meish dot org: life, unfolding

My lovely little sister Anna spent much of September circumnavigating the lower United States by train. Being the brilliant, webby, writery person she is, she conceived an intriguing participatory project to help while away the miles as well as atomising the memories, jotting moments onto a hundred and fifty custom-made and decorated postcards which were flung around the world to friends and strangers who had signed up to be on the receiving end.

You can read more about the snailr project, here and the original idea, here.

I received my postcard last week, but entirely failed to capture it digitally until today. But it’s fun seeing the other postcards find their way onto the web – from mental, to analogue, to digital memories – so I finally got my act together and here it is…

Front:

It reads: This is the snailr project, crossing the border n.b. please to customise this card. and i love you.

Back:

It reads: #63 I remember our mum loving reading The Night Train to us as children. As a poem, it had precisely the same tempered metre of a slow, careful train. And she sounded it out just like that, coming down heavily on enough syllables to suggest clacking tracks. I now wonder what it would have been like if she’d had access to an American version of the same poem, reflecting the Amtrak policy of blowing the horn, constantly, all through the night. I like to think she would have brought a hawk to bedtime stories. Or a stuck pig.

She’s right – our mum did read Auden’s The Night Mail to us at bedtime. A wonderful, evocative out-loud poem – and one which becomes even more vivid at the thought of a train whistle piercing the rhythmic clacking, all night long.

My sister’s ace.

Today is the 9th anniversary of the very first UK blogmeet, which took place at the Lincoln Lounge in King’s Cross (mere metres from my office nowadays).

Back on Saturday June 11th 2000, a ragged band of early-era bloggers got together and spent a happy afternoon talking nonsense and taking solace in the fact that this weird blogging lark (which everyone else found so weird at the time) was considered completely normal and even interesting by the gathered gang.

Present on that day were:

Dan Hon
Adrian Hon
Tom Coates
Jen Bolton
Katy Lindemann
Giles Turnbull
Luke Martin
Johanna MacDonald
Dave Green (who I remember was wearing a particularly fine NTK jacket that day)
Stephen Reid
and me

And you know the best thing?

I’m still in touch with all the people above, and I count many of them among my closest friends. Plus most are still blogging in some shape or form. The itch never goes away.

We still meet up occasionally for drinks in various bits of the world, even after all this time. That’s the effect of blogging community. Long may it last!

It’s my lovely sister’s birthday today, and she’s far away. So please hop over to her site and wish her a happy birthday.

(I made her a silly card – my first experiment with stop-frame animation. Pretty chuffed with it though obviously Wallace & Gromit have nothing to fear)

A scene from this weekend’s family gathering near Arundel, West Sussex, in which your humble author is playing hide and seek with her beloved three and a half year old nephew, T.

Meg: …sixteen…seventeen…eighteen…nineteen…twenty! Coming, ready or not! [she springs up from the chair on which she has been sitting to count] …Now, where could he possibly be?

T: [somewhat muffled] I’m hiding in the cupboard, Auntie Meg!

It’s not for letting people know you’ve popped out for lunch, or are in a meeting. No. It’s for reliving David Bowie in frightwig and tights, as evidenced by this little interlude this morning. No conversation required – you don’t need to talk and you can get on with other things quite happily. Just let your status do the talking.

Because it’s all about status.

anna’s new status message – you remind me of the babe
Meg’s new status message – what babe?
anna’s new status message – the babe with the power
Meg’s new status message – what power?
anna’s new status message – the power of voodoo
Meg’s new status message – whodo?
anna’s new status message – you do!
Meg’s new status message – I do what?
anna’s new status message – remind me of the baiib!
Meg’s new status message – what babe?
anna’s new status message – the babe with the power
Meg’s new status message – what power?
anna’s new status message – the power of voodoo!
Meg’s new status message – whoodoo?
anna’s new status message – you do
Meg’s new status message – I do wha?
anna’s new status message – remind me of the babe
Meg’s new status message – WHAT babe? Dammit!
anna’s new status message – the babe with the power – seriously, this could go on all day
Meg’s new status message – But why does a babe need power? I don’t understand. What is it, glow in the dark?
anna’s new status message – not that kind of power
Meg’s new status message – Then what kind of power? Is this some esoteric inner-resilience and moral fortitude thing?
anna’s new status message – No! It is the power of ‘voodoo’!
Meg’s new status message – What is this voo doo you speak of? And whoo doo?
anna’s new status message – voo·doo (vÅ«’dÅ«) pronunciation. A religion practiced chiefly in Caribbean countries, especially Haiti, syncretized from Roman Catholic ritual elements and the animism and magic of slaves from West Africa, in which a supreme God rules a large pantheon of local and tutelary deities. Oh, and You Do.

