Christmas

For my beautiful Beanchen at Christmas. Have a wonderful day.

Bina Writes an Essay

This is another chapter from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund".
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Saturday 19^th June 2004

Bina comes into my bedroom without knocking and stands at the foot of the bed.

“Mama.”

It can only be about money or similar. My clock says 10:31. It is Saturday morning.

“Yes.”

“You said you would put the Internet on the other computer. For me to work.”

So I did. Last night. I forgot.

“OK.”

She leaves. I drag myself out of bed. This is a good reason to get up. It is one of Life’s Important Reasons. My daughter needs to write an essay for school, she has to research in the Internet. It is a reason to live.

My pyjamas smell of sweat, I hate it because I never sweat. But six weeks ago I had a hormone coil inserted, something to stop the awful bleeding. The doctor suggested this alternative method to having a hysterectomy. And since then I sweat every night, towels full, and everything is drenched and I hate it. I hate waking up in the morning and smelling it. I wish all of this, all this sadness and all this pain would go away. It is a reason not to get up in the morning.

In light of the Jimmy Savile scandals, I remembered that back in the 1970s, when I was a teenager and Jimmy Savile was apparently doing his thing, young girls falling for and having affairs with older men really wasn't considered anything unusual or even frowned upon. In fact, at least in the circles I moved, it was the ambition of many young girls to find themselves what we used to call a "Sugar Daddy".

Of course, this can't be compared with Jimmy's activities, and I was never a fan of the chap anyway. But back then, it was simply a different time and people looked at many things of this nature in a different way.

This is a story I wrote as a chapter in my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Fund", which tells a little bit of a story of one girl and her Sugar Daddy.

Flambeaux 

Sunday May 2nd, 1976 

We’re pretty sure that Simon Lyons is Yu Lin’s Sugar Daddy. Ashley and I plan to acquire at least one Sugar Daddy. We’re just not quite too sure how to go about it.

Ashley, Tessa and I are so sure about this because Simon Lyons picks her up in a dark blue Ferrari every day after school, and sometimes in the lunch hour. That’s a Ferrari! And she also told me that sometimes she visits him before she comes to school. So sometimes she comes in late to Assembly. Simon Lyons is a diamond dealer who lives in the town and also owns a restaurant, which is called the Flambeaux. He is a friend of the family, she says. But the thing is, he is obviously very rich and very keen on Yu Lin and she is of course very beautiful. Apart from that, he is 35 and Yu Lin is only 17! And she has been seeing him since she was 16. So why would he be spending so much time on her if he were just a friend of the family!

Anyway, Ashley and Tessa and I asked her about it but Yu Lin just continues to maintain that he is a family friend.

One day, a while ago, I had a row with Ashley. It was really stupid, and it only lasted one day. Ashley and I have been friends for years, and we had never ever had a row before. But we just got cross with each other about one small thing, and then I went into the cloakroom at lunchtime and hid in amongst the coats, and just cried to myself. And then Yu Lin came in to the cloakroom, because she was getting dressed to go out. And she found me hiding on a bench between a few coats.

“Oh, Lizzie, what are you doing here?” Yu Lin asked.

I just mumbled something about being miserable because I’d had a row with Ashley.

Yu Lin put on her hat and coat. “Do you want to come to lunch with me?” she said. “I’m going down to see Simon Lyons.”

Poppa's Gang

This is a short story I wrote in 1982, when I was 23 years old. At this time, I wrote a set of stories called "Anglo-Indian Tales" loosely based on characters in my family and on friends of my family, some of whom had been a part of the Anglo-Indian community in and around Calcutta up to the early 1960s.


We used to play chess with Poppa when we were small – Mama had bought us two volumes of ”Chess for Children“ from which she had painstakingly taught us (and herself) the game careful move by careful move, diagram by diagram. Poppa lived and played by often ferocious animal instinct, coupled with a fanatic meticulous desire for order, reason and logic. To some greater or lesser extent, we all inherited these traits, perhaps his daughter, Mama, and his grandson, my brother, most of all.

Poppa, an Anglo-Indian ex-Captain in the Indian army, had come to England for the first time shortly before my own family’s migration in the early 1960s. At Liverpool Street station he met a porter – the man was white. Stunned by the encounter and the man’s humble position, he presented him with ten shillings, together with instructions to buy himself some respectable attire and make application for honourable employment.

