Guest Slapper of the Month VII

My August Guest is Jemima von Schindelberg – isn't that a wonderful name? Her blog, Imitation of Life, is full of quirky poetry and insights. She's supposed to be a teacher (those kids are so lucky) but she's a writer, really. As you can see below, she feels strongly about things and doesn't pull any punches.

A Violent Pornography

I need to open with an emphasis on what I’m not. I am not an easily shocked, shy retiring spinster type of prude. I am not a self-important, do-gooding, fascist type who wishes to control the minds of those I deem ignorant. I’m not living in a bubble cut-off from the realities of what life has become in the 21st century’s developed world. Generally I dismiss complaints against extreme art with a shake of my head and a quick “they’re missing the point”; I am, however, speaking to you today in the guise of Concerned of Birmingham, outraged by some violent ‘art’.

I rate A Clockwork Orange*, Goodfellas**, and City of God*** among my favourite movies, all unflinchingly violent but, as with the obscenity distinction between pornography and art, they offer something else. I have delved into the darker parts of my personality playing violent video games (such as The Simpsons Hit and Run) where I see that violence and competitiveness provide the entertainment. Entertainment becomes dangerous when a me me me greedy culture is the immoral substructure of an explicitly violent, and outstandingly realistic entertainment package.

So I am grasping this opportunity to slap, or slapportunity if you will, to drown the makers of Grand Theft Auto, the many sequels and the many imitators with oceans of shame. These are the games of speeding in shiny cars, of theft, violence and all manner of anti-social behaviour presented in such a slick and stylish way that one cannot help but be seduced by the glamour. Entertainment aimed, allegedly at an adult market that know better, glorifying a self-centred, materialistic and utterly selfish mode of living. Not only do these games miss the intended audience influencing small minds, they also normalise violence, bringing the act of killing into people’s homes, influencing grown minds.

The blurb says:

Five years ago Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas... a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs and corruption. Where film stars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gang bangers.

Now, it's the early 90s. Carl's got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading towards disaster.
On his return to the neighborhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets.

Liberty City. Vice City. Now San Andreas, a new chapter in the legendary series.

I have always been a little troubled by the ultra violent, but believe in free speech, the right to choose, individual responsibility, yadda yadda. During a Circle Time session when we were discussing activities we enjoy (in an effort to help the children see their shared humanity, their similarities and thus to make friends more readily) I became concerned. It turns out almost all the boys have played the GTA San Andreas game, adore it, and would defend it passionately. Interesting that I’ve had a lot of problems with violence and fighting from this group also. So many of them seem to have unlimited access to play unsupervised. So many struggle to draw any distinction between reality and the fantasy painted in the 18 films and games. They are unsupported, having no guidance to consider the moral implications of visiting prostitutes and carrying weapons.

The violent cinema causes violence argument is an old and not especially convincing. Clearly many people see violence and do not react violently, The Crusaders, Genghis Khan and Jack the Ripper didn’t rely on cinema to get their passion for violence flowing. It is not as simple as that. I have to draw a distinction between passively viewing violence and taking an active role, even as far as holding a replica gun, and pulling a replica trigger in some games. The added level of involvement has to go some way to normalise violent acts and make them seem an every day occurrence. How much easier it would be to pull the trigger when faced with a violent situation, when you’ve simulated it a thousand times and become acclimatised to the consequences of a gun shot. Don’t forget Grand Theft Auto’s verisimilitude resulted in a shortlist in The Culture Show’s Design Quest.

The websites I visited made a show of their adults only policy. These games are Rated m for Mature, but this is no protection. Options of “Click here if you are British and under 18”, “click here if you’re from the rest of the world and really mature”, enter your date of birth. Why do they even bother with this? If I’m a bloodthirsty ten year old with no one watching my online activities, my conscience isn’t going to stop me entering the site I’ve been warned is unsuitable. At a Parents’ Evening one mother reported how she resorted to breaking the PlayStation in order to get her sons (and husband) away from the violent DVDs and games they shared. Dad liked to share. Mom was powerless. This horrified me, and is probably a whole other gender-culture related slap.

The children, my dearly loved students, have no concerns for their own safety. They believe in Grand Theft Auto, see truths and validation that are lost on me. Ok, so they’re happy to inhabit this world, happy for our world to become more like it, thrilled by the Ray-Ban glamour, high-speed excitement, the fashion and passion. But, ah-hah, “What if someone wanted to hurt you?” asks the naïve teacher. Haven’t I warned them a thousand times of the cycle of violence and suffering that result from an act of anger? “I’d kill them first,” comes the instinctive reply. The wrongness of killing is absent. The likelihood of being caught off guard, overpowered or punished is less real than their sense of potency and the safeguard that a raft of extra lives confers. There is no danger and no conscience. I feebly quote The Qur’an, The Bible, The Torah to impress on these children who spend maybe ten hours a week in religious instruction, that every religion is certain on the question of the sanctity of life, but it is way too late. They have lived the GTA life, the thrills much more alive than tales of angels and damnation meant to scare them into submission.

I am not going to slap those who find violence and crime exciting or alluring. We are usually not responsible for our passions and interests, an attraction to that which is forbidden or dangerous is common and understandable. I am slapping parents and other carers who are so irresponsible they allow unlimited access to age inappropriate material, to the media machine that looks at success in terms of sales and not the effects on society and to a company that throws all its expertise into making their interactive violence as realistic and alluring as is technically possible. These games are not art, offering nothing more than pleasure taken in the pain of (simulated) others, they are the trigger on a time bomb that will inflict needless suffering on an already pain-weary populace.

Thanks to System of a Down for lending me the title, although I didn’t actually ask permission, so technically it’s theft: see what happens to my moral fibre when I start researching these games. All quotations and images from: www.rockstargames.com/sanandreas

*A Clockwork Orange has young people dancing with violence as a symptom of a decaying society. It is a warning, a futureshock, with exquisite photography, soundtrack and utterly thought provoking. Youthful attraction to ultraviolence is shown as a phase we can outgrow.

**Goodfellas explores the attraction to crime and violence of the poor and impressionable. The consequences are shown. And it is also exquisite in visual and audio terms.

***Again a decaying society, of haves and have nots, a dog eat dog world that anyone with a brain and some luck would seek to extricate themselves from. A wake up call to those who close their eyes to the favelas and see the poor as subhuman and far away. It too has high standards for the sights and sounds.

****Cartoon violence. A yellow, non-realistic, humorous, humanistic icon is in no way similar to any aspect of the world I know. Probably quite a bad influence on the youth, but at least they know it’s not real. Then again, my youngest believed visiting Disneyland would result in her being transported into an actual cartoon where everything and everyone would look like they do in the animations, so can I really assert non-realistic violence is safe?

Tête à claques XII

The heat wave is apparently over. Phew! I couldn’t stand it! No, not the heat – the moaning, the whingeing, the grumbling, the millions of newspaper articles with dire warnings about heat strokes and other various illnesses caused by the hot weather.

I know a 76-year-old woman, in good health, who lives in a lovely, airy house, with a gorgeous garden, and who, after reading all those doom-laden articles, was convinced she wouldn’t survive – like those very frail old people who were left alone in deserted French towns a couple of years ago and who died because no one thought of checking up on them.

I had heat stroke once, years ago – in Israel, in the middle of August. I was staying with Polish relatives of my mother’s who had recently arrived in the country, complete with goose-down mattresses, duvets and pillows. I was sleeping in a kind of meringue during the night and being fed incredibly stodgy food during the day. I collapsed. I was put to bed sans duvet, and given sweet and salty drinks. All I had was a slight fever and a headache. I didn’t die.

Who’d have thought the Brits were such wimps?! There won’t be any more complaining, I hope. I’d be very glad not to see such a lot of yucky white flesh on show as well. Not a chance of that, though, the Brits strip down to their knickers as soon as the sun comes out for a second. Ugh!

They never stop talking about the weather, yet they’re always taken by surprise by it. The whole of the UK comes to a standstill whenever the place isn’t grey and chilly. We’ve just had ‘the wrong kind of heat’, very soon – too soon for my taste – it’ll be ‘the wrong kind of snow’ again.

Slap!

I was right

It's not happening: Now What?

Worried, angry and frustrated

Maps from www.iris.org.il

This will tell you why I can't write just now: This Ongoing War

Just read it! It's updated every day so go back if you want the latest news.

Slapping the biased media!

Updates (Wednesday 19 July): For the first time in days, on the World at One (BBC Radio 4) today, the war in the Middle East was replaced by an item of domestic news. Are the media already getting bored? Is Israel getting too long to get wiped off the map? That’s what they’re waiting for, aren’t they?

Every day I’ve turned on the radio or the television and switched it off again within a minute, after hearing the word ‘Israel’ followed by a verb signifying aggression. “Israel attacked...”, “Israel bombed...”, etc. Even when whatever Israel did was in direct response to rockets fired by Hezbollah, this wasn’t made clear in the reporting and the lasting impression was that Israel was the aggressor.

