Gold Magazine - Issue# 2

we provoke...

Dear Reader, Let’s be clear. You’re cerebral, but you’re sexy too. So is Gold. It’s a match made in heaven. Gold’s here to encourage, validate, entertain, enlighten, and amuse. We say getting older is getting golder. There’s nothing inconsistent with having responsibilities and maxing out on all that life has to offer. We’re about what you actually do, what you might like to do and where you likely could be. So it’s goodbye to those who would feign offence at anything they can’t immediately reconcile with the off-the shelf persona they’ve assumed, believing this to be more becoming of someone of their vintage. Gold rocks and rolls like you and knows this is wholly compatible with class, wealth, duty and beauty.

Designer: Wallace Wainhouse Picture Editor: Daphne Holland

Launch yourself into the world of professional dance, training in Contemporary Dance with a renowned teaching faculty, at Laban’s unique award-winning building in London, UK. Offering undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

Additional Photography: Zoe Weisselberg

APPLICATION + INFORMATION [email protected] +44 (0)20 8691 8600 WWW.LABAN.ORG

CREEKSIDE LONDON, SE8 3DZ UK Programmes offered at Laban which fall within the framework for higher education qualifications in the UK are validated by The City University, to whom Laban is responsible for ensuring the quality and academic standards of its undergraduate and postgraduate provision. Laban is incorporated by Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Registered Charity 309998. Supported by Arts Council England with National Lottery funds. Design Laban 2008 Photo Eric Richmond.

Front Cover: Izabelle Kwasniewski Production Manager: Fleur Wainhouse Production Assistants: Apollo Rose, Emily Bentley Gold is published quarterly by Sextant Media Ltd All submissions to [email protected] All enquiries: +44 (0) 20 8244 2041

Makulu

7 - Featured Artist: Kirsty Whiten 8 - A Feast of Festivals, by James Bainbridge - the lowdown on the best festivals near and far from the jewel in Lonely Planet’s crown of writers

Remember your roots Our ethos of “good wines without the hype” enables us to offer sophisticated wines at affordable prices and we created the Makulu range to support this aim. Makulu wines originate from Wellington, at the foot of the Hawekwa mountain range, in the heart of the Western Cape. These fresh and fruity wines consistently reflect the taste and spirit of Africa. The Zulu word “Makulu” means “big” and this range of wines certainly lives up to the name. They are “big” wines with great strength, character and excitement, yet are smooth enough to complement any service from banquet to barbecue and add a real “zing” to the party afterwards!

Chardonnay An elegant, beautifully rounded wine with soft nut and citrus tones, which prevail on the nose, followed by lime and vanilla flavours that linger gently on the palate. Enjoy this food friendly wine with most seafood dishes, shellfish, smoked salmon, pasta, Chinese cuisine, duck, chicken or summer salads.

Pinotage Rosé This beautifully crafted blush, made exclusively from the unique Pinotage grape, excels for its freshness and flavour with a fruity nose and easy drinking nature, yet retains the nobility and stature of the red varietal. Serve well chilled as an aperitif and to accompany seafood or light dishes and snacks, summer salads and buffets; also a crucial accompaniment to Christmas Dinner. A perfect party wine .

10 - Clubbing with a Baby, by Dom Hale - a family outing to Baby Loves Disco 12 - “Dance monkey, dance!”, by Amber Tillings - everyone should learn to dance 13 - Crime and Punishment, by Numan Rahman - behind the walls of Brixton prison 14 - Encyclopedia of Dating, by Charlotte Fereday - the good the bad and the ugly a selection of dates

Chenin Blanc The fruity flavours of Chenin Blanc result in an elegant, dry wine with tropical fruit on the nose and citrus flavours on the gentle, lingering palate. Enjoy this food friendly wine with most seafood dishes, white meats, smoked salmon, pastas, veal, chicken or summer salads.

16 - Vodka, by Danny King - icy is sexy and vodka is the new king in town 18 - South Wales, by Charlie Jones - after years of regeneration South Wales is a prime UK investment destination 21 - Getting Dirty in London, by Joanna Gray - where to walk and when 23 - Old is Gold, by Catherine Norton ageing isn’t not so bad 24 - Female fiction: Rebbecca Ray 26 - Fashion: Edge sustainable clothing 28 - Male fiction: Jamie Dwelly 30 - Hip-hop, by Chris Arning - the ups and downs of being a hip-hop fan in your thirties 32 - Offshore in the Caribbean - global hotspot for managing wealth, investing and running a company 34 - British Virgin Islands, by Estelle Fargo - beautiful British overseas territory is offshore utopia 36 - Poker Mums, by Joanna Gray - West London hustlers 37 - The Church of Poker, by Dave Ford - all are equal in the eyes of the poker God 40 - Fits of Peak, by Will Scott -Celebrating the ordinary

Shiraz This easy drinking, deep purple wine has spices and white peppers and a fragrant floral hint on the nose. With well rounded tannins giving a velvety smooth well polished finish when allowed to breath. This wine is perfect to accompany classic roasts, steaks, Game and soft creamy cheeses.

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Pinotage Strong varietal character is the hallmark of this elegant fruit-driven wine. Ripe cherry, strawberry and plum tones on the nose blend with rich spicy-peppery flavours on the palate. Soft tannins ensure a smooth, lingering finish. Enjoy this food friendly wine with rich meat dishes, venison, game birds, roasts or mature cheese.

43 - The Snip - part 2, by Bill Sheehan - the art of having a vasectomy 44 - Find your Inner Sea Dog, by Michael Brooks - yacht chartering around the Greek islands 46 - Featured artist: Kirsty Whiten 48 - Offaly Good Food, by Wallace Wainhouse - the alleged wonders of eating offal 50 - Listings - selection of places to get hold of a complimentary copy of Gold

Featured Artist: Kirsty Whiten - see pp 46-7 for more + bio

EAT DRINK BOWL HOLBORN

BAYSWATER

BRICKLANE

020 7025 2676

020 7313 8363

020 7426 9200

WWW.ALLSTARLANES.CO.UK Hareem: 100x125cm pencil drawing with ink, watercolour, acrylic and gold leaf on paper. 7

A Feast of Festivals For anyone who’s pitched a tent at one of the Babylonian music events that litter England’s meadows during the summer, festivals have definite associations. These generally include lukewarm lager, tepid indie bands, free lentils and swirling eyes in the Hari Krishna tent, rivers of mud, and losing your wallet/friends/brain. Luckily, there is a world of festivals to be explored that doesn’t include timesharing fields with Somerset cows and sheltering in the cider tent. Whilst England freezes in the depths of winter Malaysia’s Thapisum event is taking place. A typically extreme Hindu gathering, devotees enter a trance and pierce themselves with hooks, tridents and skewers. It marks the day when Murugan, Shiva’s son, was given a lance to vanquish some demons; the masochistic behaviour is intended to give thanks for answered prayers. Religious frenzy is also de rigueur at the

someone who is probably at a festival

sour, proceed to the suitably messy Battle of the Oranges. In Italy’s answer to Spain’s La Tomatina, 3,500 ‘revolutionaries’ pelt each other with 400,000 kg of the fruit - only stopping to attack spectators who slip on the citric sludge underfoot.

the hurtling dairy product, but it hits 100km/hour, and most contestants find it challenging enough to reach the bottom without the aid of a stretcher. At Cumbria’s Egremont Crab Fair, one of the world’s oldest fairs (established in 1267), participants in the World Gurning Championship have to contort their faces into hideous shapes - while sticking their head through a horse’s collar, naturally. However, the firm winner in the absurdity stakes is Wales’ mucky World Bog Snorkelling. Mud-lovers don a mask, flippers and snorkel, and try to conquer a 55m trench without using conventional swimming strokes. Though it might not seem apparent in the depths of a peat bog, Britain is a richly cultural nation, and this has given rise to a wide range of festivals. If you’ve reached the stage where the chill-out zone looks more tempting than the mosh pit, or you have a brood of

“Blighty's festivals calendar is packed with frenzied activities, surreal sights and arcane rituals” Indonesian harvest festival, Pasola, in which horsemen battle each other with spears - in order for blood to be spilt as an offering to the spirits. If bling bling is more your thing than self-flagellation, Italy is a good place to spend the month, with the glittering Venice Carnival filling the canal-happy city with masked balls and gondola processions. Love birds can spend St Valentine’s Day at the saint’s Umbrian hometown, where a feast takes place around the basilica holding his remains; then, if the relationship turns

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Of course, you wouldn’t find such hotblooded behaviour among the reserved Brits - would you? In fact, Blighty’s festivals calendar is packed with frenzied activities, surreal sights and arcane rituals - most famously the Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling. At this 200-year-old Gloucestershire riot, locals and Australian backpackers chase a seven-pound circle of Double Gloucester Cheese down a scarily steep slope, which caused 33 injuries in 1997. The object is to grab

tomorrow’s head-bangers to take care of, smaller festivals such as the Larmer Tree have real positives. Held among peacocks and pagodas in 19th-century gardens in Wiltshire, the festival features green glades, theatre and craft workshops, situationist performances, morning pilates, and some damn fine tunes (the Senegalese superstars Orchestra Baobab played last summer). The Sunrise Celebration in Somerset is similarly inclined, encouraging festival-goers to tap into their own creativity as well as

checking out the 300-plus live acts. Sunrise and the Big Green Gathering, which brings five days of playfulness and environmentalism to Somerset’s Mendip Hills, are recommended for their ecological emphasis. Among the other events catering to families and folk seeking something more inspiring than overpriced lager and guitars, Womad allows muso’s to catch some big names without having to join a scrum of students. In 2008 alone, the World

and a younger party crowd to Eastnor Castle Deer Park, Herefordshire, the event has grown to meet demand but still displays a degree of integrity generally not found at large events. Orbital and Basement Jaxx are lined up for this summer. At Bestival, the ‘boutique’ festival on the Isle of Wight, last year’s line-up featured artists from Amy Winehouse and Hot Chip to Aphex Twin and Underworld. The five-year-old festival, which spawned Camp Bestival (at Lulworth Castle in Dorset),

“If bling bling is more your thing than self-flagellation (head to) the glittering Venice Carnival (replete) with masked balls and gondola processions” Music stars who trekked to the edge of the Cotswolds, to play among the gathering’s trademark flags, included Rachid Taha, Toumani Diabaté, Ernest Ranglin and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Any scrums at last year’s Big Chill involved Sixties kids rather than students, as the festival offered a rare opportunity to see the melancholy lothario Leonard Cohen sing his bittersweet ballads. Attracting both families

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features quirky extras such as the Bollywood cocktail bar, ‘hidden’ disco and solar-powered cinema. What’s more, children can be an asset at such festivals: one Gold staffer, a young dad who braved last summer’s rainy Bestival, is still raving about the joys of the queue-free toilets in the family camping area. James Bainbridge is the author of A Year of Festivals (Lonely Planet)

don't overdo it

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Anything with a spray facility is handy for campsite chores; fashion a shower from a gardener’s spray can Know the risks at events such as Spain’s Running of the Bulls (impalement) Pack light; you’ll be less interested in Harry Potter’s capers than psychedelic floats Bring a smile, some patter and even gifts such as glowsticks; they fit the festival spirit Afterwards, factor in a ‘come-down’ period; a world without noodles for breakfast and conversation with randoms will seem dreary

