Lesley Truffle's Blog, page 14

The Perils of Insomnia

 

The Perils of Insomnia

 

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.’

                                                                                                            William Shakespeare

One of the questions that often comes up when talking to other writers about insomnia is, ‘What keeps you awake at night?’

In my case, I find that my brain computates problems for me in the midnight hours. This is tremendously useful when I’ve been working on a manuscript and I’ve gone to bed thinking about a problem in the narrative that needs to be resolved. Suddenly the solution drops into my mind, forcing me to wake up at around 3.00am-5.00am. Scrambling around for pen and paper, I’m usually knocking things over so I can quickly write down the solution. Otherwise by sunrise I’ve forgotten what the hell it was.

One of the funniest occasions was when I’d been working on a fiction manuscript before going to bed. I distinctly heard my main character address me directly at about 4.00am. My eyes snapped open and I was instantly very, very awake. It seemed that Sasha Torte (world famous Tasmanian pâtissier) was furious that I’d misrepresented her. And she demanded I fix it immediately. I went back to sleep feeling chuffed, because it meant she’d taken on a life of her own.

According to researchers, John Peever and Brian J. Murray (Scientific American Mind), our brains are still active even while we sleep. Sleep clears waste from the brain, energizes our cells and plays a role in regulating our appetite mood and libido. It also assists memory and learning.

Shakespeare knew a lot about sleep, especially insomnia. I suspect he was often awake in the midnight hours. The Bard often alluded to the fact that sleep is crucial to our wellbeing; a nourishing sleep is essential for restoring both body and mind. And while we sleep the brain sorts out our tangled thoughts and soothes us.

In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s guilt about Duncan’s murder escalates to the point where rabid insomnia gets her by the throat. Hallucinations and nightmares haunt her, she obsessively washes her hands, becomes irrational, rants, raves, cannot bear to be alone and sleepwalks.

In 1904 Sir James Sawyer M.D. of Birmingham published a small book titled ‘Insomnia: It’s Causes and Cure.’ He was a serious gentlemen with a penetrative gaze – that’s our physician in the portrait above.

Sawyer makes several suggestions about curing insomnia. He firmly believed in fresh air, sunshine, exercise, gardening, fencing with foils, reducing work overload and the soporific benefits of alcohol, morphine, chloral hydrate and opium. Oooh, yes please.

He did however state that the physician should, ‘Never allow the patient to dose himself with hypnotics. Keep the matter quite within your own secure hands.’

How that worked out for him we’ll never know.

The chopping up of one’s firewood – as did Archbishop Whately – was also highly recommended as a cure for insomnia. I immediately pictured the Archbishop in his vestments, madly splitting logs at 3.00am and enduring the righteous wrath of his neighbours.

Sawyer also held that there was nothing like fresh cold air in the bedroom to aid one’s slumbers. A thermometer should be used and it was advisable to keep a thermometric register to get your bedding temperature just right. He then went further and stated that there was nothing like a good sousing of one’s neck, head and hands in icy cold water to induce sleep.

I suspect Sawyer had very meek, obedient patients who never objected to his harsh treatments:  ‘The patient’s self-control, loyal cooperation, and obedience to your directions are essential to your curing the case.’

In closing, Sawyer noted approvingly that Charles Dickens successfully came up with a cure for his insomnia. Dickens would get up out of his cosy bed and stand around getting nice and chilly, while also exposing his sheets and blankets to London’s cold night air.

Each to their own I guess!

‘Nighty night,

Sleep tight,

Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’

 

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: signed 1904 portrait of Sir James Sawyer M.D. Senior consulting physician to the Queen’s Hospital Birmingham England.

 

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Is Paris burning

Is Paris Burning?

 

Shortly before Paris was liberated by the Allies in August 1944, Adolf Hitler ordered that the City of Light had to be destroyed. It’s been claimed that the German army placed explosives in readiness around transportation areas, under bridges and around famous monuments and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower. It was also claimed that Hitler sent several angry dispatches from Berlin demanding – ‘Is Paris burning?’

The last Nazi commander of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, stated that he was personally responsible for saving Paris from obliteration, because he’d disobeyed Hitler’s orders.  However, several French historians have discredited the general and insist that it was the French Resistance and the Allies who saved Paris.

The controversy has never been resolved and General Dietrich von Choltitz’s son, Timo, informed The Telegraph in 2002, ‘If he saved only Notre Dame, that would be enough reason for the French to be grateful.’

