FULL HOUSES VERSUS SOCIAL DISTANCING

Aeroplanes standing idle - BA is laying off 12,000 staff

Once, when I was finishing off the paperwork at a hotel where I had been staying with a group, I noticed what the company I was working for paid for the rooms we had used.  It was well under half what an individual would have paid if he or she had walked in off the street and bought the same room.  By promising to buy in bulk over the course of a year the company were able to beat the hotel chain down to what seemed an absurdly low price.  (Empty rooms are of. no use to an hotel.)  An individual who just needs to rest his/her head does not have the same negotiating power as a big company and has to cough up the full price for a decent night’s sleep.

The basis of many businesses is achieving bulk volume.  Some concentrate on making a lot of money out of a little group but most aim to make a little money from a lot.  Each sale produces a small profit – or even a loss if it brings in further sales – and a strong business’s selling power increases its buying power with their own suppliers.

Airlines are the classic example of making money from full houses and crowded spaces. They no longer rely on businesspeople charging the cost of their travel to expense accounts and not worrying too much about the size of the bill.  Today they need to attract ordinary travellers, who invariably opt for the cheapest fare, even if it means flying on a crowded plane.  The flight is over quickly enough and the savings are permanent.  Tony O’Reilly, who made a fortune from packing people into planes, and for whom I have a begrudging admiration, has said that they will all go bust if they have to observe social distancing.  British Airways has already laid off twelve thousand people as people stop flying.  

One of the main jobs of those who deal with clients in crowded conditions – whether they are cabin crew, tourist guides or organisers of queues – is to make people feel welcome and wanted even as they are being packed together in uncomfortable crowded conditions.  

Forgive me for stating the obvious here because in a month or two it will be far from obvious.  When we go for a walk, usually in the late afternoon, we weave in and out amongst our fellow-exercisers keeping the required two metres social distance between us.  People are understanding and good-humoured about this and we are more likely these days to say hello to and smile at other people even as we avoid coming too close to them.

It is not always possible, of course, and sometimes we come a little too near, particularly if we are shopping.  The closest I get to another human being (apart from my partner) is once a week when I go to the checkout and pay for the weekly shop.  I choose the shop on the basis of it not being crowded and I go when it is quiet, but you can never be fully safe.

What will happen when we start going back to normality as the lockdown ends?   My business is tourism which, almost by definition, involves bringing large numbers of people into a small space.  As I wrote in my other blog, when we go to Windsor, we often spend more time in the queue than in the castle.  We would not mind a queue at the moment.

But in a queue, you are inevitably crowded together, cheek by jowl as Shakespeare says, and this is a great meeting place for germs and people.  Two metres apart is simply not possible with lots of people all aiming for the same place at the same time.  Likewise, nobody makes a living from an almost empty pub, hotel or theatre.  The overheads remain the same while the income dries up as people avoid crowded space like, well, the plague.

Plague has come to us before, of course.  Back in the Middle Ages about a quarter of the population died in many European countries as the black death spread through contaminated communities.  A century ago we had the black flu which killed fifty million people, many of them soldiers who had survived the war only to be struck down by a deadly virus that arrived unseen as the fighting drew to a close.  The crowded insanitary conditions in which the soldiers were billeted was ideal breeding ground for the virus and, without today’s social distancing, there was little chance of staying safe, as try to do today.

People were not even warned about the dangers.  Newspapers were not allowed to spread news which might lower morale in wartime.  Being neutral, Spain was able to report with more accuracy – and honesty – on the disease and this gave the impression that they were worse hit.  In fact, the people of Spain were simply being given more information.

Today it is almost compulsory for news outlets to spread gloom.  My experience, has been that most people have been reasonably cheerful about the outbreak, adjusting to the new normal of avoiding crowds, dodging and weaving during walks, missing the football and other events that have had to be cancelled and using video conferencing in which the sounds and images do not always match each other and those little signals saying who is going to talk next are strangely absent, so we alternate interruptions and awkward silences.