Mama told me that Poppa had moved house at regular intervals throughout his life – the reason for this being that he was persistently and tortuously hounded by “The Gang”. Mama would always be annoyed to hear of the “The Gang”, furiously condemning it as sheer fantasy, idiotic imagination. There was no “Gang”. Stubborn as a mule, Poppa could never be wrong.

The Big Fat Hen

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel Lizzie Goes To Japan

It was nearly four o'clock when Lizzie arrived back at the hotel from Asakusa.  Maybe Colin had called already, she thought.  She went to the Front Desk and asked, ‘Do you have any messages for me?’

The attendant said, 'Yes, Miss Chichele, we have one message for you.  Voice mail.  Would you like to hear it?'

'Yes,' said Lizzie.  'Yes please.'

It would be Colin.  He would be saying, Sorry, I can't come.

The attendant handed her the telephone receiver and pressed a button, then another button.  Lizzie listened.  It was Colin.  He said, 'Hi Lizzie, this is Colin.  I have to go into the office this afternoon, I have to collect a PC that I need for working at home.  I will only be about an hour.  So I will be coming through Takeshiba.  I can meet you somewhere.  I will call again later.'

Ypres, Messines and Passchendaele

I have written about the First World War before in this blog but a TV documentary about the fighting has once again appalled and moved me to write on the subject anew.

I think that it is the extremely high level of death, violence, sacrifice of life and seemingly total inconsideration, heartlessness and callousness by those "in charge" for human life that is so shocking. One is forced to realize that these people - and there must have been actual people in charge who made these decisions - did not view a solider as a living being with a soul and a right to live his life on this earth but rather as a commodity to be expended to the point of being killed if it was in the interest of strategy or policy.

It seems that if incidents or events lie more than 30 years in the past, we have a problem remembering them. Even in this age of image documentation (film, photographs) and recording of sound and vision, nobody actually remembers anything very much about the First World War, or of any individual events occurring in its duration and it is spoken of very little. The point is mainly, I think, that it has been completely eclipsed by that other terrible event, the Second World War, which is documented to a much greater degree, is still in the memories of many living people and to which even some level of glamor, thrill and excitement is attached.

Afterwards

This is another chapter from my unpublished novel The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund. In this chapter, Lizzie is grown up with her own children and her Dad John has just died and is about to be cremated. Lizzie, in Germany, cannot attend the funeral in England. John (Dad) is the main character in the chapters Fish and Chips in the Park and Stolen Time.

Wednesday 31^st May 2006

Lizzie woke up. Today was the day. Her father was going to be cremated and she wasn’t there. But it didn’t matter, he had died already. It was just his body, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t feel anything. He was everywhere, she had said to Brigitte, he wasn’t right there in the church, not right there in the crematorium. He probably wasn’t on Earth at all. They could say goodbye to him here, couldn’t they?

Couldn’t they?

Still, it was a significant day and it meant looking nice. It meant washing one’s hair and dressing up. It meant getting up, not lolling about in bed although you had work to do. Lizzie got up at 8:30; it was early for recent weeks, showered and washed her hair. You couldn’t be depressed today, you had a commitment. You had to get out of bed.

It was important to look good. There was hardly anything in the wardrobe that fitted her any more, since she had recently put on some weight, but she had made an effort to do all the washing yesterday, so the wardrobe was at least full. Everything was several years old and falling to bits but there were some dark clothes that she could still manage to squeeze into. At least a skirt and t-shirt, and some tights without holes.

Britain Seeks The Superstar

Britain’s Got Talent started up a new season last night on British TV and I was glued to the box, watching it via satellite. As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a big fan despite my constant criticism of everything to do with the show, from the incomprehensible dialect spoken by hot hosts Ant and Dec to the capabilities of various performers and the attitude of the judges.

And today I’m moaning, amongst other things, about the title. Although the show is called Britain’s Got Talent, I think the last thing it’s actually looking for is talent. So many of the acts presenting are loaded with talent but get buzzed off, often before they can even complete the gig. Others manage to finish and have the audience and myself cheering and egging them on, and maybe even one or two judges give them a Yes. But they need at least three Yesses to get through (under the new system, there are four judges) and so they don’t make it through to the next round. What the show actually seems to be doing is looking for a superstar rather than proclaiming that the country has talent. Hell, some of the acts don’t even come from Britain!

