Shell Wildlife Photography Competition

Animal Magic
Open 9am until 5pm
April 26th 2007 until 27th April 2008
Natural History Museum
£7 (adult) £3.50 (Children and Concessions)

Split in to 11 different categories this exhibition has been running 43 years. The space is set simply, letting the photographs speak for them themselves. And ‘boy’ do these images sit up and sing for their space. From catagories rangeing between ‘Animal Portraits’ and ‘Creative Visions of Nature’ the photographs are literally mesmerising.
Through the bustle of the Natural History Museum the exhibit stands out for its regimented but poetical layout of startling animals as they watch you from every wall. From the back wall of the ‘Nature in Black and White’ category an Artic Fox stares. The black of its eyes and nose and the top layer of dirty snow is all that is immediately visible in the picture. On closer inspection only the faint outline of the fox can be seen, the photograph grasps at the amazing potential of the creatures natural reliance on its habitat.
Sergey Gorshkov, winner of the ‘Animal Portrait’ award is the photgrapher of the “Bear Glare”. This photograph is disturbingly intimate. Gorshkov explains how he was photographing salmon in South Kamchatka when he came across the bear quite by chance. Both bear and man in the water, both searching for their own fishy prize when apparently they literally came nose to nose. Gorshkov, on meeting with the impressive mammal took his moment and photographed the bear. He wrote in his comment “I didn’t realise the danger I was in until after I had taken the photograph. In hindsight I was taking a rediculous risk.”
This chance close encounter is not unusual in the stories behind the pictures of this exhibit. In the ‘Behaviour of Mammals’ category, Cristobal Serrano Perez’s “Night Pride” shows five lions drinking, eyes fixed upon the camera lit up with infrared. Perez explains how the lions were watching her as she waited, but did not approach or seem affected by her presence. There is a stillness in this picture that seems so devoid of anything remotely unnatural that it is quite shocking.
This alarming intensity of nature is something that strikes you at every step through the gallery. There is something about the process of a gallery space that often leads you, as the viewer, to wander longingly it constantly aware of the process of the work and the effort or energy that went into each piece. It seems different here, as you move through the Shell Photography Exhibit you are unaware of your movements. Something will catch your eye and you will move on. You will stand watching a picture and yet never quite realise what you’re seeing. In short it is more a natural than a critical experience.
Perhaps the only thing that could improve this exhibition would be to take all the photgraphs out of the gallery and place each piece hanging in mid-air in smack bang into the subject’s natural habitat and leave it there – if were possible it would create a more natural divide between the maze of people and corridors at the Natural History Museum and these enigmatic and beautiful creatures.
Among the images of wildlife are some images of the natural world. At first these can seem off putting – too obviously overwhelming. However, we forget that you can never trick nature with an arrogant brain. Rob Knight’s “Ice Creation” which he won the ‘Wild Places’ category with has a diversity too challenging to nod surreptitiously at and shuffle on. The photograph is of a huge iceberg translucent in blue and white and crashing up to the height of its highest point is a wave. The wave, translucent and almost indistinguishable from the precarious iceberg, collides with the ice. The picture in its simplest form talks of a natural phenomenon between two densities battling for space.
In this exhibition there is a central grasping point, after much thought it seems to be the irrepressible fascination of what is still left natural in the world. For some reason we are always shocked when something almost untouched by human beings is so beautiful. People deny it all the time, but that is what amazes the crowds as they search for the photographic technique or the digital skill in the work; when really what makes the picture is the photographer’s moment with that natural visual which comes across. Without doubt that moment, those few milliseconds are not filled with concentration on the shutter speed or the zoom, but rather the secret insight into that part of our declining natural world which you and I hardly see.
Without doubt, if you go to see this exhibition, before walking back out onto the streets of a multifaceted modern London, you will be let into a secret – there is still diversity in life on this planet, just not where we might choose to look.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Review

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

With the stench of murder and fixation comes the inevitable aroma of possession.

