of self-absorption. Nothing remarkable achieved, failed or celebrated. So the effect of a new place and a new challenge is refreshing and will make me take stock again.

I was talking to a friend who has been working at home, 15 hour days, since the first lockdown (“at least I see more of my wife”). His review of his team seen through the prism of Zoom, WhatsApp and Microsoft Teams is there are two sorts of people. Those who thrive in a world of change and those who wither. Those who are constantly “reaching out” and those who retreat in silence. By the way I normally hate that Americanism - “reaching out” – but it occurs to me the victim in Stevie Smith’s poem should have been reaching out. Those who don’t will drown in depression.

“I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.” 

So lesson one – keep in touch, talk and listen. You don’t need to be face-to-face. You do need to be mind-to-mind. 

Next make the most of what you have. Being in isolation didn’t stop you reading unread books, drinking better wine, cooking a new dish. In the past year a depressingly large number of my friends have died. I wish I’d reached out to them more. I have spent too long in the presence of death to slither into a puddle of woe. 

Lesson two – seize the joys of life. Love it. It could be you next.

Celebrate the good things. It’s too easy to get depressed. I was taken out by good friends to celebrate a birthday last week. I was taken to the Hélène Darroze restaurant in London. She’s got three restaurants, London, Paris and Moscow; she’s also got three Michelin Stars. One is unlikely to forget the event. No, not the food which was very nice but a bit fussy but the people, their bonhomie, generosity of spirit and energy. That’s what sticks in the memory like a flashing light.

Lesson three – celebrate with a big spirit (no, fool, not an Armagnac).

Your life is a script which you can edit as you reflect any which way you like. My 98 year old mother in law reminisces in a brilliantly optimistic way. Her life is essentially “98 Years of Joy and Success”. Bad memories fall on her cutting room floor. Recently I had a spell of insomnia and a film of my life flashed before me (in black and white - what else?) The film might have been called “Cock-Ups, Blunders and Regrets”.  I’ve burned it. There are too many good things and fantastic people in my life to think about missed goals.

Here’s what, according to writer Tom McTague, Boris Johnson once said:

“All romantics need the mortar of cynicism to hold themselves up.”

“Cheerful scepticism” would be a better phrase because just being an optimist is irritatingly mindless and a bit blundering . We must just never stop asking questions.

Lesson four – Never stop thinking and questioning. 

And never forget to refresh yourself. You are not a machine. 

I’ve recently been feeling weary, stale and unprofitable (thanks Shakespeare). A break, a period of relaxation and eating out is what I need.

Lesson Five - Be kind to yourself. Take your body and mind away on holiday more often.

LA SERENISSIMA

Just nine days pottering around in the jewel of the Adriatic was very restful. A word to all of you out there who are saying you’re knackered.

You are. You need a break.

I was knackered and now I’m feeling great not least because I’ve dragged the Venetian weather back here.

Observations on Venice:

• Still manages to be beautiful and, yes, serene. The sun creating twinkles on the canals fills my heart with joy.

• The airport has got international class – you get through in a jiffy; it’s clean, cool and elegant. The Marco Polo Lounge has to the very nicest I’ve been in.

• Campari Spritz, a vile-tasting concoction when drunk in the UK, tastes absolutely fabulous there and as part of that away-from-homeness feeling one has relaxing in the sun.

• We must has been about the only Brits there… what’s going on? Venice used to teem with Waitrose shoppers, now no more. Lots of Americans, Germans, French, Indians and Italians. And (also) where have all the Chinese gone?

• Aha! They’ve gone to the Tedeschi, which was in the 13th century and beyond, the HQ of German Traders in Venice. Now it describes itself as “The Lifestyle Department Store”.  We visited it briefly having observed (as it were) the absence of wasps in Venice this year and finding ourselves in a huge wasps’ nest. Chinese families all paying in cash and spending thousands of dollars on Prada, Cartier, Chanel, Burberry. It’s an amazing tribute to the power of luxury branding and the sudden growth in personal wealth of the world’s second largest economy. 

• Sadly the place is full of beggars, mostly illegal immigrants brazenly demanding money in an intimidating way. It was made illegal in 2008 but no one now enforces it.

• Just before we arrived the cruise liner, the MSC Opera, crashed out of control into the Zattere just west of San Basilio. On just our first day there were three of these nautical  monsters lumbering up the Guidecca canal. Imagine a 40 storey skyscraper being built next to Admiralty Arch in London. Yes it’s that inappropriate. 

• Finally a sour grape from an ex adman. On a deconsecrated church on the Riva Degli Schiavoni just beyond the Danieli Hotel facing out into the lagoon  is the vastest, nastiest poster ever. It’s for Balenciaga which says, well it just says Balenciaga in letters 20 feet high. This was last year’s – this year’s is even worse. I hated the brand in 2018.

x

• 

And, now,  the bad news.

• 

• 

 I now hate Balenciaga even more.

 Just thinking and looking at the Grand Canal I’m forced to take the long view and think of history. Virtually all the buildings are over five centuries old.  Somehow Britain, Brexit and Boris seem a little trivial when I’m here.  

I want to quote from that brilliant speech Aaron  Sorkin wrote for the first episode of the Newsroom orated by Jeff Daniels. I’m thinking of Britain as I read it:

“America isn’t the greatest country any more… It sure used to be… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed laws, struck down laws, for moral reason.  We waged wars on poverty, not on poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbours, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest.  We built great, big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases and we cultivated the world’s greatest artists AND the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men. We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”

Venice was great once. America was great once. We called ourselves Great Britain. But we aren’t great anymore….we sure used to be. We have a problem to solve.

