Part the XVIII: Notes on Paris

Things are not good.  The self-imposed thesis deadline has become an actual deadline.  I must submit this rotting albatross by 1st December, before I fly home to Oz, otherwise the university will charge me fees to the tune of 3750GBP per term, charming people that they are.  On top of the stress generated by trying to complete a thesis to my own (admittedly high, but unconsciously so) standards before the said deadline, I have various other editing and research projects to complete to keep myself financially afloat, with the consequence that I no longer have any days off.  My body has responded to this unpleasant state of affairs with insomnia, two bouts of flu in quick succession, gastroenteritis, a cold and episodes of depression. To this end, I thought I should pen some notes on my last moments of happiness before I become completely shrouded in gloom and send my readers to the Slough of Despond.  Actually this will be the last post between now and December, when I finally finish up four years of work and fly home for three months of sunshine.

So, H and I had arranged to travel to gay Paree a few weeks ago on the Eurostar to meet our dear friend SP and his sister.  Lo and behold, the night before we were to travel, the fire broke out in the Channel tunnel.  H put off telling me for as long as he could, but a friend mentioned it to me when we were out at drinks and I plunged immediately into despair.  I had been looking forward to seeing SP for months.  For the next day I obsessively checked the Eurostar website and, overreacting a little as is my wont, dreamed of tracking down the culprit for the fire and enacting revenge.  Fortunately for the truck driver, the Eurostar got itself up and running again, and I was able to get a ticket after work on Wednesday.  Poor H had to stay behind though and help his boss with Design Week.  He wasn’t very happy.

I got myself through the shiny new St Pancras terminal and onto the Eurostar (which was operating on a case of first in first served).  An excited little boy crowed all the way to the tunnel.  The train shunted through the tunnel slowly and, in the darkness, the child obviously thought it was bedtime and quietened down.  Once on the other side however, the twilight filtered into the carriage and he was off again.  ‘Baba! Baba!  Baba!’  And on and on.

I am a bit slow with maps.  I can read them well enough (and navigated H and I over hairy Thai highways), but not quickly.  Thus it was with some degree of pride that I got myself to the hotel near Notre Dame, which was very sweet and neat, with Lepidoptera mounted in frames on the walls, along with a gnat-like insect that was the size of my head.  I had visions of coming across it in the Amazonian forest, and was disturbed.  SP turned up not long after, a bit shaggier than when I had seem him last, but still delectable.  He had been in the Alps running up mountains that day, as one does.

Realising that I was in one of the worst countries for a gluten and diary intolerance, I had done internet research on Vietnamese restaurants (there was nothing to do at work, ok?) and, to my immense delight, SP took command of the map and directed us to Kim-Lien.  The lighting was warm and red and the food was fresh and tasty, but they stumbled with the Vietnamese pancake, into which they had put bacon and cheese.   We arrived there late and after a while the patrons began to leave and the staff gathered around a table, chatting and laughing.  A man walked down the stairs, blowing out the candles in their red lamps, and a fat tabby came up to say hallo, and I stroked him.  I miss having a cat.  All I have is my rather stupid angel fish, Andromeda, who looks very pretty but doesn’t do a lot.

The next morning the sunshine was abundant and I was happy.  There has been no sunshine in London since the fortnight in May that seems to constitute an English summer these days.  We walked past Notre Dame to the Pompidou as SP wanted to see Brancusi’s studio.  It was a bit chilly en route so SP stopped by a rack of coats outside a shop and five minutes later was purchasing a black jacket for twelve euros and pulling it on.  I couldn’t believe that someone could look so shit hot after a mere five minutes and  twelve euros.  However, as SP pointed out, much of my knowledge of men’s shopping habits stems from H who, admittedly, spent fifteen minutes selecting five pairs of undies from a market in Bangkok, and who even sent me away during the selection process because my disapproval (well, it was mild scorn, actually) was unsettling him.  I can’t imagine why.

The Brancusi studio was shut until the afternoon, so we went on to Montemarte and had a coffee at the café where Amelie was filmed.  We sat outside in the sun and the waiter sneered at us in true Parisian style, which made me laugh, and by the time we left I had managed to get a smile out of him.  We went on to the Eiffel Tower where SP was to meet his sister and their friend, and as we stopped to look at a building-length advertisement for Australia.com juxtaposed beside the tower, there was a commotion behind us.  An old man had tripped on the uneven pavement and grazed his hands.  There was blood, and he was disorientated, but some people helped him and SP asked for my bandaids (blister contingencies) and handed them over, and said this was the third time he’d seen blood on his trip.

At the Eiffel Tower I craned my head back to look at the marvellous lattice of iron beams while SP chatted with his sister.  We arranged to rendezvouz at the Brancusi studio, then jumped on a boat and emerged at the Jardin des Tuileries.  People sat on chairs, tilting them back to feel the sun on their face.  Others read newspapers; some old men played boules.  The light was glorious.

We walked back to Brancusi and my feet started to hurt (I was wearing one of my two pairs of flat shoes, but still, they rubbed), so I was glad to get to the gallery and sit down.  SP liked the smooth, simple forms but I find most modern art quite boring (and was in a vile mood when I was dragged to the Pompidou with H and the parental unit two years before) so was happy to look, then rest, while SP did the circuit more slowly.

