King Charles unveils red portrait of his Majesty.
Benji comes..... around to notice it....
https://youtube.com/shorts/sBlJb-NkOoA?si=fdvy5R3uVN7X5YDz
This is a splendid self portrait by da Vinci, not sure if he was in Italy or had ridden his little horse to kick it with the King of France with whom he was tight. I always had this on my work table in the staff room at the Yihe Hotel in Baiyun district of Guangzhou China around late 2004 early 2005. It was just after I first met my partner, when she was 21, in Bulgaria. I returned to China and hit the jackpot landing a cozy job at a four star hotel with daily room service, giant pool with wave machine and beach. Feng Shui mountains and resort village living. A beautiful chapter in zer life of Benji. I recall my mother queen victoria, not her real name or title, just a nickname including the title as part of the nickname, sent me a picture of herself over email. Extremely uncharacteristic of her as apart from that photo and some very small money orders through the post office when I was a teen-ager in high school living away from home. I mean those are the only two times I ever recall that woman reaching out to me while I was living away from home for so many years. I think she visited my crib once in Auburn Sydney. Once. She certainly wasn't one to reach out much. My teenage years buddy Winston Churchill (not his real name, also just a nickname, like my surname 'English', on this blog, not real). This buddy WC, he'd get quite a laugh over remembering how my mother would lift his head off the couch on his frequent sleepovers, ram a cushion under it and push his head back down, he just thought that was so funny how gruffly she did it. He was also extremely fond of her stew. I must say, she never let a cockroach in her casserole pot but her fry-pans were a different story. A messy woman. My boss in China at that hotel was a very senior member of the Chinese communist party. Her and her husband owned like the entire resort village or much of it and God knows what else. The equivalent royal rank would be a duke I suppose. My buddy at the sailing club is from minor British royalty also. His mother actually. She still lives in England.
So tomorrow is my 48th birthday and uncharacteristically, like my mother's rare shows of recognising I existed when I was away from home, I'm doing something with buddies for my birthday. I might only do that like every eight or fifteen years on average, apart from my immediate family nowadays, who like to observe those things (birthdays, ie with parties). So I'm expecting to kick it with three male buddies, not anyone from the sailing club though.
Anyway I hope they turn up. We're meant to meet on Friday night at Burwood, Burwood Rd, Sydney. My Lebanese buddy has not met the other two buddies but the other two buddies go way way back. We can get paella. The Lebanese buddy has an interesting story, during the civil war in Lebanon, some Muslim factionalists ransacked his father's village of Catholics and gunned down every last Catholic except my buddy's father. He probably had survivor's guilt. My buddy said he treated him poorly, possibly because he was the eldest, I can't recall. I believe he's close to his mother but never liked his father much. My Anglo buddy David will be there, he's a TV producer in Australia, does a lot of popular Australian TV shows. And my Australian counterpart Murphy who has a lot of history with Dave but hasn't caught up with him in a long time.
Ever noticed how latte art is mostly love hearts? While coffee isn't big in China, even in those days Guangzhou had at least one Starbucks. If I ever wanted to leave my little artificial resort town (no reason to really), I'd catch a minibus into downtown Guangzhou and go to Starbucks. Then one day I left all that behind and went to NYC.... What a great place that is. But Guangzhou is amazing in a different way.
Latte art:
https://youtube.com/shorts/6TzT5qBBHac?si=lO52V6LnjQHp_K05
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