The telling thing about this statement is that the magnificent 850 year-old Notre-Dame Cathedral – built on an island on the Seine – is perceived to be the heart and soul of Paris. Following the fire of 16 April 2019, the French President Emmanuel Macron stated, ‘Like all our compatriots, I am sad this evening to see this part of us burning.‘

Fortunately no lives were lost and most artefacts, art and holy relics were rescued by a human chain of firefighters aided by officials, a Reverend, church caretakers and the chaplain of the Paris Fire Brigade. As the fire was being fought Parisians wept, prayed on their knees, sang hymns or stared fixedly at Notre-Dame in stunned silence.

Notre-Dame known as Our Lady of Paris, has been a source of inspiration, controversy and mystery ever since the first stone was laid in 1163. The initial construction  was completed in 1345 but the famous Notre-Dame gargoyles were not installed until 1831.

The first time I visited Notre-Dame on the Ile de la Citè, it wasn’t the flying buttresses, the 13th century stained glass masterpieces or the sublime beauty of the church that transfixed me. It was the French Gothic architecture and the extraordinary gargoyles.

Gargoyles were part of my childhood. My European mother treasured the gargoyles she’d purchased in Paris on her honeymoon. We had gargoyles looming at us from the bookshelves and a larger gargoyle – gnawing on a human shin bone – dangling a mellow light over the fireplace. It was their bulging eyes that killed me – I suspected that they knew what I was thinking.

Seeing the real Notre-Dame gargoyles transfixed me and once again their knowingness unnerved me. Gargoyles can appear frightening because they are monsters, wild beasts and fantastical creatures. Many folk believe that the function of gargoyles is to keep evil forces and demons away from the church and to protect its sanctity.

Not all of the fantastical Notre-Dame creatures are called gargoyles. Some are chimera or grotesques depending on their purpose. Many are functional as well as decorative and they drain away rainwater, thereby protecting the stone walls from damage.

The fire at Notre-Dame shocked the world but there’s talk about rebuilding and restoration and philanthropists are already offering generous bequests. Admittedly it will take years, but Our Lady of Paris will again rise up to become the cultural centrepiece in the oldest part of Paris.

by Lesley Truffle

Image above: detail from Victor Hugo’s, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, illustration by Luc-Olivier Merson 1881. The laconic gargoyles seem to be observing the male figure desperately clinging to the building.

 

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Easy Rider

 

Easy Rider

‘You watch the white line and try to lean with it  . . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica . . . letting off now watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge …’                                                          

Hunter S. Thompson. ‘ Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs’.

 

Hunter S. Thompson rode with the Hell’s Angels for a year and his book title gives a fairly clear indication of what went down. When he voiced his disgust over an Angel’s member beating up a woman, he was set upon by several Angels and given a vicious ‘stomping’.

Motorbikes have always exercised a strange fascination. Part of their charisma is that folk such as: Marlon Brando, James Dean, Peter Fonda (Easy Rider movie) and the eternally cool Steve McQueen (above) had a thing for motorbikes.

Today – with the exception of Pink, Cher and a few other women who ride motorbikes – the field is dominated by men. So we have Bear Grylls, Bradley Cooper, David Beckham and Ewan McGregor regularly photographed astride their macho/vintage motorbikes.

Living bayside, I’m aware of the city’s night sounds. Sometimes there will be a solo bird winging home late and cackling to himself, a tram rumbling past on its last run, police choppers circling overhead, or cop car sirens waking everyone up as they scream down the road.

Frequently in the midnight hours, there’s also the racket generated by a pack of bikies having their own private Grand Prix around the lake. Only the black swans know for sure who they are, but locals whisper that they come from a bikies clubhouse nearby.

Of course there are many motorbike groups who are composed of sober citizens who simply like to ride. In my neighbourhood, the most visible group are the mature gentlemen who ride their motorbikes on a Saturday morning down the beach esplanade and then crowd out the French patisserie.

With their pots of tea and warm croissants they’re in stark contrast to HST’s Hell’s Angels. For one thing, they have no truck with vintage bikes such as ear shattering Harleys or throbbing, heavy-duty Kawasakis. Instead their pleasure machines of choice are recent model, luxurious BMW motorbikes.

A Ducati owner of my acquaintance got quite heated. ‘Those fancy BMW motorbikes with their tinted shields, heated padded seats, navigation systems, phone rechargers, warmed up grips and piped music … that’s not riding a motorbike, that’s cruising in a fucking armchair!’

