Brits in the USA

Whitney - diva, girl next door, junkie

2012-02-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

The 1992 movie The Bodyguard starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner wasn't a particularly clever or good movie. The plot was predictable and the blockbuster hit a little too mawkish.

But it was a powerful movie in that it showcased two stars at the top of their ascendancy. Houston could do little wrong and Costner was one of the biggest names on silver screen. The film moved effortlessly from Miami beachfront to a Hollywood mansion. It showed the America we saw a lot of in the movies back in Britain, the America that you don't see much of in America.

Still reality bites and it bit today.

Although its politics and barely concealed sexism can be nauseating, I can usually rely on the Daily Mail to capture America stories often better than the U.S. media and so it proved with the tragic death of Houston at the age of 48.

There seems to have been a lot of high profile deaths lately, but this one still hit me in the solar plexus, because Whitney was just a bit older than my generation and she was a mega star in the early 90s, a time when I was comparatively young. I still have memories of the dance floor clearing to the strains of "I Will Always Love You."

I'm told Houston was even bigger in America than in Britain. She had the voice of an angel and the clean cut looks of the girl next door. She had appeal in those cookie cutter subdivisions where Madonna was seen as a deviant.

The trouble was Houston was always something of a marketing creation. When she took up with Bobby Brown, an unreconstructed badass, the people in the cul-de-sacs were shocked and reacted as if she had been kidnapped. Yet, according to a documentary I saw while ago, Houston was a lot more like Brown than polite society would like to believe.

Not that we liked to believe it just as we don't like to believe diet Coke will kill us. When someone looks and sounds as good as Houston does, we find it hard to believe she could be the biggest junkie since Major Tom. At least until she started to look like a junkie.

Still, in the words of REM the fame thing - I don't get it. You'd think having the looks and the voice and the wealth and the rest would be a recipe for happiness but it seldom is. Does anyone really believe Brad and Angelina spend all their days floating round on a happy cloud any more than anyone seriously believed Ashton and Demi were the perfect couple?

There are many manifestations of the hollowness of mega stardom but the most powerful image that sticks in my mind is from Martin Bashir's seminal documentary on Michael Jackson. At the Venetian Hotel in Vegas, Jacko took a break from dangling kids from balconies, to go shopping. He whined like a child about the things he didn't have and went away armed with the most gaudy vases and other artifacts $200,000 can buy from an overpriced retail boutique.

It made me think consumerism is not all it's cracked up to be because Jacko didn't look like a much happier bunny once his vase craving was met. I imagine it would be cool to have a swimming pool in the back garden but probably only because I don't have one.

The whole Whitney Houston thing says much about the nature of the American dream. I'm not sure exactly what but nor am I convinced it's a dream worth aspiring to.

The House of the Aunts and Uncles

2012-02-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I watch the kids I wonder what experiences they will remember as adults and which ones will pass them by. Why is memory so selective? Why do I remember the day I jumped from the Mountain Ash tree into the neighbor’s garden only to be yelled at so vividly and yet a whole year at elementary school passed by in a blur?

But some memories are vivid down to the smells and sounds. They tinkle like the first time we hear church bells on a sunny morning deep in the countryside. So it was with the House of Aunts and Uncles. Somewhere in the Midlands, somewhere in a time warp we’d visit, although I don’t think my parents had much in common with the white haired folks inside; less so my sister and I for whom the House of the Aunts and Uncles was like stepping into Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop.

I remember it as a rambling place of fading red bricks, down a lane under wide boughed trees, sycamores with their winged seeds rotting quietly into the autumnal loam, yellows and greens that were fading to brown, behind foreboding privet hedges the house loomed large, although if I revisited today it would probably seem small and insignificant. The House of Aunts and Uncles was in reality two houses that were interconnected. Dorothy and her brother Stan lived in one and Mabel and Charlie the other.

Dorothy’s place was low and dark and a fire seemed to burn in all weathers. While my memories of the furniture are vague I recall the lines in the brown rug and the wide portraits of Cavaliers and their dogs, down the features of their faces. A dark work by a Dutch master, a Rembrandt, perhaps.

The saving grace and sanctuary from the mundane adult talk in the low, stuffy dark room was the large glass conservatory, a playground of work benches, tumbled porcelain pots and climbing plants and the bright fountains of daisies that rose up to greet us in the back garden, festooned with dew and the veils of cobwebs.

Mabel’s place was another matter. From Dot’s living room a passage would lead to a home stripped bare of all darkness. Bare boards and cold blue wood and stairs almost too steep to climb. But we’d ascend, a sharp sun insufficiently diffused by a tall stained glass window, edges of diamond and ship-shaped navy blue. The scullery would open up, a cold cubicle with a deep stone sink and a bar of roughly hewn Carbolic hanging on a string.

Mabel herself always seemed to be upstairs in a high and airy parlor, a big boned woman with a shock of white hair. I don’t remember much about Charlie, apart from his thick circular spectacles and a vaguely condescending air. But I recall a faltering conversation about how the skies were filled with shrapnel, whirring planes and pieces of men and how the mud and the blood thumped against him as he wove across the battlefield with a rickety stretcher, walking low to avoid the monstrous anger of the guns.

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme on June 1, 1916 more than 58,000 British troops were killed. The generals told them the artillery barrage had torn down the wire but the wire was still in place and men were blown apart even as the barbs pierced their skin. Charlie wove his way through this lunar landscape of shell holes, blood and human limbs, patching up the wounded where it wasn’t too late and lived to tell the tale.

But he didn’t talk about it much. In the House of Aunts and Uncles people spoke about the weather and their ailments. And that was about it.

Years later I went back there with my father in a Ford Transit van. He had failed to get the measure of the thing and kept bouncing off the kerbs. We had to pick up a few pieces of furniture that Dorothy had left in her will but the house was already receding. Dorothy had left it to a couple of carpetbaggers called the Simpsons who had forced her hand on her death bed. I remember them now, awkward and wringing their hands, impatient for us to pick up out battered items and to be gone.

Sure enough the house seemed smaller now and the sycamores no longer the majestic specimens of my childhood. There was no Charlie or Stan, no Dorothy or Mable. The House of the Aunts and Uncles was bare and meaningless. The memories had left with them. We left never to return.

Man pulls dubious rodent out of a hole on Groundhog Day

2012-02-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

Well I was going to write a post about Groundhog Day today. Then I thought of being lazy and reposting last year's post about Groundhog day. Groundhog Day - WTF.

But I figured going back to the same old ground again and again would be; a bit like groundhog day, really.

Not that the 42 people who checked out my 2011 article today - yes I work the night shift and I have zero life beyond going to the Fritos machine - seemed to give an over stuffed rat's that this was an old post.

So the interesting news here is that Punxsutawney Phil apparently popped out of Gobbler's Knob, got all alarmed by his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter which is rather odd considering it was almost 70 degrees today.

Apparently he has a brother in DC called Potomac Phil who is long dead and stuffed but this didn't stop him also making a prediction of six more weeks of winter. I don't understand this whole thing. I don't understand why guys in a top hat have to pull out the rodent and parade him for a bit off off the cuff meteorology.

So it's six more weeks of winter then. And this parrot isn't dead either.

"No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!"

Whatever happened to Chris?

2012-01-27T14:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wonder about Chris; but not very often. When I first arrived in rural North Carolina and ended up working on a small town newspaper Chris walked in wearing a leather jacket and a superior frown; a big shot crime reporter in a small town, smoking out of his sardonic mouth round the back of the building, looking me up and down with a disdainful eye, slightly unkempt and on the edge.

Chris was odd and I believed him to be standoffish. He shared the next cubicle to me but we seldom talked. Then occasionally our heads would bob up and down at the same time and we’d exchange a few words. I believe he thought I was standoffish.

Chris, his wife and kids lived a street over to us in a white house, that had the mere whiff of grandeur but seemed to be heading downhill fast. The blinds looked as if they had been in a fight; there were kids toys and trash all over the lawn.

We invited Chris to our daughter’s birthday and he came but he looked ill at ease, staring into the far distance through a haze of blue smoke. We started to wonder if he was a depressive. It occurred to me that what I had assumed was his arrogance was in fact something else.

Chris embraced the crime beat like a pair of well worn boots. He’d hang out in the bad parts of town, looking edgy. He wrote stories that went above and beyond but some days he wouldn’t go there at all. He’d be summoned into the editor’s office and would leave looking more hard bitten than ever. Then there was a rumor and speculation he was interviewing for a big paper in California. Then he stopped coming to work. Mostly.

In the end Chris just quit and disappeared into the dark home with white sidings close to the river. He had a large collection of French literature and he just buried himself in it, I heard. Sometimes he’d be spotted in town and he’d enter superficial conversations. But it was as if his former life belonged to somebody else.

Mostly he disappeared. The world moved on and left him in its slipstream – another Boo Radley in a southern town. The last time I drove by the old house in November I saw his door swing open and there was Chris, still in the small town and looking into the middle distance. I thought about stopping and saying ‘hi’ but I wasn’t sure he’d even recall me anymore and the conversation would be frankly stilted.

Yet there are days when I think there’s a bit of Chris in all of us, days when the strange and trite conversations about road tolls leave us numb, when we find we frankly don’t give a damn about whether Romney is five points up on Gingrich.

