Med Poets Plunder Party

“Shiver me timbers!”

“Have him walk the plank!”

“No, keel haul him!”

“Where’s the rum?”

“Ooooh arrrrrr!’’

What’s all this then? Extracts from a resurrected “Pirates of the Caribbean”? A celebration of the so-called generous vowels, not to mention generous Rs (pronounce with care) of the West Country?

No, these are extracts from entertainment at the Med-Poets’ Society’s annual offbeat get together, an event that somehow combines elements of a varsity comedy club “smoker”, a masquerade ball of the type favoured by long gone European Aristocracy and a good-old fashioned East End “knees up”. More succinctly, it’s an opportunity to dress up and perform a party piece with identity hidden by costume and alcohol, with community singing and dancing to follow.

Many thanks to all those involved in this years’ gathering, billed as a Pirate Plunder Party. All proceeds go to charity, so sponsors were signed up (were they threatened with those traditional Pirate Punishments, I wonder?), Alt City in Hamra, Beirut was found as the new venue which was an improvement on the now defunct Hard Rock café, a DJ employed, a source of really good British fish ‘n’ chips found and tickets sold. There’s no committee, just a wonderfully energetic and enthusiastic organiser by the name of Vicky. Some of us get dragooned into doing silly things under the watchful eye and humorous introductions of Anthony, the master of ceremonies to jolly us all along on the night. At this point, word plays on the “Jolly Roger” (the famous skull and crossed bones pirate flag) spring to mind, but I’ll leave you to work those out for yourselves.

My own silly things at past events have included writing and reading my own nonsense poems, playing a guitar and being interviewed with a gorilla;and I still had to pay for the tickets, I told you Vicky was a wonderful organiser. This year I just borrowed a disguise. And thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Plans to move on to a second event fell by the way side as a quiz, a fancy dress competition, eating, dancing and drinking carried on until after mid-night.

Anyone who hasn’t been asleep for the last year knows that things are, well, err, sort of, like, a bit difficult here. One of the neighbours (Syria) has got rather noisy and the rowdy behaviour has spilled over into parts of Lebanon. And that has rather inhibited fun and frolics, as it seems (and would be) thoroughly insensitive to have a plethora of celebratory events going on while bombs keep going off. So we’ve been without the usual Christmas balls, while New Year and Burns’ night have just whimpered past. But this one was for charity and a little lifting of the spirits was sorely needed.

Thanks to Vicky and her volunteers, we got it.

Why did he do it? The Celtic curse?

There are days when it seems the universe was set in motion for the sole purpose of creating situations and events that make me feel angry or frustrated or miserable and on really bad days, all three at once.

Monday was one of them.

I wake up when it gets light, something my body learned to do to overcome jet lag. A wonderful trick it is, as on my first trips to New York I used to wake up ready for breakfast at two every morning and then have difficulty not falling sleeping over dinner. My longtitude sensing body clock works fine – as long as there is no early morning cloud cover. Early morning Monday’s sky was pretty well clouds and nothing else so I woke up late, which makes a bad start as something (my regular swim on this occasion) has to be cut out of the schedule for the day.  Another bomb went off, this time in Choueifat with the by now familiar, yet still gut-wrenching images on the TV. A set of trivial things I won’t bore you with continued to go awry so that, by early evening, the world had gone black and turned against me and I was completely unfit for human consumption. So I consumed instead.

Now that same day I’d read of the circumstances of the death of one of my favourite actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, at the ridiculously early age of 46. Seventy bags of heroin were found stashed in his flat. His mother bore an Irish name (O’Connell) and I began to wonder about the problems of us Celts, our apparent tendency to self-destruct while trying to escape from a world that can make us revolt from even having to stay on it. William Hamilton (mathematician), Oscar Wilde (writer), Dylan Thomas (poet), Brian Jones (musician), Richard Burton (actor) and George Best (sportsman) were all Celts who paid the ultimate price for over indulgence in sex, drink or drugs (and again sometimes all three) often presumed to be attempts to escape from reality. All of them provided insights and pleasure for the rest of us without finding personal peace and now they’ve been joined by another.

