Saturday 26 December 2009

Delhi

With stomachs full from a gluttonous Christmas the day before, and with heads sore from a little too much wine and good cheer, on 26th Dec we boarded a plane to Delhi.

I'm pleased to report that we have finally arrived in Delhi, safe and sound. There was a moment or two on the plane, where I thought pilot may make an emergency landing in order to eject the two very drunk gentlemen seated next to me, but happily we continued on and safely landed.

I would tell you my first impressions of Delhi, but I'm still trying to recover from the spectacle of the two men next to me, who each managed in the space of about two hours to down 10 mini bottles of whiskey and secrete another 10 in the pockets of their jackets. I'm not sure what Delhi Customs made of them when they arrived.

The two men spoke limited English, but nonetheless made quite a go of chatting up the airline hostesses. In fact, I think the language barrier helped - the one hostess who spoke Hindi and so understood what the men were saying gave them very short shrift. The others were much more polite. The more the men drank, the more determined they became about securing every freebie available. They started collecting airplane headsets, blankets and pillows and stuffing them into their bags. Best of all, they got into a heated discussion with the airline staff about the children's backpacks and colouring books. I gather they were insisting that, notwithstanding they fact they were grown men who had no children with them, they too ought to be given the children's play activities. Eventually the staff gave in to the latter request, perhaps in the hope that some activities would shut the men up.

But undoubtedly bizarre thing about these men was that one of them had the largest thumb I have ever seen. You know those over sized foam hands people sometimes wear to sporting games? Well, imagine a thumb that size on an ordinary hand. It was, perhaps, 5 times the size of a normal thumb. I couldn't stop staring at it. Every other digit on both hands was perfectly well proportioned and normal. This was a monster of a thumb. It was almost as large as the rest of his entire hand.

So that was our first taste of India. Over sized fingers. No doubt the trip will only get better from here...

Tuesday 22 December 2009

The weather

The old joke has always been that the English love nothing more than to talk about the weather. Until I came to England, I thought that really was a joke, much like Australians saying "throw another shrimp on the barbie". How wrong I was! During my three-and-something years of being in England, I've had more conversations about the weather than I ever thought possible. And, to be frank, England has some of the dullest weather in all of the world. Regardless of the season, you can almost be sure it will be cloudy, damp and miserable. Accordingly, most of the conversations about the weather tend to go as follows:

"hmmm, really is awful out there"
-- "yes, it is"
"could be worse, I guess"
-- "true, it's not raining too heavily"

Weather seems to be the default conversation in the work lift. The unfortunate thing is that even though we don't have a set starting time, by force of habit, people at my office tend to arrive at work at the same time every morning. That means they use the same lift at the same time every morning. So I'm almost always at the lift at 9.34am, along with the other 9.34am people. This means, of course, that I end up having the same conversation about the weather with the same people on a daily basis. And since the weather doesn't tend to change from day-to-day, this becomes rather repetitive. Sometimes someone will try and spice it up a bit, and it will go:

"hmmm, really is awful out there"
-- "yes, it is"
"could be worse, I guess"
-- "true. Just as well it's not because I forgot my umbrella!"

But that is usually as exciting as it gets.

This week, however, the weather really has been something to talk about, as it has bucketed down on a daily basis with snow. This time, the weather has even made front page news. However (and I never thought I'd say this), after several days of snow, ice and cold, I'm starting to get a bit sick of it. Shaking ice of shoes loses its novelty value pretty quickly. Already I'm longing to go back to my lift conversations about the drizzle.

Friday 18 December 2009

A week of theatre (and paparazzi)


Knowing that the festive season was almost upon us, and that the only culture in London would soon consist solely of pantos, badly sung Christmas carols and drunken city workers dancing in the street, I tried to indulge in a bit of high culture last week. First, G and I went off to see the excellent play Red, at the Donmar. Then C and I went to see Keira Knightly in her West End debut in Misanthrope. G had other plans that night and sadly couldn't join us, although he did very kindly offer to give me 50 quid if during the play I shouted out to Ms Knightly that she looks like she needs to eat a burger. Strangely, I declined that offer, although I was fascinated upon seeing Ms Knightly in the flesh to discover that it's possible to be so devoid of fat that your ribs and collarbones create shadows on your chest.


After the show, C and I wandered past the stage door around which a small crowd was gathering. We quickly worked out they were there to see Ms Knightly take the four steps necessary to get into the large black vehicle waiting outside. C insisted we join them, in the hope we might get our programme signed to sell it and make enough money for another trip to Seville. It was at that point that our cultured evening degenerated and I found myself living the life of an OK! paparazzo.

We waited outside in the cold along with the rest of the small crowd for Ms Knightly to appear. It soon dawned on us that we were the only celebrity stalking novices in the crowd. Our first clue was when the fellow next to me pulled out a stack of identical head shots of Ms Knightly from his backpack. He seemed to be running a small business, trading in signed photos of celebrities. It was also evident when the woman to my right, in her very fine ugg boots and miniskirt, complained to her friend they were having to wait a lot longer this time than when they saw "Judes" at the stage door. She might have been referring to Judy Dench, although I rather suspect it was a Mr Law for whom she'd previously waited in the cold to see.

To our left a paparazzo was holding court, with a group of young admirers quizzing him about his "celebrity lifestyle". We had the pleasure of overhearing snippets of his speeches, told in a thick cockney accent with a cigarette permanently hanging from his lip.

"I've just come from doin' Posh, y'know. Yep, just saw Posh. Typical day."

"y'know, Keira, she wears the same clothes every day she comes out that stage door. Only thing that might change is 'er scarf. You watch. It'll be blue jeans and a tan coat. She does it so we won't take photos, or won't sell 'em. But I'm still 'ere! Got 'er every night, I 'ave."

"yep, I've got Kylie. Y'know, who do you think was more famous in Oz then, Kylie or Dannie? ... Nah, was Dannie. She was on some show, Young Talent Time, y'see. We all think Kylie was the famous one, and Dannie got famous through 'er, but it was Dannie first."

And then Ms Knightly appeared. The paparazzo, without dropping the cigarette from his lips, picked up his camera and snapped furiously at Ms Knightly who was, it turned out, wearing blue jeans and a tan coat. The crowd went wild. All 15 of them. At that point, I realised I was no match for the die-hard fans, and took a few steps back to watch the mayhem. Unfortunately, C was also no match, and was quickly pushed out of the pack by the surge of the small but dedicated crowd. Up close, Ms Knightly was no larger in life than she was on the stage. In any event, she was only there for a surly moment, enough to sign only one or two programmes. During that moment, I briefly contemplated taking G up on his bet, and shouting to her to eat a burger. After realising she was surrounded with burly bodyguards, however, I changed my mind and simply stood along with the die-hard fans, paparazzo and small-time businessmen and watched as she disappeared from view behind the black tinted windows of her car. Then, in silence, as though we had just been witness to a moment for which great solemnity and respect was required, the paparazzo, businessmen, fans and C and I quietly packed up and dispersed into the London night.


Wednesday 9 December 2009

Trains. Again.


These days, I seem to spend most of my time in trains. Unfortunately, most of these trains are not going anywhere exotic but are destined for somewhere in the Midlands. And I'm not going there for pleasure, but am usually carrying an over sized suitcase full of documents, trying hard to look vaguely professional and not trip over my heels as I make my way to a court room.

Train travel in England, as you will have gathered from previous posts, isn't great at the best of times. At the worst, it's positively horrid. Usually, the reason it is so horrid is because of the other people on the train. This is why I now travel first class whenever possible. The service, food and seats are no better than standard class; the real benefit of first class and the reason I now make my employer spend the money on it is simply because the chavs cannot afford to do so. The extra money is spent to ensure a chav-free zone.