There are days when just tuning out on a sunny day and disappearing from sight for the rest of our time on earth seems as attractive as taking the road less travelled.

Woolworth staff win compensation - and not in pick n' mix either

2012-01-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

The news that former staff at Woolworths have been awarded a total of 67.8 million (what no pound sign on this infernal computer??) in compensation for losing their jobs in 2008, made me incredibly happy.

Not so much because they deserved 60 day's pay, although they probably did for the trauma of having to work at Woolworths - rather that it gave me a semi-legitimate excuse for a shameless repost.

It seemed my first post in Brits was on the closure of Woolworths, back in 2008. Nobody commented back then so just one comment will give me a 100 percent increase in popularity, although this is probably incorrect because anything times zero is still zero isn't it? OK I sucked at maths. It wasn't just the hatred of Mr. Murphy that led me to drop out. Talking of which I find myself sublimely dropping out now. And taking blissful solace in repost heaven.

THE DEMISE OF WOOLWORTHS

When I was growing up in England in the 1970s we didn't have a visit to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory to aspire to.

The closest thing was the pick 'n' mix section of Woolworths, a vast glittering realm of cheap candies and hardboiled sweets, normally positioned near the door that helped cement its nickname of 'pick 'n' steal.'

I never met a kid who hadn't swiped at least a couple of candies and even parents turned a blind eye.
In those days you could buy enough candies to fill a small wheelbarrow for 50p.

Like Woolworths itself the chocolates in the pick 'n' mix aisle would melt under the glare of a connoisseur, although there weren't too many of those around until the '80s.

It's, therefore, mind boggling to imagine a bag of "Woolies" pick 'n' mix selling for £14,500 as one did on eBay this weekend - the highest of 115 bids that were received..

The 800 gram bag was sold by Ed Adams, the former manager of the Petts Wood store in Kent, who picked it up before his store closed for the last time.

I can imagine Mr. Adams standing in the store with a large Gothic bunch of keys in his hand, ready to lock up the last store in the country for the last time, switching off the lights strip by strip on a cold winter night.

His tear smudged eye falls on a bag of candy the liquidators had missed on the empty shelves and and he picks it up and rescues it.

But I'm sure it didn't happen like that.

Still the demise of Woolworths, with the last of its 807 British stores closing on Jan. 5, is sad for anyone who grew up with the Great British institution that was actually American.

The psychological loss was described in an article in the International Herald Tribune.

F.W. Woolworth closed down in 2001 in the United States, reinventing itself as Foot Locker Inc., but the British company - long separated from its U.S. parent - remained as what the article described as a "symbol of something, a vestige of a simpler past when the country had few department stores and no giant retailers, when shopping still seemed like a treat."

In other words Woolworths was always a synonym for mediocrity.

The goods were unremarkable and the staff were notoriously "Woolly headed," as my mother would remark.

If Marks & Spencer was a grammar school boy in a blazer whose dad drove a Rover, Woolworths was the scruffy kid from the unfashionable side of town who was ferried to school in a battered Vauxhall Viva and always had a lump of snot hanging off his nose, although he didn't know it and nobody had the heart to tell him.

But people get nostalgic about Woolworths because it was like Britain itself back in the '70s, a country where pasta was an exotic food, a social life was a pair of roller skates in a scruffy church hall and nightlife was the baleful light of a fish and chip shop at the end of the street.

The demise of Woolworths is not just the fault of the recent recession. The store struggled for an identity in the 1990s and hit on a new logo and wooden floors.

When that failed it went for more wooden floors.

Now it's gone it's strange to read on its website: "Coming back soon, better than ever."

There's even tentative suggestion left hanging in the post retail ether, that pick 'n' mix could be sold on line.

I'm all for nostalgia but this is surely wishful thinking. For a start how can kids possible steal candies on the Internet?

Kate Winslet and why we're swimming naked

2012-01-15T19:00:00.000-08:00

Today I started finding material to send to a national magazine that is looking for freelance writers. I thought this woudn't be a problem having interviewed folks like Kate Winslet, Meg Ryan, Angelina Jolie etc. in the past - admittedly at press conferences in the Dorchester as opposed to over lunch at the Ivy.

I was somewhat taken back to find so few of these existed onlne. Instead I found myself having to transcribe my Kate interview onto my blog and publishing it here.

Looking over my cuttings (they call them clips in the US) started me wondering what exactly I have been doing for more than a decade. The Winslet interview seemed recent but it was early 2002. Looking back it's hard not to look at jounalism as being like that Italian cruise liner, although a more appropriate metaphor, particularly for a Kate interview, is surely the Titanic because it took longer to go down, the band played on and people rearranged the deck chairs.

But I'm sad to say the last few years have been dominated by layoffs and the sight of skilled colleagues clearing their desks after being let go for earning too much, even though too much was not much. And while it's easy to get into an 'it isn't me' mentality there's also a thing called the law of averages.

But there has been plenty of deck chair arranging, talk of new products and innovative internet gizmos, pay walls and content clouds. And 'Talk to Sam,' a marketing initiative by Sam Zell to listen to employees while he bled the company dry and later sued it. We were cynical at the time but the surpreme irony was that even journalists - that most cynical breed of people - were not as skeptical as they should have been.

But at least as we go glug, glug down to the inevitable whirlpool at the bottom of the swirling cesspit we can glory in the memory of Kate running up and down those flooded corridors. Transcribing this interview with Kate Winslet after all these years made me at first wonder what I had learned in more than a decade.

But it also gave me hope. There were paragraphs that I tightened up. I found myself thinking I would write this article differently today and it would be a lot more readable. I may have spent much of the last decade sinking but I've enjoyed the ride. And I've picked up a few tips as I've gone down.

INTERVIEW WITH KATE WINSLET JAN 9, 2002 - THE EASTERN DAILY PRESS

It is an idyllic day in Southwold, Suffolk. The young Iris Murdoch runs down to the chilly sea hand-in-hand with the love of her life, John Bayley. They throw stones into the water and gawky Bayley dons a scuba mask and wades into the sea in an overcoat.

In another scene she stands in a bright blue beach hut rattling with pebbles and shells, wearing a mischievous smile as wide as the cloudless Suffolk horizon.

The movie Iris is a tale of enduring love between the prolific and promiscuous novelist and the awkward Oxford don Bayley. It is an intellectual love that's at times childish.

For Kate Winslet, the actress cast in the role of Murdoch, life was not imitating art. As she passionately embraced her co-star, Hugh Bonneville, her husband Jamie Threapleton was holed up in hotel nearby. Four months later they split up.

Does Winslet still believe in enduring love? She falters briefly during a press conference at the Dorchester Hotel.

"I'm not a cynical person and I live for the moment. Yes, of course it can exist. Absolutely," she said not totally convincingly, before heading for the safe ground. "Iris and John were a true love story. They made each other extremely happy."

While Winslet sidesteps the question of her own romances, she glows when she talks about her daughter Mia. She did not mention Threapleton or new love Sam Mendes, the film director.

Winslet made her name in the blockbuster movie Titanic but surprised the movie world by eschewing further Hollywood blockbusters to accept roles in smaller, more offbeat British-made films.

Richard Eyre's Iris falls into this category but looks set to be one of those rare movies that will prove to be a success on both sides of the Atlantic without receiving the Titanic treatment.

On the face of it, a raw film about a novelist's descent into Alzheimer's disease does not sound like a recipe for box office success. But these are not normal times, and post September 11 cinema goers are looking for something different from the traditional diet of action movies.

Iris is a profound and moving film in which Winslet sparkles as the vivacious young Murdoch, a woman with a lust for life, not to mention a series of men and women while she is with Bayley, even though he is the man she gives her mind to.

But it is Dame Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent as the older Murdoch and Bayley who steal the show by taking the relationship to a new bittersweet level. They are tipped for Oscar nominations.

The autumn and winter of Murdoch's life rather than the spring days of bicycle rides and skinny-dipping in Oxford's rivers make the most compelling viewing. From being a distinguished scholar and a woman of books, one of England's most accomplished writers, Murdoch was transformed by Alzheimer's into a rambling wreck incapable of reading the word "dog."

For those of us who remember the media reports about Murdoch suffering from "writer's block," watching Iris feels somewhat too close to reality for comfort.

Eyre uses the juxtaposition of Winslet and Dench to devastating effect, nowhere more so than in the scenes filmed at Southwold.

While the novelist as a young woman frolics on the sand before Bayley's friend Janet Stone (Penelope Wilton), Dench stares moodily out to the sea that spawned her most famous novel and places smooth rocks on slivers of notepaper. When Janet asks her to sign a copy of her latest novel, she throws it angrily to the ground. Janet is also seriously ill with cancer, her face set in a mask of pain.

But later that night, outside the candle-lit beach hut there is a moving scene in which Murdoch responds to an old tune and holds Janet tight in a last dance to the music of time for both women.

In an era of escapism and magic depicted by The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, it is sobering to see a film that does not flinch at the grim realities of mortality and old age, a film that addresses the degradation and sheer horror of Alzheimer's head-on.

