I felt for the last month as if I was charging towards something important. I felt heroic, gulping down hope and inspiration, speeding like a bullet towards something huge and exciting just ahead….and then pooffff…. The thing I was chasing evaporated. I find myself scrabbling hard but beginning to fall slowly backwards into the pretty padded cell that is my life in Cambridge. Jobless again. Lonely again. Bollocks. I miss the Zambian sky.
(c) T. Bush Lusaka Skylines
I stare grumpily out of my window at the very stylish ,squirrel proof bird feeder I have just erected. The squirrel (Dennis of course..little sod) has been running up and down it as if it is a squirrelly plaything. Now he is standing on top of it pretending to be King Kong, pounding his little chest and throwing all the peanuts at the wood doves. Squirrel proof my arse
My bleakness is due partly to the ear and chest infection I bought back from my trip. Its rather flattened me and I am beginning to smell faintly of amoxicyllin. It does not make me feel alluring.
It must be time to write another book.
Ok – as I am obviously in an non-witty blur of winge I shall instead direct you to the writing of the five people I would like to nominate for the blog award so sweetly passed to me by Val from Monkeys on the Roof. (Thank you again Val!)
In the words of the person who created it:”This award acknowledges the values that every Blogger displays in their effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values with each message they write. Awards like this have been created with the intention of promoting community among Bloggers. It`s a way to show appreciation and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.”
So I nominate: 1. The bittersweet musings of NMJ http://velo-gubbed-legs.blogspot.com/ 2. The hysterical and yet often moving travel blog from my mum the artist Ruth Hartley and her partner John Corley – 28 countries in 18 months and now a move to France! http://epicblogue.blogspot.com 3. The ebullient, charming and soul affirming Nao, the Tea Time Traveller, http://teatimetraveller.blogspot.com/ 4. My Cuz , Up the Hill Backwards, who has a ton of these already but still writes one of the funniest and most disgusting blogs ever about raising children in New York. Not for the faint hearted. http://upthehillbackwards2.blogspot.com/ 5. Tinku of tinku gallery who writes with such insight and intelligence about the intricacies of art and the cross-cultural experience. http://tinkutales.blogspot.com You all rock!
The Chilli-Elephant man has returned from an overseas business trip and been in bed on his chilli farm in Livingstone for a mere four hours. The phone has rung and now he is trying to make some sense of the farm manager’s frantic shouting.
‘Mr. M! Mr. M! Come quickly! . The owl is on fire!!’
So begins the tale told by the red hot Chilli-Elephant man one steamy and sticky night in Livingstone town last week. Chilli-Elephant man is telling the story to myself and two very gorgeous dear single woman friends of mine. We are eating Indian food at a restaurant called, bizarrely, ‘Armadillo’. All of us ladies are slightly agog, a little breathless and a tad giddy because Chilli-Elephant man is not only breast-achingly handsome but courteous, seemingly exceedingly intelligent, thoughtful and what tops it for me..bloody funny.
Chilli-Elephant man is one of the Executive directors of the Elephant Pepper Development trust. Basically they figured out a way to bring an end to the endless conflict between marauding elephants and rural farmers in Southern and Eastern Africa whilst bolstering local economies, fighting poverty and teaching conservation. Not bad eh? The solution? Capsicum! The very versatile hot pepper. Elephants hate chilli. Grow it. smear it on fences, or wear it around your neck and you are pretty much guaranteed an elephant free lifestyle. Combine this with the fact that chill pepper can be grown under difficult circumstances and in harsh environments and then sold as a cash crop and ….da daaaa. Yep..everyone wins. Okay I have simplified this but have a quick shifty at the websites http://www.elephantpepper.com and http://www.elephantpepper.org and you’ll get the picture.
(Note you can also donate directly to the project or sideways by buying endless supplies of exquisite hot sauces!)
Anyway back to supper and the Chilli-Elephant man’s story…
‘Mr M, hurry, hurry the owl is on fire!’ Blearily and presuming he has completely misheard his farm manager, Chilli-Elephant man heaves himself out of bed and heads outside where, indeed, the owl is on fire,
It is a very large and once distinguished barn owl that has sadly tried to roost on the top of an electric pylon. This being a Zambian electricity company pylon however the poor beast has been whammed with 1000s of volts of electricity causing it to instantly and most dramatically, ignite. It is stuck, feathers flaming, at the very top of the wooden pylon. The fire service is called. They arrive eventually crammed into the back of what looks like a taxi, gripping a few rusty hand pumps. Unable to do much given the bird is flaming over 20 feet up, they shrug and end up standing next to the Chilli-Elephant man and the entranced farm staff all scratching their heads and watching the fire with its gouts of black smoke and sparks or electricity getting gradually bigger and more threatening. (Owls are associated in Zambia with death and witchcraft and there is much stroking of chins, eloquent nodding and nervous tutting.) Police too join the crowd, notebooks in hand, gazing up at the flames.