So what else is new?

Two of the very first words I learned as a small child were ‘propoganda’ and ‘demagogia’. That’s how my Russian father pronounced them. He said them often, usually at the television. I used to laugh at him and think he was slightly paranoid, but I see now he was right. He knew the meanings of those words first-hand. As teenager, he had lived through the Revolution, then through the 30s and beyond in France, where propoganda and demagogia were also common currency. Nothing has changed: these days, as always, if you want to be liked (or get a huge round of applause on BBC programmes like Any Questions?) all you have to do is to tell lies about Israel. I should be used to it by now, but I’m not. I carry on being dismayed.

And I wonder.

I wonder why anyone would want to ally themselves with people who don’t value their own lives nor those of others. The answer is very simple: anti-Semitism. Some people would rather support murderers than be on the side of the Jews. They should be careful not to back the wrong horse, though: history might remember them as those who tried to carry on Hitler’s work.

(Saturday 22 July): Apparently, there are still some people out there who, although Israel has been in the news for years, still haven't got a clue how tiny that country is. The maps above are meant for them.

(Thursday 27 July): And this map is for those who still think that size doesn't matter.

Ta da!

Guess what!

I've done it!

Me. Myself. On my own. Thank you Tina, Craig, Wayne, Nicholas and those lovely people at PC World. Didn't need you in the end.

I won't bore you with the technical details. Let's just say it involved downloading drivers from the Internet, unzipping files, moving folders about, telling the computer to get off its butt and go and look for stuff and install it now, this instant, otherwise I'm going to have a fit, etc. etc.

*grin*

Update (Friday): The replacement disk, which arrived this morning and which I thought of using to install broadband on my laptop instead of downloading the whole thing again, is also missing an essential driver and miscellaneous bits of info. Wonder what the techies would have suggested I do today if I'd waited for them to solve my problem.

Ta da!

That’s what I was going to say today, after successfully installing broadband on my computer.

Except it didn’t happen.

I spent the entire day trying to coax my computer into recognizing the modem supplied by my ISP. But it wouldn’t. I had a wonderful team of helpers – Tina, Craig, Wayne and Nicholas. It cost me 25p a minute to speak to them, but Nicholas was very nice: he called me back after 20 minutes…

In the end, after trying everything, I suggested they send me another installation disk. So I can spend another day being frustrated and aggravated.

My ISP has already started to charge me for broadband; no one actually said what would happen if my computer absolutely refused to communicate with the modem. “No, I don’t want to work with you: you’re a nasty little dark grey box. Blech!” Am I condemned to carry on paying as I go for ever and ever now?

Slapping my ISP again –because it’s been making my life more difficult than it already is for the past month and because there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of this particular tunnel.

Last year… in London

There is a very old story on the theme of Death that goes like this:

One morning, the caliph of Baghdad’s vizier ran to his master and fell to his knees, pale and shaking with fear, “I beg of you, my Lord,” he panted, “permit me to leave the city today!” “Why?” said the caliph. “This morning, while I was crossing the square, a man bumped into me in the crowd. I turned around and recognized Death. He was staring at me in a threatening way. My Lord, he’s looking for me.” “Are you sure it was Death?” “Yes, my Lord, he was dressed in black from head to toe and had a red scarf round his neck. Please, my Lord, he’s looking for me; let me leave this instant; I will saddle my fastest steed and, if I don’t stop on the way, I can be in Samarkand by the evening.” The caliph was very fond of his vizier so he let him go immediately. A little later, he went out of the palace, disguised, as he often did, to mingle with his subjects in town. On the square, he noticed Death and went up to him. “I’d like to ask you a question: my vizier is a young man in good health; why did you scare him this morning by staring at him in such a threatening way?” “It wasn’t a threatening look; it was a look of surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see him here, in Baghdad. I have an appointment with him this evening… in Samarkand!”

On a sunny morning, last year, in London, innocent people met Death at the hands of murderers (not ‘martyrs’). A lot was said about the victims at the time and they are in the news again on this first anniversary of the atrocity. I felt very sorry for all of them, but particularly for those who died thinking they had cheated death a little while earlier – those who escaped from the hellish underground only to board the bus that was blown up in Tavistock Square.

Again I’m slapping everyone who condones those kinds of terrorist acts – wherever they are perpetrated.

I’m not sure if I’m also allowed to slap someone who is a survivor of 7/7… ok then, I will: in an interview in the Evening Standard, this man said, “Terrorist bombs are a daily routine in Iraq, but they also happen in Afghanistan, Egypt, Turkey, Bali, Madrid and so on…” One country is missing from that list; a country that should have been mentioned by name, not vaguely included in a general ‘and so on…’ I’ll give you a clue: it begins with the letter ‘I’ and suicide bombers have perfected their technique there over a great many years. Is it a memory lapse or is it perhaps that, like someone who was grilled by Melanie Phillips the other night on The Moral Maze, he believes that that particular country deserves it? One can have been through a terrible ordeal and still say objectionable things.

Guest Slapper of the Month VI

Red Queen of She'll be feverish after so much thinking and I have been cyber-friends for several years: we usually laugh at and get annoyed by the same things. She has a lot of common sense and a light touch. She radiates kindness, but when something gets her goat...



Mad enough to slap someone? It’s not your fault.

Yes, fellow slappers, finally, a plausible defense for our inordinate rage – we may be suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED).

IED has been described in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that bible of mental health professionals, since its 1980 edition. It is classified as an impulse control disorder, along with kleptomania, pyromania and pathological gambling. However, IED is in the news lately because a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School and The University of Chicago have found the “disease” to be far more prevalent than was previously thought, afflicting as many as 16 million Americans. They are saying IED may be to blame for the rise in “road rage” plaguing our culture.

Huh. Aren’t we all angry from time to time with the stressors of modern life? I have been known to curse at other drivers (within the confines of my own vehicle), give my PC a good whack upside when it’s acting hinky, engage in a primal scream in response to endless automated phone menus. But we’re not talking about plain old losing one’s temper. IED anger is “grossly out of proportion to any precipitating psychosocial stressors.”

Persons with IED exhibit “several discrete episodes of failure to resist aggressive impulses that result in serious acts of assault or destruction of property” over the course of a lifetime. According to the Harvard and UC researchers, IED costs sufferers an average of $1359 in property damage. That’s not much. Heck, I only need to toss my bleeping computer out the window one time to meet that figure.

Anybody buying this theory yet? The researchers have linked IED to low serotonin levels. (Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps mediate the body’s production of adrenaline – think “fight or flight” response.) So if IED is a disease caused by a discrete neurochemical deficit, it can be treated with – you guessed it – medication!

I’ll admit I’m frustrated with my own “industry” of mental health professionals for making it all too easy for people to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior. Such disease-mongering has been an identifiable problem for at least three decades. They doubtless deserve a slap. But my experience is that these individuals are well-meaning. I believe they as much misled as misguided. So let’s dig a little deeper and ask, Qui bono?

The study I mention was funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health, a US government agency. Sounds like it might be legit. But keep in mind that pharmaceutical companies comprise the most powerful lobby in Washington DC, with enormous influence on how government research dollars are spent. (EU members, don’t pat yourselves on the back too vigorously – roughly half of the largest drug companies are European, so this is a global problem.) According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, in 1990 the big pharmaceutical companies allotted approximately 11 percent of sales revenues to research and development of new drugs, while more than three times that much – 36 percent – went toward “marketing and administration.” The investment is certainly paying off for them: From 1960 to 1980, prescription drug sales were fairly static as a percent of US gross domestic product, but from 1980 to 2000, they tripled. They now stand at more than $200 billion a year, with by far the largest increase being among neuropsychological medications.

Are you good and mad now? It’s not your fault. You’ve been provoked – 200 billion dollars’ worth. SLAP! Take that, drug companies!

Tête à claques XI

Told you the mellowness wouldn’t last long.

Before you go on reading, please answer this question: did you enjoy Truly Madly Deeply? If you’ve answered, “Oh my god, it’s my favourite movie; I’ve seen it 25 times and cried soooo much each time,” you can stop reading now because this post will upset you.

If, on the other hand, you’ve answered, “Ugh! That movie made me want to throw up: it was so syrupy and fake and the acting was disgusting,” then please carry on.

Juliet Stevenson was the main culprit and I wanted to slap her very hard for it when the film came out, all those years ago, and I can’t wait one minute longer.

I used to adore her. I saw her in her very first part at the RSC in 1978. She was 20 years old, I think, and fresh from drama school. She’d got the part of a servant in a marvellous production of The Taming of the Shrew because the actress who should have been playing that part had broken her leg or something, and she made a great impact in that small part. I got to know her and the following year she even stayed in my flat in Paris, while I spent the summer in Stratford. I saw everything she was in and was never disappointed. She had a superb, distinctive, grown-up voice and she was always good. She was also very serious and dedicated and had unbelievable self-discipline.