That evening I pulled on my brown boots, short black ruffled skirt and my favourite dark pink top, for Londoners never appreciate glamour the way the French do and I needed to make the most of it.  I waited for SP+friend+sister outside the Charonne Metro, and they were late, so I was delivered orders to find three interesting character descriptions by the time they arrived.  I wondered if the three green wheelie bins counted as people but suspected this would be disqualified; instead I made notes on a person going past on red rollerskates and a group of Salvation Army donations collectors, which totalled five people. The area we walked through was dark and nondescript, thus it was with a little shock of pleasure that I turned the corner to see a beautiful Parisian bar lit up with warm light from chandeliers.  Inside, it was luscious: delicate and refined, with a charming waiter, lovely wine and excellent food.  The only odd thing was the bathroom which, instead of having soap from a dispenser, had a ball of yellow soap stuck onto a stick; one had to stroke it to get the suds, which felt Freudian in some obscure way.

The girls were worn out, so SP and I ventured on and found a dinky bar with cheap drinks and the requisite footy showing on the TV.  SP gestured to two boys at the table next to us who were staring silently at their drinks.  ‘Do you think they’re on their first date?’ he asked.  I dissolved into laughter.

We walked back along the Seine, though I was having difficulty negotiating the cobbles by this stage, not least due to that fatal combination of poor (meningitis-induced) balance, high heels and alcohol (see here for effects of said combination).  Naturally any sensible person would remove the high heels from this equation, but I prefer the risk of falling flat on my face to giving up my heels.  Then, as we drew near to Notre Dame, we saw a group of people clustered around a huge, suspended ball of light, which lit up the front of the cathedral.  It transpired they were making a film clip with Bollywood dancers and the light was for the filming.  Then they lit another ball and we moved further back to watch, and found that the Indian families of the dancers had come along too.  It was bizarre and magical.

The next morning I didn’t feel so good as my alcohol tolerance is nil these days.  However I managed to get myself upright, clothed and checked out.  SP had wanted to take me to a café he’d found that served good coffee but it didn’t open until 11, so we wandered through a Medieval garden on the other side of the road which had been redesigned, according to an American tour guide talking to a bunch of people (who I couldn’t hear but SP related) in a contemporary style that was sympathetic to the original herb garden.

We found another café in the sun outside the Jardin des Luxembourg and the excellent boy persuaded the French barista to whip up some soy milk so I could have a coffee.  The Luxembourg gardens were even more beautiful than the Jardin des Tuilieries, and the sun stroked through the trees, some of which were beginning to shed leaves.  Out on the other side we passed a crèche, and saw two women bundling seven toddlers into a trolley, which they pushed and pulled up the pavement, which was unfortunately on an incline.  The kids looked about brightly, their faces alternately jollied and blissful.

The afternoon was passed picnicking with SP’s sister and friend in the gardens of the Rodin Museum, which were formal and plain.  I lay in the sun and snoozed while the others looked at the sculptures.  Then SP and I pushed on to the Sacre Couer, stopping first to buy some tourist tat for H.  ‘It has to be under 5 euros, and exquisitely bad,’ I told SP, and he returned to me with the most marvellous mug, which I think speaks eloquently of how much I love my brother:

Paris mug

At the bottom of the steps of the Sacre Couer we were harassed by Africans trying to sell us their knotted bracelets.  SP merely put his hands up and shook his head but I was angry, for they had invaded my personal space and they were touching me.  ‘No!’ I said loudly and barged away from them all, but SP moved on meditatively ahead, and I felt that I had overreacted again.  Note to self: never travel to India.

At the church we crossed wires and lost one another, so I ended up going to the top alone, up three hundred steps.  There were marvellous views of Paris and, while I’m not afraid of heights, my imagination galloped on and had me toppling over the edge, so I went down again fairly quickly.  And then it was time to leave the heat and sunshine and drag myself back onto the Eurostar, feeling sorry for myself.

Tomorrow is my first day off since then, and likely to be my last before I submit my thesis.  Meanwhile my computer has imploded so I am having to use H’s and my fish is ill.  Even if she is a bit of a bimbo, it would be the nail in the coffin if she died.   Never will I put myself through anything like this ever again.

Part the XVII: On the Travails of Internet Dating

I am overworked. Between now and the end of November (self-imposed thesis submission deadline) I have three weekends off: one in a castle, one at Edinburgh and one in Paris. The rest of the time I’ll be working non-stop on my thesis and on my research project. Today I am ill, my body having chucked the towel in and acquired the flu, thereby forcing me to take the day off work. However, it does mean that I’ve had time to write a blog entry. I have decided to write about my internet dating adventures, as they have come to a close for the time being. Not because I have found a bloke (it could never be that easy), but because I no longer have time to chase boys.

With gentle pushing from BrotherH, and the extraction of £20 (because I needed all my money for shoes, naturally), I signed up to mysinglefriend.com. I liked the rationale behind the site, which is that a friend introduces you to the single masses, rather than you introducing yourself. It’s a bit like being in a bar where your friend would introduce you to someone. Since it is too amusing to remain on the site, I thought I would share with you the profile that H wrote: Well this is just plain weird. I mean, it's called 'my single friend' for a reason; 'my single sister' just doesn't have the same ring to it. It conjures up images of straw-chewing Mary Lou marrying club-footed cousin Seamus down by the red barn, and that can't be good for the dating business. That said, no one knows Jess like I do so I guess I'm qualified to fill this space.

