Wednesday, 28 April 2010
A path in London
Sometimes, in London, after crowded train rides and broken escalators with people clambering up them and briefcases swinging and the clomp of heels and the black backs of men in suits in front of you and tinny announcements and school kids’ laughter and newspapers left on seats and shifting queues of people at bus stops and the tight buzzy sensation of static behind your eyes, you unexpectedly find yourself down a little path with a clearing to one side and you realise you’re all alone in this place. It’s a melancholic, refreshing feeling.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
'Episodes': Return to Australia Part III (of a still yet to be disclosed number of parts. This might be the last one)
Woolies, the Helpful Supermarket
One thing any Australian who comes to London is surprised by is that check-out chicks (or blokes) never pack your bags for you in supermarkets. Even if you’ve got two trolleys full of supplies to re-stock your bomb shelter, you’re on your own when it comes to stuffing it all into bags on the ‘other side’. Before the ‘self-checkout’ machines were installed, a regular trip to the supermarket ran a little something like this:
One thing any Australian who comes to London is surprised by is that check-out chicks (or blokes) never pack your bags for you in supermarkets. Even if you’ve got two trolleys full of supplies to re-stock your bomb shelter, you’re on your own when it comes to stuffing it all into bags on the ‘other side’. Before the ‘self-checkout’ machines were installed, a regular trip to the supermarket ran a little something like this:
***
I place all of my things onto the conveyor belt, making sure to keep the jar of basil and tomato passata at the front and the melba toast at the back. Once I’m satisfied that I’ve placed the bananas in an optimal position within the line-up, I tap my fingernails on the silver edges of the conveyor belt, and watch the prophetic scene of the person in front of me unfold. This unfortunate soul, who for all I know might have a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering, is trying frantically to keep up with the merciless check-out chick, who is wearing a badge that says, ‘WINNER: fastest scan-rate in the UK. They call me Lightning Fingers.’ His groceries topple and jostle down the slide to where his reusable bags are waiting, and the concentration on his face is intense as he shoves in celery stalks, frozen pizzas, garlic bread batons and packets of chocolate-coated almonds.
I can’t help but make judgments about his ordering system (or lack thereof) as he goes along. ‘I would never have placed the lettuce there,’ I think. ‘Who puts lettuce in front of ten cans of chick-peas?’
Lightning Fingers has finished long before he’s had a chance to make a dent in the hodge-podge of items that have accumulated around him, and she leans back in her chair and raises an eyebrow at me to show that she’s sympathetic to my plight: being stuck behind this tortoise who doesn’t even know that bread is always the last thing you should put on the conveyor. I notice her raised brow but keep my eyes forward: it would be foolish to feign kinship now when we both know that in a couple of minutes we’re going to be on opposite sides of the grocery battle.
The man finally finishes, and fumbles around in his backpack looking for his card. Lightning Fingers sighs loudly, and I can almost see him scribbling a mental note to keep his card in a more convenient location next time. In fact, I can see that he’s learned a lot of things for next time. He inserts his card into the machine, with a defeated yet determined look. ‘Next time, Lightning Fingers. I’ll get you next time…’
He makes apologetic eye-contact with me as he loads the bags up onto his arms, but all I can do is bite my lip and grimace. It’s my turn.
***
When I went home, I had become so accustomed to treating each supermarket trip like a military operation, that I was stunned when the Woolies check-out bloke smiled at me and said, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ and then proceeded to quickly and efficiently pack all of my things into bags (even putting crushables over to one side so that they might be placed on top at the end). He wasn’t working against me! He wasn’t even working with me. He was working FOR me.
How marvellous.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
'Episodes': Return to Australia Part II (of a yet to be disclosed number of parts)
I went home to Australia for a month in December. Rather than trying to squeeze everything that happened into one blog, which would be as difficult and time-consuming as tipping two similar 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles out onto a table and then putting them back together again using only the toes of my left foot, I thought I'd write a few 'episodes' blogs instead: bits and pieces of events, thoughts and whatnots that transpired while I was there. Taken together, hopefully they'll create a bigger picture anyway. (I'm just praying that that picture doesn't end up looking like this.)
The Porridge Incident
Asiana Airlines Flight OZ601 from Seoul to Sydney. About two hours before landing, I made the somewhat catastrophic mistake of selecting porridge over an omelette for breakfast, believing that eating eggs on a plane is never going to be pleasant for anyone concerned. But, after the tinfoil-covered dish was placed in front of me, the flight attendant leanded over to drop an unexpected condiment on top: a small plastic fish filled with what was apparently a perfect accompaniment for this meal: soy sauce.
After 20 hours on planes, my mind cogs could only muster up the energy to think, 'Soy sauce is to porridge as she must be is to joking' (which, I'm sure you'll agree, fails the basic rule of analytical comparison). That little fish casually tossed onto the tinfoil lid was an immediate and unsettling omen of the horror that lay beneath. With timid fingers, I slowly peeled up the edges of the foil, letting the fish reveal his purpose. He was there to muddle and mix in with that delightful breakfast food sure to whet even the fussiest appetite: prawn and broccoli studded porridge. 'Studded' isn't even the right word, as that implies that there was a little 'spring' or 'substance' to the porridge that a prawn or a broccolo might get lodged in. No, these prawns and broccoli were submerged in a transclucent white gunge. It looked like a sad combination of fake snow and tepid water, and it slopped around as the plane hit turbulence.
I didn't taste it, but I'm fairly certain that this porridge wouldn't be described as 'sweet' in the same way the gloriously goldeny-syrupy porridge I was looking forward to might be. Instead I folded the foil back down over the dish, turning away like a child whose innocence has just been shattered.
Lesson learned: When ordering meals on an Asian airline, you can save yourself a traumatic culinary experience by asking, 'what's in it?' before making your selection. This holds no matter how confident you may be in your knowledge of the ingredients of basic dishes.
