Mysterious motorcade

This afternoon, seeking refuge from the calor insoportable, I decided to stand on the front balcony for a while in the hope of catching a passing zephyr.

Suddenly a strange whirring siren (rather like the politer sort of car alarm) announced the arrival at the nearby intersection of one of those deadly serious motorcades we see round here from time to time. First to cross were two cops on low Easy Rider-style bikes dressed, I fancied, a bit like the stars of that 70s show CHIPs.

The next section consisted of four enormous black, blindados Suburban-style SUVs. The process is always the same: the first and third cross the intersection slowly, checking for any approaching threats. Their back windows are open and yet completely blocked by armed and armoured men facing out. Once they have satisfied themselves of the integrity of this particular T-junction, they move on, closely followed by the second and fourth vehicles in the line — the ones carrying 'the packages' — which then zip across as fast as they can.

After these come an assortment of back-up vehicles which varies from motorcade to motorcade. This time there was a plain white pick-up and a PNC van. On one previous occasion there was a light truck in the train, fitted with a huge pedestal-mounted machine gun, a set-up reminiscent of the 'technicals' favoured by Saddam's Fedayeen in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

Today the men staring out of the last goonmobile quickly made me on my balcony, so I was glad not to be holding anything that might even vaguely have resembled an RPG.

So, who could it have been? Colom is in Moscow. Perhaps, we later speculated, it was J-Lo and Marc Anthony popping in for a spot of pre-concert afternoon tea with Ex-Prez?

Ever since the time he was out riding with his wife and his ever-keen presidential guard (the dreaded EMP) accidentally executed a milk delivery man, Ex-Prez has appeared to prefer more low key security. Indeed, we often see him zooming around the neighbourhood at the helm of his Mule with only one bodyguard (hanging on for dear life).

Once he even came visiting alone. Well, in fact he tapped on the door belonging to the house of V's below-radar brother R, and duly asked if she was around. R must have thought 'WTF??'. Along with his motorcycle crash helmet, Ex-Prez was wearing a thick kevlar vest with an antenna sticking out the chest pocket. V also relates that he had a big button on his left cuff, as if all he had to do was press it and the SWAT team would start descending on ropes from above.

Anyway, the substantial PNC presence here in Panorama means that one has had to get used to men with AK-47s on their backs wandering slowly up the road ruminatively munching their Tortrix.

None of this really fazes V. Back in the 80s and early 90s she had her run ins with the much dastardlier (and now thankfully defunct) Guardianes de la Hacienda. She remains thoroughly freaked out however by the occasion that she came across a nuclear submarine passing our Thameside balcony around 2am one morning.

Substantial vessels of one sort or another are regular visitors to the Pool of London and the naval variety, passing sigilosamente under cover of darkness, sending a fleeting wraithlike shadow across our bedroom window, tended to steam up-river at speed — completely blacked out — with only their red and green navigation lights illuminated. No doubt a precaution against canon fire from disgruntled members of the East End Bangladeshi community.

Luxury, Tax-free Castle with Moat

This week the United States revealed the winning $1bn design for its new mission in London, which will be the most expensive embassy ever constructed. (The one in Baghdad was a bargain at $600m.)

The price does not include the 17.5% VAT that all UK constructors have to pay the Treasury, but from which the USA considers itself exempt. American diplomats also owe the Treasury £32m in unpaid congestion charge fees and other fines, a state of affairs which led London's former Mayor Ken Livingston to refer to the then US Ambassador Robert Tuttle as a “chiselling little crook”. (Perhaps it is no coincicence that the new site is outside the congestion charge zone.)

Grosvenor Square has featured a little piece of the USA since John Adams first established the new nation's mission to the Court of St James's in 1785. But in 2016 or thereabouts, 23o+ years of continued American presence in Mayfair will come to an end, thanks in part to a protracted protest by local residents against the security measures enacted there...or indeed not enacted there, since 9-11. Instead of ugly concrete blast barriers, the new design by Kieran Timberlake features a 100ft moat and some rolling parkland between it and the badlands of Wandsworth.