And then Truly Madly Deeply happened and that was it. She became the most mannered actress ever – a kind of caricature. My partner’s theory is that she was praised so much for her performance in that film that she must have thought that was what the public wanted from her so she gave it more of the same. And she started playing fluffy (she doesn’t have the physique for fluffiness) and scatty women because she was offered other parts like that after that landmark film. Her voice got shriller too.

I stopped being able to watch her, but I don’t give up easily on people and I’ve seen her in other things since then – just because I keep hoping that one day she will be the powerful performer she was when she was young. Tonight my partner and I saw her in a terrible production of The Seagull, directed by the perverse Katie Mitchell. Perverse because she decided to go against the text all through, without any reason whatsoever. Perhaps tomorrow’s reviews will reveal that the nonsense we saw on the stage had some profound meaning, but I doubt it. Juliet wasn’t bad, but she couldn’t be good in such a preposterous production. I’m afraid I hid from her, when she walked by in the foyer after the show. “Darling, you were wonderful!” I couldn’t possibly have said that to her – no way.

I’m slapping Dame Juliet (it’s only a question of time…) for being such a disappointment.

Stay tuned...

I’ve just finished my work (four days before the deadline, hooray!) and I’m feeling all mellow and incredibly well-disposed towards everyone (hmm, almost everyone).

I don’t think it’s going to last, though... so don’t go away.

Let me explain...

Every so often I tell myself I must cut down on the time I spend on the Net. I never do, of course: it’s too much fun and I would miss it. However, British Telecom must have heard me and decided to help because four days ago it cancelled the number my ISP uses to allow me unlimited access to the Net for a reasonable sum of money every month.

Just like that. Without any warning.

You put on your computer in the morning (or rather, in my case, in the middle of the afternoon), you click on the cute icon and then, instead of that infuriating series of beeps and funny sounds, you get a different infuriating noise, a voice saying, “This number has not been recognized.” Qué? You try again and again and then you get on to your ISP and then to BT and you spend the entire day trying to find out what the f*** is happening, or, in my case, your partner does it because they have a little more free time to devote to such nonsense than you do at this particular point. The ISP and BT give you differing versions of what they think is happening and every time you have to tell your entire life story to the new person with an impenetrable accent that answers the phone. Finally, it does appear that BT has cancelled that number.

Ok, ok, I should have broadband. I could have broadband for a little bit more money, but I have a geriatric computer (i.e. a 3-year-old one) and broadband might make it give up the ghost completely and I can’t afford to buy a new one and anyway why should I be forced to have broadband when that other system worked very well for me?

My ISP says they are doing their best to obtain a new number from BT, but I reckon it’s not really in their interest since they know that everyone who’s lost that connection will now get broadband with them and not stick with pay-as-you-go, which costs an arm and a leg (that expression reminds me of a very funny incident, but I haven’t got the time to tell it to you, sorry). They say we should have more info by Tuesday.

So, if you have a blog and if, in the past few days, I haven’t commented on it as often as I used to, it’s not that I'm on a deadline (which I am) or that I've gone off you, but it’s because every second I spend on line is costing me masses of dosh.

If I still get that stupid message on Tuesday I’m applying for broadband. I bet my ISP and BT are in it together. I’m not very fond of conspiracy theories – you know, Diana died because of a drunk driver; Serge Lutens has nothing against the Americans; J F Kennedy was killed by… etc. etc. – but, in this case, I could very well believe those two big corporations are in league against us. I think I can hear them laughing...

Slaps all around!

Football or Big Brother

That’s the choice on TV at the moment.

Blech! Blech!

Slap! Slap!

Now what?

In my first post on this blog Oh, to be a freelancer! (the previous ones came from my weekly thread on MUA) I wrote about my relationship with the agency that supplied me with work for 18 years and what used to happen with the one piece of work I was still doing for them. This year it’s been different. No early phone call. No threat. No warning that it might be more difficult than usual or that the deadline might be shorter and do I really want to do it, anyway? Nothing.

So I emailed the woman the other day. Today there are two messages on my answerphone and an email saying she’d like to tell me about ‘what’s happening’ over the phone. I’ve emailed back to say I’d rather read about it. (She’s always wrong-footed me that way: forcing me to react to bad news there and then, and I don’t react well to bad news).

I know what’s coming. I know there will be no British Tourist Authority brochure this year, or any other year. That’s one third of my very small income gone. The surprise will be the reason why. Did she decide it wasn’t worth her while giving me work this year – after 18 years of bons et loyaux services? Did the British Tourist Authority refuse to pay for the proofreading again and did she tell them – on my behalf – to go jump in the lake? Whatever the reason, since the work should have started in three weeks’ time, I would have expected to be told long before now. I think after 18 years of etc. etc. I deserved that courtesy. I never missed a deadline in all those years. Because I never went on holiday in the summer, like all the other French translators, I was always there to answer questions – at any time of the day. (It very often seemed to me I wasn’t a freelancer, but a tele-worker.) Before the advent of email, I used to deliver the work personally (the agency is at the other end of London) whenever a deadline was especially short. Oh, I don’t know what else I used to do to make her work easier. Now this.

But I'm a freelancer so who cares.

Updates (14 June): I now know ‘what’s happening’ with the brochure: it’s not good but it’s not as bad as I feared. The BTA has decided to just update last year’s copy, which involves spending an awful lot of time fiddling about with PDFs and stuff. At least I won’t be totally idle in July, but how do you cost adding 23 words here, seven there? The woman knew about it a little while ago, but she was about to go on holiday so she decided to tell me on her return.

I decided to leave this Slap up because, although I may have been a bit unfair to my employer, I know she wouldn’t think twice about doing what I thought she had already done and if not this time then maybe next year.

‘Paying it forward’, isn’t that what it’s called? LOL!

(26 July): Just heard from the agency that the brochure has been cancelled. The English copy to translate should have landed on my desk over two weeks ago. As it happens, because I don't work full-time any longer, I didn't turn down any other translating jobs in order to stay available during that time and for the next four weeks, but someone else might have. All they said was “Sorry!” ‘Sorry’ doesn’t do it when you’ve lost a third of your income with no hope of making up the loss.

With women like these…

I couldn’t believe my ears the other day: I was happily listening to a short story on BBC Radio 4, when I heard something that made me jump: something I’m used to reading from time to time on the message board I belong to. That moronic comment about old ladies’ smell. The latest one read, “X on me smells like an old lady. You know those elderly women who don't bathe for days?”

Well, I don’t, actually. When I think of a bad body odour, I think mostly of men who are too macho to use antiperspirant, for instance, not of women – old or young.

A woman wrote that otherwise good short story; a woman posted that idiotic, offensive comment. There are lots of things that annoy me, but one thing that annoys – and distresses – me more than any other is when women are being misogynistic. Some women internalise men’s clichéd opinions of them and spout them out without stopping to think about what they’re actually saying. They're the ones who usually proclaim loudly that they're not feminists. I believe such women are trying – subconsciously maybe – to suck up to men. Silly, short-sighted and misguided!

Slap!

Guest Slapper of the Month V

Still Life of dancing in place is one of the most exciting people I’ve had the privilege of ‘meeting’ in cyberspace. She may be stiller than she used to be physically (I gather she led a very active life before her accident) but mentally… wow! She writes beautifully about her new life. Here she is – in slapping mode:


Reserved

Last week I received a parcel surprise. A t-shirt sent from my friend Alice, catering to my slightly bent sense of humor. Its color was an ice cream swirl of pinks and cranberry, and in the center was the universal symbol of accessibility flanked by the message...
I'M ONLY IN IT FOR THE PARKING. Lovely!

However we all know that within every bite of sarcasm, there is sure to be a smidgen of truth -- and apparently Dateline felt the same.

The other evening I took much vengeful pleasure in watching a segment which exposed able-bodied drivers taking advantage in the use of handicapped parking spaces at a local Walmart. As each driver exited their vehicle and began WALKING to their locations, the field reporter approached and asked (ever so nicely), excuse me, but what type of disability do you have which allows you to park in that reserved space? I wooped. Responses ran the gamut: from jacket shielding of the face and running from camera view to adamant claims of entitlement (chronic leg pain, night blindness (it was midday), partial hearing, etc.). Some even went as far as to produce counterfeit or expired temporary placards (disabled parking identifications cards) -- Shameful.

According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, businesses are required to provide at least one handicapped parking spot per every 25 spaces. This particular establishment had seven accessible spots, so I can safely assume that the lot's entirety was that of at least 168 other available options. One offender, with identity protected, summed it up by admitting to the pros (proximity and availability) outweighing the cons ($110 penalties and social tsk-tsks). And to me, for once, the words spoke louder than the actions.

