Michael, the latest Diana? Err, I don't think so...

I have taken to listening to the Vanessa Feltz Show, a phone-in, on weekday mornings but today I switched it off before it was over, once I realised that it was to be a wall-to-wall love-in for Michael Jackson fans.

One of my recent posts described the unease I feel, since the child sex abuse allegations made against him, if I happen to watch one of his videos. I needn’t have worried. Since the news of his death it has become clear that the overwhelming majority of those contacting bodies such as the BBC to express their opinions are more interested in his creativity than in whether he was a preferential paedophile.

He was cleared of the allegations and, in his defence, he had a very unusual, troubled childhood and was milked for his talent, whatever the psychological cost to him. I expect columns will be written about the form his strangeness took. Body Dysmorphic Disorder perhaps (think of the surgery he had on his face). I have found myself thinking of the reclusive Howard Hughes who probably had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the people who took advantage of it to become his best mates.

I suspect that Jackson was, in his mind, stuck at ten years old and this probably did play a part in his need to be in the presence of younger people. The problem is that anyone else less marketable with this mindset would have been told very firmly by those around them that this would not do but there was too much to be gained by humouring him. He was clearly vulnerable if not actually predatory and I feel that, if anything untoward did take place, those who enabled it are as responsible as he might have been.

There is no doubt that Jackson had at least one or two in his circle who would cater to his every whim in order to skim off some of the wealth he generated. They must be rubbing their hands together at the royalties that are rolling in at this very moment as a result of the many tribute shows being broadcast to mark his death. I was astonished that BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme felt the need to play exerts of a number of Jackson tracks. It won’t make up for the billions they would have made had he completed the final world tour he was rehearsing for.

The moment I heard the news I felt certain that someone somewhere would allege that he is now in hiding, having faked his own death. Read the message boards across the web and you’ll see that this is already happening. I predict that someone will be selling photos of the corpse before very long. For a profit of course. The circus rolls on.

There have been a number of references to the vast amount if money that he donated to charities and while that is to his credit it I would have thought more of him in this aspect if he had paid his own bills first. As it is he died in considerable debt and I have no doubt that the three children that he somehow produced (please, no details) will suffer for this. I expect that they are being watched like hawks to see if talent is genetically transferred.

Alas, the fuss over Jackson has overshadowed the news of the death of the lovely Farrah Fawcett. I wasn’t really a fan of “Charlie’s Angels” but she was such a star that she was everywhere. My neighbour’s teenage son, Jameel, was a Farrah fan and the image of her in a clingy, revealing top, taped to the wall in his room will always stay with me. She epitomised the ‘70’s beauty and millions must have wanted to look just like her. How sad that a surgically deformed man of dubious reputation has taken some of the remaining glory that she should have been entitled to. Never mind Farrah, you’ll always be fabulous babe.

The Goldfish Liberation Front

The Attached One had a nasty shock on Sunday morning when he went to feed the goldfish. Vanessa, the pretty one with the gauzy tail, had died during the night. No obvious reason, she had seemed perfectly healthy and was buried in the garden with some ceremony. It left us feeling very sad that she did not get the chance to live in the bigger tank that we were planning to buy for her and her friend Dennis.

The care that we have taken over the two years that Vanessa and Dennis have been with us, to make sure that they have been happy, is in complete contrast to the treatment of the goldfish that are sold every year by an Iranian grocer in west London. In March those passing his shop are treated to a display of all the items needed for the celebration of Nowruz, the Zarathustrian or Persian New Year. These include pots of fragrant hyacinth and sprouted wheat, but it is the glitter and flash amongst them of many small goldfish in tiny bowls of water that draws customers to the shop.

These are very popular with the Iranian expats, who can be seen peering at the pairs of young goldfish in their ornate bowls as they carry them home. What they do not realise is that these fish are being kept in a volume of water that is a tenth of the amount they actually require and that the traditional bowl denies the fish the surface area necessary to give them the oxygen they need to survive. It’s a bit like shutting a toddler into a cupboard where it can only turn round on the spot and putting a plastic bag over its head so that it can’t breathe properly.

I have been told by an RSPCA inspector that they have tried to stop this practice as the fish sit in these tiny bowls until they are sold and who knows what happens to them after Nowruz. I suspect the sewers of West Ealing are alive with goldfish by the end of April, unless of course there are Iranian households with substantial fish tanks. In which case why do they have to buy more each year? The saddest thing about this practice is that goldfish can live for as long as forty years but these die when they are only a few months old.

Most of the Iranians who patronise this shop are likely to be exiles who fled their country after the revolution in 1979. Even so, I always think of those delicate goldfish in their tiny suffocating bowls as a metaphor for the young people of Iran, suffocated by a regime that criminalises homosexuality and executes teenage girls who are themselves victims of rape and abuse. The death of Neda Soltani will make her a symbol of the youth of Iran and their desire to live in a modern democratic environment, but long before this the situation of young Iranian women has been a matter of concern to human rights activists worldwide.

Atefeh Sahaaleh was a sixteen year old girl with mental health problems who was the victim of repeated rape by a former member of the Revolutionary Guard. When she was five years old her mother was killed in a car accident and this drove her father to drug addiction. She was obliged to care for her very elderly grandparents who repaid her by ignoring her. She would wander the streets of her town, prey for older men who would take advantage of her. The penalty for having sex with an unmarried man in Iran is one hundred lashes. She was given this punishment on three separate occasions.