I used to ride a motorbike until I was wiped out in a road accident when a doped-up driver failed to give way to me. I knew I’d used up all my cat’s nine lives in one go, so I didn’t replace my motorbike which had been pulverized. I was lucky because the force of the impact sent me over the car bonnet.

Prior to owning a motorbike I used to ride pillion with a bunch of university chums who were partial to cumbersome old Kawasakis, Nortons, Triumphs and Harleys of the loud variety. Riding pillion for long distances was a tad cramped because I had to sit with my knees raised above the hot metal of the naked exhaust. So I learnt to stretch my legs at red lights by planting my legs on the road and standing up – while  still hovering above the pillion seat.

I got caught out one night when we were on our way to the trendy end of town for what my buddies called a ‘food fix’. So there I was doing my leg stretch when the red lights changed to green and the motorbike screeched off –  leaving me behind, on the road in my bow-legged cowboy stance.

I was laughing so hard that I nearly got run over by the cars behind. I knew my bikie chums were mortified. They had to cruise the entire street just to execute a U-turn and then come back and retrieve me – watched by sneering hipsters.

The guys I rode with were kitted up in vintage metal headgear or sinister full-face helmets, black leather bikie jackets and black bovver boots. It was the boot of choice for skinheads, university Marxists, Chardonnay Socialists and those who were partial to a little argy-bargy. Often bovver boots were fitted with steel capped toes.

It was comedic when I got invited to posh pool parties and discovered that many of these ‘born to be wild’ bikies were being bankrolled by their uber rich, conservative parents.

As Chuck Berry put it, ‘C’est la vie”, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.’

 

by Lesley Truffle

 

Photograph: Actor Steve McQueen rode and raced motorbikes.  Vintage Indians, the Husqvarna 405 and Triumph TR6’s were among  his favourites. Before his acting career took off, he worked as a mechanic in a NY motorbike repair shop.

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Peel Me a Grape

Peel Me a Grape

Hollywood legend Mae West liked her men distinctly masculine. Her taste veered towards wrestlers, boxers, prize fighters, gangsters and musclemen. At 61 she took up with Mr California, Paul Novak, who was thirty years younger. He was one of the musclemen in her stage show at the time and he remained loyal right up until her death in 1980 at the age of 87. Novak adored Mae and was quoted as saying, ‘I believe I was put on this earth to take care of Mae West.’

An earlier boyfriend, William Jones, was a champion boxer. May was appalled when Jones was barred from entering her Ravenswood apartment by management – on the grounds he was an African American. So she solved the problem by buying the whole damned block and changing the rules. Mae slept with whoever she wanted and got away with it – in an era where women were expected to be fragile, ladylike and obedient. ‘When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before.’

Unlike her friend, the sensational Marlene Dietrich, Mae didn’t drink or smoke in real life – but she did believe in the power of positive thinking and regular colonics. She enjoyed upsetting conservative folk with her wickedly funny quips. A late-night TV interview was withdrawn after she blithely commented about the large mirror positioned directly above her bed, ‘I like to see how I’m doing.’

In many ways Mae was ahead of her time, she was a free spirited, liberated woman who was open about sex. In most of her films she played the confident woman who used her feminine wiles to get her own way. ‘Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I’m tired.’

Mae never did nudity on film and she didn’t even expose much skin. Flamboyant hats, long, lean skirts and high platform shoes were her thing.  She loved big things – large cars, muscle bound men, capacious beds in the shape of swans, voluminous drapery, huge white furs and ostentatious wide-brimmed hats.

Salvador Dali venerated Mae West and he created several art pieces including a plump cherry-red sofa in the shape of her lips in 1938. Years later he designed the Mae West Room; an art installation which was a surreal recreation of her face. Her flared nostrils became a golden fireplace and her eyes were formed by two abstract paintings.

Mae came late to films at 40 after starting out on the stage in vaudeville shows as a child. Much of her skill as a comedian came from spending years finessing her comic timing and testing the boundaries with her clever sexual innuendos. Somehow she always managed to keep it classy.

Her play titled ‘Sex’ was lacerated by theatre critics but it became a raging box office success. Mae characterized a boisterous, tough broad with a nasal Brooklyn accent. ‘A hard man is good to find.’ She was arrested and charged with corrupting the morals of youth. She then had to choose between being jailed for ten days on Welfare Island or pay a fine.

Mae chose jail because it provided free publicity and sharpened the public appetite for her special brand of salacious humour. She coolly informed the press that she’d been allowed to retain her silk panties instead of the prison issue underpants made of coarse canvas. Mae also dined with the warden and his wife and got off two days earlier for ‘good behaviour’.

