Are We Kind Enough?

Did you know it was UK Kindness Day on November 13th?  Well nor did I.  And I wasn't overly enthusiastic when I walked into the Action for Happiness panel debate the other night:.  Are We Kind Enough? It all screamed out socks and sandals to me as I got in the lift with two white middle class women wearing the sort of necklaces you buy in spitalfields made from melon seeds.  But the room was full of a real mix of people.  Not everyone was white, and ages ranged from pensioners to twenty somethings.  And you good feel an almost imperceptible buzz coming from the audience of social entrepreneurs and community activists.  

There was a panel discussion.  Ok I was suspicious that Big Society was funding the event, but their representative didn't look too much like a young cameron.  In fact going on stereotypes he looked like a guardian reader.  The speakers kept kept mentioning community and society, which seemed quite practical.  Despite the the daffy philosopher who talked about utilitarianism (greatest good for the greatest number of people) we all responded to the UK Kindness Movement's representative who quoted Samuel Pepys 'kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not'.  And boy do I sometimes struggle with that one.  There was even an ex apprentice, James, who now works for Talk Radio, to through a bit of right wing opposition into the mix.  But the man who impressed me the most was xxx the artist who started up the riot cleanup campaign on twitter.  He seemed totally immersed in the community now, but in such an unselfconscious, and such a passionate way.  Don't just think about it or plan it, 'just do it' he kept saying. And then he went on to recount his tale of the kindest man he'd known: a bin man on his street who used to save up  tokens from cereal packets in the rubbish, send them off, and then give the toys he got away to the children in the street.  We all felt like saying 'aaah'.   Especially when we heard he ended up winning the lottery a few years later.

I can't describe every single contributor, although I have put their links below, as each has his/her own special passion.  They did though, make me think again about what my society is, and what is good for our society.  As xxxx of Action for Happiness said, we're all hard wired for kindness (although we're also hard wired to be competitive and selfish too), kindness is contagious - if someone is good to you, you feel like being good to someone else, and lastly, society really is richer, more productive, if people are nicer to each other.  You only have to look at win win negotiation and city companies who spy on interviewees to check if they're just as civil to the security guards as to CEOs.

Ok.  I had reservations about the sort of person that spends his/her life getting grants for litter cleanup organisations, and how much good their work actually does.  But at the same time they are passionate and sometimes, whatever it is, you really need people to care about something to make it work.
meanwhile, as I passed the red leather sofas on the way out of somerset house, and ruminated on artist xxx act of kindness project, I did hope that tomorrow, on kindness day, I'll try to smile more and let someone in front of me go in the traffic queue...

links

Bulgaria 3: Plovdiv

The pensioners'  'gymnastics' class at the Jewish Community centre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria is a crowded affair.  Broom handles are laid out on chairs in a large high ceilinged room, and despite looking like they might be for tap dancing, I realise that massaging finger joints and reaching arms to the ceiling are more the order of the day.  The women are a youthful looking lot for their years.  Anna, in her late 60s, emigrated to Israel only to come back to Plovdiv.  Others, like Rivka looks 75 but is actually 90.  She used to run the class herself.  Rifka's husband is the cantor at the synagogue because, she says, he is the only one left who reads Hebrew well enough.  They rarely open the synagogue but still make a show of a minyan on important holidays.   In the adjoining room the chat buzzes along with plates of boicos (cheese pastries) and salad served to the pensioners.  Not everyone is officially Jewish (quite a few have Jewish fathers, or perhaps even more tenuous connections) but like elsewhere in Bulgaria, numbers make it an inclusive community.  The religious side of things seems to be expansive.

The same goes for Sofia.  The beautiful main synagogue, the third largest in Europe, stands towering over my hotel is a focus for community life.   At the succah meal after the shabbat service I chat to a few women as we sit on separate tables.  The Chabad House's director's wife, from Israel, who has been a number of people, mainly the older generation .  From visiting religious Israelis,  the religion is passed down via the mother But for the decayed stucco frontage and everyone nodding for no, and shaking their head for yes this could be Finchley Road on a Sunday outing for Jewish pensioners.

I hand them a pcture of my grandmother and mention my father's family name to see if anyone can remember them.  all the various staff who smile and help out.    But there can't be more than a few hundred jews here, 5000 in the whole of Bulgaria (it's an inclusive community - if your father was jewish, well that's good enough for most people).

I sometimes wonder whether staying flexible has been the watchword of the Bulgarian Jews who stayed in the country after 1947.  That was when (until the early 50s about) the vast majority of Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews were told - you're free to go.  Helped by American payments and a new state's gratitude for their salvation from the worst of Nazi extermination, the Bukos, the Meyers, the Lilyas, the Chanas of Sofia, Plovdiv, Bourgas, Kustendil and all the little towns where Jews had lived since Byzantine times got on trains like my mother and ships to Israel, or like my father boarded rickety old boats bound for Palestine, sometimes caught by the British and being interned in Cyprus before partition in 1947.

So here I am.  In Plovdiv, the second city, where my family lived in the centre of the old city.  In big compounds of houses, long ago split up into tiny flats by the communists.  The Jewish centre is a vibrant place.  Old men with serious faces sit playing Bellot (a french card game popular in Bulgaria, like an easier version of bridge) in the afternoon, and old women looking tremendously youthful chat over free snacks for gymnastics, sukkah and all sorts of other activities for the whole community.

Sofia Part 1 - Planes, crossings and the business of the Old School

When I'm met at Sofia airport by my mother's friend Andrei, dressed neatly in a grey suit, waistcoat and carrying an umbrella like he has walked off the set of a 1950s James Stewart film, I feel underdressed.  Jeans just are not appropriate for an airport meeting now.  This is my first lesson in cultural differences.   Hospitality.  What I had thought was the Bulgarian culture of my youth was in fact a dilution.  Something brought by a group of people who dragged their customs from Bulgaria, sheep dipped them in the Israeli way of life and then walked with them to England.  The grilled red peppers, tripe soup and arguments over card games came along but a whole lot more stayed behind.

demonstration outside ministerial building

Andreii, despite being a pensioner spirits away my suitcase and does not let me touch it again until he has heaved it up two flights or stairs in my hotel (the receptionist smiles alot, watches his heavy breathing and does nothing).   Lesson number two. Bulgarian hospitality: wonderful, warm, attentive but involves following you around in whatever you may be doing.  If you say you want to be alone, that means that you do not like them, and is considered a brush off.  This is lovely for someone with an command of the language that mostly stretches to saying national dishes and a few swearwords.  It is also very comforting to be fussed over but I do wonder the limits of this cultural attentiveness go?  A guard of honour outside my hotel room?  trying on lipstick for me?

