Lesley Truffle's Blog

Earlier this year Amy Odell, a fashion and culture journalist, informed a US journalist

she’d sold  fifty of her super-expensive handbags, ‘just as a result of being sickened by

myself.’

The burning question is – just how many uber luxury handbags does Odell have left?

Having sold off fifty handbags, has she retained a collection of uber expensive handbags

as an investment?

Also, why did Odell publicly disclose she’s ‘sickened’ with herself?

The pricing for genuine, exclusive uber luxury handbags is formidable. At the top end is

Jane Birkin’s original (used and a tad battered) Hermès bag, which sold at a Paris auction

for $10 million, a new Chanel Diamond Forever bag for $261,000 and a ‘striking of

fashion and art’ Louis Vuitton’s Kusama Pumpkin Minaudiere bag for $133.430.

High fashion bags are also available for a few hundred dollars and many fashionistas

consider them to be ‘essential’ to their wellbeing rather than luxury goods.

Crime syndicates are particularly interested in uber luxury bags and mega expensive

watches as an easier means of transporting and laundering their ill gotten gains. And so it

goes.

Apparently there’s been a generational change amongst young adults to pledge cutting

back on or eliminating spending on non-essential purchases to save money. In other

words – it’s become fashionable to shun aspirational consumerism.

In our present era of anxiety over cost-of-living, insecure labour markets, world political

crises, climate change, major wars and the threat of pandemics, many cashed up citizens

still regard luxury goods as good investments.

In Melbourne and many other cities Hermes, Dior, Chanel, Gucci, Cartier, Louis Vuitton,

Burberry, Cartier, and Tiffany & Co. have no shortage of retail customers.

For over two decades there’s been a luxury label boom in Australia. Early in the morning

Melbourne’s in the CBD as the tram approaches Collins Street’s Paris end, you can still

glimpse eager customers lining up outside the luxury stores well before opening time.

The size of the extravagant stores is significant.  Luxury corporations are securing

flagship stores of 500 to 1000 square metres of space. Especially popular are

magnificently restored heritage buildings whispering power and historical significance.

The fit outs alone can start at AU$20,000 a square metre.

Being ‘seen’ at glitzy stores is crucial to both shoppers and luxe brands. As happy

punters publicize their expensive purchases on social media, the brands desirability

expands.

Small wonder the pursuit of fake luxe handbags raises the fury of premium bag

makers. Once an expensive object of desire has been reproduced en masse in quality

counterfeit, itchallenges the unique status of the real thing.

Counterfeit luxe handbags have become so convincing that it takes a leather craftsman to

be able to discern the difference. The giveaway as to whether a leather bag is real or

fake might come down to the number of stitches in a seam or some other minor detail.

At present there’s an additional element affecting the luxury market, especially in

clothing. Logos and branding are deemed vulgar and ‘stealth wealth’ or ‘quiet luxury’ are

highly sought after.

What hasn’t changed is that ‘quiet luxury’ can still be identified as extremely expensive.

Thanks to the internet, fashionistas and those in the know can easily tell if your cotton T-

shirt is an expensive luxury brand or a Kmart dupe.

However, things are changing according to IBISWorld, and the prediction is growth will

be halved in 2025. Apparently a luxury recession is occurring due to global economic

insecurity, the cost of living crisis and a slow down in Chinese demand for luxury goods.

LVMH which owns 75 luxury brands including Tiffany & Co, Dior and Bulgari recently

experienced revenue decline. Other luxury conglomerates are also seeing revenue and

operating costs decline.

As a prominent British Foreign Service chap cynically stated last century – may you live in interesting times.

by Lesley Truffle

image: Audrey Hepburn outside the windows of Tiffany’s luxe store  in the 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

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‘I wouldn’t let that family get near me with a sharp stick – let alone a sword’.  Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, commenting on the 2003 ceremony to knight Sir Mick Jagger. He was anointed by the future King Charles. The ceremony involved Jagger being tapped on the shoulder with a sword.

Keith Richards is not the only anti-establishment British musician to mock royalty. In 1977 the Sex Pistols did a splendid job with their anthem, God Save the Queen.

God save the Queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In England’s dreaming .

In Craig Brown’s book Ma’am Darling- 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, he mentions that British singer Dusty Springfield made a light hearted joke about queens during a live show in 1977 at Royal Albert Hall attended by HRH Princess Margaret. Springfield also pointedly paused dramatically after singing, ‘Quiet please, there’s a lady onstage’ drawing the audience’s attention to Margaret rudely chatting away in the Royal Box.

The next day, Springfield received a typed pre-written apology from Kensington Palace with the outrageous request she sign and return it. She did. Most folk try to keep themselves nice around royalty. The royal family are not universally known for their senses of humour. And it doesn’t pay to offend their sensibilities.

Craig Brown’s hardback quasi-biography is about the size of a brick – but it’s an wonderful read. For Brown is not just a biographer he’s also a satirist, humourist and critic.

Parodies are Brown’s speciality and HRH Princess Margaret – younger sister of the late Queen Elizabeth – is ripe for parody. I’ve been reading Brown’s book a few pages at a time over breakfast. It’s an easy digestible read. I enjoyed it immensely.

We live in a Trumpian world and I find the daily newspaper a depressing read first thing in the morning. I need to be caffeinated in order to cope with chaos, wars of vengeance, environmental and financial disasters, bizarre murders and gut wrenching violence. Very few news items are cheering and the heinous, inhumane actions of Dictator Donald are best avoided until later in the day. Or better still – left unread, scrunched up and used to ignite my firewood.