When Mae moved to Hollywood she not only acted in movies but she also wrote filmscripts, playscripts and performed in Las Vegas and the UK. Years later she appeared on television and recorded albums. One of her albums was titled, ‘Peel Me a Grape.’ American writer Scott Fitzgerald thoroughly approved of her and noted she was, ‘the only Hollywood actress with both an ironic edge and a comic spark’.

Her trajectory upwards was rapid and she cleverly invested her money in property and land which meant her future wealth was assured. She also produced her own stage shows and retained control of her material. Subsequently by 1935 Mae West was one of the wealthiest women in the USA. Unlike other famous actresses of the era, such Marlene Dietrich, she would not have the misfortune to find herself impoverished and distressed in old age.

Mae West made her last film ‘Sextette’ when she was 85.  As she quipped, ‘You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.’

by Lesley Truffle

Image above: Hollywood publicity photograph, Mae West.

 

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Melbourne Tram Devotees

 

 

 

Melbourne Tram Devotees

Melbourne’s denizens love to moan about public transport. It was recently noted in the press that currently we have the largest network of trams in the world – yet we still have no train line out to Melbourne airport.

Whenever train and tram seating gets a makeover, there’s inevitably a good deal of public judgement and scathing reviews. Seat cover designers endeavour to produce a pattern that disguises wear, tear and coffee spillage. But the disconnect between functionality and style inevitably leads to public complaints about garish colouring and squiggle patterning.

Despite the discord, there exists one particular group who are dead keen on public transport. And they proudly sport the seat cover designs on specially made T-shirts and windcheaters. They call themselves NUMTOTs – New Urbanist Memes for Transit Orientated Teens. The Melbourne group are very active on social media and they’ve gained a large following.

Last year when Prince Harry and his fiancée visited Melbourne, they were treated to a short tram ride up Albert Park’s main street to the city beachfront. Harry and Meghan then alighted to walk on the wet sand for a few minutes, do a meet-and-greet and gaze out across Port Phillip Bay at the West Gate Bridge and the gloomy docklands on the other side. It’s much more delightful when lit up at night.

The royal visit required maximum security and by the time all the schoolkids had lined up behind the metal barriers with their parents, locals and loitering passer-by’s there wasn’t much room to manoeuvre. Several local ladies paid homage to Harry’s grandma – Her Majesty the Queen – by wearing hats, gloves, stockings and floral frocks. Seated at outdoor tables next to the tram stop,  Ladies who lunch slurped down Sake and succulent noodles at the Japanese restaurant while waiting for the Prince. There was considerable hilarity all round.

The best view was possessed by a bunch of urban hipsters, leaning over a crumbling balcony situated above the tram stop. Clutching champagne glasses and dressed in glittery retro outfits, they gyrated to 70’s disco music modestly amplified to suit the occasion. Locals craned their necks upwards and there was some restrained toe tapping in the crowd below.

The back streets were bumper to bumper with security vehicles and marked and unmarked police cars. Then just moments before the Prince arrived, they all converged on the tram stop. Quelle excitement! There were two trams – the same model in the photograph above – except both trams had been groomed to the max. The upholstery had been revived, graffiti removed, scratched glass replaced, floor coverings refurbished and all the paintwork resprayed. A trio of ladies who lunch loudly debated why a pair of Melbourne’s vintage W-class trams hadn’t been tizzied up for the grand occasion. Others nodded in fierce agreement.

However, any NUMTOTs present would have been thrilled by the trams  makeover. But time has passed, the trams have lost their gleam and it’s now business as usual.

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph:  Current décor on Melbourne’s trams. The impish green upholstery has been artfully reproduced on T-shirts worn proudly by Melbourne’s NUMTOTs.

 

 

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On Being Fabulous

 

 

On Being Fabulous

 

Two nights ago I attended Madison Moore’s performative presentation at the National Art Gallery, Melbourne. Madison began his lecture dressed casually in gym gear but while talking about his influences growing up and how it felt to be marginalised, he slowly began a transformation.

Madison began by cutting and tearing up his white singlet so that it resembled a dance costume. While he was chatting and snipping away behind his back, I worried that he might cut himself – but it became obvious that this is a man who knows what he’s doing.

He applied coco butter, dark lipstick and slid into a glamorous, slinky, black sequinned catsuit. Madison cheerfully informed us that he’d bought three catsuits in LA the night before. He simply had to have them. And for those with enquiring minds – yes, Madison Moore is irresistibly fabulous!