There is an abyss between Winslet's wild, young character and the sad old woman played by Dench, which is the simple but effective key to the movie's poignancy.

Winslet is well attuned to growing older. She's made a living in acting since she was 13 and is fast becoming a British movie institution. She was nominated for an Oscar for Titanic at the age of 22. When she shot Holy Smoke two years later, she said she felt as though she was in her mid 30s. "God, I don't know how to be young anymore," she said.

Now in her mid-20s she has the attitude of a woman in her 30s. She says she is bemused by her current status as a mega star and prefers to talk about Murdoch.

"I knew about Iris Murdoch but I didn't know about her work," she said. "I had to be very selective about the research I did because the film was not about the novels but about the material from John Bayley's books. I simply read his books over and over again and spent some time with John Bayley. I did not feel the need to go out and read all her novels.

"It confirmed things I knew and felt about her. She loved people, she loved things and had an incredible zest for life."

Despite the close interweaving of the young Murdoch and the older writer in the film, Winslet did not discuss her portrayal of the role with Dench beforehand.

"When I first saw the film I remember thinking 'Thank God we pulled it off.' We did feel similar, even though from the outside we're nothing alike- I'm about five inches taller than Judi and there are a lot of obvious differences. I was relieved that we did feel like the same woman."

Winslet found few problems dealing with the two very distinct plots going on in the film that splits Murdoch's life in two. "They really were two separate stories. I was giving the sense of the young Iris as an absolute stick of dynamite, which is what she was," she said.

She recalled how Eyre told her it had been wonderful to work with Dench and Broadbent but he was glad to move on and shoot the scenes of the younger Murdoch because "it's so much happier."

"Richard has experience of losing somebody to Alzheimer's and it was nice of him to get involved in some of the spingtime stuff," she said.

Water was very important to Murdoch. The novelist and her husband were keen swimmers. One of the last entries made in her journal in 1996 read: "We swam in the Thames, in our usual place for this time of year."

The film opens with a scene in which Winslet swims naked underwater. "I love it. I do love water and I always have done," she said. "If you ask my father who was first to go in the sea, it was me tearing down the beach," the Titanic star said.

Nudity is an issue the actress shrugged off with a laugh. "If anyone is used to taking their clothes off it is me," she said. "You never get used to nudity and I certainly don't look forward to it. This was something that was key in John and Iris's relationship. When they were young they did a of skinny dipping, so to me it was another extension of their relationship."

But she admitted to having a moment of "Oh, no, here we go again," when she saw herself naked in the movie.

Winslet's weight has been a constant source of media interest. After Titanic her weight rose above 11 stone and she was dubbed "Titanic Kate," in the tabloids. She described the coverage as "hurtful" but seemed impervious to pressure to do the thing the movie industry expects of leading ladies - to lose weight. Then, just as she started to become a role model for women resisting the pressure to diet, she lost weight.

Now she is back to her pre-Titanic weight but sighs when the issue is invariably raised at press conferences. "Awful boring weight questions again," she tells the reporter who was bold enough to ask.

"Getting my figure back after pregnancy wasn't easy but I got it back again. I didn't panic and think I'd lost my figure for ever," she said.

Media interest in Winslet's weight and personal life remains unabated, becoming more intense after she started dating Mendes.

"When I feel invaded I carry on as normal, particularly now that I have Mia," she said. "The press have never forced me to be barricaded into my own home and I never will be. Because of what's been going on I'm probably followed around more now when I take Mia for a simple walk than I have been for some time, but that doesn't mean I won't go on that walk."

The arrival of Winslet's first daughter also curtailed her movie-making.

"In the first year of her life I didn't want to be away a lot. I have ended up doing two films but only worked about 11 weeks. I feel relatively triumphant about that because she has come along when I've been doing these roles. Actresses are very lucky."

Winslet's post Titanic roles appear to demonstrate a desire to do different. She turned down blockbusters to film the modestly budgeted Hideous Kinky in Morocco and Holy Smoke in India.

"I don't have a specific agenda as such, she told me. " I haven't turned down the blockbusters because I don't want to do the films. It is simply that after Titanic I have done the things I felt most passionate about and the most challenged by."

Hideous Kinky was her only specific choice. "I wanted to do something that was British and small," she said. "I was mindful of the fact I am a young British actress and it's quite important to set an example."

Many critics are saying Iris brings the best of British to the screen, bu it Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent or the writer of whose life this film is a poignant celebration of.

Bayley saw his late wife in the depiction of Iris Murdoch in the film and it made him cry. He won't be the only one.

Dial 8 for Dido at the bank

2012-01-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

A strange thing happened to me this morning when I tried to get hold of someone from the bank. The strange thing was the fact I managed to get hold of someone from the bank. Usually I call the number on the back of my card having taken the adequate precautions. The sleeping bag is ready along with enough tins of beans to survive a nuclear winter.

And then I will go through the whole process of pressing numbers on cue and being put through a labyrinth of options before giving away precious chunks of my life that I'll never get back again by listening to an automated voice that tells me a service representative will be with me "shortly." The message should really say "longly shortly," but that's not great grammar.

This time I was asked to press 1 for a service rep and then a very weird and disturbing thing happened; a human voice answered immediately. This was so unexpected I found myself floundering, my tongue flipping around like Free Willy in a fish tank, utterly in shock and almost forgetting why I called in the first place.

The other surprising aspect of this call was the fact I was able to achieve what I wanted without having my request denied because I couldn't recall the middle name of my great aunt Beatrice's long deceased gold fish.

There was a brief interlude during which I was treated to Life for Rent by Dido. This got me thinking about music on corporate voicelines and wondering why it's usually of the Dido, Celine Dion ilk. While I'm rather keen on Dido but not so keen on Celine, it would be surely be more interesting if banks opted for something edgier.

Suede, for instance, a band that never made it big in the US but had something of a heroin chic cache in Britain during the '90s, although I have little idea what they were singing about, but probably not the woman who works at the buchers'.

"She sells heart, she sells meat
Oh dad, she's driving me mad, come see."

If Suede won't make it onto Bank of America, the Sex Pistols really don't have much chance.

God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
Potential H-bomb
But you think they'd consider The Smiths and the one line that resonates most with me (unfortunately).

I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour
But heaven knows I'm miserable now.

Especially after waiting for 40 minutes to be told your overdraft limit will not be extended by some snotty rep from Rockville hovering on pubescence who probably plays Join the Dots with his acne every morning. It's enough to turn the mildest mannered individual into Sid Vicious after a couple of Tia Marias.

Personally I'd be a lot happier hanging on the telephone, in the immortal words of Blondie if they had Bowie on there. Ashes to Ashes would be the most appropriate song not only because it's probably the most amazing song ever written, although that' s a big claim, but because by the time the folks at the bank have finished with us we all feel like Major Tom.

The simplicity of southern skies

2012-01-07T14:40:00.000-08:00

There's a simplicity to southern skies, a shining symmetry that we don't always appreciate until it's gone.

We walk under so many skies, heads down, missing the shimmering world above the sheds and the pine trees and the tumble of wires.

But occasionally we take the time to look up and there it is; iridescent pink strips lighting up the blue, the last vestiges of a warm winter's day.

I found my camera before it was too late. But already gray was drifting into the pink, like a dirty smudge on the lens. I moved the lens to the left and the right but the grey moved in; gun smoke seeping across peaceful vistas.

We should make more time for the pink; we should bask more in the iridescent before the gray marches in for good.

The demise of penguins and badgers

2012-01-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

Time was I could rely on penguins to cheer me up. No longer. Just their fluffy buzzard heads (which I know is a bird mixed metaphor) and their flappers were enough of a tonic.

Sadly my recent visit to Busch Gardens where the penguin show was flagged as something of a highlight has cured me of my notion of penguins as a panacea for all ills. Zara was unhappy that I forgot to bring dirty hard currency which meant she was unable to attempt to win an angry bird by throwing a dart at the head of one of the hapless Busch Garden workers dressed as elves.

“Don’t worry. I said. There’s always the penguins.”

And let’s face it. There was always the penguins wasn’t there? During times of terrorist attacks, plane crashes and global warming, all we needed was an image of a cuddly penguin and – hey presto, like a giant Band Aid on all the world’s problems, everything was hunky dorey.

We had to wait in a long line for the penguin show, which I was told was more of a walk-past. Finally we got into a dingy house with a few small penguins clustered behind glass, along with a handful of bigger Emperor penguins.

“They stink,” said Zara.

And sure enough they did. The penguin house was awash with stinky fish water and the penguins looked pathetic and smelled badly which got me wondering why we had lined up for an exhibit that wouldn’t be seen to be fit to grace a Bogota zoo.

After this incident I fell out with penguins. I’m fickle like that.

Today I realized badgers are also missing from my life. Back in the day almost every Wednesday I would stroll across the House of Commons and have tea with a Member of Parliament. He was not a particularly important or influential member of Parliament. But he was something of an expert on badgers.

We would talk about the black and white fellas until we were black and blue in the face and the sun went down. We would talk about bovine TB. I would urge you at this critical juncture not to be overly jealous and to want a part in such sparkling repartee.

