I reckon that during a lifetime you might be lucky enough to meet one person you could safely call a genius. And when I say genius I don’t mean someone who is adept at, say, kicking a football or cooking a risotto. I mean someone whose mind, skills and creativity are at a level the rest of us can only dream about.
I think I’ve been lucky enough to meet and even work with two. One is Carlos Kleiber, whom I’ve raved about before, and the other, who I hold even above Kleiber on the genius front, is sixty today. He is Oliver Knussen. Olly. The Olster, Master of All Things Ol. …
Yesterday, my housemate Stephen and I went up Mount Generoso. This sounds like an achievement but it was really quite easy.
It was certainly a lot easier than the last time I did it three years ago. Then I took a train from Milan to Como, walked across town to another station, where I took a train across the border in Switzerland, then switched to a Swiss train which took me to Capolago at the bottom of Lake Lugano, where I boarded the cog train that climbs the mountain. Back then, the mainline train was scheduled to arrive at Capolago a minute before the cog train left. Given that this was Switzerland, where the trains really do leave and arrive on the dot, I assumed that this was all part of some slightly smug planning, a demonstration of immaculate time-keeping.…
A touch of politics
Now I’m a green card holder I can donate to a candidate in the US elections. I’m going to give money to the Obama campaign, not because I expect him to stop the oceans rising – it’s a serious albeit ambitious aspiration – but because when Romney says he’s going to “help you and your family”, noble and modest as that may sound, it is profoundly dishonest. …
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