Unfortunately, not all trains have a first class carriage. My train home to London from a work trip in Lincoln this week ought to have had a first class carriage. In fact, I believe it did, because I had a ticket for it. Unfortunately, that wasn't the train I got on. The train I instead (accidentally) got on was the express to Nottingham. That train did not have a first class carriage. However, that was the least of my worries, as I found myself having to do a detour through middle England, from Lincoln to Nottingham to Grantham, in order finally to get to London. If you want to see the path I followed, click here.

I only realised I was on the express to Nottingham when the conductor on the train came to collect my ticket. Admittedly, by that point, several announcements had been made over the load-speaker, presumably informing all passengers where the train was going. But, while I was conscious of announcements in a general sense, the content of them had not sunk in. The conductor, therefore, understandably gave me a look of bemusement when he took my ticket and asked if I was, in fact, trying to get to London, as I appeared to be on the wrong train. Upon hearing that I was trying to get to London the conductor, quite rightly, assumed I was a fool, and wrote the details of how to get to London from Nottingham in large print on the back of my ticket. He also gave me a short, but very loud, lecture in geography, to the amusement of several other passengers.

It was a very long trip home. This was made even worse by the fact that sitting opposite me was a woman who seemed to think it appropriate to wear baggy boxer shorts underneath a skirt and to sit with her legs up, at waist level, on the chair next to her. I spent the trip home trying to avert my eyes and erase the picture of the woman's pubic hair from my memory. It is a picture that even now, several days later, I still haven't succeeded in erasing. I'm hopeful that the upcoming xmas festivities (involving, as they do, copious amounts of booze) will assist in this regard. I will keep you posted.

Monday 7 December 2009

Katie Price (aka Jordan)

It always puzzles me when the English tell me that Australia is a sexist country. It's puzzling in part because most of the English who say this have never been to Australia, and are basing their opinions on what they read in the Mail or the Sun. It is puzzling also because next to the article in the Sun they have just read will most likely be a picture of a woman with her boobs out. And it is puzzling because in England, unlike (so far as I'm aware) in Australia, 63% of girls say they would rather be a glamour (i.e. boob) model than a doctor or teacher. But perhaps it is most puzzling because of the popularity of the ubiquitous Katie Price.
Many Australians have never heard of Katie Price, but over here she's regarded as mum of the year, business woman of the year and all-round role model. All this from a soft (and not so soft) porn career as "Jordan". In fact, Katie Price is widely regarded as a feminist hero. I could rant about this for hours, but have found someone who can do it more eloquently here.

Monday 30 November 2009

My sorry tale


This weekend gone by was miserable. My repeated viewing of X-Factor and other such reality TV shows has taught me that without public catharsis, or "closure", one can never move on from traumatic events. So, here is my sorry tale.
G and I were invited to lunch by a work colleague of G's, who lives in Essex. This should have been a happy event but, sadly, the trains were largely not running this weekend ("engineering work"). Our journey to Essex for lunch therefore began at 10.15 and lasted until 1 pm. It consisted of:

- a walk;
- tube ride;
- exchange at information desk with rude train information lady;
- further tube ride;
- wait in the cold for a "replacement train service" (ie, a bus);
- long journey on bus;
- short journey on train; and
- walk.

I should add that the weather this weekend was unbelievably crappy, and so our waits involved standing in the rain and wind, trying vainly to stop our umbrellas from turning inside out.

The ensuing lunch was lovely but somewhat marred by the knowledge we were going to have to repeat our journey to get home. And I also went through lunch rather traumatised by something that happened on the train leg of the journey.

I'm going to have to ask for indulgence here, as my story can't be understood unless you have some understanding of English train toilets. Thankfully, on this (as every) topic, there are numerous pictures available on the Internet and I have attached a couple.







The above shows the basic train toilet module. It's a unisex toilet. As you will see, the toilet faces the door. The sink is to the left of the toilet, although you can't see it in these photos. The door to the toilet cubicle is quite wide. The door opens and shuts by way of an electronic mechanism and you can't open or shut it manually. To go into the toilet you press the "open" button to the left of the door. The door then very slowly moves on its casings to the open position. Once inside, you press the "close" button on the inside of the door. You then press the "lock" button. This means that no one else can open the door from the outside (a trite fact, but one that it seems not everyone appreciates).
I avoid using train toilets at all costs. They are fraught with problems. My experience of communal male/female toilets has taught me that many men can't aim. That, even on a stationary toilet, some men have difficulties. Those difficulties are magnified on a toilet inside a moving train. And some men and women are just grotty. However, on this occasion, after a three hour journey and two coffees to keep me awake, I had no choice.
The train was packed, and outside the toilet cubicle, in the cabin, were lots of men and women standing as they couldn't get a seat in the train.
I went to the toilet cubicle and pressed the "open" button next to the door. The door then slowly opened to reveal a man peeing. Evidently, this man did not grasp the necessity of pressing the "lock" button. Worse still, he wasn't peeing in the toilet. Instead, he had chosen to pee in the handbasin. If he'd been peeing in the toilet, like a normal male, he would have been able to see the door open. As it was, peeing in the basin meant his back was to the door as it very slowly opened in full view of the numerous commuters standing outside it.
I have previously blogged about the complete lack of emotion shown on trains in England. This was an exception to that rule. There were gasps of shock as the man pissing in the sink was put on display. Worst of all, the noise of the gasps of shock, horror and then laughter drew commuters from the adjoining carriage to the area outside the toilet, to see what the fuss was about. All this while the door slowly opened and the man inside was completely oblivious. I think he may have had an IPod in his ears or something, as it was apparent he didn't hear the commotion. Meanwhile, I was standing by the toilet door frantically hitting the "close" button. Unfortunately, I discovered that the train toilet door won't begin to close until after it is fully open.
While I stood there panicking, hitting the close button, the commuters turned on me. Questions must have been asked as to how this had happened, and I heard a few very loud "she opened the door on him" and saw fingers jabbing the air in front of my face.
I think the man in the cubicle then realised what was going on, and I heard a shout from inside. So I panicked and I ran. Unfortunately, I mean this literally. I went from a standing still position to sprinting out of the carriage, which is quite a difficult thing to do, and causes some commotion in and of itself. Particularly when you have my lack of coordination. The unintended consequence of this, of course, was that anyone who hadn't already been drawn to look at the toilet area by all the noise now did so, and the laughter stopped being about the man peeing in the sink and I'm sure it was directed at the crazy running girl who opened the door on him.
I still hadn't recovered from the shock of the incident when we arrived in Essex. Worst of all, I couldn't even debrief by telling the group about the incident, thinking it perhaps not appropriate to relay a toilet story over lunch when first meeting a senior work colleague of G's.
I have another train journey to Shropshire this Thursday. I'm travelling for work, so first class. Nonetheless, I am going to avoid using the toilet.

Saturday 28 November 2009

Seville, the Midlands and Barristers

Seemingly only moments after landing in Heathrow last week, I was off again.

Last weekend was spent with C having a girls' weekend in Seville. Seville is the capital of flamenco dancing and tapas. C and I enjoyed the latter far too much, and the weekend was spent largely moving from tapas bar to tapas bar, drinking and eating. We also tried to enjoy the flamenco dancing but, I must confess, it wasn't really my thing. I found it hard to take seriously the flamboyant costumes and jerky movements combined with the overly stern expressions of the dancers.

Monday I was back in London and then that afternoon was off to Oxford University, to conduct a recruiting talk for a bunch of eager students. Or that was the plan. In fact, only 12 students turned up and most of those were from Oxford Brookes (the former polytech up the road from Oxford University), rather than Oxford University. Monday night I was then off to the midlands to attend a trial.

There is a misconception that all barristers in England are wine quaffing, Telegraph reading toffs. My barrister (let's call him Joe) is the antithesis of this. In my defense, he came recommended to me. I was not warned that his personality is as big as his shiny bald head and 6ft 5 frame and as subtle as his navy pinstriped suit, waistcoat and clashing blue tie.

