You Did Say Have Another Sausage
Page 20
As the school staff were patrolling up and down, keeping an eye on our school kids, our attention was drawn to a commotion where a crowd had gathered, all laughing, whooping, hollering and clapping, included two L.A.P.D. officers in their patrol car. We went over to find out what was going on, only to see Amanda, one of our year-ten girls, entertaining the crowd on a trick-cycle. One of the local hustlers, a lavishly-bearded, cowboy-hatted remnant of the hippy days made his living by offering odds that no-one would be able to ride his bike along a designated course. Many tried and failed, but Amanda was succeeding easily and confidently. She was showing-off like a rodeo rider at the Calgary Stampede. Apparently, the bike was designed so that it went in the opposite direction to the handlebars. That is, you turn right to go left and vice versa. Any rider quickly becomes disorientated and loses control, except Amanda. Her friends Lindsey and Carrie, who were cheering wildly, told us that she had a similar bike in Wigan and it was her party-piece (I never quite found out how she came to own such a bike). The Venice Beach hustler graciously gave her a $20 bill as everyone applauded loudly. I managed to get a great photograph of the girls posing with the two policemen in front of the police car, as the sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean, silhouetting the palm trees. We could have done with seeing those policemen again the following day. The $20 bill turned out to be a fake. However, we decided to compensate Amanda from our contingency fund.
Gonna Cruise the Miracle Mile
The two major art galleries on our school itinerary were the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Getty Museum. Before we visit LACMA on Wilshire Boulevard, it is necessary for me to acquaint you with Wigan’s cultural heritage. Certain places in Britain are readily associated with specific things; we have cakes from Eccles, Chorley, Pontefract and Kendal mint cake. There is the Cornish pasty, Lancashire hot pot, Yorkshire pudding and Devon cream tea. Melton Mowbray is a town synonymous with pies, and it has only one serious rival as ‘Pie Capital’ of Britain... Wigan. Wiganers are known affectionately as ‘pie-eaters’ and, thanks to George Orwell, Wigan Pier is its most famous landmark. Even that has got a pie in its name. The world pie-eating championships are held annually in Wigan and, at the time of writing, the current holder of the title is, appropriately enough, a local man (It was a travesty that he wasn’t short-listed for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award). The 2014 Pie-Eating World Championship actually made the national news, but only because it had to be cancelled. A student on work-experience delivered the wrong size pies. They had an incorrect circumference and surface area. Someone at the bakery must have confused the measurements, resulting in the 2-pie-R going pie-arse-squared over tit. The World Governing Body had no choice but to adhere strictly to the rules and cancel the event. Being dedicated athletes, the competitors ate all the pies as a training session. You are probably wondering what all this has got to do with a school visit to an art gallery...
The A-level art syllabus included a written exam, and several of my sixth form students were on this trip to America. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is on Wilshire Boulevard, part of which is known as the ‘Miracle Mile’. We enjoyed the modern exhibitions and installations which contrasted with the traditional paintings by El Greco, Frans Hals, Boucher and Rembrandt. We spent some time looking at some of the religious paintings from the Renaissance period. Janette and I discussed the paintings with our students as they took notes. As part of their exam revision, I asked them some specific questions relating to their lessons.
In religious painting there are a number of recurring themes, for example: ‘Annunciation’, ‘Nativity’, ‘Crucifixion’, ‘Taking down from the Cross’, (known as the ‘Deposition’), and ‘The Mourning or Lamentation of Christ’ in which Jesus is lying dead while his family and followers express grief around him. In Italian this is known as a ‘Pietá’, (phonetically ‘Pea-ay-ta’), an Italian word meaning pity.
“Okay, let’s begin by seeing how much you can remember,” I said to my 6th form art students. “Joanne, what is this painting called?” I asked, pointing at a canvas by the 17th Century Dutch artist Rembrandt.
“The Raising of Lazarus,” answered Joanne confidently.
“Well done, and what about this one?”
“Madonna and Child,”
“Correct.”
We then moved on to a particularly poignant sculpture of the ‘Lamentation’, attributed to an unknown Spanish sculptor of the 18th Century.