I understood clearly this person's attitude of disregard to my or any other physically challenged person's human needs and rights. It is also the unspoken evidence each time a person causes me to wait outside of five empty bathroom stalls because they prefer the spaciousness and private mirror afforded in "mine". Or when I am not able to maneuver my chair up an accessible ramp because someone on foot is blocking my path, self-righteous and unapologetic, they silently tell me --"I don't really care". So, to all of those making less of my greater needs: those who use my parking space, my bathroom stall, my water fountains, my ATMs, my public phones...if you don't want to sit in the chair, then stay off the ramp!

SMACK AND A ROLL OVER YOUR TOES!

Off with their heads!

The French Revolution has always been my favourite historical period. After years of learning about the Merovingians (oh, yes!) and about this or that war mostly against la perfide Albion, I remember it as a refreshing change to be taught about exciting events actually taking place in France and not involving military strategy (I could have told soldiers what to do – in Latin and French – at the age of 15). It became even more fascinating when, after we all took the Gaston Berger personality test in class, I discovered I was Robespierre’s alter ego. His nickname was L’Incorruptible so he was a hard act to follow (as if!). And I don’t have the time right now to even hint at the influence Marat has had on my life.

Anyway, however flawed those revolutionaries may have been, they were instrumental in having Marie-Antoinette guillotined. And for that I have to applaud them. Although, I suppose, she and that ninny of a husband of hers, could have been sent away into exile somewhere, if they hadn’t had so many supporters abroad. They did try to escape, but were caught and brought back to face the music.

Marie-Antoinette was a silly woman. She was sent to France from Austria as a very young girl and did nothing but spend spend spend. She was the Queen and it wasn’t in her remit to bother about her subjects’ welfare so she didn’t. The people got fed up with her and with all the other freeloaders who were making their lives a misery, and executed them all. End of story.

Unfortunately, that airhead pops up again and again, and now there’s a new film about her. There’s also a new book about the perfumes she used. I love perfume but I couldn’t care less about her tastes in that respect. I want to know about truly great women. Women who have achieved something; who have done something for humanity; who are role models; whose lives are uplifting. Spare me the aristocrats and the courtesans: they have nothing to teach us.

I don’t know why Sofia Coppola’s film was booed at Cannes. Let’s hope it’s because it’s a bad film not because the tide is turning and the French are getting all misty-eyed about Marie-Antoinette again and resent anything disparaging said against her. I don’t keep up with those things but I expect there still is a Comte de Paris (the so-called heir to the throne) waiting for the monarchy to be restored in France. So far, luckily, he’s been a figure of fun, but who knows?

The Tsar and his family had a similar fate. Tough. The Romanovs never showed any mercy towards anyone, why should they have been spared? (Even today I can hardly bring myself to call St Petersburg by its old name: it conjures up so many horrific pictures).

Forgive me for not shedding tears over tyrants. Those people were bad. And the fact that they died in terrible circumstances does not make them better. Given half a chance they would have become even worse and their heirs would have followed in their footsteps.

A slap to anyone who romanticizes and mythologizes oppressors!

In my next life…

I will get a menial job, marry a multimillionaire, remain a trophy wife for a few years, then divorce my husband and claim what’s ‘rightly’ mine. Because I have now an ‘expected standard of living’ I will be awarded £5m.

Or… I will have the ‘promise’ of a very good career, marry a multimillionaire, raise children, then divorce after a long time and get £250,000 every year for the rest of my life.

Wonder what the better deal is. Where’s my calculator?

On a smaller scale, I could just be an ordinary woman, marry an ordinary man working all his life for a caring company, raise one quiet daughter, have plenty of time to pursue my hobbies, become widowed around the age of 75 and live on my husband’s very good pension for many years.

I got it all wrong.

Slapping myself!

Tête à claques X

I’m sure everyone’s been asking themselves why I haven’t nominated Scarlett Johansson as a Tête à claques before. What was I thinking? Look at her!

I'm slapping her for keeping her big mouth open all the time. It’s supposed to make her look sexy, right? Wrong! It makes her look gormless.

Obviously, she’s been told she's the new Marilyn Monroe. Not a chance! The big difference between Marilyn and Scarlett is that even at her most tarty Marilyn looked innocent, whereas even at her most innocent Scarlett looks like a tart.

She’s not a bad actress but she’s not all that. And being Woody Allen’s pet these days isn’t such a great recommendation, is it?

Slap slap!

Just because you don't know...

I was listening to Matthew Parris’s programme Great Lives on Radio 4 yesterday. He began like this: “I don’t choose whose great life to explore, I only choose my guest, and when she told me this week she’d nominated an obscure Hungarian doctor of the mid-nineteenth century, whom you’ve probably never heard of and I certainly hadn’t, I did wonder whether it might have my listeners lunging for the off switch….”

I guessed who he was talking about and mouthed ‘Semmelweis’* and then slapped this supposedly educated man for not being familiar with the name and for assuming that no one else would be either. I thought for a moment he was just being ‘British’, i.e. he didn’t want to appear to know too much, but he genuinely didn’t have a clue and I'm sure the word ‘obscure’ was his, not his guest’s.

If you’re ignorant, it’s not such a good idea to assume that everyone else is too – especially on a supposedly ‘intellectual’ radio station. It makes you look stupid and patronizing.

It’s not a good idea to do that in writing either. A little while ago, someone who discusses translation on his blog wrote an excited post about how he’d discovered – after over ten years in the UK – the meaning of a fairly common word. It made him sound so silly!

It’s always better to overestimate the knowledge and intelligence of your listeners/viewers/readers. It makes you look generous and it makes them feel good.

Slap!

*If, by any chance, you don’t know who Semmelweis was, look him up: his story is absolutely fascinating. Women owe him an awful lot.

Condemned to live

So the Lords, who are not elected by us, have rejected a Bill that would have legalised voluntary euthanasia – under strict conditions.

I would have voted ‘yes’. If, god forbid*, I become terminally ill and in unbearable pain, I want the right to be helped to die by a doctor. A couple of months ago, the vet who gave my pussycat a lethal injection, less than half an hour after it was revealed she was hopelessly ill and in pain, said he considered it a ‘privilege’ to spare her more suffering. I want to be treated with the same compassion we show animals at the end of their lives. If they could speak, they would thank us, I’m sure.

Some of the most vocal opponents of the Bill were, of course, religious groups. I’m not a believer; I don’t thank god everyday for my being alive. I don’t see life as the best thing since sliced bread, as it were. Not being alive wouldn’t bother me. I just hope I won’t have to travel to Switzerland any time soon…

On a related subject: interviewed the other day about that 63-year-old pregnant woman, a medic said that this was not the time to fulfil everyone’s desire for a child; that the Earth’s resources were already getting scarce. Pressed further, he even agreed that the number of resuscitations would probably have to be restricted too. Especially since they are so seldom completely successful. Someone else said, a little while ago, they only knew of one successful resuscitation in 25 years. It was, he said, the fault of programmes like ER, where people are routinely brought back to life and assumed to go on living totally unscathed by the experience, when, in fact, they suffer all sorts of indignities afterwards. He – a professional – said he wished for a fast and painless death. A fatal heart attack was the best, he said. That’s what I would wish for me and mine.

If I am ever hospitalised with any kind of serious illness, my chart will have a big DNR on it.

I think we need a referendum on euthanasia. I believe the majority of reasonable people would be in favour of it. I’d like to slap the Lords for bowing to minority pressure groups. Slap!

*not a believer, but superstitious nonetheless.

Small pleasures from small favours

Since I’ve already denied women the right to make fools of themselves by taking up pole dancing as exercise and learning it at public classes, and thereby contributing to the backlash against feminism, I thought I would now deny women the right to have children at an age when they should be playing with their children’s children or enjoying retirement. But too much has been said about that 63-year-old mother-to-be and the subject has gone stale on me.

Instead, I want to slap people who, having acquired a little bit of power, suddenly take themselves seriously and refuse to do other people small favours, when it’s no skin off their noses.

My partner and I went to Stratford-upon-Avon for Shakespeare’s Birthday (April 23rd, in case you’ve forgotten when it was): the Royal Shakespeare Company had planned masses of events and we thought it would be good fun.

We hadn’t booked for anything (we’d learned about it too late), but we managed to attend two very interesting events (one about playing Cleopatra – with Harriet Walter and Janet Suzman; the other about the Sonnets – with Patrick Stewart and my beloved John Barton). There had been a few tickets left for the first talk, but the second one was booked up. Nevertheless we thought there might be some returns so we queued anyway. There weren’t, but just before the start we were let in, together with four or five other people, because there was space and because they took pity on us. We stood, or sat on the floor, at the back of the room, and spent a wonderful, stimulating two hours.