As we walk out of the hotel, I am shown the great buildings of Sofia.  And they are great.  The parliament - which is opposite dictator Todor Z|hivkov's demolished mausoleum is a grand, but not imposing building.  When I was here in 1991 when people were filled with expectation before the first post communist  election, uniformed officers still paraded up and down here in Russian goose steps.   There is no trace of it now. As historian Vladimir Ratchinovski later tells me, when communism fell down, people wanted to get rid of a lot of things, even old historical artefacts.  Perhaps it was a feeling for brushing the slate clean and throwing it all away.   Outside the ministerial building down the road there is a small demonstration.  There are elections imminent again, and cuts, I imagine worse than the UK with an unemployment rate of 27% is a focus.

As we walk in the streets, it feels strange to hear young people speaking Bulgarian.  I've only ever heard it from the mouths of the older generation, often sprinkled with Hebrew.  It's like the two languages have played a double act together.  Both hot, vibrant and full of Bulgarian white cheese (sirineh), interspersed with watermelon and dates.

Andrei tells me about his skype chats to his son in New Jersey, and how his sons familly prefer to vacation in the Carribean rather than to come back to Sofia for Christmas.  As another bulgarian friend tells me later 'all the smart people are out'.  That is only one point of view of course, but it begins to become clear over the next week that there are an awful lot of older generation who have sons and daughters working abroad.  Some make money and then come back.  Others like Hristo and Mila, a handsome young couple who came from the same small town only to meet, incredibly, in the UK, never want to return.  'I hate the politicians - they are all corrupt I'm never going back' .    People like Nelly a bubbly 65 year old, still working hard who looks 10 years younger have formed little support groups - parents who vow to look after each other in the place of sons and daughters who are abroad.

When I get back to the hotel, the woman at the desk says wait a minute, and then hangs out of the window to smoke a cigarette.   She must be related to the woman in the shoe shop who, after my poor attempts at saying excuse me, shouts 'I can't understand anything you're saying, go away'.  In 1991 I remember going into a shop that looked a bit like a classroom with a few boxes and coat rails.  The only thing they sold were blue coats, in one size only.  They were quite good blue coats actually. Since they were my size and the coat cost the equivalent of 50p I was delighted.  Now I'm beginning to think that old habits die hard.  This is despite the hoardings by the tram sponsored by the Be Happy sushi chain and the zebra crossing sporting a sign reading 'Volvo believes life is precious' .  

apartment block in Sofia suburb Krasno Selo, Mt Vitosha in the background

The other side of the coin are people like Gregor and his family, who work 10 hour days as standard, are immersed in business culture and aspire to making bulgaria a contender in the European Union.  They tell me about pollution, recycling, but don't talk about unemployment.  They tell me of skiing, take out their iphones to play with apps, and almost have emblazoned on their foreheads 'focus'.  These are the same people who put their children in schools like the one I saw in Plovdiv, where parents pay for a better education, and the steps leading up to classrooms are painted with sentences in English, like 'how much does it cost' and 'where is the library?'.

Behind it all, somewhere, is big business, like the placard on the zebra crossing that says 'Volvo supports a safe life'

Focus, freedom vs poverty and absence.  This is a land, like so many others, of contrasts, and I know I'm only beginning to skim on the surface. 

Prologue: Finding Vitosha?

On 8 June, along with a stag party, some Brits with properties in Varna and plenty of Bulgarian nationals living in the UK, I booked an easy jet flight to Sofia, capital of Bulgaria.


My mission which I chose to accept: to find my roots; to publicise the little known story of the salvation of most of the Bulgarian Jews from the Nazis.  My expectation: to walk through a romantic little story I'd heard as a child.  In this tableau Orlando Bloom lookalike jews like my grandfather run through bombed out train stations looking for my grandmother (aka Salma Hayek) and end up in each other's arms.  Orlando Bloom gets malaria in a labour (but not death) camp but after some tough negotiation in 1943 by politician Christian Bale, Bishop Liam Neeson and King John Hurt they save the jews from the Nazis, supported by a brave and kind populace.  In the epilogue they all stand on the quayside in 1948 waving the jews goodbye as they board rickety old boats leaving for Palestine to build a new land.  

Ok, there is some truth in the story.  In fact quite a lot but Hollywood hasn't come to the Balkans just yet.  Despite finding a relative who looks a lot like Angelina Jolie this is a living breathing country.  It is full of cracked pavements, dilapidated facades, heroic old women, professionals working standard 10 hour days and surly shop assistants. Underneath it all, sometimes, there still lives a famous Bulgarian smile, a nod for no, and a shake of the head for yes (really).


And Vitosha?  it is the blue black mountain that stands majestically overlooking Sofia.  It is where there was a meter of snow one day and warm autumn sunshine the next.  Where there is also a nouveau cuisine restaurant called 'Lazy' at the foot of a ski lift which was closed on the day there was Autumn snowfall.  


Come join the journey..

Riots and rain - it's a funny old world

London went mad for a few days.  It felt like I was in this surreal futuristic drama, where the end of the world is nigh, and while the youth go looting, the rest of sit here trying to work out what is going on.

You talk about it in the hairdresser, at bus stops, even at the doctors' waiting room.

And then everyone offered to clean up.  Ok the papers were cheesy, but I know of at least one person who donated to the looted shopkeepers appeal.  And my corner shop owner knows a guy in tottenham who got looted, and apparently insurance won't pay up.

Meanwhile at work they're dealing with the fallout of the courts.

It's a funny old world.

blah blah blah

Beautiful but boring woman overheard in coffee shop in Queen's Park saying 'I can't believe I'm a TV actress now'.  Spoke for 30 minutes solid about herself to equally beautiful man.

London's hidden enclaves

I am constantly surprised by how often I am constantly surprised.

This week, I attended the local  summer party on the square where I work.  I was surpised at how interesting, down to earth, friendly and warm the people I met there were.  I was surprised also, at how diverse they were and how, having worked in my building for so many years, I had never come across this other world.

Let me explain,  I work in a fairly grand but small georgian building, tall and thin and wholly unsuited to being an office, but designed by John Adams, one of Londons finest regency architects.  It is situated in a beautiful, rather secret regency square in London, with a small but perfectly formed garden in the middle where office workers spread out their jackets and sandwiches in summer sunshine, and foreign students chatter against the railings outside in faltering English.  Occasionally TV companies film period pieces there.  Indians from the Indian YMCA round the corner take photos of each other and once in a while anarchist squatters take over a building and create free schools (courtesy of Guy Ritchie.)

As well as varied little hotpotch of offices (engineers, magistrates, interior designers, two small embassies, an international school and a theological hospital) there are flats and houses.  A small but hidden community of (often) well to do small holders in the London's Fitzrovia prairies.   We also have a few glitterati: Ian Mckeowan, Griff Rhys Jones, Fay Maschler.

So that's it in a nutshell, and like most communities that live side by side each other in London, never the twain shall meet, until, sometimes, oddly, worlds collide in twilight crashes.