The City that Never Sleeps
When you live somewhere for a fair amount of time, you get used to the sounds that swirl around outside your door. In London, I'm now accustomed to hearing the squeaking of bus brakes, the whoosh of cars, the whirl of sirens and the growl of motorbikes as they tear up Putney Hill. They're all mechanical noises, and they drown out whatever else might be around.
On my second morning back in Sydney, I was staying at my friend Kim's place, and a forgotten noise woke me up at 5am. In a tree outside her window, what sounded like hundreds of birds were squabbling, flapping, chirping and talking like overexcited women after a Hugh Grant sighting. I felt like I'd woken up in the middle of a jungle, but it was actually just a flat near the beach in Coogee.
I remembered that Sydney is a city that never sleeps, mainly because of the wide range of animals that keep you up all night. In Summer it's fruit-bats bickering and warbling as they gobble the nectar from Silky Oaks, cicadas humming and screeching in a strangely synchronised rhythm, or a lone mozzie who thinks of himself as an intrepid treasure hunter and your ear as a cave of rubies. In Winter it's usually a collection of little birds who plink out quick three-note tunes to one another every couple of minutes, dogs barking in the distance, or another ruby-hungry mozzie who'd heard a rumour of this hidden cave and has come to investigate.
The animals carry on all day and all night. But I guess their efforts would only really stunt the sleep of newcomers to Australia, because after a couple of days back home, I could sleep through all of those noises again. Well, apart from the mozzies. No one can sleep through a sound like that.
Old Doors, Old Houses
On the trips I've taken in Europe, I'm always teased when I am suddenly overcome by the sight of a really old door. A grand, intricate door that dates back to the 1400s or something ridiculous like that. I react this way because, growing up in Australia, my perception of 'oldness' is slightly skewed. Suburbs in Australia look 'old' to me when they have faded fibro houses built in the 70s. That's the 1970s...
More episodes to come.
The Porridge Incident
Asiana Airlines Flight OZ601 from Seoul to Sydney. About two hours before landing, I made the somewhat catastrophic mistake of selecting porridge over an omelette for breakfast, believing that eating eggs on a plane is never going to be pleasant for anyone concerned. But, after the tinfoil-covered dish was placed in front of me, the flight attendant leanded over to drop an unexpected condiment on top: a small plastic fish filled with what was apparently a perfect accompaniment for this meal: soy sauce.
After 20 hours on planes, my mind cogs could only muster up the energy to think, 'Soy sauce is to porridge as she must be is to joking' (which, I'm sure you'll agree, fails the basic rule of analytical comparison). That little fish casually tossed onto the tinfoil lid was an immediate and unsettling omen of the horror that lay beneath. With timid fingers, I slowly peeled up the edges of the foil, letting the fish reveal his purpose. He was there to muddle and mix in with that delightful breakfast food sure to whet even the fussiest appetite: prawn and broccoli studded porridge. 'Studded' isn't even the right word, as that implies that there was a little 'spring' or 'substance' to the porridge that a prawn or a broccolo might get lodged in. No, these prawns and broccoli were submerged in a transclucent white gunge. It looked like a sad combination of fake snow and tepid water, and it slopped around as the plane hit turbulence.
I didn't taste it, but I'm fairly certain that this porridge wouldn't be described as 'sweet' in the same way the gloriously goldeny-syrupy porridge I was looking forward to might be. Instead I folded the foil back down over the dish, turning away like a child whose innocence has just been shattered.
Lesson learned: When ordering meals on an Asian airline, you can save yourself a traumatic culinary experience by asking, 'what's in it?' before making your selection. This holds no matter how confident you may be in your knowledge of the ingredients of basic dishes.
The City that Never Sleeps
When you live somewhere for a fair amount of time, you get used to the sounds that swirl around outside your door. In London, I'm now accustomed to hearing the squeaking of bus brakes, the whoosh of cars, the whirl of sirens and the growl of motorbikes as they tear up Putney Hill. They're all mechanical noises, and they drown out whatever else might be around.
On my second morning back in Sydney, I was staying at my friend Kim's place, and a forgotten noise woke me up at 5am. In a tree outside her window, what sounded like hundreds of birds were squabbling, flapping, chirping and talking like overexcited women after a Hugh Grant sighting. I felt like I'd woken up in the middle of a jungle, but it was actually just a flat near the beach in Coogee.
I remembered that Sydney is a city that never sleeps, mainly because of the wide range of animals that keep you up all night. In Summer it's fruit-bats bickering and warbling as they gobble the nectar from Silky Oaks, cicadas humming and screeching in a strangely synchronised rhythm, or a lone mozzie who thinks of himself as an intrepid treasure hunter and your ear as a cave of rubies. In Winter it's usually a collection of little birds who plink out quick three-note tunes to one another every couple of minutes, dogs barking in the distance, or another ruby-hungry mozzie who'd heard a rumour of this hidden cave and has come to investigate.
The animals carry on all day and all night. But I guess their efforts would only really stunt the sleep of newcomers to Australia, because after a couple of days back home, I could sleep through all of those noises again. Well, apart from the mozzies. No one can sleep through a sound like that.
Old Doors, Old Houses
On the trips I've taken in Europe, I'm always teased when I am suddenly overcome by the sight of a really old door. A grand, intricate door that dates back to the 1400s or something ridiculous like that. I react this way because, growing up in Australia, my perception of 'oldness' is slightly skewed. Suburbs in Australia look 'old' to me when they have faded fibro houses built in the 70s. That's the 1970s...
More episodes to come.
Friday, 22 January 2010
Water Drops and Hills Hoists: Return to Australia (Part 1)
My Dad's family moved to Australia from England in 1959. One day my sibings and I were trying to work out what might have prompted such a move, so we asked our Grandad for the back-story. With a glint in his eye and a smile on his lips, he said he would tell us why he chose Australia over anywhere else in the world.
