Airports

Our returning flight from Nice landed at Luton Airport at 11pm last Saturday night. We had a good laugh about the fact that it is called ‘London Luton Airport’. Don’t be fooled, folks! Luton is way beyond the M25. To make things worse, the plane flew right over central London, tantalising the passengers with the beautiful giant circuit board of landmarks and neon and countless bustling lives. And it kept on flying… away from the bright lights, away from the bridges and the sparkle of the Thames, away from the intricate sprawl of the suburbs and into the dark emptiness of unpopulation.

No one really wanted to be arriving back in the UK at that time of on a Saturday night. We ached to be home on the sofa with a glass of wine and a bunch of happy memories. But as Tom Waits so rightly says, “if it’s worth the going, it’s worth the ride” so I dug deep to find the patience to enjoy the final leg of the journey.

I was panicking a little bit about the retrieval of our bags. We had suffered a small delay by being in a long non-EU passport queue for immigration control, on account of Matt being a Johnny foreigner and all that. I snuck him through with me though (oh the irony of demanding priority attention for the man in the wheelchair, who was actually the only passenger able to queue whilst sitting down… I didn’t notice us getting any dirty looks but I bet there were some) and rushed to Carousel 2 which was heaving and grinding its way around its own bends endlessly. I waited for a while, staring at nothing, shifting from foot to foot, rather grubby, increasingly eager to get to bed.

There was a tannoy announcement to say that the luggage from the Malaga flight would now be coming out on Carousel 2 as well. Passengers from genteel Nice convulsed and shrank as the lumpen masses swarmed towards the conveyer belt.

A woman standing near me, who had – by definition – just returned from a foreign holiday (in the French fucking Riviera no less), who was obviously well-dressed, who was with friends and/or family, who was well-spoken (and presumably educated to a reasonable level), who looked healthy, who was clearly not starving or being bombed or tortured, this woman actually had the nerve to say out loud, “This must be what hell is like”.

I have said many, many such stupid tasteless offensive things in my middle class life but that did not stop me from despising her with every fibre of my hypocritical sleepy being.

I befriended the beleaguered father next to me. We had spotted him in the French departure lounge and joked about him being tranqued to obliviland in order to deal with the stresses and strains of having five rambunctious children. He and his wife appeared to be very indulgent parents putting up with all kinds of shenanigans from their brood. In person he was more pleasant than I had expected, although I did cringe inside when he encouraged one of his daughters – who looked about ten – to try to work out the speed at which the belt was moving so that she could calculate the distance it would travel in one rotation. It was nearly midnight, for fuck’s sake! As the time dragged on, it became clear to me that this poor guy was hanging on by a thread. Completely worn out, struggling to keep his wriggly family in one place, worried about leaving bags behind, concerned that his children were tired, as desperate to get home as the rest of us and all the while he was determined not to get grumpy. So, my heart went out to him when his little girl looked up at his wan, puffy face and said, “Daddy, what’s a world war?”

A dedication

Jez has a head shaped like an anvil. He combs his hair with a pork chop.

Jez is quite handsome and always dresses immaculately.

Jez tries to be cool and show off about carrying condoms but he muddles up his slang and calls them ‘jimmies’ instead of ‘johnnies’.

Jez once got whiplash when someone flicked a raisin at his forehead.

Jez recently explained away the strange fridge odour by telling the entire office that it was down to his ‘salami deodorant’.

Jez needs constant attention.

Jez can eat six inch long cream cakes in one mouthful.

Jez had an Uncle Pod and an Auntie Vim.

Jez sent me the only text I got on the day of my godfather’s funeral, saying that he hoped things would go as well as could be expected.

Jez shakes constantly. He blames the caffeine but is quietly terrified that he has Parkinson’s.

Jez doesn’t get drunk, he gets ‘sloshed’. He uses words like ‘twerp’ and reads first edition romantic literature in the noble savage tradition.

Jez fancies Sandra Bullock and listens to Boney M.

Jez went out with Dorothy a couple of times. On their first date, she announced in the pub that she didn’t want to drink her pint because she thought the bar staff were trying to poison her. Instead of dismissing her as being totally doolally, he offered to swap drinks and let her have his pint, which touched her beyond words.