What is it about the Celts then? Well I can’t be sure, but Monday provided me with yet another experience of descending into the black followed by switching the lights out. And there’s another colour that can engulf me – red. I think of myself as easy going, I like the soft furriness of cats, I’m normally gentle with others and their feelings, but, and it’s a big but, very occasionally the red mist descends.

I think it was the manager’s fault. He should have ducked when, having ripped out the SIM card and crushed it under foot, I threw the empty phone across the shop. The details of the event don’t really matter, suffice it to say that what seemed like hours of my life had been wasted by a customer dis-services screw-up by a well-known mobile telephone company in the UK. One by one, all the pet hide behinds of data protection, health and safety and “it’s our policy” had been trotted out for my mental torture. Then it happened, the red mist that I’d been holding back finally exploded all over my brain anaesthetising good-sense, reasonableness and physical caution, during which time the phone was made to fly. My wife smoothed over the threat of assault charges, but I’m still banned from ever going in one of XXX’s shops again. Just the sight of me walking past the same shop half an hour later caused the manager to duck. Too late. I think it was that that caused the feelings of remorse, guilt and self-horror to set in.

It happens every five years or so, the invasion of the red mist followed by descent into black. Black alone perhaps once every few months. I can cope with that, but if they happened regularly? I’d have been pushed or fallen off the stage ages ago.

So I’m not going to blame Messrs. Hamilton, Wilde, Thomas, Jones, Burton, Best and Hoffman for leaving too early,  for I suspect they’d had to cope not just with the black and the red but many other colours too and all too regularly for comfort. I’ll just thank them for the bodies of work they, and so many other Celts, left behind.

Another crisis draws to a close

Phew, it seems that the Syrian crisis is over. Well the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, not the whole thing, but, as school reports used sometimes to say – a good start.

For a time, it seemed that the clock had been turned back to the cold war era, with Russia and the USA locked in a stand-off. I started to put some words down towards the end of August and wrote some criteria for testing possible solutions, they were these …

“First any action must be credible to the citizens of those countries taking action, and that can only happen if international law supports that action. That is a necessary, not a sufficient condition as events in the aftermath of the 2003 Iraqi invasion showed.

“Next, to be credible to citizens of this region, the Middle East, in general and Syrians in particular, any action must be aimed at improving the situation of the victims of the civil war, whatever side they are on. Killing them or their relatives won’t meet this criterion.

“Further, it should be sufficient to prevent any future use of chemicals on civilians.”

I must have been feeling a bit down about things because I then wrote …

“Can the circle ever be squared? It can’t. Talk of crossing red-lines was fine as a threat, but now the Western world has got itself into the position of a parent who tells an unruly child that he’ll be in serious trouble if he steals chocolate biscuits from the fridge, only to discover that the packet of Hobnobs is finished and the child denies all knowledge of it. Some action has to be taken to preserve parental credibility. But what?”

Hmmm. Thankfully I got that one wrong. Actually the answer was sitting there in the analogy, no more chocolate biscuits, or in this case no more chemical weapons. Simple really, not only does it satisfy all three criteria, but by neutralising stocks of Sarin and whatever other noxious agents have been manufactured, the world at least feels a safer place to live in.

Being British, I would like to think that the decision by our dear old Parliament not to authorise military action made some contribution to allowing time for more creative solutions to percolate through. Why, incidentally, are these high flown international activities important to me? Well, I live here in Beirut and it seems that if Syria catches a cold, Lebanon is usually in danger of getting pneumonia.

Does it matter, as some local pundits suggest, that the idea is a Russian one? Not one iota. As noted elsewhere, good ideas are highly promiscuous, they really do not care who has them. What does matter is that an approach has been found that is acceptable to the international community and espoused by local governments. The sight of Messrs. Lavrov and Kerry clearly enjoying each other’s company on stage makes me hope that the relationships forged in the heat of this crisis may be brought to bear on other difficult issues later on as well.

Because although the most recent crisis seems to be drawing to a close, one thing we can be sure of – there’ll be more before we’re done.