When the kids were young and they lived in Liverpool, he said, he and Nana used to have to hang the washing up in the kitchen. It was hung up high, and when he got up in the mornings to make some Ribena for the little ones, water drops from the washing would fall down the back of his neck. He hated that sensation, and dreaded it, but there wasn't anywhere else the washing could go, so he just had to put up with it. One day he was complaining about the water drops falling down the back of his neck to a friend, and his friend said, 'You know, in Australia, you can hang your washing up outside, and it's so hot that by the time you hang up the last thing, the first thing you put up is already dry!' Grandad jumped up and exlaimed, 'That's the place for me!'
Now, my Grandad had a tendency to tell a funny story over sad facts, so needless to say there were other reasons for the move, but I still like the idea that water droplets from washing could provoke someone to move their whole family to the other side of the world.
Water drops do suggest slightly larger miseries, of course. England's weather is one of the reasons why so many of my Australian friends and family looked at me with complete and honest incredulity when I told them I was moving to London. Why would you leave the luxury of being able to hang up your bed-sheets on the arms of a glorious Hills Hoist in your own back yard, watching contentedly as they ripple and billow in the warm breeze, absorbing the light of the sun? Why would you exchange that for a mouldy little line off of a city balcony, a rickety drying rack clogging up a living room, or a dingy Laundromat where your sheets flail around in a horrible black space, injected with artificial air and deprived of every sheet's dream: sweet sunshine?
I explained to the incredulous that I wasn't moving to London for the weather. (To be on the safe side, I also clarified that feeling pre-emptively sorry for my potential future bed-sheets would not stop me from moving there, as I assumed most British sheets are born knowing that they will not be able to aspire to a life in the sun. Instead they must limit themselves to a more modest hope: perhaps a lucky day when they might stretch out within a massive tumble-drier all alone, not having socks or underwear bashing them in the face and guts.)
No, I moved to London for other reasons. But now that I have lived here for nearly two years I will admit that the clothes-drying solutions I have had to come up with have taken some getting used to. I can see why Grandad must have reached the end of his rope. In my Whitechapel flat I started drying my towels in an inexplicably hot storage closet. I could only wash one towel in any load, and then I'd hang it over the clothes-rail inside the roasting cupboard, returning to rescue it from an advanced stage of rigor mortis the next day. It seemed... unnatural.
After all sorts of imaginative responses to 'The English Laundry Predicament', I returned to Australia for a visit last month, stepping out of Sydney airport into one of those impossibly heavy 43-degree days. I had a thick black coat with me, and my suitcase was packed with clothes that had been dried in a Putney Laundromat. When we finally pulled up to the house, the first thing I saw was a fitting surprise organised by my Dad. There, strung up on our giant Hills Hoist, bearing the spray-painted inscription 'Welcome Home Sarah!', was a white bed-sheet waving and fluttering in the sunshine.
A sight like that must have been Grandad's dream.
NB: I guess I should point out that it is quite possible to hang things up outside in the UK Summer. Provided that you own an 'outside' to hang things up in, that is. I've come to the conclusion that British bed-sheet oppression has as much to do with living conditions as the vagaries of the weather. Of course that's not doing much to 'sell' London to my Australian nay-sayers. I've just pointed out that not only is the weather bad over here, a lot of people don't even have their own outside area from which to scowl at it.
When the kids were young and they lived in Liverpool, he said, he and Nana used to have to hang the washing up in the kitchen. It was hung up high, and when he got up in the mornings to make some Ribena for the little ones, water drops from the washing would fall down the back of his neck. He hated that sensation, and dreaded it, but there wasn't anywhere else the washing could go, so he just had to put up with it. One day he was complaining about the water drops falling down the back of his neck to a friend, and his friend said, 'You know, in Australia, you can hang your washing up outside, and it's so hot that by the time you hang up the last thing, the first thing you put up is already dry!' Grandad jumped up and exlaimed, 'That's the place for me!'
Now, my Grandad had a tendency to tell a funny story over sad facts, so needless to say there were other reasons for the move, but I still like the idea that water droplets from washing could provoke someone to move their whole family to the other side of the world.
Water drops do suggest slightly larger miseries, of course. England's weather is one of the reasons why so many of my Australian friends and family looked at me with complete and honest incredulity when I told them I was moving to London. Why would you leave the luxury of being able to hang up your bed-sheets on the arms of a glorious Hills Hoist in your own back yard, watching contentedly as they ripple and billow in the warm breeze, absorbing the light of the sun? Why would you exchange that for a mouldy little line off of a city balcony, a rickety drying rack clogging up a living room, or a dingy Laundromat where your sheets flail around in a horrible black space, injected with artificial air and deprived of every sheet's dream: sweet sunshine?
I explained to the incredulous that I wasn't moving to London for the weather. (To be on the safe side, I also clarified that feeling pre-emptively sorry for my potential future bed-sheets would not stop me from moving there, as I assumed most British sheets are born knowing that they will not be able to aspire to a life in the sun. Instead they must limit themselves to a more modest hope: perhaps a lucky day when they might stretch out within a massive tumble-drier all alone, not having socks or underwear bashing them in the face and guts.)
No, I moved to London for other reasons. But now that I have lived here for nearly two years I will admit that the clothes-drying solutions I have had to come up with have taken some getting used to. I can see why Grandad must have reached the end of his rope. In my Whitechapel flat I started drying my towels in an inexplicably hot storage closet. I could only wash one towel in any load, and then I'd hang it over the clothes-rail inside the roasting cupboard, returning to rescue it from an advanced stage of rigor mortis the next day. It seemed... unnatural.
After all sorts of imaginative responses to 'The English Laundry Predicament', I returned to Australia for a visit last month, stepping out of Sydney airport into one of those impossibly heavy 43-degree days. I had a thick black coat with me, and my suitcase was packed with clothes that had been dried in a Putney Laundromat. When we finally pulled up to the house, the first thing I saw was a fitting surprise organised by my Dad. There, strung up on our giant Hills Hoist, bearing the spray-painted inscription 'Welcome Home Sarah!', was a white bed-sheet waving and fluttering in the sunshine.