Joe is very proud to have been educated in the school of hard knocks. This being, he made clear, the infinitely superior school to any of the universities in which I and many other lawyers have been schooled. He calls all women "darlin'" and refers to himself in the third person. Within five minutes of meeting the man, I knew his life story. I knew that he hadn't gone to uni until his late 20s, and before his career in the law was a union rep. I had also seen photos of his wife, two children and even his dead dog (the photo, thankfully, was taken before poor fido died). I knew of the threats he made to his 16-year-old daugher's boyfriend to break his legs should he be so foolish as to expect the daughter to show an inch of flesh let alone remove her chastity belt. In short, I knew far more about the man than I know about many of my closest friends. Thankfully Joe didn't expect the same level of disclosure from me. He was too busy talking to ask me any questions. The only exception to that was when he asked me if I had or would have children. My response was the usual "no, and I have no immediate plans either" to which he responded "just as well, because I'm rather busy today."

It was an entire day that we had to spend together. Perhaps the worst part was lunch. Or at least it was my lunch - it turned out Joe is trying to lose some weight from his large frame. While I ate my cheesy tuna melt, wiping the excess oil from my chin, he happily told me about his diet, which consists of eating nothing whatsoever during the day and then eating whatever he fancies at night. It soon emerged that his evening meal contains more calories than most of us eat in a week, as he complained to me that the night before he had to send his burger and chips back to the restaurant, as he discovered his burger missing the requested bacon, egg and cheese and his chip portion to be rather small in size. I'm therefore not entirely sure how this diet works but had, by this point, realised that Joe was not fond of questions that might hint at criticism of his methods or madness.

It may not surprise you to hear that the trial did not go brilliantly. Our judge liked Joe as much as I did, and made that quite plain during the course of the trial. The rest of the week has therefore consisted of me, back in London, frantically trying to organise new counsel and an appeal.

Thankfully my feet are now again on London soil for some time. Admittedly the soil is rather damp and cold at this time of year, but nonetheless it is nice to have my feet firmly planted on it for a week or two. It is also rather nice to know that Joe and I are no longer in the same borough and that I have left him safely in the midlands.

Sunday 15 November 2009

Good neighbours


It is often said that good fences make good neighbours (although by some conservative American judges, that phrase is quoted without the irony which Mr Frost intended). When you live in a flat, I'm not sure what makes a good neighbour. If you know, please tell me, because I suspect that very soon our neighbour downstairs may lose his patience with us.

It began with a flood. The installation of the new dishwasher in the flat did not go entirely well, and resulted in G being woken at 3 in the morning (I was thankfully away for work) by our neighbour, in his pyjamas, reporting that water was flooding through his ceiling, down his light fittings and into his kitchen and dining area. The water was promptly turned off and a plumber called. The plumber, in an impressive display of tact, then tightened a tap, explaining to G that you have to ensure the taps are turned tight before turning a dishwasher on. Apologies were made to the neighbour, a bottle of wine was offered and the disaster was over.

Then G's sister came to stay. We realised there were no curtains in the spare room in which she was to sleep, the window of which faces the street and is visible from the pavement. Thankfully, I craftily was able to piece together some make-do curtains out of two brightly coloured, fraying beach towels and some paper clips. Our neighbour did not complain, notwithstanding the fact that from the street our block of flats now looked like a squat for acid-dropping junkies.

When G's sister left, and we had bookshelves built in the sitting room, our neighbour didn't complain about the two-day long building project which involved banging and sawing that could be heard from one end of the building to the other. When we apologised to the neighbour for the noise, our neighbour simply shrugged, and said that he understood that every now and again renovations had to be undertaken.

Unfortunately, only a week later, when I was happily leaping about the sitting room to an aerobics video, we received a telephone call from our neighbour, who ever so politely told us that my exercise was causing his sitting room ceiling to vibrate and cracks to appear in it. He said that he didn't mind us doing aerobics in one of the (carpeted) bedrooms, but would it be possible for us not to do it on the floorboards in the sitting room, for fear his ceiling may collapse.

It is just as well our downstairs neighbour appears to be verging on being a saint, because whatever it is that makes good neighbours, we don't have it.

Wednesday 11 November 2009

coming home


G and I have returned from our sadly very brief holiday in Perth. We arrived back in London on Monday with golden tans, a stock of cherry ripes and tim tams and, less happily, terrifically bad jetlag. A few days on and we are returning to a pasty white colour, have consumed all the cherry ripes and tim tams but, happily, have almost recovered from the jet lag.

The trip did not get off to a brilliant start. The 22-hour flight from London to Perth is never pleasant, but this flight proved particularly bad. We were on Singapore Airlines, normally known (at least by me) for its great inflight entertainment, decent food and service. Sadly, perhaps because we had only paid 400 pounds each for these return flights, all of those aspects were missing. We found ourselves with a dire selection of movies; after trying (and abandoning) such cinematic delights as The Ugly Truth and The Time Traveller's Wife, I gave up on the inflight entertainment. I also discovered my newly purchased book was dreadful, so the flight was spent largely with me blankly looking at the back of the chair in front of me or trying to entice G into a game of I Spy (he refused, after pointing out that there are only so many times you can spy a chair, fold-up tray and seatbelt before the game becomes boring). G had also, with the best of intentions, requested a special meal to accommodate my seafood-eating vegetarianism. Unfortunately, rather than ordering the vegetarian meal for me, he ordered the seafood meal. As I discovered, this was a meal exclusively of seafood. And not just any seafood, but overcooked, inedible seafood. Given that in the current security-conscious climate, airplanes are unlikely to stock steak knives, I decided that eating my seafood meal would prove physically impossible, and so concentrated my efforts instead on stealing G's dessert and crackers. As a result of all of the above, I suspect that G's enjoyment of the flight was approximate with my own.

Thankfully the holiday in Perth was significantly better than our flight there. We celebrated our birthdays, caught up with dearly missed family and friends and succeeded in gorging ourselves on food and wine, thanks to those very kind family and friends. We were also able to reintroduce ourselves to an adorable niece and two nephews. Aside from a minor incident involving me setting off my uncle's house alarm by breaking into his house (who knew?) all went very smoothly.

While it was wonderful seeing our friends and family, I confess it was strange returning to Perth. It took a little while from when we arrived for me to acclimatise myself to the place. Being now used to the incredible human traffic in London, seeing entire streets devoid of any visible people took some getting used to. I also made the mistake of (very innocently) being surprised at a dinner party when someone mentioned the West Australian had a food critic, and before I could stop myself blurted out "but are there enough restaurants to justify a food critic?". Not surprisingly, that latter comment was not met well, and I quickly found myself trying to backtrack and explain, honestly, that what I meant was that in London, there's a new restaurant opening every minute due to the enormous population, but surely there couldn't be that many new restaurants opening every week in Perth. Admittedly, the comment made me sound like a pretentious tool. It also served to show me (and this is a lesson I ought to have learned by now) that I need to find a way of disconnecting that part of my brain that causes me to blurt out whatever I'm thinking without screening it for sense and soundness first.

I love Perth. I love the beach, I love the weather, and I love the sense of space (once I get used to it). But I have to confess, I missed London while I was gone. While I was very sad leaving Perth and my family and friends (and there were more than a few tears shed for those I was leaving behind), I was also looking forward to getting home to London. And for the first time, I realised I was calling London home and really meaning it.

Tuesday 27 October 2009

Drama


The last week has been one of drama. Admittedly, not mine, but rather I have watched others' dramas unfold before me on London stages.

