Loud Women

Hi Guys

2011-11-17T07:12:00.000Z

I have changed my blog provider & in the process have 'lost' all my listed followers please could you join me again on the same address below ? THANKS
http://www.mo-foster.co.uk/

2011-10-22T09:10:00.000+01:00

THE SKY & CLOUDS AND STUFF

This new obsession of mine, the one that has me checking out the sky as I do my Tweeting and my Facebook seems pretty safe to me compared with some of my more toxic obsessions of the past and it is free. It takes a little time but I do get great pleasure from this new observatory role.

It began with my looking at the sky in the mornings but now has given me a whole new appreciation of the wonders of nature – I do hope it’s not too late what with the climate and change and all that. So far my main obsession is with the colours of the sky which are amazing. Nobody ever told me that the sky can be lemon and turquoise at the same time then produce exquisite cloud of sharp shape or billowy consistency all in the space of minutes.

A lot of my skywatching is from the 53 bus as I travel from Greenwich to Horse Guards Parade in the early evening. My bus pass saves me money not time but as the bus goes from outside the door it is not only convenient but a fascinating look into other people’s lives. This is the only downside of my skywatching it collides with my ear wigging facility. I am inveterately nosy and I love the scraps of conversation that hit my ears as we trundle along. A lot of them are in languages I don’t understand but enough are in English to make it worthwhile. I also like to look at the Old Kent road and imagine how it was a hundred years ago or fifty even. I am fascinated by the number of religious establishments with marvellous names that are in this one thoroughfare

But back to the sky that is now darkening quietly. And all I can see out of the window is lights – lights of houses lights of streets and dark grey trees, during the day that began with clouds and sun battling it out for supremacy, we have had grand mottled cloud formations followed by a kind of text book blue sky with flat bottomed clouds that looked like a sky in some old masters painting. Then dramatic dark grey banks of threatening clouds with silver linings (like what they are supposed to have!) Then back to blue skies and finally a less than sensational sunset. This show is all free and legal and lovely and as yet it is not taxed or co-opted into some vast advertising empire so I shall continue to skywatch to my hearts content and to marvel.

SPEAKING OFTHE WEATHER

2011-10-03T07:49:00.000+01:00

SPEAKING OF THE WEATHER

At last we have weather worth talking about, we British love to talk about the weather and we have given ourselves full reign to witter and chatter on the radio in the street or the pub or anywhere we are we discuss our remarkable good fortune in a few days of glorious sunshine. The fact that we walk among cornflake leaves and kick aside chestnut sheaths makes it all the more delicious. We had stowed the sun cream and put the barbecues away and looked forward to months of rain and cold. And now! To stymie us all the weather has played a marvellous trick on us and we swelter happily under blue skies, we denude ourselves to varying degrees and lay back and enjoy it.

The fact of the surprise nature is the crucial element in all this, I have been in Italy or the south of France and got thoroughly jaded with the regular sunshine, it is unremarkable and tiresome unless you want to lie on a beach. Here I dash out into the sunshine with silent squeals of joy and arrange my body to catch as much of the magic beams as possible. And that’s the thing the surprise nature of it and the knowing than any day now the skies will assume their usual grey and the rain will teem or drizzle and it will be cold and drear and time for thermals and Long johns (not compulsory) to huddle indoors to rush from place to place carrying pounds more weight in clothes and to grump full throttle about the weather and the warming planet, the price of fuel and how horrible it all is – the weather but for now rejoice at our great good fortune to live in a place where nature still has the capacity to spring surprises on us in Autumn.

And I like to talk about the weather!

2011-09-16T07:39:00.001+01:00

SWEARING AS WEAPON ( A HEALTHY EVENT )

Last Saturday I went to a party in Highgate. A long way from Greenwich but well worth the journey. We met fascinating people and I got to show off my ancient knowledge of Istanbul in the seventies the Pudding shop in particular and my new friend, from Istanbul, spoke of using the place to pick up foreign women and that one of his friends had married an Englishwoman who he met there. We are hoping to go to Istanbul in November so we were delighted to meet him and asked him to try to find us a flat to hire when he goes in October.

These parties of my partner’s friends are usually quite boring with them all talking about art and photography which I find a bit dull – probably because I can’t join in – but on Saturday we had a nice debate with an economist about capitalism and how it does or doesn’t work. Then we went on to speak of the resurgence of Stalin as popular figure in Russia and I got on to my usual shtick of the Soviet Union not being a fair representation of Communism so it got nice and lively and I guzzled and ate everything in sight (according to my love!) so when she dragged me to the tube I was nicely inebriated and in the best of form.

Something wrong with the Northern Line as usual at weekends but we got a seat and I was still rattling on about the Cuban health service when a crowd of young guys got on and distributed themselves in small posses all over the carriage. Next to me was a young woman who was reading her book and trying to ignore the two guys who were trying to get her attention. The rest of the guys watched and laughed as the two teased her, I would have told them to pee off if it had been me but the poor woman became increasingly purple in the face and looked as if she might cry.

I heard my voice yell at the men in the terms of a Billingsgate porter to leave the woman alone and they all stopped what they were doing including the two teasers who slunk away, one of these told me I was quite right and they retreated to the other end of the carriage. ‘Are you English?’ one of them shouted. ‘Of course I expletive am!!’ I yelled back and now I felt elated and scared in equal measure. ‘I shouldn’t have done that’ I said to my love. ‘Well it stopped them didn’t it!’ she said. The woman in question got off at the next station. The men got off shortly afterwards calling us obscene names almost under their breath as they went and we giggled our relief. My love said they thought I was Russian but I don’t know many Russians who are quite so lucid in the vernacular but who knows. I reckon it was my advanced age that shocked them so much. There seems to be a common belief that after a certain age swearing stops. Not true but at a recent poetry reading the compere came over to me and warned me that the next reader was a ‘bit sweary’ I retorted in the vernacular and he left.

Now I feel very proud indeed of my performance it was almost worth the hideous hangover I had on Sunday. But I don’t really recommend this method especially if you are male or under seventy!!

At last I have found an advantage in age -along with the bus pass.

PATIENT POWER?

2011-09-15T11:18:00.000+01:00

`PATIENT POWER?

Suddenly I am awake. I look at my watch, it is five am. I feel very ill. I lurch from bed, stand, make a small tight circle and fall to the ground. I must get an ambulance. Down the stairs on my backside I grab the phone sit on the floor, talk. A woman asks if I can open the front door. I can and do, she stays talking to me until two men arrive with a stretcher and cart me off. They mutter ‘stroke’ I mutter ‘brain tumour’. I am in among the blankets when I vomit. I hear myself cursing and weeping about how ill I am. Me, the stoic. They put a plastic mask on my face. The mask scratches along my face as I am removed from the ambulance. I protest, the guys say they didn’t do it on purpose. I am vomiting again and face down on a trolley, and then I am in a neurological ward covered in bits of elastoplast and wires. Now I am required to perform tricks with nose touching and leg pricking then more nose touching and cross eyed fumbling. I must eat they say, nice bright nurses, an assortment of doctors all interested in my welfare. I am told that I will have a scan within 48 hours to find out whether I have a tumour.

All change now, I am in another ward and nil by mouth. I want to contact friends. My dog is in the house alone. Too busy, says the nurse. I try to text but am cross eyed, I get a cleaner to find the number for me on my mobile, I speak to my friends, they are with me within the hour. I give them the house keys. I sleep. I am awake, I ask for food, I am nil by mouth. I ask the nurses to contact my partner. They are too busy but will do it later. I sleep and it is morning now – too early to phone people the nurses say. Nurses enter and leave my field of vision. An old lady rings for a commode, calls out, a desperate voice. It is too late, the nurses change her bed. I ask if I can wash, I dip my right hand in the bowl of water, it is tepid, I put both hands in, the water is warm. My right hand no longer feels heat. I sleep and when I wake there is a woman in white at the end of my bed. (She is a pharmacist, but I neither know nor care who or what she is.) I tell her I am starving and that my next of kin has not been contacted. Within a few minutes contact has been established with the outside world and I have a cup of tea. In this ward all urgency for a scan is on hold as nurses fleet foot past. I fell off my perch on Thursday and clearly I should have chosen another day. Weekends, all therapies stop. I am on no medication. A wonderful nurse hoists me into a bath, I realise the lack of sensation involves my entire right side.

Monday, my fifth day here, visitors and doctors arrive at roughly the same time as a porter with trolley. Scan now. I am delighted. I will know what is wrong with me. I chat to a friendly porter. We arrive at scan. A jug of beige gloop is presented, in the hand of nurse. ‘So we can see your bowel clearly.’ She says brightly. 'I’m for a brain scan.’ Her face goes through doubt to belief. She withdraws gloop. Back to ward. Doctor and acolytes talk about me, nobody addresses me.

‘Atrophy of the brain.’ He mentions en passant. He hasn’t looked at me. ‘Do what?’ I say. ’Yes?’ He says coolly – all acolyte heads turn to me then back to him. ‘Did you say I have atrophy of the brain.’ ‘No, I didn’t mention atrophy of the brain.’ I am speechless. My friend, who is visiting, mouths to me: ‘He did.’ We nod to each other, we are not mad. ‘Why is she not on aspirin?’ says the big man. He sweeps into the distance with entourage. I invest in the tiny TV and telephone that is attached to my bed. I am given aspirin. I am moved to another ward.

In the new ward, where there are no plugs for TV an elderly lady, surrounded by plastic bags, sits on a chair. She sighs and smiles at me. ‘Been waiting since ten this morning.’ It is four fifteen. ‘What for?’ ‘I’m going to the rehab ward.’ She tells me this is the acute stroke ward. So, I had a stroke did I? Second day in this ward I am spotted by a consultant from the neuro ward. He will hurry my scan. I am moved to a single room.

Next day, the eighth. I am wheeled down to have a scan. I have missed my turn. Porters take an hour to fetch me. I ask how long. I am told that I am lucky to get a scan at all, most stroke patients don’t. I ask why. The young nurse tells, breathlessly, that only yesterday the scan was in use for a nineteen year old boy involved in a traffic accident. I tell her that in my opinion all 19 year old boy racers should be culled summarily thus freeing up the scan for the old, who by their nature don’t have time to wait. A joke? Her face is delicious. I have a terrifying scan.

My third consultant tells me I have no tumour. Relief is brief. I can’t walk and see no prospect of doing so, ever again. I try to walk, fall. I make friends with the tea lady

I’ve been here two weeks and the bed manager sweeps in to tell me I am off today to rehab hospital. ‘Get your stuff together!’ she marks me off on her clip board. ‘They’ve a bed for you and they won’t keep it.’ ‘I shan’t be taking it.’ I want to be consulted before they shift me like an errant Zimmer frame. Punishment? I am left alone all day in my room. The tea lady remembers me. My friend arrives with my washing. Verbose nurse leaps into action. Addresses him as my son. In words of few syllables very clearly. I am neither his mother nor an idiot he says. Next day the registrar asks me if I will go to the rehab hospital. Of course I will. Once more, left to my own devices I practise falling over.

Space, air, an internet connection, African nurses, some of the advantages of rehab. I am wheeled to the breakfast table. I join five patients at the table. Twenty minutes later no sign of food. I am told this is usual. After we eat we wait a further ten minutes to be wheeled back. Day 2 I discover capacity to wheel self. Day 3 I find I am able to walk if I hold on to a wheelchair. I appropriate one for my use. Day 4 I am sent to physiotherapy and given a ‘walker’. I had a Horner Pica stroke, says the Physio woman. Oh! I look it up on the net. Not helpful. But I am glad to have a name for it.

At evening meal we are accompanied by a Max Bygraves tape of WW1 songs. Chomp to Roll out the Barrel, chew to Tipperary. I complain and the music stops, my fellow patients express relief. I enquire why they had said nothing. ‘Mustn’t grumble!’ but they do. They complain to each other continually, a low key, undirected whinge.

My love of pints of tea in the morning is directly responsible for some of the speed of my recovery, and anger of course. How dare my body do this to me? I loathe the dependency on other people for the most trivial of my needs. My first long haul walk is to the kitchen; my second is to the shower. I am tested by the occupational therapist. Can I make a cup of tea? I can and I qualify to be sent home. I am amazed to discover that many of the nurses appreciated my input and hug me goodbye affectionately, I am touched. Off I go in a hospital car with an unnecessarily cheerful boy who sings along to radio 1 all the way home.

BELFAST

2011-08-18T14:42:00.000+01:00

BELFAST 2011-08-17

The last time I went to Belfast was just after my partner died when I stayed with his mother and we spent most of the time weeping & protesting at the death of our hero. I remember sitting in her house in Carrigart Avenue looking at the hills and feeling angry, sad cheated ,and thinking I would never get over the loss. I did of course and now fifteen years later I decided it was time to go over there and put some flowers on his grave. My visit was prompted by the fact that I dreamed about him nearly every night for weeks.

The mother, a stern woman who smoked forty fags a day, never let alcohol pass her lips and made astounding moral judgements on her daughters and none on her sons I had liked instantly. This seems perverse but she was easy to be with and when came over to stay we would do all the charity shops in Lymington where she insisted on haggling and announcing that she could have got it for a quarter the price in Belfast. She had a great sense of humour and we could just sit and laugh together, talk about nothing in particular for hours at a time. She died a year or so after Micky, and the family didn’t tell me, though I heard the day of her funeral.

So really I never knew Belfast at all, just parts of the Falls road and one intrepid visit with my friend to a Shankhill pub (and that’s a different story.)

We booked in at the Ibis to an excellent room which suited us admirably. We needed to eat and the first pub we went into had stopped serving food so we had a half of excellent Guinness then another half and listened to men barking at each other and rushing in and out of the door with betting slips. Two televisions showed horses galloping and the table was full of beaten dockets. Nobody took any notice of us at all while we took a keen interest in everybody and even began to make our own bets. I took some photos of a line of backs at the bar which my friend will transform into a painting (rejection?)

An extremely effective barman brought out the second half and seemed keen about our welfare; he got us a taxi and told us about a good restaurant and a nice pub with Irish music. We ate and found our way to Kelly’s bar where we chatted to people who were interested in us and apparently liked strangers. We both find people fascinating and are happy to speculate and talk to anybody willing to hear.

The whole point of going to Belfast was to put flowers on Micky’s grave and I got the plot number from a very helpful guy at Milltown cemetery who actually knew Micky.(some coincidence!) We got sunflowers because I love them and they remind me of him. So, Sunday morning we spent and hour or two searching for the grave and finally left the flowers outside the office with a note giving the plot number and saying we couldn’t find it. The flowers had suffered from being in the room since Saturday and I thought it was pointless taking them back again. We went to the first pub again where a man with a purple nose declared his admiration for me and got me a half of Guinness and I’m not sure if Micky would be ashamed of me drinking halves or glad that I had come to see that women should drink halves – the first I expect.

On Monday we phoned and went up to Milltown again and got instructions to speak to Jim on the strimmer and he guided us to the grave where the flowers lay on the grave already. I was amazed and moved that somebody took the trouble to put them there and am glad that we looked in the wrong part of the vast cemetery. Micky would have laughed his socks off if he knew about us searching in vain and I found this gesture amazing but typical of the Belfast people, a kindness and warmth that I don’t find anywhere else. So thanks again Micky for bringing me over to see your grave, for all the laughter and joy you brought me and I feel close to you again now.

PS I feel as if I have done the right thing at last and it was not a sad occasion rather a reclamation of those many years we spent and all the laughter we enjoyed together. Now I am back I miss him again but it is not the savage pain, now I remember how great we were together and am grateful. Not everybody gets to have a Micky in their life!

AMY

2011-08-03T08:07:00.000+01:00

AMY

The only thing I had in common with Amy Winehouse was the fact of our addiction. She was terribly young and I am old, she was talented beyond description, I am not. She is dead and I am alive. Being part of the so-called 27 club trivialises and glamorises her death. As if it is some kind of an achievement to die so young. It is not it is sad beyond belief.

Amy was pursued by the media relentlessly, every mishap was recorded with glee and reproduced on Facebook and peered at on Smart phones, relished by Joe public. We all played a part by watching in fascination the downfall of this vibrant highly talented young woman and it was compulsive. How low could she go? Yet we loved her didn’t we? Or did we? Or was it just a vicarious pleasure in her outrageous behaviour? Who knows? But if the media would have let up just a little, have had some compassion and not gone for the jugular with pictures of her humiliations she might be alive now. The Red tops pilloried her and we all watched knowing the end of her story.

She was also hounded by dealers who fed off her in the same way as the media. Everybody consumed her with relish and left her empty except for talent. I am not sure how we can scupper the media lust for sensation – except by refusing to buy the papers that frenzy feed off such sadness, and I am not sure how likely that is. About dealers? We can lock them up but they proliferate at an alarming rate.

I took drugs in the early sixties for fifteen or more years I was a registered addict and got my drugs legally via prescription. The advantages of this method were manifold: clean drugs of a consistent quality, clean syringes and needles, a kind of stability in my life and best of all no big time dealers. There were of course bent doctors who would virtually sell prescriptions and ones that were on a power trip and expected deference as part of the deal. There were also some remarkably dedicated doctors who cared about their addicts and devoted a massive amount of time and energy to a thankless lot of people. There were small time dealers among us who sold on anything they didn’t need, almost always to fellow addicts.

Nobody led me astray I was a willing participant and it should be made clear that addiction to heroin is very pleasant to begin with for the participants. It is and always has been hell for friends and family. There was little incentive to recruit new addicts and I was not rich enough to indulge in the way that Amy did, I didn’t have access or I might have died forty years ago.

There were some famous addicts then too but the newspapers were not so avid then. We did not have to associate with dealers so we didn’t up the ante. I also knew a lot of addicts who led useful lives while maintaining a habit. The fact that these people paid taxes and did not fill our A&E departments with noisome smells and strident voices should be a factor next time we consider making drugs legal.

The idea of registering addicts raises itself to the top of the ideas box every now and again and ritually gets rejected mainly because it is seen to be deeply unpopular with the moral majority, exactly the same people who enjoy being appalled by the Amy Winehouse dramas.I believe even some of the more liberal sections of the police are in favour of a system of legalisation so when will it begin? Portugal began to treat addicts as sick human beings rather than as criminals ten years ago and it has been a success so why not Britain?

When I worked as a volunteer on a local working women project the fragility of the average addict was dreadful and bore no comparison to the condition of the registered addicts I knew. Also they were subject to appalling violence and abuse from dealers.

I believe that the death of Amy Winehouse was tragic and while it is by no means certain that if drugs had been supplied legally she would be alive now. I am positive that legalisation would not only cut down on young deaths but also cut down radically on crime

I stopped taking drugs not in rehab but in my own home because I wanted to. I had become thoroughly bored with the entire process. I had support from my partner and a doctor. I had already cut off all connections with other addicts. A deciding factor in my case was the fact that the local clinic had said I was a hopeless case. I am still an addict and like Amy will be one until the day I die. The fact that I have not touched any hard drugs for nearly forty years notwithstanding.

I was lucky Amy was not.

DEATH OF A VERY SPECIAL CHARIOT

2011-07-23T12:55:00.000+01:00

The poor old chariot has given up the ghost. She has died and is beyond redemption. Her starting motor has stopped. The cost of repair is beyond the value of her body. But not her indomitable spirit - that remained as we zoomed into and out of the bus lane overtaking far younger and infinitely more glamorous vehicles who were appalled at her impertinence. Who gave us the finger (returned with interest) as we shot past.

I reckon she should be given an appropriate send-off, a sign of our gratitude at her bravery in the face of diminishing power. She always started even after weeks of neglect one turn of the key and she was away – reversing up the hill with vigour, getting me to Waterloo pronto, shooting to supermarkets for food. Brave chariot never let us down. South London was her playpen and she cavorted like a teenager. Having bits missing on the bodywork is no bad thing – other cars tend not to mess with the likes of the chariot. Especially with a couple of irate females on board. One impertinent neighbour asked if she was abandoned some months ago, the cheek! I think she felt that the chariot was bringing down the status of the area.