Jez has mental health support needs that I am not qualified to work with. I think he may have Asperger’s Syndrome.

Jez’s Mum died when he was little. He makes jokes about it but misses her terribly everyday. His computer passwords are always variants of her name.

Nice

I spent fucking WEEKS trying to find a cheeky last minute deal holiday that guaranteed being suitable for Matt. It was a pain in the arse but that's another story [and one which has resulted in us deciding to launch a website for travellers in wheelchairs - more about that later.]

Planning the trip with our dear friend Jobi, we all agreed on some basic requirements:

Being able to have a drink outside without freezing
Being able to roll around without having to resort to cabs or public transport
Being somewhere photogenic

And Nice delivered all that and more by the shedload. What a gorgeous, surprising place it is. Full of art and energy and all the best things about France.

Some of my photos are here in the Cote d’Azur gallery.

Now that we are back, I am trying to get organised to write a bit more regularly. Apologies for all the big gaps, if there is anyone out there still visiting Thunderglades.

Damn my whorish highly-paid day job with its constant and unreasonable demands.

Balls

Tip Little and Poodle Murphy are at the vet’s today having their nadgers removed. I’m feeling rather traumatised about the whole thing (although, to be fair, probably not as traumatised as they are).

It was bad enough having four mental cats trotting around after me all morning, demanding food, which they weren’t allowed in advance of the operation. Then there was the anxiety over the very questionable sturdiness of the cat basket; there were parking dramas and payment problems - the vet, who sounds like Morgan Freeman, wanted the money up front but all the cashpoints were busted up. I had to traipse the length of the Bethnal Green Road. By the time I got the fat wodge of cash and made it back to the surgery, Tip and Poodle were shaking like little black velvet sacks of terrifiedness. When the vet said, “You won’t forget to pick them up, will you?” I nearly burst into tears. Yeah, like I won’t be worrying about them every minute all day.

I do feel a bit bad for the kitten boys that when we first all got in the car to drive up to there, the Tom Waits song that just happened to be playing was “I Know I’ve Been Changed”. I wonder how long it will be before I can listen to that again without thinking of cat castration…

Starlings swarming over Brighton Pier on Thursday evening 

Old Peculiar

So last night I was discussing some strategic management issues with my fabulous deputy, Kitty L’Amour.

A shadow fell over us and we looked up to see Jez, The Mighty R standing next to my desk, holding an open black folder and a pen.

“I’ve already started writing the ticket – it’s not my problem, love!”

Kitty and I stared at each other, confused and a little frightened. Just as I opened my mouth to ask what the fuck he was talking about, he continued (quite forcefully), “Just pay the fine and appeal later.”

Turns out he wanted to be a traffic warden for the day.

Matt 

Sunday's hill 

Brizzle

This week has been decidedly iffy. Cold, grey, soggy and with few bright spots. And I am not just talking about the weather. Last weekend was good though – hanging out with mates in Bristol.

We went to the zoo, where they have blue frogs the size of a teaspoon scoop. There were lions but some chavette was banging on the glass.

Her mate squawked, “What yer fuckin' doin’, Kels?”.
“Oim just tryin’ get ‘im a look at me!” shrieked Kels, manoeuvring her kid’s pushchair violently.

I thought I would be disappointed that there weren’t more of the larger animals but there was a wonderful time to be had looking at all the little creatures in Twilight World, the Insect House, the Reptile House, the Aviary, the Aquarium …

We arrived excitedly at the otter enclosure – firm faunal favourites with us all – but the cute little beasties were nowhere to be seen. Just as we were about to walk away, one scampered out with something white in its mouth. A second otter emerged, also carrying some white booty, which turned out to be rat. Our group watched in horror as the otters proceeded to tear the rodents limb from limb. They started by biting off the feet and then chewed their heads until the skin came away. Next came the evisceration. The dark red insides of the rats opened up and organs slipped out over dirty wet white fur onto the rocks. As we ogled, dumfounded at the brutality of the natural world, a family with small children approached the enclosure and the adults joined us in looking aghast. The kids of course pressed their faces to the glass and stared blankly, confirming - without question - my assertion that all youngsters these days are utterly desensitised to death and gore (due to the bifurcate evils of TV and video games, obviously).

