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?

wall to wall stories

Today was a lovely day.  Did this storytelling course where I got to tell my nutty kiss story (see March 10).  What was great though hearing everyone else's stories was better.  A wedding bouquet rustled up at the last minute from the runner beans,  £200 found on the street, a bump on the head in chile.  It was like sitting at your grandmother's knee over and over again when she lived very far away and getting the thrill of listening to her tell you her stories over and over again.   .

Some Days You Just Need a Hat

Today was a lazy day. Mooching in coffee shops, a bit of swimming, doing this blog and a cup of tea at my mum's. And while I look, sometimes wistfully, at all the families with cute kids running around, there are benefits. For one, I get to have days on my own in cafes, doing nothing except surfing the web
and listening to other people's conversations.

Back to hats.  My mum is worried. She wants to know whether you need to wear a hat for a barmitzvah. The considered opinion is no if you're not too bothered on ceremony.  And we in our clan tend not to be.  We did though have a good old communal worry.   I worried about my outfit and we both looked through her clothes to see if we could find something suitable amongst all the lightweight pink and beige fleeces.   In the end we agreed that a hat, a posh outfit, just doesn't really matter. It's just nice to have a great little nephew (and niece) to play games with and look forward to the charming, silly, playful things in life (like shopping in covent garden for a guitar?).

Fleeting, ephemeral things like texts, ballet steps, and surreal little yes no conversations on the phone.  Nothing like hats really.

Unfinished. Symphonies?

Some people just find it difficult to finish things.  Anything and I'm one of them.  ...But hey it's not all bad, not everything has to be finished does it?  Look at sentences.  We leave sentences in the middle all the time.  That's human conversation.  In fact if we didn't, we'd be a little weird if we didn't.  A bit like Data in Star Trek. 

Here are my top ten unfinished masterpieces (not quite ten of the best unfinished literary works) but they're all mine.

1. my first book, written age 7 in the room with the red shelves my dad painted.   chapter 1 'There was an old seaman.'  chapter 2. THE END.  
2. 53 unfinished poems and 7 unfinished short stories.  I keep reading some of them back sometimes when I try to clear out my cupboard (see below).  I have the makings of something ok, I think.  then they go back in the cupboard.
3. blog 'Tiptoe through the tulips' - one post, July 2005 (if you ever find it let me know)
4. second blog, the procrastinette.  first entry 2008. Second entry one year later.
5. 100 or so reading books, including the four hour work week, how to get what you want and want what you have and the ode less travelled.  (although some books, like A Suitable Boy, and Middlemarch, I raced through).  Length isn't an issue (!).  Perhaps it's something to do with the moon.
6. sorting out the top shelf in my wardrobe. started 2005.
7. trip diary to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.  Last entry somewhere near Chiang Mai. who cares. I have memories and some fuzzy photos.
8. predictably, this list.

Of course, an unfinished box of chocolates is always quite welcome.   and schubert did it (although admittedly he didn't finish because he died, which I don't plan to do just yet)

on that note.  I'll summon an early ending with the help of the wonderful http://www.brainyquote.com  

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

Greg Anderson

(don't ask me who greg anderson is. I reckon he's a retired astronaut)

Roots n' all that

I went to hear the sensitive and eloquent Edmund de Waal talk tonight about The Hare with Amber Eyes.  I don't know him, but it seemed he was a very humane man.  I was hooked. What Jew would not be fascinated by a Christian who goes in search of his own Jewish heritage and doesn't sweep it away under the carpet?  Especially this Jew who has designs of her own about her heritage.  It was just right for me.

Afterwards in the signings queue, next to all the cheery ladies with intricate jewellery sourced from Hampstead boutiques, this is what I heard.   'Well of course he feels Jewish' and  'he was so moved by his heritage'.  I found it odd, but perhaps it was as if they were all putting their collective hands on his shoulders and ushering him in to Friday night living rooms saying 'you've felt the little heartstrings of kinship now' and even though you've been brought up with a christmas tree it doesn't matter.  You're one of us.  What Edmund de Waal would feel about being adoped, I'm not sure.  Nevertheless, adoped he is.

He said that his family never felt nostalgia.  They just moved on and got on with it.  I liked that.  It's probably why they ended up rich as kings.

Most of all what the evening (and the book) brought up for me was the feeling of grasping at what you come from. I grew up on stories of balls of goose fat cooked by stern grandmothers, 11 brothers and sisters in one great house together, and young lovers climbing a big blue mountain in a far off land.
How can we not reach out and shake hands with the women, the men, the children that loved, ran, raised chickens, danced in halls, absconded with bakers and sang their stories over arak again and again.
For me,  I hope it's the time to start getting together my story.  Perhaps it's because I have no one to hand it over to that it is more important.  I just know that the black and white faces squinting slightly in the sun by the tree in the yard in the photos, are stretching out their arms and beckoning to me, saying you're one of us.  It's about time you made us live again.