We will come out of this sooner or, preferably later, to be on the safe side.  The habit of giving others a wide berth to stay on that safe side, will not die out for some time, however.  The problem will be to rebuild a functioning economy while still allowing social distancing.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

TOP TENS

Me walking along the Sussex beach:
I would not have gone if not for corona

There is only one thing to write about, of course: the corona virus outbreak. Rather than speculate on what is, has or might happen, I will just list - in no particular order - the top ten good and bad things that have been forced upon us by the outbreak.  We are in a much better position than others materially, having plenty of money and enough tasks to keep us occupied, but I will be glad when this is all over and can get back to 'normal'. You don't know hat you've got all it's gone, as Joni Mitchell's song says.

GOOD

1. Exploring the local area on walks with my partner once a day. Rather than just going for a brisk walk I have been looking at what is around me and have discovered much more.

2. Greeting people on these walks.  We keep two metres away but usually say hello.

3. Learning successfully how to communicate remotely using the internet.

4. Establishing contact with people I have neglected, calling them to check they are ok.

5. Drinking is down, not up, which is a surprise and a bonus.

6. Doing some writing - although not as much as I would like or thought I would.

7. Learning to cook some new dishes, instead of the same old comfort food staples.

8. Spending time with my partner - and not throttling her (or her throttling me).

9. Sleeping through the night without going to the loo. (I have no idea why I can do it now.)

10. Having clean hands most of the time.

BAD

1. Missing the theatre, cinema, art galleries bookshops and all the other places I visit.

2. Not spending time with my children - or my new granddaughter.

3. Not seeing friends.

4. Not going out for a drive or travelling on a train.

5. Not learning a new language or one of the many other things I ought to be doing.

6. Failing to finish walking the South Downs Way before being stopped form going there.

7. Watching the ratings of politicians I dislike going up instead of down.  This is not surprising, as people cling to certainty in times of trouble, and it may pass. We may even get rid of them later, which means I could switch this to the first list.

8. Watching people being stupid by mingling too close.  As it has hit our Prime Minister and heir to the throne, they should realise that no-one is immune from catching/passing a virus on.

9. Panic buying, although I understand why it happens.  People have little else to do, want to get out of the house and need far more than they usually buy because they are at home. 

10. The state of uncertainty which comes from not knowing when this will all end.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com which I will continue to post every Monday, even though no-ne can go on tours while the outbreak lasts.

YES MEN AND WOMEN

A recent Private Eye cover sums it up

One of the creepiest things I have seen recently was our new Prime Minister Boris Johnson sitting with his new cabinet leading them in a chorus of what they were going to do – build so many hospitals, recruit so many nurses, exclude so many immigrants.  They all seemed well rehearsed and knew the numbers which they dutifully chanted in reply to Boris’s promptings.  All that was missing was a chorus of “for he’s a jolly good fellow…”  Yuck.  Pass the sickbag.

There are two types of people who are loyal to you – the unquestioning loyalist and the questioning loyalist.  The first tells you how great you are, while the second is not afraid to suggest how you might do better.  One praises your decisions. The other suggests you change them.

One thing Boris Johnson and Donald Trump have in common is that they prefer the unquestioning loyalist.  The list of those whom Trump has appointed and then fired is long.  Even his Attorney General William Barr, who seemed only too willing to do his bidding on all matters legal, has now said that Trump constantly tweeting about injustices meted out to his supporters and preferential treatment towards his enemies by the legal system is making his job ‘impossible’.  Just when you thought he was a total flunkey he seems to have shown that he can think for himself.  The future does not look bright for Barr and his newly acquired backbone.

To give them their due, both Trump and Johnson know how to work a room.  This is a skill all successful politicians have to master, particularly in the USA where public appearance counts more than private competence.  Clinton (Bill, not Hillary) and Reagan both had it; the younger Bush somewhat surprisingly had it in a folksy kind of way whereas the older Bush did not; JFK and Obama had it in a lofty kind of way, appealing to people’s higher instincts. LBJ had it but, I think, lost it as people kept asking him how many babies he had killed that day.  You need a sympathetic audience to make an effective speech and Johnson lost his as a result of Vietnam.  This is surely why he decided not to run for president a second time and retreated into himself in later years. 