There was one more event we ‘didn’t mind’ attending: an interview with Judi Dench. It was to take place in the big marquee that had been erected in one of the theatre gardens (and where we’d heard the two Cleopatras earlier that day). For this too tickets were unnumbered and the queue to go in was unbelievable: it went round and round and round… We, and a very small group of other unfortunate, ticket-less people, waited for everyone to be seated. We had money in our hands; there was plenty of standing room on the side of the seating area and there didn’t seem to be any reason why we couldn’t be let in. That’s when I noticed her – Bronwyn Robertson, the most officious woman ever, and I more or less knew we were waiting in vain.

She could have said to us, “You’ve been waiting so patiently; there’s only a few of you; this is the last event of the day; I cannot deprive you of the pleasure of listening to Dame Judi, who’s come specially today – a Sunday – to give this interview. Please come in!” But she didn’t say it and everyone wandered off (one person was in a wheelchair – you’d think she would have allowed them in), disappointed. We did hear the interview for a while, because we discovered that, if we positioned ourselves in a special spot, behind the marquee, and listened closely, we could hear every word. Unfortunately, the questions were so lame and banal and so unworthy of her talent that we gave up halfway through. But that's not the point.

It would have been so easy for Bronwyn to make us all happy. But, no, it was in her power to deny us and she did. I wonder if she got any satisfaction out of it.

I first met Bronwyn in 1974, when I lived in Stratford and needed a job. She was secretary to one of the directors; she was obstructive and annoying. She was then put in charge of something or other and she carried on being unhelpful. I must have been introduced to her a dozen times. She always forgot who I was. It requires a special kind of person to ‘forget’ completely someone they see practically every day.

While I’m slapping people who deserved it in the past but who only got the utmost courtesy from me because I was still hoping to have a career with the RSC at the time I might as well mention Diana Minchall. We met in 1977, when we were both attending the Summer School and were staying in the same B&B. She knew no one; I knew everyone. By the time she went back to London she knew everyone too. Two years later, when she got a job with the RSC (in the Publicity Department), she had a head start. I had told her about the vacancy so she could apply for it and when she got the job she promised to return the favour. Yeah right!

Not only did she not help me in any way but, within a few weeks of her taking up her new post, one might have thought she was the RSC’s Artistic Director, judging from the way she started behaving. I stopped being in the secret of the gods because my contacts assumed she was giving me lots of info and I didn’t need to be told anything.

She was there for about ten years and I never got another chance to get a job with the RSC. Instead of being a help she was an obstruction. I’ve been wanting to slap her smug face for a very long time. There!

When I used to work at Penhaligon’s I had access to perfumes that everyone valued immensely. I was in a position to give my friends a few samples from time to time. And why not? My mistake is that I’ve always expected others to derive as much pleasure from doing (or returning) favours as I have.

I’m sure Judi Dench would have been very sad to know that half a dozen people were turned away that day – for no good reason whatsoever – because of some self-important official.

Slap!

Guest Slapper of the Month IV

Tania of Brain Trapped in Girl's Body took part in NaNoWriMo last year and wrote over 50,000 words in 30 days (in between waxing lyrical about rare vintage perfumes – her other passion) so my little assignment must have been child's play for her. Here's her Slap:


The Commuter's Slaphappy Haiku

In response to Bela's invitation to be her guest slapper for the month of May, I offer you this brief percussive piece: small slaps delivered on my way to work.
—Tania

*

Train in the station:
SWIPE AGAIN AT THIS TURNSTILE.
Were tokens so bad?

*

Thump of busker's drums
marshals citizens to war:
no dollar for you.

*

Young nonchalant man
embracing the subway pole,
how can I hold on?

*

The perfume you wear:
white flowers pile close like snow.
Next time put on less.

*

The small, tinny cry
of your headphone discothèque—
aren't you embarrassed?

*

Poor immigrant man
sells "battery, one dollar!"
Of course, it's worth less.

*

It's true man must eat;
fried chicken is delicious.
Just not on the train.

*

Bright as a rainbow,
Dr. Z's fruit acid peels.
Why do I read this?

*

Small mouse trapped among
the stampeding elephants.
Don't you see me here?

*

Single salmon fights
downstairs, blocking upstairs hordes:
You could wait a sec.

*

Impatient lady,
Jostling like trash in the tides,
You're not important.

*

Slow elevator:
Yes, I find it annoying.
Do not talk to me.

Tête à claques IX

This month (oops, we nearly didn’t have one) it’s Cherie Blair. Why? Because.

1) I have the same respect for defence lawyers as I have for social workers. I’ve probably seen too many films where the defence lawyer manipulates the system and gets the accused, whom everyone knows committed the crime, released on a technicality.

2) I don’t care what politicians’ spouses (or politicians themselves) look like, as long as they look groomed, but if you’re going to spend £7,700 on your hair it should at least look nice.

3) I can’t stand that ‘square’ smile of hers.

4) She said once that she ‘understood’ why Palestinian suicide bombers killed innocent people.

I have no time for that woman.

Too much, too young

I went to my local Primark the other day (the Hammersmith branch is one of the best in London, apparently; I maintain that our TK Maxx is one of the best too, but so far I’ve failed to persuade those stubborn people who insist on going there on a Saturday; you know who you are) to see what was on offer that day (no two days are the same in that store. Blink and you’ve missed it – the thing you noticed yesterday but were silly and didn't buy there and then).

Upstairs, in the lingerie department (I dream of hearing that word – lingerie – pronounced correctly once by a Brit), I suddenly came face to face with a display of brassieres (did you know that in French the word brassière means an infant’s vest?) for very young girls. They were tiny; they were cute, they were padded and they were half-cups. I was shocked (although not as shocked as the time when I absent-mindedly touched a gel-filled bra in some other store). Apparently, Primark reflects current trends and always offers its customers what they want, which means that there is market for 28AA sexy bras. What sort of message are they giving? Why do mothers allow their daughters to be sexualized so young, in such a way? No wonder 16-year-old girls want to have surgical breast enlargement? It’s preposterous. How big-breasted should a 12-year-old be? How much cleavage should a young teenager show?

Of course, girls can’t wait to look womanly. I remember pestering my mother for a Teenform bra I’d seen in a magazine ad, around, er, 196… I had hardly anything to put in it, but, wow!, it felt great. Later, in the mid-’70s, like all good feminists, I burned my bra. Actually, I got rid of it for another reason: I was travelling between Paris and Nice a lot. You couldn’t undress on the train and wearing a bra while lying down on a hard berth was rather uncomfortable. So I didn’t on those nights and soon stopped wearing it completely. Nowadays, of course, I don’t need one, and I don’t miss it.

But ‘revenons à nos moutons’ (more French for you, folks!): this is a blah blah I found on a website dedicated to the garment in question:

Trying to find a bra for a teenager can be a daunting thing to do, I know that myself from trying to find bras for my daughter. The "Tiny Whitey" style of bras are almost gone and teenagers are wanting something more stylish and sexy but parents can't really spend too much as the bra may only be worn for a few months, then another size is needed!! Plus there's the fact that most mothers don't want their teenage daughter wearing a £40 see-through La Perla!!

We've put together a list of stylish and affordable bras for teenagers. Some of the bras below are cleavage enhancing which can be an important thing for teenagers; you may not want your daughter wearing a bra like this, just use your discretion.

Wise words, but if those sexy bras weren’t produced there wouldn't be any problem, would there? Sad.

Slap!

Straight = Boring

I was going to post about something else that bothered me recently but this landed in my Inbox this morning. It’s from Daily Candy, those nice people who keep me in touch with what’s ‘hot’ in the realms of shopping and… shopping, er, can’t think of anything else they tell me about, actually.

You Polaroid your outfits, update your virus software, and drink eight glasses a day. A wild woman of Borneo you’re not, but try telling that to your hair.

Those curls have been known to derail an otherwise perfectly scheduled day. So when your primper’s elbow is flaring up and you can’t manage to squeeze in a blow-out, what’s a girl with a rat’s nest to do?

Easy. XYZ [I’m not going to give them free publicity, am I?] is an at-home hair straightener that uses food preservatives and sugar to temporarily rearrange the hair structure, giving you a sleek, shiny mane that lasts for about a week.

Here’s how it works: First, a gel relaxes the kink and softens the hair cuticle. Next, a creamy sealer sets things straight. And finally, the leave-in conditioner gives you smooth and glossy locks — all in about the same amount of time that it normally takes you to shower, shampoo, and shave.

Which means you’ll still have plenty of time to alphabetize those Polaroids.

Well, that certainly derailed my ‘perfectly scheduled day’ (I wish!). Please, could someone tell me who decided that curly hair was worse than any other physical defect? When did they decide it? And why does everyone believe it?