Let's get the easy wins out of the way first. She's a super-smart girl who sets her sights on something and works like a demon until she gets it. This means she's already tucked her first published novel under her belt and will be a Doctor before the year is out... not the chop-you-up-and-sew-the-bits-back-together type, but the how-the-f*ck-can-you-write-ninety-thousand-words-on-one-topic type. I am constantly left feeling like the dumbass of the family.

Oddly this doesn't mean Jess sits around talking about dead German philosophers all day because she's far more interested in telling silly stories about the little things that happen every day; the man who talked to her tits at work, the Porsche driver who she crooked her little finger at at the lights. She's also very good at listening and finding out what other people are interested in, and loves it when people make her laugh; laughing, giggling, snickering, chortling, whizgigging - she's got them all covered (by the way, I have no idea what 'whizgigging' is but what a brilliant word).

Once you get to the squishy emotions on the inside you find that Jess is tremendously loyal and protective of her friends. She's also a bit of an old romantic, which is why she's none too impressed about being bullied into internet dating. She seems to think it's full of trench-coated deviants rather than Mister Darcys which, let's be honest, it probably is.

Oh, and finally, she's a hottie. That's all I have to say on the matter because I'm feeling bloody weird about this again. Just take my word for it, and have a perv in the photos section.

Well, I thought it was very funny.

Having said that, there are times when H is telling a story and I am the only one in the room laughing, and vice versa, so perhaps we are both just sad.

Enthused about the wealth of men now at my fingertips, I started favouriting and emailing. After a few days, however, my enthusiasm wilted in the face of a deathly silence.

I said to H, ‘Uhm, I don’t think I’m doing it quite right. No one’s written back to me.’ ‘Well, what are you saying?’ ‘I’m just writing a few paragraphs about myself.’ ‘Paragraphs? How many?’ ‘About four.’ ‘Four paragraphs? Try four lines!’ ‘But why? If I wanted to get to know someone I’d want to have four paragraphs.’

H explained to me that, although I might be an excellent writer, most people were not very good with words and would be intimidated by four paragraphs. Ahem. This is what happens when you grow up never overhearing conversations: you never quite get a grip on what you’re supposed to say to people.

I felt a little ashamed after that, but of all the men I’d emailed, there were only two I was interested in: a fireman (it said he could hold a decent conversation, ok?) and a lecturer in political philosophy. I was contemplating emailing them again, when who should walk into the queue at the library that week but the political philosopher. I looked at him and thought, ‘You look familiar.’ As he came closer I thought, ‘Yes, you look a lot like the bloke from My Single Friend,’ and then he gave me his card, I checked his name and, sure enough, it was him. I wanted to crawl under the desk and die.

Instead I politely returned his books and told him about a fine on his account, waiting to see if he recognised me, but he didn’t seem to. I wrote to him that night because I was burning up in mortification, and he replied and said that no, he hadn’t recognised me but he was unfortunately booked up with dates and that it was perhaps bad timing.

After that I kept it short, sweet and sexy, but I still didn’t get many responses. By this stage I had figured out that internet dating was pretty much like trying to find someone in a bar and that the majority of boys would remain overwhelmed and intimidated by a woman who was good-looking and highly intelligent. Readers of my previous post may also be forgiven for thinking me slightly unhinged as well, but this side only shows itself when I am threatened. The rest of the time I am perfectly well-behaved and polite. No, really.

I didn’t mind so much, and kept on favouriting blokes, one of whom was Asian (the boy I loved in Sydney was Vietnamese and consequently I have a predilection for Asian men) and had an interesting profile. I was getting around to writing to him, and would have eventually, except that the next day he wrote a perfectly-phrased, grammatically correct note to me. I was hugely impressed, since most of the men on the site had been far from pro-active.

I replied, and it transpired that he was from Sydney. Not only that, but he made me laugh and he was smart. After a week I asked him out for a drink. He agreed, and in panic I texted M, ‘I have a DATE and I need HELP.’ She recommended a bar in Hoxton Square that wouldn’t be too noisy.

Never had I been so nervous, I thought as I waited in the bar, since I played in the Gunnedah Eisteddfod when I was 8. A girl sat next to me, a bunch of Oriental lilies lying on the table before her. Their pink stains matched the colour of my cashmere dress. The TV was on. Traffic passed outside. He walked through the door carrying his motorcycle helmet. I rose and he kissed me on both cheeks. Beautiful manners, I thought. Then I said, ‘I need a drink.’

I found a quiet part of the bar and he turned out to be everything he promised in cyberspace – a great conversationalist, well-travelled, intelligent and engaging. Then it became too noisy because the footy was on and people were clustered like flies before the telly. He asked if I was hungry and we went out for dinner. By the end of the evening we laughing. That boded well, I thought. He was busy with work though, and it was a fortnight before the second date, a play at the Barbican. I rang the Barbican and asked if I could get a copy of the script emailed to me, my usual practice before watching theatre. Before the play, I asked for the hearing equipment and we got to go through  first so I could collect it and I think he may have been flummoxed by this, which is fair enough as most people don't deal with deafness and hearing equipment (it didn't work anyway, as usual) in the daily run of their lives.  It was a good play, and in the middle of it the actor was talking to the audience and someone cracked a joke I couldn't hear, until he repeated it for me.  Again, I was impressed; most people don't pick up that habit until they've known me for a while.  He'd known me for a few hours.  Afterwards we had another drink, and more excellent conversation. When they closed the bar and we were shunted out, he walked me to the bus stop. I thought I heard him say, ‘See you soon,’ but it was dark and I couldn’t be sure if I had lipread him properly. I was happy; enough, even, for H to comment on the rare appearance of this condition.