Now I am resigned to her ultimate demise I suggested we set her alight and push her down a hill into the river – blazing like a Viking proud as ever! I even thought of pushing her down Point Hill in Greenwich alight and alarming – destroying as she went. My friend was not impressed. Think of the repercussions! She will go and buy a new vehicle much as I would buy a loaf, I am sad and realise how sentimental I am, a bloody romantic but I am grateful to the chariot for her brave Fiat heart (engine?)

By coincidence my own less glamorous but solid Polo has, for the first time failed to start. Is this a case of car solidarity? Afraid not, I left the side lights on overnight and by morning rigor mortis had set into the battery. I do this sometimes and one of the guys from the mosque opposite knocks on my door to tell me but I parked round the corner this night. The AA sorted it but by next day she was flat again. Yesterday the AA returned and told me there is a leak of power from some unidentified source. So it may be cosmic retribution from the goddess of the motor for our failure to give the chariot a decent send off but probably not and Ms Polo is off for a service today.

A penance? Transference of guilt? Keeping her sweet? I shall grin and bear the price. I realise just how long everything takes without a car & will cherish Ms Polo she is not the Chariot (and I am not the driver that my love is!) but she improves my life immeasurably.

Summer Time

2011-07-09T10:03:00.002+01:00

When I was a young girl my main ambition was to be brown - all over within the limits of our fairly modest elasticated swim suits. To this end my best friend Joan and myself spent every moment we could covered in Olive oil and vinegar ( nobody did salad dressing then it was always Heinz salad cream so we bought the olive oil at the chemist and nicked the vinegar from our mums) Danson Park Lido was our chosen venue and turning ritually from back to front over and over ten minutes at a time was our method. We never got bored we always had plenty to talk about and there was a group of body builders flexing parts of themselves to giggle at. I was not especially interested in boys though in the evening I would stand in the 'rec' talking to boys, flirting and watching it get dark. Knowing there would be trouble when I got home I succumbed to the irresistible pull of flirting. All the others had bikes and would lean on them. I was a lot more interested in my friend Joan but since she had left school at fourteen ( sounds incredible now!) from the Modern while I was trapped at the Grammar she had begun to dress up and flirting seemed to have become a part of her repertoire.

I wanted a bicycle enough to forsake the bronzing so that summer we got a job at a nursery de-budding chrysanthemum and worked in glasshouses with the lovely smell of ripening tomatoes and though the work was back breaking I liked it. I worked alone and went into a sort of trance dreaming of the bike that I was working for. I gave my mum the money religiously every week towards my bike and necessarily cut down on my mission to bronzing. Joan would get us home on her bike -me on the saddle her pedalling, we wavered a bit but in the fifties there was such a lack of traffic that it was safe enough.

I was supposed to be doing a massive amount of homework during the holiday but I always left that to the very last days - by which time I had forgotten any ideas and all impetus was gone. The family went off to Camber Sands for a week and we took Joan which pleased us both -at fourteen nothing is more boring that adult talk. We stayed in a primitive cottage with a lavatory at the bottom of a garden that was overgrown which was fun in the day but spooky at night. we also had a water pump that delighted us, In fact Camber Sands had very little to offer in the way of entertainment and only a very few bungalows. we would go into Rye for cream teas but really we were happy enough to swim and work at our tan. We also discussed the world and its mysteries a lot.

I went straight back to work at the nursery and realised that I wouldn't be able to buy a sports bike with drop handles and would have to settle for a rather ordinary roadster or even a second hand bike. By this time Joan had got a job in a drawing office so I walked home alone with nobody to giggle with but I didn't care, I had the dream of cycling everywhere no more foot-slogging for me!At the end of the holiday I got a bonus from the governor and knew I had enough for a reasonable roadster.I give the money to mum and she informed me that I needed a new school uniform more than a bike and she went ahead and spent my money.
she told me that promises are like pie-crust - made to be broken. Ghastly bottle green gym slip cream flannelette blouses and horrid velour hat replaced my dream bike
Just writing this outrages nearly sixty years later me!

Signal Failure

2011-06-14T08:24:00.001+01:00

On Thursday I went to my first meeting with SWWJ which was delightful, I met characters I have only known on Email or Tweeting ate some lovely scones and rather a lot of cake.Heard excellent poetry and found myself with more than two hours to kill. (odd expression murdering time?) I had a day return ticket so couldn't go back until after seven and we finished before five. I thought of Oxford street but rejected the idea. In fact I met a charming woman who I joined forces with to smoke a fag outside an exotic patisserie - probably the most expensive fag either of us ever smoked but enjoyable and we found a lot to talk about and finished up bussing it to Victoria where we parted.
At Waterloo which appears to be undergoing a revamp to rival the original battle, the bar seems to have disappeared altogether. I couldn't contemplate a jolly without a drink so went to the Hole in the Wall where I had the worst glass of white wine that I have encountered for many a year, I drank it among a cacophony of noise made up of two separate TVs some unidentifiable music and yelling voices making themselves heard. I remember enjoying this place for many a pint.
I retreated to the concourse where I debated with myself if I should buy the Guardian - thank god I did. I waited until just before seven when I got on a train where I was squeezed into a spot so small that I could actually feel people touching all around me, decided I couldn't stand all the way to Southampton so got off again.
I found a slower less packed train and found a seat. The rest is history.
At Byfleet we stopped, which I find ironic - we never went by fleet or otherwise. we stuck. Trains passed us snug with passengers staring desperately out of their windows - we reciprocated. The guard was magnificent he really came into his own. he became the ship's captain he always knew he was. He strode - within the limitations of the space - being CALM, and gave us no news in such a measured way that we accepted it, there was one chap who popped out from first class and got slightly stroppy and I mentioned all the trains passing us on both sides but under his stern but firm eye we were pacified easily. So we sat , I mentioned compensation and suing the South Western but this was met with derisory though restrained laughter. The guy opposite me was an old hand, he had been held up earlier in the week and he carried on with mysterious paperwork discussing with a fellow worker.on his cell phone. He looked up on the web and announced that nothing was moving beyond Woking.
I read the Guardian from end to end - except the Sport section and the guy opposite read that. I read the Evening Standard and began to feel hungry and cold, the air conditioning still functioned. The guard returned with the news that some passengers had broken out of their train so the power had to be turned off while they were recaptured,( he didn't put it like that but the implication was there) We remained passive, we murmured among ourselves and I imagined what would have happened in foreign parts in these circumstances - in Italy say. My love who is Italian phoned around ten thirty, she sounded outraged-though whether at our passivity or our train service I am nor sure.

Eventually our hero the guard came to tell us we would be moving shortly but slowly we growled our gratitude. We reached Woking where many passengers got off and the guard announced several times how grateful he was to us passengers who had shown him many kindnesses and been so forbearing. At one station it was stiff with police and we were invaded by more malcontent passenger but they had seen nothing compared with us. I sneered when they spoke of two hour waits.

Later a couple of Welsh boys got on, intent on a night of debauchery in Southampton, I wished them well but after midnight and one of them in flip flops I had my doubts. Imagine coming all the way from Wales for a night out -in Southampton! I heard a young girl direct them to a likely spot and warn them not to argue with the bouncers. I do hope they found what they were looking for.
Me? I am contemplating coach travel.

Lisbon's Finest

2011-06-08T08:28:00.000+01:00

ALFAMA

Alfama was built by the Moors and shows it. A lot like Tangier a fully fledged labyrinth. It is the inner city of Lisbon has many of the best restaurants and most of the fado. It took our cab driver, who didn’t favour Sat Nav, a very long time to find the apartment booked online. We drove down alleys where the car was within millimetres of both walls, past bemused locals who peered into the cab at us, we looked back, my friend with ferocity myself with an ingratiating grin,I began to wonder if Alfama was an entirely good idea.

We had looked up guest houses in the area and on one list of recommendations somebody had described the area as ‘ Smelly dirty red light area where it is dangerous to walk after dark.’ Clearly the guest book owner hadn’t translated this – but it is the sort of remark that I would take as a challenge anyway. But now, driving round and round talking frequently on the mobile to our landlady I wondered.

One thing that occurred to me many times during our visit is the fact that you are in effect walking or driving in somebody’s front room. The Alfamans eat and just sit outside and probably get peeved at crews of nosey tourists meandering around Thus a gaggle of young boys looked up when we got out of the cab and watched us get back in as the driver told us we were in the wrong place. When we finally found the apartment immediately next to a church –handy for locating from the distance – there were several rather dour old women sitting on a wall, they stared at us blankly. The view from this open area was stunning though marred by the sight of an enormous cruise ship that looked like a block of council flats in Hackney with nothing ship-like remaining. (Yes, I do know there are no council flats left they have all been bought up but the image is accurate)

Our landlady spoke excellent English and we settled in, I realised we needed the basics (I crack up if I have no food handy) we trotted out together to find a shop. Two young girls helped us to locate the main street, through what looked like a cul de sac with six people enjoying their evening meal. They looked up and pointed us to a corner where narrow steps led down ever downward until we arrived at a narrow street where every second shop seemed to be a café and most offered Fado as a side order. We dithered a bit then decided on a café where youngsters were smoking and eating, I hardly smoke any more but I like smoky places they make me feel at home. The octopus and all kinds of other fishy things along with broad beans and unspecified vegetables were very good indeed.

The next morning the church bell was deafening and I could hear the responses of the congregation, a mumble but audible.

By the church there is a nice big area and the dour old bints were replaced by kids playing football, mostly against our wall. This area is clearly a valued asset of the neighbourhood; daytime kids play and people sit. Early evening it becomes a snogging area with various impassioned couples totally engrossed with each other. Late at night, when the snoggers are gone it is an adult playpen where cavorting takes place until early morning. One teeming night a crowd seemed to celebrate this with rain dances at five am. We could hear these activities but couldn’t see because our window faced the courtyard. This brought a nice tension to our nights.

After a day or two everybody ignored us as we walked through the area or sat on a bench at night for hours. Fado drifted into our ears as we lay in bed and we got lost many times in the streets but always found our way home. Nobody attacked us or bothered us. The Lisbonites like their dogs and haven’t yet discovered the merits of the poop scoop so care needs to be taken when walking. We met a very nice puppy called Bob Marley and only one breed specific dog – a Yorkie so I speculate that birth control for mutts has not become widespread in Lisbon, which has a wonderful variety of canines who look very happy.

One of the main points of going to Lisbon was to see an exhibition of Paula Rego’s work We saw her Proles Wall on the first day, a Sunday when most of Lisbon appeared to be going to the beach. Paula lived up to expectations, funny, profound, enchanting as ever we bought cards for friends and wandered among parks in hot sun Bliss to have to find a shady place to drink beer .And the trees impressed me There are a great variety of trees and some appear to grow from the tiniest piece of earth, they give shade and light up the grottiest street. Lisbon seemed to me a place where there is a tolerance of people, dogs and trees, no sign of the ruthless pollarding of London trees. And people mostly left us alone but one time in a restaurant the entire company advised me of the best fish to choose. I ate fish every day at least once, sampled lovely cakes and gained ten pounds in weight – worth every ounce of joyful eating. I did come unstuck with cuttlefish with ink which even I couldn’t eat, a learning experience. In fact my love took a picture of me resembling a vampire on her tea break with ink from nose to chin. I have ‘lost’ it. We also witnessed a large demo that looked exactly like a London demo with bright red flags and coaches parked nearby but no police were in evidence and it was all good natured stuff.

I recommend Lisbon with its lovely Miradors and Alfama in spite of vertiginous hills and steps. Bairro Alto has some of the best clubs ever that don’t even get started until after midnight I didn’t make the effort – too busy digesting fish!

I shall definitely return to Alfama and have made a deal with Marisa the apartment owner for a special deal.cheap. I shall return for the cod in cream if for nothing else and the flan!

LOVE IS WHAT YOU WANT at THE HAYWARD GALLERY

2011-06-06T17:18:00.002+01:00

LOVE IS WHAT YOU WANT at THE HAYWARD GALLERY

an exhibition of the work of Tracey Emin

This is a very personal view of the present exhibition which I found polarising. I always admired Tracey Emin for her courage, honesty and apparent invulnerability. I was also impressed when she went on TV exceedingly drunk (always a good thing in a woman) but I was wrong she is as vulnerable as us all. The difference is that she looks her vulnerability straight in the eye and transforms it into art, a magician. I wrote this morning on Twitter how wonderful I think she is and a friend responded that she wishes she could ‘get’ Tracey. I have many friends who don’t ‘get’ her and if they are happy with this very sad state of affairs that’s fine, if not, then this is the exhibition to do it. It is large and comprehensive and all her many skills are utilised. Also her great wit.

She ‘speaks’ of love in its many forms fraudulent and real. Of double standards, under age sex, of love for her nan, her mum and her dad. She engages with her first experience of death and abortion in such a variety of ways it is stunning. The film ‘Why I Didn’t Become a Dancer’ is where I would start if you are not a fan. In this she tells of dancing in a competition the audience clapping her, feeling jubilant when several guys – all of whom have enjoyed sex with her – begin shouting ‘slag slag slag’ she is defeated cannot hear the music. A defeat turned into triumph with her work.

The most important thing about Tracey for me is the fact that though she is a self obsessed narcissist, all her lessons apply to me. We all have failures in love and life is unfair in particular to the female gender but hey we can get up and use these experiences fruitfully. We don’t have to be an artist, we don’t even have to ‘share’ our grief but we are all the result of our experiences for good or ill. She made me think creatively and realise that shame is a waste of time, put all your ‘stuff’ to good use. She also says that writing is the backbone of all her work and I can relate to that.

I love her blankets and the wooden shed on stilts, her fondness for wood and her materials. She is a skilful painter and maker of objects of all kinds. This exhibition shows her tenderness and sensitivity clearly and is worth taking the time to look at and to digest thoroughly. As it costs £12 to get in take it slowly and it’s worth every penny. If at the end you still don’t ‘get’ Tracey Emin I will be surprised and very sorry for you.

Vintage Babe Travels

2011-05-14T07:26:00.000+01:00

The Vintage Babe Travels

Going away for a few days is hard work for me. I wash clothes that haven’t seen the light of day for years but I just might wear, I iron which is a chore I avoid all year. Like I want the immigration guys to be impressed when they root around in my case. They haven’t done so for a while now but on the ferry from Tangier to Spain they picked on me out of all the dodgy looking characters – guys & gals from the antipodes with rucksacks weighing in at six stone or more, men with ravaged faces every inch the malefactor, women who I reckoned were dead dodgy. But no. They stopped me, insisted I was my best friend’s mother and gave me the once over anyway. I must have that kind of face. People come up to me in bars and ask me where they can score dope, I quite like this I think it means I have the face of a sophisticate – I fool myself a lot like this, it probably means I look scruffy. I went to Amsterdam with four other women and the buggers stopped me on the way in – I do wonder what they thought I would be importing into Amsterdam! Perhaps I have a criminal mien or it’s the shape of my head? Who knows? But it brings a little extra aggro to customs.

But back to the preparations: I have to water my plants extensively & desnail the area – with my crocs. I used to chuck them over the wall but I heard on Gardeners Question time that they get back surprisingly speedily so now I crunch em and refuse to think of Brian. I haven’t seen any slugs yet this year – no doubt there will be a plague of them as soon as I leave. The mice seem to have disappeared for several days now, I plugged all the holes I could find with foil and foiled them but they get in anywhere. A mate reckons they are packing to come with me to Lisbon and if this is true I wonder is mouse is a universal language like Esperanto? Will they encounter racism? But no I am afraid they will re – establish themselves and build a colony in my house and be resentful when I make a comeback. There are gaps in the floorboards for ease of passage from both sides of my terraced house and next door is being tarted up with ‘wooden’ floors to facilitate skating for mice or alternatively moving one house down where my grotty carpets are more mouse friendly. Who can read the mind of a mouse?

I have washed all my knickers and packed them as if I expect incontinence to strike at the border or I won’t have water to wash them in Portugal. My mother’s voice rings in my ears ‘You can never have too many knickers!’ Also Immodium and tissues and teabags I might take powdered milk too. My love, who is a world class traveller looks askance at all my precautions and idiosyncrasies. Berets for bad hair days and a big jumper just in case the Atlantic coast freezes over unexpectedly. A raincoat and several scarves. I remember in the very distant past travelling a la stop with just one pair of spare knickers but I have become cautious with age, and more wise?

No more obsessive.

And now I am exhausted and must have a liedown to recover!

THE PLANTING OF FLOWERS

2011-04-27T10:39:00.001+01:00

My interest in gardening is minimal but I like to look at nice bright plants from my window as I wash up this involves putting them on stands or tables – I enjoy washing up it is the nearest I get to bringing order from chaos – let the piles of paper grow as long as the dishes are clean. I also find the mindlessness of it to be stimulating with new ideas popping into my mind – some of them remain long enough to write down when I have dried my hands – a lot of them are gone in an instant. My mind becomes an open thoroughfare at these times – something about the alpha state I believe enjoyable to watch the new wheezes come - and go.

I also love going to an out of town garden nursery that is a magical place of greenhouses and grumpy old gardeners filling their barrows with plants of all kinds, ancient couples and a few younger family types but mainly middle aged blokes with the wife along, I expect we all find this place a treat after the ones in town which are twice the price and tarted up with bookshops, gross fancy goods and foul cafes. Here deep(ish) in the coutry you can pretend you are a horny handed son – or daughter – of the soil for a little while and grub around in the earth while you choose your plants. You can pretend to yourself that you have an acre of two( terrifying thought) I even adopt a Hampshire Hog accent briefly and they do of course take Visa!

So this week I spent an hour or two getting in touch with my rural side And bought rather a lot of plants. Then we saw a guy with a barrow outside his house so we bought more. Then yesterday I went to the Co-operative and discovered they had far cheaper petunias in particular buy two trays get the third one free. Not one to miss a bargain I bought them. What a saving! My kitchen s now filled with trays of Lobelia, petunia, and tomato plants and I must go and buy growbags, pots, plant food and compost. I must acquire an old table from somewhere to put said pots etc on and arrange for somebody to water the buggers while I am away at the weekend on my –‘escape the royal wedding’ mission!

I am off to the tip and expect to do some skip diving and pillaging of friend’s gardens – I think I saw a stray table somewhere local – now where?

I am so delighted to have got a bargain!

THE SCENTS OF SPRING

2011-04-22T11:06:00.000+01:00

The Scents of Spring

I took my Polo in today for a new dashboard. The old one had given up the ghost weeks ago and in spite of an ultra helpful mechanic stuffing the fuse back it collapsed and died again almost instantly many times. So no speedometer or petrol gauge and every day I forgot until I was on a road where speed matters as I know to my cost. I was recently given the opportunity to relearn my driving techniques and somehow it cost me over £100 plus an afternoon of extraordinary, mind shredding boredom while two nice old boys revamped bits of the Highway Code. I was only doing 34 MPH. but didn’t want points on my licence.

So I walked back from the garage and among the delightful diesel and petrol I was hit by the scent of flowers all the way home. The lilac was wonderful as were some shrubs and there was an overall perfume of cut grass. Normally I am in my car still redolent of dog. Though she died six months ago I can’t bear to have it cleaned. I was going to give her basket away too but it is languishing in the boot a sort of moving memorial to Saffie. There is also a smidgen of fox in there somewhere she loved rolling in essence of fox. I quite like the general odour of my car – gawd know what the nice mechanic will make of it.

The grass scent got me thinking about scents of all kinds firstly of New Mown Hay perfume by Floris a nice subtle one this and they would create an individual scent just for you at one stage. Then on to a perfume called Poison so pungent as to make you recoil. I have been put off my pint by intrusive perfume, it has invaded my nose and made its way into my taste buds I think it was ‘Youth Dew’ and seemed to be the pong of choice for every middle aged woman in my local. It was fine in moderation but I think the publicity and name encouraged women to believe that instant youth would result and the more they splashed on the more youthful they would become. It actually inserted itself into my Guinness and made it unpalatable although I think I remember making the effort and drinking up.

