meish dot org: life, unfolding

Train mayhem again this morning, and a bitter blustery wind which managed to consistently find its way down the back of my coat with worrying ease.

When we move house, I will never have to stand on that platform again: this is what I keep telling myself. It’s a good mantra.

I wasn’t ready for this morning, when it came. I bumbled through the weekend dopily and fell into a heavy sleep last night – my bed too comfortable, hot water bottle too comforting. We ignored the alarm and as a result had to rush. I hate that, but I love the lie in.

I seem to be surrounded – physically, virtually – by people whinging. Why don’t they change things, if they’re not happy?

Found this picture of my old college, from the air, while surfing idly last night. That used to be me in one of those kayaks on the seafront.

The ten year reunion is coming up in June this year, and I don’t think I’m going to go. There are many reasons for and against – notably for is that I’d love to go back to Canada to visit, and that this reunion is something that I’ve been expecting for twelve years. But on the con side…it’ll be expensive, it’s at a bad time business wise, I’m not sure it would be an overwhelmingly positive experience (Too many people seeking cathartic closure? Expunging issues that should have remained closed and quiet?), it’s a long expensive way to go for something I’m not sure would be that enjoyable, and I want to save all the holiday and money I have at the moment, because there are other priorities.

Croissant crumbs everywhere, and I miss my bed.

I’ve just discovered that it’s impossible to buy a single box of tissues when Boots have a two for one offer on.

A rough transcription of my conversation with the shop assistant:

[Meg picks up a box of ultrasoft tissues and takes them to the cash register]

Cashier: [scanning the box] Oh, these are two for one, you know.

Meg: Really? Well, that’s ok, I don’t want the other box.

Cashier: [incredulous] But it’s free

Meg: Yes, I know. But I don’t need it. I’m hoping my cold will have gone by tomorrow.

Cashier: But the second one is free. You don’t have to pay for it.

Meg: Yes, I know. But I only need one. I don’t want the other one.

Cashier: They’re over there. Just go and get another one.

Meg: Honestly, I don’t want another one. I can only fit one in my bag. I just want one box.

Cashier: I’ll get someone to get one for you [pressing service button]

Meg: No…really…that’s not necessary…

Cashier: [to assistant] Could you get this lady another box of ultrasoft tissues? They’re on two for one special offer

Meg: But I…

Cashier: [getting the new box of tissues, and scanning it] There we go. See? It’s free? That’s one pound thirty five, please.

Meg: [handing over cash] *Sigh*

It reminds me of getting pizza at college in Canada. The local (well, 20 miles away) pizza place was called Romeos. They did the most exceptional pizza, but they always had a two for one offer on. You couldn’t physically order one pizza. Even if you called up and gave them the details for one pizza and then hung up really quickly, they would still roll up forty minutes later with the one you actually wanted, and an identical twin pizza.

No! I only need one! Don’t you see? It’s cheaper for you if I only get one!

It got really difficult after a while, because we didn’t really have any spare cash, couldn’t really bear to throw away the unwanted spare, and since we didn’t have anywhere hygienic to save cold pizza till the morning, except under the bed, we couldn’t do that either. This meant that even if only two people wanted pizza, they would have to wander around the campus and try to find a couple of others who fancied a snack too, to split the order.

A whole thirteen bucks.

Eleven years ago (eek!), I went to an international college in Canada, with two hundred students from eighty-seven different countries in attendence. I represented the UK, which was an oddity for someone who had never identified herself as being especially British before.

I was born abroad and brought up in Nigeria and in the heady racial and cultural mixing bowl of Notting Hill in the seventies and eighties. My family travelled often, and picked up bits of the cultures we encountered along the way. As a seven year old I could jabber away happily with snippets and words in seven or eight languages (wheras now I struggle with just a couple). I was (and still am) just me, not defined by my language or passport or nationality – at least not from within.

And so it came as a shock to represent a country I didn’t necessarily agree or identify with – politically, culturally, linguistically, historically – in front of the world. I’m not going to go into the whole nationality thing here, though there’s a lot to say about it, except to point out that for a lot of formal functions (special events, performances, concerts, fundraisers etc) all the students at the college were expected to wear national dress, to represent the rich cultural diversity of the institution.

Let’s just stop and think a minute, shall we. What exactly was I supposed to wear? Jeans? A Beefeater outfit? A Bowler hat? Morris Dancing costume? Er, none of the above. I had no costume.