But the strange thing about badgers is nobody in the USA seems to know much about them, even though I’m told they exist here and there’s a Wisconsin based university team called the Badgers. I assume badgers must exist here because why would you name your team after a non native animal unless it’s something macho like a tiger? Otherwise it would be like the Boston Duck Billed Platypuses.

I have emailed a number of people today asking them if they know of the existence of badgers in America. So far nobody has replied. I wonder now if there’s some kind of sinister conspiracy of silence about badgers in the USA. Is to mention badgers like mentioning the secret society in Eyes Wide Shut where influential folks dress like Gandalf and take part in sex orgies?

Nobody got this movie but I found it rather interesting as is anything by Stanley Kubrick, the obsessive director who probably got off on making Tom and Nicole do sex scenes when there was clearly no chemistry between them following Nicole’s discovery she had married a short guy.

I also admire Kubrick as a talented American who, like T.S. Eliot, chose to live in England for much of his life. I’m only sorry he never had time to devote a movie to penguins and badgers. Perhaps he could have used a curious story that emanated in Basra during the Iraq war that British troops had let giant man eating badgers loose on the streets.

Which is the sort of scary thing our boys and girls in combat fatigues do in war zones after destroying the morale of the local population by carpet bombing civilians with dead penguins.

New Year's Eve with the human wrecking ball and sister sulk

2012-01-01T19:58:00.000-08:00

I'm a firm believer that something unfortunate happens to us in our 40s. Aside from the perpetual mid life crisis, we make the stealthy transition from being protagonists to victims.

Suddenly we realise one day we have no control over our own destinies and are rather purely reactive people who watch horrified on the sidelines as awful events explode around us thinking weakly 'I used to shape and now I don' t even have the energy or the belief to follow; rather I stumble haphazardly in the wake of things, blinking weakly and trying to remember the world we once mistakenly eyed up as our oyster.'

New Years Eves used to be a case in point. These used to be so full of hope and expectation, even if they so often ended up in the arms of a stranger with a bad complexion at a second rate party in a disused bowling alley.

We got older, they got more respectable. But we still waited for the countdown, we still went through the motions of partying. We threw our arms around people when the clock struck 12.

But now in our 40s we seldom even bother to wait up and watch the ball drop. We're far too tired to stay up so late.

And we seem to have little control over the chain of events; a relative said we should meet at the Great Wolf Lodge because she had four kids in tow and we have two and we should all get together and it will be fun and frolics and she forgets to add to explain more is less with kids and to mention a key word that comes back to haunt us and nibble at us as we beat a retreat from hell; purgatory - it will be purgatory. You may never have been to Purgatory USA but the brochure looks positively nasty.

Another symptom of being in your 40s is that you realize something will be bad but you are powerless to change the course of events. The pictures of the Great Wolf Lodge looked frankly alarming - you could almost smell the sweat oozing from the bodies of children out of the pages, you could hear the screams and yells and demands for more and less and something you couldn't give. The good news is the rate had gone up to $500 a night by the time we got round to booking, so we stayed in the Hilton instead.

And as soon as we arrived there and the comfortable bed wrapped around me I weakly suggested not even showing up for my rendezvous at the Wolf Lodge.

Overruled. before I knew it the great faux hunting lodge rose from the woods and we were descending into its depths beneath giant polystyrene wolves asking at reception where we could be fitted with Adamantine chains. The place was full of miserable adults, recently disgorged from flash Mercs and BMWs looking uneasy and out of place while the kids screamed at them to part with $15 for magic wands that would open the chests placed along corridors straight out of The Shining.

Before we could reach the water park we were taken to a BBQ shack for a late lunch. The place was renown for its BBQ but had all of the aura of Steffi Graf's arm pit. "I'm sure the white table cloths are arriving soon," I joked to deadpan silence.

By now Jax was causing havoc, hurling just about every piece of food related junk on the table.

"Look - I've just about had enough or you," I growled assuming the fearsome demeanor of a polystyrene wolf.

"Ah," he threw a cup full of water over me. That's what I'm trying to say about the powerlessness of being in your 40s.

Then as I went off on another bleak foray for plastic utensils he sunk his teeth into my wife's arm.

Yes. It was going to be a New Year's Eve to remember.

Back at the Great Wolf Lodge we were preparing to use the water park. My wife pointed out rather pertinently that while the rooms may have large lumberjack-style four poster beds and cost $500 a night for New Year's Eve, they reeked of child vomit.

I thought it might be the distinctive odor of the vomit of the Papua New Guinea duck billed platy puss but I didn't argue the point. That's another characteristic of being in your 40s; you don't want to waste energy defending stances you would have built a barricade for in your twenties.

At this point it became apparent I had forgotten my swimming trunks so I had to borrow those of my nephew that were rather too tight. This left me uneasy on the water slides as I expected an unpleasant ripping sound that would herald more trouble.

So the night unfolded with only extortionately priced cans of Miller Lite to dull the pain. Jax ran through the water park with me haphazardly in tow at one point falling and gashing his face. And he ran and ran until we adopted plan B - namely restraining him as he screamed and writhed and knocked over cans of Miller Lite in his temper.

Zara merely sulked about rides she couldn't go on until we agreed she could most certainly stay at the Wolf Lodge and we'd pick her up again on New Year's Day - 2014.

And after a tortuous few hours we got back to the Hilton where we could miss the ball falling in Time Square and any other mawkish activities traditionally associated with New Year's Eve.

As it turned out I had to pick up Zara before 9 a.m. the next day but the organized activities in the lobby on the cotton wool snow failed to mask the chill that had descended on the place with my wife's sister having fallen out with her boyfriend and the kids sitting in a woeful line comparing their moon faces. I was barely acknowledged as I picked up Zara and nobody ventured those well worn comments: "Happy New Year."

At least there was a sense of normality back at the Hilton, even if the woman on the next breakfast table kept glancing at Jackson's scarred face and we expected her to dial up social services at any time. Or perhaps she was just being wary because he had just thrown a buttered roll that had missed her face by mere inches.

We drove away bereft of New Year's resolutions or any high hopes although we harbor a hesitant expectation that 2012 won't suck quite as much as 2011.

Why did you marry a Brit, Katy?

2011-12-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

So there goes another promising Anglo American relationship – Katy Perry and Russell Brand are to divorce after a mere 14 months ending a relationship that had more promise than – I don’t know – Liz Taylor’s marriage to Larry Fortensky.

This one is somewhat shocking because Katy and Russell were seen as the uber cool couple. However, according to the Sun newspaper they had a “huge row,” – a good term that like their marriage, doesn’t translate – and Brand spent Christmas in none so hip Cornwall.

The Sun newspaper said a source told US Weekly mag the pair had a massive row, saying: "She was like, 'F*** you. I'm going to do my own thing'."

The source said that Russell replied: "Fine, f*** you too."

So in such profound terms one of the most talked about relationships of recent years ended…

If there’s a message to come out of this – and who knows if there is or not – it’s don’t marry a Brit. Americans may like the quirky, offbeat humor thing. They may have seen Notting Hill a few times but the reality is we are unreliable and crap and we’re not very funny after a couple of months. And we hate to put out the trash. We start to miss the strangest things like warm beer and fish and chips that don’t taste like cardboard and we realize we’d be happier watching Newcastle United after the fifth pint of Newcastle Brown.

In recent years we have seen a number of these Transatlantic gigs falter as surely as SkyTrain, which is a very old allusion. Take Madonna and Guy Ritchie, a union that straddled all the stereotypes from the obligatory vows in a Scottish castle to Madonna becoming an honorary Brit, owning horses and trotting round her Wiltshire estate blah, blah. For a while we adopted Madonna as real down to earth Londoner ignoring her obvious lack of any discernible sense of humor.

Guy, in contrast, remained being a regular Guy, albeit one from a privileged background, and later said he didn’t have any regrets, especially as the marriage improved his film career. Spoken like a true Brit.

Now I’m on to taking bets about how long Gwyneth Paltrow will remain with the ginger bloke from Coldplay.

While I never had much time for Madonna as an individual, although I have a soft spot for her as a singer, I have a soft spot for Katy Perry as an individual while I have no time for her as a singer.

I didn’t know much about Russell Brand to start with. In fact I was rather shocked because I thought Katy, who is kind of cute, even if her eyes are a bit close together, was marrying Russell Grant.

Alas and Santa sucked too

2011-12-27T18:43:00.000-08:00

As I predicted in my last post about the Tooth Fairy, Santa wasn't really up to scratch either. He forgot to put anti freeze in the sledge, the reindeer entered a parallel universe in which they believed they were workers at a French airport and promptly went on strike at the prospect of visiting x billion kids in just one night.

I wrapped presents with Zara the night before and we put out cookies for Santa; we even sprinkled reindeer food on the lawn late at night which seemed rather surreal with the neighbor's white car rumbling up and down outside as they went out on nocturnal drug deals.

We went to bed with some kind of vague idea of waking up at 4 a.m. to do the Santa thing but it didn't quite happen. The next thing I knew it was 7: 52 a.m. and I heard Zara yelling: "Has he come yet?"

Cue a lot of confused throat clearing and mumbling.

"Houston we have a problem."

Not only was Zara's door wide open but Santa had obviously been a no show and wrapping paper was lying around the floor.