Now, and this is new, I am assailed by the cologne of young males early evening as they approach me surrounded by an almost solid miasma of pungent pong that remains in the air long after they have gone. At such times I tend to say that I prefer an armpit aroma but I am not serious. I do wonder about differentiation of smells in the case of these chaps, I do still believe that we humans are attracted to one another by our natural scent and this must be very confusing for their potential mates. Could this have an effect on the high breakdown or relationships? Inaccurate identification of natural mates? Probably not.

There is an astounding difference in public hygiene in these last many years. I travel a lot on buses stuffed full of people and it is rare that BO offends and even on the tube with strap hanging arms fully extended just at nose level it is usually pretty OK. In the old days (!) before everybody used deodorant (yes, there was such a time!) travel by tube, particularly in the evening after a day of festering in the heat; liberation and an outstretched arm would cause foetid and obnoxious odours to make their way into nasal passages and remain there immovable for hours and it would interfere with natural consumption of anything liquid or solid.

I reckon that it is probably healthier to sniff the perfume but I so wish that people would desist from using quite such liberal doses of the stuff.

MY brain is in down mode

2011-03-18T09:04:00.001Z

My brain is in down mode.

Been racking it which it doesn’t appreciate. So what do you do when your brain is taking industrial action? You negotiate. You let it play around a bit, in my case I read ‘social networking according to ‘The Wire’’ which I hardly understood at all on Flowtown blog. It appalled and fascinated me in much the same way as the programme, that I loved, did. A lot of the language was a mystery but the essence was the truth. I am not sure about Social networking according to the laws of Baltimore gangsters; we live according to Whitehall gangsters here in Britain. And now it looks as if we may be going to war – again.

And we watch, some of us compulsively, as the Japanese suffer one disaster after another, ‘bring it on god’ if you believe in deities but what ever have the Japanese done to deserve this? And what is the point of us being served up photographs of this disaster on every channel at every hour of the day and night – do they think we will forget the sight of this hideous series of events? I feel like some kind of vulture woman picking at the bones, like when there is an accident on the motorway and I slow down to see the gory details but one look is enough, I don’t stop and rubberneck, I drive more carefully for the next couple of hours. I guess this is a learning experience.

So what have we learned about nuclear energy from this? That it is dangerous? That although we don’t have earthquakes of tsunamis here(yet) it is never completely safe and when it goes wrong it is tragic, we are all subject to human fallibility – that’s what makes us human. No! It would seem we have not learned a thing. Nuclear power it is still vaunted as the cleanest option of energy production. I reckon that this is dubious at least. Could be we should cut down on our energy consumption?

And as for us engaging in yet another war in yet another Middle Eastern country – I despair. And no I have no solutions in my sterile mind. I just have visions of us romping through territories engaging with other violent thugs, all using weapons that were made in England and killing. And who is going to do this? Not the politicians you can be sure! And who is going to be killed? Young guys who just needed a job (and women and children of course.) I can’t help thinking that there has to be a better way.

SUNDAY

2011-03-09T10:31:00.000Z

SUPER SUNDAY

‘So we’ll go to the South Bank early.’ Were her last words to me on Saturday night. This from a woman who can happily stay in her pit until midday, yeah yeah I thought. Went about my business up at 6.30, having a Twitter shufti for five then email & Facebook for 2 then settle in to write while radio 4 talks of crises in the world – I will wait to get my reality check later with Aljazeera – I reckon to get the BBC and Aljazeera plus a little Russia Today and then believe none of it but with a definite bias toward Aljazeera. Mainly because the journalists question more and appear to take less bullshit and most of them are women. It’s a method!

When at 7.20 she appeared, and vertical I was stunned. She whacked the cereal bowls too close to my laptop for comfort, I stopped writing and took up eating stance and within fifteen minutes we were flying through a near deserted Greenwich, Deptford, Bermondsey and all the other beauty spots of South London – when I say ‘flying’ I mean it as a comparative term the chariot no longer flies but it goes well and looks terrifying so people don’t usually mess with us and she is an Italian driver with all the verve and nerve that this implies.

The South Bank was near deserted and the cinema fairly empty. I knew the project was called The Clock and that it involved film. She tells me I am culturally unadventurous – because she once took to some show where we were shepherded round a building and expected to be scared, excited, interested, on command. I just wanted to sit down and get a pint - I don’t do audience participation. Also she is not a great explainer – in fact I had thought we would dive in and out of this clock thing in a half hour but no – this was a twenty four hour gig that still had hours to run. The project is in real time and the time is always on the screen in various forms. Station clocks, alarm clocks watches; with people responding - they are late; they are waiting, rushing, getting fractious. Every response to time is represented.

The artist who created this is called Christian Marclay and he is a genius. The entire show is made up of thousands of clips of films .This sounds dull but it is riveting, funny, fascinating and totally absorbing, we stayed for three hours and if we hadn’t had a lunch date I think I would have stayed all through until 6.30 when it ended.

I am explaining badly. The clips of films came from all over the world, as far back as the twenties and the juxtaposition of clips was marvellous. Some clips lasted long enough to get engrossed in the story – a door would open and an explosion came that tore at your mind – which hadn’t had time to jettison the last image. There was one intriguing clip of Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren that we felt we should have heard about and there was Tony Hancock – gloom personified pulling a lever over and over and then… so it went on with no moment of boredom, no ennui just total engagement and then the market on the South bank for great cheese and ginger and fig cake.

On to lunch with some mates at their house – and me in me track suit bottoms and hair stuffed into a beret, no time to change. Brilliant conversation and a decision to all go to Sicily together, and lots of good wine and fabulous nosh.

I tell you I get a better class of Sunday since I took up with my bird!

MICE TAILS

2011-02-28T12:12:00.001Z

MICE TAILS

I begin to wonder about my life before mice. They have become a fascinating part of my life. I could do without them very easily but the sheer volume of material they have supplied makes me feel I owe them one. I also reckon that mine are exceptional mice. We seem to be running a kind of hotbed scheme with either myself or the mice in residence at any one time. Not exclusively of course, there is the case of the stock cube orgy. I had been making some soup that day and whacked a stock cube in – along with the herbs I get in jars from my love’s sister near Turin and ancient veggies, new veggies and a bit of this and that. I am rather good at soup I’m told but that might be to keep me cooking. Anyway I enjoy it, it makes me feel I am taking part in a rural idyll - odd because my raw materials come from Aldi ( We all need our illusions!) anyway I must have left the top off the glass jar that I keep stock cubes in (because the thought that the mice got together in a team and removed the top is far too worrying) I was putting the washing on when I noticed nasty brown marks on the counter.

I investigated further and found eight cubes chewed at the corners and evidence of the little mothers in the jar. I emptied it out and saved the damaged cubes with a view to putting them in mouse traps. That was the day I bought ‘humane’ traps. I tried to set the wretched thing, caught my finger and it didn’t feel even remotely humane to me. They are now empty on the window ledge, I had hoped that my cleaner may care to take responsibility for mouse murder and I think she would but she had caught her finger before and refused. Then I saw no evidence of them for a few days, though the guy next door swears he hears them in the wall (his paranoia or my loss of hearing?) I know they make their way from house to house under the floorboards so I endeavour to keep a food free kitchen, the stock cube slip up was an aberration. But I know they are around. In fact they have a taste for plastic which might mean they are building nests or they are rather dim mice with eclectic tastes.

I spend up to four days at a time in London and when I go home I am greeted with a powerful essence of mouse, pungent and unmistakable. The little varmints have been in occupation in my absence. As I enter the kitchen I sometimes see a mouse in fast motion tiny and fleet of feet, it scuttles away in the direction of the back door though I have blocked all holes – I think. I am convinced that decamp when I am home but they have frequent recces

to suss out if I have made a slip up of the stock cube variety. I imagine them alarmed at this large creature invading their territory and making it her own. I expect mice have different time scale to human beings and four days allows them to settle in nicely then along I come to disrupt them. I will get some of the traps that they walk into next and take them walkies to the river – but the river has big rats to imperil their safety. A cat seems to be the answer but the Cameron cat turned to be a non combatant cat so there are no guarantees. I shall report back.

BAD TRIP?

2011-02-19T20:35:00.002Z

LONDON FURY

The train was not running from my local station so we were bussed to the next station. This involved humping my heavy wheelie bag and far from light self up into and out of different vehicles all stuffed full of discombobulated travellers in filthy moods. There were a few plucky wartime spirit characters, I was not one of these. Most of us were grumpy sour faced buggers. It brings out the worst in people to have our plans disrupted.

The driver was unnecessarily jolly particularly with any young females who got within his vicinity – clearly his flirt opportunity for the week. This notwithstanding he dumped us all on a nice fast secondary road so we could run the gauntlet of traffic speeding on their way to the Saturday shopping orgy that takes over Southampton each weekend. We galloped across to the sound of squealing brakes, I brought up the rear because I‘m not great at galloping so I caught the curses of drivers – and I enjoyed retaliative action. It seemed essential that we rushed to the train that was waiting in the station. In fact we all pushed and shoved our way on and sat for at least fifteen minutes, time for me to fillet my newspaper of its dross and establish myself (I am very territorial) we muttered about being late but softly – we are British after all.

My love was away and I was off to warm the flat up for her return so I had to get on two buses the first to the Elephant then another to Watt Tyler road, I love the name but the journey was hell with more and more people clambering aboard at every stop until the bus was crammed to bursting and my large cumbersome trolley taking up valuable foot room. I apologised profusely shoved it hither and yon out of one lot of feet into the next persons ankles gathering glares along the way. When it came to getting off the bus I had to fight my way through a phalanx of backs and a few resentful fronts to the door that was being held open by a kindly couple who must have heard my panicky squeals of distress. I shoved the case out in front of me and followed it unsteadily, thanked them and, restored to sanity marched over the lawn speedily.

The thing that had sustained me on this entire trip had been the fact that I knew I had a half -full bottle of gin waiting for me and I was nearly sure that I even had a bottle of tonic. I could almost taste the fresh zing of a stiff gin. I thumped up the stairs with no regard for the noise factor or computer safety and practically fell in the front door. I collapsed in a chair to catch my breath and went for the gin. It was gone. I did a futile search in which I looked in the same places again and again until eventually I was convinced that it was gone. I was furious. I telephoned Turin to quiz my love who said she ‘must have drunk it’ but I had asked her the week before if it was still there and now it occurs to me that my enquiry had alerted her to the fact that it was hidden beneath the kitchen table. I slammed the phone down and opened a bottle of Chablis and guzzled a fast glass – not the same thing at all.

My disappointment was profound, my apoplectic rage probably out of proportion. it was just as well that I had a day or two to recover a semblance of good humour before she got back. Forgiveness?
Forget it!

ONLY IN LONDON

2011-02-14T09:43:00.001Z

Last week I went home to Southampton for a day or two, see how the mice are doing( not a lot ) get my parking permits pick up letters, see friends. Meanwhile my love went to yet another opening where she met a charming actress who was reading some poetry. She talked to her, said I might need a reader in the future,’ I am reading some poems at the Royal Court on Saturday evening come along if you like!’ said Rebecca, the actress( no bishop figures in this tale!) So it came to pass that we trolled up to Sloane square and I wasn’t keen, I like poetry but..and I was quite certain that it wouldn’t be main stage and when the guy in the box office knew nothing about it I was all for finding the nearest boozer and my mind was focussed upon the inflated prices of beer and other mundanities so I didn’t hear the very lovely very young girl ask the guy about poetry, my love is a far better focussed woman and talked to her. She knew a director and telephoned her telling her that she had TWO OLD LADIES who had also come to see the poetry.

This was a pivotal moment in my life. I have never knowingly been called an ‘Old Lady’ before, at least not in my hearing. I was shocked. I have been called old bag and various other terms of abuse mostly in anger but never LADY. There is something incredibly ancient in that term, irretrievably old. I think I may have a secret belief that there is a switch somewhere that I will hit one day a become forty again( one of my finest years) and I know now that I am .in the eyes of the world, indeed an old lady I dislike the word ‘lady’ but it is the conjunction that really got me.

When we got to the bar I told Rosanna ( the beautiful girl) that I had never been called an old lady before she told me that she was describing us in case somebody was looking for us. And that’s another thing, my love is my love not a bloody old lady! My irate mind churned over my G&T an old lady’s drink and I explained that I Ioath the word lady, and I do. Then I bought her a drink because I realised that it is not her fault that I am an old lady.

We found the director Sophie Ivatts and went into the back room, filled with chairs all full and we were witness of An eye for Cupid… in two acts of fifteen pieces of poetry all written by Simon David that was marvellous in its variety, had me moved in all directions from ‘To see me wee’ hilarity and the most witty trumpet I have ever encountered played by Caleb Frederick in Why eye my thigh. To the most moving depiction of the result of rape that had me near to tears through to two men getting in and out of touch with their very feminine side,. Simon David also acted and I counted twenty three actresses on stage for the finale. (I prefer ‘actors’ but everybody I spoke to said actress so I am clearly out of date with my daft feminist attitudes – my age you know!)

It was the most enjoyable evening in a theatre ( kind of) I have spent for years and so many gifted professional actors knocked me sideways with their talent the writing and direction was superb and – it was, sadly, a one off!

Such a very lucky privilege and as I say – only in London!

On reading in public and other stuff

2011-01-20T13:00:00.001Z

Last night I read some old poems at The Art House in Southampton. As usual I was filled with dread and terror, asked self very many times: why am I doing this? It's pure masochism! Went to the cinema with a friend to see the King's Speech, thought it would occupy my mind nicely in fact I slept through most of it - according to my friend and she was supported by a woman the other side of me so I believe it and I felt quite perky on the way out. As a fairly fanatical republican I probably shouldn't have gone but I saw Firth in 'A Single Man' recently and thought him marvellous.I expect he was marvellous in this too - everybody says so, once more I am in minority of one - nothing new there then. Anyway I got very cross about Helen Bonham Carter who had little resemblance to the doughy faced woman that I remember seeing once at Epsom race course and a million photographs.I think I will move on away from the royals lest my blood pressure rises and I make more enemies!

The reason for the old poems is the fact that my old computer has taken a turn for the worse and refuses to download any files so I can neither print out or work on documents. My new computer is cute and awaits conversion into my chief tool of communication the expert is comng later frabjus joy! I - hope. Meanwhile I can play with emails, facebook and Twitter all day with no compunction at all a guilt free dilettante day.
I must write new poems too with a slightly less anti male bias. Now that I have a woman lover I can afford to be more tolerant of the male -not being in direct fire so to speak, at least in theory. In fact I still seem to be rampantly pro female but I can work on this. Perhaps.

Still the need for public affirmation perplexes me but it seems to be there so I will obey my instincts and carry on taking my heart in my hands and hope the audience laughs, preferably in the same places that I do.
Here is the link to the superbly delivered reading by Nina Ludovica Smith of an excerpt of my novel, A Blues for Shindig which was recorded at a gig in the Arts Laboratory in Berlin. It is not our preferred piece and the interview is inaccurate in a few places but who cares? ( apart from me!) We hope to perform at NotaBar in north London soon and hold both self and work to ridicule again soon!
(In fact this link does not work so I will erase it!I will get it on to my blog another way, it is already on the Legend blog click on picture of my book & it will appear.)

THE WHAT FACTOR

2011-01-17T07:43:00.000Z

Some weeks ago I went to a party and saw the Xfactor for the first time. I was comfortable and had a chair and I stayed riveted. I had managed somehow not to see this though many of the people I know enjoy it. I found it barbaric and sad. The noise was hideous, the enormous amount of energy that exploded onto the screen was obscene. Seemed to me that this vast energy could be far better spent and when I heard that more people vote for this than vote in elections I nodded to myself in a self congratulatory way. This is the danger of emphatic disapproval it leads to conceit. After all. Who am I to disapprove of a programme that is designed and succeeds in pleasing the public?
But public hangings were a real hit I believe with characters queuing up to watch the twitching death of another of their species - no doubt roaring their approval and derision. Bear baiting too was seen as a good night out and dog fighting still remains popular so do we give the punters what they want at any price? Well, no we don't. We manufacture something that appeals to the lowest common denominator, costs nothing for the performers who clamour to be on television and makes at least one person fabulously rich. The advertisers must fight to flog their products during the breaks in this particular programme.
So, have I become a supporter of censorship. An arbiter of good taste. No and yes .I am now po faced critic who finds the humiliation of the 'losers' revolting to watch and I won't watch again. Did I mention my opinion to my friends who were hooting along to the show? Certainly not, who am I to judge? And who wants to be seen as a humourless reactionary?
I stayed shtoum!

Greed as virtue

2011-01-07T08:20:00.000Z

Food glorious food

I am a radio four fan/freak to the extent that I arrange my car journeys around programmes I like and have been know to sit outside my house in the car until a particularly enjoyable programme ends. Ed Reardon is my favourite and I cringe and identify particularly when his writing group rebels - I 'taught' creative writing for a very long time - too long.
So I have the radio burbling in the background and tune in to anything that catches my ear. Woman's hour has been talking about food, weight and dieting - again. They seem to have been on about it for days and nobody ever says they are just plain greedy and that food is gorgeous and meant to be enjoyed. I get a lot of pleasure from food and have noticed in the last weeks that when anybody says 'How was your Christmas?' I rhapsodise about a wonderful sour cherry sauce al la Delia that I made with a duck that I cooked perfectly. These things don't always come off and this time it did so I am justifiably proud but am not sure if that should be my highlight. I also enjoyed good company and no disagreements but it is the cherry sauce that I remember.
When I was a child I was beanpole skinny and, naturally, I longed for some curves and I was called the dustbin because I would swoop on any leftovers and gobble them up. I am still greedy and like greedy people around me but I don't expect they would call themselves greedy because it is now a word of abuse. I enjoy my greed, I love to go to a new town, especially in France and spend hours wandering around looking at the menus, comparing combinations of food imagining the tastes and generally drooling, my brother- in- law who I admire tremendously took sandwiches to Paris with him when he went to the Monet exhibition. To save money he said, I said nothing but this seemed tome to be folly of the first order. Sacrilege.
Recently my partner had a young German girl staying with her who ate phenomenal amounts of food, a joy to cook for and a good lavish cook. Our eyes would gleam over my English specialities bread and butter pudding, cauliflower cheese would disappear at a rate of knots and she would make excellent German dishes and chocolate cakes. I think my fondness for her was based on our mutual love of food, food and books.
I have never had a partner who loves food as much as I do. My husband was diabetic and when we got married I got the Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook and indulged in Cordon Bleu which was the fashion then. He gained a vast amount of weight and I nearly killed the poor man so lush cooking had to stop.
Then I was with an excellent Irishman whose preference was for Guinness and I adapted and also gained a lot of weight. Now I am with a wonderful woman who is definitely not greedy but I am working on her, hopefully she will become less abstemious in time. Meanwhile I seek out hearty eaters and feed and admire them, in my book greed is good.
I am slightly overweight but I'm worth it!

A Second bite at Berlin

2010-12-06T10:59:00.000Z

I was a little nervous about returning to Berlin, afraid it would disappoint. It was better than ever and the people I met before were as sound and the new ones were great. The start was a disaster with me abandoned at the airport watching people from the Moscow flight come through the gate. I felt my face alter from a semi expectant grin to anxiety through to fear and on to fury then the terror of knowing that my love was dead/ missed her flight or just abandoned me ( I have vast 'abandonment issues!!'I have been told this by many a counsellor and have obligingly believed it.) My actress friend had gone on ahead in the opposite direction to Kreizberg and I had happily gone to the correct gate and stood waving. My love has different sim cards for every country she touches down (thrift) and for some curious reason her Berlin card was not working. Eventually I phoned a number I had taken last year that I thought was the place we had stayed. The wonderful Chris answered and gave me the address - by the time I found a taxi the only defining landmark I could remember was the Swanglers Club - the actual address had slipped down into my personal delete bin so I phoned Chris again who told the driver the address.