Having read Patrick Suskind’s Perfume I was slightly surprised to see how the IMDB had classified it. Apparently Perfume, with the added marketing title - Story of a Murderer, is for those who search for films under the keywords, ‘shaving’, ‘prostitution’, ‘serial killer’ and ‘France’; it certainly includes all those themes but perhaps not quite in that order.
Perfume tells the story of the extraordinary Jean Baptiste Grenouille. A man born with out his own odour in the stench of 18th century France, Though Grenouille alienates others due to his strange lack of body scent, it is his own superior sense of smell that knows no rival which guides the fantastical story of Perfume along. From the flower presses of Grasse to the fish markets of Paris, this is what makes this story so remarkable.
Suskind’s novel succeeds in evoking smells as vivid as steel, rotting rat corpses and tuberose It is unnerving to watch a smell weaved in language across a page. But can this be matched by a director? Stanley Kubrick did not think so. He declined purchasing the rights for fear of failing one of his favourite books. Suskind himself was very reluctant to translate his novel into celluloid but Bernd Eichinger and his ten million convinced him and in 2001 the rights were sold.
It was worth it. The director, Tom Tykwer had an almost impossible task but Perfume: The Story of a Murderer is the best translation that Suskind could have hoped for. Ben Wishaw plays Grenouille and is excellent, instantly capturing his naivety and yet horrifying immorality. His nose is the only thing that guides his actions and although you are sure to recoil from his actions in pursuing the perfect scent he cannot be condemned. One sense is so dominant that all others fade into insignificance.
The film is successful on a number of levels. The framework of smell, scent and stench permeates the cinematography as the audience joins Grenouille to pursue his victims- to find the next olfactory sensation. Not at all like a Chanel № 5 advert where the sense of smell is transcendent and non-specific, but these smells, the ones that drive Grenouille, are dark, sensual, passionate and overwhelmingly familiar. But don’t worry your other senses aren’t neglected. The dialogue is in skilled hands with Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman playing puppet like roles around the young and sly Grenouille. Their familiar faces reassure us as Grenouille takes twists and turns.
An absolute definite and dominating must see. It will leave you with a bad taste in you’re mouth and a heightened sense of smell. This has got to be the ultimate treat for the senses. (END)

Purfume: The Story of Murdurer
147 mins
Certificate 15
****

My Summer of Love : Review

My Summer of Love
Cert 18, 86 mins

Pawel Pawlikowski’s follow-up to winning the Carl Forman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer in 2004 certainly lives up to its expectations with his latest film. My Summer of Love, adapted from the novel by Helen Cross, has the captivating allure of the silver screen but all the modern grittiness of a northern small time art film. The film follows two girls relationship of exploratory fascination with each other. The story becomes a journey of self discovery but in a very different way from your usual pseudo art house film. Mona (Nathalie Press) is poor and bitter, Yasmin (Emily Blunt) is rich and sceptical, they meet on the moors, as they strangely trust each other they experience the frustration of their counterparts life and make decisions for the other, with this Pawlikowski brings the absurdity of human behaviour especially that of the passionate. Pawlikowski almost allows you to feel for the characters as you’re tugged through their summer days witnessing obsession, and at some points, something close to love, but he destroys your comfort zone as the end twist invites deception into the equation. This film has plenty to say about the struggle to find faith in a world where nothing can really be believed to be true. If you’re willing to listen, Pawlikowski allows you hear what he has to say about people.

Lucky Seven: Review

Review Lucky 7
127 Westbourne Park Road, W2 5QL.
Big Breakfast for Two, £25


This unique little American Diner gives the distinct impression that some time ago now it was hovered up from a small town near Memphis, Tennessee in the 1950’s, taken up into the cosmos for a few years and then dropped, just be chance, smack bang, in the middle of trendy Westbourne Grove, London in the 2000s. Even the waiter has the illustratable air of an undiscovered young Buddy Holly as he cheerfully takes our order.
This is morning after food at its lip-smacking best, the blueberry pancakes are without doubt the best in London and of course I can’t finish the portion they gave me, which makes it all the more an American experience. Get a milkshake between two, they come in huge tin buckets and actually taste like the flavour you ask for, which is a hard thing to come across these days.
My friend has the Mexican burger, which in his own words is a ‘giant chilli and cheese meat-lovers ecstasy tablet.’ Even some of my American friends regard these burgers as ‘better than you get back home.’ Now that’s when you know an American diner is doing well in London, when the Americans come to feast.
One the most extraordinary things about this little juke box of a restaurant, started by Tomas Conran, Terence’s son, is that it verifiably makes American nosh cool again. You can hear yourself saying “fancy American?” on a Sunday morning twice a month and meaning it rather than meaning ‘fancy a greasy dead battered chicken limb from end of road.’
You can actually spend too much time here sat upon the red leather booth seats and aluminium napkin blocks, staring wantonly up at boxes upon boxes of Lucky Charms, which for all who don’t know is a brand of American cereal made mostly from marshmallow. Among them are all the small things that make this place a real trendy little haunt. The snooker ball handles on the loo door, the huge jar of maple syrup on every table, the butter pack, the neon logos and the smell of buttermilk pancakes. If you don’t like it you probably read it is a legacy of the Conran family and were expecting a Blueprint Café or Guaglino‘s, well don’t. This is Terence Conran being fun-loving, liberal, friendly and a bit pissed -Tom Conran has a good thing going.
And if nothing else it’s fun to watch the old English gentleman with his shocked face when he sees the old tin sign that reads ‘We have a booth sharing policy’ as four teenage girls climb in along side him, because ‘frankly’ he’d ‘rather they sit somewhere else’.