First up was Life is a Dream, with Dominique West, which G and I saw at the Donmar. It was excellent and has received glowing reviews from people whose tastes are far more credible and reliable than mine. The Donmar is a tiny theatre in the West End and is one of our favourites. It's a not-for-profit theatre with seating for only 250 people. The seating is set around a small stage, and no matter where you are seated, you are close enough to the actors to be able to see every drop of sweat fall from their brows. The Donmar also gets excellent plays with terrific actors on its stage and the tickets are well-priced. The downside, of course, is that for these reasons it is a very popular theatre and you have to be on the telephone queue for tickets for shows the very minute the telephone lines open. Getting on that telephone queue is one of the few things that can make me get up early in the mornings, and so G and I are often fortunate to see plays at the Donmar.

One of the things that never ceases to entertain me about the Donmar is the sheer Englishness of its audience. No matter how amazing a play or actor, you will never, at the end of a show, hear a whoop, over-enthusiastic applause or see someone give the cast a standing ovation. The applause is always moderate and controlled, as is the audience. The last play we saw before Life is a Dream (a Streetcar Named Desire) had Jude Law in the audience, just four or so seats to the left of us. It was obvious from the ever-so-slightly raised eyebrows that the entire audience recognised Mr Law, but no one did anything to draw his attention or that might indicate to Mr Law that he had been noticed. This sort of behaviour is in stark contrast to the audiences of the big musicals, which are mostly comprised of tourists. From my experience (gained when I first arrived in London - now I avoid musicals like a plague) you can usually hear and feel the emotive nature of the musical audience the moment you take your seat. Seemingly each performance, no matter how appalling, is treated with whoops, whistles and standing ovations. This is particularly so for those musicals containing a "star". No matter how wooden an actor's acting or monotonous their monologues, if they have graced the cover of Hello! magazine, the audience seems to applaud and shout for them at the end of each show with rapturous delight. Were Mr Law to be spotted amongst such an audience I suspect he would soon find himself signing the body parts of various strange females from around the world. Although, judging from recent media reports, he doesn't seem adverse to fondling strange females' body parts.

Moving on from the Donmar, the other play I saw last week was Speaking in Tongues (better known as the play that was turned into the movie Lantana). Sadly, G decided he had had enough thespian delights for the week, and so declined an invitation to attend this with C and me. He missed out! It was excellent, especially for the price paid for the tickets. Taking advantage of the recession deals, for £20 each C and I had dinner and saw the show. Our cheap "restricted view" seats were upgraded to stalls and so we got to see all of the stage rather than, as we had been expecting, simply half an actor and a pillar.

Having sated my desire for theatre, I will be having a bit of a break now, as G and I head off to Perth tonight. Expect the blog to be silent for the next couple of weeks - with any luck, I will be having so much fun that I simply won't have an opportunity to update it!

Tuesday 20 October 2009

Things I've learned from the news

The last week has been a rather dull one; we finally had bookshelves erected in the sitting room, reorganised the house and started preparing ourselves for our trip to Australia next week. To sustain myself during this uncharacteristic period of domesticity, I have therefore been reading every paper online, from cover to cover (so to speak). And it is amazing how much you can learn from the newspapers.
This week, I've learned that men should always marry smart women and grow moustaches. Men do not care about looking good when they are in a relationship unless, of course, they are having an affair. Meanwhile, while all women want to eat cake, they should not delude themselves into thinking they can burn off those calories with a bit of exercise.
I've learned that the best way to irritate the clergy is to request they play Tina Turner at your funeral. On the topic of celebrities, some people will seemingly do anything for fame, even committing crimes to get on the news. However, we need not worry, because we have new supercops in the form of leeches. But if the current state of the world does depresses us, we should not expect to be able to take refuge in children's books. We can instead cheer ourselves up by peeking in on the world of fashion, a world that is very hard to take seriously.

Monday 19 October 2009

Why I still hate the Daily Mail

This article sums it up better than I can. I am, of course, referring to the horrible, homophobic, hateful bucket of bile served up by Jan Moir.

The only good aspect of this saga has been that it appears I was not alone in feeling repulsed by this material. It's good to see that people stand up against this nonsense.

Thursday 15 October 2009

some friends are bad


Last night G and I went to see Willy Mason at St Giles-in-the-fields. St Giles is a circa 18th century church, and so a very atmospheric venue suited to Willy's acoustic-style music.

It was a terrific gig. Actually, I should qualify that statement and say that it was almost a terrific gig. The detracting feature was Willy forcing us all to listen to what must be a friend/relative/drug creditor sing. I say that she must have had such a relationship to Willy because, quite frankly, if she did not there is no way I can believe he would subjected his audience to listening to her sing. Imagine the worst X-Factor contender you have ever heard and you'll be close to picturing this woman. Her music was terrible. I believe it was intended to be folksy, but could most kindly be described as spoken poetry, it was so flat and lifeless. The lyrics were no better. One painfully long song was to the effect: "I am a foal. A little horse, running on the field. I have a master." The song went on for some time, describing the little "pretty" foal. By the end some audience members were loudly booing. I'm also sure I heard a "you suck" shouted from the back row.

All of this served as a rather painful (for my ears) reminder: being kind is not always a good thing. Particularly if it means you agree to friends' requests to sing, even when they are manifestly unsuited to doing so.

Oh, and for those masochists out there, you can hear Willy's friend here.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

It's easy to be racist


The news in London has been dominated of late with stories of racism. One of those stories has come from Australia, with the rather surprising decision of the producers of Hey Hey it's Saturday to have performers on its Red Faces segment "black up". The other story has involved a reference by a Strictly Dancing contestant to a newly spray-tanned dancer looking like a "Paki". Both incidents have been defended (with varying degrees of success) as simply harmless jokes, with no racism intended.

Both incidents were, in my opinion, a result of some serious lapses in judgment. I do like an excuse to be judgmental and feel morally superior. Therefore, I tend to tut and shake my head with glee when I hear of the lapses of judgment of others. However, unfortunately, I have had to avoid the moral opprobrium I would typically display on reading these recent stories of racism. This is because I too have been guilty in the past of being a racist.

The first arguably racist display of mine was in 2004. G and I had bought our first home, a flat in the newly redeveloped East Perth. That part of East Perth used to be an inner-city semi-industrial area. The only people who lived there then made their beds in the doorways of the warehouses or, depending on how much they had drunk that night, on the floor. All that changed when the developers' bulldozers moved in, and turned the warehouses into smart apartments and manicured parks.

Being successful young lawyers (or rather, having just finished law degrees and so being rather too confident in our own abilities), G and I decided to execute the property purchase ourselves, and so duly found ourselves at the Land Titles Registry Office. I had six months more experience in law than G and so, quite naturally, took the lead in this whole process. I therefore dealt with the friendly Land Titles man behind the counter.

"Hmm, East Perth" he said, looking at my Title Deed. "That area's pretty smart now. But it used to be full of Coons. They did a good job getting rid of all those Coons. You don't see any of them there now."

This was, I confess, the first time I heard the term "coons". I therefore immediately assumed the man to be referring to a small (and possibly dangerous) marsupial. Accordingly I nodded approvingly and, not wanting to admit I had no idea what he was talking about, agreed it was good the Coons had gone. It was only when I walked out of the office that I noticed G standing, agog, next to me. G then kindly explained that by "coons" the man had been referring to Aboriginals.

The second incident of my racism was this year on a bus. G and I were travelling to London from Oxford. I heard the noise of a group of men in front of me, breaking the cardinal rule of English public transport and having a very loud conversation across the bus isle. I couldn't see these men but I could hear their conversation, punctuated by numerous "oohs" and "uhs". I turned to G and said (rather too loudly) that the men sounded like a group of monkeys. Again I saw G's agog expression, as G explained that (unknown to me) the men were of apparently Indian descent and that (also unknown to me) to call them monkeys was extremely racist.

