I am just about to enter the narrow path between the shops when I see them. It’s been a long while since I have seen that sign. The bald man pauses in his painting of the swastika as he looks at me with that insolent stare that is his privilege and birthright. Before he can advance, I spin around. Having just been to the butcher on the right; I blindly stumble into the kosher bakery on the left.
I steady myself as I enter the bakery’s warm cinnamon and apple Austrian fog. It is the smell of Marthe’s cooking from before the troubled times. I long to impulsively reach out to the china plate of gingery Pfeffernusse on top of the counter, but hold myself back. I am still shaking as the girl there looks up at me expectantly.
“Can I help you?”
I hold up my string bag with its joint of ham from the butcher.
“I’m sorry. I should not have brought this in here.”
I rush out and flee past the shops and the bus stop. The August sun is fierce but I am cold. I could have worn my woollen coat but it’s not safe to stick out. If the Gentiles have bare arms so will I. With no yellow star to mark me these days, I can disappear like a sweet spoon of honey in bitter coffee.
I come in breathless and sweaty but my icy hand and knuckles scream their winter song of pain. While Walter’s beloved ham is on the boil, I start on Marthe’s honey cake. He loves that too. In that childlike manner of his, he will lick each sticky finger off before wiping his hands on the linen serviette that I will then have to put in the weekly wash.
With the tin in the raging oven, the cold is conquered by the warmth in the small kitchen. Despite the briny boiling ham, the honey smells strong in the kitchen and reminds me of how different it was then.
Even my name, H______ was different then. I was young then, so young and everything seemed so high above me. Tall people with long faces draped in broad furs that swept our dark wood floors. Silky white walled cool rooms with their ceilings high to the sky and those steep glass jars of cherries and apricots hunkered down in the brick cellars. The only thing that remained the same here was the smell of the hot honey Mutti would stir into her beloved lemon tea.
My darling Mutti was wiser than my Papi. We had heard of the transports when we were expelled to the Ghetto in the East, but by that time Papi was a starving man and no longer himself. He had never been hungry for so long before then and like the other men the free jam and blankets they bribed us with did us all in. With the help of his brother Shmuli, who was in the Ghetto police, the two brothers drove us and the howling others to the Umschlagplatz from where we were to be expelled to the East with our precious promise of jam. Two thousand people in a small square. After that November day in the piss and shit soaked square, winter air has never felt crisp or clean to me.
Wise Mutti exchanged her pearl ring and her last ruby brooch with Mrs. S____son, in exchange for us slipping through that cordon and escaping the camps that time.
In the end though, Mutti was not wise enough. Trusting Marthe meant our betrayal and having to endure that terrible Lager for so long. An age and Mutti passed on, before the new Aryans came in and transferred us to the Grand Lager with as many rations as you asked for and thick wool blankets. A DP they called it a Lager for the dispossessed and displaced.
That DP was brought to an abrupt end by the ship that brought me here: a great big unsteady bathtub that lurched across the narrow sea. I sailed with Etjie, Kitty and the rest who giggled constantly. We are free, we are free! I knew better. We were off to a new Lager with better rules, but rules all the same. As soon as we docked I collected my precious paper money and slipped off leaving those giddy goats behind.
The new Lager was not like the last place. There was no routine, no appelplatz assembly at dawn, no breaks. With no special status, I needed an Aryan to hide behind, so I ensnared Walter.
Many months later, I saw Kitty here. She still lives in the Eastern Ghetto giggling her way from one day to the next. I know better. Where there’s a ghetto there are informants. There one day your own elders will become policemen and the next day they will drive you with blows to the Umschlagplatz on the promise of jam.
Time goes by very quickly here. We are relieved of the race rules –no stars, no decree filled announcements, no expulsions from the halls of government. My lovely blonde hair is now a dreadful gray with a nest of black shoots. My eyes maybe blue but they are watered down. All that stands proud is the hook of my nose. And that is what they see. I know it when I see them look at me. When the time is right they will come for me. That much I am sure of.
Two years pass and the signs are painted everywhere now. There are lots of new people here who come from an East that is farther than the East I know. They wait on street shop corners like itinerant peddlers, their darkness stark against the surroundings. So the Aryan Alliance gathers pace once more and I am very fearful. They have a new uniform this secret state army. In the old days death came accompanied by a gentleman’s hat, soft grey wool, shiny black leather whip and boots. Now they take their short hair and raze it to signify the razing that is to come. The newcomers try to fight them just like we did in the old City, but it is no use. They will lose just like we did.
One peculiarly clammy October afternoon, when I read the news of the riots, I catch cold and start shaking. I put my overcoat on and head for bed to right myself, and this is where Walter finds me three hours later. This is where the silence between us explodes into noise.
“Marie, Marie wake up!” Walter shouts and for a moment I forget myself.
Dear little French Marie with her cheeks rouged in blood at every selection, finally got selected by typhus. Now her name belongs to me and H___ is another dead statistic.
“Oh, liebchen, don’t worry,” I calm him down with the promise of food. “I was just trying on the coat for winter and fell asleep. Phish! I’m just a silly old goose. Here let me fix you your sup..”
“Marie! Stop it! You’re not well, love. You know it. You’re sobbing, tossing, turning all night and every morning you deny it? Well it needs sorting out. I’m going to call Doctor Sharples for a check up right now.”
“Walter stop it. I am fine liebchen. I was just tired. I was cleaning out the scullery. Come on now its egg and chip night, your..”
“No bloody’ egg and chips, old girl, I’m not going to let you give up. It’s Doctor Sharples or I call the ambulance. You look green enough for them to take you in right now!”
I could not risk the dispensary. Helena with her boils and abscess went there and up she had gone up in smoke. A sick Jewess might as well be dead as far as they were concerned.
“Don’t be a worried goose Walter. I’m as right as rain! Now come on I need some egg and chips and I have got a new bottle of that mustard you like so!”
“I know what you’re worried about but it’s over, it’s over! You hear me? It’s August nineteen bloody seventy six! It’s been over for thirty years! You are not in a bloody Lager camp, you’re in Croydon for heavens sake!”
“Walter, don’t fret so, please?”
“You were an Art teacher at Croydon Grammar Marie, what’s happened to you? You never worried like this?”
Never worried? I just now know that now I am too old and feeble to hide the worry. The worry strengthens as your legs weaken and can no longer run as fast as you may need them to. He carries on babbling as he holds me close to his damp coat that smells like a wet dog.
“It’s okay Marie, its over. You have Israel now, a homeland I’ll take you there just to show you its all kaput. I can’t take this worry.”
We spring apart after our uncustomary embrace and sit in silence. I wonder if I should tell him what I know, but how can this Gentile with his brown sweet rabbit eyes understand what is happening around him. What does he know of a homeland for Jews? Look what good Madagascar did. Instead of a homeland, came ghettos and ovens to burn in. Israel or Madagascar it’s all a sham!
“Walter, I..”
“It’s on the wireless Marie, and there’s even the television you could watch if you went round to Gertie’s. It’s all on there. We watched the reels at the Ritzy, you saw it. It’s over the camps are finished.”
The television-phtchah! This poor man has no idea of how easy it is for them. Goebbels may be absent but his trickery is everywhere!
“Walter, Walter, really don’t make a fuss..”
“Stop! I mean it, stop! If you don’t see Doctor tonight I’m getting Gertie round to take you to hospital.”
Fraulein Gertrude-she was no better than Stella K-----selling all those poor Jewish U Boat families in hiding to the dogs when their money ran out. I never stooped that low.
“I mean it Marie, you know what I know..”
In the end Walter gets his way he knows my old secret and I cannot afford to lose his trust or favour.
“Okay, let us have our meal liebchen, and we’ll call him round in the morning”
I saw to it that Doctor Sharples did not arrive the next morning and our argument raged every day for weeks.
One Friday afternoon, seven weeks later, Walter unexpectedly appeared with Doctor Sharples and Frau Gertrude skulking behind him. They forced me down into my own chair to let the Doctor examine me. A week later I received official notification that I was to be transported to the hospital for further tests.