The party was catered by a lady from number 14, (and her mother who'd rushed here from france on a hastily booked easy jet flight), music delivered by a jazz trio related to someone in no 1, and dedicated to a man from who'd rented a peppercorn rent for 40 years and had just died.
I talked to his 'adopted' son and daughter in law (he was childless).  They described a man who, Betjamen like, had fought the authorities since the sixties turning a parking lot into a garden, by a restored piece of England's heritage.

I like communities.  I like London for the way it swirls up separate little groups who keep to themselves.  Where you are, as I'd recently read, defined by the title of your postcode.  It's not often you look under a stone and uncover a world.

Of course we all got very drunk and a few of tried to sing some karaoke.  But that's not for these pages...

Doing Make Up on Trains - Our London Heroines

Yo Londoners at large! There's a new class of heroine that's going unnoticed here in our city.  She's sassy, smart and has a pretty good sense of balance too.  Plus the precision of the hands of a brain surgeon. Not a measured complement.

She's the commuter I saw this morning, stood in a packed tube train, against the open window at one end (you know, where standing there is like being in a wind tunnel and you're Michelle Obama on a state visit to the UK) And what is she doing? applying mascara, eyeliner and a little touch of blusher.  Standing up.  Yes, bag on shoulder, someone else's elbow near her face, putting the fine points on her lashes.  The woman should be in the circus.  It's like painting the sistine chapel standing on a vibration plate.  Brilliant!

Oh yes, some of you may taunt.  Disgusting? No way.  She's a testimony to modern womanhood.  Not above caring about her looks enough to put make up on at all, but couldn't care less how many people there were around her to see it, and oblivious to the odd jostle from another commuter's elbow.



In Japan they regularly make up on the underground despite having that famous Japanese sense of etiquette. In fact, in 2008 they printed posters telling people not to (see Annie Mole's underground blog).  In London there aren't any posters but sometimes the odd grumble behind a copy of the Times.

Apparently it's all about denying we're not alone, say researchers.  We're just extending our personal space in a crowded city says one article in the Evening Standard... .  I disagree.  It's about confidence and liberation of course.  Well certainly according to our Make Up Michelangela this morning.

And why not.  Here's to adding make up on high speed trains as an olympic sport!  I hope though they don't have to wear the same gear as the beach volleyball girls.






(ps, in case you were wondering, yes, I've done a little bit of the art of motion make up myself.  Conclusion: overground trains are much smoother than the tube)

Gardens Rock: the chelsea flower show

Chelsea flower show is a British institution.  I mean, most of the upper class has a relative with the same name don't they?  So the chance to go was not to be passed up, even if it meant standing on a square of ground trying desperately not to squash a plant, and giving out leaflets to unsuspecting members of the public like my life depended on it.

As a famous flower girl with a cockney accent once said, 'the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated'.  So treat 'em all I did, and did a lo' of luvely talking in the process.

Ok, I'm no cockney, but it was a surprise to see just how many Karen Millen Linen dresses. straw trilbies, and very thin old women with immaculate hairdos I could spot.  They were a nice bunch though. And all  totally, totally absorbed by species of agapanthus, violas and how you pleach a plane tree to grow flat.

Soon I was into my stride, talking about heurchaneums and violas like I was born to it.  I admired the plane trees (platanus hispanica),  told middle aged gay couples and old judges about living walls, and peppered my sentences with latin like I'd stepped off a Shakespearean play.

Of course they weren't all priveleged.  It was kind of nice to see bankers on corporate hospitality sitting on patches of cardboard in a corner eating fish and chips alongside pensioners from Stockton on a day trip.  The British may be a class divided society, but it all swirls in the compost mix when it comes to  hobbies like plants.

The postscript? The woman who looked at me like I'd landed from mars when I quipped about taking her clematis spiral home on the tube.  'Well not quite on the tube...but it'll be good to get it home' .

Getting Life Write

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.”

Danny Kaye

Go on, slap me on my hand.  Go on.  Yup.
Thanks.  I know, I haven't written this blog for a while, and well, what can I say?  The ideas flitted by, landed on my head in the middle of a crowded tube train, and then just flew off into the sunset once I got through the door and the second helping of Vanilla Ice cream slithered peaceably down my throat.

You see life happens, work happens and practicing for a rather irrelevant charity walk happens.  But that's no excuse.   In fact, this weekend I've been thinking about procrastination and no excuses pretty often.  I've been on a free life coaching course.

Not that this little chick is about to become a life coach (well it may not be a good idea until I get a northern accent, perma tan and high heeled shoes, as all the tutors seemed to).  Nevertheless, it's not all hokum. I left feeling positive, having written a lot of goals down (they may not happen but I've written them down),  and having met the most eclectic, and in some cases inspiring bunch of people.   All of them loved people and some were genuinely nice people.

There was of course the unemployed scottish clairvoyant, who believed that the universe would provide him with a turnover of £250,000 this year.

Life coaching courses are of the moment.  They're a magnet for people who need rescuing, people looking for career change, and people looking for a shiny new nameplate for their office.  They say it works.  Others say its nothing more than a replacement for your granddad sitting you down at the kitchen table on a saturday afternoon after the football scores and telling you that you you should become an accountant because selling watermelons leads to nowhere.    Whatever, I liked it.  Roll on high heels.

The Battle of Cable Street gone Yuppy

It's not often you overflow with gratitude for London transport.  But this weekend I did just that because it meant I got off at Shadwell instead of Greenwich in East London.  And Shadwell is on Cable Street, site of a battle that basically put a stop to fascism in Britain at a at a time when Europe was going mad with it. In 1936, Jews, Socialists, Irish and an assortment of others banded together to stop Oswald Moseley's blackshirts marching on the (largely Jewish) East End. They're marking their 75th anniversary this year in fact.
(the lovely History Workshop has a great article on it)
So here I was on the corner of Christan Street (yup, real name) looking ahead at a massive flyover in the distance, newly renovated Georgian houses for city slickers on one side of the street and pastel coloured council flats full of headscarved women tending to little kids on the other.  And I wonder, would it happen here today?.  Hopefully it wouldn't have to, but if it did, would people here -or anywhere- band together?

I stop thinking philosophically and think of my stomach.  There's a sign to Waitrose and Fitness First, and down a surgically cleaned road, there's a little square with a pub, a dry cleaners, and a bijoux little chocolate shop.  I love Waitrose, but inside never quite seen anything like this.  It's like the Stepford wives. 70% of people are wearing matching clothes and reading labels of food packets    There is only one family with kids (on a Sunday), one woman with a pram, and one disabled person (who is wearing Louis Vutton slippers).   The only person bigger than size 14 is the woman on the fish counter with a broad East End accent and a young girl at the till wearing hijab.
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Reassuringly, the old woman ahead of me in the queue farts, which reminds me of Wood Green.

I think perhaps the community here wouldn't stand on street corners in blockades if the BNP marched in Hackney, but you never know.  Perhaps it's not only poor communities where people stand together?  But perhaps not? Lots of buckinghamshire housewives did go and bake cakes and then March in the west end against the cuts didn't they?

