Columnists
Michael Sadler speaks up for the British bloke’s romantic reputation, while Bill Knott says it’s about time we resurrected the humble milk float and Sarah Champion discusses the “Vital” festival of Chinese artists
MICHAEL SADLER BIDS ADIEU TO THE SUPREMACY OF THE GALLIC LOVER AND SAYS IT’S TIME FOR THE BRITISH BULLDOG TO STAND UP FOR HIS ROMANTIC REPUTATION. IF HUGH GRANT CAN DO IT, ANYONE CAN
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Ça suffit. Our reputation is at stake. The time has come to stand up and fight. It’s been stuffed down our throats for too long. Since 1066 boatloads of tourists have insidiously spread the rumour. They are better at it than us. At what?
At pétanque? Non, monsieur. By “it” they mean “ça”. Lovemaking. Frolicking. Le hanky-panky. When compared with our continental neighbours, we Brits, they gloat, are not precisely the cat’s whiskers. A lady contemplating a hot springs weekend in Reykjavik (and why not?) would be better off with Pierre than with Peter. You can’t beat a Gallic lover, apparently. Proof? Wave your wand backwards at Prince Charming and what do you get? A frog.
Literature – until Sadler (thank God for him) – has gone some way to substantiate the myth. Don Juan (Molière, 1665) wasn’t born in Tunbridge Wells and didn’t drive a Rover. Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Laclos, 1782) did not take place in Bexhill and St Leonards. Even dear old Jean-Paul Sartre, who, let’s face it, brain apart, was hardly David Beckham, was reknowned for being a quintessential hot rabbit (un chaud lapin), seducing his way existentially from Being to Nothingness (L’Etre et Le Néant, 1943).
When I was small I swallowed all this bunkum hook, line and sinker. I was brought up in Lewes, near Brighton. Come July, hordes of small-time Casanovas would take the summer language schools by storm, creating havoc in my Home Counties harem.
With their pink Lacostes, their pre-tanned complexion (they come off the production line that way), their rippling muscles (no fish and chips or doughnuts in France) and their totally unacceptable ability to play tennis, they pillaged.
Then one night in the Loire Valley, I twigged. This was brain washing. I was on a camping jaunt with Lou Charpin, the future lady of my life. Erecting tents is not my cup of tea, so she did it. Three out of ten. Building a fire was an equal disaster. It went out and I burnt my pully. Two out of ten. I was excellent at inflating the lilos, but Mademoiselle Charpin remained unimpressed. We settled down for the night. It began to rain. Frogs (no, the other kind) queued up outside the tent, making slimy noises. Lou didn’t like creepy crawlies. In the middle of the night I awoke with a start. There on her pillow – quelle horreur! – a frog. With a manly gesture I threw a towel around it and tossed it out of the tent.
Pssssssss…….
Oh dear. It wasn’t a frog. It was the stopper of her lilo. She deflated. Along with my morale. Had I let the side down? Confirmed the myth that we’re no good? Surprise surprise – Lou wasn’t cross. She laughed till she cried. I was different. I was funny. I was English.
I had won. We had won. At last the nation had triumphed. The key to success? In the immortal words of Donald O’Connor: “Make ’em laugh.” There’s nothing sexier than doing it badly. And there’s no race in the world better at doing it badly than the British.
All you have to do is be clumsy, stutter and fumble. They’ll love it. It’s the Hugh Grant syndrome. It may not go down a bomb in Bognor but it works wonders in France. And vengeance is sweet.
FLYING THE FLAG
BILL KNOTT RAISES A GLASS (OF MILK) TO THE HUMBLE FLOAT
IN OUR BRAVE new world of ethical consumerism, we are told that packaging should be recyclable, that we should make every effort to purchase local produce and that cars should be low in carbon emissions. A utopian vision of a green future? Actually, we have been there before. Not so long ago the streets of Britain were quietly crawling with battery-powered vehicles, all stacked with local produce in reusable bottles.
I speak, of course, of the humble milk float. Until the 1980s the gentle hum of its battery-powered motor and the clink of glass were sounds embedded in the nation’s semi-consciousness – mankind’s contribution to the dawn chorus.
The milkman was more than just a delivery man – he was a neighbourhood watchman, trained to notice anything unusual on his round, such as a pint of milk still sitting on an elderly client’s step from the day before. What of the neighbours, you say. Surely they would notice? No, they are too busy chugging off to the shopping mall in their 4×4, filling the boot with semi-skimmed cartons of homogenised cow juice.
Milkmen contributed to their own decline, it has to be said, by trying to diversify – a sensible thing, now that nobody actually drinks a pint of milk a day – but with dubious white sliced loaves, dodgy fruit yoghurts and, bizarrely, milk bottles full of orange juice, which always disturbed me.
Why do we not resurrect the milk float and use it to ferry local, seasonal, organic produce – including milk – to people’s doorsteps? Crusty bread, bacon, eggs and butter straight from the farm; the farmers’ market on a float, in other words, and the bacon-and-egg sandwich from heaven. It would restore a lost sense of neighbourhood to our towns, would make eating good-quality food as easy as opening the post and the environment would be completely unscathed. I just thought I’d float the idea…
CULTURE VULTURE
SARAH CHAMPION ON THE POWER OF CONTEMPORARY CHINESE ART
2007 WILL BE an exciting time for the Chinese Arts Centre in Manchester as it marks our 21st birthday. Established in 1986 by a small group of Manchester-based Chinese artists who were frustrated that their work was rarely seen, it has continued its remit to promote and support artists of Chinese descent. Manchester now has the second largest Chinese community in the UK after London and has grown as an arts attraction.
At the end of last year we launched “Vital”, a year-long festival of international Chinese artists who work in Live Art. Live Art is among the most challenging of all art forms, developed in the US in the 1960s by a group of visual artists who wanted more contact with their audience. Live Art is exactly as it sounds: the artist creating a living art-work, sometimes impromptu, sometimes rehearsed but always in front of an audience and rarely in a theatre setting.
When people think of Chinese art they still imagine it to be calligraphy, brush-painting and blue and white porcelain. While these still have an important role in Chinese culture, they are as relevant as Mozart and ballet are to British culture: interesting and influential but not exactly contemporary. Vital wants to encourage people to update their view on Chinese culture.
The current media focus on China certainly helps to raise the Centre’s profile but in the quest for a new story it is usually the sensationalist angles that grab the headlines. “Shocking” is a word often used to describe contemporary art from China, and particularly Live Art. As artists try to find new means of expression in a formerly communist country, there are some who seem to deliberately try to shock. But this isn’t our aim. The Chinese Arts Centre hopes to show the very best artists from around the world. Apart from their ethnic origin, what the artists have in common is that they want to engage an audience by making an immediate and emotional connection – a powerful gift that they are trying to share.
For more information, visit www.chinese-arts-centre.org or contact +44 (0)161 832 7271
An Englishman Amoureux by Michael Sadler, Simon and Schuster (£10)