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(not seal clubbing)

Photography: Zoe Weisselberg

by Dom Hale Baby Loves Disco comes to us from the States. The concept is an afternoon dance party at super-cool venues for little kids up to seven and their parents. The feel-good factor is high with legendary disco anthems on the turntables guaranteed to get you and the titches getting your groove on and feeling funky. Forget ‘The Wheels On The Bus’. We’re talking ‘He’s The Greatest Dancer’ here. We took our 21 month and two week old daughters Summer and Tatiana to Pacha in Victoria just before Christmas. the former boogied on down with her little pals, and so did we. She drank juice - we drank wine. It’s undeniably fun making shapes with the apples of your eye; sharing with the next generation your love of a good night (day) out, and because it’s in a proper funky club they’re getting a real sense of what you’re about; of what you like. With the music at 80 decibels it’s loud enough to get down without it getting them down, and as with any adult club worth its salt there are chill out zones. Here your kid can snatch some shuteye, hang in a tent, 10

have their face painted, read a book and generally do their thing before heading back to shake their booty, but unlike adult clubs (specialist adult baby clubs excepted) here punters can get their nappies changed and be nursed without worrying about being thrown out. These parents are multi-taskers unlikely to throw a hissy fit at the first thing that doesn’t go their way. They’re clearly not daunted by all they have to do to pull an afternoon like this off, nor by the inevitable chaos of a hundred pushchairs needing a home on arrival. To many it could come across as asking for trouble to transport unpredictable mini people into the heart of London on a busy cold wet Saturday to party with hundreds of others. However, these people take the view that if you always take the path of least resistance where children are concerned, you’ll never leave the house. There is even acknowledgement for your efforts. Tatiana won a t-shirt by virtue of being the youngest there, and showed her thanks by behaving impeccably throughout the event. In fact as something that ties in with the principles of Gold, Baby Loves

“The feel-good factor is high with legendary disco anthems on the turntables guaranteed to get you and the titches getting your groove on and feeling funky.” Disco is hard to beat. It subscribes to the school of thought that says there’s nothing inconsistent with having a family and having a blast. The organisers get that particularly these days, far from being the end of something parenthood affords you the best of both worlds. In the best traditions of the Mediterranean, families hanging together is seen as something to be cherished rather than tolerated. This is a heart warming and validating urban movement with a demographic that transcends boundaries of class, race, gender and age. It’s unashamedly metropolitan, and flies in the face of those who’d leave the big smoke for a perceived bucolic idyll in Dorset or some such. It’s a tall order making something kid friendly that’s also uber-cool, but

BLD appears to understand that it’s a mind-set as much as anything else. It’s the people that go to these events that make them what they are. They refuse to compromise on enjoying life just because they’ve become parents, and would struggle to change their life view even if they wanted to. That they love their kids to bits is in no doubt, and it’s because of this they want them to have as much fun as possible too. Baby Loves Disco rocks, and if it can find the right venues that dig where it’s coming from, and that understand the unique requirements of such an event, it could be at the vanguard of a revolution that shouts from the rooftops “have your cake and eat it!” For more information go to babylovesdisco.co.uk 11

ce! ”

In other words, there is a show and a style and a class out there for everyone whether you are new to dance or are re-acquainting yourself with a former passion, for these days, bar the ongoing funding worries, British dance is in rude health. A hundred years ago it was all waltzes and polka, but the arrival of jazz

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For many, particularly men, that they never learnt to dance has come home to roost. It’s an undeniably cool skill to possess, and they privately wish they’d been more proactive in the past. But now? Well, they wouldn’t have a clue where to start. In their head it has become this glaringly obvious missing string to their bow, preventing them from defining themselves as they’d like to. They are filled with fear at the prospect of the wedding dance floor, and will be found skulking in the toilet or puffing away on an unwanted cigarette at the appropriate time, whilst gallantly allowing their beloved to be whisked around by some sure-footed butterfly. Having often never even been to a dance performance, they are under the impression it’s an elitist pursuit. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

derful venues drawing the most spellbinding companies from across the world, while the home grown raw talent constantly being fed into this mix is unmatched virtually anywhere, with a wealth of teaching establishments catering to the careerist to those with three left feet.

y, d an

by Amber Tillings

“Dance

London is blessed with a flourishing classical and contemporary dance scene, with several won-

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from America soon put paid to that. Speedy legkicking, arm-flinging dances like the Charleston heralded the beginning of the modern ‘scandalous’ dance era that was marked by physical contact with your dance partner. This was dancing with sex appeal, and the young loved it. Fast forward to the 1950s, and modern dance pioneers like Martha Graham turned the rulebook on its head again – this time in the world of ballet. Delicate fairy tales were replaced by real-life psycho-dramas in keeping with the era of kitchensink realism. This development certainly polarised opinion, but brought to dance a new legion of fans previously uncatered for, and heralded the creation of Robin Howard’s London Contemporary Dance Group. Minimalism gained credence in the seventies epitomised by the Dance Umbrella Festival founded towards the end of that decade. If prior developments had sparked controversy this took the biscuit with many lovers of dance feeling left hard done by, and unable to make

Crime and Punishment Numan Rahman by his own admission inexplicably decided to become a prison officer five years ago. He lasted two years. Here he recounts his first day behind the walls. The seven foot metal grate swung to the side and we shuffled a few steps, waiting for the iron door to open. Inch by inch the ferrous portal creaked open, and one by one the jejune recruits to Her Majesty’s Prison Brixton stepped into ‘A’ Wing, still dressed in civilian clothes since ‘stores’ had run out of uniforms.

this leap of faith. However, the dye had been cast, and since then there has been less resistance to ‘the new’ in dance. The present day is marked by fusion with different dance forms being blended together. These days when ballet meets hip hop or the martial arts, it’s cause for celebration, not consternation, and those few who would be outraged at this ‘sacrilege’ simply look away. It’s a great era for dance. Thanks to populist films and shows it is firmly in vogue, and now almost completely transcends class boundaries. Rough diamonds can learn ballet, and it’s ok. Debutantes can overlook ballet, and that’s ok too. So, whether you’re a scumbag or an heiress, or somewhere in between, don’t pass up the opportunities that abound in London right now, and wherever else it may lead, at least you’ll feel good in body and soul, be able to cross something else off the check list of life, and wow those whose opinion still matters with your grace, verve and aplomb at the next wedding.

It was the stench that made me gag, a stench that you never get used to- a miasma of stagnant sweat, rancid feet, faeces, stale urine, expelled semen and boiled cabbage. And then you’re hit by a tumult of banging, screaming, shouting, and the sight of men engaged in frenetic activity. I felt my head spin and my legs buckle, but with our bottle being calibrated by a whole landing of inmates I couldn’t faint. I braved a glance upwards and saw grinning, brutal faces on the landings above. I pictured Hans Bruegel’s imaginings of Hell in ‘Dante’s Inferno’. I heard air being sucked and then a laconic Jamaican voice saying “Rasclat pussio - dem not last a week boey.” Another inmate started to bray and then pointed at me saying “that one looks like ‘e’s gonna’ faint. ‘E won’t even last a day.” We ran a gauntlet of threats, jeers and questions, and it seemed as if we were being interviewed by the weirdest rag tag selection board as to our suitability for the job. An inmate grabbed hold of his crotch

and licked his lips as Sarah, a recruit from Carshalton passed. Built like a prop forward gone to seed, Sarah looked a little like Waynetta Slob. As pugnacious as she was big she turned round and snarled back at the inmate “just you fucking wait, I’ll fucking have you.” This was perhaps not the best retort, since loaded with ambiguity it brought out a chorus of howls and woof whistles, and a chuckle from the lugubrious Senior Officer escorting us through the wing. However, as we walked away I couldn’t help noticing Sarah become less hunched and the wiggle of her arse became more pronounced. I was paired off with Sarah and told to go onto a particular landing and talk to the officer posted there, so as to ‘get a flavour of the place’. While waiting I felt a prod in my back. I turned and was confronted by a scrawny and twitchy South London geezer. “Awright governor”, he proclaimed. I smiled at him and said “Hi”. He sniffed and wiped his nose on an already crusty cuff, leaving an elastic piece of transparent snot suspended between it and his nostril. “You got any burn”, he asked. “Sorry?” I absent-mindedly replied, mesmerised by the sagging line of mucus which had just snapped and entwined itself around his cuff. “Baccy”, he said, clarifying. “Oh. No. I’m afraid I don’t smoke”, I politely informed him. He looked at Sarah. “You got any burn ma’am?” “Yeah”, she told him. “But why would I wanna’ give you any?” Suddenly the inmate’s rat like face looked down and his face started to twitch. A

voice bellowed from across the landing “Ibbet!” At that he stooped down by my shoes and picked up a butt. He smiled triumphantly exposing a black chasm between stumpy molars, and scuttled off. Officer Evans twenty years into the job confidently strolled over, cleaving gathered groups of inmates in his wake. “I see you’ve met Ibbet. Sucks cock for a pinch of tobacco. Apparently his mouth feels like a woman’s. You two must be the new un’s”, he said whilst unlocking the door and ushering us out of the wing. “If I were you I’d fuck the prison service over and join the Met. I wouldn’t even wish my worst enemy this job.” “Forget about what you’ve heard about the prison service. This is not a place for brutes. Our clients must be treated with respect. You have to be a people’s person to work here”, pontificated the urbane Governor as if our job was to involve nothing more than manning the tills in a supermarket. With these sound bites from the new cuddly prison service ringing in our ears we were told to go home. I’m in a cell and I hear a dull metallic thud-which feels like an explosion in my head. My heart sinks with utter terror. I turn round and see that ‘Ibbet’ is behind me. He smiles his black hole smile and says “for you ‘gov’ I don’t want no burn.” At this I was hurtled to consciousness, drenched with sweat. Though I tried to hold them back, hot scalding tears would not be denied, and streamed down my face as I wondered what hell on Earth I had got myself into. 13

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ncyclopedia of Dating by Charlotte Fereday

“Single girl, looking for fun” There’s a secret code to dating that governs everything from how you describe yourself (never curvy, even if you’ve got an hourglass figure) to the venue you choose and the image you project. These rules lurk beneath the surface of every ‘getting to know you’ conversation, and woe betide you if you’re mixing your messages. For example ‘looking for fun’ means ‘no strings’, and ‘Cuddles on the couch’ means ‘I want to stay at home and watch Big Brother’. And whatever you’re looking for, to play it safe you should choose a mid priced bar or restaurant for a first date and get dressed up, but not too much. You don’t want to scare them. Even if you are only ‘looking for fun’, apparently getting drunk is bad, as is talking about your ex, politics, re-

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ligion, and sex. Which doesn’t leave much to talk about apart from what film you saw recently and if you prefer red or white wine. Whatever else you do or don’t do on a first date under no circumstances should you ever do a ‘Percy’.

awkward start they relaxed and got back into the flirty banter that had brought them to this point. Intrigued by the carrier bag (have you noticed that men rarely carry anything except a newspaper?) Rachael asked “What did you need at Sainsburys?”