Brown’s book examines Princess Margaret, the Countess of Snowdon, through the eyes of her groupies, lovers, detractors, sycophants and servants. HRH comes off as a rather unpleasant member of the royal family. Namely because in her early twenties – around the time she began kickstarting her day with orange juice stiffened with vodka – Margaret gleefully began exploiting royal protocol to the max. She had a mischievous, sharp tongue and could be entertaining when it suited her.

HRH became known as a beastly houseguest at numerous country house parties and was immensely rude at society dinners and posh social functions. Guests were not allowed to sit down to dinner, leave or even go to bed until HRH deigned to do so.

Margaret seemed to take pleasure in baiting and upsetting those around her. She criticized, insulted and denigrated her host’s cuisine and took pleasure in being mean to those who were attempting to feed and entertain her.

HRH relished making her entourage uneasy and took pleasure in humiliating people. Her insistence on other guests/friends lighting her many cigarettes was seen as a deliberate move to ensure they were aware of their lowly position. They were there solely to serve her.

Margaret was a chain smoker who kept a cigarette burning on an ashtray, even during high society dinners. HRH expected & demanded those present to light her cigarettes with a proper lighter and detested the use of matches which she considered ‘common’ and below her.

Being a disgruntled, vengeful heir to the British throne became a precedent in 1936 when Edward VIII abdicated to marry notorious American divorcee Wallis Simpson. He was ably followed by Margaret and several years later by Prince Harry.

The Royal Family are not known for their devotion to the fine arts. But Margaret had a thing for bohemia and loved hobnobbing with the arts push. These weren’t bohemian artists who tend to be talented but impoverished, they were society darlings such as Gore Vidal, Noel Coward, Cecil Beaton and famous Hollywood stars.

HRH’s behaviour became increasingly bizarre as she aged. Her health declined in her later years. Strokes, cancer threats and other illnesses plagued her. Her health was also compromised by a ghastly accident on the private Caribbean island of Mustique.

After her death in 2002, many who’d shamelessly fawned over her viciously turned against her. As Brown notes in his book – several people who fraternized with Margaret were absurd, self seeking and chronically deceitful in their interactions with her.

The other point Brown makes is that specific events – when seen through different eyes – can reveal the truth which frequently gets lost in the retelling. Margaret’s doomed relationship with Group Captain Townsend is a case in point.

Was she insanely obsessed with him or was she actually exploited by him? Brown implies a case could be made that he took advantage of her youth and romanticism. Perhaps he’d hoped to marry Margaret to further his own career as opposed to being madly and helplessly in love with her.

If she had married Townsend, Margret would have had to forgo her royal rights and income. And as Brown points out, Townsend drafted the written announcement himself, then Margaret dutifully copied and signed it. She stated clearly to the British people that nobody else had influenced her decision not to marry Townsend.

Townsend in his biography damns himself by admitting his role in wording her written response. He also repeatedly refers to himself as ‘a boy’ and waffles on about how ‘boys’ relate to ‘girls’. This is decidedly odd given he was already middle aged.

Townsend met Margaret when she was about fifteen. He was twice her age, had two sons, was a married man and later a divorcée. His actions before and after they ended their relationship are highly questionable. According to Brown, Margaret was under the impression they weren’t finished as a couple.

Having being promoted to the position of air attaché at the British Embassy in Brussels – and only a few weeks after splitting from Margaret – Townsend met his second wife at a horse show. She was fourteen years old at the time.

In his biography Townsend claimed she fell from her horse ‘at his feet’ and he immediately came to Marie-Luce Jamagne’s aid. She was a Belgian tobacco heiress and after ingratiating himself with Marie-Luce’s family, he married her five years later. She was nineteen and he was about forty-five. About a year later Margaret married photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones.

When detailing the backstory of Margaret’s first relationship, Brown theorizes that the truth of what happened in the past is fluid. It depends entirely on who is telling the story.

And as many of Brown’s vignettes demonstrate, it’s impossible to know what really drove Margaret. Why did she behave so imperiously? And why did an attractive woman blessed with financial freedom, a strong personality and immense privilege actively choose to live the sort of life which would probably end in tragedy?

by Lesley Truffle

image: detail from 1977 Sex Pistols poster for their single record, God Save the Queen.

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And at yet another dinner she produced a revolver and placed it beside her. A startled guest enquired: ‘Duchess, what are you going to do with that?’ To which she replied: ‘Oh I don’t know, I might just shoot Marlborough!’              (excerpt from biography The Sphinx by Hugo Vickers).

 Another relaxing evening at home at Blenheim Palace UK with the 9th Duke of Marlborough (Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill) & his exquisite wife, the Duchess of Marlborough (Gladys Marie Spencer-Churchill).

Gladys Deacon was a French American born in 1881 in France to socialite Florence Baldwin and her husband Edward Parker Deacon. Florence was one of the acknowledged great beauties of her generation. Gladys mother was not an intelligent woman but she was extremely cultured. She was obsessed with high society and fashion but was also dedicated to the fine arts and supportive of artists.

A month after marrying Florence, Deacon knocked his wife down for the simple reason he didn’t like her hairstyle. Both of them had extra marital affairs. Deacon was frequently controlling, jealous and nasty. As he aged his temper became unmanageable and his actions increasingly bizarre.