We sprung into containment mode, locking down her room and finding her presents - no mean feat in itself because some were in the car, her new bike was in the shed and quite a few of them have failed to achieve lift off from the store, although to be fair her list amounted to two pages of A4 and contained a veiled threat that reindeer would be decapitated if Santa delivered the wrong kind of Angry Bird.

Still it was another great escape - albeit one without Steve McQueen and motorbikes. Zara fell for the fact Santa had really visited our humble abode and taken a bite out of the cookie, even though I still had the telltale crumbs around my mouth. Had she not heard the hasty rustling of wrapping paper or noticed it was the same stuff we had wrapped around presents the night before?

My colleague Joe who also has a 7-year-old child has an interesting theory on this. It's not actually that interesting and probably quite prosaic for anyone who doesn't have a 7-year-old.

A few months ago, he tells me, his 7-year-old David was asking probing questions as to the existence of Santa. Some of these questions didn't have easy answers such as what aerodynamic forces exactly keep reindeer suspended in mid air and how does Santa visit every kid in the whole world in one night?

But then a few weeks before Christmas David stopped asking questions and became unfaltering again in his belief in Santa. Because he wanted to believe he believed, Joe told me, even though his rapidly developing intellect was telling him otherwise. Kind of like God for grown-ups, I suppose.

Still Joe surmised that this would be the last Christmas his seven-year-old would believe. This made me sad in an indescribable and abstract way; our childhoods are less an awakening than a long series of realizations at how our parents have betrayed us.

Until the final betrayal when they leave us altogether but we have to fill our closets and sheds with their forlorn belongings - just because.

(the house is not ours BTW)

The tooth fairy as a slovenly bag lady

2011-12-23T05:52:00.000-08:00

The tooth fairy was shambolic; she was more like a wrinkly old bag lady living in an beaten up car.

"Sparkle me some glitter dust on last night's beef and cheddar wrapper from Arby's will you love?"

Here I am back from another day of ever deceasing circles, orbiting around abstract meaninglessness and the shelves of a supermarket where I forgot to get half of the items texted to me on the list.

"Zara's lost a tooth - a big one at the front."

"Great. I'll check it out," I said persuading her to open her mouth and show me the gap so as I could laugh at the gap toothed effect so beloved of clowns and vagabonds the world over, peddlers of cheap mirth. (I could never see the point of Benny Hill).

"I can't believe you are laughing at her. She's been upset all day," my wife snapped at me.

"Oh." And I declined to reply that if diplomacy was my strong suit I'd probably be hosting Bill Clinton at some reception at the embassy in Laos hoping he didn't reach for the cigar box.

If the downside of losing a tooth is a disfigurement, the upside (at least for kids) is the visit of the tooth fairy. Don't ask me where this tradition came from but it's there and it doesn't seem to apply to the loss of other body parts. If Mike Tyson happens to chew off your ear there is no corresponding ear fairy to make you feel better. If Lorena Bobbit ... well you get the idea.

Zara demanded $20.

"Get out of here. I could fly to Hawaii and stay there for a week," I said somewhat insincerely. But hey - I'm cheap. If you can chase the roaches around the hotel room it saves the cost of a safari.

The morning rolled around, as it tends to round these parts, and my wife was rushing around and tearing apart my wallet. Zara had woken up and the tooth was still under her pillow. The tooth fairy was in serious big shit, banged up in some cell facing a DUI charge and getting unsettling looks from an overweight and brutal looking deputy.

We managed to salvage $3 and a mittful of quarters (which sounds like a low budget remake of a Clint Eastwood Western) that were wedged under some books on the floor. And by a somewhat shambolic sleight of hand the tooth fairy rearranged her dishevelled dress and slipped the filthy lucre under the pillow.

Zara was none the wiser and swallowed the tale that the tooth fairy leaves behind large teeth for unspecified scientific purposes, but it's to be hoped that Santa puts down the crack pipe long enough to get his act together for Christmas Eve.

Try to remember you're a Womble

2011-12-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

I hanker for Britain when I read stories like the one about the Womble removing his head before the cameras stopped rolling and wrecking a lot of kids' dreams. Good old Britain - so progressive and yet so caught in a time warp.

London may have unnerved me last time I was there because everyone was so young and so trendy and so obvioulsy un-British. And yet the Wombles - those loveable rubbish (sorry not garbage guys) collectors from Wimbledon Common are still in vogue.

In fact they are so current that a new generation of children believe they are real. So when Mike Batt removed his head before the cameras had stopped rolling on a recent TV show there was an outcry from children and their parents. It was as if someone had stood up and declared: "Santa Claus is really your dad," and your presents don't arrive in a sledge but a Fort Fiesta.

This story stops me dead in my tracks because I grew up with the Wombles. The song "Underground, overground, Wombling free," was the theme of my childhood in suburbia. And yet the Wombles are not only still living and breathing but kids believe they are real an dthey are in with a shout of being Number One at Christmas - another great tradition that's lost on Americans. But if you are British Mistletoe and Whine is ... well a sort of gawky part of your heritage.

The Wimbledon Guardian reather alarmingly refered to the Womble incident as the "Womble 'severed head' debacle."

The other remarkable thing about this story is the fact that it mentions DJ Simon Mayo; someone who was a fixture of my adolescence if not my childhood. It's extremely reassuring that the likes of Uncle Bulgaria and Orinoco are still ambling around Britain which makes me wonder if Dougal and the Magic Roundabout and Bagbuss are doing the rounds still, although surely not the Clangers, who I tried to introduce to my daughter recently only be be told they were "boring and lame."

And what of Captain Pugwash? - and was it really an urban myth that this show was pulled off air because it contained characters called Master Bates and Seaman Stains.

Of course if you talk to Americans about furry Wombles and Dougal they tend to look at you in a funny way and you can see that look pass over their face as they desperately seek the phne number for social services to dial up a restraining order.

Which is the way I like it, really.

Swept away by the sea - Kitty Hawk pier

2011-12-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

I was glad Nancy's memorial service was by the sea because the sea puts life in perspective.

Men and women live and die and the sea simply turns its rounded shoulders, shrugs them and sloughs off, pulling the sand beneath it. About 70 percent of the earth is ocean. As land dwellers we are clinging to the edge of a great watery abyss; we are as insignificant as the grains of sand on the beach.

And as we pass on there are many to take our place. I'd like to say I was moved during the memorial service and I was in places but I spent most of it trying to stop Jax Jax screaming out. BlackBerry therapy only worked to a point - and that was the point where he texted a particularly bad tempered councilman who I had last spoken to on acrimonious terms five years ago.

But beyond the pier house with its Pepsi signs that evoked jaunty times by the sea so many years ago, the great waves crashed on and on, oblivious. They pulled us to the ground where men once made flight.

Funny how our parents always took us to the sea when we were kids. Without fail they would head to the coast as if they had ran out of ideas and wanted to slip off the edge like pre Columbus sailors. And at the first sign of the water my father would strike up the familiar mantra: "I can see the sea through the trees."

And still we see the sea through the trees, although we have long ago departed our childhood selves who would get giddy with excitement at the silvery water and the smell of brine in our nostrils. I wonder if we all remember that time when suddenly we were on the beach with our parents and we didn't want to be there anymore. I recall looking around at the flat dull expanse of the sand and seeing the resort for what it really was, a crumbling piece of nostalgia that I didn't want a part of anymore.

My daughter can spend hours on a chilly beach while I chafe with impatience to leave. But one day she will no longer care about her bucket and spade and something will die inside me. Just like the days when I raced my dad and one day I won and saw him panting and suddenly I was sorry I had won.

Back at the house with the death of Nancy a tie had been broken, a cord that held a bundle of letters has snapped, sending correspondence scattering to the ground.

The order was gone and photograph albums lay haphazard on the floor, some of them spilling pictures - my wife as a kid, paddles and trees and inevitably the sea. And it seemed strange how I felt those childhood days would never end - like the trails I carved in the sand as the sun slipped low over the Cornish coast. Or the day when the fog lay low over the rock pool and I jumped on and on, across briny pools until I came across a huge red crab, magnificent and triumphant as the sun came slanting through the mist.

But to grow up was to lose the randomness of rock hopping and to forget the impetuousness of youth. Yet back at Nancy's house something had slipped; suddenly the children were taking over. There were screams and possies of them and menacing figures in the yard clutching huge plastic guns and whatever they could plunder from the house.

Like a revolution there were forces we could no longer control. It was time to move over or to be swept aside.

Leave it to Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian and Casey Anthony

2011-12-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

It's been a tough week following the sudden death of my mother in law and I can't thank my blog followers out there enough for your kind comments that I will respond to shortly.

It's also been a week when I have been rethinking a lot. It occured to me this week that giving 120 percent all the time at work can be rather unproductive. You still end up being kicked around while the people who give 20 percent will be promoted. There was a tale, that may be urban myth, about a worker who died at his desk and nobody noticed for 24 hours. It struck me that this could easily happen to me; in fact people would probably have one sided conversations with a somewhat dead me and not even notice until I failed to comply with a piece of unnecessary paperwork.