A week later he emailed rather brusquely to say that he had too much going on and didn’t want to hold me up in my search for a suitable partner. I lost my foothold, slipping immediately into gloom. ‘Don’t take it so personally,’ M said. I couldn’t help but take it personally; I had liked him. I had bothered to disarm myself for him. The internet, I thought, made everyone much more callous.

Now I am re-engaged in my torrid love affair with my thesis, and I have no more time to look for boys, nor can I afford the strain.

Part the XVI: On the Hazards of Being a Deaf Woman

This afternoon, at the recommendation of a friend, I went to see Susan Hiller’s ‘The Last Silent Movie,’ a recording of extinct languages, because I’m writing about conversations with the dead and the gallery wasn’t far from where I live.  As it's summer at last, I put on one of my lovely floaty silk dresses that I bought in Thailand and haven’t yet worn, a pair of Muji thongs, a black sunhat and my don’t-fuck-with-me Prada sunglasses. The exhibition was interesting.  The audience sat in a dark room in front of a movie screen, but it remained blank except for white, written translations of the languages.  The translation was screened as the voices were broadcast.  My sister, to whom I’d spoken that morning, said there would be Aboriginal languages and sure enough there were two of them, although I recognised them from the context (the form of their stories and the talk of spears) rather than the sounds of the words.  My friend had said it was eerie to hear dead people speaking but it didn’t have much effect on me; it just seemed like any other recording.

Afterwards I read some of Hiller’s catalogues from old exhibitions, and she talked about Freud’s The Uncanny and Cixous’ "The Laugh of the Medusa" and pointed out that the unconscious, the unknown, was like the feminine and/or that which is repressed and undefined, although this didn’t mean that it was confined to women.  I liked that idea, and decided to incorporate it into my thesis.  I didn’t hang around because I a lot of work to do, and sauntered back out into the sunshine.

The route back home was through a largely Muslim community, and I run through it most weekends so I’ve never felt threatened.  In fact one of the things I like about where we live is that I feel much safer than I did in Hackney.  When I saw the group of young boys, about 11 or 12 years old, clustered at the top of a street I was, to use Johnny Howard’s fridge magnet phrase (which he thought would save us from the terrorists), ‘Alert, but not alarmed.’  Some of them were smoking and trying to look adult in the way that stupid boys do; as if anyone can’t see through the pretence.  I ignored them as I went by.

Then, halfway down the street, one of them suddenly grabbed my arse, and I shouted, ‘You fucking cunt!’  I whirled around and saw two of them running away.  I was enraged, and I was fucked if I was going to let them get away with that.  I put my foot back in my thong (I had lost it in my surprise) and strode back after them.  Seeing this, they began to run away.

‘So you’re fucking scared now?’ I jeered.  Then I raised my voice another decibel.  ‘Why don’t you learn to treat women nicely?’ To his credit, there was one small boy who stayed, and to him I delivered the brunt of my anger. ‘And you know what?’ I shouted, pointing at my ear.  ‘I’m fucking deaf!  I’m wearing a hearing aid.  I couldn’t hear them come up behind me.’ (This was a slight fabrication; I heard something but I couldn't tell how close they were).  The boy glanced at my hearing aid, looking worried now. Then another of them, taller and thinner, began to come back.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying but he gestured to the ones that had run off, and I assumed he was saying it was their fault. ‘Yeah?  They’re your mates!’ I said scornfully. There was no response to this, so I began to walk off.  I heard voices behind me and I turned again.  I wasn’t sure if they were talking amongst themselves or to me, so I shouted, ‘And don’t fucking talk to me because I can’t fucking hear you.’

By the time I got home I was shaking, but jubilant.  H said he was very impressed by my use of the C word, and I replied that they’d probably never heard it before.  Nor had they probably ever had a woman shout and swear at them, being used to submission.  He thought they might go home and say, ‘Mummy, what does cunt mean?’

So, not an entirely pleasant way of ending a Sunday afternoon.  But I’m not going to stop running through that area; I refuse to be intimidated, not least by a pack of 12-year-old twerps.

Part the XV: In which I fall flat on my face outside Tate Modern

Friday evening last week saw me slipping into my red velvet Sacha Drake dress patterned with roses and my brocaded Red or Dead stilettos, to attend an alumni function for the London Consortium at Tate Modern. I don’t get out much these days and the dress, which my sister gave me, was too beautiful to leave in the cupboard, so I wore it despite my qualms of being overdressed. The shoes were precarious to say the least, but I negotiated the stairs on the bus and the cracks in the Millennium Bridge with delicacy, then took the lift in Tate Modern to the East Room. I love this room – it’s the one in the top left corner of the building as you look at it from the bridge. The walls are all glass and as the sun went down on the longest day of the year, the sky burned with pink and deepened to a royal purple, setting off St Paul’s and the silhouetted London skyline, criss-crossed by cranes.