Walter brings me the hospital letter and tells me I am too old to run. He is right, this war will outlive me. When he leaves for the pub, I know that he must never have to defend my wrongdoings as a collaborator. I will do what is right for the both of us.
The morning before my transport, I go to my secret store. It’s in the outside lav, a place Walter never goes to now we have one indoors. There inside the cistern is my roll of cloth with my Reisepass, Mutti’s Kennkarte, my thirteen cans of provisions and the envelope. Many families we knew in the old Ghetto had these envelopes .They were brought out on the night before the families scheduled transport and their contents were shared by all the family. I say the Kaddish prayer of the dead for them, and for Mutti, Papi and Marie. I lift the tinkling poison envelope out from the roll and head indoors. Inside I shake its precious contents out and stir it into the rich chicken stew Walter and I will feast on together later.
Sunday 10 October 2010
Monday 6 September 2010
Friday thoughts on a Monday afternoon
Last Friday afternoon work started to empty itself from my inbox at around three in the afternoon as out of office replies starting pinging their way at me in response to my truculent queries and insistent demands to those who were apparently still at lunch. At four with the umpteenth email promising to "get it done by Monday" I packed it in and walked through a sun saturated City that promised a return to summer for the weekend. The City’s glass towers had purged itself of it’s be suited inhabitants and vomited them into the pubs that they themselves would spew out of (quite literally) under the watchful eye of the moon. But for now there was camaraderie in the air, an azure sky and golden goblets of bliss held by many hands as they stood outside the Globe, All Bar One and O’Neill’s.
Minding my own way I wended down to the river which was littered with a thousand sparkling diamonds that must have fallen from the careless diamond fairy's handbag as she dropped off for a much needed nap on the cool waters under the glowing orb in the sky. I walked back towards St Pauls and heard Bow Bells sound five peals for the foolish workers who had lost track of time as they sat ensnared by the pure white light from their monitors that trapped them like flies to sticky flypaper. Below the spires of commerce and at dark wooden pub doors; blue silk and linen jackets were slung on clever shoulders, men’s sleeves were rolled up demarcating the vacationers from the staycationers and the bubble of laughter and chatter gurgled in the air like some ancient village brook in the heart of this old City.
The white sun was edged with gold now as it sliced lower through the glass ramparts and po-mo facades at London Wall only being defeated by the hulking irresoluteness of the concrete fortress of the Barbican. Little velvet squares of manicured lawn under shady plane or chestnut trees were a brilliant lime green like the new neckwear recently appropriated by Waitrose supermarket staff. The white asphalt under our feet glowed as it was branded by the sun above. Fat bees weaved in the air dizzy and drunk on nectar and sunlight, skimming fair and dark heads unshielded from the fury of our solar stranger which was reflected at us by the glass on the cathedrals of industry that rose arrogant and insouciantly above us.
Many hours later I was still sitting on a splintering wooden bench outside a pub that would soon be demolished to make way for a grand transportation project that was at least seven years away. The sun had slowly melted at its heart bleaching the sky in a lactic whiteness bleeding at the edges with a thin frayed border of fading fuchsia.
As violet banded the horizon, white light spattered on within the red double deckers trundling past us and the flow of folk and nectar started to ebb. Like good wood left out too long in the sun a splintering started that saw the large masses break off into chips of twos and ones drifting to the rail stations or slipping down stairwells to the trains that sped along long tunnels under the tar or clambering onto red buses heading north, south and east.
As I walked homeward I noticed that the asphalt has lost its daytime sun seared white -even though it had now cooled dark and grey it still tingled and sang with an electric hum that promised that the best was yet to come...
Minding my own way I wended down to the river which was littered with a thousand sparkling diamonds that must have fallen from the careless diamond fairy's handbag as she dropped off for a much needed nap on the cool waters under the glowing orb in the sky. I walked back towards St Pauls and heard Bow Bells sound five peals for the foolish workers who had lost track of time as they sat ensnared by the pure white light from their monitors that trapped them like flies to sticky flypaper. Below the spires of commerce and at dark wooden pub doors; blue silk and linen jackets were slung on clever shoulders, men’s sleeves were rolled up demarcating the vacationers from the staycationers and the bubble of laughter and chatter gurgled in the air like some ancient village brook in the heart of this old City.
The white sun was edged with gold now as it sliced lower through the glass ramparts and po-mo facades at London Wall only being defeated by the hulking irresoluteness of the concrete fortress of the Barbican. Little velvet squares of manicured lawn under shady plane or chestnut trees were a brilliant lime green like the new neckwear recently appropriated by Waitrose supermarket staff. The white asphalt under our feet glowed as it was branded by the sun above. Fat bees weaved in the air dizzy and drunk on nectar and sunlight, skimming fair and dark heads unshielded from the fury of our solar stranger which was reflected at us by the glass on the cathedrals of industry that rose arrogant and insouciantly above us.
Many hours later I was still sitting on a splintering wooden bench outside a pub that would soon be demolished to make way for a grand transportation project that was at least seven years away. The sun had slowly melted at its heart bleaching the sky in a lactic whiteness bleeding at the edges with a thin frayed border of fading fuchsia.
As violet banded the horizon, white light spattered on within the red double deckers trundling past us and the flow of folk and nectar started to ebb. Like good wood left out too long in the sun a splintering started that saw the large masses break off into chips of twos and ones drifting to the rail stations or slipping down stairwells to the trains that sped along long tunnels under the tar or clambering onto red buses heading north, south and east.
As I walked homeward I noticed that the asphalt has lost its daytime sun seared white -even though it had now cooled dark and grey it still tingled and sang with an electric hum that promised that the best was yet to come...
Wednesday 25 August 2010
The pursuit of sadness
So after umpteen self help courses projects and ‘wow’ moments I was fortunate enough, in my late twenties, to realise that happiness is not something to hanker after but it’s our natural way of being unless we choose with our minds or our bodies to feel sad. The tough thing is that even when life is going fantastically well tiny superstitious whispers at the edge of a pragmatic mind exhorts us to ‘ examine the cons’, be realistic, be mindful of others etc. etc. There are a hundred different reasons to get off the happy train and swap smelling flowers for ‘waking up and smelling the coffee.’
The phrase ‘analysis paralysis’ is so apt here as our happiness lies trapped deep in a mental mine that is topped by a hard assed-straight talking, reasonable and practical mountain of data, statistical evidence and counter arguments.
As a young child being happy was not worthy of pursuit or exploration, as in most instances where the basics were being met happiness was a natural state of being, until that first time. The first time a discordant note was sounded in the melody of our life we became aware of the perfection of the harmonious construct that formed the tune of our life and stopped to examine what caused the song to go wrong. That stopping or dwelling started a life long pursuit and obsession with the nature of wrongness and it’s relation to perfection. Until that moment, perfection didn’t exist it just was the canvas, the background we crawled stumbled or slept through. From that moment on we got geared up at the pursuit of sadness store with some highly personalised gizmos to help us on our life long quest including:
-Judge-o-meters-the perfect I’m right you’re wrong nifty portable accessory and vital for any pursuit of sadness mission
-Past master-a view master like apparatus that projects achingly beautiful and lyrical montages of moments from the past to hanker after, in our inner minds eye
-Craporama- Essential eyewear: these High Def glasses frame our minds eyes every morning to help us view our self, the world and almost everything as just not good enough
Reasonator- A statistical device that is evidential in nature, and provides reasoned and logical data driven theoretical constructs to support and justify us in our approach to the pursuit of sadness
These are just some of goodies that are personally customisable at the Sad Shop, a place we all know too well. Many fellow writers and artistes will pick the “Pain-essential” mind trap, that will only spring open to let the ideas and expressions come rushing out, in moments of personal pain.
The pursuit of sadness is what makes us human in the current state of evolution we’re at. As we evolve further maybe sadness becomes as arcane a construct as bear baiting or slavery, but till then we soldier on united and yet strangely divided in a sad race towards a state of happiness.