While staying at the Hotel Windsor in Marseille, Deacon became increasingly suspicious of a young French attaché, Emile Francois Abeille, who’d befriended both he and his wife. Florence informed a socialite that Abeille liked to watch her swinging naked on a seat for his viewing pleasure.

After vacillating for weeks, Deacon cornered Abeille behind a hotel sofa and fired three shots at close range with his revolver. Abeille staggered to the passage and collapsed in a pool of blood. The French were known to be lenient towards crimes of passion. Subsequently he was imprisoned for only 12 months, acquitted of manslaughter but found guilty of intending to wound Abeille.

When Gladys was older, the indisputable fact her father had murdered her mother’s lover added to her notoriety. And after Deacon went insane and died in an insane asylum, many whispered it was obvious he’d passed his worst genetic traits onto his daughter Gladys.

Gladys Deacon, the sphinx in Hugo Vickers biography, made the fatal mistake at the age of 14 of becoming obsessed with the quest of marrying the 9th Duke of Marlborough. It didn’t bother her that the Duke had recently married American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. The Duke was busily spending Consuelo’s money feathering & renovating his nest, the spectacular historical Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire England.

Gladys remained undaunted. A fortune teller had told her she would succeed in her quest and she was willing to wait it out. She managed to become the Duke’s mistress but didn’t succeed in bagging the Duke until 1921, when he married her and she was over 40 years old.

Gladys endured several miscarriages while slowly coming to the realisation that the Duke of Marlborough was a cad and a bounder. By rights his callous treatment of his first wife, Consuelo Vanderbilt should have put Gladys off her quest but it didn’t. Gladys had cunningly befriended them both and she was fully aware of the Duke’s shortcomings.

Author Hugo Vickers in his book The Sphinx, sought to understand why Gladys pursued such an unworthy man. Several distinguished gentlemen pleaded for her hand in marriage but she turned them all down. Gladys cheerfully claimed she’d slept with ‘every prime minister in Europe and many kings’.

So who was she? And why were her stocks so high? What made her so damned desirable?

Proust adored Glenys and wrote, ‘I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.’

She possessed an otherworldly beauty with a classical Greek profile (portrait above). Cheeky, clever and dedicated to fun, Gladys put her competitors in the shade with her sharp wit. It was a bonfire of the vanities for decades. Princes, statesmen, wealthy socialites, men who were handsomer and smarter than the Duke made fools of themselves trying to woo her.

Gladys became increasingly eccentric and enjoyed shocking high society by making outrageous claims and behaving badly. This endeared her to many notable men and women. Winston Churchill was a frequent guest at Blenheim Palace. At dull dinner and social gatherings Gladys played, teased, insulted and was frequently the most fascinating femme fatale in the room. She gleefully made enemies and they took revenge by spreading vicious rumours.

There was much speculation that Gladys was ruining her astonishing beauty when she opted for facial surgery. She had paraffin wax injected into her face, hoping to acquire what was known as a Grecian nose. The wax slid down to her chin and in her later years her jaw appeared somewhat swollen and heavier. One of her visitors claimed she had sat in front of an open fire, with her face turned away, until the wax softened and she could manipulate it back up to the bridge of her nose.

Realising the unsettling power of her eyes, Gladys arranged for a series of paintings of her startling blue-green eyes on the ceiling of Blenheim Palace’s portico. There were also sphinx sculptures in the gardens with faces closely resembling hers.

Unfortunately, Gladys and the Duke of Marlborough became estranged. She made no secret of keeping a revolver in her bedroom to stop him from entering. The palace became overrun with the pedigree dogs she was breeding and several rooms were made uninhabitable by numerous dogs running amuck and defecating.

Eventually the Duke threw her out of Blenheim Palace and sought a divorce. He did his best to humiliate her by locking her out of the palace. However, the Duke died before he obtained a divorce and she outlived him as The Dowager Duchess of Marlborough. The Marlborough heirs remained fond of her and continued to pay her an allowance.

Gladys moved to north Oxfordshire and later to a small farm. She eventually became a recluse surrounded by cats. By 1962, she was mentally ill but she lived to the age of 96 and died in 1977.

When Hugo Victors visited her shortly before she died, he noted Gladys had remained curious, witty and personable. She’d devoted herself to knowing what was going on in the world and recorded her witticisms and observations in diaries and notebooks.

Gladys had always been fully aware of the power of her gaze and her ability to render grown men speechless. Her tombstone is simple but elegant and etched into the stone is a stylized image of one of her lovely eyes. It’s a wide-open, all-knowing eye, similar to those on the ceilings at Blenheim Palace.

by Lesley Truffle

Image: Portrait of Gladys Deacon – future Duchess of Marlborough – by Boldini 1916.

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St Kilda road can be a tad gloomy just before sunrise but the trip improves when the tram trundles past the National Gallery.  The bare trees are festive with coloured lights and city buildings are silhouetted against a sky that’s slowly lightening.

The tram is past its prime and the brakes are a bit dodgy. Dripping umbrellas, sodden passengers, windows that won’t open and heating that knocks you out. As an elderly chap informed me, ‘These trams are so bloody hot you could grow fucking orchids on them.’

There’s a rolling beer bottle and some slimy substance underfoot that you really don’t want to investigate too closely.

Sometimes it’s better not to know.