6 reasons to love Regents Park

"Life itself, every moment of it, every drop of it, here, this instant, now, in the sun, in Regent's Park.."  Virginia Woolf.   


I walked home through Regent's park yesterday.  There's nothing quite like overhearing snippets of conversations in a park.  There's nothing better than hearing them in this wonderful little breath of fresh air in the middle of central London.

Here are some things I loved:
1.  The row of fountains, framed by great purple round flowers that stand out like lollipops.
2.  The young pretty girl riding a bicycle with an unnaturally straight back, wobbling a bit.  She screams out 'oooh it'll be lovely in France' and  a less pretty girl runs behind trying to catch her up.

2. The fountain (right) built by Sir Cowasjee Jehangir, who was so excited at having the British overtake his country that he built an ornamental  fountain for them. Apparently he was grateful for British government protection (he was a Parsee) but I think he just wanted the hereditary title they gave him.  In a park stuffed with fountains though, it's a nice one.


3.  The couple sitting either side of a large topiary having a post lover's tiff talk.  It all brings me back....
Girl - 'but why did you say that when he left'.
boy -  'I said it because I thought you were angry with me'
girl 'but I thought you were upset with me'.  Silence, smiles and sounds of wet lips.
Three women of a certain age with bottoms of varying sizes walk past.

4. The sounds of after work footballers calling out to each other. The very pleasant sight of their legs. 

5.  The mccaws cracking out calls from the zoo, me wondering how much it actually costs to get into the zoo nowadays.

The totally English serenity of this place (populated by 50% tourists).  I love it.

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And then I got to Camden town.  There was a man holding a stick with a little sign that just said 'Jesus'.   He looked like a tour guide.  Perhaps they have tours to Jesus in Regents' Park too.  Definitely a very spiritual place...

50 ways to earn a living without working - the pub quiz

As I stared at the flickering screen today at work I tried hard to think of 50 possible ways of earning a decent living by doing very few hours of actual work.

The alternative careers were exciting but all had to be discounted:
chat line hostess (too prone to giggling)
counsellor (too impatient)
marrying a rich man (too bad at flirting)
prostitution (too old)
'IT' girl (too many boring people at parties and too little food)

Then I remembered we were going to a pub quiz tonight and, HEY, there's a cash prize.  Pub quizzes are where you arrange to take some other, slightly cleverer friends than you out for a night and a drink.  You go to a pub pay £1 for the quiz, buys ya drink (diet coke), then try to answer some god awful trivia questions.  

At our local, there is the added excitement of the man in the corner who wouldn't give us a spare chair, but who was also once an actor in the Eastenders Soap  (we think he now works as an accountant because he wears very dodgy shorts and flipflops).  

As you sit there racking your brains, you get the chance to reminisce.  Memories come back of watching TV in a great big bed with your family as a child as your dad tries to tell you the capital of the Ivory Coast.   You remember the TV presenters who were your role models and the conversations at school the next day on how no one liked the round window in Jackanory, and where did they keep the plant pot.  In fact one of my friends remembered tonight that Terence Stamp, classical actor, looked a lot like her grandmother.  (get us a picture Stevie!).

We never win though, although once we won a bag of crisps between us, and it's still a talking point today.  I reallly do think that pub quizzes are something special.  Very levelling in the community.  Everyone should do them.  Perhaps I could read up and earn some serious money with this.

Islington, wifi and big middle east questions

I am sitting in Islington trying to get some admin done with the help of a coffee, a computer and fruit and nut bar.  It's not the most obvious place to think about big middle east questions is it?

You see, I'm trying to find blogs of israelis in London to see if anyone else feels the same as me.  A bit israeli inside, mostly English covering.  There are precious few.   But I did find a blog in English which tells the story of a soldier's mother in Israel.  It was pretty moving.  I mean, how difficult must it be for any mother who has to see her son (perhaps more than one son) conscripted into the army, with a real danger that he might be injured or even killed?   When I was in Israel I saw two cousins, both of whom had, or still have 3 sons in the army.  Every day on a knife edge for up to nine years (service is for three years).  What a life?

But then I saw that the woman lives in Maale Adumim, a large settlement just outside Jerusalem, on the West Bank and when you look a bit deeper, she has some pretty hawkish views.  But then you hear from a friend that Maale Adumim is not a proper mad religous person's settlement, but somewhere that people go to live in because it's cheap.  So you don't know.

In London, I don't think much about this.  I don't have to.  But it always feels like you're at a road in a forest and some guy with a wand and long pointy fingers says 'choose which path'.   You don't want to choose either because neither will get you out unscathed.  How can you choose between a mother's love, and a settlement policy that is just not right, and the pictures you see on TV and the comments you hear?

So you end up saying 'nothing is black and white' to all the left wing friends who ask you about your recent trip to Israel.  They put down their tea cup and nod as you talk about the great coffee and the family you reconnected with.  Pretty soon though, they ask 'well what about the Palestinians?'  You reply that you wanted to visit the west bank (and you really did) but there wasn't enough time to fit it all in.  And you feel guilty from two different sides because they're right.  As are the people you spoke to there who asked you how many times in your life you think about the lives of the poor, the dispossessed in London and how much you would really be willing to sacrifice to help them.  Give up your nice flat and move to Milton Keynes?  You keep mouthing buts but it's so much easier not to answer at all.

So you think you need to know more.  You look for jewish blogs of Israelis, and you spend some time in Islington wishing that as many cafes in London provided free wi fi as they do in Israel (so you wouldn't have to spend so much time in Starbucks).  

Then a woman  walks in the door saying 'Yes, inshallah, inshallah' into her mobile as she gives you a quick passing smile.

Bootiful! If I could only do accents

If I could count the number of people who've said the dress is bootiful.  No other words.  We're sitting here watching the wedding..listening to a man talking about the pain in his feet in participating in the royal wedding.  What a wonderful diverse country we are.

Love itv coverage.  Quote 'Kate will be the next Diana'  says scary woman in union jack dress.

We sit here enjoying the view in a blurred, kind of hazy sort of way.  Is it because we're Jewish?  or British from North London?

blurry photo and a glss of wine...apt for the occasion

Royal Wedding - a view from north London

As soon as I got back, I realised we really are now in royal wedding fever.  The regency square I work in has been decked out with red white and blue bunting, there's a holiday atmosphere everywhere with two four day weekends one after the other, and there's even spring in the air.

Day by day, gradually, you see union jacks appear on pubs, street corners, and there's even a takeaway pizza been advertised - the 'I dough' showing william and katherine's faces!

Amongst people I've talked to opinion is divided.  In my area, which has a very strong community but which is perhaps a bit too left wing for royalism, there is no street party (there are loads happening elsewhere).  In fact I've spoken to quite a few people who are going out of their way to ignore the whole thing and have either gone away, are weeding the garden or attending a dance class, or just sleeping through it all.