A sight like that must have been Grandad's dream.
NB: I guess I should point out that it is quite possible to hang things up outside in the UK Summer. Provided that you own an 'outside' to hang things up in, that is. I've come to the conclusion that British bed-sheet oppression has as much to do with living conditions as the vagaries of the weather. Of course that's not doing much to 'sell' London to my Australian nay-sayers. I've just pointed out that not only is the weather bad over here, a lot of people don't even have their own outside area from which to scowl at it.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
A Little Pea in a Big Town
I grew up in a place where if you didn't have a car, it was like being marooned on a desert island. Only instead of oceans I was surrounded by grass, and instead of palm trees it was cows I watched swaying in the breeze. Well, they were never 'swaying' so much as 'chewing', but they did have milk inside, like coconuts do.
I take pains to point out to people that I didn't grow up on a farm; we just happened to have cows, horses and a small menagerie spread out across acres of paddocks. My neighbour out the back did have chickens at one stage, and a working well, but ours wasn't a farm. Our cows were only there to keep the grass down. If anyone reached for Daisy's udders she probably would have raised an eyebrow and then given you a warning poke in the temple with her horns for being so forward.
I remember sitting in the living room on days when my only companions had been the palm trees mooing in the ocean. I'd keep an eye on the end of the driveway for Dad to pull in with the car, and when it finally happened it was a joyous event. Not only was there going to be a person to look at and talk to, but the car could take me to where lots of other people were; where there were shops and coffee machines and cinemas and things were happening. Of course we had a TV, and sometimes my siblings would be home too, but I can remember being stuck at home alone, watching slugs leave glittery trails in the garden, wandering around the perimeter of the house for no particular reason and putting CDs on as loud as they would go because the neighbours were too far away to complain. In times like that there was the sense of an enormous space I was rattling around in, like a lone pea in a family-sized tupperware container.
Things to do when you're home alone:
I take pains to point out to people that I didn't grow up on a farm; we just happened to have cows, horses and a small menagerie spread out across acres of paddocks. My neighbour out the back did have chickens at one stage, and a working well, but ours wasn't a farm. Our cows were only there to keep the grass down. If anyone reached for Daisy's udders she probably would have raised an eyebrow and then given you a warning poke in the temple with her horns for being so forward.
I remember sitting in the living room on days when my only companions had been the palm trees mooing in the ocean. I'd keep an eye on the end of the driveway for Dad to pull in with the car, and when it finally happened it was a joyous event. Not only was there going to be a person to look at and talk to, but the car could take me to where lots of other people were; where there were shops and coffee machines and cinemas and things were happening. Of course we had a TV, and sometimes my siblings would be home too, but I can remember being stuck at home alone, watching slugs leave glittery trails in the garden, wandering around the perimeter of the house for no particular reason and putting CDs on as loud as they would go because the neighbours were too far away to complain. In times like that there was the sense of an enormous space I was rattling around in, like a lone pea in a family-sized tupperware container.
Things to do when you're home alone:
- Stare at your own eyeballs in the bathroom mirror for 15 minutes at a time
- Clang out new tunes on the piano, trying to utilise those sad sounding E-flats as often as possible
- Move from the cupboard to the fridge and back again (and again and again) to see whether your eyes may have missed a block of Top Deck or a punnet of juicy raspberries
- When the above point fails, come up with ideas for fruit and vegetable installation pieces for people's birthdays (see picture A)
Picture A
- (Picture A has also been 'repackaged' with twigs and flowers, and has subsequently morphed into all sorts of different materials.)
It can be great being home alone, but sometimes, staring at your own eyeballs in the bathroom mirror, you can easily drift into a mindset that says, 'All the fun is happening somewhere else. All those people - out there - are getting on with it, having a whale of a time, without you.' You might even imagine groups of people - laughing as they casually sip their drinks at a bar, sitting in cafes having coffees and saying things like 'George needs to learn to be more independent' or 'Barbara's gone off Mike again' - or just one person crossing at a busy intersection with a stride that says, 'I am late meeting all of my friends for the launch of that big thing.'
The squiggly veins in your eyeballs don't seem nearly as interesting as all that.
Now I have moved to a city, and even though I've been living here for a while I still feel like all of my Christmases have come at once knowing that I am a two-minute walk away from supermarkets, department stores, hairdressers, restaurants, bars and a rather addictive ladies fashion store that shall remain nameless. Buses purr by as regularly as Simpsons re-runs, and there is a neverending story of pedestrians passing my front window.
I'm finally in the midst of things. Things happen all around me, I can see people doing things and rather than feeling like I'm missing out on things, I can look around as I'm walking by a bus-stop and know that I am being seen as doing things too. Even if I'm just going to buy a can of kidney beans, those bus-stop people can see me pass and say to themselves, 'Oh yes, she's got plenty of things to do.'
But (there had to be a 'but' coming, right?) for all of this, sometimes the neverending story of people almost offend me just by being there. The thing about that past sensation of being a lone pea in a tupperware container is that the space around me was all mine. I could roll around and daydream about other vegetables and take as much time staring into my pea-eyes as I wanted. Now, when a train door opens and I see that there is simply no more room in that moving tupperware container for one more little pea (and the peas already onboard do not seem to care about my plight), it feels shocking. What are all these other people doing in my space? Why can't I get onto a train when I want to? I realise in that moment that I'm being selfish, but suddenly I don't have time to perform a probing exploration into my innermost pea-psyche because I have to hurry over to the other platform to make sure I can squeeze onto the next container.
It's hardly a new observation to say that time and space go together, so when there's no space your time dries up too, but it's still something that is difficult to accommodate to when you're used to one or the other.