Then there’s the sinister bloke dressed in black leather. He’s placed his big yellow banana on the empty seat next to him and leaves it there, even when the tram fills up and other passengers have to stand. He’s pasty faced, sweaty and more than a tad twitchy.

There’s not a punter present who wants to challenge his pin-pricked eyeballs by asking him to remove his banana. Nobody knows for sure what pharmaceuticals their fellow man is on. Bad things can happen if you rub a stranger up the wrong way.

Folk get on and off. There’s a bit of a hold up when a mother gets her chromed up mega pram jammed in the doorway. Her kid wails as four blokes attempt to lever the pram over the narrow metal railings on the tram steps. It takes time but most passengers are sympathetic to her plight. She’s finally on and we take off again.

The mother thanks everyone and looks shamefaced. Her kid hasn’t stopped wailing. The pram is barricading a bunch of smartly suited business folk up against windows which are dripping with condensation. I feel sorry for her, she’s distressed and close to tears. Who knows? Maybe the oversized pram is the least of her problems.

Finally we reach Swanston Street and the end is in sight. Thank the gods. That is until an impatient driver accelerates his massive SUV through a red light, collides with another car and shuts down every single tram going up or down Swanston Street. Nobody is hurt but several trams are now banked up as we wait for the police to arrive and sort the traffic situation.

The punters are cursing and snarling and our driver resigned. The workers reach for their phone to tell their bosses they’re late. Again.

by Lesley Truffle

Photo: Swanston Street Melbourne at sunrise by Lesley Truffle.

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Thanks to shows such as Succession, Rivals, The White Lotus and Sirens there’s never a supply shortage of at shows involving rich and privileged people behaving badly.  It’s become a streaming genre which offers up the possibility of drama, disaster, satire, and humour in one easily consumed package.

Movies are also providing ‘wealth critique’ with suspense comedies such as Knives Out , Triangle of Sadness and the The Menu. I greatly enjoyed Triangle of Sadness, primarily because of the presence of Woody Harrelson who plays the cynical captain of the doomed luxury cruiser. Champagne glass in hand, Capatain Smith is forced to interact with the mega rich passengers who are astonishingly out of touch with reality.

By the time we meet Captain Thomas Smith he’s given up all pretence of being in command of his ship. To be sure the captain has quite a few cad & bounder qualities but he’s also a humorous man possessing deep intelligence and insight. Captain Smith is an alcoholic who openly refers to himself as a communist. His witty arguments about Marx and capitalism with   his obscenely wealthy passengers provides comedy in the movie. And his drunken rant with Dimitry, a Russian capitalist is wide ranging and leads an unexpected disaster.

I was disappointed when Harrelson disappeared from the cast early in the piece, leaving behind a bunch of rich and privileged characters. But it would be a spoiler if I detailed the plot any further.

Bounder and Cad are descriptors that were popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A bounder was a man who behaves badly or immorally especially towards women. Whereas a  cad had more in common with a scoundrel or an ill-bred man who demonstrates ungentlemanly behaviour.

In the biography aptly titled, The Scandalous Freddie McEvoy by Frank Walter, we first meet McEvoy when he was an Olympic bobsledding champion.  Despite being Australian, he represented Britain in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Germany. McEvoy later dedicated himself to racing cars, marrying heiresses, smuggling and doing dodgy business deals. He lived by his wits, charm and sharp intelligence.

McEvoy became a close friend of Errol Flynn and they partied hard in Hollywood. Most folk loved McEvoy even though he was publicly known as a scoundrel, rake, fighter and cad. His former wives and lovers remained loyal to him long after he’d moved on. Several of them spoke longingly of his outstanding sexual skills and his ability to charm, persuade and seduce.

Being tall, strapping and handsome McEvoy had no trouble attracting women of financial means. He loved the high life and was willing to do pretty much anything – including law breaking – to enjoy living in the fast lane.

Freddie McEvoy lived by his own amoral standards but many men and women remained friends with him despite his wild wicked ways. He appealed to both sexes and knew how to manipulate most social situations to suit himself.

McEvoy was suspected of being a double agent and died a brutal death in mysterious circumstances. Errol Flynn was distraught at losing his friend and spoke movingly of McEvoy’s better qualities and his loyalty and courage.

In the final chapter of McEvoy’s biography, author Frank Walter sums him up in negative terms as a ‘rogue, bounder, cad, rake, grafter, scoundrel, anti-hero, opportunist, rascal, rapscallion, lothario, gigolo, smuggler, black marketeer, brawler, predator, philanderer, reprobate.’

But Walter also describes McEvoy as ‘witty, charming, amiable, debonair, daring, dashing, swashbuckling, carefree, fearless, seductive, fascinating, devil-may-care, considerate, courageous, polite, impeccably mannered, versatile, gallant, attractive, libertarian, likeable, loyal.’

Frankly, I think McEvoy would have been fabulous company. And those who knew him well –including the many women he ruthlessly fleeced financially – willingly acknowledged his good points and seemed to think their money had been well spent. McEvoy’s women are depicted in the round and we get to know them and appreciate the way their minds worked. They were not just a bunch of shamelessly rich women living the sort of life that is often represented in books and movies as rich folk behaving badly.

I really enjoyed McEvoy’s biography. It was extremely well researched, without being tediously scholarly, and the author was engaging even when discussing European politics. Frank Walker’s sense of humour is embedded in his writing.