At the end of his presentation Madison played Sylvester’s 1978 nightclub track on the big screen, You Make Me Feel Mighty Real. Everyone was encouraged to dance in the aisles and they did. En masse. No inhibitions. Not one person remained seated. And Madison was among us, jiving, laughing and sprinkling us with fabulousness.

Dr Madison Moore is a cultural critic, pop culture scholar, DJ, queer advocate and an academic at the Virginia Commonwealth University. He writes for various publications and academic journals about queerness, gender studies, fashion, sound, contemporary art and visual culture. Madison has also presented an inspiring TED talk: Communicating Brooklyn Style. For under all the sequins, Madison Moore is a serious person who loves veering from the polar opposites of frivolity to intellectual matters. With a few humorous asides in between.

In 2018 he published his first book, ‘Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric.’ He theorized that fabulousness can become a radical aesthetic practice: a form of cultural criticism that empowers those who’ve been marginalised.

‘It’s about making a spectacle of oneself in a world that seeks to repress and undervalue fabulous people.’

Madison was raised in St Louis County, Missouri USA, before moving to New York. Among his black role models were Prince, Lenny Kravitz, Little Richard, Grace Jones and Josephine Baker. He spoke about Josephine Baker’s highly successful career in Paris. But despite having her name on the glittering awning out front, being a black woman she was expected to enter the theatre from the back entrance.

Raised by his grandmother, Madison was deeply impressed by his flamboyant Aunt Mildred who always dressed beautifully. The family would teasingly ask her, ‘Where are you going, Mildred?’

However, it wasn’t all frivolity and style, as young Madison was spending six to eight hours a day practising his violin in order to become a classical violinist.

Inspired by Prince’s opulent stage costumes, the adolescent Madison began dressing more flamboyantly. But he couldn’t understand why – when the local lads wanted to bully and denigrate him – they sneeringly called him ‘Prince’. Everybody in Madison’s family loved Prince, including his grandmother. So how could being likened to Prince be an insult?

In an interview, Madison stated that we all have a lot to unlearn. ‘It’s a collective process. We have to unlearn white-supremacy, unlearn misogyny, unlearn tran-misogyny and unlearn biases so we can get on with life and be who we are.’

Photograph: Book cover Madison Moore ‘Fabulous The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric’. Yale University Press 2018.

 

 

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Devilish Desires

 

Devilish Desires

 

I’ve just re-read Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Grey, and it has dazzled me yet again. My favourite line is, ‘The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.’

The characters throw themselves around dramatically and they rarely ever sit quietly. They fling themselves at the furniture with abandon and sigh heavily. They’re frequently drinking something sublime or noshing on delectable morsels that are ferried about on silver platters by obsequious servants.

Emotions are deep and operatic and there’s no long journeys or tedious parties for us to endure. Decors are vibrant and salubrious and you know deep down in your wicked little heart that everybody is going to end up in tears.

Wilde was educated at Trinity College Dublin and also at Oxford. He excelled as a classicist and was fluent in French and German. Even as a youth he was known for his clever wit, outrageous dress sense, bons mots and engaging, brilliant conversation. After university he moved easily amongst London’s most fashionable and cultural cliques. He collected art objects and fine porcelein and once remarked, ‘I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.’

First published in 1890, Wilde’s only novel caused a scandal. It’s principally about Dorian Grey’s moral disintegration and the risks of promiscuous reading. Dorian buys multiple copies of a book – bound in different colours to suit his mood – and it’s this decadent novel that sets him on the primrose path to Hell.

Wilde wrote, ‘Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception of the beautiful.’

Wilde was vilified for what was perceived as his novel’s corrupting influence. This seems bizarre now, given we live in savage Trumpian times.

In the preface Wilde wrote: ‘Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art … All art is at once surface and symbol … Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril … All art is quite useless.’

Whether Wilde sincerely believed all art is ‘quite useless’ can only ever be conjecture. He spent his life creating works of literature, fairy tales and plays that have endured for well over a century.

Wilde went well ‘beneath the surface’ and was  vilified and broken on a wheel while incarcerated in Britain’s Reading Goal 1895-1897. His criminal conviction was for homosexual practices, but had he lived in a different era this would never happened. He died destitute in Paris at 46 and was laid to rest in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

In 2017 Wilde and about 50,000 other men were pardoned for homosexual acts that were no longer considered offences under the Policing and Crime Act of 2017.