The food was surprisingly good and the chardonnay from Malborough in New Zealand, and I love Malborough whites. I caught up with people I hadn’t seen for a long time, resisted half my cheesecake because I am weaning myself off dairy products, and smiled at the waiter as he brought me a cup of peppermint tea. He took this as licence to stare at my cleavage which, admittedly, was on display.

We were ushered out at eleven and I walked out to the courtyard with M and Wtk. They were going a little fast however, as both of them were wearing sensible shoes, and I, in a struggle to keep up that was somewhat hampered by the chardonnay, somehow tripped and landed hard on my knees and elbows from a height that was 7cm higher than it needed to be. A kind man stopped to see if I needed help but M and Wtk ushered him on. The pain went away fairly quickly but when I lifted the hem of my dress I was horrified to find that I had gouged a large hole in my knee. It looked messy, and it was bleeding fast.

Never have I been so angry with myself, not least because it was my own fault for wearing stupid shoes, and because I wouldn’t be able to wear short skirts for the rest of summer. ‘What am I gonna do?’ I wailed. ‘I’ve got to go to Ascot tomorrow.’ ‘Uhm, wear tights,’ M said quickly. They led me to a bench, offered tissues and told me to catch a cab home. I insisted that it wasn’t that bad and I could catch the bus, having had much more serious wounds – the worst being when my piano teacher’s son ran into my calf with his bicycle and split the flesh open. That was nasty. However, I could see that the cuts would start bleeding again as soon as I moved, and this was problematic, I conceded to the cab and, swearing at myself, followed them to the taxi rank. ‘Well, it could have been worse,’ M consoled me. ‘It could have happened on your date.’ She had a point.

Fortunately, the dress I had chosen for Ascot covered my knee, and I stuck several bandaids over the hole and got through the day alright.

Have I learnt my lesson? Of course not. In a spot of retail therapy I went to Dune and purchased a pair of absurdly high courts in delicious chocolate and cream, with a black patent rim and a sweet bow. It matters not that they are difficult to walk it – what are shoes for, after all?

Cousinly Affairs

It is a Wednesday night and suddenly I find myself with time on my hands.  Having written all day on botany and femininity, then gone for a swim in the decrepit local pool, and not feeling like reading, nor having a TV with which to spongify my brain, I am left with my blog. So now it’s time to write about our jaunt to hear CousinA play in his band, which I intended to get down a few weeks ago.  CousinA used to live south of the river, and whenever we went to visit I would always feel conspicuously overdressed.  So this time, hearing that the rugby club where he was playing was in the middle of a paddock south of the river (according to H), and having visions of sinking into the grass in my stilettos, I elected to dress down.  I was colour coordinated (in green) but I wore sneakers (the only pair of flat shoes I own).  You can imagine my horror then, to get inside and find the men in shirts and trousers, and the girls in spangly tops and high heels.  I couldn’t work it out – it was a rugby club in the middle of nowhere – and on expressing my consternation to CousinA, he explained that this was a big night out for the girls, that they only went into the city for big occasions, and they were here to find a husband.

Then the girls perched, like budgies on a branch, on the top of the benches running about the room so they could see the band and of course, have their assets viewed by the blokes.  But the blokes stood with their backs to the girls, watching the singers, and ignored them.  I couldn’t understand that either; if you like a girl/boy you go and talk to them.

Anyway, CousinA sang his stuff, and was very good and got everyone in the mood for a dance, and once he was done we went off home with his guitar so he could carry on partying.  On the DLR, a man with many piercings and a small woman with bottle blonde hair and huge black boots asked us whether the DLR went to Lewisham.  H explained that it wasn’t going all the way and they would have to get off at Mudchute and catch a bus.  We also had to get off at Mudchute and catch a bus.  So at Mudchute we trundled to the bus stop, following the couple.

Then H, being like the friendly Labrador that he is, decided to strike up a conversation (one of these days he’s going to get stabbed, but that’s his choice).  It transpired that they were cousins and were going to the White Swan, a trashy gay pub which is apparently an East End institution, and they don’t allow women in to the amateur strip nights on Wednesdays.  H once took my supervisor and his boyfriend there after our house party (on a Saturday, I hasten to add) and thus corrupted him (well, I’m sure my supervisor is already corrupt but I don’t want to think about that).  The man began a discussion with H about the kind of men he liked, which H kindly repeated for me afterwards (‘I like big, muscly men, y’know?’) Then the man noticed my hearing aid and said, ‘Oi, we’re both deaf too.’  He proceeded to elaborate on how he and his cousin had each lost their hearing but, ironically, I couldn't hear what he was saying.

Then a bus went by and suddenly H shouted, ‘Jess, we’re on the wrong side of the road!”  This was my fault because I had looked at the bus timetable but not the bus map.  We ran after the bus, swinging the guitar, the small woman clomping in her built up heels, but it was too fast.  In despair, I agreed that we should walk to the main road and find a taxi.  The cousins went ahead of us and proceeded to have an argument.

On the main road, we flagged a cab and bundled in.   The woman must have been on E because she was talking so fast.  She had kids, and this was a rare night out for her, I gathered.  We pulled up at Limehouse, and H said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it,’ and the woman, who was getting out her wallet, said, ‘Oi, orright,’ and put her wallet away and got out of the cab.  The cousin followed her and they took off immediately without saying thank you.  I would have been disgusted if they hadn’t been so entertaining, and I admit I had the bad grace to start laughing while they were within hearing.  One always seems to get more than one bargains for when one goes to visit CousinA, but that’s one of the reasons why we love him.