Unlikely Passions: Linda Franklin, Portrait of the Artist

Linda Franklin: Portrait of the Artist

Linda Franklin lives an unusually calm conventional life for an artist who admits “the possession of paint and the ongoing battle with the surface of a canvas can only one day break me in half”.
On first glance you would never suspect this pretty, 52 year old house wife to be the artist behind such dramatic and daring art work. Like many women Linda’s artistic career came later. In many ways she has lived most of her life before at last she took the plunge and ‘grappled’ with paint. Here she allows us to venture into her rather contrast of worlds.

Why did you wait so long to get so involved in art?
It was really difficult to pursue art when I was younger. My parents really wanted me to have a ‘proper job’. I left school and went to university to study speech therapy, but I failed on science so had to leave and became a PA, but I didn’t have all the basic skills so it was going no where for me. I eventually decided to join the army as an officer. I think I just needed to earn some money and it seemed a secure way of supporting my self, and it was the proper career that parents wanted for me. It was there I met my husband and that was the last time I did a proper job. I had children which took up a lot of my life and only in the last ten years have I had any time to really paint!


Where did you artistic streak come from?
Neither of my parents ever painted but my mother was very literary. She read me Milton’s Paradise Lost when I was very young. I didn’t understand it at all but enjoyed the drama of all those marvellous words, even without understanding its true meaning it was amazingly exciting. Milton’s work still has a big influence over my portraits in particular. The characters always end up showing desperation, whether through pain or thought or angst.

You say they ‘end up’ like this, is this therefore something that you are unaware of at the beginning of a painting?
I don’t set out to do something in particular, although I might have a mood or a feeling associated with the subject or person that I am portraying I don’t ever know what it’s going to look like when the paint stops being reapplied. It really is more about the process than anything else, that process being the laying of the paint or charcoal and then the destruction of a line and the rebuilding or shape and density. Its all very unpredictable.

You talk a lot about the process of a painting or drawing, does this mean you have a particular feeling towards a finished piece, perhaps a feeling of satisfaction that something has become finished and is unchangeable?
No, it is quite the opposite. I have no feeling toward most of my finished pieces, that doesn’t mean I dislike them but I am finished with them. Although you stand back and look analytically at them to see where they came from and why they work or not work as a painting, I never feel satisfaction it is more like relief, although not quite relief either. I just see them as the result of the painting rather than the finished article. I don’t see a piece of art as a complete whole; it really is a piece, a segment of the entire development, it makes it no more important just because it is the final development. A finished piece of work is what is left over after the artist has finished with it, the remains of a battle with the canvas.


What in your life influences your work?
I see moods through dramatic expressions rather than through actual feeling. Although I have done some work that has been influenced by my own raw emotions, its impossible not to. When my husband was very ill and I thought I might lose him the portraits that came from those feelings are very powerful. But, of course, it is not until afterwards that you realise it was that which went into a painting. Only on hindsight you can see the exact push of an emotion. Pollack and Munch’s art was about process and only later they realised exactly what process it was they were grappling with, I identify with that.


How does your life fit in with your art? You say you have children, what are you first, an artist or a mother?
I am a mother first. But I am not a mother who paints. My children and my art are very separate. When I am in my studio and my children are with me, they are my friends, when I am back in the house I am mummy. This is the only way it works for me. Ultimately, to be a good artist I believe you have to be very selfish, so I have to separate the two otherwise one side would lose out. But my children are much older now and so tend to be a good judge of my work and are very critical, which is good because they know I’ll listen!