Errol Flynn was devastated when his best friend died in the yacht wreck near Morrocco. As Flynn told a newspaper journalist, ‘Freddie was one of the great livers of life. He lived it the way he saw it. He didn’t give a hoot. And the people who knew him, knew that he was a brave and generous spirit. He went out the right way when his time came – with courage.’

by Lesley Truffle

photo above: Woody Harrelson and cast in the movie, Triangle of Sadness (2022)

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pine mushrooms
live a thousand years
in one autumn

Den Sutejo 1633-1698 (translated by Makoto Ueda)

Wild mushrooms have been getting bad press recently. A murder trial in the Australian country town Morewell has just commenced, but it all began back in 2023. Erin Patterson – known on social media as ‘the mushroom cook’ – has been accused of killing her in-laws with a homemade Beef Wellington laced with death cap mushrooms.

The accused has pleaded not guilty to three murder charges and one alleged murder. The trial will have a 12 person jury and they will deliberate over a period of about six weeks.

Ever since I read, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I’ve had a thing for exotic mushrooms. I was about six when I first came across the notorious Alice Liddell, disappearing down the rabbit hole into a fantastical world. The scene where she comes across the caterpillar sucking on a hookah – while seated on a sinister looking mushroom – really tickled me.

The caterpillar was imperious in manner and rude to Alice, “Who are YOU?”  I was very taken with the notion that if you ate a chunk of the caterpillar’s mushroom, you’d be able to grow or shrink at will. I’ve since discovered that premium champagne can sometimes produce a similar effect.

A marvellous book on mushrooms was first published in 1925, The Romance of the Fungus World by mycologists R.T. Rolfe and F.W. Rolfe. Between 1925-2014, eighteen editions were published, including a 1974 edition featuring a trippy purple cover with an illustration of the caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. (photo above).

It perfectly suited the decadent era of LSD, hallucinogenics, Pink Floyd, David Bowie and exotic smoking drugs imbibed from hookahs and bongs.

The wonderful thing about The Romance of the Fungus World is that it seriously examines the gastronomic delights offered by mushrooms, their medicinal uses and the effects of poisonous fungi. Yet this scientific information sits comfortably with the esoteric, mystical side of fungi.

A whole chapter is dedicated to fungi lore and mythology: predominately the association between fungi and devils, witches, elves and fairies.

Toadstools in a circular formation (known as fairy rings) have numerous mythologies explaining their existence. One ancient story has it that after the wee people had danced around in a circle, toadstools grew on the grass where they’d danced and were used by elves and fairies to rest their tired feet.

An old English West-country superstition held that if a maiden wanted to improve her complexion, all she had to do was to nip outside on a May morning and rub dew from the grass all over her face. However, it was imperative that the maiden didn’t intrude inside any fairy rings, for the wee people might get angry and take their revenge by giving her a hideous rash.

Strange things happened to folk who were foolish enough to step into the fairy rings. In Germany it was once believed that the bare portion of the ring was the place where a fiery dragon had rested in his nocturnal wanderings.

The dedication in the 1925 edition is quite lovely:

To the memory of George Edward Massee … to whom the Authors are indebted for their first glimpses of the Fungus World, and in whose company, in field and by fireside, they spent many delightful hours.

by Lesley Truffle  

Photograph: Cover of The Romance of the Fungus World (1974 edition) by R.T. Rolfe & F.W. Rolfe

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‘… users are now having genuine problems parsing reality. Peruse AI chat forums and you’ll see women asking one another if they should tell their husband that they’re having an affair with their chatbot. ’

      Tim Elliott, AGE newspaper article In Bot we trust

 One of my favourite films of all time is Blade Runner, a neo-noir science fiction film. Released in 1982, it’s an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Set in the early twenty-first century, the Tyrell Corporation have developed clever, highly sophisticated robots. Named replicants, they were designed to serve humans as labourers, soldiers, assassins or sexworkers.

Los Angeles in 2019 lacks natural light and it constantly rains. Retro buildings from other eras remain standing but the city is dominated by monstrous high-rise buildings. The ambience is distinctly Tokyo on amphetamine.

Massive screens advertise off world trips and strobe lights highlight mysterious mega storied buildings. Off world is comprised of corporate-owned space settlements on other planets. Planet Earth is dying and supposedly the off world is a safe alternative

The Nexus-6 replicants have become a mega problem because they’ve morphed into beings who are almost undetectable as robots. They’re vengeful, have turned rogue and are back on what remains of the earth. Unlike their predecessors they’ve evolved and authorities suspect they can now experience the same emotions as humans.

Nexus-6 robots were implanted with fake memories adapted from humans.  These genetically engineered biological androids created by the Tyrell Corporation have designated functions. Some are cold blooded assassins while others are known as ‘pleasure’ models.

Police units employ Blade Runners who’ve been hired to take Nexus-6 replicants out of the game. As Los Angeles in 2019 is depicted as treacherous, dark and violent their obliteration – known as retirements – are brutal, bloody and often carried out on the streets.

Does it sound like a more sophisticated version of our present day chatbots? Hell yes.

Today we have chatbots and you can design their avatar, choose their personality, accent and physical features. Famous figures are available for adaptation, unless you attempt to choose people such as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin or Caligula.

Various companies own the chatbot space and their paying clientele are in the billions. Xiaolce a Chinese artificial intelligence company has acquired 660 million clients in just over a decade and Replika a Russian AI company – which offers sexting and erotic role play –  runs at 80 million clients. And so it goes.