At least now that I've experienced both sides I can use them against each other to remind myself of certain things. When I'm feeling cramped I can imagine myself in another time, looking for entertainment in palm-tree cows or my own eyeballs. And when I'm feeling like all the fun is happening somewhere else, I'll try to remember that sometimes all people are doing as they stroll determinedly by is going to the shop to buy a can of kidney beans...
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Wouldn't it Be Loverly
I work at a college in central London, where course fees are at a level synonymous with a certain mode of dressing. The idea of 'student discounts' is almost comical when you observe that in this place, the students flounce about in D&G while the staff get by in H&M. Maybe not the staff at the upper echelons of management, who get biscuits in posh individual wrappers rather than a communal platter of Ginger Snaps, but in general, 'the rest of us' do not come from backgrounds that would have allowed us to actually study here.
This month, the students have returned from their summer holidays, so the main quadrangle is again clogged with cigarette smoke emitted by 18 year olds wearing the kind of haute couture you see advertised in Vogue with the guffaw-inducing pricetags. No stumbling out of bed and showing up on campus in pyjama bottoms and a jumper with peanut-butter stains down the front here; these kids stand leaning near the sleek automatic doors in bejewelled jean pockets, massive be-golden-buckled bags, glossy skyscraper heels, suede loafers, silk scarves, cashmere sweaters and blazers made out of the kind of fabric that is too well-heeled to show any inclination towards pilling.
To give an indication of the brand of student that might be found lounging amongst this perfumed platoon, here are two examples:
1. A nineteen year-old Lebanese boy showed up the day before the start of term and said he wanted to enrol. He was told that this was fine but he would have to organise for £13 070 to be paid immediately. He said that that wouldn't be a problem, and casually strolled to the Finance office to arrange it then and there.
2. A girl from India arrived with staff. Her 'people' routinely brought snacks into her during her exams, and when even these banned culinary interjections did not help her to pass, and she was consequently sent packing, her parents pulled out their financial ace-up-the-sleeve and tried to buy her way back in.
Now, when you turn up in the morning and realise that your entire outfit probably cost less than the eyelet on that seventeen year old Italian business student's shoe, it can summon up some pretty visceral reactions. Those of us amongst the 'great unwashed' often huddle together and gossip from the sidelines, our conversations fluctuating between three basic emotions:
1. Disgust. In the fact that we are handcuffed to our desks with only a faux-diamante brooch shaped like a water buffalo and a pocket full of mismatched buttons and paperclips to show for it, when these kids can nip down to Tiffany's and buy a diamond-encrusted buffalo brooch only to discard it the next week for the new trend in bovine accessorising.
2. Envy. That these kids can keep up with trends in bovine accessorising and then pop over to Minsk to pick up some truffles and champagne flutes full of emeralds to distribute to their classmates on a Monday morning. We'd all love to give our friends champagne flutes full of precious stones, too, but through the limitations of our life stations we can usually only offer displays of affection via stick-figure drawings of a guy with his unnaturally long arm around another guy's shoulders, 'me' and 'you' written atop their heads.
3. Pity, or 'poor man's pride'. This usually comes after the 'envy' stage, when we consider the possibility that a stick-figure drawing might actually be more valuable than a glass of gems. Poor man's pride is when you start saying, 'Yes, but they'll never have what we have'; this being a level of street-smarts and common sense that can only be gained through playing fridge-tetris* with your sixteen other flatmates and having fortnightly arguments with the landlord over who should buy a mop.
(*For the uninitiated, fridge-tetris is a fascinating game played in flats where there is one fridge between eight or so people. It is a 'squidgier' and more forceful game than real tetris, and involves a much higher risk of exploding milk cartons and shattered jars of raspberry jam. If you can successfully navigate a little electronic broccoli down the screen and house it snugly between a tower of yoghurts, a pack of cherry tomatoes and a roll of Edam someone brought home from Amsterdam, the fridge bleats out 100 points and then transports you to the next level when you realise you forgot to put in the bouquet of beetroot, the family of kiwifruits and the pack of cumquats you need for your 'beetroot surprise' dessert.)
We twist around between these three emotions, arguing and becoming defensive and angry or serene and philosophical. Some days we simply stand watching in bemused curiousity, eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells out onto our scuffed Primani boots. But although the dollar signs standing in the quadrangle provide us with daily reminders of our own 'lot', and our conversations about them are as constant as the Russian students' love for test-driving conceptual clothing, I wonder if they ever peer at us through their curtain of cigarette smoke, pondering whether there may be something in these primitive drawings we're always giving to each other.
Books and movies are full of 'fish out of water' scenarios where 'average' people are ushered through secret passageways into sparkling lives full of butlers and their very own fridges, and wealthy people must suddenly come up with new gift-giving ideas (the ol' faithful cup-o-emeralds now out of reach) and find themselves lost in the mire of public transportation systems.
Watching the shimmering society from my sunflower-seeded corner of the quad, I have decided that it is not realistic to wait to be ushered through a secret passageway into caverns of rubies. My workmates and I have employed our fridge-savvy street smarts and come up with a plan. The details are sketchy, but we will steal a few eyelets from Prince Al-Khalifa’s shoes, sell them and then see what it’s like to live the life of a student.
This month, the students have returned from their summer holidays, so the main quadrangle is again clogged with cigarette smoke emitted by 18 year olds wearing the kind of haute couture you see advertised in Vogue with the guffaw-inducing pricetags. No stumbling out of bed and showing up on campus in pyjama bottoms and a jumper with peanut-butter stains down the front here; these kids stand leaning near the sleek automatic doors in bejewelled jean pockets, massive be-golden-buckled bags, glossy skyscraper heels, suede loafers, silk scarves, cashmere sweaters and blazers made out of the kind of fabric that is too well-heeled to show any inclination towards pilling.
To give an indication of the brand of student that might be found lounging amongst this perfumed platoon, here are two examples:
1. A nineteen year-old Lebanese boy showed up the day before the start of term and said he wanted to enrol. He was told that this was fine but he would have to organise for £13 070 to be paid immediately. He said that that wouldn't be a problem, and casually strolled to the Finance office to arrange it then and there.