Eventually she was arrested after an unsigned petition describing her as a “bad influence” was presented to the local authorities, asking that action be taken against her. Under torture she confessed to having a sexual relationship with a married man, in other words, he raped her a number of times. Atefeh’s reaction to the sentence of death passed on her led the judge, Haji Rezai, to make a supreme effort to make sure that the sentence was carried out. Documents showed her age as twenty two even though her family can prove that she was sixteen at the time. Rezai himself placed the noose around her neck and it was later discovered that he had been responsible for torturing her. Her family cannot even visit her grave to mourn her as her body was stolen from it within hours of her death.

Young men suffer equally in Iran. In 2005 Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni were executed, convicted of the rape of a thirteen year old boy, although it has been alleged that they died because they were homosexual and that the “rape“ was a consensual act. Their case gained notoriety when photographs taken just before their deaths were published on the internet. Mahmoud was sixteen and Ayaz eighteen. In the UK we worry that our young men are too rowdy, too interested in drugs, too lazy, too inclined to wear hooded tops. What must it be like to be young in a country where you risk a public lashing for engaging in the kind of activity that we regard as part of becoming an adult? How much harder must it be if you are gay?

I have never been to Iran but the knowledge I have of it suggests that it is a place of contrasts. A country where there is torture and executions are carried out but with a long history of creativity. The ceramic and textile art of Iran has attracted and inspired collectors and designers for centuries. Women are obliged to cover their hair in public yet there are female reporters and sportswomen. Homosexuality is banned but Iranian surgeons carry out corrective operations on transgender people every year. Iran’s government has a reputation for cruelty and repression yet its people are some of the kindest and most courteous that I have ever met.

Cruelty and beauty. Goldfish and hyacinths. I hope that the ordinary people of Iran get the democracy that they long for and I hope that shopkeeper sticks to selling flowers next New Year.
　
　
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/5217424.stm　
　
　

Sad and shocking images:

This means war

I do not cycle. This may be because I grew up in a cobbled mews, the bumpiness put me off although other children living there had bicycles. My lack of cycling experience has not influenced what I am about to say, in fact I have largely ignored bicycles and cyclists. Until now.

My three mile walk home from work between 8pm and 9pm on weekday evenings has brought me into contact with that lower form of life known as the pavement cyclist. I am expected to get out of the way of idiots who, whether they are clad in the most up to date dayglo lycra or ninja black, seem determined to kill me. Trouble is, by that time of day, I am usually too tired to move quickly enough so have to rely on their seeing me in time to stop. On more than one occasion this has been inches away from me.

To be fair, some of them have gone to the effort of attaching what could be referred to as a “bell” to their killing machine but these are usually barely audible and, from my perspective, pointless. The only warning I get is a brief tinkle seconds before one of these morons barrels past me. Sometimes they shout at me before they do this. They rarely shout “thank you” afterwards. The clear message is that they have the right of way and I am a bloody nuisance.

I know that my words will be met with irritation by those who cycle responsibly, the ones who cycle in the road, wearing high visibility arm bands/helmets/flashing lights and actually stop at lights rather than whipping round to the crossing and suddenly becoming a pedestrian. Well, none of you seem to cycle where I walk. So if you expect me to greet with excitement the news that Sky Sports has teamed up with British Cycling to organise “Skyrides” around the UK you will be sorely disappointed. It turns out that the Mayor of London will be leading a Mini Skyride to West London. Oh joy. Boris (who got into trouble for breaking the rules on his way into work on his bike) wants to encourage people to cycle around in large groups, free from the fear of being run down by cars and buses. How about enforcing the law when it comes to cycling on the pavement, Boris? So that I can walk around free from the fear of being scythed down by one of these fools?

The latest incident was on Thursday. I was walking round a blind corner when of these helmeted twits came screeching to a halt right in front of me. I did quite a lot of swearing as he swerved past me and then proceeded to cut straight across a main road, all this in the presence of a police car. I was under the impression that a cyclist could be fined £200 for this kind of offence. The Highway Code says:

145
You MUST NOT drive on or over a pavement, footpath or bridleway except to gain lawful access to property, or in the case of an emergency.
[Laws HA 1835 sect 72 & RTA 1988 sect 34]

Emergencies in most of these cases would appear to be getting home in time for dinner/the football match/a hot date.

I bet this kind of thing would stop if every cyclist was expected to wear an identification number as well as high visibility kit. Some of the people who have almost run into me have been wearing dark clothes and have no lights on their bicycles at night. I’ve seen them swerve on and off pavements, in and out of traffic. Having waited for the lights to change, like a good responsible pedestrian, I was almost run down by a man who thought the traffic lights didn’t apply to him and didn’t even see me. I understand that cyclists find car drivers aggressive and that they are often the victim of accidents themselves (I’ve seen the bloodstains) but I don’t think that this gives them the right to take over pavements. This happens even where there are cycle lanes. The Mayor wants to ensure that there is a network of them across London. Terrific. And are you going to ensure that they are used, Boris? Unlikely.