“What is this subject called?” I asked Brendan.
“The Lamentation.”
“Correct, but how is this subject usually referred to in art history?”
Brendan paused for a second, screwing up his eyes as he tried to recall the name from the back of his mind. A couple of the other students put their hands up to answer.
“Just wait a second,” I said, “let’s give him a chance to answer the question.”
Brendan then opened his eyes as though he had just had a flash of inspiration and said, “I’ve got it... It’s called a Pie-eater.”
This prompted a few giggles from the students, and then all I could say was, “Well... if Jesus had been crucified in Wigan, I suppose the painting would be known as a Pie-eater.”
It’s amazing how laughter amplifies when reverberating in a cavernous gallery. Brendan appreciated the joke and I said to him, “I hope for your sake that a question about a ‘Pietá’ crops up in your exam next June.”
“Why?”
“Because you will always remember this.”
There is a denouement to this particular story. During the exam season Brendan came out of the school hall, after sitting his History of Art examination, and came to see me in the art room. He gave me a thumbs-up signal and with a big smile said, “Sir, a pie-eater question came up, and I wrote about the one we had seen in L.A.”
“That’s great news, Brendan. I’m glad you remembered it.”
“How could I forget? Guess who else cropped up in one of the other questions?”
“Who...?”
“Pie-eater Breughel.”
He passed his exam with a top grade. The last time I heard about Brendan, he had married a Japanese girl, had started a family and was living in Tokyo, teaching English as a foreign language. So, if ever you hear a Japanese tourist speaking English with a strong Wigan pie-eater accent...
When Richard and I were in Los Angeles, the Getty Museum was housed in a Roman-styled villa in Malibu. It wasn’t on our itinerary, but on an art trip thirty years later it was a major priority. In the intervening years it has been moved to Santa Monica, where the museum is now in purpose-built buildings in the mountain foothills, providing us with panoramic views of Los Angeles. The modern architecture, situated amongst meticulously tended gardens, is a perfect setting for the paintings and sculptures, a private collection begun by John Paul Getty, an American oil-billionaire and one-time world’s richest man. We arrived by funicular railway to be welcomed by a team of immaculately-uniformed ‘greeters’.
For some reason, I have always loved coffee shops in art galleries. I don’t know why, it must be the smell and general ambience. The restaurant at the Getty Museum was fantastic, and very reasonable, with a magnificent view. It was packed with families all enjoying lunch in a cultural atmosphere, and our pupils seemed to enjoy the day.
Mean Streets
There are roads and streets in certain cities around the world which are famous in their own right: Fifth Avenue and Broadway in New York, The Strand and Oxford Street in London, the Champs Elysee in Paris, and Lombard Street in San Francisco. None are more so than Los Angeles with Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood Boulevard, Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive. Readers who are of my generation will remember with great nostalgia the 1950s detective series ’77 Sunset Strip’ starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
We visited the Hollywood ‘Walk of Fame’, and had great fu
n star-gazing along the pavement in front of Mann’s Chinese Theatre. The road itself seemed a lot less glamorous than we had imagined, and yet there we were looking up at the iconic ‘Hollywood’ sign standing on the hillside. The sign began life as ‘Hollywoodland’ in 1923, a temporary structure to advertise a real-estate development. It became a tourist attraction, but fell into such a state of disrepair that local residents wanted it to be torn down. The developers sold the remainder of the land and the sign to the City of Los Angeles, who repaired and maintained it. They decided to remove the ‘land’ section in 1949, and actually replaced it with a brand new sign in 1978 at ten times the original cost; much of the money was raised by stars sponsoring individual letters. It was a marketing ploy which I think the original developers would have been proud of. There was a tacky souvenir shop nearby which would not have been out of place in Blackpool. We all bought an ‘Oscar’ to take home. Mine was in anticipation of the reception I was hoping to receive from parents and pupils at the movie premier ‘The Deanery Tour of the Golden West’. The Odeon, Leicester Square was booked-up so we had to settle for the bar at Wigan Rugby League Club.