I had the idea that otters only ate fish but the keeper told us they will take down a seagull, if it happens to stray into their pen on the scavenge.

All in all though, it was a lovely outing with some hilarious moments:
Gem: “Oh, oh! Look at those torpedo speedo things!
John: “Gemma! They’re PENGUINS!!”

And there were pockets of magic… like walking through tunnels underwater whilst the seals swam upside down above us; like miniscule toads kissing each other a dozen times; like the leaf-cutter ants making fungus farms; like the beetles that shone like Moorish jewels; like the Picasso fish; like the Postman Butterfly which feeds sometimes on the salty tears of alligators; like just being with best friends in the thin February sunshine, on a freezing cold day, laughing.

Tip Little 

I'm blaming the planets

So today is turning out to be a little bit weird. The pond and the bird baths had frozen over so I started the day feeling like some kind of farmer tending to the needs of my land, breaking up the ice, feeding all the animals, checking the water supply. There was a robin in the garden, first one I have seen in months. Rather a cliché that it showed up on a snow day, I thought. Everyone was wearing funny hats because of the weather, and walking gingerly.

At lunchtime I fell down the stairs. It was my own fault - I was writing something in my Moleskine and stepped down onto the landing about three stairs higher than the landing actually was. My fall was broken partly by the side of my face, which is now throbbing like a bastard, and my bosoms. I smashed into the handrail, twisted my ankle and produced a delicate snot bubble in my left nostril all in one ungainly swoop. Luckily, I managed to stop myself from crying with the pain and humiliation by thinking how amusing it must have looked on the CCTV cameras. But, on arrival at the ground floor, it was really no surprise to find that our ludicrously crap security guard Keith had missed the whole thing because he was rearranging the contents of the charity snack tray on the reception desk. Feeling decidedly shaky, I went for a walk by the canal and along Wapping Lane. As I came through the gate of the graveyard, a spooky woman leaning against a gigantic window in Gun Wharf waved at me as if we were old friends. There was almost a pile-up outside the office as a bus (the slinky kind that Matt so dislikes) careered down the wrong side of the road trying to get into the right turn lane. The oncoming cars screeched to a tyre-smoking halt and cacophonised while the bus driver indicated his contempt for the pint-sized vehicles in his path by doing spastic octopus impressions and cursing silently, or so it seemed from where I was rooted to the spot, horrified that - for once - I empathised with a BMW driver.

Somehow I got back to the office in one piece, where I now sit with bruised boobs and an aching jawbone. Everyone has gone to a party. There’s just the humming of the printers, the occasional siren from the Highway and the heavy pressing quiet of a room suddenly empty.

The Day Today

I got about 55 minutes sleep last night. Mice have reclaimed Admiral House. The weather is alternating between blizzard and blue skies. Matt shaved his head off. The kittens now have collars and name tags which they keep kick scratching. I got a letter about our modest charity donation to Tomas Tomas signed by Tom Waits (although possibly not in person). The Mighty R has some kind of diseased skin patch, which he keeps claiming is just where he has “itched” (sic) himself. The envelope containing the collection for Anatole’s leaving present has gone missing from Jez’s desk. The office is divided on whether or not he should be bollocked. I appear to be the only one defending him.

Pushing an elephant upstairs

From Private Eye’s “Dumb Britain” this week:

Steve Wright’s Big Quiz, Radio 2
Wright: How many days are there in five weeks?
Contestant: Don’t know.
Wright: Give it a guess.
Contestant: Sixty.

BBC Radio Devon
Presenter: Name the artist born in 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk whose paintings include The Hay Wain and Chain Pier, Brighton?
Contestant: Van Gogh.

The Weakest Link, BBC2
Anne Robinson: Mount Everest is in the autonomous Chinese region of Tibet and which other country?
Contestant: Nicaragua.

And from MoreFM, Christchurch, New Zealand
Presenter: What’s another name for Cosa Nostra?
Contestant: Ummmm…. Amnesty International?