So of course I improvised. In my first year I wore a sari a few times, then graduated on to a Kazakh waistcoat and hat and black polo neck (I was reading a lot of Satre at the time). At verious choir performances and fundraisers I was Polish, Basque, Pakistani, Texan, Norwegian. Often, after the performance, we met with the audience – and frequently, I simply could not be arsed to explain
a) that I was English (the person I would talking to would invariably say “Oh, do you know John Brown, from London?” which would force me to get evil and say “oh yes…terrible about the divorce, wasn’t it?” and watch their faces fall in horror…but that’s a different story) and
b) why I was dressed up in the Thai national costume. So I began to act. Well, okay, lie. If I thought I could get away with pretending to be from another country, then I would (of course, the irony that I actually was from another country was completely lost on me). So I would put on outrageous accents and swear blind that I was from Portugal, Italy, Iceland, Paraguay.

It was Paraguay that got me into trouble.

[I've always wanted to say that. Makes me feel like a spy.]

We were singing for some charity event at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. I was wearing the Paraguayan costume that I’d borrowed from a girl on my floor, and afterward, milling around with the audience and a cup of lukewarm tea, an old man came up and said “Hello, where are you from?”

I summoned my best outrageous accent and said “I yam frrrrom Parawaaay”

“De veras?” he asked “No me diga! Que raro! Trabajaba en Paraguay por unos trece años. De que parte eres?“

Gah. My face fell. I had found a flaw in my plan. The fact that I didn’t speak any spanish at all (apart from a few choice phrases) and understood even less. Like, in fact, none. At all. Eek. So I mumbled something about the coach leaving, and ran for the door, resolving next time to stick to my own nationality, whatever that nebulous item was.

Sure enough, ten months later, I managed to be British at another fundraiser. It was two years before the Commonwealth games were due to come to Victoria, and the international choir was again singing at some press junket fundraiser thing, providing local commonwealth-flavoured colour to what was essentially a royal visit by Prince Edward, patron of the Commonwealth games committee or something. The point being that we got on stage, sang a bit about world peace and jolly old international group hugs or something, and then afterwards, suddenly, instead of milling around with lukewarm tea and rapidly cooling enthusiasm with the audience, I was dragged into a line-up (a shaking-hands-with-royalty type one, not a police identification one – that’s another story…) to meet Prince Edward.

I was wearing a particularly horrible floral Laura Ashley type creation which I’d borrowed from a Canadian, and which made me look like a strangely camp american football player (I’d shaved most of my head in Mexico, a few weeks earlier, and the dress had enormous shoulderpads). I think it was supposed to look country-garden-ish, but it actually reminded me more of the sort of product pattern that would emerge if you gave Ermintrude a rather powerful emetic. I was also wearing stupid heels, which made me at least six foot tall. So picture a tall butch amazon in heels and a pool of floral vom, and you’ve pretty much got the picture.

Anyway, Prince Edward was working his way along the line-up, greeting people and exchanging a few words with them as he went. I always imagined (because I gave it soooo much thought) that royalty had a standard two or three lines which they used in rotation along the line-up, so it looked as if they were having new and original thoughts and covnersations the whole time, in much the same way as I used to play three songs when busking on Portobello Road – two songs was the optimum passing time for people who were walking slowly and browsing at the stalls, and three meant I avoided repetition, bumped out the set and didn’t have to bother expanding my repetoire. Besides, people only ever gave money for the Beatles or the Smiths anyway.

Edward got closer. I don’t care much for royalty, but that wasn’t the issue in this particular situation. My palms would have been equally sweaty if I’d been meeting my boyfriend’s parents, or an MP, or whatever. I’m prone to momentary gasps of nervousness just before I meet someone – even if it’s someone I already know, but haven’t seen for a while. I get a huge adreneline rush, my heart hammers in my chest, and I get a bit shaky – but it all passes within seconds, usually. As soon as I open my mouth, I relax and it’s all fine – I’m in my element taking control of strange situations, talking to people, making things work. As soon as the waiting is over, I’m fine, which is why I so detest people saying they’ll come over or call some time on saturday afternoon. I hate waiting, because it means that sense of anticipation, expectation, goes on far too long.

And now I’m making you wait for this story. Oops, sorry.