Percy wasn’t my date he was Rachael’s. They met online and he seemed funny, flirty and sexy. After a couple of weeks getting to know each other by email they arranged to meet for lunch. (Going back to the secret code, arranging a daytime date says ‘I’m sticking to the three date rule’.)

With a beaming smile and a conspiratorial wink he opened the bag to show her the contents. Rachael was gobsmacked to see a collection of sex toys. Not a pint of milk or a loaf of bread in sight but a bag full of rubber. In daylight, in a restaurant, in Covent Garden.

Rachael arrived early and settled herself at a table in full view of the room to give her more chance of recognising him when he arrived. Which he did, a bit late but well dressed, apart from a badly accessorised Sainsbury’s bag. After the inevitable

It transpired that Percy had not only thought he was on to a sure thing, but that they could skip the first few months (or years) of working out what makes each other tick, and go straight for the battery operated props. To make things worse the

sex toys were un boxed, pre owned, used and very definitely de-flowered. Needless to say, Percy’s toys stayed in the bag, but Rachael was left seriously wondering what she had said to bring on the rubber. Making any kind of assumption about a date can land you in hot water, or at least leave you slightly startled at the abrupt end to an evening you thought had hardly got started. I’ve had two dates so far when my beau for the evening has bailed before the first drink has gone down. Alastair muttered about an ‘early start’ the next day, and Charles offered no excuses, just offered me his hand to shake before striding briskly down the street. I think that they were possibly both shopping for a wife with a very specific product description. Rather like buying a car they knew on sight that I wasn’t ‘the one’ and so left the showroom immediately (insert your own joke about not taking me for a test drive). To my mind a date is a commitment to spend a good three hours finding out if you can imagine being naked in the same room together. Sometimes you can tell instantly that there is no way you want to see that person naked and the best you can hope for is a pleasant evening. But I still think it’s only polite to see the date through. Maybe I’m a little old fashioned. On one such occasion I met Tony. He’d lied about his height and posted a photo that showed him at least 15 years younger and a good deal lighter. I saw him before he saw me and my first instinct was to run. After making tortured small talk about Vodafone over a pint (if you want

to know why Vodafone predictive text is different to Nokia’s drop me a line and I’ll give you his number) I suggested we find some food. At least if you have nothing to say over dinner the silences can be excused as chewing. During dinner Tony regaled me with tales of his parents having met someone who lived in the same village as his sister while on holiday in Germany. I ate, paid half the bill and at ten o’clock said I really should be going. I was so scarred by the experience that I ducked into a local pub for one last drink and got chatting to a guy at the bar. We flirted, we got on, I imagined being naked with him. He was married and nothing happened but it put a smile back on my face. Another friend, Siobhan, ran into difficulties when what she thought he thought, and what he thought she wanted were very different things. Leaving her with the tricky question of if you invite them to your house, how do you get rid of them at the end of the evening? She’d been flirting with a Portuguese mullet haired barman in our local bar for a few weeks and was flattered by the attention (and the free drinks). One night he suggested that he should come round on his next night off and cook an authentic Portuguese meal. He arrived with a rucksack of food to cook up his feast and got to work in the kitchen. In between chopping and stirring they kissed, drank wine and worked up an appetite. So far so good until, just before serving dinner, Paolo pulled from his bag a pair

of slippers, a heart shaped cushion and Winnie the Pooh’s head. Was this the behaviour of a dangerous lunatic, or just a cultural misunderstanding? With hindsight I’d say it was a little bit of both. Paolo wasn’t dangerous but he did have a shaky grip on reality, at least two imaginary fiancées and, allegedly, a dying mother. I’m not sure if Paolo’s assumption that he could move in with his soft toy collection, Percy’s belief that sex toys are acceptable on a first date, or Charles and Alastair’s quick exits are the most inappropriate. If you are ‘looking for fun’ there’s a tricky path to navigate from making contact to meeting. Most of the men who contact me are looking for love. They want a soul mate and are willing to take things slowly to make sure that they meet the one woman in 50 million who is right for them. They also have identical profiles claiming to enjoy art galleries, fine wine, ‘going out and staying in’, and profess to be loyal, kind and genuine. To meet a man who is ‘looking for fun’ it seems you have to go back to the traditional mating routine of picking them up in a bar. Although even then I seem to have a knack for collecting the one’s who want a nice girl they can introduce to their mothers. Maybe I need to reassess my dating etiquette, brush up on my dating code or just go to seedier bars? www.datingencyclopedia.blogspot. com

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xy i s Se Icy

V o d k a by Danny King

Fancy a hot affair....

Vodka is the drink with celebrity stardust. Amy Winehouse and Prince Harry allegedly like to snort it, while Kevin Federline would have it that his kids had to regularly endure a vodka, coke and breast milk cocktail thanks to ex-wife Britney Spears’ penchant for guzzling the Friday night favourite prior to feeding them. There are also plenty of famous faces making money from the hard stuff. Donald Trump has Trump vodka in a Gold bottle (trying to muscle in on our success no doubt). Add to Trumpy the Italian designer Roberto Cavalli (Bobby C to his friends), hip-hop mogul Damon Dash and rapper Jay-Z and it’s clear they’re all trying to get in on the act. Even the dead are after a slice of the pie e.g. (Jimi) Hendrix Electric vodka. Vodka’s seen as sexy, sure, but it’s also cheap and easy to produce. Remember, these men are bean counters first and foremost. If any other tipple afforded an opportunity for greater returns they’d probably be in there. In a few years we could be ordering half a Mandy Shandy (as endorsed by Peter Mandelson) or a bottle of Rose (West) wine. How about Bono’s ready to drink Irish coffee, available at point of sale in all good newsagents? Right now though, it’s vodka that rules the roost. But where did this obsession with vodka all start? It is unwise to be too definitive with regard to the drink’s origins, except to say that more than one country wishes to claim the credit for it. That commercial vodka production first occurred in Russia is not too controversial. Allegedly, a climate which historically rendered the cultivation of grapes (and therefore wide scale wine production) unlikely also favoured spirit strength alcohols to prevent freezing when being stored or transported. The Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and the resulting dispersal of influential pissheads across the globe led to a corresponding spread in the popularity of vodka in the West, and this a popularity not solely dependent on its freezeresistant qualities. Large scale vodka production was established and vodka began its irresistible rise to dominance, 16

initially as a cocktail base, its versatility being a top draw. It is difficult to imagine Lenin approving of today’s massive global vodka industry, however. The internationalisation and commercialisation of vodka has ironically lent the drink a sensual and indulgent quality that belies its minimalist character. That advertisers capitalise on those very roots illustrates the unintended consequences our actions can have and the rippling movements of history. Lenin and Bolshevism are all but gone but vodka’s unrelenting expansion continues unabated. The most popular spirit worldwide, its share of the alcohol market continues to expand year on year. Today, vodka has become more than something to be simply tossed back. It is considered to have pedigree, subtlety and sex appeal (Britney Spears notwithstanding).

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Enter the Dragon All Hail South Wales. Charlie Jones makes the case

© Crown copyright (2009) Visit Wales

Most of the 3 million people living in Wales are located in the south, concentrated around the coastal cities of Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, as well as the famous former mining valleys inland. Even in the current challenging climate there are opportunities sufficient in the region to attract those wishing to relocate, start-up or expand their business activities. What’s more, government incentives abound. Incentives you’ll struggle to find in London and the southeast. In fact, given the current precarious state of affairs, counter-intuitive as it might sound now could be the perfect time to move to South Wales. Rather than attempting to ride out the storm in an expensive region, or risk getting into difficulties because you’ve always naturally equated London with best and feel it would be an admission of failure to quit, try de-centralising your mind-set, and enter the dragon! Be it on the stock market or the poker table the received wisdom is that it’s better to cut your losses than desperately stick to a stinker of a situation. Pride will destroy you. In the last 100 years, the region has welcomed many diverse new groups to settle and be part of its population, and today is no different. South Wales has long suffered from a perception problem. Forget the coal, the dirt and the grime; this is now a cosmopolitan outward looking place that is less about self-deprecation, triumphant failure and currying sympathy than prosperity, quality of life and

increasing international relevance. After the decline of the coal mining industry the valleys became synonymous with economic deprivation. However, a 15 year government regeneration strategy has gone a long way towards delivering its objectives of bringing prosperity and confidence back to the region through the creation of a buzzing economic climate packed with opportunity and an attractive quality of life. The beaches of South Wales are to die for, with much of the coastline a national park, as is much of the stun-

Shirley Bassey – they all seem to represent something peculiarly Welsh that people warm to. I’d like to say Shakin’ Stevens, but actually I know for a fact he isn’t very approachable. I and lots of other kids went to get his autograph after going to one of his concerts for my 8th birthday treat and he told us all to **** off. Sure, there aren’t as many people as in London and the southeast but that’s its beauty. The sense of solidarity is tangible, whereas by definition London is so large that anonymity and isolation is ironically the order of the day. “the culture of work This isn’t to say that South Wales trades on the argument that quality here is strong and of life is everything, or believes that ambitions are high” things shouldn’t be boiled down to ning low mountainous interior. There economics. On the fiscal front the are castles, museums and industrial area makes a particularly compelling parks galore if you like that sort of proposition too. The culture of work thing, as well as a thriving and pashere is strong and ambitions are high. sionate sports and cultural scene. The idea behind the Welsh Assembly More importantly, however there’s Government’s regeneration initiatives a feeling that South Wales is on the is for them to generate wealth and jobs through actively supporting the ambitions of sustainable, high quality enterprises. With government incentives to assist relocation and innovation regardless of the size of your enterprise, excellent transport links to key markets, support from a network of highly business-focused universities, and the there’s a brain drain to South Wales most successful business incubator in Britain (Technium #1) - an environmove again. Money has been poured ment where science and technology into the region in recent years and it businesses can flourish and turn their shows. What’s more this is set to con- potential for high-growth into reality, tinue. Uber-cool new residential and it’s hard to resist what’s being put on commercial brownfield conversions a plate for you. adorn the waterfronts of Swansea And the great thing is it’s not even a and Cardiff Bays as well as inland in bribe to come to a crap place; South the former valley areas like Merthyr Wales rocks! Tydfil and Rhondda (just saying these

“There’s a feeling that South Wales is on the move again” place names is evocative!). Moreover, gaining a foothold in one of these developments costs considerably less than it would in London. It’s true that the people are cosmopolitan, yet they also remain down to Earth and unpretentious. Look at the alumni and you’ll get the picture; Richard Burton, Dylan Thomas, Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Catherine Zeta Jones, Huw Edwards, © Crown copyright (2009) Visit Wales