I am not the only person to have been caught out being inadvertently racist. When I relayed the above story to my work colleagues the following day (no doubt in breach of our anti-racism work policy), I discovered that everyone had their own story of accidental racism. Perhaps the best was the story of a work supervisor who, being a bit of a fashionista, regularly used the expression "it's the new black!" when referring to anything about which she was fond. When trying to praise a new trainee, she told a group of people that "she's the new black!". As it happened, the trainee was, in fact, black. Someone in the group took offence to this description and the supervisor was promptly sent off on a equality training course.

Real racism is never funny. But knowing that I too have been guilty of it, despite having good intentions, I am going to withhold my judgment on the latest incidents.

Friday 9 October 2009

Death to the Pixies







When I was in primary school I was an avid watcher of movies like Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles and, later, Beverly Hills 90210. Like most tweens I laboured under the misapprehension that when I was a teenager, my life would be as exciting, my skin as clear and clothing as beautiful as the actors I was watching. No one told me, back then, that the actors playing teens were in fact in their 30s because, quite frankly, teenagers are, on the whole, an unattractive group. Most teens are beset by acne, an odd body odour, mood swings and have more metal in their mouths than Mr T had on his body. When I finally became a teen and discovered these rude truths, I felt justifiably angry and robbed of a life about which I had dreamed. Like most teens, I then retreated to my room to listen to music and complain about "the man", not to return for a few years. During those years of living in my cave, I discovered the Pixies. With the same passion with which I hated "the man" I loved the Pixies. I spent hours sitting in my room, listening to their acclaimed 1989 album, Doolittle, and singing along to every song, finding meaning in every word. It didn't matter that the Pixies formed in 1986, when I was only 5 years old. Nor did it matter that they disbanded in 1993, when I was 12, and so about the time I started listening to their albums. It just made my passion all the greater, knowing that the Pixies were both physically (being a Boston band) and temporally out of my reach.

In short, the passion with which I loved the Pixies was that passion that only a teenager has. The overwhelming, intoxicating and almost painful sort of passion that seems to dissipate from your body the day you can legally drink alcohol. While I am now passionate about such important things as a 10 course degustation with matching wines, it is unlikely to bring me to tears the way the pixies did. Or at least, the tears are more likely to have to do with the 10 glasses of wine than any overwhelming passion for the wine or food.

I still love the Pixies. Part of that is the music and part of it is the nostalgia - the moment I hear a Pixies song, it brings back waves of memory of the passion I had for the band as a teenager. I was therefore more than a little excited when I heard the Pixies were reforming in celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Doolittle, and touring through England to boot. The day tickets went on sale G and I were on the tickets phone queue with the best of them, and managed to purchase tickets within the ten minutes it took for the tickets to sell out.

Wednesday night was the big night, and to say I was excited is an understatement. I harnessed the spirit of my teenage self and, after downing a few drinks for encouragement, went to the Brixton Academy ready to dance and scream. And dance and scream I did. The crowd was mainly people my age and older - a crowd who largely abandoned their ties for the night to scream along to the songs and dance the night away. I was proudly at the front, still able to remember every word to every song. I left the gig utterly exhausted, drenched in sweat, with bruised ribs and a horse voice. It was everything I'd ever dreamed and more.

I'm not sad that I've lost the ability I had as a teenager to feel that overwhelming and intoxicating passion. Especially given that it came hand in hand with an overwhelming and intoxicating sense of angst and anger at the world. However, it was truly great to be able to relive a bit of that passion as an adult, and to have a toast to my teenage self as I screamed along to the Pixies on Wednesday night.

Monday 5 October 2009

Sharm el Sheik


G and I are back from a wonderful week's holiday in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. I would like to say that we immersed ourselves in Egyptian culture and traditions. In fact, we didn't leave the walls of the resort, finding ourselves enjoying the 8 swimming pools, private beach, crepe bars, ice cream stands and massages far too much to venture outside. Therefore, the only culture we absorbed were the Eastern European and German cultures, thanks to the other many weird and wonderful guests of the resort.

Amongst the cultural lessons learned, we discovered that the further East you go in Europe, the smaller and more outrageous men's bathing costumes become. While in the UK the bathing costumes are of an ordinary men's shorts' size, usually in muted colours, by Germany they have shrunk to very small and tight trunks, preferably in bright primary colours. By Russia, they have shrunk even further to minuscule speedo size, usually in lurid fluorescent colours, such as the man pictured above doing beach aerobics in fluorescent green speedos.

We also learned that there is a significant number of very white European men and woman who enjoy basking in the sun to an extreme degree; that when Berlisconi commented on Obama's "tan", he wasn't making an ill-advised joke, but having seen so many of his country men and women transform themselves from pasty white to brown perhaps really thought Obama's skin tone achievable to all. G and I received quizzical looks in response to our insistence on sitting in the shade, smothering ourselves in sunscreen and wearing floppy hats. While I lust for brown skin, I know my genetic limitations. The idea of shriveling my skin in the sun to the prune-like state required to achieve a deep brown did not seem worth it.

Finally, to my great joy and relief, I discovered that even the most beautiful and skinny Russian models have cellulite on their bottoms. I had more opportunities to examine bottoms than I wanted, thanks to the insistence of many a Russian on wearing thong/g-string bikinis.

Of course, we also managed to learn a little about Egypt. Or at least we learned that Egypt has a wine industry. It shouldn't. Nor should it produce beer or spirits. Unfortunately, it does.

All in all, it was a great holiday, with many valuable lessons learned.




Wednesday 23 September 2009

Why I hate the Mail


There are many things I love about my adopted city, such as the ability easily to attend the theatre, concerts and interesting pubs. I also love the ready availability of public transport and taxis. I am glad that tonight, for example, I can have dinner with some girl friends and not worry (unlike in Perth) that I will be unable to get home safely. I know that in London the buses will still be running, no matter how late I finish up. And, at worst, there are always plenty of taxis. It's not like Perth, where I may find myself standing on a windy street waiting for hours for the taxi I pre-booked to finally arrive. Generally, I love London.


Perhaps because I do love London, it makes me even angrier than it ought when London shows its ugly side. And, unfortunately, like every city it does have its ugly side. Often that ugly side is conveyed by the headlines on the front page of the Daily Mail.

I am proud to say I have never read the Mail. However, when travelling on the tube or bus, I am still assaulted by its headlines, which I assume give a general gist of the content of the publication. This morning, for instance, when travelling on the tube, I was confronted with the headline of a Mail held in another commuter's hand, reading in part "Baroness Shameless". Presumably the article was about the recent controversy to engulf the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland (controversy largely created by the Mail). In case you are not from England, and so have not seen the recent headlines, Baroness Scotland accidentally employed an illegal immigrant for six months as a housekeeper. She didn't keep a copy of the worker's identity documents, as required under a law that Baroness Scotland (rather unfortunately) had helped formulate when in the Home Office. As a result, she was fined £5,000 (a civil penalty). Baroness Scotland apologised, unreservedly. However, she then made the further mistake of trying to clear the myth that she had been convicted of a crime, by explaining the fine was a civil penalty, analogous to a fine for a failure to pay the congestion charge.

Admittedly, the mistake of failing to comply with the legislation was foolish. Baroness Scotland's attempt to then clear the confusion as to whether she had been convicted of a crime was also ill-advised. Nonetheless, both errors are arguably understandable. Particularly when Baroness Scotland is someone who is juggling a busy job with the pressures of family life. While I consider that law officers and government ministers should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us, I do not think they should be held to an impossibly high standard. And the backlash Baroness Scotland has had to face is over the top. Worst of all, some of the backlash is clearly racist and sexist. For example, the comments of the Timesonline reader who, in response to an article on the topic, wrote that Baroness Scotland should be fired because it was clear that she (as a black female) was only ever given the position of Attorney General due to positive discrimination!