So eventually, Edward gets to me, and his Aide says “This is Meg Pickard, she’s a student at Pearson College. She’s the British one.” which is a funny old introduction, if you ask me – but he didn’t. So I stick out my hand, and then remember and do a little curtsey, though I feel like a complete and utter tube. He opens his mouth to say what I imagine is going to be the usual little bon mots or simple question, and then he says

“So, have you ever met royalty before?”

“No,” I reply, honestly, “this is my first time.”

“Ah,” he says, in his weird strangulated-plum accent, “what do you think of it so far?”

My brain goes into hyperactive WHAAAT THE FUUUUUCK mode. What kind of a dumbass question is that? What? Is there any kind of protocol for answering such a question, I wonder, and as I’m wondering, trying to formulate my response, I hear the words just sort of slip out.

“Well, you’re shorter than I thought,” I say, because he is, “and you’ve got less hair,” which he most certainly does.

All that’s going through my head at this point is that he’s a short, balding plummy little man, and I just insulted him and I really didn’t mean it, well, I did, but I didn’t mean it to come out like that and now I’m wondering whether they’re ever going to bring back hanging as a punishment for treason and/or insulting the royals.

He sort of snorts with laughter, and I wonder if he’s even heard me, and then he sort of raises one hand to smooth the back of his hair and says “Yes, I suppose I am…” at which point the aide grabs him by the elbow and firmly guides him to meet the old lady next to me, who is the chair of some committee or other, wearing an awful lot of cat-wee flavour perfume, and was fishing her knickers out of her crack three minutes earlier. She, of course, follows protocol to the letter, giving me a snooty glance as Eddie moves on to the next guest. She bloody would, because he didn’t ask her any unexpected questions, oh no. He asks her the equivalent of the busker’s Panic – safe, secure, everyone can sing along, no threat whatsoever – he asks her something about the weather, in other words, and she answers smugly. Silly cow.

So there we have it. My first and only brush with royalty, and I called him short and bald within the space of about thirty seconds. Bring on the queen mum, I say, I’ll bloody well ‘ave ‘er!

My brother gave Princess Di some lilies in his underpants, once, but that’s a different story entirely…..

I once travelled by Amtrack from San Francisco to Seattle, just after new year. The journey took forever, and we got delayed in southern Oregon because of snow, so my reading matter quickly ran out and I became bored and frustrated. I retreated to the viewing car to watch Pretty Woman for the eighteenth time (they had it on a loop) and stare out at the rolling landscape.

A guy asked if I could do him a favour. I said sure. He asked if I could draw something onto his jeans, which seemed like a completely normal request, given that I was 17, impressionable and had just had a fairly eventful and trippy month in California. Sure, I said. Anything in particular?

He introduced himself. His name was Eric Pfeiffer, like the numbers, he told me, five-four, which I thought was strange – not like the famous actress, I asked? He just laughed. He was 19, on his way home to Vancouver, Washington, where he was at the local college. He was a part-time firefighter, and had just had a tattoo on his left shoulderblade. Could I copy it onto his jeans for him? Sure, I replied. No problem – though I’m not an artist, I warned. Fine.

He gave me a biro and hoiked his shirt up, and I started to draw.

There’s something quite weird about drawing on denim, especially when it’s wrapped around warm flesh. The ink heats up easily, and the surface takes to the design readily. The design was an aztec sun motif, outlined in black and filled in orange and red tones on warm tanned skin. Eric was about 5’11″ and skinny, with sandy brown hair, grown too long, so it got in his kind green eyes. As I drew on his leg, constantly checking between shoulder and thigh, he told me about his studies, his family, all sorts of random things. He talked about himself, and I listened and concentrated, but said little. I didn’t talk about myself.

Time passed. I drew in heavy biro on his warm thigh. We talked. Sooner than we expected, his station came up. I walked him to the train door and watched him disembark, a new drawing on his legs.

I didn’t think about him again until six or seven weeks later, when a card arrived addressed to Meg, Pearson College, BC, Canada. I’d been wearing a college sweatshirt that day, and he must have remembered.

Inside the thick envelope was a card showing a school of dolphins from above, surfacing through crystal water. His schoolboy scrawl read “To Meg;- because some things in life are too beautiful to ever forget. Eric.”