But I like mass psychology,  escapism and people watching so I'm having a few people round to watch it over brunch.  My friends say it will be an ironic look at the wedding, but I'm not so sure. I don't have any flags but I like the idea of all the pomp.   Perhaps secretly I will be buying a William and Katherine forever mug on ebay when the price goes down after the wedding...

Oh yes, and it will be a very British affair - it'll be raining.

Back Home In Crouch End

When I got back to England it was hot, and where I live everyone was outside, sitting on chairs outside the grocers, the little pub and the hairdresser.  It was a lot like Israel except that people were talking English with the odd smattering of Greek or Turkish.

I went to a gig of a friend of mine.  Lots of jews, playing their hearts out in a local bar.  It was lovely, but I was missing the loud chatter, the assertive way people asked for drinks, and the pleasure of speaking in another language (and of course, the bloody good coffee you could get in Israel).

I think I've settled back in now, but it's taken a while.  I've returned to my truly English persona, so much so that when I stood next to a woman with the biggest boobs I've ever seen in a packed tube train, I only smiled to myself and made no attempt to talk to her to quell the uncomfortableness of the situation.  It did occur to me to take a picture (my boob to her boob as it were...) but couldn't do it without her noticing.

the next day I took my niece and nephew out to crouch end.  It's a part of London where you get loads of mothers with state of the art prams, charity shops where designer clothes don't go above size 10 and full of coffee bars and restuarants.  It looked very quaint and so typically English in the afternoon light.  It's lovely but misses a little bit of grunginess that can be charming.

We walked on to Parkland Walk,  a wooded trail that used to be a railway line, now filled with families wearing dungarees and fathers who had long grey hair tied back.   About half way in, we saw a yellow ribbon tied to a tall tree.   Waiting for someone to come back perhaps. Or is it waiting for me to go back?

Departures

The turning into Ben Gurion airport terminal 1 is deceptive.  On the one side is terminal 3, with its gleaming spires of lipsticks, foreign chocolate and Scottish whisky.  On the other side, down a ramshackle slipway is the terminal where the likes of Easyjet passengers like me leave from.  It is also what used to be Lod Airport’s main terminal.  There are about 10 checkin desks, and one story.  It lounges somewhere in the 1970s, where airhostesses with fair hair (before the influx of oriental immigrants into prestige jobs like this..) used to smile from the billboards, and signs shone from the walls with open arms and a background of oranges saying welcome to Israel, welcome to the land of milk and honey.  

As we leave from here the departure hall does seem familiar.   I remember all of us, grandparents, parents, sister and enough watermelon and white cheese to last us a month, packed into my grandfather’s tiny white car, zooming down the road like we were in a cartoon.  I remember the tears on departure that I never really understood.  The hands held too long in unsaid embraces and the crowds of relatives on the other side of the barrier gradually getting smaller and smaller as I was flung in front of them to wave. I remember too the grey silence on the other side, where the state of the art walkways and large house couldn’t compete with the hum of traffic under a balcony in the evening, or grand slaps of old friends echoing in the dark stairways to loved ones' flats.

 

So today I am here again.  We’ve eaten the most excessive (but delicious) Israeli breakfast of white cheese, omelette, salad in a café by a freeway.  Around us sat cool young Israeli wrapped in red blankets because it’s windy.  Despite the machismo here, it feels like under the surface there's still abit of the jewish mother in the Israeli psyche.    

At the check in I struggle with my greengrocer Hebrew, but there are still smiles.  Perhaps in spring everyone is nicer.   

In my mind, two film reels are playing in the sunshine simultaneously.    Two lives.  Here, the warmth, the metach (stress) and the unforgiving blue skies.  There, Luton airport, young boys and girls with bleached hair holding tins of beer walk through the train, ready for a night out to London.  Perhaps later in the journey, in some cross cultural exchange, I’ll sit on the train, and 5 strangers around me will want to know my business, recommend me the best way to get home from Kings Cross, and while we chat they’ll ask me why I left England on holiday and that I should have gone to the lake district instead because it’s really lovely too and it's good to stay in Britain.  Perhaps not?  

But there's a charm to the chaos, the freedom to be who you are.  The sheer familiarity, realising that what you thought was different behaviour may have been a cultural difference.  

the coffee trail

I'm sitting in a tel aviv coffee house.  In Israel, it is coffee in the morning, coffee in the evening, and coffee interspersed several times during the day.  Coffee and chat, although at the moment I am not doing any cha t. I'm looking over a high ceilinged room with arched windows and antique lights hanging languidly from the ceiling.  Girls in dark glasses sit outside talking and gesticulating and a family next to me pick at salad and matzah (it's passover).
Yesterday we visited another, 'cooler' coffee house in Tel Aviv, where we literally bumped into Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister out for a power walk with his wife.  This guy is, right now, one of the most unpopular men in israeli politics, and we got about a foot away from him and his security entourage.  I didn't recognise him myself, but I must admit his security men looked a bit prattish.  It's a small place around here.

Tel aviv has all the chic coffee places and bat yam, well bat yam, well bat yam has the overcrowding made good, the great beach and the mafioso mayor who renovated the place.  And of course it has the block of flats where my grandparents used to serve us spinach and meat fritters, israeli salad, and a lot of love wrapped up in the small flat adorned with tapestries my grandmother had done.

We made our way up the staircase - we only saw the doorbell, and the rack where my grandmother used to hang the washing at the back but it was enough.  The cracks in the walls had grown, and it seemed as not much had changed except that the people we knew had gone.

On the beach we sat with my cousin's family laying back on easy chairs, watching the parasurfers on the beach.  I was, of course, the only mad Englishwoman to paddle in this cold weather (20 degrees centigrade).  Another coffee, another chat.

Then we went to see some other relatives, and again we were offered drinks, chocolate and cake.  They're bulgarian, so the tapestries were on the wall, and the cake was decorated with something white which I have yet to understand what it was, served on those brown pyrex plates that I think everyone over the age of 60 in this part of Israel owns.  Perhaps it was given out to them when they first came here. Nevertheless, it was nice to make their acquaintance again.  It made me feel good.

Songs and Supper - Pesach with Airconditioning

There are about 64 cauliflower fritters, a big pot of Persian rice, a bunch of flowers and two boxes of presents in the back of Talia's yellow car.  Leil haseder (Seder night-or Passover) is upon us, and like Christmas, the tension has been mounting.  Shops have been steaming up with clouds of focussed israelis dragging round overladen trolleys of food.  In the train stations young girls with sweet smiles give out chocolates, and skinny young teenagers in army uniform sleep exhausted on trains as they make their way home for the festival from their army service.  

Many people get a week off work.   Security guards at railway stations wish you 'Hag Sameach' (happy festival) after they check your bags, and women in buses still talk about which part of the family they're spending the festival with.  It's strange, for once, knowing that what you're doing in your own home is reflected in what is being done by many others. 

