Presents

Dr Ram Ben-Shalom, pictured below, a student of Assi Ben-Porat in Tel Aviv, brought me a beautiful little picture from Assi – an ink drawing of a character in Lifting Hands with the sacred mist rising visibly within. Thinking where I should get it framed I remembered this event from six years ago:

On John's 60th birthday in 2000 I was due to visit him for Pushing Hands at 6pm and on the way from my flat on the Lower Clapton Road (Murder Mile as it was affectionately known) I stopped off at various shops to buy him a little present. Buying things for John is always difficult, especially since he hates celebrating birthdays, but I felt the 60th deserved something. Unfortunately I could find nothing suitable so I resigned myself to not getting him anything.

The last interesting shop on the Holloway Rd one passed before turning off to get to John's flat, which was then on Liverpool Road, was a picture framing shop I really liked visiting because the lady who owned the shop was very friendly as well as being very beautiful, so I decided to go in and buy a classy birthday card for him. Unfortunately on this occasion the lady was not there, instead there was a gay guy called David who always wore extremely tight turned-up jeans high off his ankles and high into his groin, and spoke with one of those lacquered gay voices – almost a lisp. As I was buying the card I noticed a series of smallish framed photographic portraits of famous movie stars on the far wall - Brando, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, etc. One of them was Grace Kelly - John's favourite - a beautiful photograph. I said to David, "Is that Grace Kelly?" He replied that it was and he then told me a wonderful story of how in the 1970's he had worked as an electrician in the palace in Monaco and had met Grace Kelly and had become friends with her (she really missed speaking English apparently). When he finished working in the palace she gave him a large signed and framed photograph of herself and her children which he said he will treasure for the rest of his life. I was so charmed by his story that I bought the small portrait for John (even though it was, for me, a lot of money) and got David to wrap it up nicely. When John opened it I have never seen such surprise and delight in a persons face. He hung the picture on the wall by his bed.