Back to the novel. While having his portrait painted, young Dorian Grey – a youth of delectable, irresistible beauty, an Adonis, indeed a Narcissus – is seduced by the bohemian ideals of Lord Henry. Basil Hallward is the painter of Dorian’s portrait and he is the person who intuits the tragedy about to happen.

Henry Wotton is the snake in the garden of Eden who dangles revolutionary ideas in front of Dorian’s nose and seduces him into thinking that libertinism and unchecked hedonism will give him everything he could ever wish for.

Does this work out the way Dorian hopes? Don’t be silly, of course it doesn’t! But I can’t reveal more because you have to read it for yourself and I don’t want to spoil it for you.

As Oscar Wilde put it in a letter – ‘Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks of me: Dorian what I would like to be …’

 

Photograph: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde photographed in a very louche pose by Napoleon Sarony in 1882. Oscar liked to be depicted in languid poses but in actual fact he worked exceeding hard.

 

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We all dress for Bill

We all dress for Bill

 

I never met the New York Times photographer William J. Cunningham but he was definitely one of my most favourite people. Wearing his trademark blue French workman’s jacket, Bill Cunningham peddled around New York on his bicycle, taking photographs of street fashion for his On the Street column.

Bill’s favourite place to photograph was the corner of 57th Street and 5th Avenue. He took all the photographs, wrote up his columns and directed the layout of On the Street. His take on fashion was that clothes were the armour you put on to survive the harsh reality of daily living.

In order to ‘never be owned’ he lived very simply. ‘I don’t have charge cards, I do away with what weighs people down.’  He sometimes forgot to cash his pay checks if there was nothing he thought he needed. Money didn’t interest him and he slept on a small cot bed, alongside his filing cabinets crammed with his photographic archives. His modest wardrobe hung off the filing cabinets on wire coat hangers.

Bill freelanced until the day that he and his bicycle collided with a large truck. While recovering, he decided to accept the New York Times job on offer – only because he’d have access to medical insurance. His search for the sublime and exquisite didn’t extend to celebrities who ‘don’t pay for their own clothes.’ He preferred to photograph women who dressed themselves and bought their clothes with their own money. He once said, ‘I go out onto the streets and let the streets speak to me. It’s more honest.’

Bill cared deeply about the folk he photographed and selected the image that showed them at their very best. With his toothy grin, boyish enthusiasm and energy to burn he was especially appreciated by those who spoke his language. As Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour put it, ‘Everyone dresses for Bill.’

Apart from photographing fashion on New York’s streets, Bill photographed and interviewed friends and NY legends: the spectacular Kenny Kenny, the self-styled dandy Patrick McDonald, Tom Wolfe, American banker David Rockefeller and French Vogue’s former editor-in-chief, Carine Roitfeld. Bill adored Carine, and revelled in her sublime taste, creativity and style. On his death in 2016 she wrote, ‘Another legend left! … You inspired all of us. Goodbye Mister Cunningham.’

Bill worked from eight in the morning until about midnight. Most evenings he was out at fashion events for his Evening Hours column. Fame found him but he had no time for it. For eight years he refused to let two filmmakers make a film about him. Eventually he relented and the film, Bill Cunningham New York opened to rave reviews. On the night of the NY premiere he arrived, photographed the fashionistas in attendance and quickly left for another social event before the film had even started.

In 2018 his book, Fashion Climbing: A New York Life was published. He tells about his earlier days as one of the most celebrated mid-century hat designers, creating fabulous hats for society belles, working women and ladies who lunched.

Bill’s book dwells on the fun and perils of extreme creativity, his love of beautiful things, ready wear design and high couture. His sense of joy is there on every page. I particularly loved the tales about how he created his stylish hats and transformed his hat salons into exotic temples of flamboyant beauty.

One stinking hot summer he was creating his outrageous straw beach hats that had to be moulded while wet. His studio morphed into a sweat box, so he sat in a cold-water bath all day, feverishly transforming the straw into strange ocean creatures. Every time the phone rang he leapt out of the bath, streaming water everywhere as he rushed to answer. It was worth it – his unique, witty sunhats were much sought after by beachgoers and fancy-dress party goers.

Bill’s shop at Southampton was a diabolical success and an outrage to conservative sensibilities. Three arrogant, moneyed matrons – from the restricted beach club – descended on him one day to bully him and haughtily inform him that his shop ‘with its vulgar uninhibited designs was the cause of an influx of prostitutes.’

And how did Bill react? ‘I was astonished and nearly died laughing.’

Nobody ordered William J. Cunningham around. He never compromised and lived his entire life in the belief that, ‘Money is the cheapest liberty and freedom is the most expensive.’