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From post-coital to post-baby it’s always useful to have a couple of interesting walks up your sleeve and there’s nowhere more interesting to walk than London, writes Joanna Gray There I was gingerly walking, occasionally holding hands, with this ‘friend of a friend’ who had become more of a friend the previous night, when suddenly from behind a gravestone a man performed fellatio on a fellow ambler. Apparently I was supposed to be impressed; this was friend of a friend’s finale to what had been a pretty racy date. The

morning after he always took his conquest for a stretch around the Brompton Cemetery, an area I soon learned is famous for cottagers who prowl around each other like lions. His aim was to encourage a bit of outdoor action himself but to be honest I was then only 21 and still living with my parents in the Cotswolds and it was all a bit much. But since I’ve grown up, I’ve used the venue myself. Eerily romantic, clutches of vivid purple violets grow on vast Victorian tombs that jostle with each other around broad paths and a central colonnaded chapel. A more sophisticated game to play there is celebrity grave spotting where you will find Emmeline Pankhurst amongst the other corpses. For similar post-coital slightly edgy walks try the canal walk from Regents Park to Camden lock, there’s always a hypodermic needle to skip over, or pass through the Blackwall tunnel to the Isle of Dogs. Let’s imagine that the post-coital walk somewhere unusual does the trick and you enter a relationship, you now need a whole other walk to embark upon. Now is the time to head to parks and any will do: Hyde, Battersea, Greenwich, Richmond, Wimbledon Common or Hampstead Heath, say. A gentle saunter through a park with a picnic and some booze really is a good way to spend a Saturday with the person you’ve been seeing for a couple of months. It’s a good way to discover whether the relationship has legs as you’ll come across many happy or not-so-happy families. The sight of grumpy dads or knackered mums pushing expensive pushchairs around will either make you think, this is what I want to do at some point with this person, or will send you straight back to that cemetery with a new model. If you did stay together and you’re now giving most of your money to the mortgage and your children’s savings accounts, the whole walking issue becomes properly dirty, in

the very literal sense. This is when you have no option but to buy the walking boots and drag the family every other weekend, ‘for a good blow’. When they’re really tiny, pop the baby in a papoose or when they are old enough to walk / dawdle for about an hour on their own, you and your mate can discover some genuinely lovely areas of London. Why on earth would you otherwise find yourself in Sydenham, if not to enjoy a good, woodland walk to Dulwich village? Or how about birdwatching in Barnes, with the Wetlands Centre nearby? A walk in surrounding parkland always provides unusual avian activity. If the family have caught the walking bug teenagers will need a little extra push to get them out of bed, and promises of gallows, prostitutes and ghosts might do the trick. There are numerous themed walks, crime and punishment, (Southwark and Blackfriars), the sex industry, (Soho and Shepherd’s Market Mayfair) and haunted London (the City) to investigate. So there you are, the key to successful relationships through walking, and if you find that you and your booted partner suddenly have nothing to say to one another, either divorce or join the Ramblers Association. Contact Details See www.london-footprints.co.uk for detailed directions for London walks

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O L D i s G O L D by Catherine Norton “I’d like an article about ageing” he says. “Ageing!” thinks I, “You’d better find someone with some experience of it then”. I’m only 36, what do I know? And then I remembered when I got my first “you’re so old” comment from a 17 year old - I was about 24… It was about the same time that I first got a CV from someone born in 1980…when I distinctly remember I was already sufficiently self-determining to boycott the brownies! And they want a job! And now they’re arriving from the ankle-biters of the 90s…

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And so the evidence mounts up. The yoof TV presenters that distracted me from essays now endorse anti-ageing products (although Davina was also in a zombie movie, at least she’s eclectic). The nosey nurse at the ladyparts clinic (which you have to visit more often as odds are you’ve started getting dodgy results) lays into me for being a geriatric. GERIATRIC! Apparently that’s a medical term, reproductively speaking, for women over 35. Whatever. On the tube after a glitzy magazine party the other half spotted an action film poster of Robert de Niro (65) and Al Pacino (68). He liked that men 20 years older than him (he’s much better qualified to write this than me…) are still doing heroic stuff. Searching for my own role models (Driving Miss Daisy does not, repeat does not count) I was heartened to find that Sigourney Weaver is pushing 60 and was optimistic

enough in a recent interview to suggest that “as baby boomers age, the whole world is shifting and growing old with grace”. Quick, someone should tell Ronnie Wood! She was in PR mode sure, but it’s true that being 35 today is far from what it was in my mum’s day. I’m thus inspired to think through some upsides to geriatric status.

“The nosey nurse at the ladyparts clinic lays into me for being a geriatric.”

It’s always the first step in the programme, realising you have a problem. So, first upside - as soon as you twig that you’re not immortal, decisions that seemed scary get a whole lot easier. You don’t want to promote me? OK, I’ll do my own thing. What’s the worst that could happen? And after 15 years of work, the portfolio and the “contacts” file are bulging. Hence invites to glitzy parties – if I went to those in my 20s it was part of the Faustian work pact; now it’s an invite for me, not for Company X, ‘Admit 6’. By now you’ve tried most of what’s going and, knowing yourself better, you don’t fall prey to the white-out, the humongous hangover or the crap sex – or less often anyway. It should be easy to say “left a bit” or “no, the other one” at any age but it sure isn’t at 20.

Thinking positively keeps you looking young. This 'fresh stud' is actually 89 years old.

Whereas this 'old hag' is not even thirty yet

At 35 your earnings are probably higher than at 25, and even if you were a six-figure banker and now you aren’t, after a decade of experimentation and reckless consumerism (’investment purchases’) the basics tend to be covered. If you’re not more or less sorted for a place to live, a decent LBD, a TV and an assorted pile of flattering denim then I’ll eat my misguided beret. And that frees up what cash you have for other things, right? Be honest, would you want to do it all again? Knowing then what you know now is not, remember, a viable option. I’m less angsty by a long chalk than I was ten years ago and I find in my 30s that the finer things in life become – well, just the things in life, because it’s all mighty fine. 23

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Female Fiction By Rebbecca Ray

Jim came to his own front door and knocked on it like a stranger. He stood beneath the automatic wash of the security lamp, no laptop bag on his shoulder, no keys in his hand and no car in the driveway behind him. Regardless of these differences, the door looked just the same. To its right, at shoulder height, their oval brass plaque was still engraved 72. He was cold. Seeing the line of light changing at the edges of the doorframe as his wife made her way down the corridor, the word disorientated occurred and recurred, but it was not the right word. They’d bought the plaque at the Ortons garden centre, he remembered queuing with it under his arm. The door opened with its precise sounds, latch and Yale. She recognised him instantly but whatever it was about him, which wasn’t disorientation, took an instant longer for her to see – a flutter somewhere behind her evening face – a stutter. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘what’s wrong?’ And though he knew with adequate clarity the course of events, he found himself unable to articulate them, not with the speed, the correct order necessary to stunt the progression of that fluttering into a look of full24

blown fear. She repeated the question but perhaps there was no comprehensive answer, he could relay the facts but they would not explain this situation – of her husband standing separate before his own doorstep with cold and shaking purple hands. The leaves had risen toward his windscreen in an updraft from the dark. Into the path of the BMW, this he remembered. Revolving in the headlamps, broad hand-shaped leaves that were what – sycamore – unfurling. ‘I love you,’ he told her, when they were only halfway down the corridor. The carpet was cream. She returned the words willingly. The shadows gifted it varying colours though, blues and browns, which revealed themselves as he passed them. She kept her hand in the crook of his arm. The television in the living room was on standby. He watched its red light remain unchanging as he sat where she placed him, in the deep firm hold of the couch. She talked about making him tea with anxiety as the television’s low frequency standby played under the silence of the room. He had been in third, going uphill. ‘I had a collision,’ he said. ‘Oh no. Jimmy, are you hurt? Are you ok? What happened, tell me.’ She took his hand and seemed briefly to examine it, causing him to follow her

gaze over the slim veins and tendons that constituted it. ‘The car is dead,’ he told her. In the soft familiarity of their living room, he raised his eyes and saw her face: her pretty aging eyes and clean hair, her halfworn shade of lipstick. ‘What did you hit?’ she asked him, as if the car mattered nothing. ‘I don’t know,’ he responded slowly. ‘A tree? I lost control.’ On the arm of the sofa next to him the television’s remote control lay. A brushed chrome finish with a very few multifunctional buttons, arranged ergonomically and aesthetically, in crescent shape. Beyond her right shoulder he noticed the sound system, also on standby of course. And the warmth of the house, circulating at perfect regulatory pace, filling each of the radiators, here and in every room upstairs. ‘Where’s the car Jimmy, did you leave it? Did you call anyone?’ ‘No I should call.’ ‘Where did it happen. I’ll call.’ ‘After the garage, on the backroad.’ ‘Ok, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea ok?’ She began to rise and he moved his fingers around her wrist to prevent her, whereupon she sat again, only looked at him, waiting for his words. But he couldn’t take her back to that moment with him, to feel the airbag engulfing them together, to experience the world rolling around the BMW as the car had given its life for his. ‘Tell me,’ she encouraged him.

But despite their eight years of marriage, and many shared silences, nothing could now be communicated to her, nothing of what he felt. The car had not burnt. Without an explosion, the night had descended to lie thickly in its folds of metal and its broken glass. As he had opened its unsound door and relieved himself of its embrace, tiny fragments of its windows had fallen with the ticking sounds of sleet. And he had stood alive in the wet leaves, not in darkness, because its headlamps had persisted, shining on. The tea cooled in its cup and he drank little. She led him upstairs for a bath. As she ran it, at its thermostatically determined temperature, she made the call in the study next door, on occasion peering around the wall to check facts with him or perhaps just to check on him in a general way. Bubbles rose in the water, real bubbles. He failed to undress. He went to stand next to her. On their Dell PC screensaver, digital bubbles slipped across the monitor and rebounded from its borders, which they must have sensed and recognised. She saw him watching them without expression and as she talked, placed one hand against his face. He remembered the rising leaves, their colours in the headlamps, fragile things that could not cause damage. It had been his speed, his ease and complacency. It had been his fault. After a short time the conversation

ended with the person on the other end of the line. ‘You’re not hurt,’ she prompted him, ‘and you didn’t hit anyone, it’s ok.’ Behind her back, the high resolution bubbles went on and on. She left him and turned the bath tap off. ‘Thank God it’s ok,’ she said. Yes, the radio had been on. It had been his ease and his complacency, singing, the radio had played. And leaves had risen in the updraft, rhythmical, in the soft and menacing organ tones of Marvin Gaye’s Heard It Through The Grapevine. The BMW’s noise reduction had blocked out the reality of the night. ‘Come on Jimmy, come on and get in.’ Currently the PC was not online – though the broadband sat primed, awaiting. There were such things, Jim thought suddenly, as emotional hyperlinks. Like the other evening when they’d been watching TV, some makeover programme that she enjoyed. And the stylist had talked about how important it was to change your hair parting on a regular basis. He hadn’t changed his parting for years – perhaps never – and all at once he’d been worried about baldness. Insecure and prematurely old. Like the web, but inside you, there were such things as emotional hyperlinks. Cath came to stand behind him in the darkened study again, where only the screensaver’s bubbles cast

a shifting spectrum of light over his face and his hands. Seeing him unmoving, she busily began to shut the computer down. Look, he wanted to say. Look at how the mouse fits to your hand. But instead he told her, ‘The car is dead.’ And she did attempt to reassure him, pointing out that the BMW was not a human being – that the events of the last two hours could have been much worse. But watching Windows shutting down, saving his settings, he was suddenly aware of a rush of love for the system, cradling his word docs and his jpegs and enabling him. In its final moments, he thought, the car had activated its ABS. He was conscious of the radio’s electrohum as she led him past it into the light, though it was off, he checked to make sure. But it seemed to give voice to the air with its unchanging digital sleepsong, denoting information highways that remained unseen. It was so effortless a thing, he thought, to live without recognition of them, but currents were everywhere these days.