And while I am at it… here are some choice picks from Pseuds Corner:

“I have no quarrel with Einstein.” Simon Jenkins, The Times

“These South African wines embody the spirit of reconciliation.” Roger Scruton, New Statesman

“Sideways is beautifully written, terrifically acted; it is paced and constructed with such understated mastery that it is a sort of miracle…. Audiences at the screenings where I have been present may have heard something like a fusillade of gunshots from the auditorium; it was the sound of my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Lapis Lazuli

I dreamt about an armadillo and rattan and prune yoghurt
And a tanned, tattooed Tony Blackburn, in bed with a man.
Our garden was full of cheeky rats.

My head pounds, ringed with sweat
Cracked with dehydration.
I thought that my house had a sand bottom,
But apparently it is easier to make room in my heart
For the things I fear
Than for something that doesn’t even yet
Have a name.

We are coming ever closer.
My hectic splashes
Running off the edges
Over a beautiful, bright background of you.

Decidedly under the weather

My face is squeaking. Every time I breathe out it sounds like a door hinge in the upstairs flat needs to be oiled. My wheezechest burns with a hundred thousand needlepricks sewed drum tight into a bursting leather bag. The neighbours are out-shouting each other, an angry baby is bawling its head off and the sky is suddenly blue with candyfloss clouds bobbing sheepishly behind the chimneys. When I cough too hard I almost wet myself and my ears hurt. I am basically a bubbling head of snot and think it is best if I return to my bed with a bottle of Gee’s Linctus until it is wine o’clock.

Who fucking cares?

Heh.

Actually, the best laugh I have had out of this whole Charles and Camilla thing was listening to John Prescott on Radio 4 this morning. Ed Stourton asked him what he thought about the royal engagement and Prescott replied, “I think it’s a good thing – it means Charles will have less time for fox-hunting”.

In the neighbourhood

The blackbirds are building a nest in the ivy bush by our pond. Tip Little and Poodle Murphy sit on the windowsill, carefully watching all the activity, twitching and swishing their tails, shoulders up, ready to pounce, if only they could get through the glass. Minnie crouches at the foot of the ivy staring up but is soon spooked by the wind and waddles indoors.

A cruddy Tupperware box has been ditched with some old clothes on a chair by the bins. Inside is a half-eaten brown bread sandwich.

A group of middle-aged black women cackle infectiously and talk over each other on Underwood Road before heading in to work in the social services family centre.

An egg-sized growth protruding from the thin hair of a young man begs me to stare at it on the Commercial Road.

People have their hoods up, shoulders hunched into the wind, umbrellas out. The windows of the Codfather fish and chip shop have steamed up.

A lass checks her Hijab in the silver cracked windows of an old pub.

Two policemen patrol the streets on tall, beautiful chestnut mares. The men have luminous yellow jackets and flashing red lights on ankle bands. A gang of 15 or so Asian teenagers yell abuse and make noises to scare the horses. “TOSSERS”,“FUCKING CUNTS”, “WANKERS”. The police pretend to ignore them, muttering to each other to save face. Farther down the street someone opens their front door high up in the block of flats to shout “PIGS” before going back inside.

A sign in the barbershop window advertises the special price of £5.50 for something undisclosed. The 50 is written very, very small.

Outside the Post Office, a sleek Mercedes with blacked-out windows idles on double yellow lines.

A white-haired man coughs long and hard at the top of a tall ladder. His paint can wobbles.

A fat man leans against the park railings laughing into his mobile phone.

One of the local street drinkers hurries down Backchurch Lane. His straggly white beard is ginger-streaked with nicotine.

I walk past a short, stocky man who has worked on the markets in Whitechapel for 40 years, pushing carts and goods around for the stallholders. For as long as I can remember, he was always seen with his dog, a huge shaggy German shepherd. Now outside his council flat he wears a donkey jacket and a woolly hat. He is flustered and in a high pitched voice shouts at the ground where his pet used to be, “I keep not being able to find you! I don’t want to have to fucking worry about you”. He shakes and shuffles in tiny steps and is fighting back tears.

A Happy Anniversary

Four years ago to the day, I was cuddled up with Matt in the LAX Hilton spending our very first night ever together. I had known him for two months, in contact by email and then by phone, and we had seized the moment, deciding to have a holiday together before he was dragged off to prison.