Hoping we don’t see a Grease revival on Twitter anytime soon.

In 1989, I made a birthday card for the second red nose day, and ran around collecting signatures and money for it, with visions of being able to present the card live on air – you know, like they do with those big charity cheques.

(In this archive photo, above, you can see me aged 15 – I think Red Nose Day was actually on my birthday that year, which is why the birthday card seemed appropriate), my friend Melissa holding the card, and my sister Anna (who would have been 12), raising money by being sponsored to wear her uniform backwards for the day. As you do…)

After school, a couple of friends and I tramped down to BBC television centre in White City (about 5 minutes away from school) where we hung around the front gate, trying to blag our way in to the telethon/live show/star-studded extravaganza.

It didn’t work, and a chauffeur-driven car containing Rik Mayall nearly ran over my foot.

Eventually, we despondently sloped off home, and I had to persuade my mum to write a cheque for the charity, in exchange for a carrier bag jangling with pound coins and other loose change.

Happily, since then it’s become much easier to give money to Comic Relief – and this year, you can do it from the comfort of your keyboard, and get a funny book into the bargain.

Pop on over to shaggyblogstories.co.uk and order a special edition book, compiled of 100 funny bits by british bloggers including the great, the good and the gigglesome -people you’ve heard of, people whose blogs you read all the time (including, er, me) and people you haven’t yet met. Compiled in just a week, all profits after Lulu takes its cut go to Comic Relief.

Go on. Do it.

So yesterday, I took the train from Glasgow to Oban, up the West Highland line. I make this journey probably three or more times a year, and it really is one of the most stunning little journeys you can take – setting out from dreich and dingy Glasgow for three hours of snaking through mountains and along lochsides with perilous drops to the sides of the rails.

And it’s not a glamourous train – it’s a rather pedestrian diesel sprinter, with four carriages when it sets out from Glasgow, dividing in two at Crianlarich with the front half heading off to Tyndrum Lower, Loch Awe and onward to Oban, and the rear portion heading off across Rannoch Moor towards Fort William and Mallaig.

Every time I take that train, I want to get off – at Arrocher and Tarbert, Crianlarich, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and just wander off into the wilderness with my camera. But I don’t, because I’m always rushing to catch a ferry at the other end of the line. One day, though, maybe.

On the train, you can start to guess where people are headed. You can spot those who are stopping in Oban, and those who will be heading over to Mull and the islands. You start to guess who’ll be rushing with you to the ferry from the station, and who’ll be boarding the island bus on the other side. Who’s an islander, and who’s a visitor? Who belongs?

Belonging is a funny thing, and whenever I come up this way I’m reminded of it.

I don’t belong here, on Mull, though my mum lives here and has done for years. I’ve lived here myself, and worked several summer seasons on Mull and Iona, back in student days. I’ve been coming up twice a year or more for nearly 15 years. I recognise faces, and places, and customs and the patterns of weather. I’m comfortable here, and I even drive like a local, haring down single-track roads strewn with potholes, mud and sheep.

I’ve spent more time here than many of the more recent incomers, but I’m not a local, and they’ll never quite let me forget that. I think that’s got more to do with them asserting their sense of community identity than specifically trying to exclude anyone, to be honest, but it still smarts a bit.

But I’m not from here. I don’t belong here.

In Gaelic, the way to say you’re from somewhere carries a sense of belonging to a place – it’s more than just where you live, but it’s more than that.

The thing is, I’m not really from anywhere. I don’t really belong anywhere, specific.

I was born in Nigeria, of Geordie and Lancashire lineage, and grew up in central west London. Since 16, I’ve studied and lived in a bunch of places for long stints – Canada, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Aberdeen, Spain, Bolivia, Manchester, Derbyshire – and since 1998, I’ve been based in London again. But my family have kept on moving, too – Finchley, Luton, Harpenden, Birmingham, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Iona, the West Bank, Roehampton, Mull (and that’s just my parents) – so that I haven’t had a permanent home (you know, the family homestead, where all my stuff lives) since I was about 16 and left to live in Canada. I’m a product of all over the place, really. I belong wherever I am.

Where are you from? Where do you belong?

I have to share this very short movie of Pickle pretending to be stuffed. I have never seen her so still.


Statue Cat on Vimeo
(If the embedded player above doesn’t work, try here)

(and don’t look too hard at the mess in the background – we were in the middle of spring cleaning)

All my pets:

1. A rabbit, when we lived in Nigeria. Can’t remember what it was called, but I do remember this: we went on holiday once, and asked the neighbour to take care of it while we were away. When we got back, no rabbit. We asked the neighbour and he said “Yes, I took care of it, like you asked. Thank you, it was very tasty.”