Rebbecca Ray has published two novels, ‘A Certain Age’ and ‘Newfoundland’, both available from Penguin. Throughout her writing career she has continued to pursue a keen interest in waitressing and hopes to progress to silver service in the future. 25

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Male Fiction

by Jamie Dwelly The nightclub hadn’t been too crowded. It was a Tuesday after all. He’s gone there after deliberately losing a couple of his work colleagues in a bar near Liverpool Street, and not wishing to call it a day yet had slipped downstairs to a venue off Old Street whilst sort of intending to head home. Feeling a little over dressed in his Gieves and Hawkes suit he’d chosen a quiet corner by the bar and ordered his bourbon and ginger from a pretty brunette waitress in a white cocktail dress who’d immediately noticed him when he entered. He switched off his phone and sipped his drink watching punters mingle by the bar and make salutary gestures on the dance floor to some form of jazzed-up Samba, a couple to his left were engaged in some maudlin mating ritual, and aside from being thoroughly irritated by the music he felt utterly isolated from his surroundings. Despite himself he ordered another drink. He’d had a few, but not enough. The same waitress slipped over and smiled at him. He looked at her again. She really was very pretty, and the way she was smiling…something? No. It was probably just the 28

drink projecting opportunity. He ordered the same again, and as she left she said something to him he didn’t quite catch. When she came back with his drink he asked her what she’d said. It still wasn’t clear, but it seemed as if she was asking him outside for a cigarette. Or perhaps she wanted a cigarette? He nodded ambiguously, and she held up her hand. “Five minutes”, she mouthed. It was only then he remembered he’d quit last summer. Ten minutes later she appeared unseen from behind the bar, tapped him on the shoulder, and gesticulated to a door he’d not noticed by a vacant DJ booth. He followed her outside and she instantly lit a cigarette the second the door closed behind them. Feeling a bit ridiculous he patted himself down as if searching for his smokes. She watched him with mild amusement before offering him one from her pack. Without hesitation he took one and allowed her to light it from a small bronze Zippo that she shut with a ringing click. He took a puff and grinned at her, but as she smiled back his head swam with the

sudden explosion of carbon monoxide which also reminded him he was by no means sober. He felt the colour drain from his cheeks. This wasn’t going well. She asked him if he was alright. Of course he was. He was just fine. They chatted briefly. She was Claire, 27, studying architecture at UCL, and working as a waitress to help pay the rent. He let her talk, monitoring her body language with a sort of detached amusement. He wasn’t quite sure if she was flirting with him or not, but being flush with boozy confidence he heard himself asking her what time she clocked off. “In an hour”, came the reply without hesitation. He said he’d wait. If that was okay of course. It had been a good long while since he’d spent time with a woman, and he was keen not to get too over excited at the thought of what might happen. He was 29, of medium build, easy on the eye he supposed, but far from Hollywood leading-man material. ‘Quirky’ probably did him justice. He had almost nodded off when suddenly she was standing in front of him wearing her coat and a little make-up. She smelt great.

They walked across the street to an all night café. There were a couple of cab drivers eating steak and kidney pie, and a drunken man pushing a long baguette into his cavernous gob. They ordered coffee and sat down by the window. It must have been his expression because suddenly Claire felt the need to explain that she didn’t make a habit of picking up punters from the club. Indeed, it was something she’d never done in the five months she’d worked there, but apparently he seemed, well... she cut off. He made the decision there and then to ask her back to his flat. She put down her coffee and looked into it for a moment. “Ok”, she said without looking up. He lived just around the corner in Shoreditch. “A ten minute walk at most”, he told her, not quite believing he wasn’t the dumb recipient of some sort of set-up. They arrived, and before he’d a chance to offer her a drink she was kissing him in the hallway. He led her to his room, and they undressed together in silence, sliding fingers through layers of clothing, mouths

locked in embrace before first making love on the floor, and then fervently on the bed.

knew nothing of her real parents, apart from the fact they may have been quite well off.

After the passion had subsided he charged two glasses, and they began to talk. She reiterated that she wasn’t in the habit of meeting strangers in bars and returning to their homes, and blushed slightly in retrospect. Claire tried to explain that there was something about him, in addition to her instant attraction at his way of being, that was ‘familiar’. He looked at her, and was compelled to agree. He realised how unusually comfortable he felt with a person he’d literally just met.

He took a sip of water and asked how she might have supposed such a thing. Claire continued. When she was 22 she had received £75,000 from a trust fund she had had no prior knowledge of. Her parents had discreetly told her it was from a relative, though she had always suspected it might have been from her natural parents, since her siblings had received nothing.

He regaled her with his Surrey roots. He had no siblings, his father lived in Australia, and his mother had taken her own life a few years ago. She stroked his arm and he felt as if he might cry.

In the same year he’d received a cheque for the same amount, but that wasn’t all.

She spoke of her family. She had been brought up in Scarborough with two much older sisters. Her father was a retired civil engineer, and her mother a housewife. She paused. They weren’t her natural parents. She’d been adopted as a baby. She looked up at him and told him she

His stomach rolled over. Something was very wrong.

Before his father emigrated to Australia he’d dropped the bombshell that he and his mother had sired another child two years after he was born. His mother had been unable to cope with another baby, and for her sake his father had agreed they would give her up. She had been adopted by a family in Yorkshire. Her name was Claire.

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Schnickens lyrics after 5 lagers with your financial adviser hype man buffooning around like Martin Clunes does not a fine figure cut – definitely more Ricky Gervais than Just Blaze. It’s really a terribly tawdry business. I’ve been there believe me, rocking up at gigs where half the kids in the queue are like 17 and you feel like a Dad at a school disco. Annoyingly they all know the lyrics to Schoolly D tracks made in the 1980s but they laugh if you ask them what that unsigned freestyle off that Green Lantern mix tape is!

A Tribe Called “I Need a Rest” Chris Arning Hip-hop grew up in 1970s New York as part musical experimentation, part cultural movement. It’s always been viewed by the establishment as the epitome of alienated youth in a consumer culture hungry for style and sass. Its abiding images are the surly stare, splayed fingers flailed into the camera, and pursed lips spitting profanity. “Young Jeezy”, “Lil Wayne”; artist monikers emphasise youthfulness, with only Dirty Old Bastard bucking this trend. Up until this decade hip-hop has been the preserve of young people, seen as a sort of rite of passage: troubled adolescents fretting off energy till they settle down. No country for old men. That’s what conventional wisdom has held. But conventional wisdom has got the world into much trouble of late and I’d like to challenge this view. 30

As the generation that grew up on fat breaks, dope beats and sick rhymes creaks into middle age, beer bellies bulge against Ecko belts and Phat Farm hockey shirts drape uneasily over man tits. Rappers nineties hip-hop fans once admired are looking haggard, having knee replacement surgery and doing greatest hits albums. The ageing B-Boy is a sadly increasing phenomenon – like the laid off hedge fund manager or de-mobbed squaddie they can be found wandering around befuddled after their tour of duty has finished still flush with misplaced adrenalin but unwilling to leave the field of combat. It’s tough getting cantankerous and grumpy. There’s that window

of debonair charm in late 20s when you’ve got it all worked out, then comes sex crime 29, next dirty 30 and before you know it you’re barely staying alive at 35– see what I did there??? Of course magazines such as Fat Lace and Spine have always acknowledged hypocrisy and hubris in hip-hop but this bulging demographic and their folly will need to be tackled head on. This can manifest itself tragically, like watching a veteran footballer make an ill-advised come back and struggle. There’s nothing more undignified than seeing a graying and paunched 35 year old with mutton chop whiskers doing the ‘caterpillar’ across the carpet. And if you must go to hip-hop karaoke, prancing around on stage stumbling over Fu

There’s a certain swagger that you see with the young bucks at a hiphop jam - it ‘s somewhere between a pimp roll and a jailhouse limp. True hip-hop heads ooze feline spring and sinuousness with every step, padding about with sneaker stealth, as once the Blastmaster KRS quoth: “real bad boys move in silence”. So you can’t help feeling like a fraud if you’re gingerly picking your way through the dance floor constantly calibrating your gait to avoid tweaking your right knee or straining your sore left hip. Worrying about your pension provision or whether you’ve enough life insurance covering whilst intoning slick ebonics such as ‘it’s all gravy mate’ also pricks the conscience somewhat.

So, looking to my erstwhile heroes, how are they bearing up as they pass into dotage? KRS-One raps in Over 40: “For all my people that’s over 40 now – classic that’s what they call us now” – don’t delude yourself Chris: ‘pensioner’, ‘granddad’, ‘old timer’ that’s what you call you mate, if you’re lucky. From Old School to Old Fool it would seem… ‘Every year I get newer, I’m the dust on the moon, I’m the trash in the sewer’. Trash? Dunno about that mate but the album was rubbish! Me thinks he doth protest too much… Public Enemy performed recently at the Brixton Academy and Flavor Flav looks like a wizened rice farmer who needs an armchair, a cup of Horlicks and a stern word in his ear. Method Man and Redman have remained juvenile knaves

those less fortunate than you. With age comes a certain amount of experience: so disses include, “I’ve got my own parking bay, I’ve written a will in my name certified by a notary” and other such painful barbs. As Jay-Z has got older, he has cultivated an international sophisticate’s image. For the Jigga man ‘the maturation of Jay’s easy’. His 2007 album Kingdom Come hears him claiming on “30 Something” that “30’s the new 20” – adopting a supercilious posture he list his achievements like bullet points, scoffing at the callowness, empty boasts and crassness of his juniors: “I’m still here, I’m still here, like Mike (Jacko) I gotta stop playing with these childrens...” So that’s one gambit then - patronise the young by suggesting you’re a pederast, hmm… Basically, hip-hop is a microcosm of social Darwinism: only the strong survive, so the youth use their freshness and novelty as a weapon and the older use their experience and wisdom.