The meal itself, at my cousin Iris's, is very similar, but with a different cast of characters.  We follow the haggadah which is all in hebrew.  Despite everyone except me being a hebrew speaker,  people are still asking 'where is it', what bit do we do now? and 'when do we drink the second cup of wine?'  I seemed to think that the wonderful confusion that surrounds the ritual around Pesach the world over would be be eradicated, but no, we still don't quite know what we're up to, or the whole tune to all the songs.  But I love that.   It's a way where different family traditions bump gently next to each other, and somewhere, plied with wine, a new recipe for charoset and a hell of a lot of chicken, you meet and laugh about it.

The house is cool and airy, and feels like a home. Chaotic, busy but loving.  Jokes fly between some of the guests and I struggle to follow.  Dor, Iris' autistic son, stands up and whoops at odd intervals, and her five year old giggles shyly when he does the singing.   What strikes me most is the feeling here of acceptance of people.   Very much each to his own, in his own way.   Perhaps I'm being starry eyed.  But the vibe tonight was good.

After the meal, like families everywhere after a festival, we sit with slightly glazed eyes, bloated by good food and alcohol in a haze of satisfaction.  We sit outside on sofas which my cousin has decorated like a bedouin tent (kids trampoline making a great low table covered with scarves).  A few smoke cigars (unusual) and black muddy coffee is drunk.  My uncle with his new poet hat, looks abit like a nouvelle vague artiste from 1960s france, sat on the sofa in the garden covered with scarves.

We continue with songs from the book, and israeli songs that people sing while staring into pleasant memories.  For my benefit a few beatles hits are trooped out, although Moshe's teenage niece knows the words a lot better than me..

We've sung, we've eaten, we've remembered our freedom, and true to form we've video'd almost every minute of it.

It feels warm in all senses of the word.  I grew up loving pesach, it was a time for relaxing and letting go.  This time has been no different. 

    

Old stone and socialism

Hedva, a distant cousin of mine,  wasn't quite what I expected as she honked her horn in the car park at Binyamina station near Haifa.  Dressed in sunglasses, a tennis visor and sweatshirt, she reminded me of the sort of American tourist you try to avoid talking to at the London eye. Unlike Norma from New Jersey though, Hedva is a bit different. She had the sort of upbringing that might have come straight from the pages of a manual of socialist living.  Brought up as the responsibility of the commune, living in a children's house from a young age, little private property, communal dining room, laundry..etc it wasn't quite the same.  Now though, Hedva drives me to her large home, outside the kibbutz, filled with pictures of foreign trips, the electric piano, and view overlooking the Jezreel valley with it's squares of blue greenhouse covers that look like perfectly manicured pools of water.  Socialism isn't what it used to be but neither of us seem to worry about it.  Her husband works in Israel's version of silicon valley, and her son is the youngest of three boys who have just left the army.  Her relief shows.

On the way here, she drove through a small village made up of pale stone houses set on a hill overlooking the valley.  We stop at one overflowing with purple spring flowers and a date carved above the doorway '1889'.  This is where her parents in law live.  Where the family moved from the US in the 1890s.  Where they jumped from new york with its Carnegie and trams, to swamps, malaria, and a bunch of goats.  A bit like moving to the amazon now. 

Nowadays, predictably, the village is real estate heaven, with plots snapped up after funerals, and rows of jasmine and fig trees planted by new immigrant gardeners. The cypresses still grow in the same spots though. 

After black muddy coffee and dates, I’m driven over to her father’s place in Kibbutz Hazorea.  As soon as we enter it it's not just the smell of cows that hits me.  Or the silence.  There's a haze.  People call it 'shalva' tranquility.  Perhaps it's more in my mind, but to this city girl it's a long way from getting on the tube, running from the bus and finding a parking spot in crouch end. The whir of bicycle wheels greets us.  Perhaps it's memories of what things used to be.  (at this point I should mention that Kibbutzim are not what they were.  Communal ideals have become 'pay as you go living' with charges for all the kibbutz services, people with external jobs.  But it's still more shared than most of us.)

We walk in to the house of my father's cousin.  Like my father he has bright blue eyes and the same way of asking difficult questions.  He moves effortlessly from family feuds, how much people earn and what exactly your mother does during the day.  (we've already covered the why aren't you married thing..)

But it's a useful trip.  We talk of the clothes factory in Plovdiv my grandmother’s brothers used to run.  the one that switched from making underwear (very good underwear) to uniforms for the Bulgarian army.  It meant that unlike any other jew, the family was not subject to anti jewish curfew regulations. 

Of there's the story where the jews of Plovdiv were taken to the Jewish school, carrying their bags and told to wait.  Possibly for transportation to Auswizch.  So they waited.  Locked together in a big hall.  At the end of the day they were just sent back home. Lives saved by the protests of parliament members, the priests, the king.  

I take a few photos but no one likes to talk much about the war.  Who does.  On the way out we smell the apple blossom and look back as the rows of houses, looking up at the road ahead, the old bungalows superimposed on the brand new toll road above.  Life, death and saving lives.  Sometimes it all seems just so prosaic on the surface.  

Green Hills and Lebane - a tour near the lebanon border

As we rode further into the hills above nahariya, in the north of Israel, David kept saying at each corner that’s Lebanon! That’s Lebanon! Of course we had no idea whether it was or not, but we knew we were pretty close when we saw a ‘keep out – border’ sign down a little track.

It is spring in Israel, and while in a few months the land will be yellow and sour with want of water,  at the moment, in a hazy warm light, by the hills above the Jezrael valley you can almost mistake the vista for for the rolling hills in England.

But up here in the north it’s as far as you could get from England. We drove up a winding single track road, passing the odd herd of mountain goats.  It reminded me of driving in the north of Scotland, without perhaps the drama of the sweeping slopes and lochs.  Of course it’s a different type of drama here.  We saw a battered brown sign saying ‘Galleria/coffee’ and followed it.  Yet another dirt track road led us to yard filled with a few bits of scrap, a dilapidated fifties car, and a carefully wrought iron work bench looking over the hills.  Inside there was a long room full of tables made of tree trunks. 

The pretty young girl serving explained that they’d all moved there in the 80’s as chalutzim (pioneers) given incentives to build houses with the proviso that they build responsibly to the environment and that the beauty of the forest be preserved.  She described how the ketushas missed them during the last Lebanon war, aiming further.  It felt that all over the world there are the same types of people who run away to little communities like this to be reborn in the wild of nature.  She smiled when she described how they almost got snow this winter.

The view was spectacular.  Drier and more rocky than Italy, rougher, interspersed with patches of multishaded green trees and course grasses.

I felt sad though.  Sad at all the litter for a start when we stopped off to walk later.  But also sad after visiting the arab village, where headscarfed women sat working in their balconies, and berber like dressed men, with black robes and white caps walked the pavements throwing the odd salaam Aleichem to the each other to hear it rebound with common greeting.  I felt sad that I felt so alien, just because this was an arab village and I am a jew.  I felt sad that there is so much bloody love in this land, for this land, that that the passion cancels itself out.  It loses itself in the politics.  I felt sad that there was the drama in the hills doesn't come from the scenery.