Rodeo Drive is one of the world’s most famous and exclusive shopping streets, where scenes were filmed for the movie ‘Pretty Woman’, starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. We filmed our version with three of our sixteen-year-old girls parading and posing to the imaginary singing of Roy Orbison, which I would dub onto a soundtrack back at school. The girls were proudly wearing their Wigan Rugby League shirts as a small crowd gathered to watch. Being in Los Angeles, everyone naturally assumed that a ‘proper’ movie was being shot.
“What movie is this?” asked a sharp-suited passer-by as I finished filming.
“Northern Soul,” answered Janette, quick-as-a-flash, before I had time to reply.
“Music from Detroit...?”
“No, Wigan.”
He walked away bemused, scratching his head.
An Uplifting Sight
We had been dropped-off by our driver just around the corner from Rodeo Drive on Dayton Way, and he stressed forcefully that we must be on-time as there was a zero-tolerance policy to parking along the street. Only a very brief period was allowed for drop-off and pick-up. Our party congregated along the side-walk a few minutes early as everyone talked about what they had bought on Rodeo Drive. Things like key-rings, or pens, all relatively cheap, were bought as souvenirs. In fact, the ‘Pretty Woman’ girls went into Gucci and asked upfront, and without any embarrassment, what the cheapest items for sale in the store were. They bought some book-marks. They struck up a rapport with the sales assistants who had been watching them filming outside. Amanda, Carrie and Lindsey told us that the sales assistants were really impressed and amazed when they found out that they were on a school trip from England.
As we waited for our bus to arrive, an impressive-looking car came around the corner, glistening in the California sunshine. It was an open-top faux vintage style, modern but styled on something like a 1930s Bentley in highly-polished deep burgundy. The distinctive, if not unique, feature was that many of the tubes and pipes, which in most cars are out of sight, were external as a gleaming chrome display. If the Pompidou Centre in Paris was a car, this would be it. As the car pulled over and stopped opposite us, it got the desired effect. Everyone just stared in admiration with the inevitable tinge of envy. The driver, a man in his mid-thirties, paused just long enough to make sure that he had enough attention and stepped out of the car with the air of a star arriving at the Oscars. We felt as though we should roll out a red carpet to help him across the road. He had sleek, combed-back black hair and the profile of Rudolf Valentino. He was wearing a crisp white shirt, silk tie and a dark blue suit which seemed to shine as much as his car. His two-tone shoes finished off his ensemble perfectly. He glanced contemptuously at the ‘No Parking’ street sign, which was emphasized by a little diagram of a tow-truck hoisting up a car. Obviously it didn’t apply to him, whoever he was, or thought he was. He walked straight into a jeweller’s shop without browsing the window displays.
“He must be picking something up,” surmised Janette, glancing at her watch.
“Well, he had better get a move on,” I replied nodding towards a side street.
As if on a mission, a yellow tow-truck sped round the corner and, with the precision and speed of a tyre-change in a Formula One pit-stop, the mobile Pompidou was hoisted-up and on the move. As it passed the jeweller’s shop, our would-be movie star came running out carrying a small gift-wrapped package and waving frantically. The driver and his mate were obviously in no mood to stop and negotiate as they picked up speed. He tried to run after them but he was hardly dressed for sprinting, so he gave up after about twenty yards and looked for a moment as though he was about to throw his package at them, as it were. We watched this drama unfold with undisguised glee, even though we tried not to smile when he looked over in our direction. His body language suggested that he wished the ground would open up. He looked flushed following his exertions in the California heat. Rudolph Valentino had morphed into Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. As he walked forlornly around the corner towards Wilshire Boulevard, we could resist no longer. Everyone burst out laughing, including members of the public across the road.
“We shouldn’t really be laughing at somebody’s bad luck,” I said, trying to suppress my smile, to a couple of our year 8 boys, Patrick and Ian, who were standing next to me.
“No sir, but it was funny.”
“Yes, I think we all share a ‘banana-skin’ sense of humour,” I agreed.
“It’s called ‘Schadenfreude’,” Janette interjected.