I recognised the building and paid the eighteen euros, rang again and Chris bounded down the stairs with the joyful news that my love had arrived I find it difficult to describe the force of my fury - let me just say that I made it to the fifth floor in one go, usually I wheeze up slow and stop at least twice. Adrenalin is wonderful and I still had breath left to yell my feelings in purest Anglo Saxon. So we began our visit not speaking, Things improved and I realised that I should have taken the address for myself never rely on anybody, ever. A learning experience indeed.

Things improved and our first reading went well and we finished the evening with an invitation to read on Sunday at an open studio event and adjourned to a wonderful pub. One of the more enchanting features of Berlin pub life is the fact that when you invade somebody's table they smile their welcome and talk to you, that and the nice familiar smoky atmosphere. Also the fact that you pay at the end of the evening, which is late but on Friday and Saturday the underground runs all night and nice Turkish food is available in the tube stations. These might seem irrelevancies but they all go to make Berlin my favourite city.

The Sunday gig was fun and funny and I saw wonderful sculptures in the studios and all kinds of excellent art work of every conceivable kind in a building that was once a school.. The third event was a great success with Alan in the chair and so many lovely Germans who shame us with their knowledge of English. Plus all the hip Brits who still crash on Sofas and are cool. This is going on far too long. so thanks to Chris and Regine, Marc and a special mention for Alan and Jacinta and all the lovely East of Eden crew! And thanks to Wu Zhi and I am saving up for that picture. And most of all thanks to Nina and Albertine for friendship. And thanks to beautiful BERLIN

DEPRESSION?

2010-11-22T12:34:00.001Z

For many years I endured bouts of gloom that marched in from nowhere and occupied my entire being like some alien army, my mind grasped tight in a vice of misery. I would function on a superficial level as if I were normal and wouldn't share this fact. I would watch myself operating and wonder at it. Listen to myself chatting instead of screaming under this heavy grey miasma. I joke and my wit is intact if a little sharper, more barbed. In fact it hardly impaired my function at all but totally filleted any joy. I can remember walking with my dog in my favourite place feeling desolate and trying to understand how this could be. All the things I loved were present and correct yet none of it was enjoyable, I was lost in the fog of misery with both exit and entrance barred. It was pointless talking about my mood and impossible for anybody to get through to me. The isolation was total.
Eventually the mood would move off spontaneously and I was capable of happiness again, or at least of a peaceful mind. During the glooms I often had a tune going through my brain, I remember one in particular was Chinatown my Chinatown and when I woke it was a warning of misery. Though a gloom is quite different from misery that can be addressed and dealt with or at least talked about. I can remember when I was teaching that during a gloom I would watch myself and even admire my performance which was detached and outside my self.
Alternatively I would drink myself into a stupor with the vain hope that it would shift the gloom and occasionally it did temporarily but it would roar back along with a hangover when I woke and the idiot song would churn in my mind like some unholy carousel. Beside which it was expensive and with the danger of revealing my pain in some drunken moment and I was terribly ashamed of these glooms. I often read about gifted people who vaunted their glooms as part of their genius as if the fact of desperate moods make them special but I knew this didn't apply to me and it sounded like a poor consolation too.
So why am I writing about this now? Because for the last few years since I had a stroke I have not had the glooms. Perhaps my brush with mortality scared it out of me or perhaps brain damage occurred. I am very glad to get out of desolation row mood and even as I type the words I am afraid of tempting fate but I will take a chance because the subject interests me and I can never resist a disclosure!
I know that we are all unique and that my own experience is not the same as that of anyone else but I would be interested in other experiences of the glump.

Berlin

2010-11-22T12:26:00.000Z

I will be supporting the lovely Nina Ludovica Smith who will read excerpts of my novel A Blues for Shindig and I will strut my stuff very briefly with a couple of three poems at the the events below in Berlin in late November
Stardust Boogie Woogie
Tania Antoshina, Mo Foster, Marcela Iriarte, Christian de Lutz, Jane Mulfinger, Bob & Roberta Smith, Jessica Voorsanger and a reading by Nina Ludovica Smith
Curated by Francesca Piovanot
Finissage with a reading by Mo Foster: 26 November 2010 8PM
Special event: Tuesday 30 November 2010, , A reading by Nina Smith and Mo Foster at the East of Eden International Bookstore, Schreinerstr. 10, 10247 Berlin-Friedrichshain - www.east-of-eden.de

DEAD DOG

2010-11-12T07:35:00.000Z

DEAD DOG
I have been resisting the impulse to write this one for fear of seeming maudlin but maudlin is OK on occasion and if you don't like pets it will be best if you don't read this.
Since my delightful Border Terrier died I have felt desperately lonely for her company interspersed with feeling of guilt. I feel rather like Nero who gave the thumbs down to some misbegotten gladiator. There really wasn't much choice, the vet said she was in a great deal of pain and there was not much chance of her recovering fully. She had had Cushings disease for several years and now she appeared to have had a seizure and in spite of Rescue Remedy and drops of brandy she stood stiff, unable to sit, she also had a very high temperature and she was fifteen, so I let her go via the vet.
Miss Saffie was a special dog, I wanted to call her Sappho but she lacked the gravitas - or I did. I didn't get her from new so I missed all house training and she was the most continent of dogs - until Cushings struck and I had to measure her water intake against her visits outside quite carefully, her early days were spent alone because her owners both worked and when I came along to have her during the week she was very pleased and went into paroxysms of joy when she saw me and deep gloom when I left her so when I asked if I could keep her they said I could.
I always thought she was a bit dim and she was incredibly lacking in bravery, although she had very bold moments when she fell for yet another unsuitable very butch fighting dog. She was smitten with an unspeakable monster in the hairdresser shop round the corner a Japanese piece of exotica who hardly responded at all, she would rush in rudder waving, He would retreat. She was never put off and the next day she would plight her troth again. There was a dog called Hercules that she was quite passionate about and he reciprocated and she would become young again and cavort with him all over The Point in Greenwich.
A few months ago she was attacked by two Staffordshire Bull terriers one of which grabbed her throat in his teeth with no preliminaries at all, the other went for her tail. I kicked the second one away, a small crowd of onlookers gathered but the only person who intevened was a young Moslem guy on his way to the Mosque. He took off his slipper and whacked the dog in the face and it ran off. Then he dashed away white robes flowing into the Mosque. Heroic I thought - knowing the Moslem dislike of touching dogs. Since this incident Saffie had little taste for walks locally in Southampton which is hardly surprising. And I became more cautious. So we would drive in the car to places where she was happy to walk and on our train journeys to Waterloo she would make friends with people, I believe she had a happy life and she brought a lot of happiness to me. At a friends house yesterday she reminded me of the pitter patter of her claws on the floor as she trotted to the back door in he endless search for water. Even cat lovers liked her and I loved her so it's goodbye to you Miss Saffie and thanks again..

THE PLUMBER

2010-10-29T08:23:00.001+01:00

The Plumber
Greenwich has this wonderful scheme which provides free odd jobs to we vintage models. Wonderful I hear you say and I said too. Unfortunately there is a fifteen-minute limit to this visit and there's not a lot that can be done in fifteen minutes. However they will assess your needs, make a report , then you apply for a claim and in the fullness of time the work will be done. Our blocked sink seemed to be more urgent than this process would allow so my friend got on to a plumber.

He arrived nearly within the half hour he promised and did the usual head shaking with warnings that it wasn't going to be a straightforward job and that the pipes had vicious bends that might be unreachable and he may have to dismantle the entire drainage system. Then he went off to Wicks to get a piece of pipe, he would be back in ten minutes. We did a joint panic job envisaging floorboards up and general disaster. Our lodger chose this moment to make a cake and we were in such a state of anxiety - twittering among ourselves - that we watched her go to it with the aplomb that she brings to everything.

After an hour I was convinced he had abandoned the job with the sink in bits and ourselves in turmoil. He rang to say that he had to go somewhere else for the spare part but would be back soon. ' I bet he's having a fry up in some café!' I said. 'Probably on his third cup of tea now.' My friend was building up to fury with beetled brow and dangerous eyes. She began to speak of the British workman in derogatory terms when the intercom went. 'Plumber!' his cheery voice rang out and he bounced in with no sign of a pipe and I fancied I got the scent of fried bread off him, I licked my lips and he proceeded to apply his vacuum thing to the dismantled waste pipe and in two minutes it was all over, clean as a whistle clear as a bell as if by magic.

He looked triumphant like a conjuror and we, in our relief joyfully paid him what he asked and thanked him profusely. 'Just make sure you put boiling water down it once a week and it will be fine! It's a build up of grease.' I am the fry up merchant of the family and I hung my head slightly. But all in all we were delighted and it was a nice pantomime: scare the bejesus out of the punter, leave them for an hour to build up the tension then come back and do the job that would have taken all of ten minutes. I like to think of it as an exercise of the emotions! Fair play Mr plumber. We came away happy and so did you.
The lodgers cake was excellent.

The Literary Event

2010-10-20T10:21:00.002+01:00

The Literary Event &
I had read weeks ago in the Guardian about the 'To Hell with the Lighthouse' event which takes place monthly in a Rock and Roll Club in Denmark street. Naomi Alderman was to read on that occasion and I had enjoyed her first novel 'Disobedience' enormously. Unfortunately I was unable to get to that particular meeting but what I had heard I liked so I decided to go anyway and had been looking forward to it too, happily dismissing a mention of 'young talent'.

I thought it would be fun to meet some new people, make a few contacts, network. I am fairly new to the networking game and I am sure I will never get the air kiss past the edge of a face right. But I can't believe this is vital. I do hope not. I have quite recently begun to tweet and have been blogging with great enthusiasm since February so now for some flesh-to-flesh networking I thought and I must say I found the idea rather exciting. In fact I tweeted somebody who was reading and she sounded keen to have me there so I was hopeful. I descended the stairs into a club that reminded me very much of places I had known in the sixties and the shop above was enchanting, in fact Denmark street appears to have absorbed all the music shops in this part of London. It's been a long time since I've been there and had forgotten how great it is.

The barman sold me some fairly unpleasant white wine pointing at a happy hour poster and I found a seat beside a young woman at a table so I could begin my networking straight away. 'Hi' I said and she smiled and carried on her conversation. I looked around the fairly empty bar where some jolly men in reversed baseball caps were having a merry time, I wondered if I should give up on networking and join them - they looked friendly enough - at least they smiled.

But no, I am here for a purpose I thought and tried the girl on my right again.
'Who's reading tonight?' she mentioned one name but said she didn't know who else. She went back to her conversation. I noticed a magazine on the table called 'Fat', I asked if I could buy one and she smiled and said I could. It was a misnomer I thought for this very slender mag that cost £2, the content was pretty slim too, and it was called a countercultural ladies' mag. I might be countercultural if they allow women of advanced age to be countercultural, which seems dubious. But 'ladies' is a word that I take issue with. I imagine it is used ironically though there was not much sign of irony in the interior of the magazine. There was a little self conscious swearing in the editorial so perhaps that is the countercultural bit. Spare Rib it 'aint, more's the pity.

I found a stray book on the table and began to read, it was an interesting idea about gods on Hampstead Heath, I wondered what the cruisers and bathers made of them. Probably wouldn't notice them I thought - particularly if they were over thirty - but gods are immortal of course. I liked reading it and a woman came up and told me it was a proof copy so I was welcome to it and could get it signed. I said thanks and she left before I could engage her in any conversation. Besides the place was filling up with young women with a few men among them and the noise level had increased to what I imagine it must be like in a parrot cage just before feeding. Not all the noise was that of kissing air, some was from the many 'hello darlings' and a generalised squawking.

I have been reading a lot about obesity of late but here there were few above size eight and most in tiny printed cotton dresses. I asked the woman on my right in one of her breaks from leaping up to deliver a kiss; 'Why is the magazine called Fat when you are all so thin?' I think she said something about tapestry but will never be sure. The lights were dimmed and there was a plug for the magazine and the first reader, a substantial American woman was introduced. She read well and told us with delight how she had annoyed her mother with her first book. There was nothing that shocked me in her reading and nothing new either, but what do I know? The audience liked it.

Then there was a break and the lights went up and the woman who had given me the book dashed in to take the book back:' I'm going to steal this back' she said 'Oh fine!' I said limply. Then I got up to go to the 'Ladies' room and when I came back my seat had been taken and I left sadder and no wiser.
Never has a woman been so comprehensively spurned by so many for so long. I thought as I hit the local Subway for solid solace.

Memory

2010-10-17T07:06:00.001+01:00

On Memory
It is usual to express regret about forgetting words. To lambaste oneself and to see this as a fault of the ageing brain. The fact that I can remember a blues riff and all the words from something I heard in 1958 is given no value. I disagree. I would far prefer to remember 'My Kitchen Man' and forget the name of Glucasamine Sulphate than the other way around and when I go to my local health shop I can wander about the place until I find it- and I have no idea where I would find the words of the wonderful Bessie. Certainly not in Holland and Barretts.
So. I conclude that the brain very sensibly picks the vital more interesting memories and discards the others. It sometimes embarrasses but only momentarily and I have my own methods of bluffing and recognise other people with even better methods and I am not slow to heist these. One of the most profound misconceptions about we vintage models is that we become rather naïve and I wish to deny this, most of the characters I know are as crafty as ever they were and as venal too, if that was their inclination. I think some ancients go along with this 'simple minded' belief and let on that they are innocent as new borns thus leaving themselves open to any amount of patronising. And I do wish they would stop. There is no value at all in being pathetic.

This train of thought was brought on by looking up Blues that I used as titles of chapters in my novel. I chose titles that were suitable and now the original Blues Who's Who book has disintregeted with half the index gone I know not where. But I began looking at it again and can remember hearing this music from over fifty years ago and know the words in full and can sing them in my terrible voice and I am back in a smoky dive dancing or snogging to the music. The personnel involved are mostly and wisely gone from my memory and just the songs remain and the essence of the time - another clever trick of the good old brain.

I am about to make, with a lot of help from my friends, a CD of the blues in question as background to a reading and this has brought forth some delicious memories of times long gone and I must congratulate my brain on its taste in selection. It is good to remember blues parties in Somerleyton road in Brixton and dances in the St Louis in the East End and the Flamingo Club it seems that there is nobody around to correct me if I get the name wrong. And that's what is also excellent about remembering those long gone times; they don't have to be precise just the essence comes back so you remember a song and relive the heartache that you thought would never go away and the woozy joy of being in love again. And it is safe now - no danger of the heart breaking just a gentle marvel at the amount of time I spent engaged in futile but enjoyable passion and I am delighted that I have these sweet memories and that my good old brain has the sound sense to filter out the dross of the price the gas bill was last year and when my car insurance is due. People will remind me of these boring details and I don't need a reminiscence group to jog my memory it is a fully functioning part of me thanks to my very sensible brain.
And next time I forget my keys or I go from the room to do a reprise to jog my memory because I have no idea why I came in I shall know that whatever it was will come back to me and not to worry eh? And when I forget the procedure for downloading a photograph I will know that my brain is busy elsewhere remembering fascinating titbits from the dim and distant past
And I shan't castigate myself - if I remember!

Berlin Blues

2010-09-23T09:17:00.001+01:00

I had no thoughts of falling in love with Berlin, I am already in love and that is quite enough for me. Like many people of my age who remember the war and the pictures of Belsen that were shown to us as children, I had very mixed feelings about the Germans. So, as I climbed the stairs to the flat we had borrowed I had jackboots in mind.

Then I met some Germans and the first thing that occurred to me was the fact that they looked exactly like the British, but with less preoccupation with fashion. In fact there were few bum revealing boys and midriff bare girls (a relief for me because my kidneys begin to twitch in sympathy) perhaps the cold there has something to do with this though I doubt it. I have very clear memories of wearing pelmet skirts and boots with bare legs in the sixties in snow or gale and feeling no cold - or not admitting I did anyway.

Also there seem to be far more extremely good looking people about, and tall too .It was the time of the Christmas markets, gluwine, marvellous snacks and everybody stuffing their faces with crepes and similar gorgeous stuff, but I noticed a curious lack of obese people. I am a people watcher and stare so I tend to assume a benign look for the safety factor and to smile kindly at people I don't know. In Berlin this worked well and I got lots of smiles back.

On the metro they read newspapers that are not like the Sun as far as I can see. They have no barriers on their metro and while the stations are nowhere near as astounding as the ones in Moscow, there is a curious freedom about them with characters carrying their bicycles down the escalators.I grew up reading Isherwood and longed to find Cabaret and decadence, in fact there was a 'Swingers club' within yards of our flat but we didn't fancy it. And that's the thing about Berlin, there is no pretence. what you see is what you get. We decided against a cabaret as neither of us speaks German but we did a pretty extensive tour of pubs all over the city. We were welcomed everywhere we went with a nice enthusiasm that is curiously lacking when it comes to a couple of old birds in London!

I had another agenda too, I wanted to see a guy who I had a dalliance with in 1962 - before sex was invented according to a poet (fortunately we didn't know about this!) Last seen sharing acid, now a successful artist of sterling apparent respectability. And me? What do I look like to him? Would he recognise me? I have grown appreciably - horizontally and all the long hair is gone along with my bare feet. and white lipstick so I doubt it. Stout sensible shoes are the order of the day now and a nice warm coat. And both of us old. But we are both in there somewhere and during our conversation we peep out, slyly, briefly, while his formidable wife offers cake carefully. And talks to my girl friend almost exclusively. An old flame become an ember with hardly any life at all. My guru become dull, all his originality taken up with warnings of ice slips and fear of broken bones. I hadn't expected him to look the same, in fact I would have recognised him but his fierce energy has gone and mine has not - my physical energy is certainly diminished but my joy and anger seem intact, his wife clearly has him on tight rein and they are happy and what do I know? I envy him his peace but am quite glad that I haven't succumbed. I wanted to play 'do you remember' and I think he may have quite liked that but it was not possible and they were hectic years so perhaps that was for the best. What I would really like to have done is take acid again with this old man and find the parts of us that still believe that life is wonderful because it is.

And now I am going back and I hope I like it as much as that first time. I know we were only there for a month and can't know it properly and when I speak to some Germans who hate Berlin I wonder if I got it wrong but it was right for me and I will stay in Krietzburg again and have wonderful breakfasts at the bar and eat Turkish food again and my work will be part of a visual show at a gallery and my words exposed in a bookshop so it won't be all bad.
No, it will be good to be back.

VERMIN RETURN

2010-09-16T08:47:00.001+01:00

It is patently obvious that my house gets the five star rating from the local mice. The Ritz of the rodents! I reckon it is very probably ideal. I am away most weekends for four days so they have the house to themselves and it must be a shock when this great lumbering creature re-occupies with her dog. I understand their point of view. However my point of view is that I don't want to share my home with a lot of highly incontinent mice. The smell is foul and it increases the housework load and my cleaner threatens to defect if I don't get rid of them. Besides they are cheeky little buggers and after meeting one eye to eye on my draining board I brought a zeal to my anti mouse purge.

I got the pest control people in and killed some with poison, they died and festered under my white goods, rotted and stank. They were removed and I had seen none of the tell -tale signs of mice for more than a week. 'Hooray!' I thought, they are gone. I was wrong.

On Tuesday evening I came back from a lovely day out with friends I hadn't seen for fifteen years and I was cooking quietly thinking nice thoughts, going over conversations we had had earlier in the day, smiling at our memories of trying to join a group of pagans who greeted us with a phalanx of hostile backs, speaking of our first meeting and genrally indulging in deja vu of the best class. It is always slightly odd rejoining friends you haven't seen for this long, will we still like one another? have they changed ? have I? But it had all worked wonderfully well as we sat and drank milk shakes and talked and talked. I liked them even more than before or I had forgotten this easy closeness. I smiled to myself feeling mellow.