In the village we ate at a bar which proudly showed off its best restaurant credentials over the last 4 years. We chomped at fresh baked arab bread folded over a combination of lebane (yoghurt cheese) and zaatar (hissop and other spices).  The taste of these green hills.

We left and looked back over the hills, passing by the stained glass windows of some of the houses, perched on the mountains.  We drove back to the crowded schunot (residential areas) of Naharayi where everywhere, families, arab and jew, sat round tables on the balconies, eating the same cucumber and tomato salad, humus and pitta for the evening meal. 

the story of a miracle

Today I go to a big barmitzvah party.  Mission if I choose to accept it, is to link up with all sorts of people who can tell me more about my parents and what it was like growing up in Bulgaria during the second world war as Jews.

You see few people know that almost all of Bulgaria's 50,000 jews survived the war despite living in a country which was an ally of Hitler.  That was thanks to a few members of parliament, the orthodox priesthood, and the Bulgarian people.  So my aim is to question a few of the older generation and ask them a bit more.  The miracle is that I'm here really.    It might also be a bit of a miracle to get through the day without being asked why don't I get a husband, but that's another story.  here go the canapes and wine...

sleepless nights and poet's hats

wow. can't write long, it's 6.30am and I haven't been to sleep.
today we sat in my uncle's flat, in the not so cool, pretty down at heel part of Jaffa, reading his three poems recently published in a magazine, and admiring the new hats sent lovingly by my mother from England so he would have a poet's hat.  You see, I don't know if it's my uncle's quirk or not, but I understand that it's obligatory for any creative, including this poet Yakov Aladjem, to have a suitably bohemian hat when he walks past the stone coloured blocks of flats dressed with graffiti, past the bus stop facing the sea and travels to a little room in a cafe where other poets meet.  My uncle is 70 years old and for the past 20 years has really started to live his life as a living breathing human through this lark, so a hat, of course, is a must.

So we sat in a long narrow room, predominated by brown sofa covers, pictures of grandfathers and grandchildren, and of course books, each wearing new black hats, laughing for photos, and reading poetry that I don't quite understand in hebrew (with a smattering of ted hughes).

Classic. heartwarming.  it filled me with hope, loss for those are not here with us, and the beginnings of a link.

and all that topped off with the most incredible heart to heart catch up on life with my cousin.  Someone whom you thought you had little in common with because you have different mother tongues, and then, realise that blood really is thicker than water.  You realise that the same giggle, and of course the same love of swearing, may just be something to do with inherited genes (or is it to do with the chilli chocolate).

who knows. but I'm getting a poet hat of my own..

seven year itch

I'm finally here.  Seven years is a long time to stay away from your roots.  But it still keeps drawing you in.  Sitting here on the Terrass, listening to israeli music, thinking, another life.

I'm staying with my cousin, Talia, who is from what I understand, a pretty good writer.
I haven't seen much of the place yet, it's been enough to drink the coffee, watch the gangly ants ranging over the deck and let the memories creak open the door and float me back to israeli salad on the balcony with my grandparents, shakshouka and bottles of orange coloured soda.  But this isn't the same, it's quiet, it's relatively cool and I am not part of it.  Aside and watching but soon to dive in and let it cover me.

Last night we talked and I want to talk some more, but let it happen.  We talked about similarities of families, and underneath the cultural differences slipped to the side like it was water on a tray poured out leaving it all clear and free to take whatever it holds.

I wanted to record a few thoughts on the off.  I feel already as if I'm learning.  My cousin talked about coming here to the country to confront her fears.  there's a little of that here for me.

Nothing compares to you

Day 1 – a man’s belly is pressed against my ear, I know I am going to Israel again.   He is asking for money for an institute in Jerusalem and has targeted all the men wearing skullcaps on the plane and is walking amongst them offering to take credit cards.  He has long sidecurls, a long white beard and little shame.  Two Israelis look at videos of a pop concert and a few people clap as we land.  This clapping thing only ever happens on flights to Israel and instead of making me smile.  People really do care about this place they'll even clap the pilot for taking us there.  


As I enter the airport the shininess of it all hits me.  A great curved departure hall below that looks like any other European city lounge.  But this is Tel Aviv, and I soon realize it's different when the chaos of passport control means that foreign nationals are waiting over an hour to get through, and I am asked why I don’t have an Israeli passport even though I lived here only until I was four.

Outside my relatives have been waiting for an hour, and it all feels a shambles.

First impressions – there’s a confidence about the place that I don’t remember.  There’s also a friendliness I don’t remember.  People help me with directions when I don’t even ask ‘what do you need?’ they say.

I’m reminded of the words of the song ‘it’s been seven hours and fifteen years since you took your love away’.  Instead I think seven years.  It's been seven years since I've been here.  But for better or worse, nothing really does compare to this place. 

Rites of passage

Roll up, roll up, roll up!  Welcome to the spectaculous!  the fantasgamorical! the excessiveolo! London barmitzvah.

My nephew is getting married having his barmitzvah!  I was very proud seeing him read out his little prepared speech about being a worthy soul (very intentionally funny actually),  and photos in the synagogue.  But I just cannot believe how many different elements there are to this.  The kid is 13 - he's not doing this is your life after 90 years.
so this is what I'm on about where attendance has been required -
1.  video session for relatives at dress rehearsal the week before .
2. Friday night service the night before
3.  saturday morning in synagogue
4.  party in evening at a london restaurant
5.  visit to western wall in Jerusalem
6.  party with relatives in Israel

A very British jamboree - the cuts march today.

I didn't mean to be part of this, really I didn't.  I'm not the union type.  I just wanted to go for a walk before coming here to the south bank, but I couldn't help joining in when I saw it.  A snake of coloured flags down Whitehall.  Mum's with pink hats with children holding mini placards.  Women wearing hot pants and black tights, with orange hair and shouting 'the women are here!'.  Old men with beards and kagools smiling like they'd seen it all before.  And of course all the whistles, the drums, rock music, a few mini eggs offered to me in the shade of the socialist workers party marquee.  All washed down with a few beers and a cheese roll.

This was the huge anti cuts march in town today.  Organised by the TUC.  In fact,  as I sit here in the royal festival hall, I can see a couple of Unison placards on the ballroom floor, and a few families with prams, and a pensioner in a wheelchair wearing a unison hat being taken for a stroll along the promenade. Was it like this in Bahrain? Egypt? France last year?
Perhaps it was, but I just can't believe it.  We Brits have this way of making the revolutionary seem, well, really quite Nice.  It seemed so good natured.  It was a lovely atmosphere, but it felt more like we were all at a great big folksy rock festival, with a lot of vegetarians.  Perhaps that's what rallies bring out in people.  In fact the only people that were really angry were the group of Libyans sitting astride the statue of King Charles 1.  Yes, that's King Charles the despot who refused to allow a democratic parliament.  They were waving green flags that said keep your hands off Libya.  A bunch of women on the ground arrived soon after holding the same green placards, screaming into loudspeakers. The supporters of the Bahraini revolution stood in the background, at the bottom of Nelson's column a few yards away, their large red and white flags billowing against a frieze of the battle of Cape Vincent.  The same battle where 1000 poor Spanish buggers were killed as compared to 73 British.  But still, they were jolly enough, although you could see their voices had a hint more anger in them than the teachers from Birmingham or the Woodcraft Folk from Barnet.