So it really is time to revamp my life but how? I have read about people whose blogs make them vast amounts of money but I can't really see how this would happen. Brits experienced something of a spike in readers just over a year ago, and slid down the virtual Matterhorn to level out at a respectable but hardly earth shattering 150 or so views a day.

I think Brits isn't going anywhere fast because I haven't mentioned Justin Bieber enough. I know a bit more about who he is than a year ago and I still can't see the point. But I have forgotten the mantra and neglected Bieber. Have I said I haven't mentioned Justin Bieber enough.

But a lot of people have him on their easily distracted little minds a lot, it seems. A recent survey found Bieber was the most searched person on line in 2011.

And the second most searched person I'm quite mortified to say was Kim Kardashian, a character who gives the Biebs about as much depth as Albert Einstein in comparison. Kim and Justin don't have a lot in common but they do succeed in looking rather like waxworks of themselves.

The most searched news story was the trial of Casey Anthony and somewhat surprisingly the most searched for sports star was Maria Sharapova.

The most searched for musician was - I don't need to say, of course - and the most searched for show was American Idol.

This list is somewhat depressing because it reveals how shallow we have all become; if we weren't that way to begin with. It's the stuff of reality TV junkies and disaffected bloggers desperately seeking a bit more SEO juice guv.

In Memoriam

2011-12-03T22:04:00.000-08:00

I had to get away from it all. So I walked. My gait was halting in last night's shirt and Bill's crocks that were too large for my feet.

But the small beach was close and the weather strangely warm for December. I could hear birds whittering away in the trees, three whispy clouds were painted on a peerless blue sky. Such a cruel day to die, although technically the time of death was the night before and the small neighborhood beach ten worlds away from the sterile room at the back of the hospital.

It was the first time I had stared at the work of death, waxy, yellow and undone and while I was grateful for dodging death for half my life, it had caught up with me. Still the words of John Donne marched around my head.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so:

Death struck me as a sickly and a mean thing, not at all mighty, a hobgoblin panhadler that had stolen the vibrancy and magnificent from her face.

And death left me speechless, weak and wavering. Absent minded and wandering, mouthing at cupboards. I was lost unlike my dear wife who put up with so much but complained so little.

Only the beach drew me with any purpose, away to the small jetty and the drifting blueness of the sound. Souls drift away on such days and we can only watch and wonder at the ebb and the flow. I recalled a sunset when I was here before. Noah threw stones in the water and Rob showed him sticks. Still the distance between us went well beyond the beach. Rob was already drifting away and soon would be a name without a face. And the child was an adolescent now, although I had not seen him for a long while.

From a house on the bay I heard laughter from a yard sale and remembered a similar sale here two years ago when we had laughed as I picked up a bulky JVC camcorder for $1 only to throw it away.

Now these people were separated from me both in time and mood. In a way I wanted to be anonymous as if this small beach was a microcosm of the desert island I longed to be a small black figure on, lost in sunsets, like driftwood on the rocks. My mother-in-law could be difficult but she had a big heart; at least until it packed up.

The occasional spats were as insignificant as fragments of shells in the bigger picture of the world, so why did we let them fester? And the words of one of the saddest songs caught in my throat.

Of all the things I should've said,
That I never said.
All the things we should've done,
That we never did.
All the things I should've given,
But I didn't.

More than 40 years ago there was a wedding of college sweethearts. I don't know the details but picture a small white, clapperboard church. I picture hope springing from the roadside verges. But they went their separate ways and their paths seldom crossed and only bitterness grew from the verges. At least until they were reunited within the year - walking down a valley where we assume there is no sea. A place from whence no traveler returns.

This woman's Work - Kate Bush

Why I'm still feeling queasy after Thanksgiving

2011-11-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

I kept rather a low profile during Thanksgiving. To be honest I’ve never really seen the point of this schmaltzfest, unless you happen to be a turkey farmer in the US who gets to hit pay dirt twice in the space of a month. And what kind of an American expression is pay dirt, anyhow? What does it mean? You get paid so you have to go out and do something really dirty. Which may ensure you don’t get paid again for a while. Apparently it refers to gravel with a high concentration of gold in it; not like any gravel you get round these parts.

In short I didn’t post anything on Facebook saying 'I’m so Thankful.' That’s partly because I’m a curmudgeon, although I am thankful I don’t live in Syria or Somalia, even though I have this recurring dream that I have been transported to a war zone. I'm not even sure if the feeling of peace and thankfulness was enduring because sometime overnight on Thursday it was replaced by the urge to get a cheap flatscreen TV or pair of designer sneakers and not care if it involved trampling a few elderly women half to death to get them the next morning.

But really I don’t like Thanksgiving (apart from the day off work, of course) because it’s one of those glib and smug rewritings of history for the benefit of people of European descent so that we can pat ourselves on the back about how great America is as our stomachs grumble for the rest of the afternoon parked in front of Real Housewives of Atlanta or New York or Redneckysville, Alabama.

So what are the origins of Thanksgiving? According to the Northwest Herald which is, I presume a newspaper in a cold place, it’s….

“The proclaiming of a day of thanksgiving traditionally dates from the autumn of 1621, when Plymouth Colony Gov. William Bradford invited the local Wampanoag Indians to join the Pilgrims in a three-day celebration of feasting and recreation. The Pilgrims were especially giving thanks for surviving the harsh winter of 1620-1621, during which half of the 102 Mayflower passengers had died, and for the bountiful harvest, which hopefully would help them to meet the challenge of the upcoming winter.”

But there’s also some kind of school lesson plan that does the rounds about how the Indians gave the Pilgrims their corn, that ensured survival, taught them to hunt and they all lived happily ever after. This is surely the tale that prompted my daughter to ask: “If the Indians didn’t have microwaves how did they teach the Pilgrims how to make popcorn?”

This is from the lesson plan.

“Tell first winter the Pilgrims spent in their new home was very cold. Food was in short supply. Some days they had only enough food for each new person to have five kernels of corn for the day. Finally spring came. They planted food and it grew. All the pilgrims did not die. From then on, when a time of Thanksgiving came around, the Pilgrims put five kernels of corn on each plate to remind themselves of their blessings. Let us also remember: (Written on the poster paper).”

Well that’s as clear as mud then. What is clear is that a few years later the Indians weren’t happy bunnies with a valid cause as the settlers took their land and drove them out. Philip, or Metacom, the second son of old Massasoit, the longtime friend of the English, became the head of the Wampanoags in 1662.

King Philip’s War between the Indians and the settlers that was waged from 1675 to 1678 was a bloody affair and the single greatest calamity to occur in seventeenth-century Puritan New England. Nearly half of the region's towns were destroyed, its economy was all but ruined, and much of its population was killed, including one-tenth of all men available for military service. Proportionately this was one of the bloodiest and costliest wars in the history of North America.

For the next 200 years or so the protracted and intermittent genocide of the Indian people continued, as they were pushed west to the badlands of Oklahoma until somebody decided they wanted those lands too, perhaps after hitting pay dirt in those hills.

This is one reason why Thanksgiving leaves a bad taste for me. The other is the way we celebrate the Pilgrims as Godly and goodly when they were religious extremists who used to kill women who acted in a peculiar way as witches. These folks were more extreme than the tea party. In modern America they would probably be going around cutting beards off Amish people (predominantly men folk).

America makes such a big deal about the Pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact, that’s made out like a precursor to the Constitution, that they tend to forget the first successful English speaking colony was in Virginia not New England.

There’s also a certain irony in seeing descendants of these white settlers who drove out the native people arguing for the kids of Mexican immigrants who sneaked into the country, to be sent back south as punishment for their parents’ actions. Just saying.

Preconceptions Gone with the Wind

2011-11-24T18:42:00.000-08:00

I have never appreciated the attraction of Gone with the Wind, believing the film to be a cliche of star crossed lovers, garish sunsets, Magnolia trees and the old south. I had seen parts of the movie and knew a couple of the most famous lines "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." and "Tomorrow is another day."

What more did I need to know? What was the point of giving up four hours of my life - more like six when you build in commercial breaks - to watch this predictable mush in overwrought costumes?

But while I was aimlessly channel hopping last night I chanced on Gone with the Wind and decided to stick with it because there was nothing else worth watching. And then a funny thing happened. I got hooked and my old preconceptions were gone with the wind.

Most of all I got drawn into the character of Scarlett O'Hara. It stuck me it's been a long since since I saw such a fascinating character on the silver screen; manipulative, impulsive, scheming, yet charming and despite all her flaws she draws you in, even after all the decades that have passed. There are people we encounter occasionally who burn so brightly that we can't help walking into the flames, even though we know we will come out singed. And Scarlett is one of those people.

Gone with the Wind has been described as one of the greatest love stories ever told. If this is so then love is clearly destined to be one step removed from torture. The relationship between O'Hara and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) is at best dysfunctional and at worst abusive. And yet these two manipulative people are fixated with each other. The only people who don't realize it is themselves, although perhaps they get an inkling at the end when it's too late.

Watching Gone with the Wind made me realize that we have lost at the same time as we have gained at the movies. The backdrops may look crude at times and the sets appear clumsy by today's standards. But while we can create special effects with stunning accuracy somewhere along the line we've lost the raw passion and the emotion.