I would love to know your thoughts on this contentious and very simplistic post and appreciate that there is a huge level of complexity that is being ignored here. I just wonder if the lucky majority who aren’t medically diagnosed as sad, are indeed chasing an ephemeral happiness that they already possess. Answers in the comment box below please.
Monday 23 August 2010
Ride on time
Last week the BBC documentary Vision of The Future on the box (http://preview.tinyurl.com/2pgdc5) suggested that people in their fifties or sixties today could live to be a healthy hundred and fifty. That’s Madonna sorted then.
The interesting question is to imagine a world where the technology was already in existence. What shape or form would that world take, if say Mary Whitehouse was still alive and healthy enough to continue playing her vitriolic role as a social and moral guardian. The mind boggles as there are so many greats and not so greats that have withered and declined as their organic faculties have struggled to keep pace. What kind of a world would it be a hundred years from now if Madonna was singing her swan song and would we still care? Would the rush of thought and culture, that is ushered in through the natural order of things, slow down as gridlock commences because the older generation are not ready to pass on the baton for a long time? After all power is only reluctantly passed on when the physically weakened are unable to keep in step with the times.
The other interesting thought is who will be given access to extend their life? In the current context there is the balance and pay off between time and money (in the richer world). If time was less finite than it is, would it replace money as the transaction vehicle for the future? So would an ageing population get access to the life extending technology in return for continuing to work till they were a hundred and twenty? That would be a fair trade off for economies in the West and China as they struggle to keep up with the more demographically youthful Latin American and South Asian market economies. How would the portfolio career withstand this change? Would we return to job for life and if so would that be a stultified existence or would there be enough opportunities for furnishing a portfolio career? The likely scenario is a stratification of working paths: both a job for life and the portfolio career would exist side by side and it would be a case of ‘horses for courses’; markets permitting.
Marketing wise, where would the ‘empty nester’; ‘silver surfer’ marketing opportunities disappear to? As we get healthier for longer and accrue more golden years how will we spend, live and eat and will we choose to have babies later in life? What will happen in the workplace, when we realise that we’re here to stay will we be less rushed in our approach to the career ladder? Most important of all what will happen to the youth and where will their place be in all of this? Will our present obsession with youth and beauty be replaced by a veneration of experience when youth and beauty become ubiquitous?
Answers in the comment box below please and if any one has mastered the space time continuum and spotted a peek at our parallel selves, pray do tell. Your secret will be safe with us.
The interesting question is to imagine a world where the technology was already in existence. What shape or form would that world take, if say Mary Whitehouse was still alive and healthy enough to continue playing her vitriolic role as a social and moral guardian. The mind boggles as there are so many greats and not so greats that have withered and declined as their organic faculties have struggled to keep pace. What kind of a world would it be a hundred years from now if Madonna was singing her swan song and would we still care? Would the rush of thought and culture, that is ushered in through the natural order of things, slow down as gridlock commences because the older generation are not ready to pass on the baton for a long time? After all power is only reluctantly passed on when the physically weakened are unable to keep in step with the times.
The other interesting thought is who will be given access to extend their life? In the current context there is the balance and pay off between time and money (in the richer world). If time was less finite than it is, would it replace money as the transaction vehicle for the future? So would an ageing population get access to the life extending technology in return for continuing to work till they were a hundred and twenty? That would be a fair trade off for economies in the West and China as they struggle to keep up with the more demographically youthful Latin American and South Asian market economies. How would the portfolio career withstand this change? Would we return to job for life and if so would that be a stultified existence or would there be enough opportunities for furnishing a portfolio career? The likely scenario is a stratification of working paths: both a job for life and the portfolio career would exist side by side and it would be a case of ‘horses for courses’; markets permitting.
Marketing wise, where would the ‘empty nester’; ‘silver surfer’ marketing opportunities disappear to? As we get healthier for longer and accrue more golden years how will we spend, live and eat and will we choose to have babies later in life? What will happen in the workplace, when we realise that we’re here to stay will we be less rushed in our approach to the career ladder? Most important of all what will happen to the youth and where will their place be in all of this? Will our present obsession with youth and beauty be replaced by a veneration of experience when youth and beauty become ubiquitous?
Answers in the comment box below please and if any one has mastered the space time continuum and spotted a peek at our parallel selves, pray do tell. Your secret will be safe with us.
Friday 20 August 2010
China in your hand (apologies to Carol Decker)
We hurtled down a rocky path and even the hill hardy battered jeep groaned in protest. The rain grew stronger and soon lapped at our six pairs of ankles in the old jeep; we soldiered on. It was 1986 and in our usual state of bravado we had decided that on our trekking trip to the mountains, we would get to the Chinese border to, get this: buy erasers and pencils to fill our Donald Duck magnetic pencil boxes. We were early teenagers desperate to acquire coveted Chinese erasers that we could swap for championship striker marbles.
After an exhausting three hour border procedure designed to remind us that we were to be subservient to the vastly superior People’s Republic, we were greeted by its first citizen. It was a mountain dog who with his assorted coterie crossed the borders as their whim took them, if they fancied their chicken steamed or fried they were on the right side of the border and when the call of the curry became too strong to resist, they crossed back into India.
The village was tiny and the track muddy but a few larger houses were freshly painted in white and feted with bright red flags: Government buildings. One of these was the store which our guide took us to. Even then the marvel of Chinese manufacturing engulfed our senses: six different types of pencils, banks of Hello Kitty erasers rejected by American importers sat in empty oil tins, large plaid printed hard covered notebooks sniffed imperiously at us from the sample glass cases and the mercantile communists demanded to know if we were aware of their minimum purchase requirements. They looked rather bemusedly at our individualism as we stepped up to negotiate our own orders, and advised us to club together to meet the minimum.
Out in the street, clutching our purchases in red paper bags the dogs were the only denizens of the village, the locals seemed curiously absent till we spotted a hidden square. The people sat in odd clumps repairing cycle tires and no one talked. There was an odd industrious air that was totally missing the usual jocular and noisy camaraderie ever present on Indian workshop floors. A few vacant and dismissive glances at us were all we merited. The wet towers of tyres and dripping broad hats suggested that the workers had continued working through the rain in this open square. Their stoic silence shushed our noisy schoolboy chatter and we reverted to library behaviour pointing at a stray chicken and whispering at the impressive mounds of cycle tires on display.
We wanted to stop for some lunch but it seemed that lunch was not on offer even for paying foreigners. As we walked through I felt a prickle on the back of my neck and a strange sense of dull hostility from the silent streets and dark doorways along our path. Even the sun seemed to prefer the company of the large clouds which seemed to race northward away from the Indian border. Our guide hurried us on, no doubt eager to make his way back to his cronies at the border with his bag of fermented brew that he had brought out with him after he had slipped into a doorway in a lean to at the back of store. As we drove away, I turned around and saw the dogs’ race alongside our jeep. A narrow eyed child plump cheeked but strangely narrow framed had toddled to the side of our path and a pair of determined hands pulled it out of sight more worried by its observations of us than cleaning the dried stalactites which hung from below its nostrils.
Across the border we were greeted by three urchins, the guide’s cronies and a blaring transistor. The sky was blue, the sun hot and the smell of mustard seed and spring greens on flat griddles was in the air. We tightened our grip on our paper bags to make sure that they did not get contaminated by the pungency of turmeric and cumin, as our precious stash would need to hold onto its aloof and damp desirability in order to trade well. Twenty four years later, when I read this article in today’s Economist http://tinyurl.com/36mng4s I was reminded of that peculiar day.
After an exhausting three hour border procedure designed to remind us that we were to be subservient to the vastly superior People’s Republic, we were greeted by its first citizen. It was a mountain dog who with his assorted coterie crossed the borders as their whim took them, if they fancied their chicken steamed or fried they were on the right side of the border and when the call of the curry became too strong to resist, they crossed back into India.