There was no return address. He did not require a response, and I couldn’t give one even if I tried. This was a random act of randomness. I never heard from him again, but I still have the card…why? To remind me that random things happen, random brief encounters can occur, and they don’t have to be complicated. They can be good, and fleeting, and simple, and just be.

Words I never thought I’d hear myself say:

1. I miss going to the gym. I learnt so much there.

[I used to think it was the perfect place to study - all the way through college and uni and my MA, I would head over most evenings at about eightish, prop up my book (Nietsche, Kant, Sexual Objectivism in Anthropology, 500 Spanish Verbs - books so dull that I simply couldn't bring myself to read at any other time, because there would always be something better, more interesting, more active to do) on the handlebars of the stationary bike, and ride twenty miles while reading about man and superman or radical changing verbs.

Later, I progressed onto paying people (undergrads, gullible freshers) to record themselves reading chapters of the same books, or chuntering away in Spanish, to which I could then listen while doing bench-presses or whatever...

And then I discovered the joy of running through a forest, and was spoilt forever. Springy floor, soft blanket of pine needles and earth, clear path through the trees, sound of leaves falling or rain in the treetops, high above. Running on a Rotex was never the same. And as for city streets....

The same is true of cycling - backwoods trails or gentle pottering along country roads has spoiled me for city riding, and certainly made me tire of the stationary bike. Who wants to ride nowhere, working up a sweat, watching your world stay stagnant, ending up where you started? Not me.

Swimming, too has been spoilt. The Holmes Place pool is too chlorinated and stings my eyes - and the relentless ploughing up and down of serious swimmers desperate to get in forty laps before their two o'clock meeting is offputting. I've been spoilt forever by wading out into the surprisingly warm waters of Port Ban or Market Bay at sunset, spreading the clear water with my arms, shimmering the incandescent sunset into the ripples, or completing long lazy laps of the crystal blue bay in Sifnos as the Greek sun beats down. No pool can possibly compare.

What I learnt in the gym was not how to correctly conjugate caer or the difference between a posteriori and a priori knowledge. I learnt to think of my body in terms of function rather than form. I was explaining this to someone last night (he called me a wise owl because of that, and so he gets extra brownie points) - that it's about physical potential and power in the raw sense. Can you run for the bus? Can you fix things? Can you communicate? Can you use your body to live, laugh, love to the full? That's what's important to me. More important that BMI or callipers or whatnot, more important than doctors' charts or arbitrary numbers. Potential, not perfection.

I could get fit again. I just need the right environment the right context, the right lifestyle. Trust me, the life of the passionate noomeejahoor is not compatible with jogging around Hampstead Heath at dawn. Unfortunately.]

[and if you believe that, I've got a bridge you might be interested in purchasing]

I’ve found a foolproof way to make long-lost friends come out of the woodwork.

1. Get a website
2. Develop and hone it over five or six years
3. Assume no-one is visiting
4. Assume some people are visiting but none of them know you
5. Idly mention one afternoon that you’ve never had a nickname
6. Watch the replies to the contrary flood in from people you haven’t heard from for a decade.

After this morning’s “Norris” reminder from the distant mists of time, MJ has shown up from the dark recesses of amnesia lane (and college in canada, ten years ago) to remind me that I did in fact have a nickname back then, though only one person ever called me it.

A bit of back story::

<wibbly lines>

September 1990, West Coast of Canada. I’m sitting in a music room with a new friend, Martin, who is playing the Cello. Brilliantly, I might add. I’ve just arrived at college, and I’m gradually doing that whole getting-to-know-people thing; identifying like-minded characters and talking about nonsense. You know the drill.

Martin’s from Edmonton (though we called it Fishpaste, for some weird reason – and anyone who can guess the genesis of calling something fishpaste instead of its real name earns my undying adoration. Really.) and is Czech-Canadian. I’m leafing through his wallet and I find his driver’s license – it says Martin G H*****. So I ask him what the G stands for…and he says I have to guess.

OK, I say. Gianni. Graham. Geoff. George.

Bingo, he says, only you don’t pronounce it like that. Excuse me for being dumb, I say, but how else can you pronounce George? Easy, he says, and then does this weird central/eastern European thing with his mouth that makes the word “George” sound a whole lot like “Yirrrthri”. So after a few goes, we quickly realised that I was never going to get my tongue around that (ooh, matron) and the best approximation I could summon was “Yitti”. So Yitti he became, as far as I was concerned, and I, eventually, became Yittette.

