Sunday 14th October
Barbican, Summer 2006
Saturday 13th October
Obituary Watch: Jacques Vellekoop
'On first sight, he was breathtakingly handsome, so much so that, in his youth, people of both sexes would turn and stare at him as he walked down Bond Street. His vitality that was immediately striking, his speech (with the slightest, not easily defined accent) accentuated by face and hands in constant, vigorous motion.
'All this palled beside what he said, which was pungent, exact, penetrating, occasionally prophetic; but always laughter would keep breaking in....He soon met Anthony Hobson (who) introduced him to Ernst Philipp Goldschmidt, the most learned antiquarian bookseller in London, and in 1948 Vellekoop became Goldschmidt's assistant.
'"I also like to have a distinctly gay and amusing fellow in my office," Goldschmidt wrote to his old friend and former employee Robert Dougan. "I am so often depressed about everything: my own affairs, and the world in general, that the daily encounter with somebody who is thoroughly enjoying himself and 'could not care less' (his favourite expression) is quite good for me."
'"Could not care less" only meant refusing to take rebuffs or difficulties to heart. He did care: for his work, for the customers, and above all for Goldschmidt himself, old and already ailing. When he died in 1954 he left the firm to Vellekoop.
'His retirement was complete, but his enjoyment of life continued, and he went on travelling until a stroke incapacitated him. Countless friends, from all quarters of his life, came to visit him, to be entertained with good food, drink and gossip charmed, insulted, captivated and, as always, made speechless by his undiminished wit.'
(Never married.)
Friday 12th October
Regent's Park, Summer 2007
Thursday 11th October
(Desperate for hits? Moi?)
Wednesday 10th October
Piccadilly Circus, Winter 2007
Tuesday 9th October
I'm indebted, btw, to All in a Day's Work, the cabby-blog I mentioned a few weeks ago, for the revelation of the mystery of The London Nose.
If nothing else, it makes rocketing through Admiralty Arch on the way home at 3am just slightly riveting enough to keep me awake.(Can something be 'slightly riveting'? Probably not.)
I'll let you know if I ever spot it.
Monday 8th October
Wapping, Spring 2006
......previous week