The village was tiny and the track muddy but a few larger houses were freshly painted in white and feted with bright red flags: Government buildings. One of these was the store which our guide took us to. Even then the marvel of Chinese manufacturing engulfed our senses: six different types of pencils, banks of Hello Kitty erasers rejected by American importers sat in empty oil tins, large plaid printed hard covered notebooks sniffed imperiously at us from the sample glass cases and the mercantile communists demanded to know if we were aware of their minimum purchase requirements. They looked rather bemusedly at our individualism as we stepped up to negotiate our own orders, and advised us to club together to meet the minimum.
Out in the street, clutching our purchases in red paper bags the dogs were the only denizens of the village, the locals seemed curiously absent till we spotted a hidden square. The people sat in odd clumps repairing cycle tires and no one talked. There was an odd industrious air that was totally missing the usual jocular and noisy camaraderie ever present on Indian workshop floors. A few vacant and dismissive glances at us were all we merited. The wet towers of tyres and dripping broad hats suggested that the workers had continued working through the rain in this open square. Their stoic silence shushed our noisy schoolboy chatter and we reverted to library behaviour pointing at a stray chicken and whispering at the impressive mounds of cycle tires on display.
We wanted to stop for some lunch but it seemed that lunch was not on offer even for paying foreigners. As we walked through I felt a prickle on the back of my neck and a strange sense of dull hostility from the silent streets and dark doorways along our path. Even the sun seemed to prefer the company of the large clouds which seemed to race northward away from the Indian border. Our guide hurried us on, no doubt eager to make his way back to his cronies at the border with his bag of fermented brew that he had brought out with him after he had slipped into a doorway in a lean to at the back of store. As we drove away, I turned around and saw the dogs’ race alongside our jeep. A narrow eyed child plump cheeked but strangely narrow framed had toddled to the side of our path and a pair of determined hands pulled it out of sight more worried by its observations of us than cleaning the dried stalactites which hung from below its nostrils.
Across the border we were greeted by three urchins, the guide’s cronies and a blaring transistor. The sky was blue, the sun hot and the smell of mustard seed and spring greens on flat griddles was in the air. We tightened our grip on our paper bags to make sure that they did not get contaminated by the pungency of turmeric and cumin, as our precious stash would need to hold onto its aloof and damp desirability in order to trade well. Twenty four years later, when I read this article in today’s Economist http://tinyurl.com/36mng4s I was reminded of that peculiar day.
Thursday 19 August 2010
The fate of books (and homo sapiens?)
The SeeWell isn't in sync today and so I'm unable to access my skyfiles which means I cannot access this particularly interesting novel called Indefinite Leave to Remain (www.michaelbraga.com) which I am told was circulated five decades ago. I shout at the Well but that sentient is as always inscrutable. Its shields are up though which means it is reading my anger levels and preparing to be lashed out at in frustration by me, one of the few scribers left. There used to be many of us but that was before the paper run of '19. The toofans that year had been fierce and the flooding of the islands had decided it, POCE (pulp of coniferous origin) was instantly declared a classified resource and all production or use of it ceased. To make sure things stayed that way every old papyrus, bound scroll and those BOOKS were secured in the womb of the Mankind Project. Now my handiwork can only be glimpsed at virtually through Skyfiles. Still Skyfile's a grand service to be running just for little old me with one foot in each era. My first present was an old bound piece of pulped tree to skim through for my Professor of Human Sciences and my last present was a Halucin implant that attempted to transport my meagre memories into TI or total immersion where the rest of humanity dwells these days. It even came with a free TI on Midnights Children that schooling classic that has been on Curriculum for over three decades. Aah well I prefer to glance over and absorb pictures and letters and not be drowned in moving aural and olfactory experiences that require me to boot-down after each silo-ed sensory layer comes crashing into my consciousness. Their large, heavy and dense constructs upsets my fragile webbed interface for I am after all only a first generation SD (sentient scanning device) created just before the Singularity...
Wednesday 18 August 2010
Night swimming deserves a quiet night..
Wolves, faeries and dragons surround me and the wolf man throws his head back to howl at the moon at my feet but it’s not a howl I hear rather a shrill buzz, buzz, buzz…
Eyes thick with sleep cower within their heavy lidded prisons and a clumsy hand reaches out to an i-phone that dances as it buzzes on the bedside table. Its bright light blazes the thick veil off my eyes and the dark room is lit by this dancing torch. Wearily I look at the fascia and see the words unknown just before the phone stops its dance at the edge of the table preventing the first instance (in my limited experience anyway) of death by dancing. Turning over into a twisted duvet and burrowing under pillows I slip into the lair of wolves, dragons and faeries and the buzz, buzz, buzz starts again..
A dull pressure cresting my brow and knotting at my temples means that the caller will get the full force of my ire. Armed with my irritation and cloaked in indignance I reach for the dancing device and bark into it.
“What?”
A mechanical transatlantic voice asks me if I am aware of the savings I can make; and before I can hear another word, I let out the howl the wolf was meant to make. I press at the keypad to see if it would connect me to a homo-sapien who would be ready like the moon to receive the howls that are waiting in the pit of my stomach but each option I press sends me to another automaton and for the sake of my neighbours the howling remains unsounded. Anger turns to incredulity for a brief moment: who, why, what, how could telemarketing have got so desperate? Meaningless conjecturing is instantly replaced with a fresh wave of rage that then comes boomeranging back at me. So much for all those countless online registrations forms filled by me which insisted that the field for my mobile phone number was compulsory. Greed to get my hands on the last pair of tickets to an underground event or the only remaining voucher for a discount expiring in minutes leads to a unknown call from a robot in a different space-time dimension.
Wide awake at three in the morning I daren’t to go to sleep as this new event seems specifically designed to occur when I hit REM. So I stay awake and watch the moonlight hit the water outside and throw crested light and dark striations across the pale bedroom walls. The trees outside are silent in the still heat and the restless spirit of night tangles me into its own special embrace. At the window I look out to see a city that is asleep for that one hour in the day when the denizens of club-ville have caught their last taxi home and the milk vans and HGV drivers are yet to sail past the ringed avenue that circles the centre of this agitated metropolis.
I flick on Spotify and create a new playlist starting with Night Swimming by REM (http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8pbvbz) that seems fairly appropriate, but my dear readers what songs would you add to this playlist for the sleepless?
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Tuesday 17 August 2010
Tips for the budding ( writers that is) from the London Writers Cafe
Last night I went to my first meet up event for writers organised by the London Writers Cafe (http://www.meetup.com/londonwriterscafe/) a great resource for writers at all levels. There was a panel with 3 published authors and an editor from a publishing house.
Leigh Russell was on first and her energy and drive for writing resonated with my approach. She bypassed agents and sent her first book to a publisher which resulted in a meeting three weeks later and a signing. Now she has two books published ( her first only came out in June 2009) and a further one out next June plus three more works in progress-inspirational:) As if this wasn't enough she is a one woman PR and events machine traipsing to libraries and book shops to push the book out through signings and events and when that's all done there's still no resting to be done for she is online blogging ( http://leighrussell.blogspot.com/) and meeting people.Her quote "When you start writing you realise that life becomes either writing or thinking about writing"-so true , terrifying and inspirational at the same time.