Here Comes the Sun

I began this blog entry last week when the sunlight was pouring down. Unsurprisingly, it is now raining again. I noted an article in G2 a few days ago nervously headed, ‘Will there be Summer this year?’ and confess to having asked the same thing myself, as the weather pattern is similar to last year’s. The forecasters, however, assured us that it would be a normal summer with above average temperatures. I hope to god that they are right.

Seeing as it seems to be the done thing to sit outside in the sun to blog and drink cardonnay* these days, I have set myself up in the garden to write. I’ve just baked a batch of Russian Tea Cakes while listening to Alanis Morrisette and shall be opening the vino shortly. Given that my alcohol tolerance is pretty much nil these days on account of having neither money nor a social life, it is wise to pace oneself in these situations. Should this post suddenly end with 1p39847qieuh;agakjda1298h9fgngsdkjfh[qwerq, I will have fallen off my chair onto the paving, my head gently wedged between the pots of rhododendron and thyme, thence to shall remain until BrotherH comes home to rescue me.

There have been many reasons to be happy of late, at least as happy as is possible in my state of incarceration, the discomfort of which increases as the days warm and I remain shackled to my desk writing about displacement, haunting and bodies in the text. Firstly, I was shortlisted for the Dobbie, an encouragement award for first time female novelists funded by Perpetual. Naturally I had been hoping to win (what writer doesn’t?), not least so I could buy a new Spencer and Rutherford handbag and ticket back to Oz, but Karen Foxlee’s The Anatomy of Wings scooped the prize, as I’d expected. I haven’t read it but it’s had lots of good reviews so will add it to my list of books to buy when I go home at Xmas.

Just after my agent emailed me the results, the postman dropped off the new edition of my book, which is just gorgeous, as possibly even more ‘me’ than the first edition, though I’ll always love it (the first) the best. Here is a picture of it:

Then my publisher told me that I am one of four winners of the Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist for 2008, hurrah! I don’t get any money, although I do have my picture in the paper. To this end the London photographer for the SMH came to work and snapped pictures of me for nearly two hours with one of those fancy umbrellas for the flash and all. Having the White gene that is addicted to showing-offness, I lapped up the attention. However, by the end I was quite tired from smiling, and I was starving, so I was glad to see the photographer on his way. The article is to appear in the Spectrum on May 24th.

And while the weather has been gorgeous, it does has its downsides, in that it reminds me of Oz and I’ve been aching with homesickness. I wish I could sit on the patio in mum’s garden, drinking tea, reading and burning my shins in the sun, or lie on the beach at Coogee, or walk through Centennial Park, the heat gently clinging to my skin. Well, it’s only seven months until I go home again, and I guess I can bear it, unless it’s another wet summer. I shall be very unhappy indeed if my frocks languish, unworn, in my cupboard for yet another season.

* After watching Kath and Kim, I am now incapable of saying chardonnay. It must be pronounced, as Kim vehemently protests, without the 'h': 'It's cardonnay, cardonnay, ya pack of shunts!'

ANZAC Day Nausea

I was going to title this blog ‘ANZAC Day Ambivalence’ (which has nice alliteration) but after seeing the headlines on news.com.au this morning: ‘Gallipoli pilgrims pay respects’, I am changing the operative word to ‘nausea.’

It seems to me that each year the ANZAC Day celebrations become increasingly sentimental, distorted and obsessed with nationalism. In a country that has so little European history and therefore aspires to make do with what it has, the few events worth commemorating (and even those are dubious) run the risk of being blown out of proportion.

This year, it appears that they are trying to give the ceremony religious overtones, and this has made me very, very angry. Gallipoli was created by the mismanagement of leaders who wanted to create a back door entry by which to attack Germany. The terrain was inhospitable and almost unpassable and the ANZACs were fired upon as soon as they left their ships to crawl onto land. It was an absolute bloodbath which is not deserving of the respect of a religious ceremony. Yes, the soldiers were heroic and for that they should be remembered, but they were going into war and they were going to kill people. I am of the opinion that murderers should not be honoured as saints.

Often ANZAC Day appears to me as a celebration of war, or rather, a celebration of a bunch of men who played with their toys and territory. Adding to my reservations is the repellent term ‘mateship.’ For what of the thousands of women who supported the ANZAC forces? The nurses serving in Egypt, France, Greece and India; those working in auxiliary roles as cooks, nurses, driver, interpreters; and those holding together the country at home – taking on the emotional burden of keeping families together, and of making sure the economy dragged itself on by doing men’s work, whether in the cities or on the farms. Does ‘mateship’ celebrate them?

I do believe in respecting what these people did because they loved Australia and because they risked their lives for their country, but I think the commemoration shouldn’t focus so exclusively upon the Diggers. I also think we should look to the future rather than to the past. Australia, someone once told me, was different to England in that it had such an emphasis on youth. We encourage our young people, we are positive and we try to look forward. In this spirit, then, I believe there is another cause far more worthy of our attention: justice for the Aboriginal people.

Getup, always a practical organisation, have made a step in that direction into this by composing a song for justice. You can buy it here (but only if you’re in Oz). If Australians are determined to have ‘mateship’ as their defining characteristic, why not extend that to Aboriginals and do something about reconciliation?