It has got to the stage where I am fairly sure that one of these days I will be killed or seriously injured by one of these selfish, irresponsible arseholes. Cyclists need to be registered and they need to be regulated. I want to be able to identify the person who has almost killed me. I think that someone who causes injury or death by riding their bicycle should not only be fined but imprisoned and banned from using one ever again. Why should elderly or disabled people be put off walking our streets because they have been frightened by an incident like this?
Please consider signing the petitions to which I have added links.
　
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7498562.stm
www.livingstreets.org.uk/news_and_info/pb9_pavement_cycling.php
petitions.number10.gov.uk/dangerouscycling/
petitions.number10.gov.uk/IDCyclists/
petitions.number10.gov.uk/NightBikes/
petitions.number10.gov.uk/canal-no-bikes/

Fixing the fixers

On Tuesday and Friday evenings I clean an office after my regular job which means that I’m still in the building after 9pm. The office overlooks a busy main road and there are the usual sounds of sirens and traffic. Last night, at around 9.15 I heard what sounded like a large amount of scrap metal being dropped onto the ground.

Almost. It always take a while for my brain to work out what I can see before me in these situations. It seems that a small black car had pulled out from the car park of the neighbouring building when another, almost identical small black car had swerved to avoid it and had run into a lamp post on my side of the road. By the time I got to the window the first car was in the middle of the road pointing in the opposite direction to the other.

There is a fire station a few yards from where this happened and several firemen were on the scene within seconds. Within minutes two fire engines were blocking the traffic off in one lane while police from a station that is also close by directed it around the damaged cars. The driver of the second car was injured badly enough for it to take half an hour for him to be removed from the vehicle to the waiting ambulance.

This was all dealt with and cleared up within an hour. The two damaged cars were deposited, for the time being, in the car park next door. Sand was spread across the oil spill by the lamppost. Broken bits of car were swept up. What struck me was that I had seen all three emergency services acting in a calm and coordinated manner, comforting uninjured passengers, shepherding pedestrians out of the way, making things safe.

From the fifth floor I had a clear view and felt rather detached after the initial shock, as if I was watching a play. For those directly involved, who had to see and hear the shock and pain close up it must have been very different. It is easy to forget that these men and women often attend situations like this daily, even hourly, and are expected to take it in their stride. The rest of us can walk away and forget about it but it does not surprise me that some in the police, fire and ambulance services crack under the strain or behave in a way that doesn‘t meet our expectations.

Hours before the traffic accident I had watched a video recorded in Nottingham of police officers trying to handcuff a man. A cab driver had begun recording the event because one of the officers had repeatedly tazered the individual even though he was already on the ground and vulnerable. He was simply trying to avoid having his hands cuffed. He was also punched in the head a number of times. This went on in front of a crowd of people who were clearly angry about what was happening but the police concerned carried on regardless of their comments. I suspect that they were unaware of the fact that this was being recorded (which seems a bit naïve these days) and would have stopped it if they had known.

It has raised questions about the use of tazers which were regarded as a non lethal option for subduing potentially dangerous suspects, better than guns. I am more interested in why someone is prepared to obviously and repeatedly inflict pain in a way that seems unnecessary to most of us. Have those involved become so hardened by what they have seen and experienced that they do this sort of thing without thinking twice about it? Did any of them question for a moment what their colleagues were doing and consider stopping them? Was it just the end of a long and difficult shift?

Personally I feel that we expect rather too much of our emergency services. We are not there when a drunk vomits in the van that is carrying him to the police station, we aren’t the ones who have to clean it out. Ambulance personnel increasingly face attacks when they attend a situation and firemen go home to their families and act as if nothing has happened, having seen the consequences of a fire. For the police in particular there are no second chances if they get it wrong.

I am not excusing the behaviour of the police in that video and I have concerns about the way some have dealt with demonstrators over the years. It worries me that they are being deliberately wound up to be more aggressive ahead of these events by some of those responsible for managing them. However I believe that we should become as understanding and respectful towards them as we are now expected to be towards military personnel. It is clear that there is a link between the stress of serving in a war zone and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We are often shielded from the war zones that some places in our country have become and I think that once the dust of this most recent example of police brutality has settled, we need to look at how we are dealing with the people who clean up the mess so that we don’t have to.

There's no place like home

Occasionally something happens that makes me feel very protective towards my belongings. Following an attempted break-in I began stashing jewellery out of sight and the threat of a flood had me moving irreplaceable things upstairs. Watching news reports of refugees in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990’s and images of the homes they had left behind I wondered what I regarded as so precious that I would try taking it with me. Money and documents, obviously, valuable jewellery, some photos maybe. Would we have tried to take Jones the cat with us or would we have given him a quick and kind death because we were uncertain about what was ahead of us?

Thus far in my life I have been lucky in that I have not had to make those decisions. I live in a country that has not faced invasion for more than sixty years and, in spite of certain recent events, could still be regarded as a democracy. I don’t have to bribe a councillor to raise an issue of local concern and the police usually turn up when I need them. There is likely to be someone out there to help if I fall on hard times. If I get pregnant the system should kick in to make sure that my child is fed, clothed and housed adequately, if not by me then by the state. Most of the time I take all this for granted.

A couple of things have reminded me that I am unbelievably lucky. One was the news that Madonna had been allowed to adopt a second Malawian child. The other was that Amnesty International has launched the “Demand Dignity” campaign to raise awareness of poverty and the impact it has on human rights. The term that stood out to me when reading about it was “absolute poverty” - according to the world bank that describes the condition of 1.3 billion people. Absolute poverty in 2009. Poverty means no clean water, no adequate sewage, no education, no healthcare, no voice.

It also means no certainty that the ramshackle roof over your head will still be there tomorrow. In the UK I can be certain that, should anyone find that they have the right to turn me out of my home, for whatever reason, I will at least have the chance of appeal and some notice of when I will be expected to leave. This is not the case in places like Kenya’s Deep Sea settlement where private companies are gaining land for development by illegally evicting people who have nowhere else to go. The developers are being supported by the authorities and police so those who had little to begin with are being forced to leave in the middle of the night taking with them only what they can carry. Bulldozers are literally showing up without any warning.