The statues (such as the one of Eisenhower in the foreground below) are staying put, which is appropriate given the role Grosvenor Square played in America's contribution to WWII. Nicknamed Eisenhower Platz, my father remembers how the square was gravelled over so it could serve as a massive military car lot outside Ike's HQ at No20, with the railings all removed, presumably to make more Sherman tanks. (We didn't get our iron railings back in Eaton Square until the mid 70s.) One wonders if the residents back then (probably actual British passport holders in the main) were quite so vociferous in their whingeing when these changes were imposed.



The square was also famously the scene of a massive anti-Vietnam war protest on March 3, 1968. Vanessa Redgrave (now a regular on Nip/Tuck and newly elected BAFTA fellow) was there that day leading the Trotskyite Workers Revolutionary Party and was permitted, along with three supporters, to enter the embassy and deliver a protest. Later things turned ugly and 200 people were arrested and 86 treated for injuries received during the 'battle'.

With their new moat American diplomats will now be able to fart in the general direction of English discontent much like John Cleese's French castellan in Mony Python and the Holy Grail.

The present, soon-to-be-discharged building was put up in 1960 (while the previous one was handed over as MacDonald House to the Canadian High Commission) and is expected to be re-purposed by the Qatari Diar investment group as a hotel.

Given that it was granted Grade II listed status in 2009, the former embassy's new Arab owners will have to put up with the massive gilded eagle that perches atop the facade. Back in the late 80s my friend Thom — whose mother was in fact American (Georgian 'aristocracy') — suggested to me that he'd like to pick it up with a helicopter and the drop it right back on top of Eero Saarinen's modernist fortress. These days that sort of casually anti-yanqui remark can earn one a trip to the Caribbean.

The Qatari's will no doubt feel at home here, as one suspects that many of the properties around the central park are owned or rented by middle-easterners: which may explain why the embassy's American occupants have been feeling a bit edgy of late.

'The euphoria of weather'

Looks like an accident waiting to happen, but this extraordinary structure will soon be giving Londoners something to talk about other than the prevalence of cumulonimbus (and bursting bubbles!).

Wallace and Grommit and the Curse of the Vanishing Nibbles

Congratulations to Surfer who has managed to sign up some A-list imaginary characters for his latest exhibition at the Illustration Cupboard.

Scatological

Nothing like a good North London put-down and AA Gill's review of Market in the Sunday Times today, had an enjoyable one:

"Camden, a little stretch of London’s lower colon that has aspirations of being north Notting Hill, but is really south St Albans. Someone tried to set it on fire a month ago. Fire engines and news crews turned up to watch, but unfortunately, the rain put it out."

Reforestation

"Case goods manufacturer Antigua Furniture has purchased another 200 acres of land here to expand its ongoing reforestation efforts in Guatemala.The land is located on a tract called the Agua Volcano in Antigua. With the purchase of the additional land, the company now owns some 1,016 acres it plans to reforest and preserve in the area." (LINK)

Hmmm, the slopes of the Agua volcano wouldn't be my first pick for reforestation in Guatemala...

We had a small tremor here in London last night, which made our bed wobble. It was the kind that we get almost monthly in Antigua, but are felt in England only every thirty years or so.

Pret's new anti-Third World policy

This is just mad of course, as basil leaves can easily be grown on my balcony in the UK, whilst there are all kinds of exotic things that the sandwich chain might want to put in its recipes that tend to do better in tropical climes...whilst at the same time providing a living for poor people.

As Perry de Havilland from Samizdata notes:

"From a business point of view I can see their thinking as a much higher percentage of their clientele are likely to be middle class Guardian readers with an eco-fetish than impoverished Kenyan farmers desperately trying to get the European trading system to let them sell their damn products and really not needing a meme infecting the private sector that makes it even harder for them than it already is."

The Globe's gate

Before last weekend V had only ever visited the Globe Theatre in Second Life.

Having gained considerable experience with wrought iron decorations and other structures over in Antigua (mostly when we were building our house), what most impressed her with the actual exterior of the theatre last Sunday was its iron gate.

This features a whole array of mini-sculptures representing human and animal figures from the plays.

The Mitsubishi 'Wanker'

Spotted this one outside Stringfellows on Friday, appropriately enough.