A Gloomy Start to my Morning

This morning at breakfast I read an incredibly dispiriting article about the discrimination women employees faced once they announced they were pregnant. One of the cases it highlighted was that of Ramona Jones, who worked in the human resources department of a county council, working her way upwards until she was a step away from a management position. Then she announced she was going to have her first baby. The promise of a move to a higher role disappeared and on her return from maternity leave she was shoved back into a boring role that she had held two years previously. By no means alone in this situation, she cited examples of women in senior positions who had been forced into a similar pattern or who, on arranging to work part-time, were expected to do their entire job in three days instead of five (can you imagine doing this with a new baby anyway?) and naturally floundered and were forced into redundancy.

It occurred to me as I read this article that the women were fine at their work – they did well and were rewarded for it – until the very point that their femininity became obvious. For what marks out a woman as a woman more clearly than her capacity to give birth? Women can be treated equally (though they are rarely paid equally, but that is another blog entry) as long as they act like men. As soon as their difference becomes obvious, they are penalised for it.

The thing that saddened me most was the colossal waste of talent that this practice encourages. The article ended with a comment from Ruth Holloway who was told to resign when she became pregnant and who, in trying to contest this, was forced to take a cheque and shut up rather than carry the case to a tribunal because she was so exhausted from fighting the company (and as a deaf woman who has to constantly stand up for my rights, I can totally empathise with this). Holloway said: ‘It’s great fun being at the school gates, and looking after my children full-time, but it’s not quite the same as the buzz that you get from running a massive team and being in charge of a £4bn budget. It’s not quite the same as leading a massive team project. If you’re the kind of person who can do that, then you enjoy it, and so I do miss it. I always will.’ The loss isn’t just Holloway’s, though, it’s also her company’s. Just from this comment you can see that the company has lost a bright, energetic and competent employee.

I recall a conversation I had with my father a while ago – one which didn’t, unusually, descend into a biting argument – in which he said that feminism had been around for thirty years and that good things had happened, but there were very few women in roles of power. He was of the opinion that women just weren’t cut out to lead. Actually I think the only reason why there wasn’t an argument was because I was still young at this point and hadn’t mustered enough ammunition to reply, so I let it drop. Now, however, I can see that at least one reason why there are so few female leaders: sexism is still rife and if it’s a choice between doing battle with a bunch of testosterone laden triceratops and looking after your baby, you’re obviously going to chose the latter, especially if it’s your first baby because you don’t really know what you’re doing and don’t want to fuck it up. This isn’t only detrimental to women, but to men as well: what if a man doesn’t want to spend hours at the office but wants to look after the baby too?

At the heart of it all is a glaring hypocrisy – the people who get to the top of a profession are often those who have been nurtured well. How can they then show such disregard for the job of parenting by keeping men at work away from their children, and by forcing intelligent women back into the home, where they may become bitter and bored (and looking after babies is incredibly boring, though few dare to admit it) and transmit that frustration to their children? And this is only one small aspect of the fallout from the poor treatment of female employees – I could go on for hours but I have a thesis to write.

The only hope I have is that gleaned from a newspaper I read a while ago, which said that companies will be forced to change to accommodate women because, as the population ages and the employment pool shrinks, companies won't be able to afford to lose their female employees. And it won’t, as my father thought, take thirty years. If, after three or four decades, sexism like this still exists, it will take generations to be rid of it.

Better than Mills and Boon

This isn’t an internet dating blog entry, although one of them will be forthcoming in due course. Suffice to say it’s providing hours of amusement, but (because I am fastidious in my tastes) no romance yet. For that, where better can I slip than between the sheets of a book?

The Easter long weekend took us to a Woolacombe, where we stayed in a caravan with some friends and our cousin, who also brought along his retinue, the various members of which descended on us a varying times. It was bitterly cold, although not snowing as it was in the rest of the country. As we played beach volleyball, I began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation: the wind was horizontal and it was near freezing, but we were going to have our beach activity no matter what. Anyone other than the English would have just stayed inside and toasted their tootsies by the fire.

The next day I went for a walk by myself along the shore. The tide was out and had left pools of water in the sand which I skipped over. Coming back was tortuous, as the wind was icy and determined to fold me in half and then, joy of joys, it began hailing. I finally made it back to the caravan for a game of Scrabble, which I lost because someone helped H (again) and I subsided into a deep sulk.

On Sunday we went for a long walk along a headland, then down to a cove with black sand and a log smouldering from a fire. A dog, going bananas in the sea air, bounded around with a stick. I collected some rocks for my fish bowl, and on the way back H and I sank into the green grass at the top of the cliffs the way we used to do when we were kids on the farm, watching the birds freewheeling and the sea tossing up white balls of foam into the air above us.

We ate dinner at The Thatch and enlightened the English as to the anatomical meaning of this term in Australia, then played bingo at the vile club in the caravan park for novelty value. The kids’ games room was filled with brightly coloured slot machines and the adults’ room, full of pokies, was identical, thereby making for an obvious transition from one kind of game to another, more damaging one.

After bingo we settled down to watch Ocean’s Eleven. ‘Oh,’ I said scathingly as a car backed up with an enormous piece of equipment on board (don’t ask me what it was), ‘it’s such a boy’s film.’
A looked at me pointedly and said, ‘And what did we watch last night?’
I squirmed. It had been Pride and Prejudice. It was an otherwise beautiful film except for the scenes with Keira Knightley in them. Twiglet is clearly suffering from a want of vitamins because she has rictus of the jaw and can’t move her muscles properly. Unbelievably, she wasn’t as thin in this film as she was in Atonement, in which she closely resembled a coat hanger.