“I’m convinced there’s a place for the gentleman rapper: a suave lounge lizard quoting P.G. Wodehouse and rhyming ‘riffing’ with ‘spiffing”

So when I find myself on stage at hip-hop karaoke hunkered over a phalanx of 17 year girls waving their arms in stupefied (by the booze, not by the fact that I’m trying it!) revelry I feel like Charles Bukowski unleashed at primary school – both perturbed and titillated. Somehow the experience is life affirming, it’s like being a kid again – like Eminem said he’s not ‘grown up’ but ‘grown down’ - indulging in meaningless word play. But whilst drinking at this fountain of youth I’m cursing my sore rotator cuff and hoping no-one will shout out: “look, he he’s wearing an M&S shirt, I can see the tag from here!” Haters. It’s tough when your self-image veers between a Gil Scott Heron / Chuck D sage and a slightly more sprightly Jimmy Saville. Now then, now then. Let’s see if Jim kicks it!?

and channelled their bonhomie into showbusiness, Russell Simmons does yoga and has become a vegan activist, Wu-Tang’s GZA has morphed into a chess playing film scoring svengali. But whilst some like LL Cool J have retained bouncing boyish charms, Vanilla Ice is obnoxious and desperate for cash and others have succumbed to sad senescence. Marley Marl and Primo are jowled old coots with Sartre rheumy eyes and bad skin and don’t even mention that Craig Mack! Tim Westwood still promotes parties for 13 year olds and drives round in an A-Team van with a huge picture of his scowling mug on the side. But at least this parson’s son does keep up with the argot. “Holler at my butler…” There are certain advantages to being a 30 something B boy. After all, hip-hop is partly about scoffing at

As a creaking 35 year old hip-hop aficionado I’m still alive and kicking and can get on the good foot even if the foot in question is stress fractured and gout ridden. But I dread and relish becoming that posh bloke in the Pimms commercial. I imagine hijacking the DJ booth, taking the needle off the record and grabbing the mic: “Awfully sorry everyone, I’d love to feel the beat build, rip another 16 bars, and bless you with more conscious lyrics straight off the dome piece but I’ve got to go home, call mum, feed the cat, renew my Barnardos direct debit and watch Andrew Marr on Sky + (incidentally, I particularly like the credits at the start when he’s all nattily dressed and riding around Whitehall in that spiffy Bugatti)”. This is the curse of the middle aged bourgeois hip hopper. It’s like champagne socialism without the agenda. But I’m convinced that there’s a place for the gentleman rapper: a suave lounge lizard quoting P.G. Wodehouse and rhyming ‘riffing’ with ‘spiffing’. It might not be me but I reckon grizzled old timers with the pluck to break the puerile tyranny of the genre will be the quantum leap that will save hip-hop. Word.

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Discover the ease of doing business in Nevis QUALITY

|

EFFICIENCY

| INNOVATION

|

INTEGRITY

Corporate Services include: • International Business Companies • Limited Liability Companies • International Exempt Trusts • International Insurance ......There's still lots of treasure in the Caribbean Once only available to a wealthy elite, assuming you can meet the criteria, forming an offshore company or IBC (International Business Company) potentially affords you a greater degree of anonymity, control, flexibility, protection and simplicity than you could hope to get in the UK. It presents opportunities to limit your UK tax liabilities and therefore grow your investments at a higher rate. On a philosophical level it will appeal to the free spirit in you that resents over-zealous governmental interference. An offshore investment is one which is held, literally, offshore, i.e. not under United Kingdom jurisdiction. As to what makes a country an offshore financial jurisdiction, characteristics include those that have a number of financial businesses that predominantly engage with non-residents, businesses whose activities will be out of proportion with the domestic economy,

There are many supporters of offshore who couldn’t be further removed from the shady types traditionally synonymous with this approach. Their argument is that reputable offshore financial centres play not only an acceptable, but an essential role in international finance and trade, offering fantastic opportunities in certain situations for both corporations and individuals, and allowing for legitimate risk management and financial planning.

• Offshore Banking

In Nevis, you can take comfort in knowing that your business will be conducted with the highest degree of efficacy. There are over 60 qualified Registered Agents with expertise in law, banking, finance, tax planning and asset management. To complement this sophisticated professional infrastructure, we are committed to providing a strong regulatory framework, 24-hour incorporations, innovative laws and competitive fees.

Think Business...Choose Nevis!

auterucci.com.ar www.c

“Terrorist financing’s a no-no, should you feel the urge.”

countries marked by having significantly lower corporation tax rates, as well as those with a much more lenient financial regulatory framework than back home. Just because you live in the UK it doesn’t mean all your finances have to be based here too. So, how about it? The world’s principal offshore financial hubs couldn’t be further removed from the grey mercantile cliché that is the City of London – they are to be found in the Caribbean, and a large proportion of them are current or former British Overeas Territories. The UK actively promotes offshore 32

finance in these jurisdictions, in part to help these small islands diversify their economies. Think Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Turks and Caicos Islands The essence of most offshore financial centres is the formation of offshore structures. These characteristically involve the formation of an offshore company, partnership, trust or private

• Multiform Foundations • Mutual Funds

foundation. You choose in which jurisdiction and through which professional service provider to proceed, and once established – companies can be incorporated on the same day – you can undertake all activities without ever needing to actually go to the jurisdiction in question. Your IBC for example can from the date of its incorporation engage in virtually any business you direct. Everything comes with an easy exit strategy too. Though lightly regulated by definition, it’s important to remember that one cannot ‘go offshore’ for illegitimate reasons. Doing it to avoid creditors is out, as is doing it for money laundering or tax evasion purposes. Oh yes, and terrorist financing’s a no-no, should you feel the urge.

Remember HM Revenue and Customs aren’t ignorant of offshore strategies, but so long as you remember to employ the advice of professional legal and tax advisers, and you’re merely taking advantage of advantageous legitimate financial opportunities, you’re doing nothing untoward, so fear not. More than half of the world’s assets and investments are held in offshore jurisdictions, and while offshore isn’t for everyone, with minimum investment thresholds being beyond the reach of some investors, if you are the adventurous type, and prepared to risk against the potential of substantial returns, offshore could be the way forward.

Nevis Financial Services Development & Marketing Department P.O. Box 882, Rams Complex Stoney Grove, Nevis. Phone: (869) 469-0038 Fax: (869) 469-0039 Email: info@nevisfinance.com

www.nevisfinance.com

British Virgin Islands – non-virgins welcome

b The o aths

orda gin G

n Vir

sailing capital of the Western World. Meanwhile, incredible reefs and designated marine parks, particularly off the island of Anegada make for spellbinding diving and snorkelling. Also worth mentioning is the wreck of the RMS Rhone off the principal island Tortola, rightfully considered one of the world’s finest. Not only do the islands represent a tropical paradise for a luxury holiday, though – Branson’s Necker Island is here – but in recent years they have also prospered through exploiting their stable political climate to become one of the world’s leading offshore financial centres. The islands boast one of the highest incomes per capita in the Caribbean and the status as the world’s biggest incorporator of offshore companies called IBC’s (International Business Companies). In fact, for those looking for an attractive offshore destination as part of their managed wealth portfolio, it has a lot going for it. The massive volume of offshore companies, trusts, insurers and mutual funds on the islands are testament to this. It’s not hard to see why BVI IBC’s are so popular. They have widespread application, while incorporation and running costs are low. Not only this, but it is very difficult to establish the identity of the real owner, since there is no requirement to file any information with the authorities. More to the point IBC companies do not pay any Corporation, capital gains, or inheritance taxes. Of course the Caribbean is always going to be an alluring prospect, and there are many island states vying for your attentions. Of these, however it is the British Virgin Islands that have mastered the realities of our age. They offer a two-pronged prospect - sensual indulgence with the realisation that whether rightly or wrongly it remains money that makes the world go round.

by Estelle Fargo

The British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean were discovered in 1493 by Christopher Columbus. He was so taken by their raw beauty he named the area after Saint Ursula and her 11,000 martyred virgins. One of them must have been a bit porky - the third largest of the islands, ‘Virgin Gorda’, means ‘Fat Virgin’. In the early years of British overlordship, begun in 1672, the islands were largely uninhabited and noteworthy only in being popular with pirates and those on the run. In fact historical references comment on the lawlessness and godlessness of the inhabitants. One George Suckling noted in 1778 that the islands were “miserable indeed, and disgraceful to government, not to be

equalled in any other of His Majesty’s dominions, or perhaps in any civilized country in the world.”

“whether rightly or wrongly it remains money that makes the world go round.” Fortunately, things have improved since then, though the islands remain one of the last vestiges of what was once the British Empire. These days they are classified as an ‘overseas territory’, though in practice they now decide much of what they do for themselves. Unique wind conditions and protected anchorages make the ‘BVI’ the

1 TERRITORY

3 LETTERS

30 ISLANDS 1,000,000 BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES The real beauty of the British Virgin Islands is its proven leadership in meeting the needs of international business. A strong partnership between the public and private sectors has been a core factor in the sustained growth of its trusts and wealth management business. The Jurisdiction offers: - Innovation and well respected legislation such as the VISTA Act 2003 and the BVI’s Trustee Act 2003 - New regulations making the BVI a highly attractive jurisdiction in which to establish private trust companies - A wealth of quality and experienced trusts, corporate and personal wealth management professionals - A sound business operating infrastructure - Enduring political and economic stability

For more information, contact: Sherri Ortiz, Chief Operations Officer

BVI International Finance Centre, Road Town,Tortola, British Virgin Islands. Telephone: (+1-284) 494-1509 Facsimile: (+1-284) 494-1260 E-mail: [email protected] www.bviifc.vg

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The marina at Soper’s Hole on Tortola

The National Dish: Grilled Alien

T h e

Bored of breastfeeding? Sick of nappies? Why not play poker instead? Joanna Gray meets the poker mums of West London As if young mothers don’t have it hard enough as it is, just getting showered and things, some are now expected to gamble £50 a week in a wave of poker mums circles that are starting in West London. Meet Emma, Nicole, Beatrice and Heini, four mothers with six children between them who regularly meet up for daytime poker sessions. This being West London, the babies stay at home with ‘the help’ so the women can have a proper session together. ‘My husband loves it,’ says Nicole, ‘he’s an accountant so after a dreary old day in the office, he can’t wait to get home to hear about Emma folding first.’ ‘Yes,’ agrees Emma, ‘My husband once took a sickie when it was my turn to host, he thought we finished playing and then all had sex together.’ But never mind the husbands, the women adore it. ‘I imagine we’re like those gloriously elegant women in 1940s China playing Mahjong,’ says Heini elusively. ‘We have quite a routine,’ elaborates Emma. ‘The host prepares lunch, we eat briskly and then set to immediately and generally play for a solid three hours and all return home in time to feed our children supper.’ None of the women, who range in age from 24 (second wife) to 39, admit to being competitive but clearly they are. Emma is famously hopeless but carries this off to her advantage by often winning the showdown at the end of a very vicious game. Beatrice is the talker and able to chat through her bluffing, Nicole is very good and tries not to be sidetracked by 36

the gossip whilst Heini is Finnish so noone has any idea what her game is. Watching them play Texas Hold’Em, one afternoon it’s clear that girl-on-girl poker is a completely different game to the male only variety. If they didn’t play for so long you could almost be forgiven for thinking that they’re just doing it for

laughs but really, they’re as serious as the next man - just able to combine it with laughter, gossip and breast-feeding. Emma and Nicole both have tiny babies who can’t be off-loaded to nannies so the little mites perch in bumbos on the table and watch their mothers gamble away their inheritance. ‘Nicole’s expecting another baby so she won’t be around for a few months before and after childbirth which will be annoying but better for our wallets as she so often wins,’ laments Emma. They’ve been playing together for three years but Nicole is the only one to take the game to the next level. ‘We’d only been playing for a couple of weeks when a friend, who arranges big poker tournaments, asked if I would enter,’ she explains as she shifts uncomfortably under her eight month bulge. ‘I was still a bit hazy about the rules so I took a copy with me and read them on my lap whilst playing. Everyone thought I was a complete idiot and I found myself in the final, came second and walked home with £2,000. It was the most exhilarating thing I’ve done since writing my Shakespeare paper at Oxford.’ Five poker tips from the Poker Mums

mothers with monkeys for babies are not welcome

1. You don’t always need the best hand to win the pot. A bluff at the right time can take the pot. 2. Vary the way you play, keep your opponents guessing what you have. 3. You don’t have to play every hand. A 7-2 offsuit is not a good starting hand. 4. Watch your opponent. Some people will give you a ‘tell’ if they are bluffing or if they have the ‘nuts’. 5. Accept that it is also a game of luck. The best you can do is to get your money in on the best hand; what follows after that is up to the poker gods!