It's the imported version of the SUV known here as the Shogun and the Montero in Guate

...imported by people that must be blissfully unaware what pajero actually means in Spanish.

Terracotta tenistas

Tenemos estos 3 guerreros de terracotta en la recepción de nuestra oficina esta semana.

A diferencia del ejercito de tales figuras enterrado por el Imperador de Quin en 210 BC estos llevan raquetas y forman parte de un grupo de ocho creados para celebrar la Copa Masters del ATP en Shanghai esta semana. Como tal vez se nota, son Federer, Nadal y Djokovic, supuestamente los mejores tres del 'ATP Race' en 2007, pero tambien los que parecen más agotados en estos ultimos encuentros del año.

Ultima Hora: Se quedaran aqui en GB en Wimbledon hasta que se terminan los campeonatos de 2008 y despues cada uno de los ocho tenistas se llevará su propia efigie a casa. (Claro que Davydenko venderá el suyo en eBay!)

Tottenham Court Road in the 80s

Nothing changes really...

Wahaca and Loco Latino

Talking of Tex-Mex output, the area within lunchtime walking distance of my office has two new Mexican eateries.

First up Wahaca in Chandos Place, which is a phonetic spelling of Oaxaca. They probably didn't do this just because we Londoners are the kind of morons that wouldn't be able to pronounce it properly (rat-a-too-ee), it also kind of makes sense from a Googling perspective too.

Not long ago I went to a Geek-meet with Frode and he looked a little put out when one of the specimens present ventured that Scrubbs, my Norwegian chum's favourite show, was nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is. Well, Wahaca is nowhere near as trendy or as tasty as it thinks it is either.

"Quite good," our Chinese intern Evi politely summarised, and it may not have even made that grade had someone not ordered what is clearly Wahaca's signature dish, the Sonora salad, (see the menu here) which arrives in a bowl with the oleaginous substance of a mutant Kettle chip.

I was also pleased to find some jalapeño seeds in the bar matchboxes. This is a clever response to smoke-free England. They are now in a little pot on my balcony and I will report back on their progress.

The rest of the formula is being violently tugged between an earnest desire to be more authentic and the inauthenticity of international cool. When did 'Mexican market eating' become a lure to anyone that has actually eaten in a Mexican market? And when did you last hear electro-tango tracks played in your local cantina? OK, some of the ingredients show a degree of extra effort, but I'm with AA Gill when he warns his readers off any restaurant where the opening gambit of the serving staff is "Have you been here before?"

Our own notably pushy waiter made a point of informing us that we wouldn't find any Tex-Mex nonsense like fajitas at Wahaca. Oh no. Maybe someone can explain to me why burritos are kosher and fajitas aren't, but I've had some of the best sizzling chicken in the Yucatán, which is quite a way south of El Paso.

What depressed me most about Wahaca was perhaps the realisation that V and I could do better. The idea has mucho mileage, especially when you read this article by la patrona, but they need to start by taking stock of the fact that you can't make a small portion of totopos look yummier by serving them in what looks like a mug without a handle.

In blatantly appealing to the donkey, sombreo and slammer crowd Loco Latino in Romilly Street has opted for the south of the border authenticity of the Mayan Riviera. The comedor ambience would be familiar to anyone that has been to the joint called Los Tacos on the Calzada in La Antigua, run by some of V's cousins: red checked tablecloths, red paper napkins and a bottle of hot sauce on the table. Loco Latino calls itself a bar, but the one inside the restaurant (there's a 'cantina' upstairs which I didn't visit) is the kind you find in East End Balti houses: lots of mirrored glass and bottles that generally don't move off the shelves.

The quesadillas there are a violation of the trades descriptions act, because there is but one, and it arrives bubbling in tomato and oil and looking much like (oval clay bowl notwithstanding) a microwaved Smart Price canneloni. The fajitas sizzled and were very tasty. The tortillas came in a little plastic pot and were a passable compromise between the flour tortillas you can get at your supermarket and the less flimsy corn variety that are the staple of Guatemalan cuisine.