Next we met lovely Sue Moorcroft -another hard grafter who had to publish 89 short stories before she climbed onto the ladder of published novelist. Her account of getting an opportunity to pitch for a how to book on writing romantic fiction involved a chance encounter and three bottles of wine-say no more. Truly network orientated and driven to make this a paying career Sue has been and is I believe a teacher of writing, a writer of short stories, serials, romantic fiction and now self help books as well as a blogger and tweeter.Sue's blog is full of handy tips and hints ( she promises) and news of competitions take a peek at http://suemoorcroft.wordpress.com/
By the time we got onto Kaz Mahoney an enthusiast of all things vampirical, mythological and magical we loved her account of how her partner marched her off to a cafe at age 33 (soz Kaz) with the order to "write something" after weeks of her moaning that she was too old to be a writer -Exactly what all writers need at the start, that firm or brutal nudge that sends us over the edge into a crazy obsession that takes over our life.Again here we had bundles of energy, stories and a opportunity in the now defunct Murder One bookshop that led to her publishing a short story in a Vampire anthology.You can learn more about her forays into dressing up for an Italian meal with her publisher at http://www.kazmahoney.com/blog/
Then we got to the dreaded publisher who was lovely and not terrifying at all . From a small imprint at Harper Collins called Blue Door she gave us the authors dream a tip that made the event so worth it-http://www.authonomy.com/ Once you visit this website if you are an aspiring writer your aspiration will coalesce into inspiration when you see what's available there.
So there you have it -my contribution to writerville-get writing folks:)
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Leigh Russell was on first and her energy and drive for writing resonated with my approach. She bypassed agents and sent her first book to a publisher which resulted in a meeting three weeks later and a signing. Now she has two books published ( her first only came out in June 2009) and a further one out next June plus three more works in progress-inspirational:) As if this wasn't enough she is a one woman PR and events machine traipsing to libraries and book shops to push the book out through signings and events and when that's all done there's still no resting to be done for she is online blogging ( http://leighrussell.blogspot.com/) and meeting people.Her quote "When you start writing you realise that life becomes either writing or thinking about writing"-so true , terrifying and inspirational at the same time.
Next we met lovely Sue Moorcroft -another hard grafter who had to publish 89 short stories before she climbed onto the ladder of published novelist. Her account of getting an opportunity to pitch for a how to book on writing romantic fiction involved a chance encounter and three bottles of wine-say no more. Truly network orientated and driven to make this a paying career Sue has been and is I believe a teacher of writing, a writer of short stories, serials, romantic fiction and now self help books as well as a blogger and tweeter.Sue's blog is full of handy tips and hints ( she promises) and news of competitions take a peek at http://suemoorcroft.wordpress.com/
By the time we got onto Kaz Mahoney an enthusiast of all things vampirical, mythological and magical we loved her account of how her partner marched her off to a cafe at age 33 (soz Kaz) with the order to "write something" after weeks of her moaning that she was too old to be a writer -Exactly what all writers need at the start, that firm or brutal nudge that sends us over the edge into a crazy obsession that takes over our life.Again here we had bundles of energy, stories and a opportunity in the now defunct Murder One bookshop that led to her publishing a short story in a Vampire anthology.You can learn more about her forays into dressing up for an Italian meal with her publisher at http://www.kazmahoney.com/blog/
Then we got to the dreaded publisher who was lovely and not terrifying at all . From a small imprint at Harper Collins called Blue Door she gave us the authors dream a tip that made the event so worth it-http://www.authonomy.com/ Once you visit this website if you are an aspiring writer your aspiration will coalesce into inspiration when you see what's available there.
So there you have it -my contribution to writerville-get writing folks:)
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Monday 16 August 2010
Take me back to summertime this time ( St.Etienne)
The last two weeks of summer in the office are bliss. The daily number of emails shrink while the 'off the hook' phone appears comatose. Getting on the tube's a doddle with seats to sit on and even the lunchtime options expand as the cabinet at EAT still has my favourite toasted sandwich waiting for me at three pm.
Come September it changes:schools will fling open their gates to a horde of reluctant children who leave their relieved parents behind to clog up the tubes and grab my favourite EAT sandwich before I even get there.
Work returns to it's chain emailing frenzy and earnest keepers of kingdoms rattle their keys and sabres when the threat of 'cross functional' working rears it's innocent head.The bare desks start to fill with towers of 'project' printouts and late afternoon trans pacific conference calls keep your ear engaged till dusk veils the City skyline. Back come the floods of earnest analysis attributing every fractional percentage of growth to a justification of effort without ever questioning why the lack of the same effort during the summer did not result in the organisation collapsing like a soufflé when an oven door is unwittingly opened too early.
Until then the ping pong table in the parks waiting a second player, my sandwich waits graciously and with a handful of emails to attend to I can be home with the sun at it's late afternoon apex and have a life after.
If only work was about truth and effort where it was needed it would be summer in the office all year round. Till then it's a fortnight of focus and fort holding till the work expanders return.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Come September it changes:schools will fling open their gates to a horde of reluctant children who leave their relieved parents behind to clog up the tubes and grab my favourite EAT sandwich before I even get there.
Work returns to it's chain emailing frenzy and earnest keepers of kingdoms rattle their keys and sabres when the threat of 'cross functional' working rears it's innocent head.The bare desks start to fill with towers of 'project' printouts and late afternoon trans pacific conference calls keep your ear engaged till dusk veils the City skyline. Back come the floods of earnest analysis attributing every fractional percentage of growth to a justification of effort without ever questioning why the lack of the same effort during the summer did not result in the organisation collapsing like a soufflé when an oven door is unwittingly opened too early.
Until then the ping pong table in the parks waiting a second player, my sandwich waits graciously and with a handful of emails to attend to I can be home with the sun at it's late afternoon apex and have a life after.
If only work was about truth and effort where it was needed it would be summer in the office all year round. Till then it's a fortnight of focus and fort holding till the work expanders return.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Sunday 15 August 2010
The darkest hour is just before dawn ( thanks to Mama Cass)
Silence reigns over a Sunday Dawn that is only met by the sound of rushing water from a fountain and a whisper from the breeze travelling through the trees,
In this beautiful darkness it'd hard to be
opinionated or even hold on to an issue. I decide to go for a Tim Burton ( noted filmmaker of Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd etc who has moved to London from LA and walks from Hampstead to the City in the early hours looking for inspiration).
The black pavement shimmers in sodium orange pools under the avuncular gaze of their steel watchers.I decide to head right down Moorgate to avoid the dregs of madness that threaten from the western edges of Shoreditch.
The pavement is glistening chocolate and I walk past dark glass and alabaster edifices with cavernous lobbies,steel entrance barriers, drooping hothouse flower arrangements, made to order corporate art and sleeping security guards.
Two White sixteen wheelers whizz past bearing their offerings to the hungry lanes of the supermarket who wait to be occupied by salad leaves or chilled ravioli.A night bus flashes it's strip lit blue interior with chattering office cleaners who ignore the slumped figures of Bacchus' children who lie scattered around them after returning from the
battle of the dance or pub floor.
Then the velvet cloak of silence resumes.
Above me, a persistent hand starts pulling away skeins of darkness to reveal a lighter umber and cerulean that portents a dark dawn. Underfoot something magical is happening as the cracked cement gives way to an intricate black and White Italianate chequered mosaic. I walk down this marchpane alley surrounded by timber and brick renditions of Dickens curiosity shop; and I arrive in a dazzling courtyard
floodlit to show off it's black and White pied design. On all sides stand the excessively ornate serried columns and arched windows of guildhall who watch me with the weight of age and wisdom. I slip out to be embraced by a mile long twenty first century under construction regimented parade of piazza, arcade, global HQ, exchange and trading floors. Deep in their foundations are the stratified and ossified
remains of two thousand year old piazza, Roman empire HQ,exchanges and markets for slaves and sorghum.
As the feeble luminous light struggles to backlight the dark massing of cloud the ancient city soothes my fluttering consciousness. For some inexplicable reason this sodden damp square mile with it's short statured river folk colonised by patrician Romans, sturdier Angles,Jutes and Saxons and then by adventurers, wanderers and the dispossessed,this little
square mile has endured it's occupation and casts an
ironic and sometimes sardonic glance at its present occupants.
A circle of squawking seagulls foretell a rainy morning and the gentle lap of the river pushes me back across London Bridge and away from the younger hamlets of the South.
