Capricorn birthdays

Here I was celebrating another birthday with friends; then again with an old school ‘best friend’ just like old times and the third time with my 1975 darling’s family, as the younger darling is not on these islands for the time being. I am a Capricorn and I share the sign with some pretty interesting personalities: Humphrey Bogart, Pablo Casals, Nat King Cole, Cary Grant, Martin Luther King, Rudyard Kipling, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Helena Rubenstein, Albert Schweitzer and even Joan of Arc. French politicians of all leaning from Napoleon onwards have invoked Joan of Arc’s name at sometime or another. And now, on the 600 anniversary of her birth (or is it her death?), she is being dragged back into battle by politicians of all hues who are fighting over her image.

For decades Joan of Arc has been a symbol of the Front National, now led by Marine Le Pen. Several years ago Joan was adopted by France’s far-right National Front party due to her legacy of driving the English out of France (an early anti-immigration policy if you will). Now, she has become the subject of Nicolas Sarkozy’s attentions, and it hasn’t gone down well with the National Front. It is not only in Malta that politicians will use whatever they can to stay in power. Still, back to astrology;

I hope there is no more to it than there is to crystal gazing and other esoteric hobbies as I see, to my horror, that I also share a birthday with Mao Tse Tung and America’s answer to our Anton Grasso, Edgar Allen Poe, whose stories of mystery and the macabre terrified us in our teen years. But my actual birthdate is shared with Thérèse de Liseaux and an intriguing personality Queen Emma of Hawaii, Consort of King Kamehameha IV who died in 1885.

My birthdays don’t hold any sort of fascination for me, if they ever did.

I am always mildly surprised at those who celebrate birthdays with a great deal of fuss, pomp and circumatance. I suppose it is a kind of hangover from schooldays, when birthdays were almost a wondrous occasion with cakes in the refectory and much clapping and holy pictures with wishes written at the back and ‘many more to come’ invariably added to those wishes, mostly and optimistically, of lifelong happiness.

Our parents always contrived to send us a cake and, when we were boarders, lots of sweets and chocolates hidden in between the sheets and towels. Once the goodies were removed a suitable hiding place in our sparsely furnished cubicles had to be found.

In those days we longed to be teenagers and be allowed to stay out until 8pm at the Golden Harvest in Sliema. And then we longed to be 21 and be truly grown up and perhaps be allowed to stay out until 11pm.

Eating out then was truly a treat to be enjoyed on important occasions and I recall the thrill of discovering the prawn cocktail served in a shallow glass and made up mostly of lettuce leaves and mayonnaise. Still, although I may not make much fuss over my own birthday I rise to the occasion when kind friends and family remember. So happy birthday to all Capricorns.

A concert by the

Grad-Quartet at

San Anton Palace

I am always delighted to be invited to a concert at San Anton Palace and hate it when I have to miss one, for one reason or another. The 6 January concert was organized by the Russian Centre for Science and Culture and in the Russian Chapel at San Anton there wasn’t a seat to be had although it was cold and rainy. There were diplomats, members of the clergy and several Russians, some of them married to Maltese.

The staircase and reception rooms looked particularly elegant with poinsiettas and gulbiena or vetch decorating the artistic crib at the top of the stairs and the chapel. Everyone except me seems to be able to have curly, twirly gulbiena. I keep on asking for the secret for growing it and have been given all kinds of suggestions: put it under the bed, plant it in compost, don’t water it too often, make certain you don’t forget it and keep it moist. I have tried them all but although this year’s was fairly presentable it was not the kind of gulbiena I dream of. I shall have to keep on trying until I get the curls and twirls I am after. I have spent a lifetime trying to get curls and twirls out of my hair and here I am, wanting them in my gulbiena. We are full of contradictions.

The young musicians were wonderful and we clapped and clapped. I will not give you their names. What is the point? All those difficult surnames will mean nothing to you – or indeed to me. But their music! We loved it. The Grad-Quartet, as they call themselves, was formed in 2006 in St Petersburg in the Department of Folk Instuments at the Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts. Apparently, and according to the programme, ‘they regularly trigger off storms of enthusiasm and inspire music critics from around the world in ever increasing numbers.’ They are virtuosos, fun and absolutely brilliant. Their versatility is to be greatly admired – and they were admired that evening. They played various styles: from traditional songs to Bach arrangements, contemporary compositions, Folk, Jazz and classical Russian composers and the wonderful Argentinian composer Piazzolla. In fact they won First Prize in a competition of Piazzolla’s music in 2008.

I loved, most of all their piece Mozart meets Bond a most entertaining medley, Nino Rota’s A stroll with Fellini with extracts from Fellini films, Velasquez’s Besame Mucho which we never tire of hearing and at least a couple of Piazzolla tangos. How uplifted we were as we walked to the reception rooms to meet the President and discuss the concert.

However, there was another star that evening. It was impossible to miss a tall blonde lady in a very distinctive and elegant gray ensemble. I was to learn that it was Mrs Anna V. Botvinova who was with her husband. After asking her several questions she told me that her father is French and her mother a descendant Serbian-Russian. Both parents, she told me, are descendants of nobility and Russian aristocracy. She speaks perfect French and English and has a Ph.D. in languages. She is also the proprietor of a company Bekkar Ltd and of the Gallery Versal which imports furniture among other things. Her husband Alexander Botvinov, is ‘a famous scientist and renowned surgeon; an academician and Doctor of Medicine, Professor, President of the International Medico-Biological Scientific Centre.’ An interesting lady and as the Russian ambassador’s wife told me in her perfect English and elegant mild manner: ‘Yes what she is wearing is spectacular, yes spectacular.’ You will agree. I did not like to ask Dr Botvinova whether the foxes were baby foxes. We shall never see the likes of it again here, I am certain. She carried it off beautifully. You cannot skulk around shyly wearing that sort of thing.