Linda Franklin is currently exhibiting in the Chanley Gallery in Chelsea and the Lansdowne Club in Green Park. Linda lives and works in Wiltshire with her husband and their yellow Labrador, Hector.
You can contact her about her art at lindaafranklin@btinternet.com

Chocolate Stereotypes

Chocolate Stereotypes
Just in time for Easter Charlotte Franklin takes a pleasure adventure of quite a different kind in to the world of chocoholic logic and discovers that chocolate can tell a lot about a woman. . .


Green and Blacks
Company Slogan: (Quite simply) ‘Organic’
Origin: UK
The world’s first organic chocolate, made from 70% cocoa and its bittersweet texture has become the chic girls Saturday night treat. “Two cubes only please” she’ll say as she slips a perfectly toned bronzed leg over the other. Your Green and Blacks girl will be drinking red wine and smoking Vogues as she bites the crisp dark chocolate laced with cherries or orange and spices. The G and B girl has had enough after one, the high content of cocoa goes to her head faster than the wine and she’s smiling a smile that purrs like a cat.
When she’s alone at night she opens the black fridge door (she keeps her chocolate in the fridge) and lifts the Maya Gold bar, made from the ethical Brazilian cocoa bean for its rare melting ability, from its special place under the pomegranate juice and pak choi and devours the dark crisp moment to herself. She has no idea that the sophisticated, organic and fair-trade chocolate is now owned by Cadburys, and they’re sure as hell not going to tell her.
The Green and Blacks Organic Easter Egg (180g) comes in great flavours including Dark Chocolate, White Chocolate, Maya Gold and Butterscotch and is available from Waitrose for £4.99. *

Thorntons
Company Slogan: ‘The Art of the Chocolatier’
Origin: UK
The Marks and Spencer of the chocolate scene and timeless confectionary favourite, which has been doling out its delights since 1911, is the yummy mummy’s favourite treat. Adaptable to any occasion, whether it is the parent teacher meeting, Christmas with the in-laws or a bubble bath for one, there is even some for the chocolate loving diabetic. From its fondue fountains to its choc-fudge dreams it spans generations of chocoholics as the nations favourite variety. The Thorntons woman has a private moment with a mint-choc-chip ice cream on the way home from work before she picks up the kids. In the evenings she leaves the kids with her mother and as she slips on her Phase Eight heels there is a box of Eden Selection (the Thorntons seduction range) on the eiderdown next to a potpourri heart-shaped cushion. These little luxuries are best served with a goodnight kiss and a G and T.
The Milk Chocolate Thorntons’ Egg (400g) is available for £5.99 or two for £10 in all Thorntons’ stores. They are also available with hand-written messages. *


Valrhona
Company Slogan: The Chocolate Trend
Origin: France
Loyal to their slogan Valrhona chocolates are the Versace of chocolate. The rare designer cocoa label has been in circulation for a few years now, but only the best get their hands on this kind of class. The Valrhona girl, is a darling, she’ll say so herself as she sips pink champagne from a cut glass flute and cracks the chocolate between her ice white smile. From salted caramel fudge to blackcurrant basil truffles Lady Valrhona is satisfied. Her cream silk dress hangs gracefully over her designer bones, she’ll need no more than a chocolate for supper. But as she reaches for another Trendy Mini (Valrhona’s sugar free chocolate selection) she need not fear, they contain 65% Xociline, which she assures her fellow cover girls, with a wink, sounds alarmingly similar to Ex-Lax. Lady V chooses another from the silver tray under the chandelier, there is no point pretending, these chocolates are fit for the cat-walk themselves with their gold graphic prints and their fashionable size.
Valrhona make their beautiful hand-made eggs to order, prices are given upon ordering. Look out for their Tiffany collection (made to resemble Tiffany lamps) for a real treat. *




