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Another excerpt from my unpublished novel Lizzie Goes To Japan.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."