This silence is rare for me, a radio 4 addict. Usually I arrange to cook when I listen to the Archers or when Moral Maze is on and I yell at the ghastly Melanie. Or listen to Any Questions and take an active part, one of the advantages of living alone.is the freedom to listen to annoying people and shriek. In fact I seek out the Atkinses of this world to give me a nice rush of fury, and when, as sometimes happens I agree with her, I worry about my integrity.

In my ruminative quiet state I heard a metallic noise I listened intently and there it was again a rustling against metal located in my balanced flu water heater. The sound unbalanced me totally . Mice! I gave it a whack. Nothing. I remembered once before that mice had set up residence and fortified themselves with eating the plastic round the electric wires, dangerous this and could cost me a lot of money. I opened the bottom part of the heater and a confetti of chewed bedding and the ever present mouse turds descended on to the counter beneath. They are back in force. A new crew ready to take advantage of the superior facilities and my sloppy housekeeping. I put bleach in water and wash all the counters. I had had all holes cemented after their last incursion . It was mouse-proof I thought. The mice thought otherwise and now that I am away again I try not to worry. And I feel feeble about the mice because I don't even dislike them and when they are dead they are cute little creatures.with sweet wee faces that would soften the hardest heart but when they scuttle under my feet and startle me with a sudden impromptu appearance, then it's me or them and its got to be me! So watch it next time I'm home.
The guy next door tells me he is getting the mouse worriers in on Monday and I only hope they don't all trot in retreat into my house again.
PS This blog got caught in the works was supposed to go up last week, since then no mice are apparent but I am not entirely reassured they are crafty little varmints!

Dogs Glorious Dogs

2010-09-06T09:45:00.000+01:00

Now that I have a connection with Woofbark on Twitter I feel that I can give myself licence to get really doggy. My Border Terrier Saffron is the first female dog I ever had and by far the nicest, which is only to be expected. She has a sweet nature, is extremely pretty, gathers fans about her on the train when we travel and if I leave her outside a shop she draws a group of concerned citizens who reproach me.

I acquired her from some friends who bought her for their daughter just about that time of pubescence when she found the poop scoop deeply embarrassing and boys totally fascinating, so poor Saffie was not getting much exercise.

I was grieving for my last dog, Zit, more of whom later. I had mostly had rescue dogs before and this enchanting little creature was a totally new experience for me,a civilised girl, the arrangement initially was that I had her during the week and took her back weekends but I found excuses to keep her with me and finally, when she began to pine for me and go into ecstasies when I arrived they said I could keep her.She does of course have her own vices, a passion for rolling, in fox spraint main among them and I have become accustoned to perfume of fox as accompaninment to life with her and only bathe her when she rolls in a dead toad, old fish or if I expect fastidious friends to visit.( oddly they seem to have fallen by the wayside over the years!)

She is a great contrast to my last dog, Zit who was a rogue of the first order whose main aim in life was escape and who would slither away low to the ground, in imitation of Muttly whose grin he could do, between car and door looking over his shoulder with what looked like a gotcha grin to me. He was sly and endearingly funny. He also had hideous breath and stupendous farts . I got him from a friend whose boyfriend swore he would leave if she didn't get rid of him, predictably he left anyway. I felt that she should have chosen the dog but was glad to have the pup who was a few months old and already an escape artist.

His mother Daisy was a Jack Russell mixed with something indefinable and even after being spayed she had a distinct taste for lusty adventures with the local dogs. Zit was a further variation on the mutt theme. He would bounce four feet into the air at the hint of walkies reduced to a mere two feet before he died at twenty. He was never spayed and now that I have a bitch I realise that he was a pest, at the time I felt it was the unkindest cut and when he was seventeen we tried to mate him with a similar bitch called Libbie. They were enthusiastic and went off for a weekend sojourn together, which they enjoyed but no progeny resulted.

When he was twenty his back legs quite suddenly were paralysed. He dragged himself around for a day or two looking thoroughly miserable, he was a dog who lived to roam and now he couldn't walk. I made up my mind, took him to his favourite place: Mudeford where he attempted to jump from the car and landed in a heap on the ground dragged himself along the beach a few feet and collapsed looking reproachful. I had seen dogs with wheelie things for back legs but he was twenty had a heart murmur and arthritis I decided to put us both out of our misery. I made him a bowl of his favourite Boulognaise which he gobbled up and then I took him to the vet, a long term admirer of his. I held him as he died my face alongside his and he wagged his tail as he went, the death of a reprobate. I spread his ashes on Hegistbury Head one day in the Spring. I swore I would never have another dog.

I missed him dreadfully and realised that apart from our life together it was a case of a social life that had gone. Those conversations about dogs, the mutual admiration of our dogs. The instant comradeship of fellow dog owners, the routine conversations that go on fairly set lines, they never nag you or reproach you (a downright lie this - Zit could cut me to the core and ignore me for an entire day if I curtailed his freedom)I know many people by the name of their dog and they call me Saffie's mum.

This may sound trivial to the non doggie among us,I expect it is but it precludes the usual judgements that colour my own relationships and limit me. So I had a great friendship with a Labrador's mum who, one day shook me rigid by voicing an admiration for Mrs. Thatcher. I caught my words before they got out into the atmosphere and we are still 'friends.'

My partner is not English and finds the whole business of dog talk bizarre and threatens to make a video record of the routine 'sharings' with other dog admirers, not a bad idea!

2010-08-28T08:29:00.000+01:00

COMPUTER HELL
When my computer has a hiccup I have a kind of neurotic tremor rather like a nervous breakdown or an emotional earthquake.. And I do know it makes no sense but it doesn't stop me for a second, I telephone my love for my password - like she'd know! I talk to my web master in frantic tones, they - insensitive bastards - laugh. I am a three-year-old in full tantrum mode. I want to kill. Fortunately I have not done so yet but the spirit is definitely willing.

When my computer crashed some months ago, before I had found Twitter or Facebook, I went into huge gloom and wept real tears. Not for long but I was without a computer for more than a week during which time I became intimate with my nearest internet facility which has pictures of Tibetan horsemen galloping across the walls and a Babel of eastern European languages mixed with Arabic, Punjabi and Pashto. As I understand none of these languages they float over me quite pleasantly if noisily with a few Russian words that intrude into my consciousness from a couple of kids playing games. A guy sings along to some religious music and an African guy and myself pull faces at each other and grin. All this sounds attractive but it doesn't make for concentration and it was a big relief to get back to my normal nice isolation with the dog.

This time, with the added loss of Twitter I was even more destroyed. All that fractured energy while I read the odd dozen tweets from people I don't know at 2am. It has become a habit and I don't approve but I enjoy it anyway. In fact this time it was a mere upgrade - something I have resisted for years. I must have been feeling over adventurous this week and the computer is demanding an ancient password and bombarding me with news of how good this particular facility is, how it is protecting me. Protecting me from what? My own emails?

But I do worry about my reaction, which is totally out of proportion. I can only think that all my nascent lunacy has gathered itself into one vast screaming panic that gushes out wantonly as soon as somebody takes my toys. I know it smacks of a deeply sad person and saddest of all I have a sneaking feeling that my computer is doing it on purpose. That it is punishing me for my lack of careful file keeping, my untidy way of keeping eight files open simultaneously as well as the sneeze splattered screen that I forget to clean for months (I am a morning sneezer). And I haven't been backing up either.

So, I must conclude that rather than accept that these things are random - like life - I have some grim belief that I am being punished by my computer. That it is a spiteful entity that sits looking back at me with malice waiting for a time when I am feeling particularly pleased with myself and hits me a whammy. I worry about my mind.

Of course I don't believe this, not really, still I rush around bleating like a wet hen and I know hens don't bleat but my voice does and I hear myself tearful over the phone to my lovely Belfast voiced internet supplier. Shrieking at my friends because they can't help, abusing the poor old guy in the computer repair shop and rage and shame overcome me so I have to go and do an abject one later.

It's only a bloody computer after all. Isn't it?
And I know people who go off for weeks with no communication at all, and they tell me they enjoy it too! Clearly not for me but I must get out more!

2010-08-20T09:27:00.000+01:00

TALKING TO STRANGERS
When I travel it is a rather untidy business with my computer which is old and heavy in a trolley thing that is just a smidgeon too wide for the aisle in the train. Then my dog, who is usually a sweet natured girl and entirely biddable, being dragged along behind me and objecting by resisting with four paws on the deck. And my coffee wavering dangerously hot. So this particular evening it was hardly surprising that the good looking woman in the seat I chose objected. 'I'm sitting here.' she began.'On both seats?' I retorted into the challenge now. 'I don't want your dog next to me!' she said. 'And you won't get her, she sits on the floor!' I sat down, stuffed my trolley and Saffie under the table and glared, I thought for a moment she was going to whack me and I smiled ingratiating at the woman opposite who gave me a blank.
Not a good start to one of the most entertaining journeys I ever had on my way to Waterloo, which happens once a week.

This can be a variable trip. Often my dog gets a fan club, a sort of Border Terrier support group and we speak of the virtues of the breed, how adorable they are (only in Britain I hear you say!) This has its problems because then the dog takes up residence with them with me on the other end of the lead. Or we speak of their own dogs and stern business men go into excesses of sentiment and passion and we speak of all the dogs we have known and loved, which gets rather mawkish but fills the time nicely and we feel close, briefly. The great thing about dog talk is the fact that the only thing you need to have in common is a love of dogs. I once met a woman with a chocolate Labrador on my dog walks twice a week for months and we chatted happily together until election time when she told me that Mrs. Thatcher was the best thing that had ever happened. I was astounded and realised I had been consorting with the enemy, we carried on talking but I never quite got over this insight.
The female next to me was definitely not of this ilk. But, fortunately she loved to talk and so do I. I am also a great ear wigger but am not sure how she began, I was doing the easy crossword to prove my intellectual limitations or something. She was onto the fallibility of men, which would definitely be my specialist subject on Mastermind and I was impelled to put in my two pennorth. The woman opposite who looked formidably private was agreeing with her and soon we were all joyfully relating our own tales of deeply unsatisfactory men. The first woman turned out to have grown up in my street but her family had gone upmarket and her mother despaired of her finding 'a nice Indian man to marry'. This in spite of her not wanting anything of the sort. She told us she was forty, we assured her she didn't look it (though I don't know what forty looks like she looked young and so vivacious as to be ageless) she had had an arranged marriage when she was young, had escaped it with the support of her parents and enjoyed her freedom in a way that few women do. They spoke of the joys of the single woman and I spoke of the fun of being with a female partner.
This encounter with these two woman was a total joy and though it has taken me weeks to get around to it, I said I would celebrate it in a blog and here it is for Lydia and the fine independent woman on the train and thanks to you both!

There is some horrible old saying about strangers only being friends you haven't met yet. I wish to make it clear that I think this is nonsense. The vast majority of people hold no fascination for me of I for them. There are however delightful exceptions.

Cunt reclamation

2010-08-08T19:04:00.002+01:00

CUNT RECLAMATION

There are words that I hate, not usually if ever the words that other people hate. I loath 'poorly' but am fond of 'cunt,' a nice friendly word, blunt and purposeful. I find the word vagina a bit yucky in the same way that 'bowel movement ' sounds far more disgusting than the plain word 'shit' which is nearly onomatopoeic in my opinion. At home nobody swore or used rude words and I remember being shocked when my friend's mum said fart, at home the family said 'breaking wind' which sounded rather dangerous and always made me snigger. I discovered the word 'bastard' in a book by Alexander Baron when I was about twelve and tried it out on my brother who grassed me up to mum who told dad and I got one of the few whacks of my childhood but no explanation of why I shouldn't use the word.

I understand that some people are shocked and distressed by various words and I suggest that they don't use them and I realise that this may militate against them reading some kinds of books - including mine. They must decide for themselves what is 'acceptable', In my turn I choose not to read books that I know are going to annoy me - unless I want to be annoyed and sometimes I do. But I don't expect anybody to limit my words for me.
I love words. Words fascinate me. Melancholy is quite beautiful and can induce a nice mellow sadness whereas the word 'basically' uttered in my presence can produce an inchoate rage when used more that twice in any conversation. I count the word and was at a meeting recently when the organiser used the word fifteen times in one evening. I am afraid that this means I hardly hear what he is talking about so busy am I counting and I do realise that this is a neuroses. I once wrote a poem: We speak jargonese with a consummate ease that has to be heard to be disbelieved is the first line and I wrote it so many years ago I can't remember the rest so it is a long term foible on my part. 'At the end of the day at this moment in time (where else would you find a moment eh?? In space?) See? I'm getting colicky even as I write so I will return to words I love.

I first heard 'motherfucking cocksucker' in the open air where the sound took off and gracefully landed in my ear. The fact that it was uttered by a delicious guy may have something to do with it and the fact that it became rather overused notwithstanding I adopted it for its resonance and varied it with Cocksucking motherfucker. The scene was a dice game on a pavement outside a club and the organiser did a runner which caused rather too many repetitions but it stuck as my favourite term of abuse forever, and the fact that I seldom get to use it only makes it more precious. It is quite a different proposition for a girl of eighteen to gob off (another good phrase) with such words but for an ancient bird it is absurd (but don't worry I am THINKING it HARD) The meaning is slightly absurd because a man performing both these acts is an unlikely character in my opinion - not impossible but unlikely and the phrase has the merit of aggravating as many people as it is possible to annoy with mere words!
'Mere' words?.
Words are powerful, entertaining and dangerous? Or are they? We do presumably choose our own words to use or not. I reckon that words should have an effect, make us question ourselves and above all shake us out of our apathy, not all the time of course and at breakfast if anybody used my favourite curse I would find it unacceptable but not nearly as unacceptable as 'basically'. We can have adventures with words and few words are sacred though some racist terms are off limits with good reason. I also think that 'swear words' should be used sparingly lest they lose their power. My partner of many years was a Belfast man who inserted 'fucking' into every sentence with such abandon that it ceased to mean anything. I also spent time with some West Indians who have a line in denigrating a woman's apparatus and menstrual cycle, which always seemed strange to me because they clearly were very fond of utilising the same. In fact it occurs to me that men are a little afraid of the cunt with all its power which is why they throw the word around in a derogatory way, but we don't have to accept their intention we can reclaim 'cunt' for ourselves - go girls go!
Enjoy your cunt in word and deed!

2010-08-06T09:03:00.000+01:00

BUILDERS IN
Another beautiful day, the sun is splitting the trees but definitely not splitting a brand new grim grey high rise that looks very close, too close for comfort. We see a floor mat on the grass, somebody's sunbathing apparatus? A fox has defecated accurately dead centre of it. The grass looks dead and brown, the traffic sounds from Blackheath hill, the river is just showing a gleam in the distance. I give a stretch or two, nothing too strenuous and I look forward to a day of writing and perhaps a walk by the river.

At precisely eight the intercom sounds and the builder arrives, a handsome young Russian accompanied by his mate and they are ready to start NOW! The kitchen and bathroom must be cleared and I see my lovely day disappearing in a cloud of dust and dishes and chopping boards and more equipment than I ever knew we had, then the bathroom full of stuff to be transferred to other rooms, I am in a bedroom with my dog surrounded by culinary equipment and bathroom appendages some of which I know not their usage.

I am guarded with builders, half matey grovel to prove I am no snob and half terrified victim with a smidgen of the autocrat as I watch them move my stuff. I see myself as a free spirit who doesn't care about worldly goods - in fact I am a protective acquisitive creature and very possessive of nearly my whole equipage even though most of it has no value at all. It's mine! My inner voice protests loudly.

But this time the builders are not in my territory but in my friends' so it shouldn't matter I should be able to retain a lot more rationality. It seems not, I still feel invaded - very possibly because they are inhabiting the bathroom full time.

My friend is authoritative with them - at least in part because she speaks some Russian. I have always had problems with authoritative and when I taught I found it hard to achieve. I veered from all understanding compassionate friend to sarky sneering critic in the space of one session. With builders I make tea and am friendly housefrau behind which lurks a furious malignant banshee ready to hop out at the least sign of insubordination. I think I may be over-territorial or deeply insecure, probably both.

These are superior type builders these Russians they show up on time, work like beavers engrossed in a new dam, are grateful for tea but don't stop work to drink it, have no fag breaks and absolutely no badinage. They are courteous and charming. Still they fill the flat with their presence and the bits that they don't fill are stuffed full of a million dishes. It took me an hour to find the loo roll this morning and by the time I found it the impulse was gone and Stanislav back in the bathroom anyway.

One of my consolations in times of stress is food but the kitchen is stripped and occupied too. I can't find cheese or bread then remember tucking into a midnight snack when we lurched in last night, I expect it is eaten. We go out to lunch again, the hidden expense of the invasion. Later I notice a white emulsion fingerprint on my computer. I expect mother Russia has been contacted.

I have had hideous experiences with builders one of whom would arrive promptly enough, with his two sons stay for half an hour then disappear. After a few days I chased them down the road and discovered them busily grafting at a new job. I was incensed enough to grab the small builder and shake him vigorously, he slithered away and promised to finish my job. In fact, shortly after this incident he disappeared along with his tools leaving a vast pile of rubbish outside that grew daily as people came from miles around to dump their pruck. We would sit watching TV and hear thunks followed by a car driving off and go out to look at our new acquistions on the pile. People dump remarkable stuff and other people would come along to look it over. When it reached the length of five houses and was seriously incommoding parking the council stepped in and demanded that I remove it. the dispute went on for weeks meanwhile it increased in size and grew its own vegetation, I wrote a piece aboutit which I flogged to the Guardian. In the end the council removed it and sent the bill to the builder who also ran up a bill in my name at a local builder's merchant and left me with no windows. It took months of aggravation to get part of my money back. It seems he was and probably still is a gambler well known to the building inspector though nobody thought to mention this.

Compared to him and to many builders I have known these guys are pearls and in fact they finished on time in good order and cleaned up after themselves. I got a number for them too - for a price!

SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS

2010-07-28T15:24:00.001+01:00

The first official event of the day was a blood test at the hospital nearby, I congratulated myself on remembering it - a mere post it on my computer & a note on the kettle! I had eaten so was banished until today. I had put the washing machine on and when I looked outside tere was a sizeable pond in the yard I poked at the drain with an old coat hanger, it was not impressed. My remedies for small tragedies of this sort are have a bath or make soup. In the past I would get roaring drunk but the hangovers now make this a dicey enterprise. My tap has needed a new washer for some time and i had turned it off so vigorously that it was now impossible to get any hot water. Then a chubby mouse strolled past me on its way to the cupboard under the stairs. I looked out of the window at the trellis with jasmine and clematis that had collapsed and was sinking into the pond. This had greeted me when i came back from looking at the wonderful Alice Neel's work on Sunday. Ok I thought I will work I had soem printing out to do so I got the documents organised turned on the printer and ..nothing except a green light but no action in the printing department. I investigated plugs and gave up. I was tempted to weep, instead I phoned a friend and offered to take her out for coffee.

I got the dog in the car and hit Aldi on the way.A woman with two sticks was staggering down the steep slope that is part of their 'challenge to the punter scheme' - any trolley is practically guaranteed to do a runner about here unless held at the correct angle.'Want a hand? I have a dodgy leg and that slope is difficult.' I thought I was being kind - 'I've got a BROKEN leg!' She retorted with an air of triumph and I marvelled at the competitive spirit of the human race.I withdrew.
I resisted any temptation to visit Waitrose, I lose all self control in there and find myself spending vast quantities on olives and cheeses and summer puddings and in the mood of today it could be disastrous and I would have to be surgically removed from their pattiserie counter.
I reached my friend's house and kept the whingeing to a minimum initially but after meeting some more friends in the cafe and sussing out plumbers it all came out, a great splurge of piteous bleating, focussed on the plight of the single(ish) householder. My friend made the very sensible siggestion that I flog my house and buy a small flat, in fact there was a block of flats with a view of the Itchen and the park just up the road. I could get prizes for procrastination but now I was on the spot and inspired - this is fate I thought.