Verdict: This is how to serve quesadillas (i.e. 3 not 2, with something alongside, all on a plate that is just a bit bigger than the dish itself). I still don't agree with AA that there's no such thing as good Mexican nosh. But finding it in London remains a chore. The best of the bad remains La Perla, and if they decide to put half as much effort into composition as Wahaca does, I'll be going back more regularly.

Remember remember...

Tonight is bonfire night in London aka Guy Fawkes night, and boy did I get grief for that every year at prep school.

Is it ethical? asks Spiked with tongue in cheek.

London used to sound like Mogadishu for around two weeks either side of this important date, but the authorities have cracked down on the sale of fireworks over the past couple of years. The best displays are public, though on Sunday I missed out on Surfer's dad's rocket attack on the neighbouring township of Acton, which he likened to the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

St Andrew's, the prep school that borders Herons Farm, had its annual display on Friday night, and as ever it was a traumatic experience for all the horses, my father reported.

I attended the one in Battersea Park on Saturday by positioning myself on the Chelsea Embankment opposite the Buddha and just across from my father's notorious bachelor pad on Cheyne Row. (The clip below mostly comprises of footage I took of the finale.)

El Curando is a great little site for picking up authentic Chapin clobber, such as these wooden effigies of highland saint and sinner Maximón, the closest thing Guatemala has to our Guido, though instead of being roasted every year he is treated to fine cigars and wicked liquor. (They also burn the Devil every December 7.)

We have a friend in La Antigua whose principal collectible obsessions are ducks (feathered and felt) and authentic Maximóns, and it is the latter that makes him bonfire material himself, according to some of the more righteous members of our neighbourhood.

This one looks a bit like Saddam Hussein.

Right, I'm off to sit on my balcony and watch some more luces going up across the whole southern panorama of the capital. It's starting to sound like Somalia out there already. The only snag is that it is considerably colder out tonight than it was on Saturday.

Dolphins v Giants

I'm sure if the two NFL teams facing up to each other at Wembley yesterday had played it like the guys in this amusing clip (forward passes notwithstanding, perhaps not entirely unlike that pub rugby team alluded to by Lawrence Dallaglio in his forthcoming memoirs) then more of the locals watching might have really got into the game!

Oddly though, this 'laterals' lark seems more popular in American college football than in the major league.




Anyway, I think I actually understand American Football better than Rugby, even though the latter was compulsory at my school. I've followed Gridiron on and off since Superbowl IXX which matched up the two greatest quaterbacks of that era, the Dolphins' Dan Marino and the 49-ers' Joe Montana. My uncle lived in Florida and was a Dolphins fan so I kind of inherited the affiliation.

The Dolphins lost comprehensively in '85, and it's something they have been doing a great deal of this year too, with yesterday's encounter, nominally a home game for them, offering no relief. (The 49-ers also got stuffed later on, courtesy of New Orleans.)

Surfer was always a Giants fan. They scored their touchdown yesterday thanks apparently to the muddy and broken up conditions of the Wembley turf, under which a defensive linebacker 'had the turning circle of a transatlantic liner.

Buenos Aires

I had a delicious brunch with Xtofer yesterday at Buenos Aires, a nicely hidden cafe-delicatessen on Royal Hill in Greenwich.

We ate some ham with their delicious fresh bread and a selection of Argie-style empanadas. It's owned by an long-term exile from BA and his British wife and can only be recommended.

A certain Brazilian friend has consistently assured me that Quilmes tastes like piss, and I have to say that he is not wrong...but then Brahma isn't really that much better!

I have created a Flickr set of recent pics from Greenwich here.

Rip offs

The image on the last post (coupled with my readings of Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist) have stimulated memories of V's most persistent moan about London life: if there is one aspect of it that she is more likely to describe as a "rip off" than any other it is the price of eating out.

Her instinct is that menu prices should somehow reflect the underlying costs of the ingredients and the wage-bill. But here in London restaurant bills instead tend to reflect two varieties of scarcity. Firstly the scarcity of location (i.e the underlying rent) and secondly the scarcity that the restauranteur himself wishes to enforce by setting prices that generate the extra value of exclusivity and deter the inherently less profitable budget-conscious class of diners.