Rococo
Company Slogan: Inspired by the definition of Rococo – Florid to the point of bad taste.
Origin: UK
If chocolate could age gracefully Rococo’s collection of fine cocoa merchandise could be certified antiques. The chocolate is expertly shaped in historic moulds, their gold leaf and hand written packaging makes them masters of the chocolate experience. Their wrappers adorned with the traditional motifs from Letang Fils’ 19th Century catalogue and beneath the signature crepe paper lies chocolates flavoured with all kinds from pink pepper and sea salt to basil and lime. The Rococo of women oozes understated style in cashmere cardigans with eggshell blue eyes. She loves the outdoors and keeps chickens in an old farmhouse in the Isle of Skye. Every Christmas the grandchildren receive stocking fillers from Rococo’s Favourites Range, little bags of chocolates shaped and hand-painted to resemble everything from Fungi de Bosco to Olive Toscano, tied up with a royal blue ribbon. The Rococo woman speaks fluent Italian and makes lemon and polenta cake when her husband returns from a shooting weekend in Oxfordshire. When the couple attend a drinks party she arrives equipped with a box of Pink Marc de Champagne truffles and some Islay Malt Whisky Fudge courtesy of her “scrumptious” Rococo. Her host remarks that she has surely bought her “treasures from an ancient cave” as Mrs Rococo smiles with pleasure.
Rococo’s Easter selections reveal a glorious range of hand painted eggs. The famous chocolate gentleman hares are always a charming surprise for Easter. Prices range from £6.50 to £100 from their Easter range. *



L’artisan de Chocolat
Company Quote: ‘Trained chocolatiers are as common as unicorns’
Origin: France
A scientist as much as a chocolatier with a taste for the medicinal qualities of chocolate, your L’artisan lady is an artiste of course and is French, or wishes to be so at least. She has lived between New York and London since she met Aaron, the wealthy doctor who is away a lot since she painted the living room cerise pink and joined a fusion yoga group. In her twenties she spent much of daddy’s money travelling the world as elderly man’s muse, she has kept her trim figure eating one and a half cubes of her beloved gourmet French chocolate after a macrobiotic multi-seed power snack, with a cup of ginseng tea. At dinner parties she indulges her guests, among them members European Embassy, with a tray of decadent Kalamata Olive and Spicy Hot Chilli Pepper truffles, all made to order directly from the skilled hands of the L’artisan de Chocolat’s chef, in a white walled kitchen in Paris. At the end of a long day with Camille and Josepha, other loyal associates of the L’artisan de Chocolat circle, they indulge in a grand selection of bay leaf, fennel, sage and thyme chocolates brought to her by a butler called Paulo.
The medium sized L’artisan de Chocolat Easter egg costs between £15 and £20 at their only UK store in Lower Slone Street, London. *


Cadburys
Company Slogan: A glass and a half full of Joy
Origin: UK
The people’s chocolate, no airs and graces with this old stalwart. Cadburys is the fast food and quick fix, dear old friend of the chocolate world, running since 1824 this is your honest, no frills milk chocolate. The Miss Cadburys of this world have been dumped by the pretty faced boy next door. He sent her a text message this morning saying something about Europe and a Winnebago. But Miss Cadbury couldn’t care less anymore about Billy and his surfer boy hair. Curled up on the sofa draped in a floral Cath Kidson blanket she peels open the Flake wrapper. Her Bart Simpson slippers curl up beneath her as she indulges in the crumbliest, flakiest milk chocolate and suddenly as she closes her eyes she is the Flake Girl letting the chocolate do all the talking and the seductive demolishment ensues. From that moment a warm breeze and a cascading waterfall runs through her mind. She can only be happy. Until her mother returns home, “you’re not going anywhere until that bedroom is spotless”. Slowly she rises from the sofa, up in her room she is lost in reality until she finds a Cadburys Crème Egg under the bed that Billy gave her last Easter, and she wonders melancholically how he ate his?
The Cadburys Dairy Milk Egg 215g is £3.15 in Woolworths’ stores nationwide. *





Galaxy Mars
Company Slogan: Why have cotton when you can have silk?
Origin: UK
The poor girl’s posh choc. No cubes, no pieces to be seen here this chocolate comes in satisfying chunks. Galaxy is the Diamante of Diamond. Miss Galaxy is round her best friend’s house in her favourite Topshop sweater dress watching a Matthew McConahay movie. The glossy family size bar of Galaxy lies half eaten among the coke cans and Jenny is talking about some guy she met in Po Na Na’s last night. Miss Galaxy tries to listen but she’s more interested in the size of Kate Hudson’s thighs as she climbs aboard a motorcycle with Mr Wonderful on the TV screen, she sighs and takes another chunk of creamy comfort from the golden wrapper.
“Do you know what I mean?” Concludes Jenny.
“Men are all bastards” says Miss Galaxy, “ooh I can’t stop eating chocolate, take it away from me.”
The Galaxy Minstrel Easter Egg is available for £5 in all good supermarkets. *


*Please note prices may vary.