I should be upfront about my own bias here and admit that I am a fan of Baroness Scotland. She's a hard working, dedicated law officer and, on top of that, is arguably the only person in the Labor government qualified and suited to the role of the Attorney General.

The headline about Baroness Scotland was not the only irritating headline the Daily Mail offered this morning. Below that headline appeared another: "why I hate feminism". I can only guess at the content of that article. Particularly knowing, as I do, that the Daily Mail insists that any woman photographed in the paper in relation to a story wear a skirt. If she happens to be wearing trousers, she will be asked to change into a skirt.

The worst part of all of this is that the Daily Mail is one of the most popular "newspapers" in England. And, guess who reads it? Primarily women.

Sometimes, I really do despair.


Friday 18 September 2009

Sunningdale



I have today returned from a work mandated five-day residential training course. It was a general course for new lawyers to the department, covering all sorts of issues new lawyers are likely to face throughout their working careers.

The course ran each day from around 9 am through to 6 pm, followed by a talk at 6.30 pm and dinner at 7 pm. It was five days of being lectured to and participating in group activities. And yes, it was as boring as it sounds.

Unfortunately, I have discovered that the older I get, the less I am able to mask my boredom. In particular, I have recently developed an awful habit of falling asleep the moment I become bored by something. This rather middle-aged-like habit means I now have carefully to consider my likely interest in an activity before I commit to it, as I have in the past managed to embarrass myself by sleeping through movies, plays and even parties. Perhaps the worst occasion was once when, during a very dull day at work, I popped off to the loo, only to later wake as my forehead hit the metal toilet-roll holder. I then had a rather large red mark on my forehead, which was difficult to explain to my colleagues.

Staying awake during the course was, therefore, a struggle. Several times I nodded off for a moment before regaining consciousness. At one point, during a particularly boring lecture, I succumbed entirely and fell fast asleep, for perhaps ten minutes or so. I had a rather bizarre dream involving a juicy red apple that the lecturer was trying to steal from me and awoke with a start, beginning to shout out the words “not my apple!”. Thankfully I only managed to get the “no” part of that statement out, before fully waking myself up. I then managed to hide the word behind a feigned coughing fit.

The upside to the course was that it was held on rather lovely grounds in Sunningdale. The facilities consisted of a large university-like set-up, tailor-made for such courses, with function rooms, a dining area and halls of residence.

I have attended a few residential training courses in my time. It’s an odd experience, as all participants find themselves spending 24-hours a day with one another. In many ways, the social dynamics are like those of school. This was particularly so with this course, where all of us were strangers at the beginning of the course. Much like school, therefore, the first few days were full of awkward getting-to-know you conversation. The geeks and bores were not, at least initially, identifiable. There were therefore the inevitable awkward moments of finding oneself stuck in an indeterminable conversation with an excruciating bore, while looking longingly at other course participants, seemingly having far more interesting conversations punctuated by bursts of laughter.

By the third day, the participants naturally divided, into the like-to-banter-and-drink group (the cool kids); the far-too-serious-and-earnest group (the geeks); the I’m-much-older-than-the-majority-of-participants group (OAP group); and the very-nice-but-a-little-bit-boring group (the blandies). My level of alcohol consumption meant that I was a member of the cool kids’ group, helping to prop up the bar of an evening. I must stress that the title “cool kids” is a self-appointed one, as such titles inevitably are. It is more than likely the case that someone from the blandies is currently blogging, referring to the "cool kids" as the obnoxious-drunkards-who-aren't-in-the-least-bit-funny group.

Nonetheless, I'm going to stick with the title "cool kids". Admittedly, when talking of a bunch of lawyers on a training course, it's all relative, and it therefore doesn't take that much to fall into the cool group. Nonetheless, it's so rare that the word cool even comes close to my name, that I'm going to claim this one.

It was with a little bit of sadness that my train pulled into London today, and I realised that I had left Sunningdale, and the moniker "cool" behind. Instead, it's back to work, napping and toilet-roll indentations in my forehead. But at least I have the memories ...

Saturday 12 September 2009

Rounds

According to drinkaware, one in four adults in England is a “hazardous” drinker. (This is, apparently, a rather more technical, and troubling, categorisation than ‘happy drunk’ or ‘angry drunk’). The government is regularly contemplating ways to curb drinking, from increasing the tax on a pint through to boring the public out of a desire to drink by education campaigns. In recent times, I have become something of a drinking expert (for research purposes only, of course) and have uncovered a hard truth: none of this will make a difference to the nation’s drinking problem. The real issue at the core of binge drinking is simple: rounds. Until we dismantle the seemingly ingrained culture in England of buying rounds at the pub, one in four adults will remain a hazardous drinker. And, indeed, I will be one of them.

Perhaps Australians are, by nature, a bit less organised and haphazard with their drinking. It is usual to buy your friends a drink and return the favour but, at least amongst my circle, there wasn’t a rigid approach to buying rounds for the group. This is in stark contrast to England. In England, everyone takes a turn buying a round for the group. And everyone keeps a close eye on whose round it is. If someone foolishly tries to depart the pub for the evening without taking their turn to purchase a round, there will be a few raised eyebrows or a pointed “on your way to the bar for your round, can you get me a …”

The system of rounds works quite well if there are only a couple of you: everyone has a drink, everyone buys a drink, and everyone goes home feeling jolly. However, when it’s a regular post-work drinks get-together, involving ten or so of you, the evening gets messy.

Being a petite 5ft 2 (and so having a proportionately petite liver), I’ve tried to escape from the rounds. I’ve tried to bow out at the first drink, insisting “I’m only having one tonight” and have bought my own. But it just doesn’t work. I might escape at the first drink, but before I’ve finished it someone will notice what I’m drinking and I’ll find another glass of the same thrust into my hand. And that’s it, I’m caught in the round. And once you’re in the round, there’s no escaping. No matter how many advertisements I see, telling me about the damage occurring to my liver, and no matter how expensive the pints become, the fear of raised eyebrows is going to mean I’m beholden to the round.

In short: it’s not me. I do not have an alcohol problem. I’m just a victim of English culture.

Monday 7 September 2009

DIY disasters

This weekend G and I decided to dip our toes into that national craze: DIY.

DIY is a British obsession. Every weekend seems to see Britons packing into their local B&Q to purchase the latest DIY accessories. And Mondays are therefore spent listening to colleagues trying to impress one another as they brag about the new terrace decks and the like that they erected over the weekend. The DIY craze is so rampant in this country, it extends beyond household renovations to include dentistry: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7881865.stm. G and I decided, however, to confine our initial DIY experiments to the house.

I will admit that, like many others in this country, I had been lulled into a false sense that DIY was easy and even rewarding. I blame the profusion of home improvement shows with their white teethed presenters. Watching Hot Property and other shows of its ilk made me think that I too could so easily single-handedly transform my home into a paradise (improving the value ten-fold of course). And, what's more, that I would find it enjoyable. Like those presenters, I could slip on a pair of very short denim shorts, white singlet and would begin sanding and drilling all while looking gorgeous and showing off my chemically whitened teeth. The fact I don't have chemically whitened teeth was the least of my problems in achieving this DIY dream, as I soon discovered.

Saturday was spent with G and I happily spending our hard-earned wages in our local DIY store and stocking up on all sorts of nuts, bolts, drill bits and hooks. Already we were brimming with pride at how we'd managed to transform ourselves from dull suited lawyers into DIY gods. We should have stopped there, really. Instead, we spent all of Sunday drilling, swearing, shouting, cutting ourselves and swearing some more. I suspect the DIY trend goes hand in hand with that other great trend in England - the rise of hooliganism. G and I both found ourselves needing a drink or ten and managing to construct entire sentences solely out of swear words. What was worse is that at the end of the day, for all our work, we had only a few crooked holes in the walls, a drill bit stuck in the wall, and three paintings still on the ground and not on the wall. And we felt like failures.