Are You Old? Call Me!

This morning I was driving along on the way to work and just before a green traffic light I passed by an elderly lady who was running to catch the tram. I could see the tram, which had pulled up at the tram stop, and I could see that the elderly lady probably wasn’t going to catch it. I think she realized that too, her body language even from a distance was kind of helpless and desperate. She was quite small and her shoulders were hunched up and she was carrying an elderly lady’s handbag (which I have to say, so do I! maybe not in elderly lady’s colors, but I think the shape has come back into fashion. Those short handles and the structure a bit on the large side).

As I realized that the elderly lady might not be going to make it, a whole scenario of what she would be missing went through my head. Maybe she needed to catch that tram to make a hospital or doctor’s appointment, or maybe to help a friend get to a hospital or doctor’s appointment. I realize now that that was a bit of an ageist way to think, maybe the elderly lady actually had a job and was trying to get to it on time. Either way she was going to be in trouble.

In The Tokyo Bay Coffee Lounge

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel Lizzie Goes To Japan. In this part, Lizzie has just arrived in Japan for the very first time with her boss, Richard, and they are staying at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tokyo.

'Hello, Richard?' Lizzie said into the telephone. She had pressed room-to-room call on her multi-role telephone in the hotel room and dialled 608. Lights had come on and gone off again. Amazingly, Richard seemed to have answered.

'I'm ready,' Lizzie said. She was so excited, she could hardly keep still. She had unpacked her new navy suit, still with the shop tags on, and donned it. Underneath this, she was wearing brand new white underwear. She felt wonderful.

'You're what?' She could tell he was flabbergasted, floundering. 'I'm just pottering here. I've only just cracked the safe.'

'What's taking you so long?' Lizzie asked. 'I already cracked the safe, unpacked, showered and dressed.'

You Not Lucky, You A Mama

These next two pieces are excerpts of a novel I tried to write in the late 1980's, called "Heavy On The Wire", which was about my life as a young single working mother of two very small children.

The title of this piece here "You Not Lucky, You A Mama" comes from something my little daughter said to me at the time. I was telling my children how lucky I was to have work, because it meant we could afford to eat and buy toys (I received no help from the state and my ex-husband was not paying any child allowance at the time). My daughter's reply was "You not lucky, you a mama".

Living as an Englishwoman in Germany, I had my children in Kindergarten in the mornings and worked as an interpreter and translator during this time. At one point, I had a part-time job for a few weeks as an interpreter for one of the immigration authorities, and was assigned to one of the civil servants (in this piece called Herr Zantl) assisting in interpreting statements of refugees seeking asylum.

It was a very difficult job for me, as I was unable to hear their stories and go home and forget them. They did affect me emotionally, and Herr Zantl, who was very smart, realized this. He told me I would lose the job if I could not hide my emotions better, which is in fact what ultimately happened.

Heavy On The Wire

In this piece, which follows on from You Not Lucky, You A Mama, I invented the phrase "heavy on the wire" which is a literal translation of the German phrase "schwer auf Draht" that was popular in the 1980s, meaning more or less the equivalent of "hot" today.

When I go to pick up my babies, you know the Kindergarten is in the red-light district of town, it is situated between the Oasis Bar (Life Show - yes, life) and the Femina Bar (Girls, Singer and Life Show) and the Singer in the Femina Bar is, funnily enough, singing, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, she is called Sydne and she is blond and beautiful and tall and willowy, and her warble warbles all down the street so you could hear it in the Kindergarten if you hung out of the window:

"I heard him speak and I heard my heart's desire,
I felt my heart burn and my limbs on fire,
I knew I loved him with his sex for hire cos
He's so heavy man, he's so heavy, heavy on the wire."

Pete's Teeth

Pete’s Teeth is my new colorful expression of annoyance, surprise, horror, etc. not just du jour but at least du mois. It sounds like this: Pete’s Teeth!!! with the emphasis clearly on the teeth part. I don’t know who Pete is and I care less about his teeth but these are the words that have just automatically been coming out of my mouth the last few weeks, usually when I get stuck in traffic behind some person who finds driving a car a challenge – in my experience these are often elderly gentlemen in hats and young women who are nattering to the person in the seat next to them, but I won’t get it into that.

