Category
Childhood
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10.20.03All things of varying intellect and varying aesthetic valueDuring an IM conversation with my lovely sister today, we somehow ended up talking about childhood hymns. Oh no, wait, now I remember. I said "hello" and she was away from the computer, and then I shut the window and wandered off and when I got back it was to an IM from her saying "hello?" which I thought was an opening, except she of course was responding to my opening and...well, a lot of greetings ensued, concluding with me saying "Good MORning Mr ROBertson" which is what we used to have to say - well, chant - in primary school ...
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05.16.03FactI've never had Kentucky Fried Chicken. Actuallly, I've never had any fast food fried chicken, even though London is peppered with red-and-white liveried rip-off outlets - Tenessee Fried Chicken, Cottage Fried Chicken, Kansas Fried Chicken, you know the kind of thing.This possibly all stems from an occasion when I was about seven, and asked my mum if we could have a bucket of fried chicken for tea one night, and she referred to it as Kentucky Fried Rat. While I'm not casting doubt on the provenance of the meat in the aforementioned restaurants, I haven't quite managed to shake the ...
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03.24.03In the chairComputerised Female Voice: Hello Meg. Meg: Hello. CFV: Please choose your first category. Meg: [leans forward to touch screen] Faith & Fortune CFV: Please choose a number on the screen. Meg: Number eight CFV: If you came back as a ghost, who would you torment? Meg: Anyone who had rejoiced at my death. That'd piss them off. Number seventeen. CFV: Do games of chance appeal to you? Meg: No. Well, yes, but I try to steer well clear, in case I get too tempted. CFV: Thank you. Please choose your next category. Meg: [leans forward to touch screen] Sweet and Bitter, please. CFV: Please choose a number on the screen. Meg: Number two. CFV: ...
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03.20.03Living in FearIn 1980 and 1981, the GLC (Greater London Council, headed by Ken Livingston, now London's Mayor) put up posters all over the city. They gave them out to schools and churches and mosques, pasted them outside tube stations and near museums and shopping centres. The posters depicted a simplified map of greater London, with blue lines drawn to demonstrate which areas were at greatest risk from flooding, should the Thames ever spill its banks. The map showed clearly which areas would remain safe - the high ground of Notting and Muswell Hills and Hampstead, for example - and which would ...
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03.14.03DaquaWeekends 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 ...
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03.12.03BirthdayWhen 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 ...
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03.03.03Gu-dun Gu-dohThe 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 ...
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02.15.03Deely BoppersThe brazilian bikini wax shop (that's what they do, not where they come from) next to the deli where I go for lunch has got a strangely wilting valentine flower arrangement in the window - a cluster of miserable and tired-looking roses and greenery, interspersed with glitter-covered hearts on sticks, poking out of the foliage, like antennae. When I was eight I had a pair of heart-shaped deeley boppers, covered in red glitter and attached to a head-squeezingly tight alice-band. I wore them everywhere, for a short time. I quickly realised that when I walked with a certain lolloping, bouncing gait, ...
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02.05.03On HairAt the risk of sounding like a girl (but that's ok; I am), I'm having an exceptionally good hair day today. It's clean, shiny, and it's doing what it's supposed to, for a change, which can be basically surmised as "sit on my head and look fabulous".My hair is weird. Dark dark dark brown, dead straight and smooth and fine, and pretty long (to the middle of my back) but pretty much never worn loose (it gets in my way and annoys me), I've been growing if for ages, but I can't remember why.When I was younger, I always wanted ...
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01.01.03Blow the WindHow do you take a picture of wind? I wandered about with my camera today, watching leaves waltz down the street and cower in doorways, seeing rooftop aerials wobble and bounce precariously and shop awnings billow and swell like sails. But it's all about the movement - no static shot would have captured the buffetting bluster and blow, just as you couldn't capture the raw energy and movement of the wind in a jar held aloft. My mum's parents lived in a house next to a wild heathland golf course on a hill on the edge of Port Erin on ...
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