The media complains about magazines setting unrealistic and unobtainable standards of female beauty, but I think the real scourge on society is the unrealistic standards and expectations set by home improvement shows. It's time we took action! We'd be building barricades in the streets, if only we could manage to follow the F%$£*ing instruction manual...

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Notting Hill Carnival


I like to think that I'm cutting edge, a little bit alternative and funky. That I get the underground, the "hood" and I do not live a sheltered life. However, I suspect those statements are true only in the same way one could say it is true that The Brady Bunch explored the complexities of modern family life. While most who know me will have come to this realisation some time ago, I only arrived at it yesterday, at the Notting Hill Carnival.

The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event, which takes place over the Sunday and Monday of the Bank Holiday in August. It began in 1964, a year after the race riots. I understand that it started essentially in response to those riots, as a celebration of the Trinidad and Tobago Caribbean population, many of whom lived in and around Notting Hill. It is the largest street festival in Europe, attracting (on average ) 250,000 - 300,000 people on the Sunday and about double that on the Monday. It is a celebration of Caribbean food, music and culture and involves a large street parade full of colourful costumes and traditional dance. Or at least that's how it is advertised. In fact, as we discovered yesterday, the festival does have a colourful street parade, but that is overshadowed by the hoards of people on the streets (very few of whom appeared to be Caribbean) drinking, smoking weed and converting what is (at least during the rest of the year) a very nice and upper-middle class area into a warzone-meets-Woodstock. It was complete chaos. The "music" largely consisted of drunk people singing their own tunes. The ethnic food seemed to comprise a few grubby guys who had set up camp on the front verges of others' houses and were selling home-made jerk chicken for £8 a pop. As for the dancing… well, I saw a lot of drunk wobbling from side to side. And there was one girl who had propped against her a sign saying "will dance naked for drugs". I don't think that any of that falls into the definition of "traditional dance".

A group of us wandered around this chaos for a while. Initially, I rather innocently thought that this simply could not be the Carnival, and that at any second we would turn a corner and hit the "real" Carnival. I expected this to be more akin to those great Western Australian events: the Joondalup food festival; the Freo Sardine Festival and the East Perth food festival. All of these, of course, are very sedate middle-class affairs, involving people such as myself wandering from stall to stall, sampling the delicacies on offer and getting a bit tipsy from having one too many tasting glasses of wine.

Due to my conviction that the "real" Carnival was just around the corner, when a large group of 18 year-old men began bolting past us and down the street, I assumed they were simply heading to the "real" Carnival, and were just very eager not to miss the festivities there. I was therefore somewhat surprised when G pushed me against the wall, flattening me against it. I was somewhat outraged, too, as I had rather wanted either to follow the men or stop one of them, to find out where they were heading, so we could go there too. When I expressed my outrage at being prevented from this course of action, G (who has seen a few more episodes of The Wire than me, and who has also read some "crime genre" books in his lifetime) looked rather incredulously at me, pointing out that all of the men had been "brandishing" glass bottles above their heads and were clearly headed to a riot. I still refused to believe him, thinking it more likely the case that these men were wanting to recycle their bottles, and ensure they not get smashed as they headed to the "real festival". To my embarrassment, it shortly dawned on me that G was right on this one, as the police began to "kettle us" (at least I know some of the lingo!) and warned us there were riots happening around the coroner.

I gather the glass bottles were eventually used as weapons, as I later saw a number of people stumbling around with gashes to their heads and blood running down their faces.

Anyway, after discovering that the place was awash with riots, we decided that we had had enough of the Carnival. It took a good 1.5 - 2 hours for us to manage to escape the mayhem, due to many of the roads being shut because of the riots. It was therefore a good 1.5 - 2 hours of G saying "I told you so". By the time I got home, exhausted and longing for a cup of peppermint tea, I realised that my inability to recognise a riot is an indication that I'm just not as cutting edge as I like to think I am.

Monday 31 August 2009

Move Number 2


We at last moved house over the weekend and happily said good bye to our one-month flat. 

Unfortunately, swine flu has created havoc in my body for the duration of the weekend’s move.  I am fine so long as I sit upright, am warm and don’t move.  If I move at all, am cold or lie down I bark like a seal.  These barking spells can go on for some time, and usually cause my entire body to convulse, somewhat like the zombies in 28 Days Later.  Unfortunately, given it is a typical British summer, it’s not warm and moving house doesn’t give one a great many opportunities to sit upright and not move.  I rather suspect, therefore, that our new neighbours think we have smuggled a pet seal into the flat. 

We did not employ Vinnie again to help with the move, and thankfully had two removalists neither of whom were scared of heavy lifting.  Along with G, they got a fair bit of exercise and earned their fee.  I was therefore able to avoid the heavy lifting this time, and instead did the cleaning/packing/unpacking jobs while the boys did the hard work.

By the end of the Saturday we had all of our belongings in the new flat. 

The English property system is different to that in Australia in so many ways.  None of these ways is good. Importantly, the principle that the seller sells the property along with its fixtures does not seem to apply here.  We discovered that the shelves that had been affixed to the walls had been removed, as had coat-hooks and, most importantly, curtain rods and the curtains.  Nonetheless, we did not let any of this affect us, and managed to cobble together some makeshift blinds for the bedroom using old packing boxes.  By that point, the neighbours probably thought that in addition to smuggling a seal into the flat, we were subletting one room to some hobos. 

Moving from living in fully furnished rental properties into our own empty flat has meant that we have had rather quickly to acquire some furniture.  We bought the seller’s bed and wardrobe.  They are ugly, but perfectly serviceable and, most importantly, meant we had a bed for the Saturday night.

Exhausted after the move, we went to bed early on the Saturday night. At about midnight, G woke with a start, waking me.  There was an overwhelming smell of cigarettes throughout the flat.  G told me that immediately on waking, and for a few groggy seconds thereafter, he thought someone had broken into the flat and was smoking in the sitting room. He quickly realised this was an odd thing for a burglar to choose to do, and so decided that this was probably not the source of the smell.  G then wandered around, looking in the flat and sniffing every air vent to try and work out where the smell came from.  I was far too tired to get out of bed at that point, and went back to sleep.  I gather Geoff went back to sleep too.  At 4 am, however, I woke startled, again smelling the cigarette smell throughout the flat, and this time found I it too overwhelming to ignore.  I of course woke G, and we turned the lights on and crept about the flat, again sniffing under and outside the front door, and every air vent.  Given we have no curtains, I suspect any chavs awake and living in the housing block across the way would have been entertained for some time by the spectacle of two semi-naked adults creeping about the place, sniffing things while one of them barked uncontrollably.

Despite our best efforts at sniffing out the source of the smell, G and I could not tell where the smell was coming from.  I decided it must be a smoking ghost haunting our new flat.  G thought there must be some scientific explanation for it, but could not determine what that explanation could be.

I should mention, at this point, that G and I possibly hate the act of cigarette smoking more than anyone else on this planet. I remember when I was a teenager, and there was a brief period when cigarette smoking was seen as cool and rebellious, trying cigarettes a few times when offered them by friends.  I couldn’t see the appeal, but my loud criticisms to my friends that the idea of lighting something smelly and inhaling its fumes seemed altogether rather ridiculous was met with outcries that I was betraying the cause of teen rebellion.  It was therefore with some delight that I discovered the history of moral bankruptcy of cigarette companies, and was able to sanctimoniously tell friends that by smoking they were “feeding the man” and that it was, in fact, they who were betraying the cause of teen rebellion.  To be frank, as many of my smoking friends know, this self-righteous and sanctimonious speech of mine still rears its head, usually when I’ve had a few too many glasses of wine.  It is combined now with tales of just how long it takes cigarette butts to decompose.  It is, perhaps, not surprising that I don’t have too many friends who smoke anymore.  

