meish dot org: life, unfolding

Weekends start well with fiery Salata Daqua and chili dressing at Mandola in Notting Hill.

And although this will mean very little to anyone, the first 7-11 in London, where they did coke and fanta flavour slurpees which Jane and I used to get on the way to go skating at Queen’s on Saturdays, and which turned into a b2b in recent years, has now been shut completely and is a showroom for a bunch of luxury flats which are being built on the adjacent block.

Because London needs another luxury apartment development. Pretty soon, we’ll all be living in the lap of luxury, but we’ll have to drive out to Staines to work and Reading to get a pint of milk, because everything else in the city will have been converted into swanky pads.

And they knocked down Sweaty Betty too.

….If your landlord’s daughter lived in the flat upstairs, and for some reason insisted on playing incredibly loud thumpy music all night on her new stereo which just happened to be located square above your desk, where you were trying to concentrate, at what point, if any, would you think it was fitting to march upstairs and kindly request her to shut the fuck up, and how?

When I was born, the doctor wasn’t there. In the maternity ward, the air was thick with humidity and women hollering for relief. My mum, self-trained in National Childbirth Trust breathing techniques, from a book sent over by her mum, remained relatively quiet, panting through the pain.

The doctor came to check on her and, when she saw how little pain my mum was apparently in, concluded that there was ages left to go before I made my entry. The doctor went shopping. Twenty minutes later, I popped into the world, protesting loudly.

My mum always said I was born within earshot of lions roaring, which always seemed fitting. If you’re going to be born in Africa, where better? The truth is, the lions were safely contained within the zoological gardens nearby.

Over the years, I’ve spent birthdays variously:

• sledging on teatrays in the Isle of Man;
• raising money for Comic Relief by standing outside BBC television centre with an enormous birthday card;
• eating dinner on top of a mountain, with a view over the Olympic mountain range, while serenaded by an opera singer;
• Getting my nose pierced in Vancouver;
• waiting for flowers in a run down tenament in Muirhouse;
• eating pancakes in Liverpool;
• dancing Sevillanas under orange blossom;
• in a moutain hut in North Wales, while people raved all night;
• eating welsh rarebit in a cafe-cum-bike-repair-shop in Liverpool, run by that bloke who used to be in Brookie;
• Having a shiatsu massage in a hut overlooking the Amazon treetops;
• on a rooftop in Soho;
• at work, and then in the pub.

Today, on my birthday, I’m getting ready to go on a three hour train journey northwards, closely followed by a three-hour train journey southwards. Every year brings new adventures, experiences and surprises. Every year is different, and new.

The rules which do not apply to you include red lights, no smoking signs, one way streets and age limit instructions.

These rules do not apply to you becayse you are different. You see yourself as some sort of exceptional exception – different and perhaps slightly more important than the rest of us.

If there is a double seat with a window, and a double seat where the view is obscured by a wall, you and your big-haired husband are automatically entitled to the spot with the view – despite the fact that I’ve been sitting in it since four stops ago. And so you glare at me and mutter under your breath that I’m a bitch and I don’t deserve it. We’ve never even exchanged one word, let alone a conversation about who best deserves a view.

Or, when you get on in suit and tie, you immediately lean over my head and flip open the window, without asking if anyone would mind. Then, with chilled air pouring in down the back of my neck, you flop into your seat, oblivious. You haven’t even been in the train long enough to feel the ambient temperature.

Or you power through the red light, when all the traffic has stopped, because even though the light is red, it obviously doesn’t apply to you on your bike. You swear and shout at pedestrians crossing, who get in your way.

Or you get on and spy a seat for four occupied by one small old lady, and descend on it, crowding her out with your loud chatter and crowing about the view. She moves to the other side of the aisle, and herself crowds out a lone traveller, by spreading out her paper, her knitting, the contents of her handbag, taking over the space with her poor legs and stale fag-breath.

Every action has a reaction, which itself causes a reaction. The domino effect of “I’m alright; fuck you”. Because you are different. You are more important than the rest of us, then me, and you matter.

I’ve never seen so many thermoses. What’s the plural of thermos anyway?

What’s the name for the sensation when the back of your lower jaw prickles with taste and saliva, after you walk past someone eating vinegary chips from a bag? Or when you bring a salt and vinegar or pickled onion flavour crisp close to your mouth, but before it actually touches your tongue?

I’m currently siding with “anticipatory gush”, though it sounds awfully rude out of context.

The other day, I asked what this might be a detail from:

The answer? It’s a drum.

Specifically, a Yoruba Oba drum – a talking drum.

My parents brought it (and us) back from Nigeria in the late seventies, and throughout my childhood it lived in the front room, to be squeezed and tapped experimentally once in a while by small hands.

The point of a talking drum is to make noises which sound like words spoken in a tonal language – like Yoruba. The drum is played with a curved stick, while the drum is held under one arm and the drum is squeezed. The leather cords tighten, and the skin on either end of the drum is pulled taught, causing the tone to rise. It does sound eerily like talking, when played properly.

This drum has a past, though. This drum stopped me running away from home.

In the very early eighties, my mum, who was working as a journalist, had to go to Sri Lanka for over a month in the summer for a conference. My dad was busy as ever with work, so the family drafted in a distant cousin to help look after me, my brother and my sister during the summer holidays. Helga was from Switzerland, and had curly hair, which I liked, and a huge mustachioed boyfriend called Georg, which I didn’t.

In the finest fairy tale tradition, H & G were nice as pie when parental units were around, but wicked when they weren’t. Well, I say wicked…they were in London and in love, and not particularly interested in looking after three smallish children during a hot summer when they could have been rowing hired boats in Regents Park or checking out the buskers at Covent Garden.

One afternoon, after a screaming match with Helga (in which, to be fair, I did the majority of the screaming), I resolved to run away. That’d show her.

I packed a small backpack with clothes and books (always a priority) and left through the back door, down the ginnel, through the gate and out onto the road. I struck off in the direction of the shops around the corner. I turned right. I walked past the shops and then turned right again. I walked the whole way along the road and then turned right again. At the corner, I started to worry about the Oba drum. I didn’t want Helga to have it. I didn’t want to leave it behind, because it was precious and it belonged to our family, and I didn’t want Helga and her smelly boyfriend to touch it, steal it, have it.

I walked the length of the street, and turned right again, back onto our tree-lined street. I picked up speed, worried at the thought that H & G would have the drum. Ten houses later, I was home, sliding in through the back gate, up the ginnel and in through the kitchen door.

I hurried into the front room, where it smelled of warm dust from the carpet and overstuffed formal furniture, and wood polish, from the huge table in the middle of the room, never used (except for sliding along on our bottoms when we knew we wouldn’t be caught). By the fireplace stood the drum.

I hauled it up onto one shoulder. It was too heavy, big and awkward to carry along with my bag. I had to choose, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave without it, but I couldn’t take it with me.

So I stayed. I hid the drum behind an armchair, unpacked my bag, put the backpack back in the bottom of the airing cupboard, and stayed.

I’d managed to run away for all of fifteen minutes, never got further away than the other side of the block, and ended up back home because I was worried about the safety of a treasured family posession. Running away seemed like a good idea in theory – it was just a quetion of logistics – but not nearly so simple in practice – when emotions were involved. It seldom is.

Have you ever run away?