The campaign will also be raising awareness of corporate responsibility and the profound impact business can have on impoverished communities. They are usually powerless to defend themselves when their home is targeted by those with an agenda that does not have their best interests at heart. Native people in Canada have been directly and very badly affected by the construction of a gas plant in their area. No one in a wealthy city would tolerate a birth rate where 19 out of 21 babies were still born, yet this is what they have had to endure as a result of this imposition on what they regard as their ancestral land.

Women and children bear the brunt of this situation and the third focus of the campaign is on maternal mortality. Where I live it is expected that a pregnant woman will put her feet up and be cared for by those around her. She becomes as precious as the child she is carrying. In poor communities ease is not an option for expectant women. The need to continue working, often quite strenuously, creates a greater risk to the unborn child and mother. Add to that the lack of good antenatal and postnatal healthcare and you have the answer to why so many women who are considered to be in a condition of “absolute poverty” die as a result of becoming pregnant.



This brings me to Madonna and her adoption of Mercy, whose biological mother died during childbirth. Try for one moment to forget about the fuss surrounding what should be a private matter between an adopter and those officials concerned in assessing that person’s right to adopt a particular child. Try instead to wonder what it must be like to be born in poverty in a country where your life expectancy is 40 and where you are likely to be orphaned by AIDs. Someone with a lot of money takes an interest in your country and offers to do something about healthcare, education and child care. What would you do if you were a Malawian? If you had any sense you would put your hand up and say “Yes please!”

In my opinion too many people are ready to point a finger at Madonna and say that she has bought this child without caring in the slightest about the others that are left behind in those orphanages. That she has set up her charity, Raising Malawi, as a vehicle for the Kabbalah sect that she follows. That those who run the Kabbalah Centre in the US are looking for a country to take over.

Mmmm. Well, if they are planning to take over Malawi and run it they aren’t particularly good at keeping it a secret. I think someone will notice if that democratic country suddenly becomes a dictatorship run by a particularly pale blonde woman with an American accent. I realise that she sometimes acts as “She Who Must Be Obeyed “ but even she realises that there are limits. For centuries Christians have imposed their religion on hapless orphans throughout Africa, not always kindly, so why is the particular religion an issue?

I had felt for some time that Africa needed Madonna and even though I have some doubts about the Kabbalah Centre I have none about her decision to promote a religion other than Christianity. I believe that Raising Malawi is a genuine attempt on the part of a well informed individual, who has campaigned on the AIDs issue for years, to do something concrete and positive about it. I feel that Madonna is taking seriously the concept of “ubuntu”, a philosophy promoted by Mandela and Tutu. Above all I think that a little girl is going to grow up surrounded by people who genuinely love her and have her best interests at heart. Madonna may not turn out to be the perfect mum but she is doing her best in the only way she knows how.
　
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KS6o0jJ_C8

Through a glass, darkly, and whilst wearing dark glasses

I was channel surfing a few nights ago when I came across a documentary about Eric Gill, the sculptor. As I began to watch it there was something at the back of my mind, a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Eventually I remembered that Eric Gill was thought to have been a child abuser. This was confirmed by a visit to Wikipedia. These weren’t just allegations made against him, he described his activities in his own diaries.

Eric Gill was responsible for monuments, sculptures and plaques all over the country, the work of almost forty years. Much of his work is to be found in churches and he had quite a lot to say about man’s relationship with God. Some may wonder if God has had quite a lot to say to him, if there is an afterlife. As far as I know no one has asked that his work be destroyed or removed, and typefaces that he designed are still in use. Does this mean that the work of a self confessed abuser can be regarded as absolutely separate from the crimes that he has committed? Should I feel bad for liking the work of Eric Gill?

I find it difficult to sit through a Michael Jackson video, even though he was found not guilty on all charges of sexually abusing children in 2005. I wonder how many people in his entourage breathed a sigh of relief when that happened, not because they were concerned about him or believed in his innocence but because it meant that there was nothing to stop his music being played by the respectable and therefore royalties would still roll in. I’m no fan of his later stuff, but if “Don’t stop ‘Til You Get Enough” comes on I’ll watch it, feeling queasy and guilty all the way through it.

When it comes to Gary Glitter that opportunity never arises. His former backing band are till touring but I doubt if he has made much money from royalties lately. I loved Gary Glitter’s music when I was a kid and when the charges against him were first made public I couldn’t believe it. I suppose that by not buying his albums his former fans are punishing him in the only way they can. I suspect this means that the Glitter Band can’t use any material that he wrote and have to come up with their own songs. If I came across an old LP in a charity shop I might even consider buying it (not that I have the equipment to play it on any more) but I probably wouldn’t show it to anyone.

There is just something about a charge of child abuse that leaves a stain that cannot be erased or ignored. It isn’t like any other crime, partly because those who commit this kind of offence tend to keep on doing it or trying to. You can’t help feeling that even when most offenders of this nature are caught out they really don’t believe that they’ve done anything wrong. Society can tolerate a murderer who has done his or her time being amongst them but rarely a proven paedophile. The strange thing is that “Alice In Wonderland” is still a best seller when it must be obvious to anyone with functioning brain cells that its creator, Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), had an unhealthy interest in photographing little girls. There is no evidence that he took his attentions towards his models any further but I am sure that if Dodgson was alive today he would have taken advantage of the internet in the same way that many paedophiles have.