You have to be sixty to live here and in fact I had been here once before to a session of the University of the third age in somebody's flat. The gardens are lovely, there is parking for everybody and the facilities are truly excellent. The flats are tiny but adequate and the residents are very friendly and there's the rub. I can spend several days without speaking to anybody though I telephone my girl once a day or more and I have friends. But I am essentially an outsider looking in, critically for the most part. A pisstaker who hates having the piss taken out of myself. A resident told us that the best thing about the place was the people. And my heart sank, a vision of people with the blitz spirit all helping each other flashed into my mind and was ejected at the speed of light.
'Do you allow dogs?' I asked. 'You could ask the management.' She said and we left it at that.
When I come home later in the day the water has drained away and the smell of mice restored,three of the seven kids next door greet me noisily: 'Hello Mo where's the other mummy?' which is what they call my girl. And the mummy is out with her latest baby and she looks pregnant again, I chuck their balls back after having the truncated rap that Nadia specialises in with every second sentence :'Why?' I go the hundred yards to get a beer and treat myself to the the Graun,( a sin after midday) am greeted six times on the way there and back and meet Sister Hannah who tells me the latest on her battles with the council, the neighbours and the world, we finish up roaring with laughter at the casual injustice of the world, as usual.
I don't think I will move just yet.

ON AGE, WORDS, AND MEMORIES

2010-07-21T09:10:00.000+01:00

I think that of all the words used to describe and to stereotype the older among us 'elderly' is the worst. It sounds far more derogatory than 'old'. To me it smacks of Zimmer frames and being ensconced with fellow aged ones in a room with the TV on ITV all day with adverts for stair - lifts and incontinence pads playing with ones mind. The word 'ancient' has style and grace and is altogether more classy. So I use that for my own self description. But really, while I am not in denial of my age, indeed I have begun to boast about it (a revolting habit and one that I swore I would never indulge in) I am definitely in denial of the limitations that other people put upon my age.

What does it MEAN when you say I don't look my age? What does my age look like? Is there an age gauge? Some stipulated appearance to conform to? Yet another rule for us all? I know many people, younger and older than me and they do not all look the same. And when does elderly begin? We all know where it ends. On the slab! And can you choose? Some people I know have welcomed old age while in their fifties and other who make no concessions to their age when they are ninety five and they rail against physical limitations, so I guess you can choose. In the same way that you are not always entirely responsible for what happens to you but you can choose how to react to it.

When people tell me that I am 'not like my (their) mum' I want to tell them that I never was - I am unique. (In fact we are all unique)
I don't bother to tell them any more, it doesn't go down well. And their words are meant as a compliment but it is stereotyping as much as is the statement that 'all the young drink to excess and are rude.' (discuss!)

The Nepalese woman who braids my eyebrows offers to cook for me and feels that I need somebody to look after me - because I made the fatal mistake of telling her my age - a year older than her own mother. This is a kind gesture but not one that I have any intention of accepting. Other people insist on telling me that I am far better on the computer than are their mum. I should hope I am I have been slogging away at it for years and am still a complete
technophobe. I have an eighty-year-old friend who is a computer whiz and I expect that all levels of competence are represented in my age group. Naturally, somebody who learned computer skills at an early age finds them more accessible. And in my own experience of running creative writing groups there is a serious lack of spelling ability and knowledge of words in people under forty.

I hear programmes on the radio in which people of sixty have decided they are old and if they choose to embrace age with fervour then jolly good luck to them. They look back to the past longingly. As we all do, to our own edited past that is. I sat in the doctor's waiting room a few weeks ago with some old flame, not remotely warm now, who I used to dance slow ones with thirty years ago at The West Indian club and we reminisced about the good old days and it was fun, but we lied, we tailored our tale to fit the policy of the old days, those good old days.

We spoke of a time when the blues parties were peaceful benign affairs and petrol and ganga were cheap. You could wander about on the way home at any hour with no fear of hassle. In fact I have no desire to be up at 4am and wandering. I only did it then because I was too drunk to drive. I also remember some pretty hairy scenes in the local shebeens but like I say; we all edit our pasts and that is healthy.

My brother in law who is a hero of mine mentioned in passing that he went to the public baths in the same road that we had an exhibition and reading last week. It occurs to me that the public baths are now an unknown adventure to most people, as were the wash houses, so I will share my memories: in the fifties many houses, especially the ones in multi occupation had no bathrooms. Some had baths in the kitchen and the covered bath would double as table, imagine the performance of removing everything from the table in a small kitchen to open up the bath. Boil up a copper and decant water into the bath, the family would share the water one after another. A very steamy affair! But not in a good way.

The public baths were mostly part of a pool complex and were called slipper baths. Nobody has ever given me a satisfactory explanation of this name and I should like one. We would go in and get a number and go inside a cubicle to the vast spotless bath, which would be filling with water courtesy of the lady in charge. You would shout out your number to ask for more water 'More hot in number four please!' and we thought it great fun to demand more cold in somebody else's bath so we tried to find out our mates' number and got up to other hijnks like climbing up and peering over the top of the wall, that were looked upon unfavourably. We were pests to this woman who we saw as a granny, probably in her early fifties.

The wash house was a place where local women met, scrubbed their clothes and rubbished one another. We, who lived with black men were singled out for a great deal of nasty banter, they regarded us as sluts. The fact that we appeared, and indeed did, have more parties and actively enjoyed ourselves a lot more loudly than they did was unforgivable. Even the ones among us who had been married for years with a rack of children were thought to be 'no better than we should be'. Which is another strange phrase.

So? How is it to be elderly?
I don't know. I have decided to be ancient and I am having a pretty good life thanks. The future is exciting. And we ancients are as variable as any other group in society and it is possible to choose the warp and weft to create your own old age.
Weave on and enjoy.

Under the boardwalk down by the sea.

2010-07-20T12:00:00.002+01:00

Except in this case it is hardly sea at all, though there is seaweed that adorns the shopping trolleys that get pushed into the water. But it is still rather marvellous and very well built, though my dog finds it very dull I am afraid. She preferred the littered beach with its nice stinky mud, dead creatures to roll in and the ever present danger of getting trapped by the tide holds no fear for her.My dog is convinced that the more malodorous she is the better and to this end she misses no opportunity to roll with ecstatic expression in any noisome drek she can find.

There are many tales of characters I know lurching home from The Junction or The Dolphin , two excellent real pubs, now safely available. I have a friend who was trapped with her dog by the tide for hours clinging to the Budlea while trains shot by within inches of her back and water rose relentlessly. In the spring the tidal water nearly reaches the railway line so this must have been terrifying. She did the right thing and panicked but the water subsided and she got home soaked. In fact nobody has ever drowned in our bit of the river though two young boys nearly did last winter.
I have found a couple of dead mice but no more signs in the shape of turds and the stench has gone, however yesterday morning while washing up I encountered a miniscule mouse in the hot Ecover rich soapy water as I emptied the bowl. At first I thought it was a spud but vegetables don't move and once I got my glasses on I realised it was a frantic swimming baby mouse. I turned off the tap and as the water subsided it sat up and gave attention to its whiskers - it looked so sweet I was lost. I expect I should have killed it but how? I picked it up by its tail, it moved, I dropped it,I got kitchen roll, carried it to the back garden and released it - the cleanest mouse on the block. I expect it back some time soon bent on revenge.
The mice are not breaking and entering they are under the floorboards and carousing up and down the block. They are upstairs, a fact which freaks me out for some reason. I found a small grey corpse under my bed and it gave me the horrors. Obviously I will have to get a cat,I have spoken to my terrier about this and we are in consultation. I look forward to a time of adjustment and would welcome any advice on introducing a cat into the life of a very mature dog. At the moment she chases cats and subsequently gets beaten up.She will have to be reprogrammed and I feel we need a rather special cat taking into account the seven kids next door who are very friendly but unskilled in the ways of pets!
I had no idea that mice were such an influential force( or such a rich source of preoccupation)

HAPPY HOMECOMING

2010-07-08T11:57:00.001+01:00

I haD been away for more than a week and I wasn't sure what to expect. The mouse massacre man came two weeks ago today and put down poison.But meanwhile the neighbours told me they have 'many mice' who no doubt make their way under the floor from house to house, so I thought my plants in tubs would be stone dead and the mice scampering round the house. In fact the house smells like mouse mortuary and the plants are excelling themselves.
I found the first small corpse on the stairs, it looked totally harmless, its eyes shut in death and regret began to enter my soul. MURDERER! The second one I found with my bare foot in the night in the lavatory nasty! My resolve returned. I left all the windows open all night but still the stench of death pervades. The kitchen is the worst and I will have to search under the cupboards, in all the corners, in the glory hole under the stairs. I hate mice again, fervently.
The event in London went very well (did you notice that? It is called diversion technique it doesn't remove the stench of death butit distracts the mind while I wait for the mouse man.) The director from Hollywood came along and was charming, many friends came and the publisher came along carrying booze and books in his back pack, which I found rather noble.
I think it an excellent idea to have readings combined with visual arts exhibitions. In Russia there are shows that combine all kinds of disciplines which reminded me of the 'happenings' in the seventies. Cross fertlisation is a possible and listening to ideas for a new project from a Russian artist has jerked my own brain into unexpected new activity concerning time.
The mouse man did not come in spite of promises to be here and now the dog is back and I just hope she doesn't find a dead mouse and eat it. I have banished her to the garden where she sits peering in at me in a pathetic manner - her abandonment issues restored along with my guilt at leaving her with a friend for so long.I wonder once more about why we have dogs and conclude that in my case it is for the guilt trip factor as well as non demanding company. Some people have dogs purely for somebody to yell at or order about, Sit! Stay! Heel! they shout and it is never the dogs that need a bit of control that have owners like this. These alarming dogs caper on the end of leashes bared fangs at the ready while their proud owners hold on to them and laugh about my dog being a breakfast.I am good humoured and apologise to my own dog for my disloyalty.
I am not good at waiting, especially for the council or for workmen. It seems to me that the everybody is of the opinion that because I work at home my time is insignificant. I can't just sit back and relax. I am a vigorous waiter. I rage.
I know I should dismantle the cupboards and fish out the dead 'uns but I can't quite face it and as I paid £46 for the pest control guy I reckon it's his job.
So, I wait. I also phone. The exasperation zings over the wire from both ends.
I just phoned the pest control people again, 'my' man is not working today they will send somebody between 1 and 5 tomorrow, so they say, all pest controllers are busy with wasps and bees.
I am joined by a blowfly, it can only be a matter of time until it becomes a swarm or a gathering, then the maggots...sometimes imagination is not such a good idea!

HOROSCOPES and ALL THAT ROT

2010-06-06T09:52:00.000+01:00

Not of course that I don’t have a smidgeon of belief !!
We are speaking of a Libra friend who is incapable of making decisions without months of discussion.
I rush in where angels fear to tread. And don't even start me on the angels phenomena or we'll be here all day
‘But she was born on the same day as Mrs. Thatcher and that old gargoyle never had any trouble making up her mind!'
‘Different rising sign isn’t it.' As if this a fact and that it settles the matter and they all nod wisely to themselves and each other.
‘And that’s such a Capricorn thing to say.’ And she smiles to herself, smugly. ‘Critical, practical, ambitious workaholics.'
‘Yes, so locked into success…’ Begins one.
‘In strictly material terms.’ Comes in number two. And her mouth goes into disapproval mode. I despair of their sanity. I also want to defend Capricorns on principle but it is hard to do so without shooting myself in the foot and admitting that I believe. And I don't, though when I go to the hairdressers and spot a magazine I look at the horoscope first. And if I find a tabloid in the pub I do the same, but that's conditioning isn't it? Not that I believe all this crap.

On the phone to a friend I say that I felt ill last night and I can just see the rest of my life stretching ahead with frequent periods of being under the weather. Her voice rises into panic:
‘Don’t even think that. If you visualise that it will happen.’ She says solemnly.
‘Well, I’ve been visualising being a millionaire for years and that hasn’t come to pass !’ I say crossly.
‘Well it wasn’t meant to be then.’ Like they get you coming and going. On the one hand, there’s this almighty power thing that can move mountains, lurking around just out of sight, waiting to come in with magical assistance but only if it’s meant to be. (And who decides if it’s meant to be?) On the other hand, if you are ill it is clearly your own fault because you haven’t been sorting your chakras or polishing up the old aura. I go back to her:
‘Well let’s hope that neither is my long-term malady meant to be eh ?’
‘Mnn but you must be very careful what you envisage.’
If only it were that easy I think and swiftly envisage her pinioned on a map of the Zodiac looking pitifully at Leo and Pisces with a lion at her throat and a fish up her backside.
But why does it annoy me ? Let them carry on with their foolishness I tell myself. Rise above it !
But it’s hard. You get somebody with the IQ of an emergent tadpole suddenly take on a look of mystical intelligence and issue a proclamation of such true banality that they should be chased from the room with sticks, and half the room go into a sort of trance. Their faces take on a look of intense idiocy and the snake oil phenomena takes over. Then, you could sell them anything but common sense.
I think I shall invent a token that can be worn round the neck and that will guarantee success in a chosen field of endeavour and the perfect partner. I shall make it of some kind of offal inside metal so that it gets to smell a bit and I will give out that it accustoms itself to your own individual needs and that the aroma is part of its response to your own unique body. I shall market this and make a fortune and if I begin to visualise it now…..
Yet I would like to be a believer it would stop me having to make decisions for myself and I have in fact almost believed in various things, chanted mantras, contorteed the body into odd shapes listened to friends wallowing in regret and taken my turn to wallow too. I was part of the consciousness raising, speculum waving generation and remember it as a rather jolly time of useful revelations.
But I expect that is a very Capricorn thing to say!

Just an old guy - my hero

2010-05-29T10:47:00.000+01:00

My brother in law has never telephoned me in the forty or more years I have known him. He has become increasingly deaf and I am by no means the easiest person to understand and hardly move my lips, I think this might go back to school when I was an inveterate subversive and disrupted classes from the back. My voice is not great either so we communicate by email regularly up to twice a week. About Palestine among other things, I send him the Jewish Voice for Peace he sends me stuff from the Indie and tells me I should stop reading the Guardian. We sometimes disagree quite violently and furious emails zing back and forth. When my old man was alive he would also send clippings to us both, a lot of obits from East London papers, another comrade had bit the dust, when you are 92 I guess it is expected. I send him obits from the Guardian of any old comrades.
I admire him immensely he paints, makes pots, still campaigns as much as his dodgy pins will allow and is as engaged in 'the struggle' as he ever was when he was a young pioneer and fought Moseley in Cable street. An admirable old warrior.
The other morning I lifted the phone and heard his angry voice yelling. 'You are my first hope and my last! They've got me here against my will and they won't let me go home. You know about human rights and they are abusing mine so get me out of here! You help immigrants now help me!' all at top volume and though I yelled back 'WHERE ARE YOU BARNEY?' many times he couldn't hear me. 'I've got to go I'm running out of money on this phone.' The phone went dead and I was left in bits,
I was on the landline to a good mate at the time and she had heard my yelling half of the conversation and she halted any temptation for me to indulge in full scale panic. She suggested I try his local hospital first before I sent for the cavalry.
He was there and I talked to a nurse who told me he was very angry but as he had nobody to look after him he couldn't go home. In fact he had demanded his clothes and sat on his bed all day and night demanding release I rang the only other relation I knew and he said he would visit. I can't drive much because of my shoulder (the young have no conception of the aggravation of us oldies with bits falling off and only a bus pass as compensation !)
I met, on the phone a new - to me- niece who seems to have an admiration for him equal to my own and tells me that he sends her kids cuttings of a political nature and she was visiting him too. I finally went with my partner by train on a Sunday. He received her well and yelled a greeting over the ward. She was delighted to meet him as I have been bigging him up for all the time I have known her, she wasn't disappointed.
His son returned from holiday and rescued him and Barney sent me an email pronto so we are back in touch and I will visit him at home soon. But I think that being stroppy is an excellent policy in hospital, it gets you noticed if not loved and your swift ejection is guaranteed!
I used the same technique when I had a stroke though in a less dramatic way and when I left a few nurses congratulated me on my independent stance. True I got out extremely quickly with many glares from sister but I feel it is a mistake to succumb to the system.
So well done Barney! I'm proud of you.

All that Jazz Sunday 17th

2010-05-19T10:18:00.000+01:00

All That Jazz
This morning at eight on the Point the sun was splitting the trees and London looked great with The Eye close, I swear it moves. and over the river Canary Wharf lurked impressive as ever. The Dome shone white and weird and everything was bright.
Ten minutes later, after I had picked up 40 discarded cans the clouds had arrived to take the gloss off the day. My dog was happily imbibing fox from every third blade of grass, so I set to on the cans.
It began with one can then a blue plastic bag and I got compulsive and found myself stuffing cans into the nearby waste bins and going back for more. I reckon the foxes anoint every single can individually and my hands still stink of fox days later. Some of the cans were half full and I found one full bottle of Heineken. I pondered on the choice of beer, I feel that if you are going to carry your beer up a hill then it would be sensible to get high velocity stuff, but what do I know? I don't make a habit of clearing up after other people's parties.
Last night as we yomped up the hill from Greenwich we had smelled and seen the fire and heard the cavorting young. I occasionally get cranky about the young having a ball, it seems like a duty when you reach a certain age. But I have clear memories of bellowing out 'The happy wanderer ' a truly terrible song at 3am on the way home. when I was young and of people screeching at me from their bedroom windows so I feel I have no room to talk.
We had been to a café that features jazz on Saturday evenings. Less than twenty people fit in to the tiny café and it is a nice civilised way to spend an evening, chew to the music… However, a man at another table talked relentlessly to a couple of women he had just met. He mainly talked about America and clearly amused them because they did fair imitations of hyenas while they drank in his words. They also drank a fair bit of wine and their voices got louder. I glared at them but they were not impressed. A guy on another table also glared and one of the saxophone players remarked musically a great hoot that stopped them for a moment or two. But then the chatterbox was back to telling them about his jet.
We were four and we all sighed and grimaced, me in part because the women were supplying an admiring audience for a boring old toad. My male friend felt it was bad manners to talk through somebody's efforts at self expression and to distract from the music. I am not sure how much it did distract me, I turned around in my chair and listened intently - more than if they hadn't been there. I asked the governor - also a fair saxophonist , if people habitually rabbited all the way through the music and he hoped it hadn't wrecked my enjoyment and that next time I have his permission to punch then on the nose. But I don't suppose he was serious.
Now I am not sure if the aggro didn't improve the evening, it certainly made it memorable.
My hands still have a whiff of fox. I am growing fond of it.

2010-05-13T11:48:00.001+01:00

PARTINGS ARE SWEET
I remember as a child that there were quite strict rules about hair partings. Left side for boys and right for girls. Of course there was always the centre parting - and plaits - there were rather a lot of plaits when I was a child, and none of them on boys. I remember tugging plaits in a mindless way - because they were there I suppose. I had a bow. Several bows, in fact an endless supply of bows that were attached to the top of my head in a mortifying manner. Some small girls liked their bows and wore them with pride. I loathed mine and it responded limply and it disappeared into my satchel swiftly as soon as I was out of sight of the house on the way to school. My beret met the same fate and my black hat that was worn in winter was transformed into a pork pie hat like a bluesman from New Orleans which happily wrecked the original shape of the thing.
Now I see an engaging lack of conformity in headgear, who had ever heard of fascinators? Not me until I hit Waterloo station during Ascot week one year and spotted women trotting about with absurd things on their nuts. They seem and look quite agreeable once you get used to the idea that they have no practical function whatsoever and that they are purely for adornment, idiotic but fun.