“There you are,” said Patrick to his mate. “I told you it was a German car.”
Forward to the Past
It is time again to travel back thirty years, but to us just a blink of an eye, and re-join Richard to catch the Greyhound to San Diego. We decided to take a day excursion into Mexico to the town of Tijuana, hoping there would be a brass band playing ‘Spanish Flea’. The bus was full, and Richard and I had to sit separately. I sat next to a dapper little gentleman who was very smartly dressed in a suit and tie and wearing a trilby. I nodded and smiled at him as I sat down, and he began a conversation straight away. He introduced himself as Harvey and asked, “Are you going to the track in TJ?”
I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, but he read my puzzled expression and added, “The horse racing in TJ... Tijuana.”
“Oh, I see, er no, my friend and I are just going sightseeing for the day.”
“Sightseeing in TJ? That won’t take long,” he answered with a laugh and dismissive wave of his hand.
Once we had got the ‘Hey you’re from England?’ ritual out of the way, we chatted convivially during the journey to the Mexican border. When we got off the bus, I introduced my new friend to Richard and he walked with us to the border crossing. Following our previous experience in Canada we had made sure that we had our passports and necessary documentation. As we approached the barrier, Harvey and the armed uniformed customs official exchanged a cheery hello.
“These guys are with me,” said Harvey and we were waved through immediately. ‘Here we go again’ we thought, but the old gentleman told us that if we had gone through official channels we might have been delayed for a while. We politely declined his invitation to join him at the races, basically because we couldn’t afford to lose any money. He suggested that we should meet him later so he could escort us back into the USA. Richard and I spent a pleasant day in TJ enjoying the sun, buying a few souvenirs and having our first Mexican meal. We tried our first tequila. The bar tender told us that it had been voted the best spirit in the world. We took it with a pinch of salt.
Sure enough, Harvey was waiting for us at the designated time and place and he greeted us with a wave and a warm smile as if he had known us for years. The three of us walked up to the
border guard who simply waved us through.
“Did you win again?” he asked Harvey.
“Sure, don’t I always?”
It seems our friend Harvey was a regular race-goer who seemed to do pretty well out of the ‘Sport of Kings’. Back in San Diego he shook hands with us and slipped us a twenty dollar bill each. We protested, not too forcefully, but Harvey insisted that we take the money because he had backed a couple of winners.
“Enjoy your road trip and you guys have a drink on me.”
It was yet another fine example of genuine American hospitality.
‘If you see it once, you’ll never be the same again...’
Las Vegas has something in common with Tokyo, Blackpool, and Count Dracula. They all come to life at night. Today we think of Las Vegas as a ‘new town’ when compared to other cities around the world, but there have been continuous Native American settlements there since before the time when William, Duke of Normandy, decided to conquer Britain. Las Vegas was named by the Spanish in the 1800s and actually means ‘The Meadows’, which made me feel immediately at home. This name is derived from an oasis in the Mohave Desert, created by underground artesian wells. It became a stop-over on the Spanish Santa Fe Trail to California.
After the State of Nevada legalised gambling in 1931, I suppose the modern Las Vegas owes its existence to three people. Firstly, the New York mobster ‘Bugsy’ Siegal opened a luxury hotel/casino in 1946 and called it the ‘Flamingo’, the nickname of his girlfriend who had exceptionally long legs. However, his lucky streak didn’t last long; he was murdered soon after by disgruntled fellow-investors (who were also fellow gangsters). Secondly, the British chemist Sir William Ramsey must have played a part in the birth of modern Las Vegas. He discovered the gas neon in 1898. Then, in 1910, the French inventor Georges Claude discovered that an electric current emitted a powerful shimmering light when passed through neon in a glass tube. Frankenstein-like, those discoveries have led to the creation of ‘Vegas Vic’, the famous neon cowboy at ‘Binion’s Horseshoe’ in Fremont Street. It remains the world’s largest mechanical neon sign, and has featured in numerous television programmes, pop videos and movies. Perhaps the most famous is ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, when James Bond, played by Sean Connery, eluded the police in a memorable high-speed car chase along Fremont Street.