The Art of Chocolate Tasting:
Check List

Appearance
Good chocolate should be glossy.
Bad chocolate is matt and does not shine.

Tone
Good chocolate should have a crisp clean snap when broken.
Bad chocolate sounds blunt or silent when broken.

Smell
Good chocolate should smell
· Woody
· Grassy
· Floral,
· Fruity
· Sweet.
Bad chocolate can smell
· Rubbery (due to under fermentation of beans)
· Like ripe fruit (due to over fermentation of beans)
· Stale (due to mouldy beans)

Taste or ‘Mouth Fee’
Good chocolate should melt cleanly and smoothly.
Bad chocolate will feel sticky and waxy in the mouth.

How to chew:
Roll the chocolate around with the tongue using your four taste zones:
The tip of your tongue is sensitive to salty tastes, the two sides detect sour flavours and back of your tongue tastes bitterness. (End)

Sex, Lies and the 18-30’s ‘Club Catholic’

At the bottom of a Georgian staircase, in a house next to one of the better-known catholic churches of Knightsbridge, I have a last ditch attempt at arranging the neckline of my dress in an enormous guilt mirror. Condemning my self to the age old problem of less cleavage results in more leg and visa versa scenario I sigh and wonder whether anyone knows how a girl is meant to dress for an 18 to 30’s Young Catholic Social?
Two of my oldest girlfriends come here every month to, let’s be honest, check out the local catholic totty. I have seen them prepare, skirts just short enough to push men screeching into the Our Father, inwardly screaming, ‘lead us not into temptation’, thank god (excuse the painful pun) they’re brought up well enough to conceal any public urges and later, of course, shuffle toward the confessional box, with their tales and other appendages, firmly between their legs.
Swinging open the door I run smack into the face of Jesus. That is the Jesus looming twenty foot high from an enormous screen, his face flecked with blood as kaleidoscopic tear runs down his cheek. A fresh-faced man in a dog collar ushers me to the back of the room with a soft smile, I feel guilty. If the truth be known, I’m not a catholic, I’m a fraud, ‘but tonight Matthew, (Mark, Luke and John)’ I think as I clamber over a line of sombre faced handsome young men - ‘I’m the worst kind.’
My loyal and hardy friend and ‘fellow fake’ who studies drama and relishes any chance to put partake in façade, and, who incidentally, knows nothing about religion let alone the Turin Shroud, which is the subject of tonights talk, needs the loo. As she mounts the chair behind us I can feel the eyes upon us and as I mouth the word ‘subtle’ in her direction, she gives me a grin and mouths back something that should never be said four feet from a church. I’m thinking it wasn’t the best idea to bring my crudest companion to an undercover meeting with the Young Catholic Society.
Under the high ceilings nearly forty people are sat staring toward the front in silence. The boy to my left has the posture of a post box with the mouth to match. Every now and again he nods slowly and throws back his head. It is during my fixation with his intricately knotted shoelaces the talk ends. People start to come to life and chat, about thirty bottles of wine appear on a snooker table near by, my fellow fake and I head towards a particularly good looking bottle of Kleinbok Shiraz and so starts the evening.
Half an hour later we meet a man who says he’s a doctor, he may well be, but he’s defiantly stretching the 30 age limit. Somewhere between him offering us another drink and finding the lace of my friends dress between his fingertips he announces he’s a gynaecologist. “Ooh I need a check up”, came a voice fuddled by red wine, it wasn’t my own. “What, oh hmm, well” he guffawed. Something in my spine squirmed and spun 360 degrees. It was time to move on.
We move to the other end of the room where it takes five minutes until an Irish man of diminished height rolls in to me. I am impressed by his determination to talk about the Turin Shroud. I, having learnt a little on the subject at school (and bursting to share) have become aware that when I start to talk his eyes flick from my cleavage to somewhere considerably further away. I fiddle fleetingly with my neckline and to my amazement he acts as if I had lifted my dress and blasphemed. This is rather embarrassing; he has actually forgotten what he is saying. Suddenly, from somewhere between the coronation chicken sandwiches and the table stacked with dvd’s entitled, ‘The Wonder of the Shroud’, comes my ‘fellow fake’ friend like a dirty faced angel, she arrives between us with a bottle of wine she has pilfered from behind a curtain. “Look what I found, the priest gave it to me!” it is too much for him, and within moments he is gone.