At last to the firemen’s delight and Chilli-Elephant man’s horror the entire pylon crashes to the ground. Several small fires start up on the ground and electric pylons spark and flash in the now very dark night. (The electricity is..well down). The firemen however are thrilled and leap into action finally able to use their hand pumps.
Chilli-Elephant man is stumbling around trying to make sense of it all, jet lag blurring his vision. He notices that the police are solemnly picking out the remnants of the owl (who unlike the phoenix is never emerging from these ashes). A large bag is bought forward and delicately opened and the smouldering bones are carefully slid inside. The bag is marked…and here Chilli-Elephant man pauses for emphasis…the bag is marked ‘Culprit.’ At this point I slide off my chair in hysterical giggles. It is such a truly surreal yet gorgeous Zambian story. …though you should really have heard it from the marvellous man himself….ahh,girly sigh. How did he win the hearts of three women in one evening? I am beginning to think he has invented some kind of chilli elephant aphrodisiac aftershave. Now THAT would sell!
And so and so….I arrived back in UK yesterday. No chillies here folks. No flaming owls or monstrous, heavenly, stormy skies but plans afoot to find a way to return. More stories soon..and thank you so much to Val from Monkeys on the Roof for my new blog award. I have to nominate five others and so will make my pick for next post when I have finally (and grumpily) unpacked.
Forgive me folks..its been a while since my last blog session. I am in Zambia at the moment. In Livingstone in fact, in the Business centre of the Zambezi Sun hotel listening to the sound of a band playing marimbas (wooden xylophones.) It is the first time in ten days I have had a decent enough connection to post and apologies for the lack of illustrations. From this room I can hear the distant thunder of the Victoria Falls. It has just rained so everything is cool and steamy now but I am still tingling all over from lying hungover and belly swollen from a fulll English breakast in the gorgeous sun by the languid blue pool this morning. Look..below..my last post had snow in it. This one has sunburn. And monkeys. Bloody bastards stole my suncream.
I spent last week in the bustle and grime of Lusaka seeking out things to phoograph for The Project. The light is wonderful but tricky especially with my daft vision. It is the rainy season and so things go from bright primary colours to gloweriig dark purple storminess in seconds. Huge hammerheaded clouds drift menacingly high overhead and occasionally thick cool cloud covers everything. People are less relaxed about having their photographs taken too. There has been much change in the last few years since I was filming in the communities out here. The gulf between rich and poor is widening, shored up by gouts of AID money. People are desperate and can become understandably agressive at the ‘muzungu (white person) snapping away. A couple of days ago I was the centre of a frightening clash in the City market and was only just pulled out from being potentially battered by the quick thinking (and brutal shoving) of my father’s partner. Its different here of course, tourists are postively encouraged to shoot endless amounts of footage so I shall go exploring and see what i find. But not immediately…I think I might need to rest again….. Well I better go and get organised for some more lying around. Thanks fo r you patience with this blog and I’ll be back in full flood as soon as pos! And also – THANK YOU for your lovely comments on me last posting. means a great deal! T
Let it snow, let it snow..hang about..I’ve gotta get to the sodding airport!
Wasn’t it something though, sumptuous and soft and bright and oh so quiet; a blanket of cool otherness that soothed the usually brittle, sourness of Cambridge and London so much so that people went out and played..not just once..oh no..for two, whole naughty days.
‘Are you going to work today darling..?
No..I err..I was thinking I might …umm.. you know…take the kids sledging.’
‘ (Thoughtful pause) But darling, we haven’t got any kids..’
(Silence in the hall but for a swinging front door…)
This was also the week I won two more blog awards! Yep. TWO! One awarded by the inspirational Tam ..she of Fleeing Muses and the other the irrepressible Miranda of The Times of Miranda! Thank you so much. (Apparently my blog contains wit that ‘clinks like the ice in a gin and tonic’..this is very astute as my blood, according to my doctor, is at least 50 percent Bombay Sapphire… )
I shall add them to this blog as soon as I can figure out how the hell to do so.
