No Goat For Dinner

Today I told Carter that the place were staying in Mayfair was not far from where her Grandfather,Gracie (his grandfather name, short for “Your Grace”) stayed in 1979 when he first moved over to London to run Avon Europe. London has always been “The international city”, but 1979 London was very different from 2013. One thing has always been the case, people who were really rich from all over the world are drawn to London.

Although economically things are hard now they are nothing like the recession of the seventies. Interest rates were in the high teens, British pensioners, once of means, were having to sell off the family antiques one chair at a time just to be able to heat their flats, gas prices were sky high. Thanks to sky rocketing oil and gas prices there was one group of people who were suddenly incredibly wealthy — The Arabs. And what did those Arabs do with all this new found money in the seventies, move to London!

Dubai and Qatar were not the lavish playgrounds of the rich then that they are today. Life in the desert was not so glamorous so moving to Mayfair and Belgravia was the answer, where the shopping was good and Bentleys were plentiful.

Arabs were a new thing to my North Carolina born father. Although he had worked in the Metropolitan Hub of the world, New York City for his adult life, it was New York of Mad Men. My father loved to tell my mother stories about the rich Arabs he came across in London when looking at houses to buy for our family to move into. I told Carter this story today and she had the same reaction to it my mother did.

Here is what my father told my mother in 1979:

“You will not believe how the Arabs are taking over London. They are the only people with any money so everyone in Mayfair and Belgravia are catering to them.”

“What do you mean?” my mother would ask.

Gracie continued, “Well people are renting their houses to the Arabs for these outrageous amounts because they know they are going to destroy them by cooking food in the fire places on spits like they do in the desert. And the smell is not like anything you have every smelled before.”

“Cooking on spits? Like what would they cook?” my mother would ask wide eyed.

“Things like goats. You go in the Sainsbury grocery store and they have a whole pen of live goats and the Arab women point out to the butcher which one they want.”

“Really?” My mother asked dumbfounded.

“Yes, except on weekends when the butcher is off, then they had to get whole goats from the freezer section.” my father continued.

“Oh my. Will I have to pick my meat out live too?”

That was when my father burst into uproarious laughter.

“No honey. I’m just kidding. There are not any live goats at the grocery store. But the Arabs are cooking in the fireplaces and ruining the carpets. But that’s OK because the British are charging them outrageous amounts because of it and they have so much money that they don’t even care, so they pay it.”

In the end, my parents bought a house in St. Johns Wood that had never had a meal prepared in the living room so they was not any stink to remove or carpet to replace.