First Day of the rest of my Life.

Well today marks my official retirement day from the Foreign Service, so I am officially a pensioner now. Would like to join these fellows ( see photo below), smart uniform, nice hat, living in London in Chelsea no less. Apparently I do not fit the bill to become a pensioner at the Royal Chelsea Hospital, pity, I do fancy those tricorne hats.

At any rate I am busy with different projects as a volunteer at the National Gallery of Canada and at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Social Sciences. I have the dogs to look after and lots of other things, like Mr. W. I have also started to read more books, thanks to our friend in London, D.N. who has come up with lots of nice books I can order on my Kindle. What I like about the Kindle is it takes no space at all and books are a lot cheaper electronically, I love reading so its a good fit. I just started reading Sonechka by Ludmila Ulitskaya, a very popular Russian author at the moment.

What is fun about retirement is that I have no stress anymore about the job and what to say and not say and a million details about policy and decisions. I can also express an opinion now which I could not before since I had to be mindful of Government Policy or position papers. Someone said once that being retired was like getting out of jail, I see what they meant now.

Strangely enough I just learned of the death of General Norman Schwarzkopf who led the American forces in Kuwait against Iraq in 1991, I remember that time well, I was posted to Cairo and we went down to the Suez Canal to see the Canadian Warships cruise down towards the Red Sea. These were events that marked my years there.

So this is my new image now, having lunch in Vienna in the old greenhouse of the Hofburg Palace

Or watching the Tiber flow by on Tiberina Island in the centre of Rome

To celebrate this first day we are going to Al's Steak House on Elgin street, love the place, it is a sort of a Who's Who spot and they have my favourites on the menu like the giant shrimp cocktail served with the spicy sauce and the steaks are always done perfectly, good wines and good friendly service, very much the way restaurants use to be 40 years ago, best of all no families and no kids. Have nothing against children, I just believe they should not be seen.

Blue bird of Happiness!

Caramel, a sweet and hair remover

Caramel (2007) Directed by Nadine Labaki; written (in Arabic and French, with English subtitles) by Ms. Labaki, Jihad Hojeily and Rodney Al Haddad.

This month ARTE the French-German Television station is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. They are showing award winning movies from the film Festivals of Europe. Caramel is a Lebanese production and refers to the sweet which is used in Oriental cultures also as a hair remover. The Beirut beauty salon where most of  ''Caramel" takes place is likely to be a familiar type of establishment, even to people who have never been to the Lebanese capital. What the shop lacks in sleekness and chic it makes up for in the kind of friendly, sisterly warmth. 

Women of various shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds gather to bond and gossip. Their camaraderie is occasionally disrupted by a crisis, but you are likely to remember this charming film, directed by Nadine Labaki, less for its gently comic, mildly melodramatic plot than for its friendly and inviting atmosphere.



Ms. Labaki plays Layale, owner of the shop, which is called Si Belle. Like many unmarried women in the Middle East, Layale, in spite of her professional independence, lives with her parents. She is also having an affair with a married man and spends anxious hours waiting for him to call, ignoring the attentions of a handsome traffic policeman who is obviously smitten with her.


Layale’s friends and co-workers are supportive and tolerant of her, and also have troubles of their own. Jamale (Gisèle Aouad) is a recently divorced actress made frantic by the necessity of competing with younger women for work in television commercials. Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri), a Muslim, is engaged and is worried about what will happen if her future husband discovers that she isn’t a virgin. Rima (Joanna Moukarzel), who cleans up around the shop and washes hair, develops a crush on an elegant client. And then there is Aunt Rose (Siham Haddad), a seamstress who lives down the street from Layale’s shop with her demanding, mentally disabled sister, Lili (Aziza Semaan).

Life for these women is not easy or especially fair, and each of them faces moments of humiliation, loneliness and potential heartbreak, there are also twinges of real pain and disappointment.

But in the best melodramatic tradition, their toughness, good humor and loyalty see them through. 

I very much liked this movie because it shows life as it is and not as it is too often portrayed in the news. I know, for having lived for 8 years in the Middle-East, such charming people and their family, their stories and little dramas, hopes and joys. The movie touches on many topics, adultery, homosexuality, women's issues, marriage, family life. It brought back many memories of cities like Cairo, Amman, Damascus and Beirut, where I lived or worked or visited many times over.

BBC Radio World Service

I was posted to Cairo in 1989, I had a Sony short wave radio which I would put in my car a VW Jetta. It picked up the BBC World Service signal quite easily no matter where I went in Cairo or Egypt. The theme is a popular song or military march that Henry Purcell adapted and called Lillibullero, it played on the hour for the news broadcast. This was the old BBC not the sad British CNN it has become today due to budget cuts and shortfalls. In many ways it was that Britain between Churchill and Thatcher, years before the buffoonery of Tony Blair.