Trump is not the retreating type.  He has the skill of whipping up people who troop out to listen to him, knowing which buttons to press to galvanise them:  “Build that wall!  Keep those guns!  Dig that coal!”  It may not be subtle it sure brings people out to vote for him.  You can have the best policies – and all the money – in the world but you need to sell yourself to potential voters if you are going to succeed in politics, which is increasingly a branch of show business.  Trump knows this and passes himself off as a shrewd businessman, even if he went bankrupt several times and has a record of not paying his bills.  However, he was successful on reality television which is where he learned his trade.

It seemed for a while that Mike Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York who had built up a genuinely successful business and made far more money than Trump ever did, would be best placed to defeat him.  If I was American I would probably vote for him simply as a way of getting rid of Trump but he does not have Trump’s ability to whip up a crowd so it is unlikely he will succeed against him.  Bernie Sanders does but, being an elderly left-winger who has suffered a heart attack is probably too vulnerable a candidate to take on Trump’s propaganda machine.  Just think how they will portray his honeymoon in Moscow in the mid-west.  Truth matters very little in propaganda wars.

Americans tend to re-elect their presidents, unless those same presidents face significant opposition from within their own parties as Jimmy Carter and George Bush Senior both did.  Trump has made sure that no-one survives on his watch without showing unquestioning obedience to him and his whims so there is zero chance of any significant Republican standing up to him.  Mitt Romney was the only Republican senator to vote to impeach him for a crime he had obviously committed in Ukraine and immediately the attack dogs moved to undermine him.  Romney is (I almost wrote ‘was’) one of those decent but dull politicians who failed to win the presidency until the right in America decided that they would back a winner in Trump.  At least he could win contests by bringing people out to vote.

In the same way Boris Johnson now is ruler over all he surveys, the British Conservatives realising that he is someone people will vote for.  We do not seem to mind a posh public school type like Boris as our leader.  The very use of his first name, which is not what his friends and family know him by, gives that away.  He may be a rogue but he has convinced people he is a lovable one, so people turn out to vote for him, even though his sexual history would until quite recently have disqualified him from office in the party of the family.

Boris laps up the adulation but he does not deal well with dissent, so Jeremy Hunt, Angela Leadsom, Rory Stewart and now Sajid Javid have all been shown the door, some encouraged to jump, others pushed out.  There is nobody near Johnson now who looks like he can either stand up to or succeed him.  This cannot be good either for the government or the country.  We need questioning loyalists near our leaders, not just yes men - or women. 

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

WHEN HARRY MET MEGHAN

A Lego version of Harry and Meghan at Windsor

After the engagement was announced, but before the wedding took place, an American lady asked me what people in Britain thought of Meghan Markle.  I said something like, “everyone likes Meghan,” adding, “except for a few racists, but we needn’t worry too much about them”.

It turns out that we might need to be worried about the racists after all.  Most people still like Meghan but she has received a fair amount of criticism since (and indeed before) she began divorce proceedings, not with her husband Prince Harry, but from the whole royal family.  It has been said – and denied – that racism is behind much of this criticism.  The problem is that, while this is probably true as a generalisation, if you automatically accuse everyone who criticises Meghan of racism, you are effectively saying that all criticism of her is inherently racist which is another way of saying that people of colour are above criticism.

You could that argue that this idea is racist in itself.  Giving any group special treatment involves admitting that they cannot fend for themselves.  That may be justifiable if it helps disadvantaged people by guaranteeing them educational or job opportunities but it hardly applies to Meghan Markle, who seems both able and eager to stand up for herself.

