Many endings

We’re doing lots of things for the last time these days.

Our last dinner in our favourite curry restaurant, Punjabi Haveli, in the predominantly ‘Indian’ neighbourhood of Bury Park (Indian in quotation marks because the population is increasingly English – second generation or even, in many cases, third. But the food remains distinctly Indian and great).

Our last friend chicken from Chicken George, repeatedly awarded the prize as England’s best takeaway restaurant

Our last session at the Saturday badminton club, after perhaps 200 over the last eight years.

And these were just the things we knew we were doing for the last time. Earlier there were things we did for the last time without knowing there would be no further occurrences.

Our last Sunday afternoon chamber concert in a very little chamber with a minuscule chamber ensemble (never more than two players) in the lovely setting Wardown House.

Our last standup comedy evening where for a fiver you got to see six acts and, for an extra two or three pounds, you’d get a curry too

Even in winter, Wardown Park is a lovely place for a walk
Especially at sunset

Taking the dogs for a walk through Luton’s most wonderful feature, the string of parks, all grassland alternating with woodland and parkland, from People’s Park, to Pope’s Meadow, to Wardown Park and beyond, to ancient orchards and more woods by the stream that we like to glorify as the ‘river Lea’.

Still, though I’ll miss many of those things, what I shall miss the most are the people – and I hope that despite the geographical separation, we’ll keep in touch as much as possible. The friends from the Labour Party, including those who have become adversaries in today’s increasingly bitter battles; the friends from our two badminton clubs with whom we’ve spent many a wonderful hour on or off the court; and those who were just friends, and great to know. In a town where ‘White British’ is not the majority in the ethnic mix, it has been a delight to know this extraordinary mix of peoples, backgrounds, faiths, convictions, cultures, and sheer personality.

Many have asked me what I’ll miss the most, and that’s my answer.

This may all sound gloomy, but that’s just the nature of partings. This is the time of farewells, which are always cheerless. We’re looking forward to some new beginnings, but for now we’re dealing with endings, and they’re never happy moments.

Still, I can’t pretend that we’ll miss everything about Luton. And right at the top of the list of the things I shall be happy to see the back of will be the Luton Mall. It, as I see things, represents all that is least prepossessing about the town – and is also emblematic of what I see about Britain today that I’m only too happy to be leaving.

The Luton Mall was one of the earliest American-style malls in Britain, and it shows. It’s old and shabby, mildly claustrophobic which gives it a feeling of dinginess, lacking the airiness or light of more modern shopping centres. The only redeeming feature of the place is the quality of some of the shops.

Two of the best are Marks & Spencer and the department store Debenhams. I visited both last time I was there – another of that series of last-time moments – and reflected on the fact that both are threatened with closure. A Mall that badly needs redeeming losing two its most important redeeming features? What will be left? Just an empty shabby shell?

Luton Mall. Debenhams in front, M&S behind
Both slated for closure

That feels like the country writ small. What made Britain exciting was its openness and drive. It was the wealth of people from different places, with different concerns and different tastes, rubbing shoulders, learning from each other and building something better and more exciting together. Brexit has marked a break in that process, at least for a time. Like Luton’s Mall, the country is in decline.

The difference is that Luton didn’t choose its fate. Britain did and could stop it yet. Perhaps I should have stayed to help.

But, with two sons living in Spain, the prospect wasn’t attractive enough to prevent us deciding to go there. Hence the many endings. And I hope, after Saturday, a few new beginnings.

M&S: good marketing. Or was it?

It’s always fun when Marks and Spencer’s decides to offer tasters of some exciting new line in its Food Halls.

The other day I was introduced to its latest pork pies. First I was offered a sample topped, as far as I could see, with chutney.

“The topping really enhances the flavour of the pie,” the friendly woman dispensing the goodies pointed out, and she was right. “And the crust is just right, exactly crusty enough without being hard.” And she was right about that too.

“What about these ones?” I asked, pointing to samples topped with something more golden in colour. “Apple sauce?”

“Indeed,” she replied, immediately offering me one to try, “and I think you’ll find the slight sharpness of the apple is exactly the right complement to the meat.”

She was right again. She knew her stuff. And so did M&S which had made, in my view, an excellent choice in adding these products to its already impressive range.

Now, it’s often said that you should never go to a supermarket when hungry, because you’re bound to come out with far more than you need. I knew what I was looking for from M&S, and it didn’t include pork pies. On the other hand, I’d been at a meeting which had taken me a long way into the lunch hour. Something to eat? Struck me as a good idea. Something appetising? Even better.

M&S Food Hall: far too temptation-charged for a hungry visitor

Oscar Wilde could resist anything but temptation. Like him, I succumbed.

“They’re excellent. I think I’ll take some. Where are they?”

For the first time in our conversation, I saw her uncomfortable.

“Ah,” she said, “we don’t actually have them in the store yet. We just wanted you to know about them.”

Know about them? It’s always seemed to me that the only reason to get a potential customer to know about a product is in the hope they’ll buy it. Adding to the general store of human knowledge? I’m really not sure that’s a grocer’s role.

M&S remains one of my favourite shops and I’ll keep right on going there. But it’s clear the initials really don’t stand for Marketing and Sales. In fact, it feels like Marketing had given up on communicating with Sales at all.

The were good and I want to say the tasting was good marketing. But marketing that doesn’t lead to sales? That sounds more like good effort, wasted.

