Events | 2009.07.19
Simon Hoggart's week: A plague on Hirst's latest art concept
I know little about art, and I don\'t even know what I like. But I sometimes wonder if we are too frightened of saying outright that we can\'t stand something. These thoughts came to mind on Tuesday when I went to the launch of Benedict Gummer\'s book about the Black Death. The launch was held in a gallery behind the Royal Academy in Piccadilly, London, and on the walls were displayed the latest treasure by Damien Hirst, entitled The Ten Plagues. This consists of 10 absolutely identical canvases, each around a metre square, each with a hole in the middle roughly the diameter of a tea mug. They are jet black and at first glance look as if someone had spilled ink over Astroturf. As the room warmed up they emitted a faint but noticeable pong, which was not surprising, because when you looked closely each one was composed of thousands, possibly millions, of dead flies.
"Bloody hell, he must have quite a fly paper at home," said one guest. Other theories were that he went round butchers\' shops, collecting the remains from their zappers. Or kept a few small animal corpses in the garden, and harvested them daily. Actually I like a lot of Hirst\'s work, including the larger dead animals, so I\'m not being biased or deliberately philistine when I say I thought they were absolutely awful.
• There was a disturbing story in the papers this week about a south London man called Roy Adams who called out an ambulance after having chest pains. The operator told him to leave his front door open so he could be reached more quickly. But the message didn\'t get passed on, and the paramedic, seeing the open door, assumed a burglary was in progress. As some people ‑ maybe 0.001% of the population - might, while knowing there was a desperately ill person inside.
The medic called the police, carried out a "risk assessment" and went inside after waiting for 16 minutes. It was too late; Mr Adams, who was only 61, died in the ambulance. He might have died anyway. But the incident does illustrate two points. First, that the health and safety mindset often kills more people than it protects: think of the scores who died on the roads in the wake of the Potters Bar and Hatfield train crashes. And that every bureaucracy sees as its first task the protection of bureaucrats.
• Your memories of John Bercow continue to arrive. John Davies was at Frith Manor school in Finchley, north London, back in 1974 when Mr Speaker was 11. He was already a Conservative, and took part in a mock election on the Tory ticket. His manifesto consisted of attacking school dinners – "the greatest garbage I have ever tasted". He won by a large margin. Oddly enough, says Mr Davies, the school dinners weren\'t bad at all, and were eagerly scoffed by the young Bercow. "He obviously developed his political acumen early."
• We had an idyllic night last weekend. We had gone to stay with friends who live near Harrogate, and they had tickets for The Tempest, performed in the grounds of Ripley castle. Aptly enough the play was to be performed on a small island, in the middle of the castle lake. They had built a bridge, and put enough benches for 200 or so people inside a clearing in the woods. The actors were members of the ad hoc Sprite productions troupe, all highly professional: the sort of people whose names you don\'t quite recognise but whose biographies say "screen credits include Casualty and The Bill". They were terrific. We picnicked in the park before crossing the bridge for the play, and drank sparkling wine in the interval. The sun went down round about the time Miranda was talking about a brave new world. The whole event was captivating, and, appropriately given the play, quite magical.
• This week I was one of the judges of the Decanter magazine wine retailer awards. It was great fun, and didn\'t take very long - all of the shortlist were extremely good, and the winners quite outstanding. I was fascinated by Lea & Sandeman, a long-established merchants. They have decided to be upfront and honest about their wines, in the manner of the late Roy Brooks, the estate agent who used to advertise in the Observer: "Who would want to live in this rat-infested Chelsea basement? Clearly someone with more money than sense."
So L&S describe one of their wines as "good, but not great … no one will be set on fire by this, since it is a little stodgy". Another wine is "lumpy and grippy" and one is "a little hollow, green and brutal on the palate". I wonder if it works. Clearly, where they praise a wine you are going to believe them. On the other hand, while Roy Brooks might have intrigued people enough to make them look at the property, some people might not want even to try a wine that is brutal on the palate.
• It\'s odd how restaurants can change from day to day. It was our wedding anniversary this week, so we booked into a local place, A Taste of McClements, which offers an 18-course sampling menu at an amazingly reasonable price. Then in last Saturday\'s Guardian Matthew Norman gave it the worst review I think he has ever given anywhere ‑ and 1.5 points out of 10. We thought of cancelling, but phoned friends who\'d been, and they said they\'d had a good meal. We were the only people there when we arrived, in a somewhat nervous frame of mind. But the chicken quenelle with Roquefort was delicious, the lobster ravioli scrumptious, the gazpacho tangy, the quail stuffed with foie gras out of this world. It was one of the best meals I have ever had, for roughly a third what you might have paid in France. I am sure Matthew wasn\'t wrong; he is a very reliable critic. But my guess is that Mr McClement, who I have never met, was off that day and they must have got some trainee off the street. Or something like that.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/20[...]simon-hoggart-art-damien-hirst