The next day we set off home via Doone Valley, which a friend had told us about during another clifftop walk. The road into the valley was steep, with trees crouching on either side, and I said that I wouldn’t like to be caught on that road on a dark and stormy night. We pulled up at Doone Valley Buttery for second breakfast, and came upon a sheepdog with a screw loose. It had a fascination for stones, but if you threw her a stone, she’d take it down to the creek and stand guard over it in the water. We drove onward over narrow roads through twisted trees and thickly grassed banks, pausing by a brook for photos. I expected Heathcliff to come striding over the grass and to pinion me against a tree but alas, the vision didn't materialise.

At lunch we stopped at Dunster, where there was a castle. We had lunch at a pub which had an African Grey Parrot called Nelson in a cage. Nelson wouldn’t talk if you were looking at him, so when the old men who were sitting nearby exited, he set up a whole little landscape of croons and whistles, and then erupted with, ‘Wanker!’
‘Nelson!’ the bartender scolded him.
Said bartender was similarly odd. Overhearing our conversation on facial and body hair (specifically on getting a free exfoliation when a girl kisses a prickly boy) as he set down our plates, he added, ‘I do like a good stache.’
After lunch, full of Cumberland sausages, we wandered down the road to a paddock and watched more dogs galumping about, then into the National Trust gardens, which were just beautiful, not least because of the magnolia tree that was in flower. We climbed the hill to the castle, and once at the top realised we had to get our skates on as none of us wanted to be left behind in the waiting room at Swindon train station.

And the romance? It began as soon as I opened the covers of Lorna Doone when I got home. There was tall, strapping John Ridd fighting the equally strong, but murderous Doones to get his girl, who had been born into the wrong family. That was a good enough plot to keep anyone reading, but what added to my delight was the way the strands that seemed to end in questions were caught up and woven back into the fabric of the work in that wonderfully logical, but improbable, 19th century way. And it wasn’t so much the characters themselves that lit up my mind, for John was faintly misogynist and Lorna needed a man to defend herself – but rather the quality of their love. It sprang up in their childhoods, then endured and made them stronger: John’s love pushed him to become braver, Lorna’s washed away her pride and breeding. It was the alchemy of love that made me fall for the book, and want to begin it again as soon as it had finished.

Part the XIV: In Which the Deaf Girl Resolves to Find a Bloke

Given that the most risqué my life gets these days is going to bed smelling of Agent Provocateur Sauce, and that the most romance I can muster is singing along to the Elephant Love Medley from Moulin Rouge whilst eating peanut butter out of the jar with a knife, I figured it was about time I tried to find myself a bloke.

As you may have noticed, men and I don’t quite see eye-to-eye on many things. I’m a feminist and I make no apologies for it. This doesn’t mean that I hate all men – far from it – it just means that I refuse to compromise my beliefs for a more just society. H once had a go at me for being so dogmatic and I replied, well, if it hadn’t been for Emmeline Pankhurst and her hunger strikes in prison and her protests, English women wouldn’t have got the vote. Unless people make a noise about inequality, it will be conveniently ignored.

Added to this is the problem of having grown up with a sensitive, generous, humorous gay brother (aside from outbursts like the above, which are rare), which means that I expect every man I come across also to be sensitive, generous and humorous, and simply can’t fathom it when they aren’t. Clearly, there is something wrong with them all.

Then there is the problem of being an opinionated, outspoken, highly intelligent, attractive and articulate young lady, which many men, particularly reserved English men, find confronting. And finally, of course, there is the major problem of having a disability.

My friends just don’t understand why I can’t go up to a man in a bar and start chatting to him. ‘It doesn’t matter that you can’t hear, it’s so noisy that we can’t either.’ That isn’t the point. What is the point is that for nearly 30 years (having got meningitis when I was 3 and a half), I have been conditioned to try and fit in, to hide my deafness and to appear as ‘normal’ as possible, and that, therefore, the disclosure of a disability is something to be avoided at all costs. Even I can see how patently ridiculous this thinking is, and yet I can’t do anything about it – it’s become instinctive – I’ve become colonised and appropriated into the world of the hearing. It isn’t my parents’ fault either – we lived in a remote part of the country where they had little access to resources that explained how to bring up a deaf child, I was sent to a hearing school as otherwise I would have had to go to a boarding school for deaf children in Sydney, 7 hours’ drive away, and my mother could only rely upon her wits, which dictated that I should be just like everyone else. And this is one of the reasons why I pay so much attention to my appearance (aside from a incurable weakness for stilettos, handbags, cardies and lingerie): a girl that pretty couldn’t possibly have a problem, could she?

So why am I even bothering? Aside from the fact that I’m a healthy young girl who likes her Agent Provocateur, I’m conscious of becoming too selfish and too staid by spending so much time on my own. And then, of course, I’m an incurable romantic, in the tradition of Byron and Heathcliff, rather than namby hearts and roses, and I want someone to write poetry for. So I’ve decided that, rather than climbing up on my white stallion all a-clankin’ in my armour, I shall divest myself of my metal, sign up to an internet dating website and try walking, unarmed, with the hopefuls.