2. A girl from India arrived with staff. Her 'people' routinely brought snacks into her during her exams, and when even these banned culinary interjections did not help her to pass, and she was consequently sent packing, her parents pulled out their financial ace-up-the-sleeve and tried to buy her way back in.
Now, when you turn up in the morning and realise that your entire outfit probably cost less than the eyelet on that seventeen year old Italian business student's shoe, it can summon up some pretty visceral reactions. Those of us amongst the 'great unwashed' often huddle together and gossip from the sidelines, our conversations fluctuating between three basic emotions:
1. Disgust. In the fact that we are handcuffed to our desks with only a faux-diamante brooch shaped like a water buffalo and a pocket full of mismatched buttons and paperclips to show for it, when these kids can nip down to Tiffany's and buy a diamond-encrusted buffalo brooch only to discard it the next week for the new trend in bovine accessorising.
2. Envy. That these kids can keep up with trends in bovine accessorising and then pop over to Minsk to pick up some truffles and champagne flutes full of emeralds to distribute to their classmates on a Monday morning. We'd all love to give our friends champagne flutes full of precious stones, too, but through the limitations of our life stations we can usually only offer displays of affection via stick-figure drawings of a guy with his unnaturally long arm around another guy's shoulders, 'me' and 'you' written atop their heads.
3. Pity, or 'poor man's pride'. This usually comes after the 'envy' stage, when we consider the possibility that a stick-figure drawing might actually be more valuable than a glass of gems. Poor man's pride is when you start saying, 'Yes, but they'll never have what we have'; this being a level of street-smarts and common sense that can only be gained through playing fridge-tetris* with your sixteen other flatmates and having fortnightly arguments with the landlord over who should buy a mop.
(*For the uninitiated, fridge-tetris is a fascinating game played in flats where there is one fridge between eight or so people. It is a 'squidgier' and more forceful game than real tetris, and involves a much higher risk of exploding milk cartons and shattered jars of raspberry jam. If you can successfully navigate a little electronic broccoli down the screen and house it snugly between a tower of yoghurts, a pack of cherry tomatoes and a roll of Edam someone brought home from Amsterdam, the fridge bleats out 100 points and then transports you to the next level when you realise you forgot to put in the bouquet of beetroot, the family of kiwifruits and the pack of cumquats you need for your 'beetroot surprise' dessert.)
We twist around between these three emotions, arguing and becoming defensive and angry or serene and philosophical. Some days we simply stand watching in bemused curiousity, eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells out onto our scuffed Primani boots. But although the dollar signs standing in the quadrangle provide us with daily reminders of our own 'lot', and our conversations about them are as constant as the Russian students' love for test-driving conceptual clothing, I wonder if they ever peer at us through their curtain of cigarette smoke, pondering whether there may be something in these primitive drawings we're always giving to each other.
Books and movies are full of 'fish out of water' scenarios where 'average' people are ushered through secret passageways into sparkling lives full of butlers and their very own fridges, and wealthy people must suddenly come up with new gift-giving ideas (the ol' faithful cup-o-emeralds now out of reach) and find themselves lost in the mire of public transportation systems.
Watching the shimmering society from my sunflower-seeded corner of the quad, I have decided that it is not realistic to wait to be ushered through a secret passageway into caverns of rubies. My workmates and I have employed our fridge-savvy street smarts and come up with a plan. The details are sketchy, but we will steal a few eyelets from Prince Al-Khalifa’s shoes, sell them and then see what it’s like to live the life of a student.
Illustration by Melanie, Fridge-Tetris champion 2008
Monday, 27 July 2009
Falling Chopsticks and Lonely Streetlights: the path to Sark
I've always liked those Rube Goldberg machines. You know the ones. It starts off with someone nudging a chopstick off a shelf which then lands onto a marble which rolls into a matchbox car which falls into a precariously placed bucket of water which spills into a set of scales which lowers and stretches out a slingshot which fires a yellow bouncy ball into a red cabbage and in the end a little wind-up monkey lights a candle or something. Those born in the 80s might remember that Mousetrap game as a good example (along with the way your 8 year-old hands and body had to stay unnaturally still lest you accidentally bump the board and set off the whole plastic sequence of events that took sixteen episodes of Heman to set up).
When I was on the Isle of Sark recently - the smallest of the Channel Islands near Guernsey and Jersey - this 'Goldberg Machine' feeling was particularly potent. If my uncle hadn't given me the Gormenghast trilogy when I was 15 years old, I more than likely wouldn't have caught a bus, two tubes, an aeroplane, a taxi and a ferry to end up on this small island with only one street-light and an adherence to feudal laws.
I had to move to London, be introduced to Couchsurfing, plan a trip to Brussels, discover the profile of a Couchsurfing host there who listed the little-known Gormenghast trilogy as amongst his favourite books, stay with him, become friends, discover that Mervyn Peake (the author of Gormenghast) had written another book based on the Isle of Sark, be contacted by my friend months later and told of his intention of making a documentary about Sark (and other 'micro-nations') and asked if I would like to tread the ground where Sir Peake once lived with him and his girlfriend.
- It was the last feudal state left in the world up until 2008. They have a Lord known as a 'Seigneur' who is in charge of upholding some of the ancient feudal laws.
- One of these ancient laws is that cars and 'modern' forms of transportation are banned on the island. Transport is via horse-and-cart, tractor, bicycle or on foot.
- The population is around 600 people. I think I pass this many people on my way to the tube every morning...
- Children born on Sark are encouraged to leave the island once they reach a certain age so that they can experience other things and see whether the 'Sarkese way' is for them. A lot of these children end up returning to Sark.
- Sark only has one street light, which makes getting home from the Dixcart Hotel Bar to your B&B a slow-moving and pothole-filled task.
