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.