Oil and Gas for Lebanon - BLBG June 2013

June’s BLBG meeting had a different format from the usual. A panel of three comprising David Friedman, Oil & Gas industry (O&G) analyst, Niazi Kabalan, International projects lawyer specialising in O&G and Nick Wilson OG analyst discussed the geology, politics and practicality of Lebanon’s potential fields. All lived up to their billing of experts in their field. Questions and answered flowed for a good hour before the panelists were allowed their well-earned trip to the bar. The following is my memory of what was said, any errors and omissions are mine not theirs.

The first message was clear - the fields are potential ones. Until drilling starts and some hydrocarbons found and analysed there is hope, there are probabilities and there is, well, potential. Whatever the papers and the politicians say, discovery is still in the future and thus not yet assured; riches can only follow discovery. OK, then when does drilling start?

The area of the Mediterranean that is Lebanon’s has been divided into 10 zones. Leading Oil companies around the world have been invited to submit documents showing why they should be considered for test drilling. Once that process of review, known as pre-qualification has been completed, there will be a short list of companies (albeit fairly long) who will then be asked to bid for the zones. There will be winners (and of course losers) in that process, one for each zone. Each zone winner then starts the agreed drilling and we wait for the screams of joy. Now it needs to be remembered that the seabed is one and half kilometres below the surface. The potential fields are some six kilometres below that, getting there is difficult and that means expensive; estimates are currently around $40 million per well and each zone could have ten or more test wells drilled. That translates into finding companies willing to risk half a billion dollars for, at worst, nothing. And if there is something, that’s not without risk either as BP found in the Bay of Mexico.

The good news is that there’s no shortage of companies trying to make the short list. Lebanon is seen by many as more attractive than Israel (no-one wants to upset the Arab world where there’s a lot more already discovered Oil and Gas), Cyprus (no-one wants to upset Turkey), Egypt (prices are capped at a very low level) or Syria (for obvious reasons). The not-so-good news is that until Lebanon has a fully-fledged, as distinct from caretaker, government there is no power to sign the contract engaging the winners nor, for that matter, is there a power in place to even decree how the bid process will work.  There is a Lebanese O&G advisory board, which in turn has a staff of professional advisors, with responsibility to draw up recommendations of who and how and what the contracts might look like, but the advisory board needs someone to advise. The hope is that the bidding process will complete before the end of this year. Watch this space. And hope. Because as soon as the drilling starts, even if nothing is ever found, some of that investment money will flow into Lebanon for engineering, travel, catering and all other the various support functions that will be needed.

How much might be out there? The top estimate is thirty trillion cubic feet of methane. That translates, at current prices to paying off Lebanon’s debt and having perhaps twenty-five thousand per head to invest. That sum may go even higher if the gas is what’s known as “wet”, i.e. has butane, propane or even oil fractions mixed in with it. However, the finds so far in Israel and Cyprus are “dry”. While that number is not in the same league as the millions that Qatarians expect, the Lebanese are twenty times more numerous and the Qatari reserves so far found are, perhaps, thirty times bigger. But there’d be more enough to sort out the travel, electricity and water issues facing this country.

So what does this net out to? Lebanon has to sort out a government and then implement the already decided approach (which is to follow the Norwegian model). Then the gas has to be found. It won’t make the Lebanese rich, but it could dramatically improve the infrastructure of the country. Watch this space. And hope.

Machines have feelings too

If you think your home appliances have no feelings and are simply inanimate lumps of plastic and paint with a few wires and bits of metal, think again. They seem to want attention and get jealous, with dire consequences, if too much court is paid to one over another.

Let me start at the beginning, always a good place to start if a little unimaginative. For reasons best known to my wife, redecoration time was declared last Friday. With her usual approach to turning thought into action the decorators arrived on Monday morning, paint, thinners, brushes and masking tape having spent the weekend arriving like eager guests at a party.

The first rebellion was from our central air conditioning system, which began to make groaning and creaking noises sounding just like it was in real pain and of such magnitude our next door neighbour beseeched us to turn it off before disaster struck. As if in sympathy the plan “B” AC began blowing out warm air only. Service men arrived and performed the machine equivalent of major surgery on the main one “cash, please”, but only the last rights were possible on our so called Little AC – replacement required.