C h u r c h

o f

by Dave Ford Peter Eastgate is a 22 year old college dropout from Odense in Denmark. He looks like Richie Cunningham and dresses like a Danish version of 50 Cent - sans the bling. Half a kroner I guess. Oh wait, I just looked it up - 50 cents at today’s rates is 2.90 kroner. Which is a pretty crap moniker. He talks with the fluency of a rabbit caught in the headlights and in a monotone that would make a student radio DJ proud. As Simon Cowell would undoubtly say “he has the personality of a handle.” However, he’s very good at poker. Excellent in fact. Recently he left Las Vegas with 10 million dollars and the 2008 World Series of Poker bracelet. I suppose that makes him 58 Million Kroner. One of 58 Million Kroner’s opponents on the final table was a chap by the name of Ylon Schwartz, a street-wise 38 year old. I love Ylon. He’s done everything. Literally. His CV comes in two leatherbound volumes with a prologue and table of contents. He’s been, in addition to a highly successful poker player, a professional chess player (for 12 years!), a child actor, an assistant teacher, a drummer, a theatre ticket broker and even a dancer.

Ylon finished 4th and picked up just under 4 million dollars for his efforts. Ylon and Peter could not be more different….well…I guess they could, but only if one had wings, a trunk and 17 eyes, oh and didn’t play poker. The point is that poker is a great melting pot. I’m always fascinated at how it attracts people

“It’s hard to think of any activity as genuinely all-encompassing, at least one that’s performed while clothed.” from all walks of life. I know players who are housewives, fish-mongers, policemen, drug dealers, scientists, strippers and students. It’s hard to think of any activity as genuinely all-encompassing, at least one that’s performed while clothed. I was playing a hold’em tournament recently and sitting to my right was a studious-looking chap who was leafing through a rather large textbook whilst playing. After chatting for a bit it turned

P o k e r

out he was revising for his medical exams. He was studying to become a thoracic surgeon. To his right was a famous jockey, and over the table was a council worker – still in uniform. Mind-boggling. Undoubtedly part of the mass-appeal is accessibility. It doesn’t take years of study, a huge bankroll, freakish athletic ability or a lifetime of devotion. If you’re playing online it doesn’t even require leaving the house. It is online that you experience the zero-to-hero thrill of poker in its purest form; where you’ll find Jill McMullins locking horns with the Devil Fish in-between taking trays of muffins out of the oven for the village fete. A while ago I played Ylon in a heads up game online – that’s where it’s one-onone, just two people at the table, winner takes all. Ylon won. Mercilessly. But I love the fact that little old me was playing against someone with nearly $8 million dollars in career earnings. It was my very own FA cup; Havant & Waterlooville versus Manchester United at the Theatre of Dreams. When you have the opportunity to knock over the best, most highly paid players in the world then who ultimately lifts the trophy at Wembley is almost secondary. Almost. 37

Know your limits

There's nothing so great about standing out. Revel in anonymity!

by Will Scott On September 19, 1970, the sleepy Somerset town of Glastonbury welcomed the first happening of the festival that has made its name around the world. History doesn't record much of what the hippies got up to that weekend, but in most descriptions of the event, what happened the day before always crops up – September 18 1970 was the day Jimi Hendrix died. That Hendrix never played Glastonbury seems particularly unjust – the iconic British festival, and the universal rock n' roll hero, forever denied each other's company, because he only went and died far too young, didn't he. A tragedy. The pain of his unexpected death was quickly swamped by the trade that was busy constructing itself around rock excess. Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Jones – all notches on Myth's bedpost, and cash cows for the music industry, eager to capitalise on their misfortune. So it is that starry-eyed, gutter-minded egotists the world over now bid to repeat the story, revelling in the death-baiting indulgence of a young adulthood – literally – wasted. It's a peculiar parade to watch, and it's not just music that's involved – this mania, 40

albeit given slightly different emphasis, is rife in every catalogued corner of life, as the unblessed feast on the youthful exertions of the blessed. Every pretentious hipster's favourite East European, Milan Kundera, said it best: “You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you

“which would you prefer being - an award-winning maths whizz at the age of 20, who then fizzles out into confused obscurity, or a genial old dude who expounds upon the meaning of life over coffees in his retirement villa by the sea?” glimpse a future where the beloved is no more...” We're afflicted with an unconscionable urge to idolise those who succeed unbelievably young. Their brief years in the spotlight form within the rest of us this real-time nostalgia - a peculiar concoction of envy, sadness and admiration for those young sparks who, you know, are too busy living in the moment to realise that their defining moment has already arrived. We get to watch them reach their apotheosis while

we're still struggling to differentiate twixt pelvic bone and humerus – they're pulled out of society's whirlpool, adult versions of those 12-year-old Oxford undergraduates who crop up now and again on slow September news days. We love the schadenfreude delivered as we watch the rewards of youth, and their sad demise, play out across the overexposed features of the sporting, musical or celebrity plat du jour. Would it be a glory, then, to be one who burns out so soon? You're out there, conquering a corner of the world's imagination, while the great majority are dreaming and drunk, looking for love and flopping about, dipping toes into various ponds, considering the path most suitable, scraping around for coins. You're done before they even wake up. Maybe it would be fun. Maybe. But what of Act Two, if you will? Hendrix rocked the party, his reputation forever lustrous – but he's not around, is he? Pick A. N. Other Sporting Hero – how's their later adulthood going? Are they dealing with the public's disregard for their descent from photogeneity and outrageous, athletic skill, or are they running a pub –and drinking it dry – in bewildered misery?

With luck, persistence and steady grace, us ignored souls can emerge from a misspent, misguided youth, creakily armed with an intermittently functioning memory, a sparse if encouraging spread of professional roots, and an understanding that an unheralded life is not a grey box in a dark room. No, once your eyes adjust, you realise that the vivid hues of existence you saw so keenly when they first splashed across your canvas still remain, both in your soul and out there in the still undiscovered world and its unmet inhabitants. You're a rounded human being, in some way, more or less undamaged, and able to believe in the idea of your potential beyond your 30th birthday. In the book 'Aging and Old Age', Richard Posner evolves the theory that success, or 'peak productivity', is most common at different times, depending on your career. Careers are thus divided into 'early' and 'late' peakers – those on the side of youth include sport, natural sciences, hardcore mathematics and the creative arts, such as music and painting (although these latter two can have 'sustained' peaks, which last throughout life). Those areas where genius flowers

late include history, theology, literary criticism and philosophy. See, now, which would you prefer being an award-winning maths whizz at the age of 20, who then fizzles out into confused obscurity, or a genial old dude who expounds upon the meaning of life over coffees in his retirement villa by the sea? Exactly. One further note Posner considers leadership to be a 'late peak' talent; academic proof, then, for the lingering suspicion that any Chief

“Taking joy from the everyday can't fit into a life lived at double speed.” Such-and-such Officer under the age of 40 is a bumptious sod who's got there through vulgar amounts of self-belief rather than with any specific talent. Another shot in the arm for the mediocre middle-aged. So, we should consider this delineation of 'career' by age in light of the Hendrixes, Bests or Bobby Fischers of this world. So often, they're felled by drugs or mental instability, and the inescapable fact that their early brilliance cannot be sustained at the same vigorous pitch.

These genii spend so much time inventing stuff, being brilliant and adored and drug-addled and harassed and pursued and tortured that they fail to find enough time to chortle at telly programmes, read diverting, esoteric bollocks on the internet, enjoy some lamb chops with a dollop of mustard and a fat glass of Burgundy, or indulge in an eastern European road trip with the kids in the back seats bubbling over with hysteria after chewing on Slovenian cheese straws. That's the kind of nonsense that leads you to the meaning of life. All of which is to say that if you ever find ourselves keening at the telly while watching some Adonis do something effortlessly amazing remember that taking joy from the everyday can't fit into a life lived at double speed. If you're single-mindedly driving down the road to glorious, premature posterity, the eventual quietness will feel like a failure. But for those who embrace anonymity, every day spent in the world feels like a triumph. Life moves pretty fast, don't forget to smell the flowers – you know, all that gubbins. Who cares if no-one sees you smell them?

advertorial

No-scalpel Vasectomy Procedure

Part Two Male and female sterilisation has become increasingly popular and it is now the principal method of contraception worldwide. In the United Kingdom, over 60 000 vasectomies are performed each year.

Dr Victoria M. Pickles Medical Director at the Victoria Medical Centre based at London’s Harley Street, 88 Rodney Street Liverpool and at 27 Andover Road Winchester 01962 866 866

Vasectomy has a key role in reproductive health as it is without doubt the most effective form of contraception, ideally suited when the couple is certain they have completed their family and do not desire further children. The keyhole technique, also called the no scalpel vasectomy, is available at specialist centres in the United Kingdom, and has transformed this procedure from an overnight stay in hospital to simple day case surgery through a tiny puncture incision performed under local anaesthetic in a family friendly clinical setting. It is normal for a man to attend for a no scalpel vasectomy and leave the clinic within 30 minutes, having had his procedure. Providing there is no heavy lifting, he could be up and about straightaway afterwards and return to work and normal activities almost immediately. A detailed review with a doctor includes a thorough consultation and a full medical review in order to obtain the patients fully informed consent. Patients requesting a vasectomy should accept that the procedure is intended to be permanent. Preoperative counselling includes a checklist to ensure the relationship is stable and the family is complete. It should be appreciated that among the common-

est causes for regret are relationship breakdown and the desire for children in a new relationship. For this reason, counselling includes information about the likely success, or otherwise, of reversals should this become necessary in the future. It should be clearly understood that reversal procedures, which may include sperm aspiration at the time of the procedure leading to assisted reproductive techniques such as IVF or ICSI, are rarely provided by the National Health Service. Within the context of a thorough and detailed service, consideration should be given to the advantages, disadvantages and relative failure rates of alternative suitable methods of contraception. Long acting reversible contraception may be appropriate at a time when the couple do not wish to have further children but do not immediately seek a permanent procedure such as sterilisation.

After months of waiting and countless opportunities to change his mind, the day finally dawns when Bill Sheehan must head to the vasectomy clinic And so it arrives - V-Day. The day on my calendar marked with a big red circle, and a pair of scissors sketched in later by my slightly sadistic wife. She’s been having a ball with this. Little puns and innuendos designed to send a shiver up my spine. I’ve been playing along with it all and letting her have a bit of fun, but the truth is I am remarkably calm about the whole thing. I am resolved to go ahead with the op, and am at peace with my piece.

Information about the relative risks and benefits of male versus female sterilisation should be noted, including the remarkable differences in the failure rates of the two procedures, 1:200 for female sterilisation compared to 1:2000 for male vasectomy procedures. Hence vasectomy is vastly superior in terms of its success rate when compared to female sterilisation.