I have curly hair (it’s rather frizzy now and rapidly vanishing from my head, but in its heyday it was nice). I’ve always had curly hair and never ever wished for it to be straight. We used to say of someone with the kind of straight hair that resists any styling, “Elle a les cheveux raides comme des baguettes de tambour,” (another little translation exercise for you). And it wasn’t a compliment. Since when is having that kind of boring and unmanageable hair a desirable thing? I didn’t like it then, I still don’t.

Julia Roberts was never so attractive as when she had those bouncy curls. Nicole Kidman has naturally curly/frizzy red hair and she was so cute in Bangkok Hilton, the TV drama that brought her to our attention here in the UK. They both look awful with flat, lifeless hair. They look wrong, you know, like people who normally wear glasses do when they take them off.

I’ve been waiting for the fashion for straight hair to die, but it doesn’t seem to want to: they keep producing new and better hair straighteners all the time – ceramic and liquid ones (‘food preservatives and sugar’, yuck!).

I demand a return to hair freedom!

Slap!

PS. Life’s too short to take pictures of your clothes. Only saying…

Who tagged her?

Our Queenie has a big birthday coming up (so have I, actually; it's not a big one in my case, but, still, that's one of the many things we have in common, she and I) and the Palace has issued a list of 80 facts about her. Fun ones, strange ones, envious-making ones too, some of them, like she owns all the dolphins and whales that swim in British waters. I'd like that.

For the complete list, click here

Oh, while I'm here, I might as well slap Our Ken again. That man, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, has done it again. He's in China at the moment and he's compared the Tiananmen Square protests, in which thousands were massacred, to the Poll Tax riots in Trafalgar Square, a while back, in which, er..., a few people were manhandled by the police. Unbelievable! Of course, the Chinese won't get to hear what he said, because all mention of Tiananmen is banned from their media.

Lots of slapping needed.

Drat!

Just a quickie until I can think of a more deserving ‘slappee’.

It’s official: Dan Brown is not a plagiarist.

I was so hoping his silly book would be pulped.

Now he can be sued for bad writing. (I can very proudly say that I am the only person in the world who’s not read his opus. But I’ve come across excerpts - difficult to avoid that rubbish altogether.)

I’m slapping him and anyone who takes his nonsense seriously.

Envious, moi? Non!

Blog Swarm

Apparently, after having a very bad experience with their customer service, someone managed to get satisfaction from Dell by writing about it on his blog, and, thanks to his readers, it created a Blog Swarm.

So that’s what this post is. A Blog Swarm. All by itself. It isn't directed at a big company and it won’t make any difference to anything, but I don't care: I like the word. My target is someone who has given me a lot of aggro recently; someone called photopro.one on eBay.

Four weeks ago I put a camera lens up for sale, since I couldn’t envisage a time when I might go back to using my big SLR again, after enjoying the user-friendliness of my tiny digital camera. The lens was coveted by several people and, a week later, achieved a good price. Unfortunately, my ‘buyer’ (ha!) placed his bid at a time when all the stars were against me (my pussycat fell ill that very night) and turned out to be someone with bad feedback, from whom I would never have bought anything, but to whom, somehow, I had to sell my lovely lens. When the auction ended the next day, I had other things on my mind, but I vaguely sensed there might be a problem.

I was right: the High Bidder never answered my several emails requesting payment. I gave him plenty of time and he finally sent me a cheque. A cheque I couldn’t cash: not only was my name misspelt (although it was correct on the envelope that contained it) but it was dated 2003! I pointed it out and waited another week and then filed an Unpaid Item dispute. He assured eBay and me that he would be sending another cheque. Nothing happened, of course. When I sent him a scan of his cheque he asked for my details again, and again said he would be sending a cheque straight away. Still nothing, so I put a stop to the nonsense yesterday.

In the meantime I lost all my other potential buyers. I can’t offer the lens to the second highest bidder: he has acquired a similar lens from another seller. And, I’ve checked, so has everyone else.

Yes, I get a refund of my eBay fees; yes, I get the right to relist the item, but the so-called buyer, who is a trader and who probably was drunk that night and placed a bid on my lens for the fun of it, with no intention of ever paying for it, just gets a strike, which doesn’t affect his rating in any way. He could even leave a negative feedback for me, if he was so inclined (g-d forbid!). That’s not right.

Now, here’s something else that’s not right. I want to leave that man a negative feedback, but I won’t, because if I do he might retaliate and leave me one too, and with my very few transactions it would make my rating drop drastically and no one would ever want to deal with me. I wonder how many other buyers/sellers are in the same position. I’m beginning to think that lots of those ratings are false and therefore a lot more eBayers cannot be trusted.

Until then everyone I'd encountered on eBay had been very friendly and a joy to deal with. It’s people like him who give eBay a bad name.

Slap! Buzz buzz buzz!

Update: Guess what! I received a cheque this morning. It's dated last Wednesday (the day he asked for my details again) but was posted yesterday after I closed the dispute. Perhaps he thought he could say he'd paid before the deadline (which was the day before yesterday). I wonder if the cheque would bounce if I tried to cash it? I wonder if he would claim the lens had never arrived or was faulty or got broken in the post if the cheque didn't bounce and I sent it to him. It's also quite likely that he wrote the cheque and waited for me to close the dispute before sending it so he could imagine my dismay at receiving a cheque I couldn't cash – again. It doesn't matter now because I relisted the item yesterday and I've already got a bidder.

Up-update: This guy is unbelievable! He's now opened an Item Not Received dispute against me. He claims that he paid for the item the day after the end of the auction (10th March), when the cheque I received was dated (apart from bearing the wrong year and the wrong name) 16th March! Enough already!

Up-up-update: A Happy Ending at last! I've now sold the lens (for much less, but who cares) to someone else: a very nice guy, who paid me straight away and who's delighted with his purchase. Phew! No news from the first 'buyer' (he's had four negatives in the meantime; he's been a very bad boy).

Up-up-up-update (16 May): Ah, spoke too soon. He left me a negative feedback yesterday, claiming I ran off with two cheques of his. As expected, my rating has dropped to 90% in one fell swoop. Feeling murderous towards him and towards eBay, which has been no help at all.

Guest Slapper of the Month III

If you don’t know Mireille of C'est chic I pity you: she’s clever, funny and insightful. Go and read her blog! Hey, not yet! Read her Slap first!



It's interesting when you're given free rein in the best slapping venue available ... and you're in one of your relatively benign moods. But, don't worry, uncharacteristically mild mannered or not, I've still got one slap in me.

And it is an open-palmed tribute to all the passive-aggressors out there. Women, unfortunately, are exceptionally good at this, but I also know some men who have honed the skill to a fine art.

These are the individuals who don't have enough courage of their beliefs to be overtly frontal about what they think -- honestly, openly, in a manner that can be likewise addressed openly and honestly ... but who are willing to snipe and allude and imply and leave vicious anonymous comments.

These are the individuals who can be cloyingly sweet to one's face ... while advising their close circle of friends of the intimate details of everything they detest about your taste in [fill in the blank], what they have noticed about your abysmal absence of [fill in the blank] and how ill-behaved your [husband, partner, children, cat and/or dog] are.

I wonder how they justify this behavior. Often, I think, they are simply unaware of how truly cowardly and cruel it is. They may actually see it as politesse. You know, it's softer-edged to lay a public trail of breadcrumbs that hint about what you think another's insurmountable flaws/mistakes/gross errors of behavior are, than it is to gently, privately take the individual aside and share with them what is troubling you about your relationship with them.

Often this is because the passive-aggressor has no relationship with the individual who is the target of their snipe. In fact, it doesn't really matter to them who that person is, and how much harm/hurt/discomfort their passive aggression may cost that person. They just need to vent hostility and this is the safest way they know.

Now, of course you know I'm not talking about anyone in particular, don't you? Because that would be passive-aggressive, wouldn't it?

Têtes à claques VIII

You can’t open a newspaper or magazine these days without reading about the son or daughter of an actor or a celebrity. The same names appear with monotonous regularity.

Above are two Jaggers, two Lennons, one Harris and one Bowie; had I the time or the patience I could have posted three Redgraves, two Thaws, two Kinskis, one Marley, etc. etc.

I don’t care what their first names are; their surnames are famous and, in most cases, one instance of those surnames should have been enough.

Of course there have always been ‘dynasties’, in all walks of life: people have been butchers de père en fils, seamstresses de mère en fille, but the parents were passing on a craft, a trade, a skill of some kind. Lawyers and doctors also encourage their children to pursue the same profession, but that’s because they’ve usually invested in a practice and it pays for it to stay in the family, and the children usually benefit from their parents’ reputation. .

What do actors and celebrities pass on to their offspring, apart from a desire to be famous and having a fun life like Mummy or Daddy? It must be incredibly difficult to resist if, from age zero, you’ve been aware that your parents are being celebrated, flown to exotic locations, photographed and admired.