Then it was the turn of our faithful old gas hob; imported from a refurbished flat in England, it had never really been able to digest the local propane gas properly, in spite of replacement nozzles, burners, connections and such like. One of its burners finally went out, so another set of men arrived to fit a new one. Bigger and better it may be, but many a good meal has come from that old hob, now gone for a third life in the home of Mohamed the decorator.

Our fridge freezer clearly mourned the loss its friend across the way and wanted attention, so the fridge stopped cooling and the freezer iced up. Another service man, another part replaced and another bill paid “cash, please”: attention duly delivered.

As an aside, services here are extremely responsive. The cooker hob and air conditioning unit were delivered and installed the day after purchase, the decorator came to give a quote and then started immediately after negotiations were completed, “cash, please”; the fridge repair man was at the door fifteen minutes after the mayday call. But (oh, yes, there’s always a “but”) they tend only to bring their hands with them – “do you have a hammer/screwdriver/pair of pliers/junction box/drill bits/dust sheets”  – all those have been asked of us in the last week. Since DIY stores are difficult to come by, I am amazed to be able to say the answer was, in all cases, “yes”.

Was that it then? Oh, dear me, no! I don’t really think of us as technology freaks: OK, we have a couple of laptops, a PC, an iPad, a couple of iPhones, streaming video and music piped around the house from iTunes, but that’s about par for the course these days isn’t it? The whole thing relies on the internet and, given the vagaries of the electricity supply, the clever bits of electronics that whizz bits and bytes into, out of and all around our flat are protected by a black box which smooths out all the electrical lumps and bumps as Electricity du Liban (EDL), the generator on the balcony and our local bakery dance around one another taking turns to supply us. The black box is known as an Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS for short. The UPS resented being moved from of its hideaway in order to give the decorators free access to the wall behind it, and became an UIPS – an Unreliable and Interruptible Power Supply. Off to the menders for twenty-four hours, “cash, please”.

Perhaps foolishly we exposed our modem and routers to the power sources directly. “It’s only for a day”, we told ourselves, “it should be all right”. It wasn’t. They did what we all do when our proper sustenance is suddenly cut off, they got all grumpy and sulked. They just refused to pass on the bits and bytes to their usual proper places. We spent an hour while resetting and reloading was going on, in the waiting room of our internet service provider, which was rather like being in a dentist’s waiting room but with fewer comforts and more anxiety. Going in person was the only way to get them to help with the mix of boxes we’ve wired together over the years.

The series of hiccoughs and failures listed above looks unbelievable, but they all did happen in the last week, like some collective mechanical epidemic. The only machine that carried on working happily all through was the bank’s cash dispenser across the road, presumably delighted with the increased attention it has been getting.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go out, let’s hope the car hasn’t noticed …….

The British are coming

Almost directly opposite where I live there’s a “Commercial Centre” with names like “Clean House” (a cleaning service), “Jump and Slide” (a gym for kids) and “Christine’s Clothing” (a clothing shop, nothing quite like stating the obvious).  Friday means happy hour at the Duke of Wellington pub, watering hole of the Brits here and also at the Greedy Goose which tends to be more Irish orientated. Where am I? Surprise – West Beirut. It makes a bit of a change from the al-Maroush and al-Dar restaurants, flanked by Halal shops in the Edgware Road. In all fairness, I nod thanks to our American cousins, who with Hollywood and the internet, are also in there pushing the English language, and I have to smile at the “Duke of Wellington”, named after the hero of Waterloo, and this a francophone country.

But things go deeper than just the name of the shops and bars. Jaguar is, and has been for years, a favourite mark here, jostling with BMW, Mercedes and Chevrolet, so the imminent launch of Jaguar’s “F” series is eagerly awaited. British Airways have bought back the London-Beirut route from Lufthansa and earlier this year upped the number of flights. Marks and Spencer are opening in Downtown Beirut next month, with a fashion show to launch it (the first I've been to). Tescos are back in here via a local supermarket chain – does “good food tastes better at Spinneys” sound familiar? McVities’ Hobnobs, Walkers’ shortbread, Whiskeys galore and smoked salmon are part of the Scottish contingent. Oh, and yesterday I listened to Virgin radio (just started up) while driving (in my Swindon made Honda) to Beirut’s most famous Hotel, the Phoenicia, (part of the Intercontinental Hotels PLC chain) to have lunch with a friend (a senior executive at HSBC). I could go on, but I won’t, so apologies to any brand that feels passed over, but lists get boring in the end and the point is made, I think.