Unlike Bladerunner’s humanoid replicants, chatbots are currently only available in the form of avatars and you ask questions via a dialogue box on your digital device. They respond in text unless you want to talk to them by enabling voice function. Despite the fact chatbots are a created AI product it hasn’t stopped clients seeking emotional support, therapy, friendship, advice or erotic role play with a sex-slave chatbot.

So adept are current chatboxes that they can simulate empathetic speech, kindness and mimic human-like conversational flow. Some clients have become so addicted to their AI chatbox that they’ve proposed marriage or sought monogamy with their chatbot avatar.

There have also been a few cases where a chatbox has gone rogue and urged their client to commit socially destructive behaviour. In the case of Jaswant Singh Chail, his chatbot actively encouraged him to try and kill the Queen.

Why is it so? And how do seemingly rational human beings lose their judgement? It’s could be said the client genuinely feels they’re having a romantic relationship with a Chatbox because the concept of romance is deeply flawed to begin with.

Many folk secretly hope that hiding in the wings is their one and only soulmate. Romantics often spend their lives searching for this very special person and believing that once they find the one they will live happily ever after.

However, among the disbelievers is Doctor Robert Epstein. He took it further and asked himself – can I deliberately manufacture falling in love with a stranger?

Not being a shy, modest chap, Epstein wrote about it Psychology Today. The concept he proposed was that he and a female stranger would sign a contract in which they would commit to deliberately falling in love with each other. The faux couple’s progress would be assisted and monitored by ‘qualified’ counsellors.

His concept was an immediate sensation. And more than one thousand women from all over the world, kindly offered to help the doctor out with his ‘Love Project’.

And the result? As Britain’s Evening Standard gleefully reported in April 2012:

Besieged by offers, the editor of Psychology Today magazine chose a South American beauty to make his soulmate. But despite signing a “love contract”, Dr Epstein will be spending Christmas alone after the object of his affections decided no amount of tuition could make her love him.

Attitudes to dating apps have changed. After years of swiping on Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, Grindr, Plenty of Fish, Badoo and Zook, those seeking ‘dates’ are giving up or reducing their interactions.

Fatigue and boredom with wiping, liking, being ghosted or receiving unwanted genitalia photos has softened the market and user numbers are in rapid decline.

Self-reporting app users estimate they’ve been spending about 90 minutes a day or longer seeking their ‘soul mate’ or as others app users put it,  a ‘f**k buddy’.

Some app users have reported that shifting from the free version of the apps to the somewhat pricier ‘platinum’ version means they’ll get more responses from the mostly male pool of available ‘dates’. Apparently women have been dropping off the apps at a greater rate. Leaving behind a pool of males to compete for the attention of fewer and fewer women.

Could this be one of the reasons many folk have decided to trust their emotions and dreams to chatbots?

by Lesley Truffle

photo : actor Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner 1982.

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Famous women are frequently sensationalized to provide historical fodder for films, plays, operas and books. Facts are wilfully ignored because wickedness, orgies, incest, violence, psychological abuse and criminal activity will always find an audience.

Cleopatra was frequently represented as an objectified woman. Everyone from Cicero to Shakespeare used her to their own ends and in the stoush Cleopatra was defamed, reinvented, abused, sanctified, venerated and scorned in equal measure.

Cleopatra took a thrashing from poets, politicians, historians and writers. To Lucan she was a woman who ‘whores to gain Rome.’ And to many historians she was simply ‘a Royal whore’. It was in the Arab world that she was given a fairer viewing. And there she’s described as: a philosopher, scholar, physician, scientist and Egypt’s mightiest queen.

Lucrezia Borgia – who was born in 1480, on the cusp of the High Renaissance – was fictionalized by French writer Victor Hugo and many other storytellers. She was the illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who later became Pope Alexander VI.

Hugo’s 1883 stage play, Lucrèce Borgia was later made into an opera by Donizetti. It went down a treat as she was cast as a femme fatale who not only poisons five men – for insulting her family the Borgias – but she also organizes five coffins well in advance. Was this melodrama at work or was it meant to imply that Lucrezia always cleaned up after murdering her victims? Hugo’s and Donizetti’s fictionalization of Lucrezia Borgia seems almost quaint given what came after.

For over 500 years it has been put about that Lucrezia committed incest with her father Pope Alexander V1 and also her brother Cesare. Her other brother, Juan was found dead in the Tiber so he didn’t feature in the grubby rumours and sordid allegations.

Lucrezia has frequently been depicted as a cold-hearted murderess who was in the habit of bumping off those who displeased her. Poisoning was supposedly her forte and it was rumoured she wore a ring that contained poison – which she allegedly used to kill her prey.

Poisoning, scams, cruelty, murder, treachery, duplicity and blackmail was standard fare for Lucrezia’s father and brothers. But historians believe that it was their infamy that sullied Lucrezia’s reputation.

If the tales of her sexual promiscuity were true, Lucrezia would barely have had enough time to brush her hair, let alone give birth to seven, eight or possibly ten children. There’s not much consensus over how many children she had.

What does appear to be historical fact is that Pope Alexandra and his devious son Cesare were power hungry and they had no compunction in marrying off Lucrezia – three times – to further their own dodgy political and financial gains.

As the Borgias agendas changed, Lucrezia’s first two husbands were disposed of. However, several leading Italian families still saw Lucrezia as a catch as they desperately wanted to marry into the powerful Pope’s family.

