A television producer returns from LA to his roots in the North of England. There he marries a Californian (who's still getting used to the cold) and fathers his fifth child at the age of 57.
Jo and I shivered in disgust when we heard of the sickening murder of David Haines. Similar emotions would have been felt in every home in the civilized world.
This was a crime of barbarity, committed against a British citizen, most likely by another British citizen.
An innocent man, a simple, caring humanitarian unconnected with government, religion or media, he’d devoted years of his life trying to help other lives destroyed by conflict.
Yesterday morning, before the rain came, Izzy was hunting in the garden for chocolate eggs. As I watched her giggling with excitement and screaming at every new discovery, I felt strangely uneasy.
I’ve had this sense of anxiety since Wednesday, when the world ended for 300 people on a boat in South Korea. The story of the capsized ferry has combined a terrible sadness for the fate of children I’ve never met with a fear of how I could ever completely protect my own.
As I watched the videos of obedient students, many the age of my youngest son, huddled in corners waiting for the instruction to disembark that never came, I shuddered and thought: what if one of these were my child?
Last Tuesday I celebrated Christmas with my family.
A fortnight late, I know, though not according to my Serbian builder.
Zoric (his real name is Velibor, but everyone calls him by his surname) observed his Christmas on Tuesday as well. In Serbia they use the Julian calendar, so his celebrations are always two weeks late, a bit like his building work.
While Zoric was supposed to be chopping down an oak branch and spreading straw on the floor of his house (a Serbian tradition I doubt he transposes to his flat in Tottenham) I was a few miles away in the Groucho Club, surrounded by children, presents and bemused celebrities.
[Last night, at the beginning of Greenwich Mean Time, our clocks went back by one hour]
GMT arrived noisily on Sunday morning.
The clock on the front of our bedroom phone had reached 2.21 am, which meant it was 3.21 am in my head. I had been so looking forward to an extra hour of sleep, but the loud ringing of the phone had other ideas.
Woken with a start, Jo grabbed the handset from its cradle. A deep intake of breath, then: “Rocca – oh no”.
Rocca is the eldest of my three daughters. On Saturday night she was supposed to be arriving in Bogota, capital of Colombia.
“We’ve settled on June 8th 2013,” said Ben. He paused and waited for my reaction.
The finality of his words aroused excitement, satisfaction, relief, but also, deep down, a slight twinge of regret. This date marks the end of the first part, and the beginning of the next. The age of dependence has passed. My son is becoming a husband.
“We’ve booked the Church near Mum’s house, with a marquee; my friend Stu is doing the music and Izzy will be flower girl”. It all sounded so grownup and organised. So very unlike Ben.
His life started in a panic, and he’s managed to live in a state of frenzied confusion ever since. He was almost born in our old Volkswagen camper van because his mother and I were late leaving for the hospital – we hadn’t reckoned that London’s roads would be gridlocked because of the royal fireworks event for Charles and Diana’s wedding, so we drove on the pavement hoping a policeman might arrest us and give us an escort through the traffic. My wife’s waters broke on Hammersmith roundabout.
We finally made the hospital and Ben’s head popped out just as the first firework exploded. Since then, Ben has managed to learn from his parents and be stylishly late for everything in life.
I nicknamed him Tig because that was his first decipherable sound as he crawled round our sitting room in Putney. I still call him that, just as everyone still uses the name that Ben called his baby sister – he couldn’t quite say Rebecca, so she has lived happily with Rocca ever since. Ben transforms everything he touches.
He is loving, handsome, adorable, with more creativity and talent in his little finger than I have in my entire body. I cried when I saw him win the backstroke title in the primary schools’ swimming gala; I cried when he appeared in his first school play; and I cried again last year when I saw his first television credit, as the director of Casualty.
Far too clever to bother with good exam results, he had a deliciously rebellious streak, which marked him out at boarding school. In his first term he broke the house record for flooding his dormitory bathroom – the water reached ten inches before streaming down the walls of the room below, narrowly missing a priceless Gainsborough. He caused a sensation by going out with a sixth-former when he was just 13 and later dated a Prussian princess. I frequently had to send compensation to disgruntled taxi-drivers for cleaning up their upholstery after his illegal nights in local pubs. The school was unamused: I spoke sternly, but quietly rejoiced at his independent spirit.