This kind of exclusivity is likely to result in higher profits for the owner simply because the patrons that remain undeterred are likely to be the less price-sensitive sort. Once seated at their tables everyone pays the same price for their food...which is why the wine list is there, and why the wines on it are so expensive compared to their wholesale cost. It is the scaled price of alcoholic drinks that allows the even less price-sensitive of diners to self-select, thereby allowing restauranteurs to squeeze the maximum profit from their positions of scarcity by taking more money off people who are freer with their income.

V will tend to regard city life staples such as the Starbucks latte as a total rip-off because she assumes that she is being asked to pay for the coffee and that the high price of even a regular cup means that the chain must be making excessive profits. (Comparing London prices to those in Guatemala will often adds to her sense of outrage!) In fact the beans themselves are a tiny part of the cost that the customer pays for.

Starbucks also charges considerably more for products that involve very small incremental cost increases for exactly the same reason that restaurants offer a wine list with a scale of prices: to allow those people who can't help but throw their money around to step forward and do their thing.

You gotta fight for your right...to party

Some arsehole obviously thought it would be a really good wheeze to throw a corporate 'communist party' on the The Silver Sturgeon last week. Convention dictates that we find this less offensive than the Nazi Reichskriegsflagge. But tot up the number of lives ruined by both systems and it's more or less even-steven.

I'm sure this image would resonate nicely with Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of The Rebel Sell: How the counterculture became consumer culture, which I will be reviewing shortly.

Looking East

Another new exhibition opened at the Collyer Bristow gallery on Wednesday. It features a very high quality selection of works by Vietnamese artists and photographers.

Perhaps the most eye-catching pieces on display are the oil on canvas studies of young − in fact very young − girls by Phuong Quoc Tri. Tellingly, none of these ninfas had made it into the glossy brochure that CB sent out to its client-base promote the private view!

And then there are Nguyen Thanh Binh's umpteen variations on the theme of girls in traditional white costume.

Last year's Autumn show of works by the Brazilian artist Samuel Guimarães was also very memorable. This one runs at 4 Bedford Row until June 28.

Mojigatos and Pocahooters

The prudes were on patrol in London last night. This particular guerrilla action in the name of public decency had only just occurred as I crossed Waterloo Bridge at around 7pm.

The metal figure is by Anthony Gormley, a taster for his Hayward exhbition and one of 30 nude male statues currently causing offence to prigs around the capital.

It's a shame that I can only really share this video with my Portuguese-speaking friends. In it, a raving religious nutjob outlines to a gathering of aspiring religious nutjobs why just about every single Disney character is a really just an insidious cypher for Satanic porno filth.

The funniest parts are where he outs the Lion King, and of course his opening gambit: "If you stop and think and examine carefully the cover of The Little Mermaid [as I have done many times] you will see an erect penis..."

And yes, when you utter the name Pocahontas, you are calling the Devil to your side!

Mayday Mayday

Thanks to DG I learned that today was the 300th anniversary of the UK.

Instead of tricentennial parades, the occasion was marked in the capital of this nation by a number of unrelated and relatively underpopulated street marches. For instead of Morris dancers, here in London we have Hare Krishnas and trustafarian anarchists.

My employers used to have a blue cow stationed menacingly outside our former offices. However, prior to one of those annual glitches in the social order it was decided that there was a significant risk that it would be rustled by a passing anti-globalist. It was duly disappeared into a blue barn and has never since re-emerged. I like to think it had a kinder fate than the one in this picture.

Back in the 1970s when Labour Day was first added to the UK's calendar of public holidays, the headmaster of my school decided that none of his boys would be taking the day off on the workers' holiday. A fine gesture, but not one ultimately supported by the parents, as few of them worked for similarly stuck-up five hundred-year-old institutions. For two years we had to sit in the classroom whilst our relatives sat at home watching the snooker (?) before the old cold warrior finally relented.

Although I have known for several years that my father once dated Clement Atlee's daughter 'Flip' (the matter cropped up after a Xmas party I attended on HMS President, scene of one of their more memorable dates) it wasn't until last weekend that I learned that he used to go for dinner regularly at No10. Back in those days he too was a socialist, though Atlee himself was that much more ahead of him on the path to gentrification that he seriously objected to the venue of one of their other memorable dates: Speakers' Corner.