Back in 1939 there were fewer distractions to shrink the big screen. David Selznick, the producer kept many details of Gone With the Wind secret. Numerous big name actresses were auditioned to play the role of Scarlett O'Hara. The successful candidate Vivien Leigh was an outsider from England who was little known in the USA.

The film was first shown to an audience that did not know what they were about to see. People were permitted to leave, but the Fox Theater in Riverside, California was sealed with no re-admissions and no phone calls out.

The audience only realized they were part of a grand design when the name of Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind came on the screen. The reception was apparently thunderous and the film ended with standing ovations. This is the classic stuff of a golden age of film that may never be repeated.

Yet while Gone with the Wind can look antique its themes of a nation divided and a conflict that rages between the sexes, are as relevant now as 75 years ago. Gone with the Wind has the flawed motif of ideal love - that felt by Scarlett for her cousin's husband Ashley Wilkes that fades and falters like his character and notions of the old Antebellum South. The roguish Butler copes better with the cut throat world of Atlanta after the Civil War while O'Hara thrives in chaos.

And then there's the strife and the pride and the battles for turf that may not be on the terrifying scale of Gettysburg but can be just as destructive. But more than anything else Gone with the Wind is about the contradictions of the human spirit all bound up in Scarlett who is despicable but admirable, and at turns childlike and scheming. We don't need a Scarlett. Mitchell herself when asked what may have happened to the lovers after the novel ended suggested Rhett Butler may have found someone who was less difficult.

But while he may not have needed a Scarlett life must surely have been a lot less colorful without her.

The last colors of fall - Lake Maury

2011-11-21T20:48:00.000-08:00

Pride comes before a fall, or if you live in Virginia, it's a hurricane. And after a fall comes freefall and a nothingness in the darkness.

When I wrote a while back about my dread for October my dread was misplaced because October was crisp and colorful, temperate and beautiful. But by now the gulf between my everyday life under artificial lights and the beauty of nature is growing just as nature goes into hibernation.

It's hard sometimes to deal with the minutiae and the deadly nuances of office politics when there's a vastness out there waiting to swallow us up. Four mind numbing hours of vastness just to get to the mountains and then a world of sweeping wind kissed escarpments, and I spend most of my days starting at a screen or out of the window at the sickly saplings that grow from the asphalt.

From now on in the light will quickly disappear. I'll stand outside the concrete awnings one night and grumble about the endlessness of it all with a colleague and the next time I'll have the same conversation it will still be dark and hopeless and light years until the spring.

It could be worse I'll tell myself. I could be in Wigan. If you ever find yourself in Wigan in November when even the rain looks brown you might want to slip into the nearest pub, ducking the darts that are aimed at your head, and drink yourself into oblivion.

Unbelievably there are probably worse places to be in northern England in November than Wigan. Perhaps Warrington or Middlesbrough. How do people ever get up in the dark in Middlesbrough and make it to their cars without cutting off their heads as an act of mercy?

The fall here has a beauty but it's fading fast. I went out in a hurry to capture it as the leaves danced and buffeted me down the footpath.Mocking, mocking and moving south. No time to go far. Lake Maury again. Just like last year; so we run to stand still like Joyce's character in a Portrait of the Artist his hands pinned by his side as he circles the track.

We laughed at Joyce then. We didn't take him seriously. Until the passage about the walk by the Liffey won us over. Nor could we appreciate the frail beauty of Gerard Manley Hopkins. We couldn't get beyond the pale and wan face and the repressed and unmanly priest, going through the motions to shut out human nature while betraying himself all the time with his pen in the rhythms of the natural world.

Only now can I appreciate it, in a time and place far removed when his words echo back across the years like an old friend whose letter you find after a long absence.

Spring and Fall:

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

The science of stability balls and other stories

2011-11-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

I only started to ponder why I found myself staring at stability balls on a Friday night when I was (um) staring at stability balls on a Friday night.

I'd like to say I found myself at the Y because I'm so dedicated to reinventing my body but the reality is less impressive. Nic informed me that Zara was claiming I had promised to take her to the "interactive zone" although my recollection was of a less definite term. I'm not sure when the word "perhaps" had morphed into a promise but by the time I got home it was cast iron.

I have been on my intensive fitness program now for two-and-a-half months and the folks at the Y keep moving the goal posts; or rather they keep fitting new distorting mirrors. I am convinced they bring in a more grotesque mirror every week. How else can I explain the fact all these intensive work outs seem to be having so little impact on my gut?

In saying that these work outs are clearly having an impact on upper arm strength. These days if anyone is handing around babies at work I politely decline for fear I'll accidentally snap off a couple of limbs with my super human strength.

Still I feel like confronting the folks at the Y and telling them I wanted this program to flatten my gut, not to turn me into the Incredible Hulk with a gut. If I had wanted that I could have stayed at home, painted myself green and ripped up my shirts. Believe me people do this kind of thing in my neighborhood. Not for purely altruistic reasons either.

The gym is bearable if a trifle dull. I always forget head phones and find myself watching TV screens from afar. This being American TV there's always a lame show with celebrities trying to dance and another show about two waitresses which is probably better without words, although the brunette can become quite alluring 14 minutes and 24 seconds into the random hill program on the elliptical machine. But who's timing it?

At least I don't feel out of place in most parts of the Y where there are people more out of shape than me. The exception is the weights room downstairs which attracts football players and guys with bulging muscles and eyes. Last week I was pulling down about 50 pounds when I eyed a guy opposite me who seemed to be in direct competition and appeared to want me to know he was pulling 100 pounds.

When I went to walk away he blurted out: "Excuse me." I assumed he was going to inform me he had just out pulled me when he said: "Did you used to teach?"

It dawned on me this was one of my former students. We proceeded into a rapid fire conversation about how bad the rest of his class and all of the teachers (except me) were and by a stroke of luck I recalled his name.

Tonight I encountered another student but he either did not recognize me or did not want to acknowledge me. The last time I spoke to him I reprimanded him for plagiarism. My advice for any students out there who are minded to cheat is this; if you are going to rip off another person's work, don't use word for word the thesis of a leading academic on Macbeth comprising some elaborate and complex theories that have nothing to do with the essay topic when you haven't even mastered the art of tying your shoe laces or keeping your pants up in class. It tends to raise suspicions.

Still Kevin's parents were nice enough, although I did get worried when they emailed me to ask on his progress two months after I had quit.

Although the weight room is scary, it's the stability balls that really do my head in. If the program asks you to do crunches on one it's anything but stable. You find yourself drifting across the running track and coming into conflict with the grumpy, cursing old man who walks round and round every time I'm here whistling for his imaginary dog.

I am enduring the Y but will need to spice things up to keep going. At the moment the only saving grace is Prophet Monster Man, a character with the beard of a crazy preacher, big saggy and potentially soiled track pants and a moss green T Shirt who looks like he swallowed a baby whale for breakfast. Yes Prophet Monster Man makes me feel a lot better about my gut.

But right now I need a plan. I need to invest in the cutting edge of technology - a Sony Walkman perhaps so as I can listen to my tape of The Queen is Dead.

Cottonmouth - my arse

2011-11-14T21:17:00.000-08:00

I'm always skeptical about those warning signs at nature reserves and the like about bears, mountain lions or escaped T Rexes. Do people ever see these bad creatures I wonder or do the men and women in funny hats just like to scare us?

I have become a bit less skeptical ,though. The first and only time I was in the Everglades at an infernally hot place called Shark something-or-other I asked the warden if we'd see alligators. She shot me one of those "dumb tourist" looks that Brits in London usually reserve for Americans (maybe she had been on the wrong end of this) and informed me it was (obviously) highly unlikely that I'd see one.

We stepped out of the visitor center and peered into a murky pond only to see four reptilian eyes staring at us. Yes there were two gators right there behind the visitor center.

Last week on the day Zara was off school we went to Back Bay in Virginia Beach. It was a gorgeous fall day and the water was glittering a deep azure. The only serpent in our paradise was - well literally that. A prominent sign warned of the presence of deadly cottonmouth snakes. There were also signs about poison ivy, although I was somewhat less concerned about the ivy than the snake and I made sure to watch the path ahead.

The trail led us to a small secluded beach and then back again to the asphalt path, which we set off along. Suddenly Zara drew my attention to something I was about to stand on. I did a double take and thought it was an old tire; then again I started to realise it was a dead snake. Then it moved.

Rather alarmingly the aforementioned deadly snake was right in front of me and it seemed none too happy, opening its white mouth in a menacing way. This was clearly not the time to do a Steve Irwin and wrap the old chap round my neck before heading merrily for the beach.

We beat a retreat but I returned to take a photo of the thing. As you can see I didn't get too close which is why the photo is rather uninspiring. But it was more than close enough for comfort.

We continued to the beach where, Zara did her best to destroy a sensitive coastal ecosystem. I could have yelled at her to get off the dunes but it was such a perfect afternoon I didn't have the heart too. If the truth be told it brought back memories of how much liked to jump around and slither on dunes when I was seven years old or thereabouts.

My open tripe session at the writer's group

2011-11-10T20:26:00.000-08:00

Mike - he's also open to feedback...like ooh aren't you a big girl's blouse (before running away etc.)