Still, I loved it.  I was energised and impressed.  There is something I will always respect in people coming out for what they believe in.  Sticking their heads above the parapet when the rest of us would rather be watching the xfactor.  Where on earth would we be without the people who fought the battle of Cable Street, or those women who chained themselves to railings or who those who just stood on a square holding their lighters up saying 'I believe in you. I'm with you'.

It doesn't matter if I agree with everything they're marching for.  But my god do I respect them for doing it.   Jamboree and sandwiches or not.

time, time, time

this is dedicated to all those who, like me, get home after a long day (or even an evening at an argentinian restaurant celebrating my nephew's birthday) and want to have more time to... read books, write poems, bake biscuits or even, dare I say it, write a blog.

But my eyes are falling over themselves trying to sleep.  Here is a truncated version of what I would have written:
went for half hour walk in Bowes Park.  Bowes Park at 11pm on a Monday is strangely peaceful.  Nothing but the red sea supermarket down the road shutting up and the abnormally big moon winking over the new river through the railings in Whittington Road.
I gave my nephew a ukelele, which looks awfully small and insignificant, but he really liked it.  Apparently Ukeleles are popular with teenage boys who like guitars, banksy and being cool.
Argentinians really do like to eat meat don't they?
that's all folks.

Chariots of Fire

After work the other day, I decided to get off the train a few stops early and walk through wood green to get home.  Now wood green is great for shopping, but not exactly a haven of suburban tranquility.  So as I passed the bags of rubbish, and graffiti'd grey metal shutters things looked a bit drab.  Then I saw something quite special.
In fact a few somethings, covered in swathes of excess blue, black and brown material, with trainers bobbing up and down underneath the folds.   A muslem girls running club.
There they were, gliding past the people waiting at bus stops, seven or eight youngish women bounding (some hobbling) down the high street in full hijab and suitably modest clothing, puffing a way, some chatting to each other breathlessly.
It made me smile.  Good on you, I thought.  Why let a little thing like religious observance get in your way.

So then I looked it up. I'd heard about a muslem women's football tournament in Iran.  Something promoted in this country by the muslem   women's sports foundation.  Set up in Harrow in 2001, the organisation aims to get more muslim women involved in sport 'in a more religiously appropriate way.'   I can't say I'd like to be running around in a hijab and long sleeves but if that's your faith, it must be great to be able to run around playing sports.   Here's the background  women's muslem sport foundation  although the Times paints it perhaps more equivocally women's football in the times.

Of course it's not only islam that's into the idea that sport is a good thing, for women.  In Israel, amongst what they call the Haredim (ultra orthodox) they go to gyms instead, torah with treadmills  We hear quotes from mothers of 10 saying that the gym is the only time they get to themselves.  I know some people who'd continue to pour water on this, saying that it represents the subjugation of women.  It does, for some.  But I have also spoken to strong, assertive and articulate women who are either religious jews or muslems who for their own reasons and faith choose to live the life they do.  Freely.  So this, for me looks like a step in the direction of religious liberation.    A friend of mine even saw a whole family of ultra orthodox doing their thing at the running track in regents park.  There they were flying over the hurdles complete with payos (side curls), tzitit (ritual fringes) and sheitels (wigs for the married women).   We laughed at the time, but we also thought it was courageous and quite special.
 
Gives a new meaning to the words chariots of fire.

Life in A sitcom

Today I decided that it would probably be a good idea to record the dysfunctional characters that inhabit my workplace. Ok, I know that everyone's work is filled with a rogue's gallery of nutters, paranoiacs, workaholics and a good few devoid of social skills. But why does it seem my employer is overpopulated?

First of all, we've all been there a while. A long, long while. Don't know why, perhaps the building drew us here like something from a sci fi, all filtered lights at night and ominous music.

They do pay us a good pension.

So here we are....all in some sort of time shift in a grand old building in town where they film period dramas outside and we get the odd high profile squatters next door. Come on in. Come and say hello to the gang.

Nick - the receptionist who hates people and doesn't like to serve others. He's petrified of technology but has been to some of the coolest rock festivals on the planet.

Phillipa the policy director with (suspected) aspergers. who's actually quite sweet as long as you use the right word.

Nigel the man who's lived in the same polyester trousers for 15 years and has a penchant for sexist racist jokes (but again is a nice guy at heart)

A plethora of intelligent, funny but highly single and slightly paranoid women in their late 30s and 40s.

All topped off by a gay accountant who has a passion for flagpoles, an office painted red and dreams of having a title.

Unreal eh? or perhaps just pretty common.

But hey, what's normal? Let's just hang out our most paranoid, passionate and dysfunctional selves on the flagpole of life, and see what people make of us. You never know, there might be someone else as into picking their noses as us?

Still Crazy After All These Years

Still Crazy after all these years

went to a storytelling event last week. the theme was a close call. Up trooped all these people telling their close calls (and they were pretty close, or sad, or thoughtful or sweet).

So I thought to myself, what are my own close calls. Luckily I do not seem to have had too many, but here are those I could think of (and I borrowed a few by proxy):

1. I once put a boyfriend in hospital....with a kiss. He was allergic to nuts and I'd been eating them.  Lovely guy but failed relationship.  Perhaps it wasn't meant to be.
2. My father was once threatened with a gun by a Bulgarian gangster in our home.  Luckily he survived unhurt. I'd never realised quite how brave he was until then.
3. My parents once invited a Nigerian revolutionary leader to their house (with me sleeping upstairs as a baby). He was very charming.
4. I once tried to carry a TV from my loft on my own, then fell 14ft to nothing more than bad bruises and dented stairs.  Life did, kind of flash before my eyes.  Earned the nickname skydiver though.
5. I stopped the traffic once on Oxford street. I lost consciousness on the No 13 bus, then woke up to see all the bus passengers outside looking annoyed, waiting for me to be taken off.   Because there was an ambulance strike, I went to hospital in a green goddess.   Pretty surreal, to stop the traffic then be whisked to hospital by a goddess? 

Not sure there is a theme running through these. Salvation? destruction? who knows, but I guess we all get much closer calls than that. But we get through them, and then start worrying over whether x likes us, or whether y is a really fullfilling pastime to envisage in this one life we have. /So that's it.  Despite the earth shattering moments, we're still crazy eh?