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The Jewish Chronicle

The pleasure and perils of cycling

In his latest Window on the World column, Jonathan Shalit takes a bike ride and recalls an encounter with Bill Clinton

August 28, 2020 13:03
Jonathan Shalit Seen on a Boris Bike Cycling Thru Westminster early on Tuesday Morning getting to Meetings

25-8-2020

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3 min read

Lockdown is well and truly behind me now as I engage again with the world. I cycle to my office in Fitzrovia through semi-deserted streets feeling as if I am one of a few survivors following an apocalypse.

For those who do not cycle, I highly recommend it. Boris bikes were a brilliant introduction to London by our once Mayor, now PM, which he and I have discussed many a time. Cycling through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park is an absolute delight.

Film and television production ground to a halt during Covid. So terrestrial and streamed TV have been resorting more and more to repeated programming. I highly recommend on Netflix a wonderful movie, The American President, starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening, from 1995, about a widowed US president and a lobbyist who fall in love.

In this movie there is a scene when the President comes down the Grand White House staircase for the Presidential Entrance March, accompanied by his “date’”. It reminds me of 1999, when I was a guest of President Bill Clinton at a fund-raising event for the Ford Theatre in Washington, where my then discovery Charlotte Church, aged 13, performed. We enjoyed private tea in the Blue Room, discussing the then new European currency. President Clinton was mesmerising. He looked me in the eye, touched my shoulder and arm, asking a direct question, making me feel the most special person in the room.