- Sark is closer to France than England, but nonetheless remains a self-governing British dependency. English is the official language, but all the place-names are French. In 1990, a French nuclear physicist named André Gardes arrived on the island clad in combat gear and carrying a semi-automatic rifle. He tried to singlehandedly reclaim the island for France. According to the Guernsey Evening Press of August 24, 1990, he was fined £200 and sentenced to seven days in prison. A rather light sentence, you could say...
- Everyone knows everyone on Sark, so a couple of Belgian journalists and their Australian colleague are quite easy to spot on the roads.
Most holidays that I have taken involve cathedrals and squares and monuments and pock-marked maps from where I've tried to circle things without leaning the paper on a flat surface first. On Sark we had a map, but since the island is only 5.45 square kilometres, we ditched the map and just walked in the general direction of an 'edge' we hadn't seen yet. This isn't quite as ho-hum as it sounds, when you consider that the paths looked like this:
And the 'edges' looked like this:
Julien & Salomé at Window in the Rock, Sark
Even the simplest of endings, like a monkey lighting a candle or a dart piercing a goldfish, had to go through a meticulously constructed set-up for it to happen at all.
Some people think that their whole lives have been designed like this; that there is some old codger who is setting off seven billion Goldberg machines at once, with different 'end points' for each of them: some of us pierced like a goldfish and some of us choking on a chocolate-coated peanut.
Even if you think that that's a load of codswallop, it's still interesting thinking about all the precariously placed buckets and falling chopsticks that had to happen to lead to whatever you're doing right now. I think about it all the time, usually at stupid tiny moments like when I'm chopping cauliflower or eating hummous.
When I was on the Isle of Sark recently - the smallest of the Channel Islands near Guernsey and Jersey - this 'Goldberg Machine' feeling was particularly potent. If my uncle hadn't given me the Gormenghast trilogy when I was 15 years old, I more than likely wouldn't have caught a bus, two tubes, an aeroplane, a taxi and a ferry to end up on this small island with only one street-light and an adherence to feudal laws.
All sorts of other things had to happen too, of course. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that although all my falling chopsticks and slingshotted bouncy balls may be endlessly fascinating to me, others would find them about as thrilling as watching a dormant cheese-grater for six hours.
Let us test this theory now. Here are some of the things that had to happen to lead me to Sark:
I had to move to London, be introduced to Couchsurfing, plan a trip to Brussels, discover the profile of a Couchsurfing host there who listed the little-known Gormenghast trilogy as amongst his favourite books, stay with him, become friends, discover that Mervyn Peake (the author of Gormenghast) had written another book based on the Isle of Sark, be contacted by my friend months later and told of his intention of making a documentary about Sark (and other 'micro-nations') and asked if I would like to tread the ground where Sir Peake once lived with him and his girlfriend.
If your eyes felt weary half-way through that, please draw a picture of a cheese-grater and post it to me. If you found it utterly gripping, please reward yourself with a spoon of peanut-butter and then post me the spoon. I will add them up and give you the definitive result in the next edition of Testing Things Scientifically (a quarterly publication. Readers of the next edition receive a free spoon that smells of peanut-butter).
I made it to Sark continually wondering if I would have gone there at all if my uncle had given me Latour's Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy instead. That would have been a shame, not only because I probably would have crumbled underneath the expectations put on my 15 year-old mind by my family, but because Sark is an eccentric little island.
Some facts about Sark:
- It was the last feudal state left in the world up until 2008. They have a Lord known as a 'Seigneur' who is in charge of upholding some of the ancient feudal laws.
- One of these ancient laws is that cars and 'modern' forms of transportation are banned on the island. Transport is via horse-and-cart, tractor, bicycle or on foot.
- The population is around 600 people. I think I pass this many people on my way to the tube every morning...
- Children born on Sark are encouraged to leave the island once they reach a certain age so that they can experience other things and see whether the 'Sarkese way' is for them. A lot of these children end up returning to Sark.
- Sark only has one street light, which makes getting home from the Dixcart Hotel Bar to your B&B a slow-moving and pothole-filled task.
- Sark is closer to France than England, but nonetheless remains a self-governing British dependency. English is the official language, but all the place-names are French. In 1990, a French nuclear physicist named André Gardes arrived on the island clad in combat gear and carrying a semi-automatic rifle. He tried to singlehandedly reclaim the island for France. According to the Guernsey Evening Press of August 24, 1990, he was fined £200 and sentenced to seven days in prison. A rather light sentence, you could say...
- Everyone knows everyone on Sark, so a couple of Belgian journalists and their Australian colleague are quite easy to spot on the roads.
Most holidays that I have taken involve cathedrals and squares and monuments and pock-marked maps from where I've tried to circle things without leaning the paper on a flat surface first. On Sark we had a map, but since the island is only 5.45 square kilometres, we ditched the map and just walked in the general direction of an 'edge' we hadn't seen yet. This isn't quite as ho-hum as it sounds, when you consider that the paths looked like this:
And the 'edges' looked like this:
Julien & Salomé at Window in the Rock, SarkAs a result of Julien's journalistic efforts we were introduced to a few locals who explained that on Sark the policeman can also run the shop, tend the gardens of the Seigneurie and teach advanced dentistry (or whatever else), and that for this reason they never really feel constrained by the idea that there is a 'career' everyone must actively pursue. I love that idea, mainly because I feel like I could have been an ace badminton player if only I hadn't limited myself by sticking obsessively to the alphorn. I may be able to play Messe für Alphorn und Chor with the world's premier alphornists, but sometimes I imagine feathery shuttlecocks shooting out of the horn's mouth and find myself wishing I had the time to follow some side-interests. Don't tell my colleagues at Alphornbläsergruppe Oberaargau this, though. Ulrich would be very disappointed in me.
Alphorns aside, after various cliff-top walks and talks, pats of local Clydesdales and strolls through the Seigneurie maze, it was plain to see why Sarkese children come back to the island after their enforced periods abroad.
