It was a great afternoon and evening out, a relaxing walk around the gorgeous grounds of Glyndebourne before an exhilarating burst of Bizet, Carmen - first performed at the Comique Opera in Paris in 1875 but here presented by a cast wearing the clothing of 2024. I also found space at my latest Salut! Life post at Substack for one pop at Keir Starmer (his "make Brexit work" drivel appals me), another at Nigel Farage and warm praise for Killian Mbappe's call to French youth to reject extremism (by which he meant the far right) ...
Decades have passed since I last walked into a branch of Moss Bros and hired a dinner jacket and bow tie. As a lowly reporter covering a Lord Mayor’s banquet in the City of London, this not only enabled me to feel at ease with the assembled bigwigs but was a prerequisite of being there at all.
If I remember correctly, the Press Association reimbursed the fee or, if its reporter owned his own DJ (I don’t recall female colleagues being assigned to such occasions), paid for subsequent dry cleaning.
In recent years, effectively since 2004 when The Daily Telegraph sent me to Paris, wearing any tie has become a rarity. One later office-based job, in Abu Dhabi, saw me in smart clothing, jacket, trousers and shirt, each day but like most of the men, I went tieless.
Somewhere, however, I still have a bow tie, a black tie for funerals, an SAS tie (wholly unearned; its provenance is another story) and assorted M&S-standard specimens for common use.
For my first visit to the magnificent grounds and opera house of Glyndebourne, I utterly failed to observe the dress code.
Everywhere I looked, strolling around the lake, pausing in the bar or seated for dinner, the men were resplendent in their immaculate DJs, pressed white shirts and sleek black trousers. I wore a dark grey jacket, faintly striped shirt, maroon tie and summery beige trousers.
And at Glyndebourne, that’s dressing down. On the few occasions I passed a man in similarly smart but casual wear, I felt like shouting “snap”. I’ll know if there’s a next time; one man told me he’d fitted himself out in a charity shop.
The real raison d’être, of course, was the opera. We caught an enthralling Carmen, no less impressive because the cast wore modern costumes. Everyone from the street urchins to Carmencita herself - the splendid Rihab Chaieb - excelled and the orchestra, energetically conducted by Robin Ticciati, played exquisitely.
If there’s next time? Tickets are not cheap but look around at what people pay for a Taylor Swift concert or visit to Glastonbury and, given the sumptuous setting and overall pleasure of the experience, Glyndebourne feels fair value for money.
A former colleague, Carole Dawson Young, posted these fascinating reminiscences at Facebook in response to my photos from Glyndebourne:
Glyndebourne was an annual treat and family tradition for my late husband, James.
He had first been taken there, as a guest, by an uncle at the age of 14. Before even leaving the opera house, having immensely enjoyed the experience, he put his name down on the waiting list to become a member.
James promptly forgot all about it but, 10 years later, received a notification that he could now take up his membership request. He did so and went every year thereafter for half a century.
We used to take a picnic which we ate, in a fairly modest manner, on a rug. Some people, however, had their dinner provisions conveyed from car to smartly laid table (complete with candelabra) by chauffeur.
Yes, Carole, I can easily visualise the erudite and urbane James at Glyndebourne, properly attired. If I make it back there, I’ll hire a DJ and drink a toast to his memory.
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Killian Mbappé: to suffer two bloody noses in one day suggests carelessness.
But France’s brilliant No 10 - surely Sunderland could push the boat out and sign him - wasn’t to blame for either.
The second bloody nose turned out to a broken nose. My younger daughter Nathalie, a pretty good footballer herself, and I winced at the sight of the innocent clash of heads that caused it during the Euro 2024 game against Austria.
The first was metaphorical, inflicted by far right sympathisers in France. You know, the ones who howl when not every member of the squad can sing every word of La Marseillaise and howl again because so many of the players are black. So much for the spirit of black blanc beur - black, white, Arab - that celebrated the multiracial France squad that won the et un-et deux-et trois-zéro (3-0) World Cup final vs Brazil in 1998.
Mbappé’s crime was to urge French voters and especially young ones to reject “extremists” in the snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron - for parliament, not Macron’s berth at the Elysée - for June 30 and July 7.
He didn’t specify which extremists he had in mind but everyone knew his finger was pointed at Marine Le Pen, whose Rassemblement National did so well in the European parliamentary elections earlier this month. Keyboard warriors hoping for another Le Pen victory in the legislatives were quick to denounce the player on Twitter.
Le Pen didn’t accept the “far right” tag when her party was known as the Front National, a name more resonant of jackboots than is Rassemblement National. She nevertheless saw a need to detoxify the party’s image and, with obvious success, set about doing so. All the while, ordinary supporters talked cheerfully in TV vox pops about voting “extrême droite”.
I’m a bit of a don’t know for now but my vote - and dual nationality means I do have one - will go to someone who passes Mbappé’s test.
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Between those two dates of the French elections, Britain goes to the polls. And yes, I can vote in them, too. In choosing Labour, I shall - as explained on these Salut! Life pages recently - be doing my bit more to get the Tories out than to endorse Keir Starmer’s ultra-cautious, “don’t say boo to a goose” policies.
If I lived in a constituency where the only hope of defeating a Conservative was to vote Lib Dems, I would break with a lifetime tradition of Labour support and do so. That is what Starmer’s Brexit acquiescence has done to me.
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One more election thought: if you knew someone standing for Parliament was a friend and uncritical champion of, say, Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un, would you vote for them? Certainly not, most would reply. What about Donald Trump? Same again, I suspect.
Nigel Farage sees things differently. For him, Trump is not a felonious buffoon with a history of groping, serial lying and incitement to insurrection, but an unjustly pilloried man of honour who can once again be trusted as leader of the free world.
Farage also dismisses revelations about the ultra far right sympathies and racist tendencies of some of his own Reform UK candidates,. Questions of taste and botched vetting aside, he insists, British politics needs more rough and ready characters with a sense of humour.
That probably tells you all that needs to be known about a man who will, on July 4, capture a sizeable chunk of the disgruntled Tory vote.
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