I head back to find fresh waves of drunken revellers stumbling toward decisions between dietary needs and the need to be transported away to their suburban vapidity. Their raucousness is joined by vans of topiary and horticulture heading East to possess their weekly Flower Market territory and the spell of night is broken. The harsh weak grey of morning turns alabaster edifices into rain streaked stone and toughened green glass and the chocolate pavement dissolves into a slick cratered pavement interrupted by dips, kerbside skirting and cast iron Victorian sealed portals to the underworld.
I pick my way past the lonely copy of the Standard dancing in wild abandon at the bus stop and head to a backlit screen of light to trap the recently departed magic on bits and bytes for my patient readers- happy Sunday.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
In this beautiful darkness it'd hard to be
opinionated or even hold on to an issue. I decide to go for a Tim Burton ( noted filmmaker of Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd etc who has moved to London from LA and walks from Hampstead to the City in the early hours looking for inspiration).
The black pavement shimmers in sodium orange pools under the avuncular gaze of their steel watchers.I decide to head right down Moorgate to avoid the dregs of madness that threaten from the western edges of Shoreditch.
The pavement is glistening chocolate and I walk past dark glass and alabaster edifices with cavernous lobbies,steel entrance barriers, drooping hothouse flower arrangements, made to order corporate art and sleeping security guards.
Two White sixteen wheelers whizz past bearing their offerings to the hungry lanes of the supermarket who wait to be occupied by salad leaves or chilled ravioli.A night bus flashes it's strip lit blue interior with chattering office cleaners who ignore the slumped figures of Bacchus' children who lie scattered around them after returning from the
battle of the dance or pub floor.
Then the velvet cloak of silence resumes.
Above me, a persistent hand starts pulling away skeins of darkness to reveal a lighter umber and cerulean that portents a dark dawn. Underfoot something magical is happening as the cracked cement gives way to an intricate black and White Italianate chequered mosaic. I walk down this marchpane alley surrounded by timber and brick renditions of Dickens curiosity shop; and I arrive in a dazzling courtyard
floodlit to show off it's black and White pied design. On all sides stand the excessively ornate serried columns and arched windows of guildhall who watch me with the weight of age and wisdom. I slip out to be embraced by a mile long twenty first century under construction regimented parade of piazza, arcade, global HQ, exchange and trading floors. Deep in their foundations are the stratified and ossified
remains of two thousand year old piazza, Roman empire HQ,exchanges and markets for slaves and sorghum.
As the feeble luminous light struggles to backlight the dark massing of cloud the ancient city soothes my fluttering consciousness. For some inexplicable reason this sodden damp square mile with it's short statured river folk colonised by patrician Romans, sturdier Angles,Jutes and Saxons and then by adventurers, wanderers and the dispossessed,this little
square mile has endured it's occupation and casts an
ironic and sometimes sardonic glance at its present occupants.
A circle of squawking seagulls foretell a rainy morning and the gentle lap of the river pushes me back across London Bridge and away from the younger hamlets of the South.
I head back to find fresh waves of drunken revellers stumbling toward decisions between dietary needs and the need to be transported away to their suburban vapidity. Their raucousness is joined by vans of topiary and horticulture heading East to possess their weekly Flower Market territory and the spell of night is broken. The harsh weak grey of morning turns alabaster edifices into rain streaked stone and toughened green glass and the chocolate pavement dissolves into a slick cratered pavement interrupted by dips, kerbside skirting and cast iron Victorian sealed portals to the underworld.
I pick my way past the lonely copy of the Standard dancing in wild abandon at the bus stop and head to a backlit screen of light to trap the recently departed magic on bits and bytes for my patient readers- happy Sunday.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Saturday 14 August 2010
Gourmandicious
Does anything at a primeval level satisfy us more than an open fridge door with the light shining on a smorgasbord of goodies. I can put up with intolerances and allergies that straying from our ancestral meat n two veg diets brings in exchange for the cornucopia of global goodies in my fridge and spice trough. Today I'm faced with choices as diverse as Turkish sucuk sausages and Halloumi to dried Iranian orange peel and lime powder and coffee coloured Mexican ancho and pasilla dried chillies which are crackling indignantly at a pack of Lebanese Za'atar jostling for space. And that's just what's at the top of the trove.
With respect for our fragile eco infrastructure I buy seasonal fruit & greens and use dried foreign spices or make my own mixes when I have the time. But the main reason for today's blog is to fête the little feted greengrocer and street market vendor. Lately Saturday afternoons have been about getting a barrowful of red peppers and tomatoes, quartering and deseeding them putting them in a hot oven for ten minutes then turning the heat off and leaving them in the gently cooling oven all night.
After a martini fuelled evening I'm often in my kitchen at dawn on a Saturday freeing peppers from their shrivelled skins and drowning shrunken and mellowed-out dried tomatoes into a Tupperware pool of herbaceous oil (dried lemon thyme or basil mostly).
That done I retire to bed as the edge of the darkness is teased by a sprightly gold band that promises much but delivers yet another rainy day. I rest blessed that we are fortunate to live in a world that is rich in food
and the exchange of cultures thankful that while many go hungry their number is diminishing each day as market economies the world over are compensating for the inadequacies of government.
Now the purpose of this blog was to inspire readers to raid the market vendors late afternoon when the call of
the beer proves too hard for them to resist. That's when 16 Hass avocados can be yours for the price of 3 in a supermarket or two gold coins will fetch you a dozen red peppers. Like me you may even end up with two kilos of cherry tomatoes, a box of strawberries,three bunches of parsley, mint and coriander and a dozen limes for a measly gold coin and a shrapnel of silver. When a box of cherries is thrown in for good measure my evenings 'real work' is done in front of a laptop with a small chalky log of goats cheese taking the edge off my palate reeling from the brutal sweetness of summer cherries. Soft shards of cheese fall onto a white napkin running with red cherry juice while I manipulate an XL sheet with rows that stretch a metre across and down.
When I'm working on PowerPoint in the office a cheeky tub of drained oven dried tomatoes are paired with a toasted pitta, a smear of humus, mashed avocado and fresh cherry tomatoes and as I gulp this tomato juice sprays the office furniture which is hurriedly Flashed by me before the complaining cleaner arrives.
My favourite snack is partaken of when I'm writing this blog though.That's when the red scorched peppers come out with toothpicks and a creamy soft cheese like Bel Paese or even good old Boursin. A pepper bite interrupted by a garrulous n louche soft cheese helps the words flow and makes me a very happy man . While I eat I take a sneak peek at my neighbours highly venerated restaurant blog http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/ and think that it's time I invited them for supper.Then again celebrated food writers that they are it's either LA or Sweden or the remote foothills of Spain or Hampstead for them each weekend while I munch contentedly through my street market give aways as I industriously work through my projects at the office or at my special desk.
Now if only when I was growing up, my parents had told me that life was going to turn out a bowl of cherries I would not be left with the irrational guilt that always lurks at the heart of my pleasure fuelled days, just like a sharp edge to a stone that catches you as you sink your little grinders into the soft wet pillow of a cherry.
Dear readers do add comments to the bottom of this blog and share your favourite snacks with me whether they are Pot Noodles with a dollop of Marmite or a peanut butter,banana and set honey fried brioche or my mothers strange combination of linseed,flaxseed,beetroot and salt and vinegar crisps ( she's well past the change of life so should know better) DO SHARE YOUR FAVOURITE SNACKS BELOW- the grosser the better.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
With respect for our fragile eco infrastructure I buy seasonal fruit & greens and use dried foreign spices or make my own mixes when I have the time. But the main reason for today's blog is to fête the little feted greengrocer and street market vendor. Lately Saturday afternoons have been about getting a barrowful of red peppers and tomatoes, quartering and deseeding them putting them in a hot oven for ten minutes then turning the heat off and leaving them in the gently cooling oven all night.
After a martini fuelled evening I'm often in my kitchen at dawn on a Saturday freeing peppers from their shrivelled skins and drowning shrunken and mellowed-out dried tomatoes into a Tupperware pool of herbaceous oil (dried lemon thyme or basil mostly).