It is easy to romanticise 'island life', forgetting about the boredom, conservatism and gossip, or even to reach the conclusion that because island life is quiet and slow-paced that it must be 'simple'. But after leaving our doors unlocked when we went out and having only one daily concern - how to dodge puddles in the no-streetlights-blindness of night - all three of us agreed it would be a comfortable and open place to live.
It looks possible, though, that Sark's own Goldberg Machine may be leading it to something less open and comfortable. A wind-up monkey has lit a candle, and this candle is sitting perilously close to a microfibre bathrobe. On one of our clifftop walks, we noticed a sleek black helicopter approaching. This helicopter made a beeline for the Sarkese version of Tasmania: Brecqhou (an even smaller island separated from Sark by a narrow channel of water). In particular, it was heading towards this:
This is the mock-Gothic castle on Brecqhou, commissioned by twin British billionaires the Barclay Brothers. These fellows, who also happen to own the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly and the Telegraph Media Group, bought the island of Brecqhou in 1993.
We had of course heard about these men from almost the first second we arrived, and as we sat dunking chocolate Hobnobs into our tea with a local artist, it became apparent that these brothers are generally viewed by islanders as the possible outcome of a liaison between this man and this woman.
You can read the full account of their spoiled billionaire antics here, but to give you a condensed version, after contesting the 'backwards' feudalism of Sark so that they could have free run of their cars and helipads on Brecqhou, and bring the whole of Sark into the 'modern age' by updating the island's hotels, infrastructure and tourism (I have no doubt that the words 'Sark' and 'Rococo interiors' do not fit together), their representatives were voted down by the democracy they themselves had pushed for. Obviously this did not go down well. Billionaires will have their way, after all. They had invested a lot of money into Sark - in hotels, pubs, restaurants and construction companies - and retaliated by closing all of these businesses, leaving at least 100 people (or one-sixth of the population) suddenly unemployed. With Christmas only a fortnight away, I might add.
The children of Mr. Evil (sorry, I mean Doctor Evil. He didn't attend 6 years of Evil Medical School to be called 'Mister', thank you very much) and Ms. DeVil retreated to Brecqhou and have stayed there ever since. Talking to the lady in the tourist office, there seems to be a general feeling that the Barclay Brothers are over in their Brecqhou castle knitting things out of Dalmatians while they plot and scheme their next move. This 'quiet island life' may be the precious last moments of calm before the next storm.
If another billionaire storm ever happens, I am going to do all I can to support Sark, even if all I can offer is a few illustrations of the Barclay Brothers dressed in Dalmatian suits with knives and dead puppies at their feet. And if that day ever comes, I will be able to douse the flaming bathrobe with water from the bowl of a pierced goldfish, and when someone asks me how I came to be drawing such highly detailed pictures of dead puppies at my kitchen table in London, I will put down my pen and explain. It all began when my uncle bought me the Gormenghast trilogy when I was 15 years old...
Alphorns aside, after various cliff-top walks and talks, pats of local Clydesdales and strolls through the Seigneurie maze, it was plain to see why Sarkese children come back to the island after their enforced periods abroad.
It is easy to romanticise 'island life', forgetting about the boredom, conservatism and gossip, or even to reach the conclusion that because island life is quiet and slow-paced that it must be 'simple'. But after leaving our doors unlocked when we went out and having only one daily concern - how to dodge puddles in the no-streetlights-blindness of night - all three of us agreed it would be a comfortable and open place to live.
It looks possible, though, that Sark's own Goldberg Machine may be leading it to something less open and comfortable. A wind-up monkey has lit a candle, and this candle is sitting perilously close to a microfibre bathrobe. On one of our clifftop walks, we noticed a sleek black helicopter approaching. This helicopter made a beeline for the Sarkese version of Tasmania: Brecqhou (an even smaller island separated from Sark by a narrow channel of water). In particular, it was heading towards this:
This is the mock-Gothic castle on Brecqhou, commissioned by twin British billionaires the Barclay Brothers. These fellows, who also happen to own the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly and the Telegraph Media Group, bought the island of Brecqhou in 1993.
We had of course heard about these men from almost the first second we arrived, and as we sat dunking chocolate Hobnobs into our tea with a local artist, it became apparent that these brothers are generally viewed by islanders as the possible outcome of a liaison between this man and this woman.
You can read the full account of their spoiled billionaire antics here, but to give you a condensed version, after contesting the 'backwards' feudalism of Sark so that they could have free run of their cars and helipads on Brecqhou, and bring the whole of Sark into the 'modern age' by updating the island's hotels, infrastructure and tourism (I have no doubt that the words 'Sark' and 'Rococo interiors' do not fit together), their representatives were voted down by the democracy they themselves had pushed for. Obviously this did not go down well. Billionaires will have their way, after all. They had invested a lot of money into Sark - in hotels, pubs, restaurants and construction companies - and retaliated by closing all of these businesses, leaving at least 100 people (or one-sixth of the population) suddenly unemployed. With Christmas only a fortnight away, I might add.
The children of Mr. Evil (sorry, I mean Doctor Evil. He didn't attend 6 years of Evil Medical School to be called 'Mister', thank you very much) and Ms. DeVil retreated to Brecqhou and have stayed there ever since. Talking to the lady in the tourist office, there seems to be a general feeling that the Barclay Brothers are over in their Brecqhou castle knitting things out of Dalmatians while they plot and scheme their next move. This 'quiet island life' may be the precious last moments of calm before the next storm.
If another billionaire storm ever happens, I am going to do all I can to support Sark, even if all I can offer is a few illustrations of the Barclay Brothers dressed in Dalmatian suits with knives and dead puppies at their feet. And if that day ever comes, I will be able to douse the flaming bathrobe with water from the bowl of a pierced goldfish, and when someone asks me how I came to be drawing such highly detailed pictures of dead puppies at my kitchen table in London, I will put down my pen and explain. It all began when my uncle bought me the Gormenghast trilogy when I was 15 years old...
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