Almost disheartened by his prudishness I spot a man who I recognise. A little older than the rest and quite sober he stands among women giggling and fiddling with the cuffs of their Ralph Lauren cable knit sweaters. This man is, reportedly, the Mr Big of the Young Catholics. Mr Big is a 30 year old broker in the city, he takes home about 100k a year, but that’s not all he takes home. No sex before marriage you know, his mother must be kidding herself. I watch him as he slides across the floor, his eyes removing Isobel’s and Eleanor’s Abercrombie and Fitch shirts button by button revealing their lily white balcony bras. I’ve never met this man but rather we’ve been introduced via Facebook. One fore mentioned practicing catholic girlfriend, who frequents this obscure bubble of society, has become rather more acquainted with this Mr Big of the catholic scene than I. He arrived at her office one morning with only one thing on his mind and it had nothing to do with the Bible. She, a good catholic girl from a good catholic school, raised by good catholic nuns, let him enjoy her most intimate possessions right there on the office furniture. But, of course, as she assures me, they “did everything but”. “Ah” you may sigh, “everything but”, every catholic school girl has been well trained in the moral issues of the “everything but’ scenario. N.B, there is nothing remotely like ‘thou shalt not do everything but’ in the catechism.
Seeking some sort of boat hole in this bizarre atmosphere I head for the loo. I walk in on a scene from Mahiki on a Saturday night. Sleek girls in v-neck jumpers and glossy pony tails line the walls, Chanel bronzer and Benefit lip gloss at the ready. One pouts as she rehearses a sultry look in the mirror from a far. I catch the eye of a girl in a blue shirt as she positions her bag on her arm and flicks a lock of peroxide-free hair from her forehead. I stand out like a sore thumb on a French manicured hand. I should leave.
Downstairs my ‘fellow fake’ is talking to a man who told her he was a nuclear physicist, because she believed it, and let’s face it, here anything goes, he waited until later to reveal he actually worked in IT, but ‘Daddy owns a house in Knightsbridge, I’m the youngest of ten so I get the house in High Street Ken’. He later takes her out into the corridor and kisses her on the cheek, “What a delight you have been, we must catch up again.” I have a fleeting image of ‘fellow fake’ being introduced to his parents and getting drunk with his grandmother. She gives him her number.
I am than approached by Barny. I know of Barny. Although I pretend I don’t. Encouraged by the powder room ‘virgins’ I must admit I flirt. I hear my self accept to coming to mass on Sunday and bite my lip until it hurts. I then wickedly accept to attend Soul Food, a function that describes itself as a charismatic prayer group of friendly young adults who meet to praise and worship. I suddenly feel hugely guilty but gloss it over with a giggle and inadvertently touch his leg. I feel immediately silly, like a child whose doing something very bad but can’t be blamed because it doesn’t understand. I get the impression Barney would think the same. With my hunk of matted blonde hair and over done mascara and it suddenly dawns on me - I’m getting the distinct impression he thinks I’m a lost soul in desperate need of a good Christian scrubbing. Behind his mop of velvet black hair, behind those sparklingly clean ears, I can almost see a grey and bearded old man nodding slowly at me with a sad look in his eyes. In my haze I fumble to talk about the Turin Shroud, rather clever to have a talk before a social it means there is always something to return to, they should do it in bars. This guy is quick, “You seem rather well informed considering you got here ten minutes before the end of the discussion.” He’s got me there; I was late, by an hour and ten minutes actually. His eyes are chocolate brown; I smile and wish I had more soul. Ten minutes later he gives me his card and tells me to ring him, perhaps I would like lunch with his family after Mass on Sunday. As I stuff the card into my bag I feel sad to think I never will.
Over the next three hours we indulge in another four glasses of wine and realise the party is thinning out. “How did this all start?” I ask my ‘fellow fake’ who managed to drink more than I and is now propped up with her arm around a statue of Our Lady, as if during the evening the two have become close friends. In my left ear I can hear Harry, he’s telling me that Catholism is not a cult. Sometime ago I tried to agree with him but now I’m starting to feel like the last survivors of a mass suicide attempt. I am alarmed by a mixture of feelings and as I descend the stairs I step from guilt to a lower level of contemplation about the bigger and smaller things in a young person’s life, and finally as I leave the door and walk back on to the busy streets I am aware of the bizarre again, and I like to go again.