There are two strands here - one of racism and the other of royalty.  People often say that the Queen loves the Commonwealth and her lack of racism is a big factor in the success of an organisation which grew out of the British Empire, an openly racist concept which put white people in charge of those with darker skins.  The Queen talks to and deals with Commonwealth leaders in an easy, friendly way which, for example, Mrs Thatcher would have struggled to achieve, and they respect her in return.  In all the talk about Meghan entering the royal family, there has been no suggestion that she has been sidelined because she is mixed race.  In fact, it is her (white) father who is kept well away.

Yet, after a fairly short period of experiencing life as a royal, Meghan has said that she does not want any of this.  Before she met Harry, she was an independent and wealthy woman in her own right who had made her way in the world through talent and looks.  Her skin colour was not an issue in her success and she was used to signing autographs and smiling at people. 

The smiling was to continue after she became the Queen’s granddaughter-in-law but she was told that the autographs had to stop.  It was not the done thing for royals to sign them and neither was banging on about political matters, which the royals were supposed to be above.  There is a good scene in The Crown in which Prince Charles, fresh from learning Welsh and making a bunch of speeches around Wales, is expecting to be congratulated by his mother. Instead she tells him in no uncertain terms that the hardest thing about being a royal is to have learn to “say nothing”, a lesson imparted by her own grandmother, Queen Mary. 

But people in the public eye find it very difficult to say nothing.  Prince Charles has views on lots of matters, from climate change to farming via modern architecture, but he knows that he cannot expect to have his own pet ideas given preference over those of the people who, unlike him, were elected to run the country.  That does not stop him expressing these views.

I have long thought that the problems of the royal family in a democratic era would be internal not external. The institution would cease to be viable not when we became fed up with them but when they became fed up with us.  There were signs of this in the way that Diana, the woman who would have been Meghan’s mother-in-law, tried to detach herself from the royals.  Her problem was that she enjoyed the trappings of being a royal but was not that keen on the family itself, particularly the one she married, and that she could not control the attention when she detached herself from the defence mechanisms they had erected around themselves.  Her successor Camilla was better at this and had the sense to keep her head down until she was accepted.

Was Meghan entitled to come into the royal family and then reject the whole business?  Of course she was.  She and her husband have said that they will drop their HRH titles and will make their own way in the future.  Obviously, the royal connection will help them as they start their new lives in – what exactly?  Being a bit royal and a bit glam is not exactly a career option but they will probably manage to pay their bills once the dust settles.

The problem for Harry and Meghan is that they both want to keep their heads down and yet need to remain conspicuous in order to be ‘influencers’.  This contradiction became clear when they began proceedings against a newspaper for printing a private letter Meghan wrote to her estranged father and then issuing a warning that they would also sue those which printed paparazzi shots of them and their son Archie.  So they want their privacy respected but need to remain noticed in order to remain influential?  It does not work like that.  The one thing the story of Diana should have taught them is that you cannot be both in the public eye and at the same time control the interest people have in you.  The more you feed the press and the photographers who live off it, the hungrier that beast becomes.

The only way for royals to be both in the public eye and protected is to stay behind the walls erected around them which were built in order to keep prying eyes out.  Once you go outside those walls, you lose the protection they afford.  I wish Harry and Meghan all the best in their future lives but worry how they will survive outside royal protection.  I also worry about the future of the royal family, one of our best-loved and most successful institutions, if an independent and intelligent woman like Meghan finds herself unable to live inside it.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

BEATLES SONGS AT CHRISTMAS

..and John (no Santa hat for him)

Paul - the cover of his Xmas song 

I am posting this on Christmas Eve rather than New Year's Eve, writing in my dining room in peace and quiet as the sun reluctantly comes up on a dark December morning.  After I step outside, I will have to hear Christmas songs by Slade, King Christmas or Bing Crosby over various public PA systems.  (Enough of the Scrooge.)  This year I have particularly noticed two songs, both of them written by former Beatles: Happy Christmas, War is Over by John Lennon and Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney. Which is better?

Now, I can bore on the Beatles for hours and have conducted tours and given talks on them, but these mainly concentrate on the time they were together, rather than after they split up.  The Beatles fit neatly into the 1960s, arriving in 1960 out of John's Quarrymen and going their separate ways in 1970 after which they led more or less successful solo careers.