That done I retire to bed as the edge of the darkness is teased by a sprightly gold band that promises much but delivers yet another rainy day. I rest blessed that we are fortunate to live in a world that is rich in food
and the exchange of cultures thankful that while many go hungry their number is diminishing each day as market economies the world over are compensating for the inadequacies of government.
Now the purpose of this blog was to inspire readers to raid the market vendors late afternoon when the call of
the beer proves too hard for them to resist. That's when 16 Hass avocados can be yours for the price of 3 in a supermarket or two gold coins will fetch you a dozen red peppers. Like me you may even end up with two kilos of cherry tomatoes, a box of strawberries,three bunches of parsley, mint and coriander and a dozen limes for a measly gold coin and a shrapnel of silver. When a box of cherries is thrown in for good measure my evenings 'real work' is done in front of a laptop with a small chalky log of goats cheese taking the edge off my palate reeling from the brutal sweetness of summer cherries. Soft shards of cheese fall onto a white napkin running with red cherry juice while I manipulate an XL sheet with rows that stretch a metre across and down.
When I'm working on PowerPoint in the office a cheeky tub of drained oven dried tomatoes are paired with a toasted pitta, a smear of humus, mashed avocado and fresh cherry tomatoes and as I gulp this tomato juice sprays the office furniture which is hurriedly Flashed by me before the complaining cleaner arrives.
My favourite snack is partaken of when I'm writing this blog though.That's when the red scorched peppers come out with toothpicks and a creamy soft cheese like Bel Paese or even good old Boursin. A pepper bite interrupted by a garrulous n louche soft cheese helps the words flow and makes me a very happy man . While I eat I take a sneak peek at my neighbours highly venerated restaurant blog http://www.doshermanos.co.uk/ and think that it's time I invited them for supper.Then again celebrated food writers that they are it's either LA or Sweden or the remote foothills of Spain or Hampstead for them each weekend while I munch contentedly through my street market give aways as I industriously work through my projects at the office or at my special desk.
Now if only when I was growing up, my parents had told me that life was going to turn out a bowl of cherries I would not be left with the irrational guilt that always lurks at the heart of my pleasure fuelled days, just like a sharp edge to a stone that catches you as you sink your little grinders into the soft wet pillow of a cherry.
Dear readers do add comments to the bottom of this blog and share your favourite snacks with me whether they are Pot Noodles with a dollop of Marmite or a peanut butter,banana and set honey fried brioche or my mothers strange combination of linseed,flaxseed,beetroot and salt and vinegar crisps ( she's well past the change of life so should know better) DO SHARE YOUR FAVOURITE SNACKS BELOW- the grosser the better.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Friday 13 August 2010
They pimped my PM!
I love The Economist-besides the witty reportage and reading stories and forecasts that break in the national papers much later I love their covers.
Take a look at David Camerons pimped up image on this weeks cover here:
http://www.economist.com/node/16791720
I mean that must be the most radical pimping makeover Cameron's ever had. Funnily he doesn't look too bad for it.Kinda suits him.
Now if our well meaning albeit hot tempered Gordon had been pimped in a similiar fashion: lawdy-lawdy, one can only wonder at the result-Pennywise the clown anyone?
Conversely, the leader of the Lib dem (Mr. Bland and totally unmemorable) may not do so badly either if subjected to a radical makeover a-la Cameron in this image.
Flippancy aside, its an interesting article and proves the point that no one loves a recession better than the Tories. A great chance for them to unleash their long pent up fire and brimstone on us mere UK mortals who've been slumbering in the arms of Bacchus trying to cope with the hangover after the party. Having said that it's their time so let them shine and let's hope the swingeing cuts are applied at the right points. We hope that with their sharp instruments of cessation they display the expertise of a veteran chinese acupuncturist instead of acting like a teenage hunter in the woods armed with a blunt pen knife facing a wild boar.
On that note my latest bug bear happens to be unions who go on strike when pay rises are not forthcoming. Hello! Do they not know most of us are on pay freezes and pay cuts leave alone pay rises?
When the staff at BA and Unite together bring down our national carrier it will be the union officals who will still have a job while the "comrades" or "colleagues" they seek to represent will be left in the cold on the dole.
Why, oh why, oh why in this day and age, with minimum wage protections and with employment law being so comprehensive in this country, do we still need unions?
In my limited opinion, unions ought to exist to counsel workers who have lost their jobs by offering them training and support to find new ones. It's a coaching and support facility that's required but until we root out the self interested militants in charge of unions that day is far away.
If you want to see how our self serving and well paid union leaders behave in public take a look at this http://tinyurl.com/29qfohl
Still I know deep down that one day love will find its way; albeit a teensy weensy bit later for some people than for the rest of us:).
Gosh it's all turned politically intense on my blog today, dear reader.I blame the heavy swollen thunderclouds and feeble mid teens temperature that have turned our London summer into a total washout.
On a more cheery note my dear bloggistas (is that even a word?) it's almost time for the weekend and I am heading for Martiniville!
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Take a look at David Camerons pimped up image on this weeks cover here:
http://www.economist.com/node/16791720
I mean that must be the most radical pimping makeover Cameron's ever had. Funnily he doesn't look too bad for it.Kinda suits him.
Now if our well meaning albeit hot tempered Gordon had been pimped in a similiar fashion: lawdy-lawdy, one can only wonder at the result-Pennywise the clown anyone?
Conversely, the leader of the Lib dem (Mr. Bland and totally unmemorable) may not do so badly either if subjected to a radical makeover a-la Cameron in this image.
Flippancy aside, its an interesting article and proves the point that no one loves a recession better than the Tories. A great chance for them to unleash their long pent up fire and brimstone on us mere UK mortals who've been slumbering in the arms of Bacchus trying to cope with the hangover after the party. Having said that it's their time so let them shine and let's hope the swingeing cuts are applied at the right points. We hope that with their sharp instruments of cessation they display the expertise of a veteran chinese acupuncturist instead of acting like a teenage hunter in the woods armed with a blunt pen knife facing a wild boar.
On that note my latest bug bear happens to be unions who go on strike when pay rises are not forthcoming. Hello! Do they not know most of us are on pay freezes and pay cuts leave alone pay rises?
When the staff at BA and Unite together bring down our national carrier it will be the union officals who will still have a job while the "comrades" or "colleagues" they seek to represent will be left in the cold on the dole.
Why, oh why, oh why in this day and age, with minimum wage protections and with employment law being so comprehensive in this country, do we still need unions?
In my limited opinion, unions ought to exist to counsel workers who have lost their jobs by offering them training and support to find new ones. It's a coaching and support facility that's required but until we root out the self interested militants in charge of unions that day is far away.
If you want to see how our self serving and well paid union leaders behave in public take a look at this http://tinyurl.com/29qfohl
Still I know deep down that one day love will find its way; albeit a teensy weensy bit later for some people than for the rest of us:).
Gosh it's all turned politically intense on my blog today, dear reader.I blame the heavy swollen thunderclouds and feeble mid teens temperature that have turned our London summer into a total washout.
On a more cheery note my dear bloggistas (is that even a word?) it's almost time for the weekend and I am heading for Martiniville!
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Thursday 12 August 2010
Skinny Roll ups
This brief post is not about narcotics but rather the current trend for men to flaunt their ankles. Yes after the low hanging crotch exposing gangster waistlines as brought out by the late and great Alexander McQueen; nowadays it's all about rolling your skinny chino and jeans to show off a bulging ankle.
Not sure what this achieves as even the most effete waif in skinny roll ups doesn't come close to a Japanese Geisha flashing her ankle.
What will we have next - a male hijab with a daring slit for eyes?
Hoxton is over ridden with young (and old) men who should know better flashing pedals and ankle as they cycle past balancing their copy of Shortlist while they bark into their iPhones.
A sneak peek at the Winter offerings in the High Street show tidy turnups on new range denim and tacky khakis. That's one way to deal with the mountain of denim and khaki in third world warehouses awaiting the attention of tiny fingers to fashion them into High Street pret a porter at a knock down single digit give away prices at Primarni.
