Xaviera's summer newsletter, special on 76th birthday party
It has been far too long since you last received an update on the news in my life over the last few months. Mid May Philip and I made our sentimental journey back to Spain. Not to the snobbish city of Marbella, where I had resided for well over 40 years, until I sold the lovely villa earlier the year before, but to the next more relaxed city Fuengirola.
Of course in the beginning I was heart broken to have sold the elegant big villa in Marbella, with a delightful swimming pool - to a Belgian retired pilot and his horrid stuck up wife... But after we paid them an unexpected visit on a previous stay at the Costa del Sol I was instantly cured of any desire for my favourite old hideaway. That’s how frigid the reception was when we got there. When I asked them why we were treated in such a hostile manner the husband said Because you called my wife a slave driver in one of your last emails. “So…” was my answer. “Do you know why I did that?” He shrug his shoulders and his bitchy frigid wife smirked at me hatefully.
“Because on several occasions I had mentioned to her by email to pay Theo, our old swimming pool boy as well as gardener , who had been working for us over ten years already, at least a salary say of euro 150 a month while he could stay in the rebuilt garage, which my ex John Drummond had turned into a lovely bed-living room apartment. Did she do that?’ I asked loudly…
No answer, ‘Like hell, she did not. So for the following 3 months the man could barely survive nor could he feed his poor cat. Do you now think I had the right to refer to her as a slave driver…??' This conversation was ended in a deathly silence. We then and there decided that they would take Theo with them by car to Belgium a month later and I would pay for his ticket to Amsterdam from there.. so.. now we have Theo living on our Dutch premises, where he may miss the sunny weather of Spain but is looking after the garden and some of our guests and being appreciated at last again.
Yet I myself still am homesick once or twice a year for the many great friends I still have in Spain, who mostly all live in or near Fuengirola - a lot more relaxed, where we rent a great big flat in the middle of town. Each year we notice that specially during the weekends, after midnight when the pubs close down, it is an extremely noisy part of town. Oh my GOD those Spanish drunks as well as the British tourists sure can make a hell of a lot of noise until the very early hours in the morning!!
One afternoon we were invited at the house of my 42 years old Finnish forester friend called KIMMO MOILANEN, his Spanish wife and their one year old clever little boy for our yearly delicious home made luncheon in their gorgeous cool patio.
Then of course Philip cooked up a storm for more than half a dozen of my predominantly female friends varying in age from Sally Perlemoine in her early eighties,- an elegant witty fanatic bridge player in great shape - to Michel Cruz,(half Dutch/South African) early fifties and big shot in the magazine and advertising business of Andalucia. Carla May, (originally from Surinam), and I go back about 40 years. She too is no more spring chicken but that’s what I love: to see us all grow older slowly... for some, deterioration has not touched us like Sally Anne, still youthful and working for a bank in Gibraltar, to the great and most attractive Belgian couple fit and sporty and sexy Luc and Kristel in their early fifties. They live in the mountains near Alhaurin and have an enormous animal shelter Noah's Ark, where Philip and I got our latest little doggy Suzy from. Kristel has had 5 children before she married Luc and most of them assisted regularly in the animal business.
Three other women not to be missed were eternally youthful English Louise, whose own darling mother Eeny had just died a few years ago at age 102. Hanneke, like me from Holland, and a great tailor, who used to make all our curtains years ago, had not changed much either over the years and still lives in Marbella. Jane Gomes, who had recently over come a breast cancer operation, looked more beautiful and happy than ever and also joined us and the hen party was complete.
One afternoon after my doctors treatment, we were invited for luncheon by a charming ageless theatre producer SHERRY MIDAS of wealthy Ethiopian parents, but living down the coast in the mountains for the last 30 or so years. In fact she helped me produce my very first theater play in Marbella at the Black Box theater which is now closed and bankrupt, helas.
This time my health was not as good as I had hoped it would be and even after I went to my so called wunder artzt orthopedic miracle man Wolfgang Schmitt who pumps me full of interesting shots of Crespine Gel and cortisone injections in my sore parts of the body... like knees, hips or back and shoulders - for the first time in years I was feeling kind of ill afterwards. With a bit of luck my medical insurance will pay me back the almost euro 900 for two visits!