The Quarrymen were John's group and he brought in his friend Stuart Sutcliffe, who was more interested in painting and who died at twenty one of a brain haemorrhage, but who is credited with thinking up the Beatle name.  Later John invited Ringo to join them on drums in place of Pete Best, their manager Brian Epstein being given the job of breaking the news to Best that he would miss out on probably the biggest payday in pop history.  Paul became more important as the band progressed and bought a house near the Abbey Road studio, from where he could manage their music more effectively.  John felt his control of the group slipping away and moved to New York with Yoko where he took a long break from music.

There was never any question of Paul taking a sabbatical.  Music just poured out of him and he recorded his solo Christmas song, making a video for it at the Fountain Inn in Sussex, which I know well.  A catchy tune, a fireside in an English country pub, warm wishes for friends and family in the festive season - you could hardly get more sugary.  The song has made Paul about £10 million since 1979 so he has done very well out of his cosy Christmas.

John, whose own father left when he was little and who walked out of his marriage to Cynthia after he met Yoko, was not so good at family.  He wishes peace for everyone as he tells them that war is over with the proviso "if they want it".  Sadly, many people do not and war is definitely not over for many around the world.  John was good at big themes, Paul at little ones. Paul is the family man, John the saviour of society, painting a bigger picture. 

Thackeray said that the job of the artist was to make the new familiar and the familiar new, which I always think is a good summary of the difference between Lennon and McCartney.  it is Paul who can bring the everyday to life, either with pathos in She's Leaving Home about an unhappy girl leaving home at five in the morning "meeting a man from the motor trade" (What a brilliant phrase, both banal and suggestive - you just know that she will have her heart broken.) or with humour as in Back in the USSR, surely still the wittiest pop song ever written.  Meanwhile John is looking for new directions in psychedelic trips, newspaper articles and even circus posters such as Being for the Benefit of Mister Kite on Sgt Pepper.

I am more of a Paul man myself never having been much into drugs or tripping into new realms of consciousness.  I love his simple pop songs of true love And I Love Her or Things We Said Today (both on the Hard Day's Night album) or Blackbird, which sounds like a song about a little bird, but has an underlying symbolism relating to civil rights. John could never have written a song as simple and as symbolic as this, being more concerned with the demons inside him.  After he lost the discipline of working with Paul, his music could be pretty self-indulgent.  Try listening to Revolution Number Nine on The Beatles, usually known as the White Album, more than once.  It will drive you up the wall.  

John realised that, in his words, you have to “coat the message with a little bit of honey” so he used his ability to make a decent pop song to get his message over.  Happy Christmas (War is Over) is surprisingly hypnotic and stays with you without cloying in the way that Wonderful Christmastime does not.  Too much honey and you are in danger of getting sick of the stuff.

No group could make a three minute pop song like the Beatles when they were at the height of their power.  John and Paul, much like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 200 years ago, were young motherless men with very different personalities and backgrounds who struck sparks off each other, achieving more together than they would have done separately.  John was struck down by a random and meaningless act of violence - itself as good an argument as any for chaining America's gun laws - while Paul is still making music and will headline Glastonbury next summer.  If I had to choose which one to be stuck on a desert island with, it would be Paul, but I have to admit that John wrote the better Christmas song.

Merry Christmas everybody - and a Happy New Year to all, family and society.

_____________________

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner

FAIRNESS VERSUS FREEDOM

A cuddly looking Ken Loach - one of our great film makers

I was wondering why I am so reluctant to go and see Ken Loach’s latest film Sorry We Missed You, which is about the evils of working on zero hours contracts, just as I did not bother with the last I, Daniel Blake about the iniquities of the benefits system.  I used to love Ken Loach films but the last one I liked was The Angel’s Share, a comedy about stealing some super-expensive whisky which nevertheless had a riveting and disturbing scene near the beginning about the damage caused by the hero committing a violent crime.