Photograph: That’s Bill on the left – wickedly grinning and clearly amused by the shenanigans going down at a New York fashion event. Cover of Bill Cunningham’s book, Fashion Climbing: A New York Life.

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Fishy Tales

 

Fishy Tales

 

Your average goldfish has been known to live up to 40 years or older – if they’re lucky. Unfortunately domestic tanks are not conducive to longevity in goldfish. And then of course there’s all manner of predators both domestic and feral.

It was reported recently that a British woman, Tanya, had been madly plastering up lost pet posters in Swindon. Her lost pet is Dave, nicknamed Davo and he’s a five-year-old goldfish. Tanya is quite sure that her two dogs are not responsible for the disappearance of Dave – because the fish tank has a lid on it.

A couple of cyclists organized a twenty-mile bike ride to check the nearby rivers for Davo. Meantime Tanya told the local paper, ‘I’ve emptied the filter, moved all the stones in the tank. I’ve checked all around the kitchen, checked under the counters.’

Tanya believes that the three remaining fish are despondent and one might be severely depressed. Some cynical journalists have suggested this lot are probably the guilty party.

One can’t help wonder – are the surviving trio suffering from indigestion rather than depression? After all, the mystery of Davo’s disappearance remains unsolved – and to date no body has been found.

The first theatre piece that I wrote, involved a character named Alphonse. He was a most attractive goldfish with bulbous eyes. When The Australia Council for the Arts provided me with a rehearsed reading, a director and professional actors, I decided Alphonse should appear on stage too.

It was high summer and the day of the reading was fiendishly hot.  I went down to my local pet store and purchased a large male goldfish. Then I panicked as we drove across town to the playhouse. I imagined all kinds of ghastly scenarios – the plastic bag pumped with air bursting, a car crash detaining our arrival and Alphonse dying from stress or heat stroke.

All went well and the air conditioning at the playhouse was superb. Alphonse was quickly decanted into a cool round glass bowl for the evening’s performance. He was frisky and seemed quite the extrovert.

My friend John, who’d provided the bowl, tried to soothe my nerves by whispering in my ear, ‘Don’t worry, darling. Even if they absolutely hate your play, they’re going to love my fishbowl.’

While we waited for the audience to be seated, John confided that the fishbowl was a survivor from his divorce. Apparently the marvellous thing about glass and crystal wedding presents, is that the divorcing couple have a cupboard of breakables on hand. These can then be smashed dramatically during the ongoing hostilities.

Initially I thought there was trouble looming. The lead actress got half-cut on wine before and during her performance. At rehearsals, I’d worried that she might be too placid and self-possessed for the role, but she ripped into her lines – while tossing back more wine – and did brilliantly. Meantime Alphonse circled lazily in the fishbowl, eyeballing her approvingly and his performance was faultless.

We had a party afterwards to celebrate and everyone fussed over Alphonse and murmured sweet nothings into his bowl. At the end of the evening, he was transferred into a waiting jar and transported to his new home by a couple of my friends. They’d installed an upmarket fishpond and already had several goldfish in residence. But for unknown reasons the goldfish had failed to breed.

I heard nothing about Alphonse for weeks. Then I got a phone call from my friends – all very excited – reporting that they’d discovered scores of tiny new goldfish hiding in the pond. It turned out that Alphonse was an unrepentant libertine who’d wasted no time in making amorous overtures to the female goldfish and chasing them around.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Alphonse’s star performance had increased his self-confidence and emboldened him to take on a fishpond full of female fish.

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: by Benson Kua 2008 – featuring Lippy, his pet goldfish.

 

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There’s Something About Henry

                                                    

There’s Something About Henry

 

King Henry the Eighth received bad press for centuries and Shakespeare along with later writers and playwrights got in on the act. Henry’s life fascinated everybody. He married six wives and distinguished himself by divorcing/annulling two wives and cruelly executing another two. His first wife died in childbirth and the last managed to outlive him. Who knows what would have happened to clever Catherine Parr if Henry had lived long enough to tire of her.

Subsequently Henry well and truly earned his way onto the list of, Famous Men Who Behaved Badly. And when the twentieth century swung by, it was an easy transition to portray him on film as being a barbarian with swinish manners.

In the 1933 British film, The Private Life of Henry, he was played by actor Charles Laughton, a big-bellied chap who bellowed most of his lines (photo above). The film is a plush, sixteenth century costume comedy-drama. The Tudor aristocracy are swathed in gorgeous furs, satins and an excessive amount of richly embellished velvets, pearls and precious stones.