That looking is considered to be as bad as touching means that the career of an actor like Chris Langham is probably over. He was one of the main characters in “The Thick Of It”, a very popular TV satire of the Blair Government, but since his conviction for downloading child pornography he has not been seen in anything other than vehicles clearly meant to rehabilitate his career. In Langham’s case the images in question went quite a lot further than small girls in tastefully arranged drapery. They included video clips of the most violent kind and extreme kind. The impact on his colleagues must have been devastating. To find that someone who you may have introduced your own children to has tastes of this kind must have been shattering, knowing that your very successful television career may now depend on the amount of distance you can put between him and your next great script must have been almost as unnerving.

I still don’t know how I feel about this. I am thinking of buying a DVD of “The Thick Of It”, even though it features Langham. That Glitter LP might turn up. If it does I’ll keep the volume down.

A bit pork and cheese

I’m one half foreign and that foreign is Portuguese. It is not that obvious, diluted by the Scots and Ulster on my father’s side and, of course, by the English culture that has surrounded me since birth (if London’s culture can be described as English). It took centuries of poverty and malnourishment to refine my typically short Portuguese body and I have brown eyes and hair.

If you have a foreign parent it is likely that somewhere in the family home there will be some reminder of their origin. In our house every ornament stood on an embroidered doily, there were plates and dishes painted in traditional Portuguese styles and we had the obligatory brightly coloured ceramic cockerel. My mother and her sister worked and lived close by so I heard the language everyday and there was a lot of contact with the members of her family who lived in London. One of my cousins always put on records of traditional music and danced to them. This mainly consisted of swinging to the right and then to the left and it is good to know that others are maintaining this tradition. In Australia. I swear it all sounds like this. Jingle jingle boom.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=g36oefvywtk

Everything my mother cooked, even if it was supposed to be a British dish, tended to be a bit Portuguese which rather annoyed my father. I think she regarded the indigenous cuisine as lacking in flavour. I grew up eating the home cured meat that was brought over from her village, smuggled through customs in suitcases. Sal picao was a favourite, a sausage that was sliced very thinly and eaten with bread. The chewy slices were a dark amber and garnet colour when held up to the light. Most school friends wrinkled their noses when offered it but some took the risk and found that they liked it. The food that had helped my ancestors to survive hungry winters was regarded as a delicacy in the UK.


On special occasions we ate bacalhau, salted cod fish cooked with finely chipped, fried potatoes, scraps of fried egg and olives. If most of the British visitors to the house had seen the cod soaking in buckets of water for days before being cooked they might also have wrinkled their noses, but once it was on their plates it disappeared fairly quickly. Cod was also used to make fish cakes which could be eaten hot or cold. My mother always made a lot of them but there never seemed to be enough.

Caldo verde, a soup made with shredded dark greens, was a challenge. I was never able to eat it without getting my chin slapped by hot potatoey cabbage. Summer meant green bean salad, the beans warm from the pan and thinly sliced onions in an oil and vinegar dressing served with hard boiled eggs. Puddings and desserts usually involved a lot of work so they didn’t come along that often but when they did the smell of cinnamon filled the house.

We didn’t have much to do with the Portuguese community apart from attending occasional events. I think my mother wanted to get more involved but it wasn’t something that interested my father. I wasn’t even expected to attend Portuguese school which seemed to be mandatory for the others of my age from that background. I wouldn’t have managed it and I think common sense was sacrificed to national pride by some Portuguese parents.

The other thing that set us apart was that we didn’t spend six weeks every summer on holiday over there. A great many of my mother’s contemporaries came over in the 1960’s and 1970’s to work hard and earn money, sacrificing much to save up enough to build a dream home to retire to in Portugal. Almost everyone we knew from that community lived in accommodation that came with a housekeeping job, which meant that quite a few people lived in ugly basements with exposed pipe work and were grateful for it.

Looking back, it is hard to believe that such a large population of very foreign people could live in London without being too obvious. I think the reason was that they just kept their heads down and got on with it, looking ahead to a time when they wouldn’t have to be here. Things began to change when some began to buy houses in the suburbs, but even then the plan was still to go home. I knew several people whose parents lived in the UK for decades but never learnt to speak more than a few words of English. At the time there was no need to and the truth was that many could not read in their own language. Education was not a priority in Salazar’s Portugal. Clever people were trouble.


We did visit my mother’s home occasionally. I went from being slightly foreign in the place I was born to being very foreign somewhere else. My grandmother was the typical little old lady in black and I really do remember her with affection. The whole place was so different from London. There was no flushing toilet, you parked your backside on a wooden seat and whatever you produced was composted. How green is that? My cousin used oxen to draw along a piece of agricultural equipment I had seen pictures of in a book on medieval history and I spent an afternoon watching him irrigate a field by using metal plates that he sliced into the ground, cutting off one channel then another, allowing the river water to run between rows of potatoes. I though they were covered in Portuguese ladybirds but they were actually Colorado beetles. I remember the smell of wood smoke, being taken to see some piglets and lots of sticky car rides as my father took advantage of all that history.

