Chapter 1: Exodus I just celebrated my birthday. I turned 14 on May 18th. At last I can stop wearing knee-high socks. I had my eye on a pair of stockings or platform shoes. I thought my birthday would be fun. But not really. Despite my mother’s delicious chocolate cake, the overall spirit was gloom.…
An “African Childhood” movie Lake Hannington in Kenya hosts one of the highest concentrations of flamingoes in the world. Now a National Park, in 1969, it was totally wild. We set off early that day from Nairobi. To the north via Nakuru, another, better-known flamingo lake, following our friends the Savary, in their rugged Land-rover.…
Previously on “The Blue Lagoon”: The narrator’s car breaks down on a lonely road in Yucatán, Mexico. He finds a hotel along the road bordering an immense lagoon where dolphins come and play. The hotel owner, Clara, is a mysterious woman who loves dolphins… If you haven’t read the first part click here: …The next…
There is – or was – a hotel on the coast of Quintana Roo in Mexico, I don’t know whether it’s still there. I never went back. It overlooked the Blue Lagoon, near Bacalar. I was coming from the north of the Yucatán Peninsula, from Cancún, driving south towards Chetumal. I wanted to cross the…
Chapter 1: The Jungle Book I clearly remember my sixth birthday. December 1959. In the “first house” in Conakry, Guinea. We’d arrived in Conakry, on the West coast of Africa, in September. Guinea had obtained its Independence from the French a year before, on October 1958. Africa. A land of magic. I remember the colours…
Previously on “Warhol”. At the end of a mildly disappointing expo at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, last September, I stumbled on Warhol’s “Ten portraits of Jews in the XXth century.” First top five have been commented on in a previous post. Bottom row now, l. to r.: Recognise him? I hadn’t. (Thanks to…
It was a somewhat disappointing expo in Paris, last September. “Gertrude Stein and Picasso” at the Musée du Luxembourg, at the back of the Palais du Luxembourg where the French Senate is housed. I’d been “had” before in the same place. Only a couple of rooms with “non-essential” works. For the price of a ticket…
“Hi everyone. We’ve come to the party.” “Aunt Jezabel left her bike on the street. Is it safe?” “Ah! There she is! Auntie! Auntie! Over here!” “Wow! Azraela has really outdone herself this year.” “Don’t talk to us. We’re grounded.” “Aunt Adela brought her gun. She still thinks the Revolution is on. She might be…
My friend Max was born in 1914 in Germany. Heidelberg, I believe. He came from a middle-class Jewish family. Totally ‘integrated’. German was his mother tongue. I don’t think he ever spoke a word of Yiddish. Your ‘typical’ German Jew who thought he was German, and didn’t think twice about it. He started studying Law…
“Le petit chat est mort.” (The little kitten has died), Agnés says in Molière’s “L’école des femmes”, (“The school for wives.”) Molière wrote this play in 1662. 361 years ago. Amongst many other things Molière wrote about the condition of women then. The condition of women is a fundamental part of Western civilisation. On this…
Equinoxio 