Load Of Balls

 Ballrooms are in the news. Firstly there's the huge vanity project the American President is erecting over the grave of Eleanor Roosevelt. And secondly there's the affair at the British Museum.

The British Museum (which contains very little that is actually British) is a vast warehouse full of Imperial loot. It's new director had the wizard wheeze of inviting 800 of the world's richest, vainest and least self-aware people- many of the identifiably friends of Jeffrey- to come and disport themselves in a peculiar shade of pink among the ruins of the world's great civilisations.

The old East Wing was a serious building in which serious people did serious things. It's replacement is a frivolous building in which frivolous people will do frivolous things. The Museum is also a serious building full of serious things- and not intended to serve as a backdrop against which Mick Jagger and Naomi Campbell might flex their arthritic limbs. Frivolity is a splendid thing, but there's a time and a place. 

What caused particular annoyance in the case of the BM's "Pink Ball" was the use of the Duveen Gallery- which houses the marbles from the Parthenon- as a dining room- for the penguin suits and the ladies in pink.  Phedias would have been unamused- or simply bemused. Ditto Pericles. Ditto the modern Greeks who want the marbles back and housed in a gallery on the Acropolis where they will be treated as the foundation monuments of modern civilisation that they are. 

The T**** Ballroom and The BT's Pink Ball: there is a distinct aroma of fin de siecle/last things/collapse of empire about them both.....

More Balls

 This morning I spotted the first instance of the T**** Ballroom being referred to as The Epstein Wing. I trust there will be many more.

It is being suggested (but perhaps it's fake news) that the construction of the Epstein Wing is actually cover for the making of a new and improved nuclear bunker. I pass this on for what it's worth.

I have always thought that in the event of nuclear war, the last people to be allowed into the bunkers should be the people primarily responsible for bringing it about- which is to say the government, the diplomats, the generals etc. In societies with a code of honour it was expected that a failed leader would fall on his sword.

On a related topic (another titbit from the airwaves) it is being said Andrew Windsor is being offered a Palace in Abu Dhabi. Why anyone would not only want him as a neighbour but also offer to maintain him in the manner to which he's accustomed is beyond me, but there it is.

Who runs Abu Dhabi anyway?

Easy. His name is Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan. He's also President of the UAE. Ah, and here's a clue. He's a close "friend" and ally of the current US President. Might he be thinking it would be a friendly gesture to keep Andrew Windsor squirreled away in a beachside palace where journalists (who are discouraged in the UAE) will be unable to get at him? This is highly speculative, of course.



No, no no, this is not the T**** Ballroom aka The Epstein Wing  but the Sheik Zayed mosque in Abu Dhabi.

Ain't it grand!