In the context of this cigarette hatred that both G and I feel, having a flat that inexplicably smelt of cigarette smoke at odd hours of the evening was perhaps the most terrible thing that could happen.   However, the next day there was a further turn of events that managed to distract us, temporarily, from this catastrophe.

The delivery men arrived with our brand new sofa. A lovely, three-seater, chocolate brown linen-covered sofa from Dwell. A bargain, bought at a half price sale.  After the hectic move and sleepless night, we were both very excited at the prospect of spending a few hours collapsed on it watching episodes of The West Wing.  Without this sofa, there was only the hard wooden floor on which to sit to watch TV.  Unfortunately, the sofa did not fit through the narrow stairway to our flat.  My shouts of “just kick it through, push it why don’t you” to the delivery men did not help matters as they explained to me that, quite simply, the sofa was bigger than the space in the stairway and there was no possible way, according to the laws of physics, that the sofa would make it through.  We waved goodbye to our sofa, and sat on our hard wooden floor.

The upside of sitting on the floor was that we suddenly realised where the cigarette smell was coming from, as a gust of foul cigarette-smelling air came though our chimney.  It seems that my ghost theories were, in fact, not correct and that what has been happening is that our neighbours' cigarette smoke is wafting into their chimney, through ours and into our flat.

We promptly blocked off the chimney with some tape and cardboard and have solved one problem.  Now the hunt is on to find a sofa. Preferably one that can be delivered straight away. In the meantime, I will be writing this blog as I sit on my cold, hard wooden floor.

Monday 24 August 2009

Swine flu


It’s official. I have swine flu. 

Of course, I wasn’t diagnosed by a GP or, for that matter, by any person.  Thanks to a series of tube posters and TV ads, I am well-aware that anyone with “flu-like symptoms” in England is not to attend their GP.  On a recent trip to my GP surgery (for an entirely unrelated matter) I even noticed that my GP surgery  has a big sign on the door entitled “polite notice” which goes on to read: “if you are displaying any cold or flu like symptoms whatsoever, do not enter this room.  Telephone the NHS flu pandemic hotline or contact the NHS flu pandemic website.”

After being unwell since Thursday, with a dreadful cough, fever and headaches, this morning it finally twigged that given these were “flu-like symptoms”, perhaps I should make use of the NHS website.  This involved an online quiz to assess my health. Various questions were asked, including:

  • are you/is the patient limp?
  • are you/ is the patient unable to move?
  • are you/is the patient having a fit?
  • are your/are the patient’s lips blue and do you/they have trouble breathing?
  • are you/is the patient not breathing, seemingly asleep and unresponsive?

Thankfully I answered no to all of the above.  Even with my limited medical knowledge, I’m quite sure that answering "yes" to that final question would mean that even the NHS website could not help me any more.

I did, however, answer “yes” to questions including “do you have a fever”; “do you have a cough”; and “do you have aches and pains”.  The system then promptly spat out a diagnosis that I more likely than not had swine flu and gave me a prescription for tamiflu.  I have decided not to take the latter – I have confidence that my exercise-DVD toned body will fight this off in no time.  In the meantime, however, I am stuck at home in my one-month flat.

Being unwell is no fun.  Especially when one is unwell in a one-month flat which must itself be harbouring bacteria and germs in quantities to rival those currently attacking my body. 

I am firmly of the belief that if I am sick, I must ensure that everyone else in the world is fully aware of my symptoms at any and every given point in time.  Accordingly, G has been privileged to receive updates every five minutes or so, over the weekend and the course of today.  Mostly the updates have simply been to repeat “I’m still feeling really sick and need a lot of sympathy.  Still no better than five minutes ago”

As G has pointed out, although he loves hearing my regular updates on my health, it may just be the case that not everyone feels the same way.  I’m sure he cannot be right in that assessment.  However, on this one occasion, given my present infirmity, I’m going to defer to his judgment and avoid updating my blog until I’m better, to resist the temptation of filling this space with regular health updates.

But before I go, I should say – I’m still feeling really sick and need a lot of sympathy. 

Saturday 22 August 2009

RIP dishwasher


G and I are now the proud owners of a flat. Or, more accurately, G and I are the proud owners of a contract entitling us to purchase a flat on 27 August 2009.

Getting to this stage has not been without its difficulties. On top of the delays, there have been minor disasters. Perhaps the greatest disaster was the death of the flat’s dishwasher. By that, I mean the mechanical apparatus, rather than the seller of the flat, who (judging by the flat’s present state of cleanliness) has never washed anything in his life.

On the day we were due to exchange contracts, we received an email from our solicitor along the lines of “I’ve just been told, by the way, that the dishwasher in the flat broke some weeks ago and cannot be repaired. So you’re buying a flat without a dishwasher now.”

Losing a dishwasher may not sound like such a calamitous event, but to understand just how it affected us to hear those shocking words, one perhaps needs to know a little of our history of dishwashers and the central role they have played in our lives.

This requires going back to the days when I was 20 and G was 21 and we were living together for the first time in a house on Weld Street in Perth, Australia. Weld Street (as we called the house) rivalled the one-month flat as the worst home in which we have ever lived. It was a tiny two-bedroom worker’s cottage, built in the 50s. The floors were laid with floorboards with large gaps between them, through which weeds, cockroaches and spiders would frequently visit. The hot cockroach-filled summers in Perth meant there was a nightly ritual of me standing on top of the sofa screaming while G ran around the house mounting a counter-insurgency on the cockroaches with a can of bug spray.

The loo at Weld Street was outside the main house, in the laundry. While there was a covered veranda connecting the laundry to the rest of the house, the weeds grew so thickly between the gaps in the boards on the veranda that we properly regarded that area as “outdoors”.

The house was not equipped with a dishwasher. Indeed, in the tiny kitchen, there was barely room for two people, let alone a dishwasher. It was therefore with some excitement that, on a late-night walk around the neighbourhood, G and I discovered an abandoned dishwasher on a neighbour’s lawn. Dishwashers with plumbing were invented around 1920. I suspect this dishwasher was one of the prototypes. It was a mustard colour, with enamel inside and wood veneer stuck on the outside of it. It had a sign placed on top of it: “still working, please take me”. That was all the encouragement we needed.

G somehow managed to convince his father, at that late hour, to come around with his enormous car and help us to get the thing back to our house. G’s father, ever the gentleman, did nothing more than raise an eyebrow at this odd adventure.

Not having enough room in the kitchen, we “installed” our new dishwasher in the laundry, next to the loo. It worked beautifully, with only one minor problem. The first time I turned it on, I felt an incredible thump up my arm. Not knowing what caused this bizarre feeling, I of course immediately touched the dishwasher again, only to discover that once more I felt a thump up my arm. After several such tests gave the same result, and one nearly thew me across the room, I realised that this thump was, in fact, an electric shock. G and I puzzled over what we should do about this latest turn of events. Neither of us ever contemplated that we would not use the dishwasher. Instead, we used our rudimentary knowledge of science to come to the conclusion that, since rubber does not conduct electricity, whenever we were using the dishwasher we would wear rubber gloves and boots. And that is how we loaded and unloaded the dishwasher for the next few months, until we finally had the good sense to move to a slightly more luxurious student pad. This method still resulted in the occasional electric shock being felt, but we were quite confident that our scientific method would prevent us coming to any real harm.

Notwithstanding its difficulties and limitations, G and I loved that dishwasher. The taste of life without handwashing dishes was such that we could never go back. And we haven’t. It has always been a golden rule of rentals or purchases that they simply must have a dishwasher. It was therefore with some pain that we learnt we were losing the dishwasher at the new flat. We negotiated a small discount in the price to compensate for the loss, but have already resigned ourselves to the fact that, even if we have to pay for it entirely on our credit cards, the first purchase in our new flat will be a shiny new dishwasher.