Lucrezia was betrothed at 10 and first married at 13. Her first marriage ended when Giovanni Sforza was bullied into agreeing to an annulment on the grounds of impotence. The deal was sweetened by him being allowed to keep her dowry as a bribe. This then freed up the Borgias to warehouse her in a nunnery before marrying her off to the son of the King of Naples. But Alfonso of Aragon was strangled in his bed, to make way for husband number three, Alfonso d’Este.

Leaving Rome and the Borgias behind and moving to d’Este’s court at Ferrara, gave Lucrezia some autonomy. It also meant she wasn’t dragged down by the death of her father Pope Alexandra V1, which resulted in her brother Cesare losing power and fleeing to Spain.

Lucrezia was held in high esteem in Ferrar and she bought to the court Renaissance artists and Renaissance ideals. Having been schooled in the foundations of high culture: Latin, Greek, Italian, French, music, singing and drawing Lucrezia was well suited to court life. She also had a reputation as a fair and just governor, having been trusted to govern in both her father’s and Alfonso d’Este’s absences.

Contemporary poets and writers of the time noted her charm, grace and beauty. Bernard Zambotto dwelt at length on her ‘adorable eyes, full of life and joy.’ He also noted, ‘She has great tact, is prudent, very intelligent, lively and most pleasant.’

Such accolades were not normally bestowed on the Borgias.

Unfortunately after Lucrezia died, at the age of 39, enemies of the Borgias blackened her reputation with allegations of sexual promiscuity, incest and murder. And despite these ugly allegations remaining unproven, the myths have persisted. Whether Lucrezia Borgia was merely a pawn, a clever manipulative woman or a survivor is still being debated.

by Lesley Truffle

Photo: Theda Bara in the risqué 1917 historical epic Cleopatra.

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‘Summertime, and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy’s rich and your ma is good-lookin’
So hush little baby, don’t you cry …’

                                                                   George Gershwin’s lyrics to Summertime

My earliest recollection of summertime as a kid was a long trip to Adelaide from Melbourne with my parents and older sister in summer. We were having a house stay with a lovely English couple and their young daughter, whom my parents had met on the P&O ship coming out to Australia.

I was about five and it was all terribly exciting as our family of four were crammed in a tiny car and travelling for what seemed an extensive distance. It was.

Melbourne to Adelaide is approximately 730kms but it depends which way you go. I can’t recall the route but the Morris wasn’t exactly a speedster. And on the way home it had a nervous breakdown and refused to go any further.

My father fancied himself as an intrepid adventurer so everything in our kit had to have a purpose. He saw himself as Hemingway-style hunter and owned a lot of camping equipment so he could go wild boar hunting in New South Wales. His buddies were all macho males and they shared an obsession with red wine, retro muzzle loaders, expensive firearms and explosives.

Dear old dad had been headhunted by the Australian government. He was a highly skilled British chemical engineer specializing in explosives. He liked to blow things up. At a later date this would include his first marriage followed by another two unhappy marriages. We were his first family.

To my mother’s horror she had to return home on a speeding express bus with the cream of New South Wales farming communities onboard. She couldn’t fail to notice that many passengers had coolers of booze under their feet or in the luggage racks. Seeking distraction from the boredom of the endless highway most folk ate, drank, smoked and cackled all the way. In the midnight hours they fell out of the bus and refueled with greasy fried food, coffee and cold milkshakes bought from truckie’s refuel & rest stops. I loved the bus and its wacky swearing, half-cut passengers.

After our inglorious trip home on the bus my father bought himself a glamorous, restored vintage Citroen complete with running boards. It was the sort of stylish gangster car that featured in old Hollywood movies. The broken down Morris never made it back to Melbourne and probably finished up rusting in a country paddock somewhere near Adelaide.

When my father had to head into the shops after work, my older sister would sit next to him in the Citroen holding his sherry glass at the ready. She also and shifted the retro gear lever at his command. No kidding – this was the sort of driving behavior you could get away with back then. He also liked to nonchalantly smoke a cigarillo or slender cigar as we motored along sedately. The Citroen was fitted out with an excess supply of ashtrays and lashings of genuine soft leather.

The Citroen acquired a reputation in our industrial suburb as being choice and stylish. Subsequently my father was asked to drive a neighbor’s daughter to the church for her white wedding in his splendid automobile. He obliged and refused to be remunerated for his trouble. Dressed in his best tailored London suit he looked suave and handsome. Even I noticed the bride was more ecstatic about his polished British charm than was seemly.

Anyway, back to Adelaide. We slept along the route to Adelaide in a couple of two-man tents. For the first time I got to appreciate just how enormous the sky is when you’re out of the city and camping in the bush. Everything was wild and beguiling at night with the constellations twinkling and strange animal noises seeping through the darkness.

The food seemed exotic as it was being cooked over a campfire in oblong aluminum pans with folding metal handles. There were a lot of eggs, tomatoes and sausages and unusual but tasty concoctions served up on tin plates.

It was the sort of food we never had for dinner at home. My mother was a wonderful cook and she prided herself on her fine European cuisine and Indian curries. But I’d had it to the back teeth with Pork Vindaloo and Coq au Vin. Hot cheese jaffles and scrambled eggs on slightly burnt buttered toast became my thing. Everything tasted of the smoky campfire. It was great.

