London Life

 ...still includes the twice monthly Dante Divine Comedy Wednesdays in my flat, which have now entered  their third year. We are somewhere in the first half of the last part, i.e. the Paradiso, which means we are at the beginning of the end. The same faithful group have steadfastly refused to stop, in spite of my sometimes bitter complaining at how dreary it sometimes gets ... That is particularly true of this last part, because it lacks the narrative drive of the Inferno and the Purgatorio, when things actually happened. There is still a journey of sorts going on: Dante is holding on to Beatrice as they travel through the heavenly regions with their lovely names: the Heaven of the Moon, The Heaven of Venus and latterly the Heaven of the Sun. Here they meet various greats, like the shining soul of St. Thomas Aquinas etc. who sheds light on some theological or political concern of Dante's. But there is no doubt that the further they go in their journey towards the ultimate vision of God the more I tend to want it to be over... There are lovely passages as well of course as Dante is attempting to describe something that no human living eye has seen:

"And if imagination cannot run

To heights like these, no wonder, no eye yet

E'er braved a brilliance that outshone the sun, "

And fortunately it is a fun group of friends and we invariably end up having a great evening, discussing everything else between heaven and earth  as we finally sit down for out soup, bread and cheese.

London keeps me busy on other nights too, and there always seems to be some private view, some concert or some event happening. Take last Tuesday for example, when I had been invited to a party in Cavendish Square- a whole building had been stripped bare and was about to be renovated by an architects' firm.  Before they got started they decided to have a party and invite vintage  furniture dealers in in order to exhibit the lovely and oh so happening furniture, lamps and other interior items of mid 20th Scandinavia. There was champagne served  on every floor and a large number of frighteningly trendy people wandering about. I misbehaved again and laid  down on one of the priceless Danish pieces trying to impersonate an odalisque...

Yesterday  was Sunday and a very good one too... because I beat Ralf, my friend from the German Embassy at chess finally and managed to speak relatively comprehensible German all afternoon while I was at it... then Jeremiah joined us for supper and we showed Ralf the Fawlty Tower episode about the Germans which he had never seen... he was gracious enough to laugh and take it in his stride, as it were.
And this week I am wrapping things up again to leave  for Mali at crack of dawn on Saturday...