We visited every castle and church in the area and then went even further. We saw Alcobaca on a particularly hot day and I remember stepping from burning sunlight into the chill of the shade. The carved stonework looked like lace. My absolute favourite was a castle that had shallow steps wide enough for horses to be taken up them during a siege. I ended up with all the usual souvenirs, a boat and a doll with lots of petticoats from Nazare, hand embroidered aprons and earrings. I had my ears pierced, whether I liked it or not, by having a sterilised needle pushed through my lobes at around the age of three. This is when they discovered just how many rude Portuguese words I had picked up.


Forty years later I’ve forgotten them, along with most of the Portuguese I knew. I don’t regret it but I always mean to brush it up. When I looked around the house for things to photograph I found that there weren’t that many. I am far more English these days. Amongst the good things that I have gained from being a bit pork and cheese are a taste for embroidery and bean salads. I cry when I listen to Amalia Rodrigues even though I don’t understand most of what she is singing about. I have an insight into what it is like for those who come here from somewhere very different to earn what they think is a decent wage. I hope I am just that little bit more interesting because of it.

www.freguesiasdeportugal.com/distritoviana/09/portuzelo/fotos.htm

Ending it all

September 1976. I am eleven years old, sitting in the front room with a kitchen knife in my hand and I am thinking of ending it all. The reason? I had found the transition from primary school (population approximately 180) to secondary school (population approximately 900) rather hard to take.

This happened every afternoon for a few days and I think what I was doing was telling myself just how bad I felt. I was anxious, frightened and out of my depth, surrounded by people who seemed more confident and trying very hard to grow into a uniform that would probably never fit me. I was mentally and physically exhausted. Quite honestly, I just wanted it to stop. It didn’t go any further but, having watched a documentary about self harm I wonder if I would have done that rather than commit suicide. Perhaps that was what I had in mind but didn’t know that you could do that.

Self harm, in terms of cutting, scratching, etc. is not the same thing as suicide and seems to serve a different purpose. In fact, according to some of the self harmers that Meera Syal spoke to in that documentary, self harming has prevented suicide because it acts as a temporary release. That I didn’t do it has everything to do with the fact that I had never heard of the practice, unlike today’s school children, amongst whom “cutting” seems to have reached epidemic proportions. It has crossed my mind that in attempting to inform and support those who self harm we have in fact spread the word about it and are in danger of making it a part of everyday teenage life.

We seem to find it easier to discuss self harm of this kind than we do its ultimate form - suicide. Yet even though the increase in suicides amongst young men is described as “worrying” the most fuss was made in the media when sixteen young people killed themselves over a relatively short period in the town of Bridgend. There was a suggestion that suicide was being romanticised. Every death of this kind seemed to be marked by tributes on networking sites and there might have been something about being immortalised in this way that appealed to those suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression, so that they went from considering suicide to actually doing it.

The programme was broadcast a few days after the joint suicide of a couple at Beachy Head and an attempt by a woman with MS to clarify the law on assisted suicide. Kazumi and Neil Puttick had nursed their son lovingly following a car accident that had left him needing constant care. His death from meningitis had been more than they could cope with. They fell together with his small body and toys from a place that has become notorious for the number of suicides that take place there. An average of 20 people every year succeed in ending their lives by jumping from the chalk cliffs. The Beachy Head Chaplaincy Team has prevented a number of suicides in recent years by patrolling the area and responding to reports of people acting suspiciously.

I have come to think that this is the answer to suicide prevention. I feel that we have to actively inform the general public that it is possible to prevent many of these deaths by raising awareness of the indicators that someone is considering ending their own life. It astonishes me that even when someone has told another person that he or she has considered doing this, the person they have made the admission to has not acted on the information. To me it would seem that the person making the admission is asking to be talked out of it or even for professional help. We live in an increasingly selfish age and I wonder if there may be a hesitation to get too involved. Apart from that I think that many people are lucky enough never to have felt that low and just can’t take seriously the thought that someone they know would do something of that nature. You have to go through it yourself to really understand that the tipping point can be reached far more easily than is generally supposed.

We are gradually (a little too gradually in my opinion ) getting away from the notion that children do not get depressed unless they have experienced some obvious and significant trauma. Victims of bullying often claim to have been suicidal but policies in schools to tackle bullying seem to vary and I wonder how many of them are in place to keep school inspectors happy when the true attitude of the staff is that it is all part of growing up. We seem to expect so much more of the young in terms of education, and they expect more of each other in terms of their appearance. Why has it got to the stage where children all over the country are slashing and scratching themselves, scarring themselves for life in the process, just so that they can get through the day?
The only kind of suicide that it seems easy to talk about is the right to end a life that is filled with physical pain. Perhaps it is easier to see yourself as suffering from a debilitating condition like Multiple Sclerosis and be able to articulate your wishes to a partner or family member in case it happens to you. Thoughts of suicide are often connected with concerns about those who are left behind. In the case of those who have the kind of condition which they recognise will leave them in a particularly distressing physical state there is what some may regard as a selfish need to put an end to that distress before it becomes unbearable. There is also the concern that by asking their loved ones to take them to a place where that pain could end they will leave them facing a prison sentence. Discussion about this issue seems to be endless yet, when it comes to the quiet, unpublicised misery of the kind of suicide that happens everyday, we are too embarrassed to talk about it.

Perhaps we can’t deal with the sadness and anger of those left behind. Most of us don’t know what to say and if we do know we don’t have the patience to keep on saying it to someone who, in turn, loves and hates the one who has done this. It may seem obvious but I really do feel that we need to increase the funding for mental health services and prevent the suicides that occur because mental health staff are too overworked to notice how far someone in their care has sunk into the depths of despair. I think we absolutely need to raise public awareness of the signs of suicide in the same way that we have promoted stroke awareness. Above all I think we need to relax a little when it comes to our expectations of children in educational terms and recognise that, whatever a child may say to our faces, what they are truly feeling may need a little more investigation.