Some of those actors and artistes are quite talented, but who knows how far they would have got to with their smidgen of talent if they hadn’t been called Jagger, Lennon, Harris, Bowie, etc. It really amazes me when sons and daughters of famous people try to persuade me that they didn’t want to take advantage of their names. No, of course not, so why didn’t you change your name, then? Who are they kidding? Of course sometimes the resemblance between parent and child is so obvious that a different name wouldn’t have fooled anyone (in the case of Natasha Richardson, for instance, it’s the voice) and they would always have had a head start.

Talent is not hereditary. Proof? Keira Knightley. She’s the daughter of a moderately talented actor and quite a good playwright, yet she doesn’t have a modicum of acting talent herself…

They all deserve to be slapped for proliferating so much and getting jobs that could have been done much better by unknowns had the latter had the chance to even be considered for them. How do you say ‘no’ to the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave (herself the daughter of a famous actor) or the son of Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith?

Slap!

Stew of the Day

If, like me, you're in need of nourishment and comfort, try:

Lulu's Sunday Vegetable Stew

Go and buy:
Half a red onion, or one very small one
One tin of chopped organic tomatoes
Masses of dried herbs (two or three dessertpoons)
Olive oil
One small sweet potato
One small potato
One large carrot
One red or yellow pepper
Packet of green beans (around two handfuls)
One courgette (zucchini)

Optional:
Handful of spinach, torn
Handful of chopped fresh parsley or coriander (cilantro) leaves
Tin of organic chickpeas

Now get cooking:
Chop onion into tiny pieces and gently cook in some olive oil in the bottom of a large saucepan or casserole pan until softened. Add the herbs and tin of tomatoes, stir and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Keep the empty tomato tin.

While the onion is cooking, peel, wash and chop all the vegetables. The sweet potato should have larger chunks than the other veg as it goes very soft. The green beans are best in thirds. Make chunks rather than slices, e.g. cut the carrots and courgette in 2cm-in thick slices and cut those in half or into quarters.

Put all the vegetables into the tomato mixture.

Fill the tomato tin to the top with cold water and add salt to it, or if preferred, a dash of soy sauce. Swoosh round and tip into the stew. Stir. Sometimes you need half a can more of water.

Put lid tightly on pan and bring to the boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook for one and a half hours or until the carrots and potato are soft. Taste liquid for salt after half an hour.

If there's too much liquid, take off lid and cook for another half-hour on low to reduce - but do not forget it at this point!

When cooked, turn off heat, put lid back on and leave on warm stove for as long as you like. This helps the flavours infuse. You can't really overcook this dish! It's great with rice or, as a side dish, with chicken, says Lulu.

Trust me, this is scrumptious, whichever way you eat it. Mmm...

Once I am restored I will slap someone. Very soon.

Neither empathy nor sympathy

I have no intention of using the death of my poor pussycat as blog fodder for the next two years – I prefer to grieve in private, but I must mention it again just this once because I need to slap the person who made the whole traumatic experience even worse.

The vet’s receptionist.

Shouldn’t a basic requirement for such a job be that the person is capable of some measure of empathy and then sympathy towards other people? The silly girl we had the misfortune of dealing with on that terrible day displayed neither. While my partner and I were huddled in a corner of the small waiting room trying to decide the fate of my desperately ill cat, she was having a very loud and animated conversation with two people who’d brought their big dog obviously for a routine check-up, frequently bursting into deafening laughter. She'd seen us come out of the surgery red-eyed and distressed and she knew why we were still there, waiting. At 6pm – the appointed hour – she hustled us (g-d forbid she should go home a few minutes late) back into the surgery. She assisted the vet and attended the passing of my cat and remained cheerful throughout. Her parting shot for us was, “’bye!”, in an upbeat tone of voice.

I had a pussycat called Patsy

We kept each other company for 15 years. I loved her very much. She was put to sleep yesterday.

I am told I am suffering now so that she could be spared more suffering. If that is so, I will bear it, but it hurts terribly.

I've been tagged...

... by CJB of Crazy Jay Blue. She’s asked me not to slap her for it, so I won’t because she’s a very nice woman, but my little fingers are itching…

I’m supposed to list five weird habits or peculiarities. My first reaction was, “I don’t have any”, but I’ve been disabused by my partner. Apparently, I do. Hmm… (Oh, by the way, like CJB, I am always right so thinking that I am is not a peculiarity at all – I do get berated for it a lot, though; in fact, just yesterday someone… nah, it’s too boring…)

1. Starting with the least weird (lots of people, CJB among them, are like me): as it says on my profile, I don’t do mornings. I am the ‘night owlest’ night owl I know. I go to bed when my upstairs neighbour leaves for work. I was rather dismayed the other morning when I realized that it was already dawn and I was still up and about (well, not exactly, more like glued to the PC, reading blogs). My ‘nice’ next door neighbours are aware I go to bed late (ah, the understatement!) and usually try not to do too much noise too early, but the other day they were having their carpet replaced and the man turned up earlier than expected (actually, whatever time he’d been expected would have been too early for me, but, you know, there’s early and there's early: it was 7.50am). I nearly jumped out of my skin when he started scraping around to remove the old carpet. By then I’d only had two and a half hours of sleep and I was going to the theatre in the evening. A nightmare! I tried to go to bed a little earlier a while ago, but failed miserably. It doesn’t make my life easier, I can tell you.

2. I write funny things on the bathroom tiles in eye pencil. I listen to the radio all the time (Radio 4 – the blah blah radio) and I keep hearing these jokes and quips and clever phrases and you don’t have pen and paper in the bathroom, do you? So what else should I do? I only have to write ‘funny’ things because, although my memory is pretty good for my advanced age, I can never remember jokes or anything remotely funny (Freud explains why somewhere, but it must be a funny explanation because I can’t for the life of me remember it).

3. I don’t eat and drink at the same time. That’s not really a quirk: I suffer from IBS (not Isaac Bashevis Singer, but Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and I’ve been trying to control it for nearly twelve years. I noticed some years ago that I felt unwell at breakfast, when I had tea with toast. I would have a kind of turn; I would go grey and feel faint. So I started having a cup of tea then waiting half an hour then having a piece of toast and, lo and behold!, the malaises stopped. I applied the same rule to the other meals during the day and I like to think that it’s made a lot of difference to my well-being. Like going to bed at dawn, it doesn’t make life easier, and it creates havoc with one’s social life – going to a restaurant is hell, but, then, eating out is difficult anyway with IBS – but being alive and not in pain makes it worth it.

4. I don’t say anything good about any forthcoming event in case I jinx it. Things have happened in the past that have convinced me that I am a witch (yes, some people knew that all along, didn’t they?). I make bad things come true. I’m ashamed to say I am superstitious in that way. I try not to talk about anything in advance. I let it happen first, then I discuss it. It’s not a new thing, actually: when I was young I always refused to say whether I thought I’d done well in an exam, in case it would change the results. I also believe that the content of an unopened letter gets worse as time goes on. Well, ok, I don’t really believe it, but it’s a funny idea, isn’t it? They read a wonderful short story about it years ago on Radio 4 (and, yes, I had to make a note of it on the wall of my bathroom).

5. I go to the loo twice before a theatre performance: the first time about fifteen minutes before the show and the second time as they announce, “Tonight’s performance of X will commence in three minutes.” (Yeah, right, when was the last time, a show started on time?) I know it’s crazy, and it’s annoying for anyone who’s there with me, but I can’t help it. I used to go only once, right at the last minute, but one night someone suggested we go at a time that was too early for me so I had to go again and that was it! A new weird habit!

Nothing to write home about, is it? I don’t think it’s worth calling the men in white coats yet, do you?

The rules of the game dictate that I have to tag five other bloggers, so here are my 'victims':

Jonna of Hrmph
Laura of Laurelines (she might draw her quirks - that would be nice, wouldn't it?)
Mireille of C'est Chic
Red-Queen of She'll be feverish after so much thinking
and Surly Girl of D-Flat Chime Bar

Ooooh, I can't wait to see how weird they are.

A typical British shambles

The London Book Fair used to be one of the highlights of the year for me. For 19 years it was held at Olympia, which was great because it's only 20 minutes’ walk from where I live. It was so convenient; it couldn’t possibly last. This year LBF was held at ExCel, in the ‘exciting Docklands area of London’, as a booklet about it states. Try and look for it on a map of London. Go on, try! You won’t find it. It’s off the map. It’s miles away from anywhere – over there, towards the east.

We could have taken the tube and then the Docklands Light Railway, but we drove there (my idea, I’m afraid). It took two hours. Two whole hours! Another 30 minutes and we could have gone to see a play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. After driving through some of the least attractive parts of London (I always expect to see Jack the Ripper in Commercial Street: it’s so creepy around there), and past the stupidest building on the face of the Earth – the Millennium Dome, we finally arrived within sight of ExCel. There were no parking spaces available at the centre itself (why is the car park outdoors, by the way?) so we were obliged to leave the car in a distant car park, more like a field really, so far away that we had to take a shuttle bus to get to ExCel. Hadn’t the whole point of driving been to avoid using public transport?