These awards have come at a very pertinent ‘cheer up the moody bint’ time. I had another hospital visit and the news was worse then I had thought. More cells dying, more structural damage, more sight loss. I had gone alone thinking it (being alone) would stop me weeping in public and it does usually work. I managed to keep my upper lip all the way through to the hospital exit where I had a sudden attack of the heaving sobs. The good thing about hospital exits is that EVERYONE is sobbing. There were so many of us gurgling and shaking that I blended in fine and was mostly back together by the time I got home.
Luckily I had much to look forward to. A visit from my wise and beautiful writer friend H, who gently reminded me that a lot of the things I fear are only in my own head. (Yeah…its pretty dark in there sometimes). I even managed to get the thriller into the Amazon Breakout Novel Competition on time (with thanks to the intelligent criticism and gut-sapping proof reading by my dear volunteer editor Matt) AND put in an MA application to one of the universities whilst also remembering to retrieve my passport from the secret sock in my knicker drawer and get prepped for Zambia.
I am in a bit of a happy swirl today as I have received my very first blog award! Isn’t it beautiful! The ‘bunch of beer’ makes me exceedingly happy. Thank you so very much for nominating me Gordon! I am jumping for joy!
Talking of jumping up and down I think I may have mentioned my ‘urban rebound’ class at the gym? Well, the class is quite tough and there is a lot of panting and gasping in the breaks at which point the instructor always makes the same dire jokes about how we could all earn money by manning phone sex lines. This is irksome after the 15th time and the other day I nearly let slip that I actually had once descended into the murky underground world of phone porn.
It was admittedly a few years ago and I needed some instant money to help pay my rent. Oddly enough it was my mother who found the advert in the local paper.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘These people are looking for voice over artists.’ She had her thumb over the bit that specified ‘adult material’ but I got the gist when I called about an interview.
‘Do you mind reading pornographic material into a mike?’ I wasn’t sure but up for another life experience I said I did it all the time.
The address was a scruffy warehouse lot near a new entertainment complex and I had an interview for 4pm. There was no sign on the door just a series of buttons, which I randomly pressed and eventually a teenager still in school uniform opened up. I was a bit taken aback and shuffled on the doorstep muttering something about the ad in the Evening News.
‘Oh Dad’s upstairs,’ the teenager said brightly and led me through a wide space stuffed full of bits of electrical equipment, old instruments and metal poles hung with stage lights.
Upstairs were three studios and a small office. The ‘dad’ was a pleasant looking, chubby man in his mid forties in a blue and yellow patterned jumper and brown corduroy trousers. I began to wonder if I had the right place.
Another child of about 11 poked his head around the door. ‘Dad..can I have some toast? ‘ ‘Guitar practice?’ ‘Done.’ ‘Alright then but don’t let it burn or the alarm will go off again and we are going to be recording.’
The interview ended up being a distracted chat about his son’s rock band and the fact no one played the old stuff anymore. After a couple of minutes without a glance at my CV he asked me if I had done voice over work before. I said yes. Her handed me a script and a mike. And I read.
The script was filthy and so badly written it made me cross-eyed. ‘Its not very good,’ admitted the dad-man. ‘I have to write so many and its generally all the same stuff required. It’s hard to make anything original. It really down to you to make it sound convincing.’
And so it was I ended up in a studio one afternoon, reading utter filth to a man who looked like he could have been a presenter on Good Morning TV.
‘That’s jolly good,’ he says, impressed with my ability to moan in several different regional accents. ‘Could you try with a Scottish lilt and go an extra three seconds on the final orgasm? ‘
I recorded three scripts. One, a very basic ‘come hither and put in your credit card details’, one revolving around a couple in a car in a park….you get the drift and then there was the standard dominatrix. I sipped my tea and did Ms. Whiplash through a couple of times and it was all over.
Back home I sit feeling a bit strange looking at my pile of cash. Mum asks me how it went.
‘It was surreal,’ I say. ‘Easy money,’ but I begin to feel queasy thinking that my voice, no matter how disguised, is out there alone at the end of a phone line ‘helping’ some random man with his ..err.. private life.
By the time I get a call, a week later when the next batch of scripts are ready, I have found a full time job that doesn’t involve heavy breathing and am about to move to the other side of London. The man says he is really sorry to lose me and asks if I know anyone else who might be interested. He says he is desperate to find older Asian women. In the background I can hear children squabbling.
Its raining….that cold rain that somehow drips into the top of your shoes and catches you on the ear even if you are wearing a hat and twirling a brolly. I went for a walk in it to try to snap myself out of the lethargy that has cocooned me this afternoon but it just made me more melancholy. I had to go to Boots chemist to get some sun screen for my trip to Zambia in a couple of weeks and in a moment of irrationality I sprayed myself with a perfume called ‘Sensuous’.