The thing that I wanted most in September 1976 was someone who would listen to me and hear what I was feeling without making me feel as if I was a nuisance, as if I was just number 900.

http://survive.org.uk/suicide.html
http://www.papyrus-uk.org/
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthinformation/mentalhealthproblems/depression/self-harm.aspx
http://www.bbc.co.uk/headroom/newsandevents/programmes/meera_syal.shtml

Remembering

There has been a fuss over the failure of the French administration to invite a member of the British Royal Family to the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the D Day landings. If French commentators are to be believed Mr Sarkozy was so keen on a love-in with his new best friend, US President Oabama, that he forgot about asking along the only head of state who took a part in WW2. Mr Obabama’s intervention has meant that Prince Charles will now be attending the event. We will at least be spared the prospect of the Queen’s outfits being compared with those of the elegant clothes horse that is Madame Sarkozy. The true stars of the show are, as ever, being overlooked.

I’m not sure why the memory of a particular D Day veteran makes me well up. We were in the art gallery of the Imperial War Museum in 2004, standing in front of a painting of Arromanches, liberated on the 6th June 1944. A pensioner was standing next to us wearing his beret and medals. He had a huge smile on his face. “I was there,” he said, “Arrowmancheese!” He couldn’t pronounce the name of the place where he might have been killed but in the tradition of Tommies from Wipers to The Sandpit he had made it sound more interesting. He didn’t tell us anything else about himself and we have no idea what he did there but the thought of that encounter still moves me to tears.

I wonder whether most people understand the hurt felt over that delayed invitation by many of those marking the 65th anniversary today. The 60th anniversary of the D Day landings in Normandy was a big occasion. Everyone from the BBC to the Royal Family turned out for events in the UK and France. There seemed to be a sense that this was the last time that so many survivors of the Allied landings would be able to gather at one time, as age and ill health would now begin to take their toll. There were special events, exhibitions, television programmes, in particular there was an attempt to explain to a much younger generation the significance of the event and the role played by their grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

There must have been a time when the Second World War was something that most wanted to forget, especially those on the home front. Victory in Europe meant the removal of tape from windows because there were no more air raids, no more blackouts and nights spent in shelters. Today we make do and mend because we choose to recycle. It is hard to imagine what it was like to long for new clothes. Goodbye Utility, hello Dior. For those who had been away for years, so long in fact that their children did not recognise them, there were different things to forget. The sight of good friends blown to pieces. The fear and hunger of those who were prisoners of war. The terrible recurring memories to be endured in silence. All that misery, anger and pain buried in the work and play of “normal” life.

My great uncle, whose part in “The Great War” ended in a shell hole where he was found with a broken leg by the opposition, rarely talked about what had happened to him. He became a clergyman in the years between the wars and returned to France In 1944 as a chaplain in the Territorial Army. My limited understanding of what he went through comes from Sunday afternoons watching “The World At War” as a child. I remember craning my neck to look at the memorial to the Royal Artillery at Hyde Park Corner when we passed it on the bus because there was something sad and beautiful about those caped figures. I got to know the mock up of a WWI trench at the Imperial War Museum quite well although I have to be honest - this little girl didn’t really get it. Someone I knew loved black and white war films because they reminded her of the exciting and liberated days when she drove an ambulance during air raids. Looking back I realise that references were made constantly to those wars because they had such a profound effect on those who had lived through them but I had no real understanding of that at the time.




Living with someone who spends quite a lot of his time making models of planes, tanks and ships has left me a little more informed about WW2 but it was Northern Ireland and the Falklands that had the most impact on me. I grew up in a city that was under threat from IRA bombs so I couldn’t help but understand some of the fear. I watched the news reports from the Falklands but it took years for me to develop a real understanding of what war can do to those who engage in it. The odd thing is that it was my encounter with someone who didn’t go to the Falklands that stays in my mind.

In 1990 I got talking to an exceptionally tall man who used to hang out in the subway at South Kensington Underground Station. He clearly wasn’t a rough sleeper but he usually had a can in his hand. Eventually he told me that he had been persuaded to join the Welsh Guards by his father, which he could deal with until the Falklands came along. He had not been on the boat when it left and in the course of avoiding the MPs who had come to find him he had jumped from a window causing irreparable damage to his back. The irony was that he had to live with the guilt of avoiding the tragedy of the Sir Galahad and the Sir Tristram because he deserted whilst being on a pension for his disability. In a home of his own but marginalised by society, he felt that he had more in common with homeless alcoholics than the men he had trained with.

He isn’t the only one I have come across who had been talked into a career in the armed forces (usually by a civilian parent) at a time when becoming involved in an something other than a tour of Northern Ireland was unlikely. It was a bit of shock suddenly to find yourself being sent to war. I don’t judge them as I do not know whether I would have the courage to fight if I was told to. It means that I am all the more impressed by those who are joining up now, with a clearer knowledge of the risks they face. They can hardly have escaped the news reports and videos posted on the internet make it difficult to hide the truth. They have something that isn’t often mentioned these days, a sense of duty. I heard that word, duty, used by a member of the Royal British Legion when I stopped by at the local branch to take a photograph. It is that sense of duty that makes someone organise the sale of the poppies that fund the Legion’s work, and keep on doing it for thirty years. I hope that a sense of duty is behind the attendance by Prince Charles at the commemoration in France and any future invitations from Mr. Sarkozy.