All over the Costa del Sol we did notice - whether it was in gay Torremolinos or some of the other villages along the coast... a great deal more disabled mostly elderly people than previous years and I was happily surprised to notice that most restaurants offered great places like toilets specially created for the disabled people. Ofcourse come summer time the old folk will have to make place for thousands of young families with their screaming kids.
One man, who I have known also since the first time I moved to Spain 45 years ago, is the brilliant German psychiatrist Dr. Frank Stahl, who has lived in Scandinavia but now resides in Mijas in the mountains for the last 35 years and whose adult sons and a daughter all live in his neighbourhood.
Well Frank STAHL should maybe appear in the Guinness book of records as the man with more illnesses than anyone else we know. It started with malaria during one of his various worldwide trips in his youth. Now he has barely one tooth left in his handsome grey haired face. His hands shake due to premature Parkinson, as he calls it. He has just come out of hospital after a massive heart operation. Yet he manages with assistance of some people on the street or friends - not to forget a stick an a wheelchair as well - to crawl behind his wheel and drive over to our place or even once a week to Gibraltar, where he holds practice and does a televised talk show a.o about sex... With that one salary he can barely survive in Mijas where he has a spacious but not too expensive apartment. Then he drives back to his own home and with assistance of friendly neighbours he finally crashes in his big comfortable bed. Our flat luckily has an elevator so he manages to get himself to our place on his own speed in a wheelchair.
Just before our return to Amsterdam Philip got a severe case or bronchitis probably due to the air-conditioning in the apartment. Once landed in Amsterdam in the middle of the night I felt the same sore throat coming up. So the two of us have been ill without stopping our activities for almost 2 weeks. Three days later it was MY turn to get it and together we have been coughing up a storm for almost a week. Then I lost my voice totally for a week and just when it all was ok again the preparations for my massive 76th birthday party started.
On the day of my real birthday June 15 I had gathered a group of 14 of my closest friends. It was extremely intimate and they were happy to be there, like my friends from the UK Chris and Andrea who had to leave before my big bash on the 23rd. There were Johnny and Ezmeeh, Dia, Marjan Strack van Schendel and my lovely girlfriend I had not seen for many years from Mexico, Elsa Ramirez. Tom de Jong also showed up, the singer and actor.
AND NOW A FEW DAYS LATER ON SUNDAY JUNE 23 - a brilliant sunny day after days of rain and us praying for sunshine... ON THE DAY OF MY REAL BIG BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION, with about 60 people instead of 80 I had planned and ordered food for. Helas about 20 people had to cancel at the last moment, so I was stuck with a pretty high food bill from Mohammed who did, once more a great job, with his Syrian cooking style.
There was also my dear pretty and statuesk girlfriend (not lover) and masseuse - LEONY PAUS. She showed up with her massaging chair and I arranged half a dozen clients for her throughout the day in the back of our living room.
Our good friend and top musician Frank de Kleer had arranged, on my request a super fabulous real gypsy band of about 10 musicians and dancers. The NADARA TRANSYLVANIAN WEDDINGBAND from Romania.
They often play at enormous gypsy weddings and are known all over Europe. Nadara will not perform unless they bring along half a dozen gypsy singers and dancers who are known for their phenomenal clapping sounds during their dances and not to forget the gorgeous young women can do miracles during their most exciting belly dances.
The most spectacular part of this original gypsy music is when the lead singer Nadara brings us her Hungarian, Romanian and romantic Transylvanian repertoire.
The most wanted dance during parties or weddings is the so called MAHALA or MANELE. Here it is mostly the men that make the great music with the tapping of their feet on the hard floor.
Frank who has travelled with this big band several times to their own homes In Romania and Bulgaria told me that most of them live in extreme poverty in very poor districts and cannot even speak any other language than Roma amongst themselves. Yet they are the sweetest kindest and most cheerful friends he has in this world. So he often brings along suitcases full of used cloths from his friends like me, which they love!!
This Easter gypsy music is extremely popular in all of Romania and stimulated lots of pretty young woman to learn how to perform sexy belly dances at weddings etc.
Then there were also some terrific and most handsome male and female dancers from The Carpathian Ensemble from the Netherlands, specialized in all dances of the different population groups in the Carpathians (Romania). They dance the traditional dances from the Romanian & Hungarian (gypsy) area, like Csárdás. You saw individual and solo dances.
Nadara Gypsy Weddingband
At Xaviera’s party you heard and saw 4 members of the Nadara (means: “keep faith” in Gypsylanguage).