Hair too takes on totally new dimensions I go to the local chemist shop and this week I had to wait rather a long time for the medication that I gull every day in my bid for immortality. This shop is centre of the universe in my area for extensions and wigs and they do a bustling trade. I watched as women of all races came and matched their extensions to their natural hair. I peered over shoulders to see how exactly they attach them and it seems like a complex affair of clips. The wigs are wonderful in deep red or with hints of auburn or just plain black and a variety of blondes quite staggering in variety. I am thinking of splitting my prescription so I can hang out longer and more often at this hair emporium. Unfortunately there is a private room for the trying on of wigs but the women emerge to parade their new manifestations of self and it is all dramatic stuff.
My doctor's receptionist has a variety of amazing wigs which mystified me until I realised they had nothing at all to do with her except possession. And she has been accepting my compliments on her hair graciously for years. I was miffed at first but I suppose it proves her excellent taste. And what a liberation! I remember being subjected to the Toni perm, tongs, rollers and hairnets in turn in my bids for beauty.
I think I may buy a fascinator one day - for my friend.

BREWING ART GROUP

2010-05-06T12:20:00.004+01:00

BREWING ART GROUP
We decided to further immortalise the Brewing Art Group this weekend with photographs of the original venue, or at least of the pub sign. This involved us in a very pleasant visit to Covent Garden on a cold sunny spring bank holiday. I had forgotten how beguiling the area is, with its extraordinary shops - extraordinary products and even more extraordinary prices. Vivienne Westwood boots that I found hideous, at 400 quid, lovely brogues at 350 that I desired, unexpectedly (I am a Marks&Sparks shoe person myself) but it's fun to look.
The pub itself is excellent with a few interesting conversations to ear wig on, good real ale and brilliant staff who actually ask you if you want another drink and keep a tab in the German way. Also elegant in a nice old fashioned way with engraved windows and all the accoutrements of a real old pub - minus the smoke, unfortunately, but you can't have everything!

Another highlight was the delicious truly elegant - I hesitate to call it a sex shop and can't remember how it described itself. An emporium of erotica perhaps. None of the foul ugly rubber dildoes that seem to have a hideous colour all of their own that grace Ann Summers, here exquisite creations of glass rested in velvet and looked elegant in the extreme. I am sure they could double as an ornament but I feel the texture would be a little unrelenting, chilly too and the thought of breakage is appalling but I am sure there must be safety provisions Other accoutrements that I couldn't identify for sure were presented beautifully and books too, the staff were gracious charming and posh. I shall return, there must be something.....
I know the Shakespeares head is a far better location for our meetimgs but a pilgramage to the Two Brewers might be in order some time. For old times sake?

A New Record

2010-04-29T11:10:00.001+01:00

Today I broke a record. With my motor - no I didn't beat a boy racer or hit a pedestrian on a zebra crossing, nor even get away first from the lights, my Polo tends not to show off in that way. In fact this record was a personal worst. My petrol tank ate forty five quid's worth of petrol in a single sitting - or glug. Naturally being ancient I thought this one through and pondered that if anybody had ever told me that I would one day have a motor with this capacity I would have envisaged a Roller or at the very least a Merc, I would have seen myself as having grown rich beyond my wildest dreams. This is not so, all I have is my nice efficient little Polo that takes me round in its reliable way, creating no stir just melting into the background modestly, a quiet unassuming little car.
The most exciting car I ever had was a Triumph Vitesse that turned on a sixpence (whaddat?) even the spell check doesn't know! I have had Fords like great cumbersome dirigibles that brought a ghastly tense excitement to my life, a 'would it wouldn't it finish - or even start the journey' kind of excitement. I can do without this - easily. I once had a Micra that I managed to injure in its nether regions on a rough path outside Inverness and we limped back in hideous tension of intent version feasability. we made it. I have had cars that the local AA men knew far too intimately. My Polo is a sweet relief.

My lover has a car of hugely disreputable aspect, it flies darkly with no sheen on its body at all and bits have dropped off it long ago. Still it moves neatly fleetly through south London and people don't mess with this nothing-to-lose vehicle, she drives in the Italian way, but she doesn't shout or swear at other drivers - she just overtakes them with vast elan and quiet determination. I call this Fiat the chariot and give it massive respect. I extend it to the driver.
So why do I continue to drive? I don't much enjoy it and I have my bus pass. Still I like the idea of having a motor. I like the actuality too, for the shopping alone it is worth keeping. I sometimes wonder how one woman and a terrier can consume the sheer weight of food that we manage to get through, I stagger from Aldi with huge bags of veg and dog food then I hit Waitrose for the sweet excesses that make life worthwhile and I hump it all into the house - and, ultimately we nosh it. I enjoy my greed.
I always buy my petrol with my debit card it doesn't impact quite so much as shelling out real bread. I fool myself. In fact on this last occasion my card didn't work and I had to hand over readies! Nasty! Then I had to go to the bank to sort my card. So thoughts of cars and the cost of petrol came vigorously to mind and gave me pause.
I think it's the time factor that keeps me driving, and the comfort factor too. The waiting for buses or fighting your way onto the tube that is the incentive to keep the motor. Last week my poor old dog nearly had cardiac arrest at London Bridge in the rush hour, or was that me? Probably both of us, one of the few advantages of advanced age is seldom having to experience the joys of rush hour and I am deeply grateful every time.

I think back to when we could drive from the petrol station in the West End to Brighton for a fiver there and back - or is that a myth that I have misremembered? And I remember flying down the old arterial road at four in the morning straight from a club to Southend and the Kursall shut tight, and driving to London Airport for the joy of looking at it! Having a cup of char in a greasy spoon and driving back. But before I slip away into the mists of time I got brought back a bit sharpish this week with my road tax bill for a year so I expect that's me committed for another year.
I do blame myself though, I swear!

AFGHAN GIRLS

2010-04-20T10:48:00.003+01:00

‘Are they just plants or are they food?’ says the second eldest girl next door. She looks at my patio with lobelias, petunias, geranium taking up the space I had meant to sit in and the night scented stock and jasmine making the night fragrant and the girls are not impressed. My two buckets with potatoes growing in them do impress them. I give them a flowerpot with a small potato to grow and they bring it out and demand a progress report every time they see me. I was away for a week and it still hasn’t appeared above the parapet of the pot – I suspect Nadia who is seven has been digging it up to look.
That was last summer. Now spring has finally arrived and I am back home and sitting in the garden so I expect more questions about how to grow vegetables. Already there are questions about my dog, who is in Greenwich having a lovely time. I tell them she is with my friend and yes I do miss her. I have nobody to talk to. 'Do dogs talk?' she asks, 'No but they listen.' 'Do they understand?' she asks, 'Probably not.' I say and we laugh. Anyway I regularly talk to old ladies I have known for 25 or more years, they speak Punjabi or Urdu, I speak English we touch hands and we communicate, I think!
When my partner of many years died, and when I was going out of my mind with grief a guy called Soucha took me to his father George 's funeral at the Gurdwara and I wept with the other Sikh women. I regard this as an extreme act of kindness. The two men had been drinking buddies and both died in the same ward within days of each other. 'Because my (Irish) guy always talked to his mum.' Soucha said.
And he was well got in the area,
When the Afghan family moved in a couple of years ago there were five girls, then a boy was born and now there is another one. The boys must be some of the most adored babies in the world the older sisters cuddle and kiss them almost non stop. The result seems to be that they are adorable. So much for 'spoiling' eh?

The sisters are amazed that I live alone in my house, a two up two down terrace. My friend comes to stay weekends and they are puzzled by our relationship – now they call her ‘the other mummy’. Which is about right really, she is my lover, not included in their repertory obviously. I am a subject of some wonder to the local community I expect. The Nepalese woman who braids my eyebrows for £3 worries about my welfare, 'Who looks after you, who cooks for you? I can make food for you.' I don't take her up on this because of the limitations of conversation and my lack of time.

When the old lady next door moved into sheltered accommodation and the Iranian landlord told me the new people had five kids I was worried about noise. He didn't tell me they were Afghanis and if he had it wouldn't have meant much to me. I expect I am fairly typical in the fact that my knowledge of Afghanistan, until recently, was limited to the fact that it had never been invaded successfully and that their major export was heroin. Now the Taliban have been added to my sum of knowledge, all hazy, all with undue influence from the media. Now I hear daily news of the killing of people, soldiers and civilians and I find it hard to relate to these facts, the guy next door is a taxi driver who loves his family and is always friendly.
When I went to see the new baby it was like going into what I imagine an Afghan house to be with cushions on the floor and a pretty young mum holding a beautiful new child.
These kids delight me though I sometimes hide from them with my Saturday paper in hand. But not for long, they intrigue me and it is mutual. A nine year old reads to the others with perfect pronunciation and the second girl writes stuff that would have made me very happy when I taught creative writing to adults,English is their second or third language. The youngest girl is still at the 'Why' stage of development but she is funny, bright and cheeky and daughter number one tells her off..
I expect this is why I feel we should know how many Afghans are killed and we should mourn them too, I do hope my neighbours don't count me as in agreement with our involvment in the occupation of their country!

ON CLEANING

2010-04-15T15:12:00.000+01:00

Let me say first that I never expected to become one of the class of women who employ cleaners. I disapproved of employing another woman to do my nasty work on both feminist and socialist grounds. It made me one of the oppressors I felt. Then I had a stroke. And I reckoned that this justified me in getting a cleaner. In fact I got one with a suspicious promptness. I also felt it justified my retiring from 'teaching' creative writing. In fact the stroke was dead handy in lots of ways, I would never have got my book published without it. I hadn't even realised just how bored I was with running groups, I had done it for far too long and though we did many projects to gee the lessons up - including at trip to Barcelona for one group - I had drained the juice out of my initial enthusiasm. To be honest it was a cushy little number that was a nice excuse not to write.
My first cleaner was wonderful, a tall attractive young Polish woman who was as capable of sorting out my computer as my cupboards, she made me realise that not everyone hates cleaning in the way that I do - but then I am not very good at it, Ola was admirable at cleaning, loved my dog - who loved her back - and she talked to her in Polish that she understood at least as well as English (ie not at all) Ola was off back to Warsaw to do Environmental studies in the autumn, meanwhile we would smoke fags together and weep over the Warsaw uprising on the net. I can't remember what bit of papal doctrine it was that induced me to say that I thought the Polish pope was a particularly fascistic creep, I expect it was him saying that AIDS was increased with the use of condoms. Anyway that was the end of a beautiful friendship.
I can be very tactless. I sometimes hear myself blurting some idiocy and I wonder why but it is always after the event. I have sometimes heard that age brings wisdom, not to me it hasn't and I have a brother in law of ninety two who regularly remonstrates & chastises me on matters of my political slackness re Gaza and the West Bank - he has learned nothing about tact - his stroppiness is intact - thank god or Marx.
My friend has a truly marvellous cleaner from the Ukraine who goes through the flat like a Soviet tank on a kind of scorched earth policy, she doesn't,of course, burn but she makes neat to such an extent that we can find nothing for days. I stuff all my paperwork in my computer case for safety but have lost books for months, outrageously in the bookcase. Post operations the place gleams and shines with cleanliness smells of cleaning agents and virtue, it take days to get it back to being rightly messy again. I fumble around if I am there at the same time as her and watch as she moves effectively from one job to the next, in a past life she was a mining engineer now she is poetry in motion.
I rationalise it now, being an employer, and console myself with the fact that the cleaner needs the money and does the work thoroughly in a quarter of the time it would take me to make a muck of it. Still feel queasy though and I have no intention of sharing this with my brother-in-law.

WITHOUT DUE CARE & ATTENTION

2010-04-11T20:56:00.006+01:00

I must have been driving without due care that Sunday back in the winter. I worked out the day & the specific occasion and remember nattering as I drove over Northam Bridge - where I know there is a camera and I was doing a paltry 34 miles an hour but we were engaged in some fascinating chat and my attention wandered long enough to be clocked by the camera. So when they made me an offer of a 'driver awareness' gig instead of points on my licence, I grabbed it. I usually get nicked for speeding once a year so I reckoned it was a good idea to keep the points at a minimum. It cost £74 to book in & they sent at least two small trees worth of paperwork with the booking form. Circumstances intervened and I had to change the date - this cost a further £30.which had been explained on the bumf that I hadn't read - so it was turning into an expensive trip. The event was a case of listening to two old lads telling us about stopping distances and reminding us of the highway code. It seems to me to be another way of parting the poor bloody motorist from her money and giving jobs to a couple of nice old boys to bore the errant motorist into submission.
My dressing without due care and attention is something quite new - as far as I know. I arrived in London last week with one brown and one black shoe, I didn't notice until the next day. I have two fairly identical pairs of shoes except for the colour they feel the same clearly. I thought it rather funny and was sure nobody would notice, I was wrong. My friend felt it was noticeable and I became self conscious about it. In fact one woman on my dog walking route interrupted our discussion of attack dogs to ask me about my shoes. Meanwhile her dog attempted a sexual assault on mine, they are both well past the age of consent - or the age of procreation for that matter. We stopped their fun immediately, in fact my own dog looked pretty neutral about the performance though she snapped at him. He was enthused in spite of being in his dotage, it aint over until they are dead, we said. She then told me a tale of a 14 year old bitch who produced puppies but promised to pay the vet bills. Anyway we got it on video because it coincided with my friends filming project. The culprit was a West Highland White terrier and we got evidence!!

VIEW

2010-04-08T10:57:00.001+01:00

VIEW
At 5am this morning, I took in the view from The Point in Greenwich. Not yet daylight and the birds giving it some wellie, the lights of Canary Wharf look close by. I had got up to go to the bathroom and found my dog sitting at the flat door with the look that says 'parlous need of pee please!' Having just used the facility myself I could hardly refuse so I threw on a sweater & pants, yomped the four floors down and out, after the usual battle with the heavy door and into the very early morning. It was clear and I felt the dew soak my feet as I went to 'pick up', in the event I couldn't see the offending matter so got wet feet for nothing. Back up the stairs and into bed, I wrap myself round my friend and am asleep. I dream of making Moslem pie, or of being allotted this task which I have never heard of - I offer veggie Moussaka instead. and dream of a woman who is an architect.. my dreams seldom make any sense.

I think that this view, taking in London in all her seething glory is my favourite view, it comapres favourably with any views of mountains or seascapes for me.Later, at 7.30 I am back, I do a few stretches then I sit on one of the two benches and take it all in again, this time in daylight on the brightest springiest day this year and it is glorious. The London Eye the Gherkin. St Pauls and many obscene lumps of concrete that look fine from here. The post office tower that used to seem so tall and now is dwarfed by the vast buildings all around. I can see ten cranes of the building variety so I guess the view will amend itself soon but watching the DLR scuttle along full of commuters rushing to work makes it all the sweeter to be here an admiring audience .
My own views have amended themselves too, I try not to think about the elections as I 'pick up'. It's easy!
I

ALL RIGHT DARLING?

2010-04-03T19:29:00.000+01:00

ALL RIGHT DARLING?
I bought a mattress over the weekend. It involved a few telephone calls - mainly because I had thought there were only one or two sizes of double beds. I was wrong. 'There's a lot of different sizes darling.' A pleasant gruff voice came over the line. We measured the bed - a futon. We squabbled over the tape measure, as you do, (or we do anyway) and realised we had a 'continental' size bed. I got back to Mr gruff and told him the size. All right darling, I 'll get it to you by four o'clock.' 'Oh thanks darling' I said, 'that's brilliant.' The delivery man continued the affectionate exchanges and didn't even give me time to bung him a tip for lugging it up four flights of stairs he was smiley and charming, not what I expected at all, a nice surprise.

Today, before 10 o'clock I was greeted and addressed as 'hen'in a lovely Glasgow voice. Followed by 'my lovely one' and 'sweetheart' by total strangers. All fairly exuberantly and with a good deal of matiness. In the first instance I asked the guy whereabouts in Wales he came from, which got a laugh, thank god. I once quipped something similar to a guy from South Africa who took my hints of antipodean ancestry well amiss.. I can't resist a one liner.

Last night in the chippy the governor addressed me as darling and I reciprocated. He gave me a glass of wine. I also find that I have a tendency to mirror accents which is sometimes seen as piss taking, it is not, I am not sure what it is and suspect it may be some kind of grovelling attempt to fit in, anyway it doesn't work but I persist.
I guess it's in the intention of the words because in hospital I can get quite starchy if people call me dearie or my love, I smell patronage. In the eighties I would cheerfully challenge any man who had the temerity to use terms of intimacy, now, I find myself returning the compliment - if that's what it is. This way is certainly more peaceful.
I often get invited by ciderheads in the park to have a drink and have been known to have strangers come up to me in boozers and ask me where they can score, so I reckon I must have one of those faces - approachable? Deviant? Take your pick. In foreign towns I find the roughest cafes or bars by instinct and I seem to fit in. A gift I think. I seldom get challenged and am mostly ignored after my initial entrance, though strangers often offer me fags, I watch points and people, it is astounding what you can pick up without being able to understand a word. The hierarchies seem similar in most cultures and there is always a top dog, often inexplicably. In a Lisbon café the chief honcho among a group of old guys was a man with one tooth, and memories of Aden during the war. We got along famously with him feeding me port and me making the company roll ups. The conversation was distinctly limited but friendly until my companion insisted we went to look at ceramics.
I prefer to look at people any day they fascinate me. And now that I am not seen as potential conquest I can look to my hearts content..

MAN ON TRICYCLE

2010-03-26T08:39:00.001Z

MAN ON TRICYCLE
On Saturday in a brief respite from earth drilling rain I took the dog for a quick walk to the river. This sounds pleasant and the dog finds it so but the river is one of the kind where shopping trolleys feature and for a long time a mini was settled in the tidal water, I never noticed the going of it, perhaps it got sick of the view and took to the sea. I ponder the energy that it must take to push a shopping trolley the half mile or so to the river, but there they rest covered in mud and festooned in seaweed. I expect a couple of them to appear some time soon at the local art gallery – I shall go along to admire them in their new setting. ‘I knew them before they were famous’ I shall say. I have grown to like them and the swans seem to have no objection.

So we brave the mud, or rather I brave it, my dog enjoys mud though I am glad to say she hates rain and refuses to go out in it. We weave our way between the dog droppings and other unmentionables, me ever watchful that she might find a particularly noisome dead frog to roll in. Last time it was a pigeon long deceased and melting on the bone. This required three baths to bring her back to normal dog odour. So, I walk along with my plastic bag at the ready, though I know it is futile I enjoy a kind of cheap shot of virtue when I ‘pick up’. I come to the end of the alley and see that the river is higher than usual and the mud on the path is stickier. The council haven’t thought to improve this part of the riverfront though other parts have been improved unto extinction. We are in the abandoned part of town though they are threatening us with an estate of Barrett Houses so the dog walk will go. I shall be sorry and so will the fishermen who sit for hours and tell me they catch bass.

An elderly man, with a completely bald head rides his tricycle along the narrow path on the river bank and I get out of the way. The bald head gleams and I wonder if it is an affliction or a fashion statement, who knows? While it might be fun to watch him tumble into the water, the poor old boy could drown and more to the point I might be called upon to save him.
‘Hello darling’ he stops his tricycle and grins at me, he has two teeth, one at each end of his upper jaw.’ ‘I’ve been watching you for years, you’re a good looking woman. Why haven’t you got a man?’
‘Because I’ve got a woman.’ I rap back smartly, this usually halts the badinage. Not in this case though.
‘If you hadn’t got a girl friend I’d take you on.’ There was a time when I would have taken mortal offence at this but now I see it as funny and why bother? So we go on to have the ritual dog conversation that takes its usual path: Much better than humans, never let you down, love you no matter what, always glad to see you, never nag or criticise you. (In fact I once had a dog that could do baleful looks that would freeze me into a guilt wracked nervous twitch if I stayed out for more than an hour and he could sulk for days, I never mention this.) He tells me he has a Jack Russell with the same birthday as himself, last week it was and he got a cake with candles for the dog who is eleven, he is sixty five. Several years younger than myself. He pedals off on his trike and I think about the self confidence of such men. Jack the lad senior citizen. I wonder if he ever scores.

The rain starts again, we begin our walk home and there he is at the level crossing at the head of the queue of traffic, taking his space, fly as ever.
‘We must stop meeting like this.’ I say.
‘I don’t mind’ he says. ‘I’ve had my eye on you for years.’ I remember him always shouting ‘Hello darling!’ as he sailed past but I was sure he said that to all the females, nothing personal eh? I always waved back. I had seen him in the paper shop too, all five feet of him laughing and joking all over the place. How tiresome to be always merry I thought.
‘I’ve got a bed sit in Harding road, number forty five and you know where I work don’t you? The scrap yard in Queens Road.’ He winks.