Why is this? I’m not an economist and this is not intended as a research paper, but let me just speculate a bit. Most of my recent ancestors worked in those industries spawned by the industrial evolution; a steel-maker, two cutlers and a shipbuilder have passed their genes to me, but not the industries. Most have headed to the Far East (the industries, not my ancestors), painful losses that have left a legacy, though, of Brits finding what they’re good at, doing it, selling it then shipping it off by sea. The Lebanese have been great traders, and that means buying good stuff and selling it on, Beirut wasn’t one of the Silk Road’s great ports simply as an accident of geography. So, there is a natural symbiosis, a set of points of contact, albeit at a distance. Add to that the catalysts of language, noted above, and the five year long stagnation in Europe making extending markets essential and I think we have some if by no means all of the reasons for the increase in British brands here.

 

I have a long running duel going on with some Lebanese friends about British cuisine with good natured banter as the weapon of choice. Try as I might to persuade them of the rich delight of venison stew (“oh no, you eat Bambi”), that wonderful combination of zest and fruit and pastry called Bakewell tart, the savoury luxury of beef Wellington (“that’s French”; with a name like that – yeah right), the angelic simplicity of Yorkshire pudding and that meaty winter warmer, Lancashire hot-pot, all I get back are comments about fish ‘n’ chips. But who knows, Pontefract cakes may be next on the list; come to think of it, Tescos might be shipping them already.

Happy Birthday Ma'am, Great Party

The British Embassy here just threw a party to celebrate Her Majesty the Queen’s (HMQ) official birthday. They call it, not surprisingly, the Queen’s Birthday Party, or “QBP”.

  

Actually HMQ has two birthdays. The anniversary of her date of birth is the obvious one; it’s easy for me to remember, April 21^st, because it’s also my granddaughter’s. And then there’s the “official” one celebrated on the first, second or third Saturday in June. Edward VII was a great party goer and loved events, but, being born in November, found his own birthday celebrations frequently ruined by the infamous British weather: his solution was to invent the Monarch’s official birthday, have it in June and even then to have a plan A, B and C – the three Saturdays. Though extremely simple, this was clearly a seriously good idea as, over a hundred years later, it’s still going strong.

The celebrations are held in late May or June across all the commonwealth countries and territories, (even though the Falklands might prefer Kind Edward’s November) at more or less the same time and by all British embassies as well. It’s an opportunity to say “thank you” to many, to wave the flag and to have a good time.

Lebanese weddings, as noted elsewhere in this blog, can be massive affairs. This has led to the creation of specialised locations at which to hold them. This year’s chosen QBP location was one such, called Nuit blanche (a French expression meaning “party all night”). It boasts a spectacular view over Beirut and the Bay of Junieh. It’s about 60km West to the Mediterranean horizon and with city pollution left far below, the sunset is of the multi-coloured, many faceted variety that can only be seen from an Eastern Mediterranean vantage point. The closest I've seen elsewhere is while standing on a hill-top looking out from the Isle of Skye and standing on San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, but you don’t get the unique Mediterranean blue in those places. Then the stars come out.

A fleet of London style taxi cabs ferried us back and forth from the car park – nice touch. First stop the flag waving, with stalls offering Scottish smoked salmon, a view of the new Range Rover and many others of the British brands available here, including a plethora of Scotch whiskies. Champagne, of course, was there for those who preferred it.

Down a walkway to the main mingle area with music, canapés and more champagne enjoyed by the two thousand invitees. The only formalities were the two national anthems, performed live by a baritone soloist and a short speech from the British Ambassador, Tom Fletcher, during which he read a message from Her Majesty.

The invitation said clearly “until 9:00 p.m.” but things were still going strong at midnight. About the only thing missing was the lady being celebrated parachuting in herself, but I suppose the embassy had to keep something back for next year. Great party.