Frank de Kleer says the following:
“The primas Tocila is from Csavas, in Transylvania, Romania. They are actually Hungarian Gypsies. Frank stayed with Tocila last summer. Beautiful nature and culture. The life of the gypsies in Romania is very bad. Tocila is one of the virtuosic players of Transylvania. He can make a good living. A lot of people are dependent of him. Charles Aznavour (rip) was a big fan of their music and the band played for him at private parties. They play(ed) a lot at (gypsy)weddings and festivals all over the world. Maybe another year (at least 20 to go, Xaviera ;-) we can hear them with the full band.”
Together with the beautiful other musicians on the party Like David Kopsky, Frank Affolter, Frank de Kleer, Tom de Jong (singer - actor) there was the lovely American story teller Mary Sue Siegel . It was a real musical journey with a "piano battle" at the end.
One lovely incident I must mention which was the terrific birthday cake in the shape of a pair of fabulous big boobs. This true piece of art was made by the professional baker daughter of Martin, the lover of Sharene, an American girlfriend who has moved to Amsterdam about 7 years ago and loves it here. There was the curious little 7 year old Japanese grand child of my Russian lady friend Ala Popova , who was absolutely fascinated when the knife cut off her first part of her magnificent nipple-cake and that first piece of cake was handed to me…
Then there were my good yearlong friends Alex and Fred with Freds charming aunt, and the brother of the famous dutch author Jroen Brouwers who I know from our Mexican days in Troncones. More and more expats decide to come back once they reach the pension age to good old Holland. So did he and his girlfriend.
Marion Foster, one time well known fashion designer showed up with her regular travel companion. Ofcourse not to be missed the now well known and loved super massagist not to be confused with masochist LEONY PAUS.. with some wise words for me and my sometimes aching body.
Marijke Weisglas recently retired, had just returned from a long trip to the USA where she had purely accidental bumped into my closest friend Dia Huizinga who also was on tour in the USA. They both met again at this party.
Not to be forgotten two dear friends and Hans and Marion. She is a true survivor and had recently undergone a new heart transplant operation... when shortly after that enormous and risky operation everything else seemed to have gone wrong with her health. It has taken her a very firm and long battle and many arguments with Dutch hospitals, who had already given up on her until... her darling man at the very last moment found a fabulous German hospital that saved her life. And now she is on the mend at last, so imagine how delighted they were to be present at our big party!
Peter Zonneveld (historian, author and lover of wartime novels from Indonesia ) gave me a lovely book about Indonesia that he had written himself. Peter is also connoisseur of the war time in Indonesia and a few months earlier this year I even gave a lecture in Bronbeek where he had arranged speakers for the subject dutch men with Indonesian women/mistresses so I spoke about my own fathers adventures in Java: dr. Mick de Vries.
It was a true delight to see PETER EDEL again with his charming Turkish wife Muge. They had been living in Turkey for about 10 years, but are now in Germany where they sell all sorts of interesting things for the house. He is also, like Henk Visser, for many years the photographer at many of my more kinky parties!!
David Kopsky (who is a well known acupuncturist in Amsterdam and surroundings), also happens to be an excellent saxophone Player as well as pianist. So, towards the end of the party round 7 p.m. when most people were about to leave David and Frank Affolter were joined by my name sake Xavier Boot. He is also a gifted pianist, and so this threesome did play with each other… on the keyboard or saxophone that is, and were joined by Frank de Kleer on guitar for well over an hour of terrific improvised music. It seemed like a veritable marathon. F a b u l o u s.
Well. This sums it all up I would say. Enjoy the rest of the summer and let’s hear from YOU to what life has offered you in the last year.
By the way I like to point out how well our lovely garden at the Stadionweg 17 has been looked after by THEO and Philip and not to forget the new enlarged patio terrace which HERMAN DE BOCK has created, not only for our own eyegasme.... but surely also for the many colorful mixed nationalities who embark at our cheerful Xaviera 's Happy House BB over the last few years. Please do tell your friends and family members to stay with us on their next journey to Amsterdam....!! They can even take their funny four footers along or a child, there is Protected Parking right outside our house and bikes are for rent as well and not to forget Philip, who is the perfect guide for anyone who needs travel advice. Thank you all for taking the time to read this lengthy summer newsletter.
Xaviera and Philip