It is probably the word ‘enjoy’ which contains the reason.  I expect to enjoy the experience of sitting in a darkened room for a couple of hours and watching some other version of real life.  It is almost always real life, incidentally, as I do not care for cartoons, obviously unrealistic superhero movies or those heavy on CGI effects which I never find realistic.  The story and the characters in it have to be believable for me to feel that the whole exercise is worthwhile.

Loach is nothing if not down to earth.  There are no fancy special effects, no unrealistic shoot outs or superpowers, just ordinary people getting on with their lives, often beaten down by a system which is too strong for them.  This is the sort of stuff I normally like but I cannot bring myself to fork out the best part of ten pounds to watch some poor bloke’s life going to ruin because he works as a van driver on a zero hours contract that strangles him.  And I do not like being battered about the head being told what to think while at the cinema.

For years I worked on what was effectively a zero hours contract for a company that offered me work when it needed me but did not provide any guarantees that it would employ me when it did not.  That was fine by me: a couple of years working in an office for the government was quite enough of job security and so I developed the skills which meant I had enough work to pay the bills and support my family while the children grew up. 

The point was that the company needed people like me to be willing, ready and able to work for them.  They did not provide guarantees or benefits like pensions, maternity or sickness pay and only reluctantly did they eventually fork out holiday pay.  This did not worry me in the least.  Like many other people I actually preferred the freedom/insecurity of freelancing.

The system worked in balance because it suited both parties – freedom for the employee (contractor if you prefer) and low overheads for the company.  I enjoyed being part of this system and thought that it showed how capitalism should work.  The company looked after those who worked for it because it was in their interest to do so.  They needed good people on the ground to keep their customers happy while we liked the money we could make without being tied too closely to a company ethos.  When the company identity became all-important, I simply moved on.  I could afford to, having made enough already to slow down.

Ken Loach is having none of that.  His film is about the evils of capitalism and the misery it causes.  He said in a Big Issue interview that the scenario he portrays is how capitalism is supposed to work, periodically throwing people on the scrapheap and then bringing on some other sucker to take their place.  The state can then clear up the mess while the company prospers in its irresponsible way and the victim of its ruthlessness is simply thrown aside.

But capitalism is more complicated than that.  The company I worked for was not morally better than the one the van driver worked for.  It just had a need for committed and loyal people who, in the modern jargon, interfaced with their customers.  They knew that word of mouth recommendation and repeat business were an important part of their success and the people they employed could help to generate that.  As most people only have fleeting contact with the driver who delivers their parcels, this is not a major factor for a delivery company.  Keeping costs down and scheduling issues are more important for them so they tend to be more ruthless and less invested in employee loyalty than the one I worked for.

The case of the Scottish plumber shows how loyalty to and care for your employees can backfire.  Murray Menzies paid into a pension scheme for the small number of employees he had in his plumbing business and now, having retired and looking forward to a comfortable old age, he suddenly finds himself with a bill for over a million pounds. The problem was that some other companies had either defaulted on their commitments or gone bust and he is being made liable for a part of the pensions of employees of these other companies.

Menzies had no idea he could be liable for this debt until he found himself presented with the bill when he himself retired.  The rules had been tightened because people like Robert Maxwell had been plundering the pension funds of their employees to cover debts caused by their own poor management.  Menzies cannot afford to pay the bill, even if he sold his house, and he is not alone. Over 500 small firms and their owners face these kind of debts.

The big problem in our society is gaining a balance between freedom and fairness: allowing successful and enterprising people the right to make money whilst guaranteeing the less fortunate a decent standard of living, of combining the innovation of capitalism with the safety net of socialism.  This is obviously not an easy task but we might start by acknowledging that the unfairness extends to people in business, like Mr Menzies, who tried to do the right thing for his employees and now finds himself crippled by rules which were designed to increase fairness.  It is hardly surprising that companies use zero hours contracts when you see what happened to Murray Menzies.  I wonder if Ken Loach intends making a film about him.  