He may not know much about art, but he knows what he likes

“Reuniting two urns of ashes with the families who had lost them was particularly heart-warming,” Julie Haley of Transport for London Lost Property department told ‘Metro’, “it was very emotional for all of us.”

Transport operators find extraordinary things left behind on trains. Glasses. Mobile phones. False teeth. And, as we’ve just seen, even urns of ashes.

Lost Property staff do go to great lengths to return mislaid items to their owners. But sometimes they just can’t find them, in which case after a decent passage of time, they put them up for sale. This happened in 1975 when the Italian railways auctioned off, among other items, two paintings that had been left on board a train from France in 1970.

The event gave rise to the news story that most tickled my fancy this week. I thought it worth sharing with you, just in case you missed it.

A factory worker from Fiat  turned up for the auction and decided he liked the paintings. He bought them for 45,000 lira, or in today’s prices, a little over €400. Not an inconsiderable sum for a factory worker but, hey, everyone likes a good picture to brighten up the place.

And brighten it up the paintings did. Even after his retirement, when he moved from Turin to Sicily, where they adorned the walls of his kitchen. Nearly forty years of pleasure he had from them, so I suppose you’d have to say he had his money’s worth.

But he had a son, whose knowledge of art was perhaps superior to his father’s, even though his taste could not have been. The son happened to be glancing through a book on the subject and was struck by the similarity of style between a Gauguin painting and one of those hanging in his dad’s kitchen. He called in the authorities.

It turns out that what the father had on his wall were Paul Gauguin’s Fruits sur une table ou nature au petit chien and Pierre Bonnard’s Femme aux deux fauteuils. Estimated now to be worth €30 million and €650,000 respectively.

A reasonable return on a €400 investment.

Two painting that brought light into the life of Fiat car worker

Not that he’ll be able to keep it, I imagine. Turns out that the paintings had been stolen from the London house of Mathilda Marks, daughter of one of the founders of Marks and Spencer (I’ll leave it to you to guess which one). Presumably the thieves had panicked while travelling into Italy and abandoned the paintings. 

Unless like the owner of the urns of ashes, they just forgot them, proving you earn nothing from carelessness, and that hopes can quickly turn to ashes.

What of the ex-Fiat worker? He’d like the paintings back. I sympathise: there must be an unsightly pair of patches on his kitchen wall now, and the view will be much less appealing.

But he frankly has no one to blame but himself. He should have brought up his son to be less talkative.

Marks and Spencer, ever the early bird

I’m intensely grateful to Marks and Spencers, worthiest of British retail outlets, for having printed an uplifting sentiment on the soles of my slippers.

Inspirational message on M&S slipper soles

However, I have to say that the gesture does raise a few awkward questions.

First of all, just who do they expect to be reading my soles?

I mean, I generally walk on them. Perhaps M&S hope I’ll put them up on the coffee table so someone sitting opposite me can read the message. It’s true that I do tend to prop my feet on the table when I can but, hey, I do usually take my slippers off first. What do they think? That I’m a slob all the time?

Maybe M&S are just looking after my spiritual wellbeing. After all, slippers bring comfort to the feet, so perhaps the inspirational words are there so M&S can be seen to be taking care of body and sole together.

But, secondly, the words themselves. The early bird catches the worm? I’ve never got that saying. I mean, someone really thinks the prospect of catching a worm is going to get me out bed early? Dream on. As I intend to.

No, the only creature that would get up betimes to catch a worm would be the bird, just like it says in the proverb itself.

Now here’s the problem. I understand that this is an important principle for birds to master (though it’s not quite so salutary, let me point out in passing, for the poor old worms).

And here’s the rub: when did you last see a bird wearing slippers?

Why settle for second best, even in a quarrel?

Why not strive for quality in every area of human endeavour? 

Why not strive for excellence even in a field as apparently unpromising as animosity?

So when I saw an advert for ‘Better Rows’ the other day, I thought ‘yes, why not? If you’re going to have a row, make it a good one.’ 

It could be an original approach to, say, marriage counseling, couldn’t it? ‘We can’t stop you arguing with each other, but we can at least help you make sure the quarrels don’t descend into mere banality. We can make sure they have that special quality that marks them out from the ordinary. 

Yes, I can imagine there’s mileage in that. Perhaps even a little money to be made, if you play your cards right.

Then I looked at the ad again, and I realised they weren’t promoting a superior form of argument at all. They were doing that rather tedious thing that advertisers like, of making two words, on different lines, share an initial letter.

Turns out it’s just about threading which, I’m assured, is a way of thinning out eyebrows by pulling out individual hairs with cotton threads.

‘Doesn’t hurt at all,’ Danielle assures me. It amazes me the arrant nonsense women sometimes talk and expect us to believe.

At last - an end to bad arguments?

‘Doesn’t hurt at all,’ Danielle assures me. It amazes me the arrant nonsense women sometimes talk and expect us to believe.

And here's another sign:

 

Marks and Spencer offering 25% of men’s clothing.

But why should all men swear? Surely something to be celebrated, isn’t it?


And a last thought:

That question I started with - why not strive for quality in every area of human endeavour?

It actually has a good answer: because sometimes it isn't worth it. I can't discover who originally said it, but there's a great statement I’ve taken to quoting rather a lot recently: if a job isn't worth doing, it isn't worth doing right.

Amazing how often people spend a lot of time trying to persuade me to put real effort, real striving for quality, into doing something which there was no point in doing in the first place.

I always end up in a row with them. Which may be why I'm tempted by the idea of better rows.