Tag: family

Categories
nostalgia

Living Like Bloody Millionaires…

This was my mother-in-law’s favourite response when my then boyfriend and I would go off together as students, to exotic places like Spain and Italy, (other people we knew went to Tibet and Thailand, but, yanno…) or eat out more than twice a month.

We love the phrase and use it all the time now. “Going out to breakfast? Oooh…yer living like bloody millionaires…!”

Reading Fortune magazine over coffee this morning, I noticed that they had a special section which might as well have been entitled ‘How To Live Like A Bloody Millionaire.’

(I don’t know why we get Fortune magazine. Neither of us remembers subscribing, but there it is every month, along with the Speccie and Time.)

They actually called it ‘Life At The Top’. It is a guide to how you can spend eye-popping amounts of money on bags, cars, golf clubs, wine, and featured a brief interview with Cartier’s North America boss Federic de Narp, improbably handsome and sleek, giving tips about shoes, shirts, briefcase, coffee, watch (mai, bien sur…), where to have lunch, what brand of umbrella…

I notice that they didn’t ask him about his exercise regime. US businessmen have to be all about the daily workout regime (like Haim Saban, featured elsewhere in the issue) and ‘visionary futurist’ Ray Kurzweil who reckons that exercise, diet and 230 daily supplement pills has slowed his aging process. I’d like to think that the European alpha male can still put style, elegance and culture before a slavish devotion to the gym. But I doubt it. You don’t keep a figure like de Narp’s or Antonio Baravalle’s, the molto sexy head of Alfa Romeo, without some work. European businessmen probably keep that sort of thing quiet.

My poor father wouldn’t have enjoyed this brave new world of sushi and pilates. He revelled in the three-course, boozy working lunch that finished with brandy and a packet of cigarettes, where exercise meant the distance you had to walk from your chauffeur-driven car to your next meeting. Which may have contributed to his death aged 46.

I must have something of an Electra complex though, because the sight of a handsome businessman in well-tailored, dark blue pinstripe suit, white shirt and tie makes me weak at the knees…

Categories
raves

Bank Holiday In The Telly Zone

I’ve never been comfortable with the English obsession for fresh air and walks but my English stepfather did a good enough job impressing these as ideals for the family weekend that I still feel guilty if we haven’t put the time in on one such activity.

“I don’t want to go for a walk,” our little five year-old says. “I want to watch TV.”
“You’re not expected to enjoy it,” we tell her, tersely. “It’s just the rules. At weekends you have to go for a walk.”

Rain, of course, is the big saviour in such a situation.

I looked at the sky hopefully this morning, for any sign of being rained in. But no. Then I thought, heck, why can’t I watch TV all blessed day, if I want to? I’m grown-up now!

So I did. Ahh, bliss. Three episodes of Doctor Who season three – which I’d been saving up, and the final two episodes of Stargate SG1. Yes, that’s how far behind I was on my TV viewing, on account of Cuba and writing and even reading.

I like the new Doctor Who assistant, Martha. I like that she’s allowed to be smart and ask technical questions and actually understand the explanations. I loved “As far as I’m concerned you have to earn the title ‘Doctor'” Too right, Martha; ask to see his MD/PhD certificate!

“Smith and Jones” was a good new-assistant introduction episode. Hospital teleported to the moon because it’s beyond the Earth-bound jurisdiction – pretteh, pretteh good. Haven’t seen that before.

“The Shakespeare Code”…hmmm. Liked the Harry Potter references and the witchy magick as another manifestation of alien power, but the ending… “You’re dead clever, Shakespeare, you’ll think of the right thing to say!” The problem is that it’s a strategy that can only disappoint in execution. What would the writer of Shakespeare’s plays say in such an event? We can never know…we can only guess and that just can’t be good enough.

“Gridlock”. Brilliantly original concept, or at least I’ve never come across its like. Stuck in traffic for years…the obvious solution would be to walk, but as we understand at the end, walking ain’t an option. That Face of Boe…he’s such a tease. “You are not alone…” Could that mean that the Master is still around? The Black Guardian? White Guardian? Rassilon? All of the above?

I don’t get why the Doctor can’t go to Gallifrey in the past. Maybe I’m missing out on some bit of DW lore here, not that the RTD version is necessarily sticking to old DW canon (and that’s fine with me), but is there some reason why if Gallifrey is destroyed in the year, lets say, 1 billion, it can’t exist in the past? Did the Time War erase Gallifrey from the space-time continuum for all time? If so how can the Daleks come to exist in the first place? The Doctor was present at the Genesis of the Daleks and if I remember correctly he was sent there by the Gallifreyans.

I’m painfully aware that all of the above will be discussed at length on some DW discussion board. But I’m not going to look. I’m NOT.

The Stargate-SG1 finale was inspired. Wow, Sam Carter has to take a realistic amount of time to work out a solution to a fiendishly difficult problem! What’s wrong with you, woman? Ten seasons of performing scientific miracles, coming up with solutions of pure genius with nothing more than “Major Carter, we need that fix right now… ten seconds before the galaxy explodes…” to spur her on. But finally, finally, finally, she goes “Hmm…tricky one…gonna have to think about that.” Fifty years later, she figures it out.

Yes, you see that IS how long scientific advancement actually takes.

Luckily, Rodney McKay of Stargate Atlantis can still be relied upon for the just-in-time Nobel-prize-worthy fix. Wait until he hears how long it took Carter to solve that problem. His ego will finally rest easy – he IS smarter than her! It may be all that’s needed for him to finally be able to woo her – an excuse to drop all his insecure posturing when he’s around her.

I can still get a couple of episodes of “Life on Mars” in before bed, to make today a day in which I’ve watched as much TV as in the last month.

I didn’t do my chores. And we ate a whole bag of Thorntons peanut brittle.

Categories
switzerland

Bizarro Coincidence

As I lay in hospital, as coincidence would have it, the patient who joined me in the small, immaculately clean and tidy Swiss hospital ward, was from Mexico.

An Olympic standard beach volleyball player, poor girl, she’d broken her wrist. Not skiing, either, but falling off a bar stool or something.

So, out of all the Mexicans in the valley, we ended up in adjacent hospital beds. Klutzes or what?

We started to chat. The young woman’s mind was, not surprisingly, turning to thoughts of a post-volleyball career. I asked her what she’d studied and where. Personnel administration, at the UNAM. Well then, I offered, maybe you’ve read my grandfather’s book. He’s Agustin Reyes Ponce.

And that was the strangest part of all. That two crumbly-boned Mexicans should meet at the base of a wintry ski slope, I buy. That one should be in awe of the other for being an Olympic athlete…okay. That the other should be silenced in respectful memory of a deceased guru of the Mexican business schools, was taking it all too far.

How big is this world, anyway?