She has to drive me to the hospital/clinic, as you’re advised not to drive afterwards, so I’m subjected to a final barrage of nob gags. ‘Keep your pecker up’, ‘stiff upper lip’, ‘best foot forwards – OK best few inches….’

Patients are advised to use extra precautions using effective alternative contraception until clear samples have been achieved in line with local protocols. Only when clear results have been given from these sperm tests by the clinic, is it then safe to rely fully on the vasectomy for contraception. Occasionally persistent positive samples may prompt the need for a repeat procedure to ensure the vasectomy is complete.

This last one has her in stitches as it’s a multilayered assault. Don’t misunderstand me here, my wife isn’t really that nasty at all, and I’m no misogynist. Our culture dictates that women are almost obliged to ridicule and deride male genitals, to put the boot in at every opportunity. Dunno why…

The vast majority of men requesting a vasectomy are satisfied with the care they are given. Opportunities for constructive feedback are utilized in centres of excellence so that changes can be implemented to continually improve the quality of the service and maintain excellence in the delivery of medical care in the United Kingdom. - centre of excellence

We get there and I’m still steadfast and resolute; proud even. At reception the bespectacled lady behind the counter asks why I’m there. “For a vasectomy!”, I boom. “For I am dangerously potent and can impregnate at twenty paces – I must be stopped”, I don’t boom, or even say out-loud.

The missus asks why I was loud, why didn’t I whisper nervously. I admit that would feel like the normal thing to do, but it’s not logical. I’m here at a meeting place of the sick and infirm because everything is in working order! I should be proud! I stand out because I’m healthy! After my name’s called out I enter the treatment room to be greeted by both of the consultants that will be performing my op. They tell me they’re both experts and that one has popped by for a visit, but may as well lend a hand whilst she’s here. Hmm… professional dedication is one thing, but there are times one can seem too keen! After reiterating for the umpteenth time that the procedure is not reversible I am ushered onto a table in the treatment room. A matronly nurse sets about the ‘action area’ with a razor as the doctor explains two more developments in the treatment. They are going to rip open my scrotum and electrically burn the ends of the pipe once it’s been severed! A rip heals better than a cut, and a burned wound will be sealed permanently. After the relatively painless injections of anaesthetic (one each side) a small clamp is placed over the site and I am ripped open. Totally pain-free – I am amazed! Then comes some tugging, and a little pressure, which admittedly does cause my toes to curl. I try to engage myself in the conversation that ensues about holidays, what I do for a living, the housing market etc. to keep my focus away from the activity.

This in itself presents a dilemma – if the doctors are watching what they’re doing it’s difficult for me not to think about it, and if they aren’t I wish they’d concentrate on not maiming me! After a few minutes I hear the sounds of a miniature electric engine delivering pulses of current as they cauterise the epididymis. Again, remarkably painless. As the two docs discuss a weekend barbeque (lamb and chicken, no sausages thankfully) I am left to consider the enormity of what they consider to be so commonplace, and for a second I start to philosophise about humanity, procreation, maybe even God. “I’ve patched you up with butterfly strips”, announces doc one. “Ooh, a star shape, how sweet”, adds doc two. That’s it – I am done, in much the same way that a dog might go to the vets to ‘get done’. I swing myself gingerly from the table, and scan the doctors’ eyes for signs of admiration. I have behaved like a man all the way through. I’ve not screamed, or cried, or asked to call the whole thing off. I am leaving with, ironically, my manhood proved and perhaps even enhanced. Those eyes, however are empty of the awe I must have inspired. I imagine they’re trained not to show it.

43

Find your Inner Sea-dog By Michael Brooks You’ve been on far flung and exotic vacations, and though memorable, if you replace that rose-coloured memory unit for a standard version you have to admit it was often for the wrong reasons. You’ve also gone the other way and holidayed in some God forsaken backwater in the UK, and pretended to everyone that it was “simply heavenly”.

you should adopt a suitable role. Jason perhaps, of Argonauts fame, or Aphrodite, born from the sea in a scallop shell. Well done you. You’ve served your apprenticeship, and there’s no shame in admitting you’d now like your holiday to be undeniably, objectively enjoyable. It’s time to think about what really floats your boat. Ah, boats that float. Well, to put it more succinctly yachts to be chartered. In Greece. Now, now, hold on. Whatever your feelings about the yachting fraternity, there can be little doubt that cruising the high seas unaided under a benevolent sun and making progress solely through harnessing nature is an exhilarating and validating process. No one’s going to demand you start wearing gold buttoned double-breasted blazers or

A line white skirts. You are the boss here, and this is Greece not England. Leave your pre-conceived ideas at home for this is a luxury holiday for all, and neither is it as expensive as you might think. Sure you can apply this to anything, but really, truthfully, honestly, unless you’ve a morbid fear of water I defy you not to love it. The food is sensual, the vistas are to die for, you can swim, snorkel, fish, and generally be as involved or not as you like, and even if you do hate water it’s a great way to conquer that fear. Just look at Robert Maxwell. He was so overcome with excitement about yachting he just jumped right in. You can live the life of a Hollywood recluse or Russian oligarch, but since no one cares who you are it’s even better for you since no one’s trying to take surreptitious pics of your bingo wings from two miles away. There are several ways to charter a yacht in Greece. Self-sail or bareboat chartering means you skipper the yacht yourself with no crew onboard to assist. Clearly this isn’t for everyone, and you will require at least two competent crew before a company can rent to you in this fashion. If a little rusty, a flotilla might be the way forward. This is what it says on the packet – i.e. you sail along with other boats, yet are still the captain of your own boat, with an ‘admiral’ on hand to consult if you want to. Alternatively assisted bareboat char-

ters afford you the freedom to roam the high seas without the pre-requisite skill set. You’ll have company on board of course, but think of them as there to take the strain – as much or as little as you want/need. Crews can range from just one skipper/instructor onboard to additional cooks, hostesses etc. This is Greece remember, and so you should adopt a suitable role. Jason perhaps, of Argonauts fame, or Aphrodite, born from the sea in a scallop shell. There’s nothing to stop you going for something more contemporary of course; Demis Roussos perhaps, or Nana Mouskouri. Armed with your new persona you can create an itinerary that does it for you – mooring in as sophisticated or as primitive a port as you wish. Each island is different from the last from the Saronic isles off Athens to

No one’s going to demand you start wearing gold buttoned double-breasted blazers or A line white skirts. the halcyon Ionian and Dodecadenese to the classic whitewashed Cyclades, the pine clad Northern Sporades and the antiquity-rich splendour of Crete, though wherever you go, it’s guaranteed to be a banquet for your senses. Brownie points will be yours if you organise this, so go on, find your inner sea-dog.

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Featured Artist: Kirsty Whiten (see also p.7) Well known as a rising star in her native Scotland, Kirsty Whiten has exhibited internationally and been involved with numerous projects over the last 9 years. Her distinctive drawings and paintings have earned a year’s residency in Paris, numerous awards and bursaries and been exhibited as far afield as Cologne, Den Haag, Austria and Melbourne. Whiten initially gained notice for her warped large-scale portrait paintings and highly detailed photorealistic drawings, but her work has diversified in recent years to include performance, publishing and photography. Her solo exhibition ‘Trophy’ at StolenSpace in August 2007 showcased her first ever sculptures. She currently exhibits at Stolen Space gallery off Brick Lane, and Recoat Gallery in Glasgow. See a back-catalogue of Whiten’s work: www.flickr.com/photos/kirstywhiten www.stolenspace.com STOLENSPACE GALLERY Dray Walk, The Old Truman Brewery 91 Brick Lane London E1 6QL United Kingdom P: +44 (0) 207 247 2684 [email protected] www.recoatdesign.com

Kirsty Whiten writes; I use various photographs to work from; some I take myself and others I find in books, newspapers or on postcards. I want to create an off-balance psychological portrait, as simply as possible. I’m striving to make frank images of people, dealing with their psychology and socially constructed behaviour; making the viewer aware of the sexuality, control and neuroses underneath appearance. I want to make them uncomfortable by presenting a character very directly and intimately. A lot of my work is about power-play in personal relationships; submission, domination, manipulation, tenderness, and how this translates to society and culture. I’m also really interested in the contemporary awareness of how we present ourselves. There is often a focus on how this is constructed in my images.

Hareem (Ascot) 125x125cm oil and varnish on canvas

The realistic finish of the image is important; I make it tight so that the subject is the focus, the mark-making is simply constructive. My meticulous treatment of a subject is a kind of reverence, I use the detail and the time spent on each image to deliberately increase the emotional impact. With the Harem series I tried to update reclining figures and give them more power within their image, allow them to throw up a challenge to the viewer’s gaze.

Hareem (Alastair) 122x152cm oil and varnish on canvas

47

O f f a l y

by Wallace Wainhouse Apparently offal has become trendy. Personally I don’t have much time for fashion, but I’ve always liked the same things, so it’s great when the fashion wheel spins around to some of the things I like. The cycle seems to last about 20 years, so everything I like should be cool at least three times in my lifespan. Anyway, enough about me, and more about offal. Firstly, I must concede that kidneys smell and taste of piss, and there is a good reason for that; namely that they are the body’s piss factories. So, unless you really like the taste of piss kidneys probably aren’t the best bits of offal to start with. Unfortunately, they are the first bits of offal most people try. The tricky thing about converting people to the joys of offal is battling that most powerful of nurtured prejudices…..disgust. A friend of mine once argued to me that he couldn’t see the point of eating the “disgusting” parts of an animal when you could just eat the “good bits”. He was actually frying up some sausages as he was saying this. I’m sure it won’t come as a huge surprise to people that sausages are not pulled out of a pig carcass in between the loin and the fillet. People who don’t think they like offal should try to taste it without screwing their face

G o o d

F o o d

up in disgust before they have even put it in their mouth. My favourite offal dish is a fish’s nut sac full of jism, otherwise known as ‘herring milts’. They are probably the cheapest thing on your fish counter, but are for me a true delicacy. I’d rather eat milts than Scallops, Monkfish or John Dory. Fry them up with garlic and butter, season and eat on toast with a pinch of parsley and a squeeze of lemon. I don’t think that really counts as a recipe, but it’s really, really nice. Two points; 1. Some people flour them first. 2. A good tip with the garlic for all recipes is to grate it in with a fine grater. It’s quick, and brings out more flavour per clove. My second favourite pieces of offal are lamb’s hearts, which are also dirt cheap. Most people imagine heart meat to be tough and stringy, but in fact it is rich, dense and tender with quite a subtle lamb flavour. I suppose this one does just about count as a recipe, so you’ll need this stuff as a starter for 4.

4 lamb’s hearts 1 large onion 3 cloves garlic 3 tbsp olive oil 3 tbsp paprika half tsp salt 3 tbsp tomato puree 2 tbsb sweet chilli sauce Slice the onion into long slices, grate the garlic, and mix with all of the ingredients apart from the sweet chilli, put in a medium oven until onions are soft and browned (about 30mins), add the sweet chilli, season, and add some herbs (parsley, oregano or marjoram, or all three) and serve on toast, or with salad. Yum!

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