The train passes so I don’t hear his next few comments. He rides off at the head of the procession of cars, stately in a curious way. He turns to look at us.
‘The dog’s welcome too, any time.’ A car swerves out to overtake him, he waves it on grandly then he is gone and I turn off into my own road. I am careful that there is nobody watching me as I open my front door.

I know this small event would have had me raging a few years ago, what a cheek! I would have said to my receptive angry self. And it is certainly a bit of an impertinence to chat up a woman while riding a tricycle but I am convinced that if I had said ‘yes’ he would have accommodated me and my dog somewhere on his tricycle and driven me away to his bed sit and not a lot of women get an offer like that – or want one.

SOTHEBYS INTERLUDE (recycled)

2010-03-24T07:38:00.001Z

I am the kind of person who sneers quite a lot, who speaks of obscene displays of wealth and who disapproves, loudly, of privilege in all its forms. I have always felt especially cross about places like Sotheby’s. I see them as a great waste of space and think that the entire emporium should be given over to a nice hostel for the homeless or an alternative music venue, something for ‘the people’, whoever they are. However I am fervently pro culture and pro arts.

So, while I was somewhat surprised to hear myself saying ‘can I come too?’ in tones of great eagerness as I bounced up and down in excitement, when I had the chance to go to a viewing there. I felt it was excusable I am, as I said before, pro culture in most of its forms and there was to be a preview of Russian Contemporary Art followed by an auction the week after.

My friend was playing host to one of the artists and goes to such places regularly. I take a highly sanctimonious attitude and feel morally superior. Not for me rubbing shoulders with the ‘haves’. I am determined in my attitude to ally myself with the ‘have nots‘. I have not consulted with the ‘have nots on this’ and in fact I have accumulated a few of the accoutrements of the ‘haves’. I am not sure how you judge these things.

This does not stop me from issuing judgements; nothing stops me from issuing judgements.

On our way down Bond Street we saw an elderly man preparing for the night by spreading cardboard boxes on the ground in a shop doorway. I drew my friend’s attention to this as proof of my increased awareness of the poor.

Sotheby’s lived up, or down, to all my expectations and more. The amount of couth is incredible; the cloakroom staff are graceful and charming. The flunkeys, mostly good looking young guys, of all races and sizes who keep their expressions of disinterest in place under all provocation. The catering staff is of a superior type altogether, (I hope they are paid top dollar) The cocktails are exotic and perfectly presented.

My friend assures me the Champagne is the best and lovely young guys trot about the place filling glasses obsessively so I felt obliged to drink obsessively. Delicious young females in sequined mini dresses dart quickly like so many elegant fish among us with gorgeous snacks of unparalleled quality and miniscule size, not nearly often enough for my champagne enhanced appetite and at one stage I was tempted to mug a child who trotted past with a small bucket of snacks in her hand.

Nearly everybody there was Russian and all the art was from Russian artists. Most was not to my taste and I got the distinct feeling that few of the punters had a primary interest in the art work. They met and chatted, flaunted and flirted. One particular woman clearly had newly enhanced lips and was running them in with a slight discomfort and self consciousness that reminded me of my first time in high heels. Voices were loud and eager and there were more shades of blonde than I ever saw before. I sat and watched and enjoyed myself enormously. I think my ideal role in life is as watcher and critic; I enjoy the action best second hand.

Altogether a jolly evening was had by all and I was vastly relieved to realise that I hadn’t been missing a thing. I had had this sneaking feeling that there was a secret ingredient, a je ne sais quoi if you will. That ‘they’ had something that I could never have and after several glasses of champagne and very little food I had this revelation: no mystique is involved. Sotheby’s is exactly what it says on the label: a salesroom. And that this event had very little to do with art and less to do with culture. I am not sure why I thought it would be a cultural event. Some silly stereotypical idea of art no doubt.

It was a jolly and probably the most accomplished jolly I ever enjoyed. The person we knew sold some paintings in the auction a few days later though I believe that many went unsold. The catering staff got paid and the ocean of champagne that could have kept the Titanic afloat was imbibed.

We left fairly early and on our way back to the tube we saw the elderly man asleep in the shop doorway, hunched under his overcoat. I voiced the hope that he would be allowed by compassionate policemen to stay there all night. On the train back home I was glad to see a young woman reading a book of vivid pink and a dreadful blue and I made a judgement, ‘better they read rubbish than nothing’, then I saw that it was Slaughterhouse Five in this amazing cover, and I felt that culture is not dead but alive and well on the Jubilee line.

So what do I think of Sotheby’s now? Primarily I see it as a great job opportunity for unemployed actors and catering staff in general. An example of how catering should be done and also as great fun. Come the revolution of course it will all be quite different, but until such time …it is gorgeous, flamboyant, outrageous and, I imagine, somebody is making a few bob out of it, if only the caterers. We left with a bag of goodies that the advertising industry had produced at great expense and that we dumped in a bin near Bermondsey tube station.

I don’t think that I have changed my view of the rich and I am not sure that this group was typical of the rich anyway. But I think I realised that I don’t envy them at all and as I walked up the escalator with my friend I felt happy with my lot, a first.
So thank you Sotheby’s that was one of the best opportunities for moral superiority I ever encountered and I topped up with Champagne too!

RECOVERY?

2010-03-22T14:15:00.000Z

having bits of you fall off or cease to function concentrates the mind wonderfully. unfortunately its in an inward direction. paranoia and hypochondria become close associates with severe introspection. the merest twinge and i envisage all my sutures popping out merrily (which is daft because they were taken out weeks ago, but i have a graphic imagination) and i see the plastic grinning through a ghastly gaping wound. i fiddle obsessively with my sling which is rapidly losing its velcro ferocity and is becoming limp, i am becoming limp too.and exasperated.

my 'notes' seem to have taken independant action and have tripped off. these are vital to my physiotherapy and i am in limbo. i am not backward in coming forward and i complain with brio but i am caught, along with the notes between two hospitals. neither hospital can treat me apparently. so i scuttled quickly to my local brand new physio clinic by taxi when they offered me an appointment. i listened with interest as my afghani cabbie was delighted to explain to me the current situation there. he made rather good sense to me with his talk of robbing americans and russians.his theory that the west was prolonging the war as an excuse for their continued occupation was not an idea i have come across before but sounds as likely as any other. i will give it some thought.

the new physio centre in its bleak and windswept location with only a giant tesco for company is just that. new. it is like an aircraft hanger but much gaudier and looks very expensive, the equipment is excellent and if only it wasn't many miles from the centre of town and if it was on a bus route it would definitely get my approval, guarded of course. its old slightly scruffy venue was on at least 6 bus routes and close to the town centre. the therapist here was charming though she couldn't treat me until the errant notes catch up with me.
she wrote a note to the london therapist. i have an appointment with her this week
GREAT.

A FAN

2010-03-18T08:23:00.003Z

and now for something different:. i first met nick churchill, arts and music journo when he interviewed me for the bournemouth echo in 2006 on publication of ' a blues for shindig'. he has been a fan and a great support ever since. at our first interview he said 'i didn't know old ladies wrote books like this!' i told him he's been mixing wit the wrong kind of old ladies.
i asked him to write a review . this is the result
A Blues For Shindig
Mo Foster

Just in case any teenager – or 20-, 30-, 40-, even 50-something for that matter – was damn foolish enough to contend it was their generation that invented sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, Mo Foster’s A Blues For Shindig puts the needle on the record to set it straight.
In fact, the hep cats and hip chicks of the 1950s Soho she invokes were far too cool for the easy pleasures of rock ‘n’ roll – they were digging jazz, man… with a side order of blues for those comedown mornings.
The titular heroine Shindig makes her luck and earns her crust in the scruffy bars of W1. More likely to be serving Scotch and light ales to sweaty men in cheap suits than cocktails and canapés to coffee bar stars, she’s liked, almost respected even, by a certain type of gentleman who doesn’t appreciate being asked about his business.
When one of their less classy members oversteps the mark and Shindig lays him out, she is propelled on a journey that takes her high and low, very low, beneath the veneer of a capital city emerging from war-time austerity and flexing the muscles that would see it swinging wildly within a few years.
By then, of course, Shindig will be long gone, ahead of the game as usual – as much by luck than judgement – but no more comfortable in her own skin than before.
Shindig makes for a bold and brassy companion in this romp. At once pre-dating the ladettes and It-Girls who’ve since become tediously familiar, yet also touchingly old-fashioned enough to still recognise her own vulnerability, not play on it. Too much.
The milieu will be more than familiar to readers of Colin MacInnes, George Melly and Jake Arnott among many others, but its allure remains undiminished by this racier excursion into its flesh pits and pitfalls which only accentuates the sense that it was a world existing separate from, but adjacent to, what passed for real life outside.
Foster’s lack of linguistic artifice and obvious affection for her deviant subjects keeps the reader’s grubby finger turning the page, each new adventure and episode always well within reach. A Blues For Shindig is a fine testament to youth – yours, hers and mine.

Nick Churchill
WOW
thanks nick

MEETINGS

2010-03-15T14:25:00.000Z

i think i fulfilled my quota of meetings long ago i reckon i went to two a week for quite a long time, at least that's what it felt like.then there were always people who relished meetings, their eyes would gleam with joy as they went through the agenda and if they had a chance to jump on some poor creature who had their facts wrong they nearly orgasmed with delight. i was never one of these, i was always an observer and i would watch the bitter rivalries between various leftist factions in the anti apartheid movement and between cliques in the women's solidarity groups and wonder at the fact that these groups got things done at all, and they did. for me the focus was always on the pub for the post meeting gathering.

so when my friend told me about a meeting of artists on a sunday evening i was not at all sure about going, the only thing it had to recommend it was the fact that it was in a pub.i went along anyway and i am not sure what i expected. a row of suspicious faces suspecting dodgy motives perhaps, critical appraisal from a crew of hostile 'artists' who would spot me as a non participant..i wasn't sure, and as my dedication to the pint has lessened i was not keen. what i got was a big welcome - mostly because of my friend i suspect - but people moved over to let us sit down and the lovely lithuanion girl beside me asked about my shoulder, giving me a chance to be both pathetic and brave. my friend shot me daggers from her eyes so i kept it to the shorter version.
the only other brit was a south london guy, a sculptor who chatted and his wife pia hugged me - quite unlike my experience of meetings.the entire experience was thoroughly enjoyable and it makes me wonder if artists are nicer people or if the fact that the nationalities, which went from finnish through jewish, italian, spanish, argentinian to algerian and autralian were so diverse that made it such a different experience. i dont really care but i will be there again on sunday 28th and here are the details: the venueis the shakespeare head pub, kingsway , within yards of holborn station at 7pm. for anybody involved in the arts - writers included.

the thought just came to me that i might have changed and become more mellow with advanced age,
heaven forfend!

ON SMILIMG

2010-03-12T09:00:00.000Z

i spent a lot of my life snarling in public. there are, or were, photographs of me at weddings , an angry little girl, tummy and bottom lip protruding into the world. knees clamped together - all chakras closed down if you believe in such things - always with a bow in my hair and wearing some very feminine confection made by mum. to be fair there were also pictures of me in happy disarray on a donkey at the seaside or up a tree. at school i glared out of formal photos, yet i was a clown in the classroom, a smart arse sniggerer and disruptor of lessons that bored me - a swat at the ones i liked.

really the seventies were a very good time for me, i became a feminist and it seemed quite acceptable to hit the world with a nice grim face, in public anyway, because we were aware of vast unfairnesses. in fact it was the time of the anti nazi league and blatant racism so a grim visage was appropriate. it was also a time of great liberation for me and i probably laughed more then than i ever had before. i enjoyed the company of women enormously.

i grew up wanting to be a boy - mainly for the clothes and for the sheer convenience of peeing upright - which i tried with messy results. my brother got a better deal in both liberty and pocket money, i felt cheated. but somehow it was a given that going out with a male was preferable to going out with your mates, so if your friend got a date with a boy and dumped you that was ok.

things have changed in this department and i have take up smiling big time. partly i think because i live in an area where few women speak english and smiling is my main communication, i limit my smiling, mainly to the female population and i hardly snarl at all. i enjoy being smiled at and partly because i have a dog.in a area where the only other dogs are large grim creatures so people cower at my small terrier- and she reciprocates by running in terror from squealing kids - so a reassuring smile is part of my equipment.

anyway i take my smile everywhere with me. in moscow it was received with stoney lack of comprehension in berlin i got unwarranted smiles from most people and in london a mixed reaction. it pleases me to smile and though it could be seen as sign of weakness, i don't care.
i shall smile with vigour but if you don't reciprocate i shan't mind, and don't be fooled, the snarl is still intact and fully operational!
ps
this week i have much to smile about because my 1st novel 'a blues for shindig' has been chosen as part of the new exceptionally independent list. i am delighted and look forward to blagging and putting myself about to promote my book - along with the other writers i hope!

TV TIMES

2010-03-09T08:21:00.001Z

my friend is in moscow where women's day is a public holiday and women are given flowers. i was feeling a mild chagrin about our neglect in britain and the fact that i was supposed to be reading in berlin and i had cancelled due to the thought of jetsave one armed terrifying me. but then bbc4 came up trumps with programmes about the women's movement in the seventies (omitting much) . then a play about evil bankers
( wankers?) with the divine sarah parish who has the most gorgeous gob in the business - then greenham common was 'done' , ( with the ubiquitous fay weldon putting in her 2 pennorth irritating as ever bless 'er)then grunwick. oh frabjous day! none of these programmes was perfect from my point of view, nothing ever is but until i make my own progs i will shut up. i went to grunwick once and amid the usual fear of being trampled underfoot, it was inspiring to a serial protestor like me. I went to greenham many times on large protests to embrace the base and with a mate who camped there every weekend - i would slope off home, i was never a camping kind of gel. the only time i stayed for longer than a night - 3 days at green gate - nobody spoke to us (2 women a child and my dog in a 2 man tent) except to say that my dog was unacceptable as he was intact in the balls department, i offered to cut em off but mercifully nobody took me up on it. the soldiers chucked stones at our tent t all night to wake the dog who woke us. on the third night people spoke to us and we succumbed to the blandishments of the boozer.then a trudge back in thick mud and not a taxi in sight. i always found greenham horribly oppressive - the vibes y'know. but i admire the women who stuck it out and i believe that it was a successful campaign BECAUSE it was women only. it did change many women's lives too.
i digress yet again
back to tv: then, late, a programme about the first african woman president in liberia, it looked like she had her work cut out but, having stayed riveted all evening ( i usually kip as soon as i sit ) me and the dog went to bed, i expect it will be repeated, i hope so.
i reckon that's my licence fee well covered.

HOME FOR THE ONE ARMED NON HERO

2010-03-08T09:20:00.000Z

So here i am in splendid isolation the better to write, with my dog for company - though she is a late riser and doesn't show until after 9. i am still one armed though doing my physio and have slung the sling except when i go out,. 4 the sympathy factor - has not yet worked but am hopeful.i discovered a djebella that i got in tangier, adjusting trousers is another thing hard to do with one hand a, along with cutting up food, putting on a beret, picking up dog turds, hanging out washing, peeling spuds and typing. i. was very disappointed nobody noticed, was reduced to drawing attention to my exotic wear - somebody mentioned cultural imperialism so i shut up,but i will not be put off.. i have also recycled a few skirts that fit - unfortunately i seem to have become completely tubular so they tend to descend -very slowly but with the inexorable power of gravity, inducimg the most godawful feelings of insecurity...so either i buy braces or dump them. i do intend to return to finish my previous WHOOPEE blog and tell about the marvellous meeting i began to speak of.
been tuned in to radio 4, it murmurs in the background a lot of stuff about venables the 10 year old killer, emotive stuff too. i think it would be very surprising if, after years of incarceration he had emerged intact - but what do i know....however i was in prison in the 60s and though i met some lovely women i can't say it equipped me for a glittering or dull career, on the contrary i was scared of traffic and institutionalised after 4 months so imagine how traumatised a child would be after many years!!!

hurray my first exclamation marks for weeks!!!

WHOOPEE

2010-03-02T08:51:00.001Z

still one armed but have been putting myself about and blagging like crazy because my novel 'a blues for shindig' is one of the books to be promoted by'exclusively independent' in libraries and bookshops in london this month. I got news that my mate katie ann is being pursued by agents for her 'little book of the unhip' which is on authonomy and is very funny and. well worth a look. another friend has been shortlisted by croydon warehoue for his play 'tar baby' so it feels like things are moving in the right direction.

last night i went to a meeting of - oh dear i have very cleverly lost more than half of this posting dammit! i shall attemp to recover it and if not...i shall rage and bang some pots about but am limited by one arm status even in doing me nut.....as i said before a mild DAMMIT.

one arm bandit

2010-02-23T07:50:00.001Z

i have not deserted my post but, after having a plastic shoulder inserted,been ejected back into the world the very next day armed with enough pain killers to finish off a shire horse..i am depleted somewhat in energy. i expect grumpiness to see me through the minor annoyance of being totally dependent on my friend for nearly everything from cutting up my food to adjusting my knickers. it is embarrassing, after yelling vigorously at somebody, to have to ask them to please put your socks on. and i can't do exclamation marks, even with my elbow because it is all strapped into a complex sling which i have to wear for six weeks. so woe is me and my friend has taken to playing extended games of solitaire and gnashing her teeth....what can this mean. also manic laughter and deep exasperated sighs have been heard by me along with curses. is this paranoia i ask myself.. i shall watch those pain killers.

BLOGGING for FUN!

2010-02-12T10:57:00.000Z

ON BLOGGING

I have been threatening myself with blogging for years now - in fact my original publisher set me up with a blog some five years ago. I evaded it. I must explain my relationship with my computer: to me it is a beloved enemy, one that I have little control over but one that I have this love/hate relationship with. I use it as a sort of word processing tool with email facility. I love my emails and Google, I am happy to download maps, even though I have a problem reading maps.

My computer is the one I scuttle to every morning with a fervour that could be seen as unhealthy. I like to get my words down and in fact I can hardly write in longhand any more. However, my brain does not absorb computer knowledge, it closes down like an obstinate clam at the sight or sound of computer speak. The simplest instruction is lost on me and I feel my mind going off whistling into the distance like an errant teenager - 'I don't care to hear you!' it whistles. 'This is not for me' it sings. It puts it hands over its ears and scuttles off.

This week I decided that I must do a sneaky move on my mind, come upon it from a new angle, so I got a very efficient, competent woman in to 'teach' me how to blog. We were startled, my brain and me but some knowledge seeped through. As soon as she left I panicked, went onto overdrive or underdrive and was sure I could never do this. All the stuff she had told me just flew away and I was back at school in a maths class, baffled with brain in flummox mode and a tantrum building up. Then I would draw cartoons of women, hand them round and disrupt the class. (I got a result too, I was allowed to cut maths and do art instead - a result for the teacher too)

Now I could hardly stage a one woman rebellion, there was nobody about to witness it. I badly wanted to hold my teacher responsible but common sense walked in and prevailed and I got a grip. I telephoned my teacher'and she was patience incarnate, not engaging in my confusion and with humour and kindness sent me emails that I could refer to. In fact I am quite capable of looking at a piece of paper with quite clear instructions and my panic doesn't allow me to see them. I squeak in terror and have reduced my internet provider to near tears when she tried to explain how to get my router organised. I am sure there is a word for this malaise and I refuse to believe it is STUPID,

I shall continue with this process!!

GABBY

2010-02-08T11:07:00.001Z

I would very much like to hear from other gabby - or indeed gobby women! I know you are out there and I want you to reveal yourselves and tell me all about it and you. What makes you fume?
What delights you? Do you spot any unfairnesses that hit on the female of the species?Let's talk!