“Their lives have ended, but dreams are not yet lost
if you remember in your laugh and song
these boys who do not sing and laughed not long.”

from “The Lost” by Herbert Corby




http://www.britishlegion.org.uk/
http://www.remembering.org.uk/ra_memorial.htm

Enough numbers already

Last night I was about to leave the building I clean on weekday evenings and found that the door release button had been damaged. I was trapped. We don’t use anything as old fashioned as a key to get in and out, we rely on a door code that is changed from time to time. Having failed to attract the attention of passing pedestrians (there was a car park between me and the street) so that I could tell them the code through the letterbox and have them punch that in I ended up calling The Attached One on my mobile phone. He dropped everything (in this case dinner) to drive over and rescue me.

Pin numbers seem to rule my life. I need them for bank cards, key cupboards, catalogue orders, etc., etc. And that’s apart from having to remember passwords which also have to be changed regularly to keep out all those little monsters who get their fun by invading computers. I don’t know how I manage to remember any of them and there is usually hell to pay if I can’t.

The irony is that although these codes are meant to reduce crime there are those occasions that you read about where someone has been effectively kidnapped, marched to a cash point and been forced to reveal that code. Nothing as old fashioned as stealing the cash you’re carrying, they want to steal your entire bank balance. You even have to be careful that the ATM you are using has not been rigged in some way. “Have you noticed anything unusual about this cash machine?” Well, no. And how come I never come across one that hands out money by accident? “Have a £50 note, no really, have another.” I used to think of cheques quite fondly but they have become a nuisance as they take so long to clear.

Just to make things interesting I sometimes say the number out loud without planning to. I now try to think “one, two three, four, five” as I type in the number and “enter” to override this habit. I remember the amazed look on one man’s face as he waited behind me to use the ATM when this must have happened. Fortunately he wasn’t a mugger.

I was quite a fan of online shopping but I am rather wary of it now. Last year I signed up for a system that checks that your card is being used by the right person (another password) that I came across during a transaction. It meant registering the card I use with that system but it was only after completing the form that I began to wonder whether the bank logo was as I remembered it. I called the bank in a hurry to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake and it turned out that it was OK but the logo they were using was a little different. So far I’ve only come across one other online shop that uses it. So that was worth it.

Occasionally a chip and pin machine isn’t working and I have to provide a signature. Of course it has been so long since I signed anything that it looks as if I’m trying to fake it. I sometimes wonder how anyone with a poor memory manages in these situations but somehow I think it’s going to get worse.
Can’t wait until they introduce iris recognition technology.

Line and iron

We have had warm weather for several days now. This means ice cream for some but to me it says laundry that smells of sunshine, dried in an hour.

I grew up in a house without a garden and, after moving from the city, discovered that one of the pleasures of having an open space is the chance to line dry clothes rather than baking them in a tumble dryer. Something about the sight of clothes furling and snapping in the breeze kept me at the back door for minutes at a time. I found that if I left things on the line overnight they would acquire a perfume that was better than any synthetic scent that the soap powder manufacturer could come up with. The ”Spring Breeze” that came out of the bottle and had been designed in a lab was replaced with something more subtle.

Once those clothes made it onto the ironing board (along with a few very small spiders) that perfume really made its presence felt, released by the applied heat. It made a pleasure of a chore. Towels that had been folded away after time in the sunshine released it again when I took them out of the drawer.

Of course it isn’t always sunny and it is frustrating in winter to spend cold minutes hanging wet stuff on the line that still won’t be dry by the end of the day. Somehow it is worse to have the same washing hanging on clothes horses in doors, where that synthetic floral odour becomes more intense in a centrally heated atmosphere. I think it has more to do with a dislike of the cold outdoors than a need to dry things quickly inside that makes me do it. I can see why it is regarded as unlucky to hang up washing indoors in some countries - in the past the damp atmosphere must have invited chest infections.

At the time I moved here I had an elderly neighbour who still obeyed the etiquette that had probably been followed by her mother and grandmother. It was regarded as rather slovenly to leave your things on the line overnight but I like to think that I helped to break that trend. After I had done this a few times so did she. I once heard Aggie Mackenzie, co-presenter of “How Clean Is Your House”, talk about this. She said that there was word used in the area she grew up in, ”clarty”, to describe someone who didn’t get the washing in by the end of the day. Clarty - that’s me! I have an ulterior motive, I want my clothes to smell of the morning dew.

It is easy to forget that an earlier generation of women had to spend hours scrubbing those clothes down, their hands cracked and sore and backs aching. Even so I would be surprised if they didn’t stop occasionally, to watch the wind make flags of those sheets and shirts. There is nothing quite like a perfect drying day.

I still have to remind myself to wipe down the line first so that I avoid a grimy mark across the duvet cover, even though I’ve been doing this long enough to have needed new supplies of pegs both wooden and plastic. Some of the wooden ones have taken on the silvery hue of age. We’re not sure where pegs disappear to. Some end up keeping bags of flour safe from invasion. Plastic ones disintegrate with heavy use. Quite a few end up in the lawn. We now have enough experience to seek out more durable pegs in nicer colours.

Occasionally a bird scores a direct hit but it is a small price to pay for the pleasure I get from line drying. If I’m lucky, that mark will be washed off and the item dry again within the hour, courtesy of the sun and wind.