No-one else used it, though, and I haven’t been called that in years. </wibbly lines>

Thank you, MJ, for reminding me. It’s funny what you forget.

Used to go to Pagliacci’s in Victoria, BC, all the time when I was studying over there. Used to love the anticipation, queuing down the block – there was always a big line-up. Used to enjoy getting there early enough to get a good seat for the jazz later, sitting elbow to elbow with complete strangers, gorging myself on Caesar Salad, Manhattan Transfer with real walnuts and real New York Cheesecake, so good it made everyone shut up when savouring it, so rich I might as well have rubbed it directly on my thighs. Used to love trying to get served beer (and usually failing), and settling instead for frothy cappuccino with soy milk, before I even knew what soy milk really was. Used to enjoy the repleteness of an enormous dinner, more filling and satisfying than anything the college cafeteria could ever have dreamed up, the company of friends (or not) in the city, the guilty pleasure of a meal we couldn’t afford, the slow wander back to the bus to take us back out to the boonies.

What I wouldn’t give to be there now.

Life As It Happens gets a crash course in Khmer for his upcoming trip to Cambodia:

I did not eat that last sweet!:
K’nyom ot nyam groa-up skor jong graoee dtay!

My, you have a gorgeous bum:
Nayuk mee-an goot la-or nah!

…and other similarly useful phrases.

When I first got to college in canada, I was really keen to learn Spanish. Because it was an internetional* college, there were a lot of Latinos, and I wanted to be able to greet them properly. So I quickly enlisted the help of a Costa Rican guy in my student residence to help me go over the basics. He coached me well in a few key phrases, that I went to great pains to memorise, although my knowledge of grammar, pronounciation and vocabulary was at that point non-existent. I asked him how to say “Hello, how are you?” and he told me to say “Besame salvajamente” …which, though I didn’t realise it at the time, means “kiss me savagely”. Hmm.

So, oblivious, and wondering why I was getting weird looks from the latino students I was greeting, I asked him to help me with something a bit more advanced. I wanted to say “I’m pleased to meet you, I’m from England, where are you from?” He explained that in spanish, “me” means me and “tu” means you, so therefore I should say “Me cago en tu vida, tus amigos, tu familia y todo que es tuyo” which, roughly translated actually means “I shit on your life, your friends, your family and everything that belongs to you.”

Wow. Forget minidiscs, the walkman and dvd. Japan votes instant noodles their best invention, closely followed by karaoke.

When I was at college in Canada, we lived on Sapporo Ichiban Ramen noodles, made in a very weird way, because the only cooking appliance in the student residence was a kettle. Guaranteed to cause heartburn and indigestion, induce MSG-related wheezing and lethargy, and bring the consumer out in a rash of eczema and long-forgotten memories, here’s the recipe:

1. Boil kettle.
2. Place noodles in one solid block in a noodle bowl (preferably unwashed and fished out from under the bed), being careful not to rip the packaging.
3. Save the packaging.
4. Add soup mix to top of noodles.
5. Add 1-2 tsp red hot chilli flakes to top of noodles.
6. Pour boiling water over noodles.
7. Put packaging on top of noodles, covering the rim of the bowl. secure with chopsticks.
8. Wait three minutes.
9. Remove packaging and stir with chopsticks.
10. Add chilli sauce to taste.
11. Consume cross-legged on the bed, at three AM, with friends, weeping at the strength of the chilli, but thankful that you can’t taste the “soup” “flavouring”
12. Put empty bowl and chopsticks under the bed.

If you went to college, what did you live on? Anything similar? A flatmate from my time at Liverpool lived for an entire year on nothing but Pasta’n'Sauce. I kid you not. But I’m a fine one to talk: while I was doing my MA, I went through a jar of Pesto a week. Actually, I still do, pretty much.

Ten years ago, I was in a band with my best mate M called Ceteceous Vibrations. Well, not so much a band as a comedy routine for no-talent shows and comedy open-mics on the west coast of Canada, to be honest. We’d start out quite normally, playing guitars and singing. And then halfway through the tune, for the bridge, we’d burst into a whale solo, a poor imitation of whale clicks and moans and calls. What can I say? It got a laugh at the time. Canadians are clearly easier to amuse than hard-nosed blog readers.