I’ve always used colorful, off-the-wall expressions of my own making and I think Pete’s Teeth is a mixture of God’s Teeth and For Pete’s Sakes. One day it just popped out of my mouth when I was trying to say all of these at the same time (no doubt cramped up behind some slow person in a parking garage) and it just stuck.

The Sleeping Dali Exhibit

I am spending a few days in Berlin and yesterday I thought I should go and visit the Dali exhibition. Not because I am by any stretch of the imagination interested in Dali, but because sometimes I feel that I should broaden my cultural horizons by taking on topics that hold no attraction for me. You could also call it the result of a British all-girls’ school education.

The Dali exhibition is at the Potsdamer Platz and I found it easily after enquiring at the Film Museum (which I really should have visited instead). The Dali exhibition has large red banners with the word Dali in big letters, so it can be seen from far and wide, or from about a hundred meters away. It has lots of lip-shaped sofas, inside and outside, and the people at the entrance desk are very helpful and polite.

I did find the entrance fee of 11 Euros, plus extra for a guided tour and more extra for leaving your coat, quite steep and I communicated this. The man at the entrance desk told me it was because they are a private museum and receive no state funding. So if you are really interested in Dali, or like me, feel the need to sometimes do things that you don’t like, you might cough up and pay it.

Peep Show

We Cupcakes get irritated by lots of things. One of these is noise. More specifically, disturbing noise that encroaches on and penetrates one’s private sphere. A type of penetrating noise that particularly annoys this Cupcake is when people don’t turn off the tone on their phone keys, so that when they text, they might as well be sending the message in Morse code.

What is the point of having a tone on phone keys anyway? I could just about understand if you were stuck in an elevator during a power failure and the lights went off, then you might be reassured by the peeping of your phone as you were penning a quick text message for help. Other than that, I can’t think of a good reason for the key tones other than to irritate people like me.

The first thing I do when I get a new phone is turn off the key tones. It’s an easy thing to do, but sometimes I wonder if the reason that some people haven’t turned them off is because they don’t know how. If you’re using a Nokia, then go to Settings -> Tones. It’s the same menu where you choose your ring tone.

A couple of months ago I went on a long-distance trip on an ICE train. It was several hours to the next stop and the train was packed. Consideration for your fellow passengers is required. I was seated next to a pleasant-looking lady in the window seat, and next to me across the aisle was a lady, probably around 40, with a Blackberry.

Where Do We Go From Here?

In their latest issue, the magazine Vanity Fair addresses a topic which, for many reasons, is close to my own heart. They write that during the 20th century, there were dramatic differences in the cultural landscape - art in most of its forms, music, fashion, etc. over 20-year periods. Thus the outward appearance of our world and our peoples could be distinctly recognized as belonging to a particular era. A person living in 1952 could not be confused, for example, with a person of the era of 1932, at least not in a photograph or on film. Likewise, the image of a person living in 1972 could be immediately distinguished from a person esconsed in 1992.


However, over the last 20 years - 1992 to 2012 - there are very few perceptible differences in the outward appearance of popular style and culture, despite the vast leaps in technology and science. It is as if we are stuck in a groove of a culture and constantly looking to the past, rather than trying to create a new future.

The Glass History Museum

Another excerpt from my unpublished novel Lizzie Goes to Japan

Colin was tall, as tall as Richard. He was also slightly overweight, a little portly, but it seemed a nice sort of size to Lizzie. He was blond. She had never found herself attracted to blond men, which was probably why she really had not noticed him all this last week, and why he was not making much of an impression on her now. He was just terribly nice. And he was taking her out. He had said, Eight o’clock at the elevators, and he had been waiting there.

Inside the elevator, he looked down at her and said, “Would you like to go back to the hotel before we go somewhere? You know, I mean, to freshen up?”

I must look awful, Lizzie thought. Of course, I have been crying. How thoughtful of him to put it like that, not: your mascara has run and you do look a bit of a mess.

“I'm so sorry to be like this,” Lizzie said. “It is very kind of you.”

“It’s no problem,” said Colin. “I just can’t bear it when women cry. I just want them to... stop.”