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This is another chapter from my unpublished novel The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund.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.”

Camarooned (Queen Scenes Number Eight)

Scene: Buckingham Palace, the dining room. The Queen and Prince Philip are at lunch.

Queen: I say Philip, this is all simply too ghastly for words.

Philip: I’ll say it is! I distinctly remember ordering quiche with a light garden salad and we appear to be eating crab risotto! And some pieces of the crab seem to have gorne orf!

Queen: One’s not referring to one’s luncheon, Philip. The Prime Minister Mr. Cameron has vetoed a new European Union treaty to solve the Eurozone crisis, thus potentially isolating Britain from the rest of Europe.

Ask Your Pharmacist (And Be None The Wiser)

I am taking anti-inflammatory medication against pain and inflammation in my broken toe, but I have been told I should take an accompanying stomach-protecting medication. Last night I went to the pharmacy to buy some.

Kanga (plonking packet of anti-inflammatory medication on counter): Hello. I’m taking this anti-inflammatory medication for a broken toe and I’d like to buy some stomach-protecting medication.

Young Female Pharmaceutical Assistant: No problem. We can offer you this one with 14 days’ worth of medication from this manufacturer, or this one with 7 days’ worth of medication from this other manufacturer.

The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund

This is an excerpt from my unpublished novel "The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund".


Thursday July 27^th 1972

I organised The Mummy and Daddy Christmas Present Fund a few years ago for several reasons.

First of all, it means that the children (my little brother and sister) don’t have to worry about ideas for buying Christmas presents for Mum and Dad because it is all organised by the Fund. Second, it means that they don’t have to spend all of their pocket money on Christmas presents, because mostly the Fund consists of my pocket money. Third, my brother and sister are not very good at organising and planning things so the Fund (that’s me again) relieves them of these time-consuming tasks.

When I say that the Fund mostly consists of my pocket money, well just to give you an idea, two years ago we bought a toolbox for Dad, it cost 17 shillings and 6 pence down at the hardware shop. We bought Mum a pair of gloves from Hinds in Eltham that cost nearly 15 shillings. Now a few days before Christmas the Fund Box had just over 35 shillings in it. 32 shillings and 6 pence came from my pocket money, 2 shillings came from Lucy and about 9 pence came from Jonathon.

Friday Night in Copenhagen

I can tell you what possessed me to travel to Copenhagen last Thursday. It was an article in a glossy magazine extolling the virtues and beauty of Denmark’s fair capital, complete with a recommended hotel.

Never having set foot in Scandinavia before, I decided to start with this pleasant-sounding, artisan-rich and friendly land, which, in my (confused) mind was both a physical and cultural extension of North Germany.

How wrong could I have been and next time I must look at a map before I go anywhere. The journey itself was probably the most exciting, interesting and pleasant part of the whole experience. The couchette train from South Germany to Hamburg in the north was nearly empty, so the very kind Swiss ticket collector (the train came from Zurich) rearranged my sleep cabin and the one next door so that they turned into a single bedroom cum sitting-room.

Three Hail Marys and Two Lady Gagas

I was brought up a good Catholic girl. This stemmed from my grandmother being a good Irish Catholic girl who sent my mother to a convent boarding school when she was four years old. My mother stayed there until she was 18, and, according to her, rarely went home in the holidays.

My Dad was not a Catholic; he was a member of the Church of England. Unlike us, he didn’t have to go to church on Sundays and Feast Days. He just went once at Christmas, and one Christmas he took me with him, as I had been pestering him for a long time to show me what a heathen, sorry – Church of England – mass, sorry – service – was like. As usual, I was very quiet and obedient, absorbing everything and joining in the hymns, etc. But later, my Dad told me that the vicar had been angry and had specifically told him he must never ever bring me again, which made me very worried and ashamed and embarrassed for a very long time, thinking that I must have done something wrong.

Now, I just think that my Dad was cross because by taking me, he had missed out on something that he always did at Christmas at his church service. Maybe he went out for a drink afterwards to a pub, or maybe he met a secret friend. Who knows?

Beatle Sings Beatles

Two nights ago I went to a Paul McCartney concert in Cologne. I know! My son had two tickets and the friend he was going with was sick, so he called me and asked if I would like to go with him. I dropped everything, jumped in my car and drove the many hundreds of kilometers to Cologne. Miraculously, my son and I found each other outside the Kölnarena where Paul McCartney was performing, despite all the crowds, found a place to have a meal and then proceeded to our seats, which, I have to say, were excellent.

Paul and the band walked out casually onto the stage shortly after 8 p.m. There was no announcement, no hype, no drum roll or loud intro music, no “Please welcome to the stage…” The entire audience, I think, rose and applauded, whistled, shouted, cheered, waved their home-made banners. I caught hold of my son’s arm and babbled excitedly, “It’s him, it’s actually him! It’s Paul McCartney! Look!” And my son exclaimed, “I know, I know!” just as thrilled.

Hola Grandma

Yesterday I went into a store of one of my favorite boutiques. First, because I love their clothes, and second because the prices here in Barcelona looked a little cheaper than in the same boutique at home.

Straight off I saw a beautiful blue dress, a class act and perfect for both visiting customers and going to the theater. I have one a little like it at home, also from this boutique. So I was pretty certain it would fit and suit me perfectly.

I stood in a line at the entrance to the changing-room with a bunch of teens and twens. It was only then that I realized I might look a little out of place here. The radio was blaring out some state-of-the-art Spanish hit and the changing-room was being managed by two guys! I mean, they were right inside the girls' changing-room. At first I thought they were someone's boyfriends who had wandered in by mistake, but I realized how wrong I was when one of them charmingly showed me to a free booth with a disarming smile and some Spanish that I didn't get, but in my imagination was something like, Hola Grandma! Good to see you made it here!

One Flew Over

Last night I flew to Barcelona. I had some tranquilizers with me (my fear of flying is übercrazy) but had no need of them as a young man by the name of Julian came to my aid. Julian, a tattoo artist with tattoos from neck to foot, was sitting next to me. He held my hand all through take-off, and talked to me the entire flight. He was successful in banishing my irrational fears only in that he prevented me from bursting into the usual tears and becoming hysterical.

My fear of flying is surpassed only by... nothing! Having flown all over the world several times, I have now developed such terror of flying that I swore 4 years ago, when I last stepped out of a plane, that I will never subject myself to such idiocy again. This business trip is partially to prove to myself that I can fly, I must fly and I will fly.