My only really painful memory was seeing him wheeled out of the operating theatre in Barcelona where they’d patched him together with metal bars after his road accident – never, ever, let your children ride motor bikes, however much they plead.
For years I’d been pushing him to propose to Natalie. They first dated and then lived together in a tiny flat in Barcelona; then they painfully split up, before easing themselves back into each other’s lives. Now they’re taking the plunge into the warm comforting waters of matrimony.
So on Saturday Jo and I drove to Edinburgh to meet the in-laws. Nat’s mother is German and her father is something big in the US military. They sounded formidable, but in reality are as delightful as their daughter. Beautiful, witty and clever (she is a media lawyer), Natalie has thankfully inherited her parents’ organisational skills. A perfect foil for the Gutteridge chaos.
“You’re early”, exclaimed Ben, when he arrived half an hour after us.
“You’re late,” I said.
“No I’m not, I told you the wrong time on purpose,” he said, then confided: “It was Natalie’s idea – she does it to me all the time”.
“That’s why I was so early,” I said, pointing at Jo, “She told me the wrong time too.”
The two girls winked at each other, then huddled in the corner to discuss wedding dresses. Order, thy name is Woman.
A few months ago two young Argentinian tango dancers, Ismael Ludman and Maria Mondino, had a bad experience at Glasgow Airport. Now what I don’t know about tango would fill several libraries, but I’m told these folk are big in the dance world.
Argentinian tango isn’t like the flouncy stuff you see on Dancing With the Stars. It’s exotic and erotic, sinuous and sexy. With their upper bodies welded together, the dancers intertwine, their legs making graceful arcs around them. It’s fascinating and beautiful, and Ludman and Mondino are two of the best exponents. They travel the globe giving workshops and they’re quite well-known in Scotland, apparently, which is why they were invited to tour a few village halls and other small venues.
Sadly, the UK Border Agency had other ideas. The couple were held at the airport, refused entry and sent home. Just two casualties of a new immigration system that is making a mockery of Britain’s claim to be a magnet for international culture.
I only know about this because I was in Kirk Yetholm on Saturday night, where a public meeting, chaired by my daughter, was held to highlight the problem. There were artists, writers, musicians, gallery-owners and film-makers, even a true-blue-blooded member of the House of Lords, and they were all concerned about a system that is threatening to turn Britain into a cultural ghetto.
In 2008, our government introduced a new points-based visa system for non-EEC immigrants. It’s similar to the one that works successfully in Australia, except that in Australia there’s a special category that allows short-term visits by artists, writers and performers. Australians think it’s important that their country’s cultural diet is enriched by the work of significant international artists. Yet, despite Britain’s claims to be at the heart of cultural exchange, when they brought in our new immigration law, the government simply forgot about the arts.
Big festivals, like the Edinburgh International Festival, are given special status, but smaller events, like a book-signing by an award-winning American writer at your local Waterstones, or an appearance by a international director at a film festival in Hawick, requires a “licensed sponsor”. No sponsor, no entry, and the cost of each licence and visa runs to hundreds of pounds.
Sometimes the artist would have to travel hundreds of miles to get a biometric test – a ludicrous expense if you’re just performing for one night at a village hall where a few people like to tango.
The situation is now absurd: an international writer or a photographer on a tourist visa faces deportation if they so much as open a notebook or take a single snap; an established artist can’t even come to visit his own exhibition of paintings.
Musicians and poets from Africa, artists from Russia and China, and now Argentinian tango dancers, have fallen foul of the rules, and the world’s greatest living pianist, Grigory Sokolov, has simply deleted the UK from his touring itinerary. These are people of genius, whom we idolize for their extraordinary creative talent, and then we let the staff of the UK Border Agency treat them like illegal immigrants. They aren’t stealing employment from us, we invite them to our shores to enthrall us with their art.
According to the meeting in Yetholm, the government simply needs to create an “artists and entertainers visitor” route to solve the problem, and yet, despite a crescendo of complaints from every part of Britain’s cultural establishment, Theresa May’s Home Office remains oblivious and Jeremy Hunt’s Culture department is doing nothing to help.
The Argentinian tango dancers have got their revenge, however. There’s a magical YouTube video of them performing around their suitcases in the airport, a tribute to our pointless bureaucracy and the jobsworth mentality of the UKBA. Do take a look, before you write to your local MP.