Not just my wrist but my neck too. (Well it said ‘Sensuous’ and I am ever hopeful). It reeked. The man next to me in the checkout queue began to choke and I had to rush out before I caused an international incident. I have been leaving a tell-tail stench behind me like the vapour trail of a Boeing 747 since leaving the shop. It will probably take two baths and a whole lot of extra flannel to de- ‘Sensuous’ myself.. Sigh….
Days like these should be spent in bed with someone or playing cards with friends or juggling children. As a bachelorette I make my own fun…no no..goodness…what filthy minds you have. No I mean sorting through clothes for second hand shops, writing lists, eating soup from the pan to save on washing up, idling on social networking sites and watching the DVDs I only got out because I had a ‘get one get one free’ card from Blockbuster. Vegging out is the phrase I believe.
There is of course work to be done. I had forgotten, in all the excitement of writing a book, that I was supposed to be applying for an MA course at two prestigious universities and I now only have a week to do so. I should be experimenting with my new camera. I should be writing my pitch for the Amazon Breakout Competition. I should be looking for jobs but hell, it’s Sunday and it’s raining and that perfume seems to have damaged my central nervous system. I am incapable of ‘deep thought’ or action. I drift in a cloud of ‘Sensuous’ that is beginning to make me slightly nauseous.
Tomorrow is Barack Obama’s day! Poor sod. What a world he inherits from the Twit and the Demon Cheney. But he can do it, right?
Right!
So we are going to partaaayyyy in our rusty little British hearts, we are going to sing in the bath and have extra toast, we will wear clean socks and we may even make eye contact with our neighbours…well okay possibly a BIT far.
So lets raise a glass to America tomorrow and cross, fingers, eyes and toes that the inauguration in wonderful and what follows leads to better things all over.
I know my last post was a little frugal when it came to profundity. This is the thing: my grandparents on my father’s side were 2nd generation East End London Jews. They came from (my Grandmother) Russia; near Odessa and (my Grandfather) Poland, Krakow. Originally my father’s surname was Shimansky, a name with great history, meaning and magic. The Shimansky’s were healers and wise people. My grandfather was working in Shepherd’s Bush market when the Second World War broke out and was advised by the British Government, as were all East European Jews in the forces, to change the name to something a little..less..well obviously ‘yid’.
The family looked around and said, ‘ Oy, so we have a shop in Shepherd’s Bush Market called Bush Stores..lets keep this simple for the punters already,’ and my father became a ‘Bush.’
Note; this was my father.
The Jewish line is matrilineal and my mother was to the immense fury of my grandparents, not one of the Chosen people. This means I am only Jew ‘ish’ in the way that woman is a member of a golf club i.e. I can partake in the festivals and hang out at the reform synagogues but am not expected to really understand the implications of the religion. I do feel a deep connection nonetheless. My genes jangle when I listen to a cantor’s singing, when I hear the ancient blessings, when I break bread on the holy days. I know almost all the words to Fiddler on the Roof. (On the other hand I also know all the lyrics for Jesus Christ Superstar and will regularly sing it with my Jewish cousins at Passover. We draw the line at ‘Evita’.)
Many of my relatives disappeared into the fires of the holocaust and this resonated with my father’s generation and down the line to us. I am chilled to the bone by what happened only 65 years ago. I understand why Israel needed to emerge like a phoenix from the ashes of The Final Solution. I can still smell the fear and my subconscious is riddled with the cancerous images of concentration camps and mass graves, exterminations repeated endlessly through history and slamming into the present; Eastern Europe, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan. It is what the fundamentalist fringe of the Muslim world claim they want to do again to the Jews. Exterminate them and those connected to them. Would I and my family once again be faced with death for being Mischlings (semi Jews)? If you were faced with people screaming for your blood would you not, given the historical precedent, arm yourself to the teeth and fire first, over and over and over again?
On my mother’s side, my grandmother dabbled in all kinds of Christian based faiths including Christian Science. She ended up a Christina evangelist living out her days in a bizarre commune in Zimbabwe. She gave all her possessions away to the commune including any responsibility she might have had for her children, (others in the family may read that differently but that was the impression I had as a child.) She praised Jesus with every breath and I hope she found happiness doing it but I couldn’t be sure. The commune made people confess and repent in public a lot and even as a grubby child I felt that it was used as a form of bullying and control. Everyone judged everyone all the time. How tiring that must have been.