I phoned my Mum from Heathrow (in one of those I-might-die-in-a-plane-crash-and-I-want-to-say-a-proper-Goodbye-and-I-love-you-just-in-case moments) and she was very outwardly calm, bless her. She asked me (casually), “So how well do you know this bloke you are going all the way to America to meet?” “Oh, we go back centuries”, I explained (casually), convinced that would reassure her.

In retrospect, I can hardly believe that I flew 6,000 miles to take a vacation in the desert with a strange man that I had met on the internet, but at the time it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

I befriended a British actor during the flight, a warm, fascinating man called Tom Lockyer. He was rather charmed by my story of falling in love with Matt and before we each drifted off towards Passport Control in Los Angeles, he gave me a hug and wished me all the best. Back in London a few weeks later, I tracked Tom down through Spotlight and wrote to tell him that it had been a delight to talk with him and that everything had gone perfectly with Matt. He emailed me straight away and said that he had actually been in the arrivals area when I came through the gate. He had seen that very first moment when Matt spotted me, grinned and rolled towards me with a single red rose on his lap. Tom wrote: “I'm so happy and feel very privileged to have been there to witness such an amazingly romantic meeting. I wanted to cheer, but didn't!”

Of course, I only had eyes for my baby and hadn’t noticed Tom so it was a bit weird to find out afterwards that we had been observed but it made the surreal more real as well.

The holiday was magical in a million ways, 11 blissful days in Palm Springs, until I had to come home. I have no idea how I managed to make it down the walkway to the plane, knowing that it would be at least another two years until I could see my man again. And some days I still find it hard to believe that he is really here in London, in our flat, just a short walk or a phone call away and that he is the last thing I see before I sleep and the first thing I see in the morning and I can cuddle my beloved all night, every night.

Yesterday

We took a wander around Chinatown and I snapped a few photos...

There are even some pics of the ENO's Coliseum as mentioned in my previous post. It is all coming together!

History is just one fucking thing after another

I was slightly confused recently to spot some Alan Bennett CDs in the window of a local shop. The store is the Bengali equivalent of a 99p shop. I know this because underneath the elegant Bangla script on the painted sign across the shop front, it says in much smaller letters “99p shop”. Most of the merchandise seems to be household goods - cheap kitchen roll, stacks of scouring sponges, cut-price 2 litre bottles of pop which all look like they would glow in the dark. Anything purchased is handed to the customer in a blue carrier bag, which might as well have been made of wet stressed tissue paper. And the clientele are exactly as you would expect in such a store. Minging. So what the hell are they doing selling Alan Bennett CDs?

Bennett wrote up a very entertaining diary of his year in the Times Literary Supplement in January. Here are a couple of entries…

April 22nd
An absurd direction from the ENO management requesting all employees at the Coliseum to cease from calling each ‘darling’ and indeed from touching one another at all or using other terms of endearment.

News of this is gleefully received at the National Theatre where copies of the directive are given to everybody arriving at the stage door and announcements over the tannoy take on a husky intimacy. ‘Sweethearts. Could we have two of those delightful electricians to the stage of the Cottesloe. Hurry, hurry, hurry. A bientot.’

October 11th
Stephen Page (Faber) and Andrew Franklin (Profile Books) come round to take delivery of the manuscript of Untold Stories, a collection of diaries and other memoirs which they are about to publish jointly next September. It’s in a big box file with some of the stuff in manuscript and the rest as printed in the London Review of Books. Opening the box Andrew remarks that it’s a long time since he’s seen one of these, manuscripts nowadays generally coming in the form of a floppy disc. For my part I hope they don’t notice the smear of jam on the box, the odd grease spot and even the faint odour of milk, a consequence of the manuscript being put regularly in the fridge for safekeeping whenever we go away. I used to keep my manuscripts in boxes on the floor of the kitchen but about twenty years or so ago I had a burst boiler which flooded the kitchen and ruined half of them. I told Miss Shepherd, then living in her van, of this disaster. 'Oh dear,' she said mustering what she could in the way of fellow-feeling. 'What a waste of water.'