It's enough to lament McQueens passing and Tom Fords obsession with making dull films.We need a designer with a propensity for the testicular to design for real men whose ankles are not the most attractive part of their anatomy
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Not sure what this achieves as even the most effete waif in skinny roll ups doesn't come close to a Japanese Geisha flashing her ankle.
What will we have next - a male hijab with a daring slit for eyes?
Hoxton is over ridden with young (and old) men who should know better flashing pedals and ankle as they cycle past balancing their copy of Shortlist while they bark into their iPhones.
A sneak peek at the Winter offerings in the High Street show tidy turnups on new range denim and tacky khakis. That's one way to deal with the mountain of denim and khaki in third world warehouses awaiting the attention of tiny fingers to fashion them into High Street pret a porter at a knock down single digit give away prices at Primarni.
It's enough to lament McQueens passing and Tom Fords obsession with making dull films.We need a designer with a propensity for the testicular to design for real men whose ankles are not the most attractive part of their anatomy
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Tuesday 10 August 2010
I can't stand the rain against my window (especially when I don't know it's coming)
Is anyone aware that the multi million pounds spent on the Met Office is not spent on weather forecasting? They have decided thanks to the chief tsar at the Met to focus their energies and efforts on studying global warming and to abandon medium and long range forecasts.
Now that would be okay if their short term five day forecasts were not so wildly inaccurate. In a country that is meteorologically obsessed we now function sans a Met Office. Most basket countries in dictatorial regimes still have their Met office trundling out their, varying in accuracy, predictions for the weather but we're not. Once again a tsar takes hostage of public funds and uses it to fuel their own passions.
Before anyone jumps in, I am comitted to the study of global warming however we still need a service that predicts the weather with some degree of accuracy. As the planets ecosystem changes the short term weather will get even more unpredictable and to cope we must develop tools and better ways of statistically trending and forecasting the daily changes in our weather.
The defining moment came when the Met Office inaccurately predicted a BBQ summer in 2009 and it turned into one of the wettest summers on record. A hue and cry (as always) ensued in the press and what happened?
Was an inquiry raised, was their budget slashed? Oh no, like a precocious two year old they stamped their heels and declared that they were no longer going to publish long term forecasts. Then it was uncovered that their tsar was focused on studying global warming.
They got away with it.
Meanwhile a small six man team of weather junkies accurately predicts and publishes the medium and long term weather now (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259685/UK-hottest-summer-predicts-Positive-Weather-Solutions.html) Where is their funding, I hear you ask?
Now a lot of people may disagree with the slash and burn policies of the current government but rather than the Film Council if there's one place to slash and burn budgets surely it's here?
Peace and Love to the Gods of the weatherx
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
PS Apologies for a quote from the Daily Wail sorry Daily Mail
Now that would be okay if their short term five day forecasts were not so wildly inaccurate. In a country that is meteorologically obsessed we now function sans a Met Office. Most basket countries in dictatorial regimes still have their Met office trundling out their, varying in accuracy, predictions for the weather but we're not. Once again a tsar takes hostage of public funds and uses it to fuel their own passions.
Before anyone jumps in, I am comitted to the study of global warming however we still need a service that predicts the weather with some degree of accuracy. As the planets ecosystem changes the short term weather will get even more unpredictable and to cope we must develop tools and better ways of statistically trending and forecasting the daily changes in our weather.
The defining moment came when the Met Office inaccurately predicted a BBQ summer in 2009 and it turned into one of the wettest summers on record. A hue and cry (as always) ensued in the press and what happened?
Was an inquiry raised, was their budget slashed? Oh no, like a precocious two year old they stamped their heels and declared that they were no longer going to publish long term forecasts. Then it was uncovered that their tsar was focused on studying global warming.
They got away with it.
Meanwhile a small six man team of weather junkies accurately predicts and publishes the medium and long term weather now (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1259685/UK-hottest-summer-predicts-Positive-Weather-Solutions.html) Where is their funding, I hear you ask?
Now a lot of people may disagree with the slash and burn policies of the current government but rather than the Film Council if there's one place to slash and burn budgets surely it's here?
Peace and Love to the Gods of the weatherx
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
PS Apologies for a quote from the Daily Wail sorry Daily Mail
Monday 9 August 2010
Is that blood on the diamond or nail polish?
Thirteen years later we have a has-been actress, a supermodel in need of anger management, an ex employee and a few dirty stones..At surface level the words "who cares" springs to mind...But then under those dirty stones lie the darkness of the human soul, the supposed ignorance of consequences and somewhere between those connections the truth..
That aside, diamonds are a powerful inspiration for a short story as with all rocks clawed from the earth they demand a terrifying price that anyone who has worked in darkness under the earth can testify to. They remain a contradiction mired in dark earth and yet a perfect prism for a light that never reaches it as it sleeps trapped in rock.
What caused their elevation to the super status of desirability and where did our love affair begin before De beers decided that it was the best way to market this lustrous crystal?
The sometimes reliable Wikipedia informs us that three thousand years ago in Northern India diamonds were venerated for their unbreakability as religious icons and from there on they ruled over the clan of gems.
And once again we have it: our compulsive attraction for an unbreakable, infinite strength leads us to venerate a carbon based rock that lies trapped in inhospitable and difficult terrain until it is freed as a dirty stone in a bag surreptitiously handed at midnight or as a polished crystal set in precious metal that sparkles on a confident finger at a social gala or on a newlywed's tremulous finger as it is banded for the first time in an outward display of bonded affection.
Diamonds are forever unless we wean ourselves off our addiction to infallibility first.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
That aside, diamonds are a powerful inspiration for a short story as with all rocks clawed from the earth they demand a terrifying price that anyone who has worked in darkness under the earth can testify to. They remain a contradiction mired in dark earth and yet a perfect prism for a light that never reaches it as it sleeps trapped in rock.
What caused their elevation to the super status of desirability and where did our love affair begin before De beers decided that it was the best way to market this lustrous crystal?
The sometimes reliable Wikipedia informs us that three thousand years ago in Northern India diamonds were venerated for their unbreakability as religious icons and from there on they ruled over the clan of gems.
And once again we have it: our compulsive attraction for an unbreakable, infinite strength leads us to venerate a carbon based rock that lies trapped in inhospitable and difficult terrain until it is freed as a dirty stone in a bag surreptitiously handed at midnight or as a polished crystal set in precious metal that sparkles on a confident finger at a social gala or on a newlywed's tremulous finger as it is banded for the first time in an outward display of bonded affection.
Diamonds are forever unless we wean ourselves off our addiction to infallibility first.
Beauty is love and peace is fine.
Succumbation..If thats a word I have
I have succumbed to the inevitable and started a blog Still not sure if this is going to go the way of my tweets or if it will be as prolific as my Facebook (5 ASUD's) well anyway here goes... This blog will be fictional and contain magical expansions of the observed
While it will be written with love there will be some isms and prejudices and rants and if you can bear with that you will find magic and peace at the end..
Oh and yes there will be food and typos ..lots of them
So who should succumb to reading this ongoing capitualtion to the world of blogging?
People who like people but cannot be arsed to talk on the phone, read another email/tweet/status update in the 5 minutes of "me-time" they have.. If you are looking to relax, kick back and lift your spirits with some inspired fictional or fictionalised ramblings and if you can look past typos from a passionately clumsy typist..read on..
Remember beauty is love and peace is fine..
While it will be written with love there will be some isms and prejudices and rants and if you can bear with that you will find magic and peace at the end..
Oh and yes there will be food and typos ..lots of them
So who should succumb to reading this ongoing capitualtion to the world of blogging?
People who like people but cannot be arsed to talk on the phone, read another email/tweet/status update in the 5 minutes of "me-time" they have.. If you are looking to relax, kick back and lift your spirits with some inspired fictional or fictionalised ramblings and if you can look past typos from a passionately clumsy typist..read on..
Remember beauty is love and peace is fine..
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