A couple of weeks ago I attended an open mike session for a writer's group. I'm not sure exactly what possessed me but the event popped up on Facebook and while I ignore most of those invitations to crappy events for church pig pickings or to occupy some half empty city center, when I'd rather be occupying my own bed, this one sounded interesting.

I had images of Bohemian folk in a smoke filled bar, dropping their clever verse into a mike. On the way out a literary agent hanging in the shadows would take me by the arm, tell me I was discovered and I was on the way to the $3 million deal for my first novel.

OK that last bit's wishful thinking. I would have settled for a few eclectic Bohemian people. Or just a beer really.

However, by the time I hit the highway with a crumpled up sheet of Mapquest directions in my hand, once again cursing the fact I never got the light fixed in my car, my original enthusiasm melted away with every mile of lumpy interstate. The venue was a library. Libraries don't usually serve beer or serve as hang outs for Bohemian types.

Libraries are usually the haunts of old biddies who read Nora Roberts. Although in the city where I work they tend to attract a fair amount of flashers who like to display their Charles Dickens to the aforementioned old biddies who might even welcome the odd fleshy interlude between chapters of Nora.

This library was in a crumbling suburb on a chilly seafront; we're not talking Greenwich Village.

I followed a sign to an over lit room where a woman asked me to sign a piece of paper. It took me a few seconds after sitting down to survey the new habitat which was little short of dismal. Not only did I appear to be the youngest person in the room - and that's saying something these days - but the folks sat in the hard chairs were a certain type of geriatric. I couldn't quite put my finger on it but they looked like they thought a lot of themselves and ate too many lentils.

The moderator was a white haired man who must have been about 80, although he seemed to have the energy levels of an 18-year-old. In no time at all he was launching into his tedious piece of prose about a military plane landing on an aircraft carrier, banging his fists on the lectern and shouting and screaming for effect.

I'm not really sure if his stuff was any good and I'm hardly an accomplished judge anyway. I was too distracted by his wild hand gestures.

Then a portly middle aged Jewish woman started reading from her recently published book. The material was serious and disturbing, touching on relatives lost in the Holocaust, and yet her delivery was flat and the prose seemed uninspiring. She was talking about the biggest tragedy of the 20th Century like she was reading a recipe for strawberry jam.

One woman was shy about reading, telling the group her material was terrible. They persuaded her to get up and and read it out. They told her it was great but their faces said terrible. It wasn't terrible; awful perhaps.

There was some kind of academic. His writing wasn't at all bad and he seemed to know it. As he read it he puffed up in a self indulgent way and eyed the mere mortals below him hoping to see in their faces recognition of the crushing superiority of his poetry. When a less accomplished writer took the stage after him I could hear him quietly tutting under his voice and making disparaging remarks to the woman next to him.

So the torture under the bright lights dragged on and I found myself developing a neck ache from looking at my clock. To my horror the white haired man finally called my name, his brows knitting when realized I was going to read blog extracts.

(yes folks the best seller is going rather slowly so I was forced to fall back on Brits in the USA).

So I went up to the lectern and read a couple of blogs, succeeding in injecting some feeling into the work when in reality the brightly lit, half empty library room had left me feeling flat. I didn't stumble on my words - I didn't turn into Rick Perry. But neither did I inspire and the elderly people in the room looked at me afterwards as if I had just popped out of a flying saucer, plucked a small aerial out of my head and cried: "Hello earthlings."

At least they clapped politely while one elderly woman said she had been moved by my pseudo poem and subjected me to an unexpected hug that was so intense I feared she's go into cardiac arrest.

Having read a couple of pieces, I declined the opportunity to read again. The door was looking very appealing.

At this point College Lecturer Man took the stage and smugly and slowly read a poem that was probably as long as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner but 100 times more tedious. It made me realize there was a limit to the number of words that can be written about the upper reaches of a river. College Lecturer Man seemed blissfully unaware of this as he slowed down his diction so as each word fell like rocks into the souls of us mere mortals.

I shuffled out of the library, shell shocked - stoned into submission by College Lecturer Man. I didn't hang around for post mortems or to talk about the forthcoming December Grand Poetry and Lentil Eating Slam.

I didn't breathe until I reached my car. I had escaped but something was bothering me under my right arm. With a feeling of mounting horror I realized I had carried out a prosthetic limb that the clutching woman had left behind during her bear hug....

by way of disclaimer there is one rather blatant lie in this posting. Just saying.

Losing Sir Jimmy

2011-11-06T06:25:00.000-08:00

It hit me in a strange way. I had not thought about Sir Jimmy Savile for decades but when I read about his death this week it was like a big, gaudy diamond studded medalion had fallen to the ground and shattered into a million tasteless pieces.

That's because I grew up with Jimmy. In the days when we were kids and were subjected to the worst of deprivations - brown floral print wallpaper, chequered flaired trousers from the jumble sale, orange pullovers and three channel TV ( although BBC 2 was a snow storm), Jimmy was often there with us. There he'd be presenting Top of the Pops, hanging out with bands with names like Mud and Slade who came from towns without hairdressers, sporting his bling before bling was invented and trademark fat cigar, a cigar it seems he never smoked.

Some time later the former wrestler underwent an unlikely transformation to fairy godmother when Jim'll Fix it was born. Jimmy became the man who made kids' dreams come true. He'd review their letters and select kids, their experiences would be filmed and they would return to the show to receive their medallions in the 'magic chair.'

Our parents encouraged us to write, but there was much soul searching because we couldn't think of anything we really wanted Jim to do for us. I believe I asked Jim to fix it for me to ride a historic Penny Farthing bicycle. In the event, Jim didn't fix anything for me or my sister and my mother became outraged a few series later when another kid stole my idea and got to ride a Penny Farthing. I didn't really want Jim to fix it for me anyhow. That would involve the whole nation being exposed to my unpleasant brown plaid flared trousers. Nor did I really want Jim to balance me on his knee and say "now, then, now then."

Remarkably Jim'll Fix It ran from 1975 until 1994. Some kids apparently wrote to Jim mistakenly believing his name was Jim'll. I was interested to read the original Magic Chair was later replaced by a robotic chair designed by Kevin Warwick of Reading University. A few years ago I interviewed Kevin after he wired up his body and house with sensors that meant doors would open when he walked in, lights would go on as well. Kevin told me he was working on a project with his wife in which their thought processes could go automatically onto a computer screen. I thought this wasn't such a good idea.

But I suppose the real lesson of Jim'll Fix it is about how television can distort the young mind. Jimmy, the quintessential radio star who wasn't quite killed off by video, attained this image as a benefactor, a man who was deeply involved in charity and made dreams come true for children.

However, numerous reports suggested other things about Sir Jimmy (in Britain annoying people who do too much high profile charity work are usually knighted). In a recent interview in the Mirror his best friend and personal assistant Janet Cope revealed he hated being around kids.

Sir Jimmy even upstaged her wedding by wearing white and turning up in a Rolls Royce. She recalled: "When the ceremony started he lay down across four chairs so people would look at him rather than us. Later he gave a speech which outlasted the best man’s.”

Savile emerged as an egomaniac in a documentary with Louis Theroux which had some sinister undertones. He addressed some of those persistent paedophile rumors in a later interview in the Guardian.

Jimmy died alone. His relationship with women was always unconventional and he claimed he never spent a whole night with a woman. Perhaps he didn't want to make the coffee the next morning. Or he feared she'd be accidentally blugeoned to death by his bling in the night.

"When he talks about women, girls, he often mentions brain damage in the same breath," the Guardian reported. "Nooooaah. That's a generalism," he protests. "My logic has always been to sip at the cup of life and never gulp at it. Now ladies, God bless them. Marvellous . Lovely. If you sip at them. They will enjoy you enormously, you will enjoy them enormously. Then you go to bed on your own and you wake up not disillusioned. You wake up with no brain damage."

In short Sir Jimmy wasn't the kind of guy you'd want to hang out with, although I would have loved to have interviewed him. He was egotistical, flamboyant and strange - he clearly had mother issues. Yet it's the characters who make life a vibrant tapestry and save us from the reality of faded floral wallpaper and Jimmy was certainly different...

According to his personal assistant he didn't get married because he didn't like to be told what to do. There's some saying here involving the words "chord" and "struck," that keeps going round my head.

The Day After Halloween

2011-11-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

There was a strange lull the day after Halloween

A new shade of gray painted down the street

The tombstones blown and flapping to the earth,

The candy wrappers strewn on straggling lawns

The ghouls drifted directionless in the November breeze

That went out and bought some fine white teeth

at some time during a drizzling night

On the curious rounds of trick or treat.

On the morning by the daycare, by the blasted church

My feet crunched on the bones in the tiny leaves

Oblivious to the once fine filigree,

Oblivious to what lies underneath

There were fine ideas once on this thoroughfare

and elegant ladies on the sunny street

But the homes are now weary and coated in grime

They've seen far too many Halloweens.

We talked about pumpkins, of carving the eyes

and lighting up a memories from another time

But instead another year passed on by

And we left them to rot in the sodden ground

We fool ourselves with these empty ideas

Is there any more empty vessel than this gourd with hollow eyes?

That mocks us from the pumkin patch

and mouths empty words at the November skies.