WHY DO I GO TO VENICE SO OFTEN?

1. To feel European
2. To wash my brain
3. To read, write, sleep, eat and wonder at wonders

Richard Hall is on holiday in Italy for several weeks.

GET AWAY

David Cameron is being criticised for having too long a holiday. He’s planning to take most of August off first in Cornwall and then Portugal; swanning off when there’s Greece, an ISIS crisis and increasing problems with the SNP. Clearly he should be at number 10 worrying and having Civil Servants bouncing around like Duracell bunnies giving him advice.  Surely he’s meant to be Prime Minister not Sometime Prime Minister.

Some think - wrongly - holidays are for wimps.

Years ago I knew a football manager called Brian Clough. He ran Nottingham Forest between 1977 and 1993. He was Manager of the Year in 1977-78 won the league title twice , the FA Cup four  times and the European Cup twice. He was a legend.

He once said to me “I’m in trouble with my Board, young man - I just took off for Spain for a week - because I felt tired and needed to think and sleep - they want me there every day - well they can get stuffed”. And they did because in 1978 no-one argued with King Brian. Watch him filleting the hapless football commentator John Motsom in that year- wonderful stuff. The stuff of a relaxed man.

Brian understood the need to rest, to, as he put it, “be a bit daft” and using a change of scene and regimen can do that.

To be as good as you can be you need to stay in shape.

You need to invest in your support system, your wife, husband, children, grandchildren and your friends. Research proves (well we know it proves very little but I just love starting sentences like that occasionally). Research proves human beings make better decisions than computers and when they don’t it’s because they decide to behave like computers, whirring away 24/7.

Do we really get the need for sabbaticals, being like Yvon Chouinard CEO of Patagonia the apparel manufacturer?  Here he is in the office:

We live in an austere world and it’s one the brilliant educationalist Sir Ken Robinson analyses devastatingly when he laments the absence of creativity in modern education.

So my grandsons’ recent school reports interested me. They were very good although the forensic detail over many pages of closely typed pages worried me. The boys were 8 and just 6 in the school term in question. The detail was about the same as you’d apply to a senior marketer’s appraisal in a big corporation or an ‘A’ level student.

They should all lighten up. I think they need to be inspired not ground down by Gradgrinds.  I think they should do what a very successful friend of mine did. For family reasons he and his brothers took six months out of school when he was 8 and built the biggest, best, tree house ever. He said:  “It was then I learned more than I’ve ever done since.”

Six months’ up a tree is better than a term of modern maths. Trust me.

HALLO DORSET ARE YOU THERE?

OK, this joke about Dorset, where we’ve just spent the first chunk of a rather longer holiday than usual, a place which T- Mobile and broadband forgot, a place where it’s always “whatever-o clock”, slow, measured and clotted-creamy, has gone on long enough.

Dorset is a tiny county which it takes longer to reach by car than a return trip by Easy Jet to Venice. Above all Dorset belongs to the memory of Thomas Hardy. He’s the creator of names like Eustacia Vye, Damon Wildeve and Bathsheba Everdene. He’s the writer of novels in which the dreadful hand of fate constantly touches the shoulder of the unlucky or amoral - the nearest we have to a writer of Greek tragedy.
But there’s something else.

An award for exceptional marketing goes to Dorset.

We were entertaining our grandchildren (or vice versa). Over three days we did the following:
Visited the ruins of Corfe Castle (one of the few strongholds to withstand the parliamentary forces in the south of England in the mid-1600s) where we learned to use a sword - “aim for the nose” -  a halbert - “great for gouging at close quarters” and a bow and arrow - lethal wounds were delivered to head, groin, legs and upper body of the targeted strawmen.

And so on to Abbotsbury - an award winning sub-tropical garden - huge Monterey Cypresses, brilliant succulent plants ; the Swannery - 600 of the white feathered thugs whom the children all fed with grain and we learned about their habits (did you know that the wretches bask in the reputation of being “one-swan-guys” but they all pop off for constant “surreptitious affairs” at the “Bonking Swan” no doubt.)

And then their farm. There’s more money to be made now by tarmacking fields and having kids ride plastic tractors, have pony rides, watch lamb races, have close contact with exotic birds (in the cage with the budgerigars and parakeets) and operate radio controlled pirate boats on the lake - than there ever could be by growing stuff.

Finally the museum day - “oh no Grandpa not museums!” Dorchester is about the same size as Goldaming, Newport Pagnell or Kenilworth… so quite small. It has a Town Museum and five (yes -  five) others. A Teddy Bear Museum; a reproduction of the Terracotta Warriors, a Dinosaurs Museum (where else have you heard “kids - you can touch anything here”);

an abbreviated version of the British Museum Tutenkhamun Exhibition and the Mummies (the boys loved these dead bodies so much that they eyed me as if to say “not long now.”).  Where else could there be this much enterprise, enthusiasm to please and involve and overall sense of drama?  If everyone attacked their cultural opportunity as well as this then all would be well in the sector.

Dorset I’ve heard you loud and clear.

And one other thing. Dorchester has a Michelin star restaurant. Proof that there’s more to life than my smart phone.

I'M AWAY IN VENICE

THINKING

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