The actors emote in posh English voices and the genre of the film is established in the first scene as being a satirical bedroom farce. One of the running gags, is the requirement for the Ladies of the Chamber to embroider the latest consort’s initials on the King’s pillows, as quickly as he changes wives.

In the opening scenes, a beautiful Lady of the Chamber suggestively strokes Henry’s sheets and bemoans the fact that she hasn’t yet been bedded by the King. This ensures that the viewers know that we aren’t about to be bored witless with historical fact. And because the cheeky young minx speaks in the dulcet tones of an aristocrat, the smuttiness of her actions is accentuated for comedic effect.

Henry the Eighth is portrayed as an obese, womanizing, glutton who delights in hurling chicken bones at his courtiers and splattering them with gobfuls of food and wine. In one scene while dining with the nobles, Henry smashes a greasy chicken with his chubby fist, crams a huge chicken drumstick into his gob and speaks with his mouth full. Courtiers have to duck his spittle.

Innuendo and lasciviousness are laid on with a spade and Henry doesn’t sit – he sprawls, displaying his manly assets. It has been documented that Henry shamelessly helped himself to many noble ladies and accordingly his mistresses feature in Korda’s film.

Such vulgarity did not go unrewarded, and The Private Life of Henry was a massive hit, especially in the USA. It made Merle Oberon and the other leading actors famous and bought them to the attention of Hollywood.

Tudor history, the Protestant Reformation and politics were largely ignored in favour of Henry’s love life and artistic license encouraged the scriptwriters to play fast and loose with the facts. But historians have revealed that although Henry ended his days with a 52-inch waist, in his youth he was an Adonis.

Henry became a King before he was eighteen. In his youth he was considered to be the most handsome prince in the whole of Europe. He was also a writer and a composer. Tall at over six foot, lean and physically well favoured with the obsessions of a competitive jock, there was nothing to suggest he would suffer ill health or become obese.

Several serious illnesses and sporting injuries slowed him down, and Henry fattened up on the rich Tudor diet. As the old adage goes, ‘Karma has no menu, everyone gets their just desserts.’

A freak jousting accident when he was forty-five, resulted in Henry being crushed under his stallion while wearing excessively heavy armour. He was unconscious for two hours and some historians believe that the accident caused frontal lobe brain damage and made his leg ulcers increasingly painful.

Once he was no longer burning up the calories jousting, dancing, brawling, hunting and fucking, Henry’s dietary habits ensured he became more than just robust.

Apparently, three quarters of the Tudor’s diet was comprised of meat. Meals were a flagrant display of power and exotic foods were a key signifier of extreme wealth. Henry had a massive ego to sustain and his wealth provided the means to impress not just his court and subjects, but also the many foreign dignitaries who came to visit.

Up to 800 courtiers usually accompanied Henry and they all had to be fed. Plant foods were not crowd pleasers, but bread, pastries, sweet desserts, oxens, deers, calves, venison, pigs and wild boar were featured on the menu. Chickens, pigeons, sparrows, swans, larks, cocks and plovers were also immensely popular. The nobility had a thing for roast peacocks and Henry indulged himself at every given opportunity.

Exotic foodstuffs whispered of high status. The variety of food at Henry’s court was gobsmacking: citrus fruits, almonds, Mediterranean olive oil, sugar from Cyprus and spices from India all made their way into Henry’s private kitchen.

Only the King had the privilege of eating with a fork and that was mainly so that he could get stuck into his favourite sweet preserves. Although Henry was a first-rate glutton, contemporary witnesses wrote that he dined in an elegant manner and washed his hands before and during his feasts.

Henry never gave up hunting. Despite chronic ill health and his enormous girth he continued to go after the wildlife. Initially he had to be levered up onto his horse but towards the end of his life, he had the deer herded towards him so he could kill them at close range. How this activity passed for hunting, is as difficult to comprehend as the cold-blooded executions of his wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

Henry died in 1547 at Whitehall Palace London, at the age of fifty-five. It’s believed he died of natural causes exacerbated by exceedingly poor health.

‘I swear again, I would not be a quee n

For all the world.’

(Anne Boleyn before she made the fatal mistake of becoming one of Henry’s wives).

from William Shakespeare’s, The Life of King Henry the Eighth.

 

by Lesley Truffle

Photograph: Henry the Eighth (Charles Laughton) gobbling up the delectable Binnie Barnes. Alexander Korda’s 1933 film, ‘The Private Life of Henry’.

                                              

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