At my C of E boarding school the churches we were forced to attend each Sunday were huge, impersonal, cold and painfully, dreadfully dull. My class learnt to swear in sign language as we were not allowed to speak to each other through the service. My older sister found something deeply moving and personal in them though.. My older sister is now a vicar in the Church of England.
So what exactly do I believe in? The Force, of course, Narnia, Rock and Roll and the fact we really haven’t a bloody clue about what is going on or why we are here. I’ve been evangelised by Scientologists, The Jesus Army and worse. I’ve seen people running from witchcraft, healed by magik, comforted by atheism and made stronger by a profound belief in dark matter, quantum physics, Ganesha, Buddha, and the number 42. I need to believe in the power of constancy and kindness and yep..sorry..but I do very much have to believe that love is vitally important because otherwise someone will start building those gas chambers again. It is bound to be someone who purports to be religious too…so one thing I don’t believe in… I don’t believe in religion..
Nope, I am not someone who flourishes in the cold. I am in fact such a wuss that I have a tendency to clean my teeth in warm water. As Cambridge freezes around me I withdraw muttering and whimpering to pace around my little flat in search of warmer socks. I try not to keep the heat on all day but its hard when working from home (when I say ‘working’ I mean glaring balefully at my unedited book and checking facebook every two minutes to see if anyone has said anything ribald or interesting.)
However I broke my usual winter hibernation and finally went out for a jolly evening at the pub.
‘What do you make of the Gaza situation?’ asked my friend as we settled in by a roaring fire with pints of warm ale. I had wanted to make some joke about the fact that I had turned on the TV the previous night to watch ‘Surviving Gazza’ only to realise too late that it was a documentary about the alcoholic footballer Paul ‘Gazza’ Gasgoine and not the West Bank but it didn’t seem like the time to be flippant.
What could I say? I haven’t been there and haven’t studied the history of the area in detail. Could Hamas have spent these few years caring for and within their communities and quelled the bickering and corruption? Could they have won the hearts of the West with a call to self sustenance rather then a call to arms? Whatever the situation, Israel’s retaliation is ‘disproportionate’ in the way that me gouging out your eyes and slashing your throat for stepping on my toe would be ‘disproportionate’
I have no truck with anyone, no matter how provoked they feel they may be, who tries to justify the deliberate bombing of schools.
That Britain mostly stands back and allows what is increasingly looking like a ‘collateral genocide’ ensures that we will face further terrorist attacks around the world and that the self destructive cycle will continue. I can only state the obvious and ask ‘why?’ and where are the Buddhists when you need ’em? ’.
That conversation petered out and we stopped and stared at the fire before shaking off the gloom, buying another round and getting down to more vital discussions about who was doing who at the gym. Its all about balance you know…
(Disclaimer: please note all rather weary assessments of Middle East situation are authors own, riddled with ignorance and disinformation and come with inbuilt apologies to those who actually ‘have a clue’.)
Hey there! How was your Christmas/ Hanukah/ holiday season? I’m back in Cambridge. Its cold outside, grey as concrete with frost in the air. 2009 seems tentative, nervous like my brother and my mum’s partner who like lunatics decided to swim in the sea on Christmas day! I kindly stayed out of their way and took photos.
Bro and John (avec Xmas hat) and the freezing sea! Luckily it was gorgeously sunny!
Lunatics!
I was in Cabrille, Spain in a wooden cabin in a semi deserted holiday resort with my Mum, John and my Bro. We somehow managed around the little central table eating and drinking and catching up on all things. Mum had decorated the little cabin with treasures they had collected from all over Europe including oranges from Seville and pine cones from the forests of Croatia. The weather turned stormy on Boxing day so beach walks were out but we got to the lovely city of Tarragona for paella.
The only down side was the mattresses in the ‘kid’s’ room where Bro and I slept. They seem to have been filled with powdered brick and were slightly convex which meant if you didn’t cling on you slipped off and if you clung on bits of your body went numb. Consequently I didn’t get much sleep in and was rather emotional on the flight back when once again I was bought a wheelchair when I requested assistance. Thanks to Mum and John for being so supportive during my ‘where is the dignity in disability’ rant. You rock. My Beautiful Mum!
Christmas Bro.
Well, as I am a bit post holiday flat and anxious about editing my book, bombs in Gaza, finding a living wage and my photography project for Feb; (I have the new camera! it is gorgeous but I have yet to figure out how to take a photo on it), I will sign off for the moment. Thanks for coming back for a read after my few days away! I’ll catch up on all things and be back with you later in the week.