But the biggest thrill was when we got to camp in the dunes of a magnificent surf beach. All night I could hear the surf breaking on the shore and the wildlife creeping, slithering and sneaking through the long grasses. Night birds cackled and swore and unknown animals screeched, howled and partied. I wasn’t scared – I was thrilled.

My parents had fancy camp beds but I was happy as a clam with a narrow inflatable bed and a musty sleeping bag. I didn’t know at that stage the inflatable had a tiny puncture and I’d end up at 3.00am on the hard cold ground.

Well before the sun rose over the sea I was wide awake and prepped. Barefoot and wearing only my new Xmas shortie pajamas, I quietly slipped the tent’s zip open and took off. I knew neither parent would bother trying to find me. Being obsessed with their domestic  dramas, they’d taken the easy way out and I’d morphed into a free-range child.

I ran down a dune and there it was – the beach. It looked just the way it had in my picture story books and I was enraptured. I ran and ran along the shallows before collapsing in a heap. And still the surf raged, seagulls screeched, the sea sparkled and the sun warmed my sandy, bare legs.

Nothing could ruin my joy – not even when I became aware that some unknown insect was sinking its vicious fangs into my bare flesh.

It was the first of many Australian summers and already I was hooked.

by Lesley Truffle

photo: a warm summer night on Port Phillip Bay.

The post The living is easy appeared first on Lesley Truffle - Writer.

‘The first time I ever saw a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school and went with my grandfather to visit a big seed-harvesting ground…and there it was: a pumpkin the size of a man’s head… It immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner.’

                                Yayoi Kusama – Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, 2003

Yayoi Kusama is Japan’s most prominent contemporary artist.  She’s also been described by some art critics as the most successful living female artist on the planet.

However, as Akira Tatehata – former director of Japan’s National Museum of Art – puts it, ‘Kusama is actually a very lonely person, despite there being so many people around her.’

These days art collectors, galleries and museums pay extraordinary amounts of money to acquire a piece of Kusama’s work. It hasn’t always been this way. For despite having been born into a wealthy family, she experienced extreme poverty, humiliation and despair before she became famous in America and Europe.

Kusama has arguably become the most popular photographed artist on Instagram. This could explain why the serious subtext of her art is frequently ignored or underplayed.

In Melbourne the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) is showing about 200 pieces of Kusama’s work. The exhibition is divided into two parts – the first being her early work and the second part being her more recent artworks.

Over the years the polka dot has become one of Kusama’s most recognizable motifs. Subsequently outside the NGV, an avenue of 60 elm trees have come out to play – dressed in swathes of hot pink fabric smothered in white polka dots.

Kusama is 95 years old and the NGV exhibition is a significant retrospective. Giant pumpkins exude a playful aura, while massed pink polka dots, ‘orgy dresses’, massive twisted inflatable snakes and large metallic balls offer an irresistible lightness of being. Children are especially drawn to Kusama’s artworks. Her constructions are fantastical, whimsical, beautiful and mysterious.

The Infinity Rooms provide immersive experiences featuring dazzling lights and reflective surfaces. The effect is sensational. Gallery visitors are ushered into the small mirrored rooms in small groups by gallery attendants. Fortunately, the doors are only closed for about thirty seconds per viewing.

The male penis is featured heavily in phallic sculptures and they flourish throughout the exhibition in amusing and laconic ways. I had to smile at the retro black and white short film that involved semi naked humans and curious felines in a forest being gently covered in polka dots by Kusama. A particularly playful cat seemed delighted at being decorated with autumn leaves.

Kusama’s early work encompasses photography, paintings, documentary films and sculptures from the 50’s and 60’s. Unfortunately over the years Kusama’s work has been blatantly copied by other artists without her permission.

Andy Warhol copied aspects of her unique style, as did Claes Oldenberg.  Kusama has confirmed that at Oldenberg’s solo show in 1962 his wife said, ‘Yayoi, I am sorry we took your idea.’

 Born in 1929 Kusama has been voluntarily living in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital since 1977. She creates her art either at the hospital or in art studios in the local area.

Despite being outwardly bright, light hearted and joyful, Kusama’s artwork carries with it an underlying sense of sadness and melancholy. She acknowledges her hallucinations and obsessional images are the foundations of her work. And willingly admits her art practice helps manage her depression.

Kusama’s mother treated her cruelly when she was a child. She was forced to spy on her womanizing father when he was getting it on with his lovers. Kusama found the experience so traumatic she developed a lifelong aversion to sex. She was also beaten by her mother when she became furious about her husband’s ongoing infidelity.

She also tried to prevent her daughter from becoming an artist by repeatedly destroying her work and humiliating her. Subsequently Kusama suffered a nervous breakdown and decided to the get the hell out of Japan and flee to New York.

‘My mother beat me and kicked me on the derriere every day, irritated that I was always painting…When I left for New York, my mother gave me 1,000,000 yen and told me never to set foot in her house again.’

 A reoccurring motif for Kusama is the common garden pumpkin and she’s been painting and sculpting pumpkins for decades.

‘I would confront the spirit of the pumpkin, forgetting everything else and concentrating my mind entirely upon the form before me…I spent as much as a month facing a single pumpkin. I regretted even having to take time to sleep. Morning, noon, and night, I scrupulously painted each tiny bump on the rinds of my subjects.’

 I think Yayoi Kusama should have the last word – ‘I adore pumpkins … they make me feel at peace … it is for pumpkins that I keep going.’

by Lesley Truffle

photo: portrait of Yayoi Kusama

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