The bus was full of raucous, half-naked Essex girls with orange perma tan, ugly French manicure and cheap jewellery: it was quite obvious they weren’t going to a book fair. It soon became clear that LBF was held at the same time as another show – devoted to Beauty. The centre itself was as congenial and cosy as an airport or a railway station. There were enormous queues at all the food outlets so no water, no snack, no nothing. We were also told – wrongly – there were no toilets inside the exhibition hall so we queued for the loos with millions of other women (there was a beauty show, remember). In the end we used the men’s ones, which were empty, otherwise we would still be queuing right now.

Once inside the hall, because the stand numbering was absolutely preposterous, we spent ages trying to find the one belonging to the publishing house my partner (and occasionally I) work for. It was hiding behind the HarperCollins stand (which was about twenty times the size of my flat), behind a massive wall bearing a huge poster of Sean Bean as Sharpe. Not really a prime position. Hardly anyone walked by in that narrow aisle. You could just about hear the hubbub of voices over there, beyond the shadow of HarperCollins.

Luckily the fair itself was great. Books everywhere – from lots of countries. Some nicer and better produced than others. I got given lots of sweets and chocolates. One piece of advice: if you have a stand at a book fair, do not offer crisps to visitors or exhibitors with badges: they will think you’re mean. Blech! Had I been invited to one of the parties that suddenly sprouted all over the place, around 5pm, I could have drunk champagne too. But I didn’t care: I collected (“May I have one of these?” “Help yourself!”) nine ball point pens, seven diaries, two adorable little Google magnets that light up when you twist a small button at the back, two letter openers, a biro masquerading as a red quill, two lanyards (which, I’m sure, will be useful for something), a copy of The New York Review of Books and several catalogues, of course. Oh, and I talked to Stephen Fry for about 30 seconds. He is even bigger than I thought he was. Very nice too.

The fair was supposed to go on until 6.30pm this year, but by 5.30 most people started packing their stuff and closing their stand. We still had to take the shuttle bus to be reunited with the car. By then it was dark and very cold. It took 25 minutes for the stupid bus to get out of the ExCel car park because everyone else was trying to drive away as well. The bus was full of the same women as before, this time laden with gigantic boxes, presumably containing exercise equipment or other useful apparatus like foot spas. For some reason, we were dropped several miles from where the car was parked and, since there was no lighting and we couldn’t see it, we thought for a moment it had been stolen, which could very well have happened since the field was unattended.

We’ve never been so happy to get back to Shepherds Bush.

LBF ended yesterday. Since Sunday we’ve heard that taking the Docklands Light Railway wasn’t a good idea either: apparently the queues to get on at the end of the day were horrendous.

I’m slapping the organisers (they do not even deserve that name) of the London Book Fair. Everyone’s contracted to go to ExCel for five years. As I said, LBF used to be fun. Slap!

Update: I thought the above was the result of teething troubles, but I've just learned that ExCel opened in 2000! Six years! I would have thought that was long enough to sort out proper car parks, catering, toilet facilities, etc. Obviously not.

Quiet, please!

I went to the cinema on Thursday. Yay! I’ve said before how much I love films and why I stopped going to the cinema when I moved to London – mostly because smoking was still allowed and because eating and drinking was becoming more common, and I couldn’t stand it (also because, when you go to the theatre three nights a week, you don’t have much time left for other things).

I used to live very very close to Portobello Road and I did go to the Electric (the oldest cinema in London) a few times, back in the early ’80s, before it closed down, then reopened briefly as a theatre, then closed down again, then reopened again as an über- trendy cinema and café/restaurant, where the Notting Hill Set (i.e. people who moved to the area after 1995, after that film came out) like to be seen. At the time, the Electric was a big barn of a place, with a Wurlitzer that would come up before the performance, and a kind of indoor kiosk where you could buy a hamburger and chips to munch through the film. The smell of food and cigarette was rather disturbing, but less so than crunchy popcorn, and the Electric was convenient and it showed good stuff. You could sit through great long double bills for very little money. I remember getting an awful migraine after watching The Day of the Triffids followed by several hours of 1900, during my Donald Sutherland phase. It was eccentric and fun. Much more than the awful Odeons and Empires in Leicester Square. I was very sad when it closed down. And by the time it reopened I had already left the area.

Here in Shepherds Bush we were deprived of cinemas for a very long time, until three years ago, I think, a beautiful cinema opened in our local shopping precinct. I went the first week it opened and promised myself to go regularly, but, guess what!, I haven’t. I can count on the fingers of one hand the films I’ve been to see there. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know.

But on Thursday my partner and I saw Goodnight, And Good Luck, at 5pm – while people were still at work (ah, the life of a freelancer!). We had a 2-for-1 voucher (which helped a lot with the decision to get off our butts and actually go there) and we managed to get our favourite seats: the ones in the back row that face the aisle, i.e. with an unobstructed view of the screen. Hooray! Except that, apart from us, there were only four other people in the entire auditorium, which meant we could have sat anywhere.

Just before the start of the performance, a young couple turned up and stumbled over our feet to get past and sit at one end of the back row. Ok. But then they talked loudly all through the trailers. Fine. Surely they would keep quiet as soon as the big film started. Not a chance. They carried on talking until we shouted at them to please shut up. Luckily, they were silent from then on, but ten minutes from the end of the film they stumbled over our feet again and went out. Did the woman have a crush on George Clooney and was she disappointed that it wasn’t a romance? They left separately – did they have an argument halfway through? Or was it too difficult for them to keep quiet for another ten minutes?

I’m slapping them for spoiling the first fifteen minutes of that wonderful, stylish and thought-provoking film, and everyone else who thinks they are in their living room when they go to the cinema. Stay in and watch DVDs, please!

Guest Slapper of the Month II

Last month I wrote that this slot would be by invitation only unless I was really scared of someone, in which case that person would automatically be next. Well, Lulu has scared me a lot over the past few weeks, so when she said she had a bone to pick with someone I said, “Be my guest!”

You all know Lulu: she’s a helpful little thing. But she’s not a happy bunny today.

No one stays the same


There was someone I used to have a crush on. Let’s call her A.M.

I first met A.M. around 11 years ago. At the time I didn’t have that much experience with that type; I had been much more familiar with more conformist bosses. But A.M. was just soooo cool. I met her at work, as soon as I started a new job, and it was clear from the start that liking her put me in a small but select club - running against the pack, as it were. It’s hard to resist being invited to be included in the hip group, the in-crowd, especially when it never happened to you at school or college. By being around A.M., I was suddenly among designers, photographers, musicians - creative, enthusiastic, positive, exciting, inspirational people.

A.M. was difficult and demanding, quirky, perfectionist and occasionally irritating; sometimes it seemed she was being bl**dy awkward just for the sake of it. You had to work hard at understanding her; she didn’t make it easy for anyone. She had a great sense of humour that was clearly a direct line from the people who made her - a set of in-jokes that you had to learn to get.

A.M. was what by anyone’s standards you would call a colourful person. A rainbow of vibrancy. She had phases of colour - in a largely beige and black working world she would turn up every day in turquoise, raspberry pink, bright green, then she went for rich jewel colours like burgundy red and dark blue and emerald. They always suited her. Appearance mattered to her, style was vital, but she backed it up with substance too. I never knew her put a foot wrong at work. Whatever I wanted to achieve, she always saw a way to help me do it. She made me feel anything was possible and that she was there to make the journey that tiny bit pleasanter. Individuality was her watchword - I don’t think she ever made any of her decisions with the intention of pleasing anyone.

So why am I slapping? Well, in the past couple of years A.M. has changed. It started when she ditched the colours and started dressing in black and white only, in a self-consciously ‘stylish’ way instead of the sheer fun of before. I think what also happened was that she began to get really interested in making money - she had one really successful work idea and the universal acclaim and financial rewards went to her head. Then she started trying to please everyone. She deliberately hid her subtleties, her complexities, and she started copying other people. She dumbed herself down, basically. And then she got insecure and started devising ways to keep the new people loyal to her by trickery, with information they couldn’t use elsewhere, where before she relied on her brilliance alone to hook people. And now she keeps changing every few months, so you just get invested in one of her new ideas or projects and the next one will be introduced, at such a rate that you are continually having to spend more time and money on keeping up with her latest fad. Instead of helping with the work, it becomes work just keeping up with her changes of mood. The loyalty of her original supporters goes unrewarded; I feel betrayed, as if she’s only interested in new young conquests.

Another role model bites the dust.

If it carries on like this, I might even have to abandon my beloved Apple Mac (aka A.M.) after 11 years and (horror) change to Windows.