For more on the Scottish plumber and his problem go to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-50157515

____________________

Apologies for the slightly late posting of this piece caused by some last minute tourist guiding work

You can read about this on my other blog: diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com.

BAD BOYS OF ART

Paul Gauguin self portrait 

Lucian Freud self-portrait

One had between fourteen and forty children. No-one - probably least of all the man himself - knows  exactly how many. The other approached double figures but nobody is quite certain and DNA has been used by those who claim descent from him. Both men regarded the bringing up of their children as being the job of their mothers and both have exhibitions this autumn in London, which demand to be seen.  Your eyes cannot avoid being drawn to their paintings when you see them in an art gallery.

Lucian Freud was a grandson of Sigmund and brother of the politician Clement (with whom he did not get along). He had little time for family loyalty and the concept of fidelity to one woman became increasingly alien as his life went on. There were two marriages, numerous mistresses and several short liaisons, some of which produced children as he eschewed any form of contraception, which he considered ‘sordid’.  He gave little if any financial support to his offspring yet he seems to have been a half-decent father, who was even something of a fun figure for some of his children, although he could never be mistaken for a reliable bread-winner.

Paul Gauguin did make an attempt at being a responsible husband and father but art took precedence and his inability to make it pay cost him the affection of his strong-minded Danish wife Mette and, eventually, contact with the five children he had with her. He probably reached double figures through various mistresses he lived with when he went to live in Tahiti and there are those who today quite proudly trace their lineage back to him.

Why do I seem to be spending so much time on their domestic arrangements when it is their art that both are known for? If it was not for that they would both be forgotten by all except their families and remembered by them as a feckless if occasionally entertaining presence.

Not being a creator myself (except in writing occasional pieces like these) I overcompensate by taking my parental responsibilities seriously, making sure I provide for my children (now grandchildren as well) and spend some but not too much time with them. You can swamp your kids if you do not set them free to lead independent lives, which can be as bad as ignoring and neglecting them. This is not entirely unselfish on my part. I have a ridiculous need to see some grandchildren to continue the line – something my brothers have not yet produced – and need the first generation to find their own feet so that they can establish and continue the line on their own without me. Safe to say, that did not occur to these two artists, who live on more through their paintings than their progeny (which was plentiful).

It is a mistake to confuse creativity and goodness. You think that having a clear eye might help you to avoid mistakes, but it just means you see them and the people who make them more clearly, not that you avoid the mistakes or selfishness. And both Gauguin and Freud were very selfish. We can disapprove of their cavalier treatment of the women and children in their lives but you cannot walk through an art gallery without being grabbed by the portraits they produced, often of naked women they had just had sex with - or were about to.

Graham Greene said that there was a splinter of ice in the heart of all great writers – and the same is true of other types of artists. Greene left his own wife and children after about twenty years of marriage and spent the rest of his life with various women, having little contact with the family he deserted, although he did provide financial support for them. Despite, or maybe because of this selfishness, he continued to produce brilliant melancholy novels for the rest of his life. His heroes are fallible men who fail at family life, just as he did.

For people like me, who will never produce great works of art, being half successful at parenthood is important. I have said before that you can only offer your children three things – time, money and love – and you can give them too much as well as too little of all three. Neither Gauguin nor Freud gave much to their children except their genes and their name, which they doggedly held onto, and neither was much use as a day-to-day father. In a sense their paintings are their descendants, just as Greene said that his books were his children.

Which would I prefer to produce – books I would be remembered by or children who would remember me with fondness. Children, certainly. But then, it is unlikely I will be remembered for my writing, while my children – and hopefully grandchildren - will go on remembering me.

A late self-portrait of Freud. He turned the
 same unflinching eye on himself as others

Gauguin's strong-minded wife Mette -
still a touch of sensuality in this picture

The Gauguin exhibition is at the National Gallery (up to 26th January 2020).

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/the-credit-suisse-exhibition-gauguin-portraits

The Freud self-portraits can be seen at the Royal Academy (until the same date).

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/lucian-freud-self-portraits

____________________

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

Edwin Lerner