2. Another rabbit, this time in London, called Tango, which I think we may have inherited from an elderly neighbour. Old and grumpy (rabbit, not neighbour, though who knows?), he would run around you in rings and then nip your ankles. Gave me my first experience of construction, as he kept breaking out of his hutch, so we had to keep shoring it up with chicken wire and wood. Died at a ripe old age, and was found stretched out and stiff in the garden. I remember being fascinated by how long he was.

3. A guinea pig, the first pet I named. I called her Debbie. I must have been 7 or so. Snuffled a lot and once climbed up inside my favourite jumper and got her fat head stuck at the narrow end of my batwing sleeve. Damn, the early eighties were cruel.

4. Gerbils. There were two of them both male, or both female (there was a lot of debate), an albino one which was mine, and a sandy brown one, which was my brother’s. Mine, I called Snow White, D’s was Ghengis Khan, which probably speaks volumes. We got them one saturday afternoon from a pet shop in Shepherd’s Bush, and I remember distinctly being told how to pick them up by the tail. When we got home, I picked Snow White up by the tail, only I only had hold of the very end of the tail, which promptly fell off. I was traumatised. Though not, on reflection, as traumatised as she must have been. They lived happy lives until a friend of the family came to stay, bringing her carcat, Brindle, with her. One day, we got home from school to find carnage. The door ajar, the cage knocked over and gaping emptily, Snow White mauled and bloody underneath the guestroom bed, the cat grooming proudly on the stairs and Ghengis nowhere to be found.

5. A hamster, which I named Daley Thompson after his habit of running, constantly, as well as swinging across the roof of the cage. A natural athlete, Daley did all the cute Hamstery things you might expect, and eventually got old and wobbly, and needed to be put down. In fact, we were in the vet, waiting for it to be done when someone came in saying they’d just found…

6. …another hamster, walking down the Great Western Road, with a limp. Hardy little bugger. The vet said we could take him home, with his broken leg in a splint, but he might not live very long. We named him Sid Vicious after his punk lifestyle, and the fact that he was hard as nails, gnawing away at everything in sight, eating his way through his wheel, cage bars, the plastic bottom of the cage, the water bottle that poked through the bars, his food bowl…everything. Although he lived for much longer than expected, unsurprisingly he died of a stomach ulcer a couple of years later.

7. Two more gerbils, principally my sister’s responsibility, as they’d come from her friend. I think they were called Sugar and Spice, and they were only with us a very short while before turning on each other and one ate the other, and then died him(or her)self. Sugar and Spice, not very nice.

8. A black and white cat, Bobbins, rescued from the local shelter. I think he real name was David, but that’s a silly name for a cat, so Bobbins it was (Bobbins is local North Derbyshire slang for bollocks, which you might say when you drop something, ie “Oh, BOBBINS!” or as a substitute for rubbish “He’s talking a load of bobbins”). He was a tough old sod, adventurous and playful. He got hit by a car, and walked home, collapsing only when he was inside the house. He got his jaw wired and a brain operation, and was never quite the same again (he ran with a list to the side, and couldn’t quite shut his mouth) but still lovable and silly all the same.

9. Another cat, Poppy, black and small and very clingy. She was around for four years or so, before being run over when I was living in Bolivia. Very sad.

10. While all the above were family pets, two years ago, P and I got our own cat, Pickle (because she’s the colours of Branston), rescued from Hounslow Animal Welfare as a stray when she was about 2 years old. She’s a tortie, quite little and neat. She’s very vocal, too, chattering away merrily whenever you enter the room. She was a bit shy at first, but now she’s a total lap cat, often sitting on my knee when I’m at the computer, plus she wanders into the bedroom at dawn and curls up next to my shoulder and rumbles away. Very sweet, and totally gorgeous. I admit, I’m a bit dappy about Pickle, as you may be able to tell.

Addendum: May not count, but for the sake of completeness….

11. When I was in primary school, we (kids) used to spend a big chunk of every summer with friends of the family who lived on a farm in the Yorkshire Dales. They had a dog – Playdy (no idea where the name came from, though for some reason I have the words Play-Dog-Digger in my ehad). So, many happy summers spent yomping through prickly hay fields and tumbling down hills and splashing through freezing becks. I can still remember the very specific smell of wet dog. Not altogether unpleasant…

12. In Bolivia, the flat (well, outhouse) which I rented in Cochabamba came with two canine residents – Oso (trans: bear), a big mean-looking but ultimately dim German Shepherd, and Mili, a tiny little beagle puppy. They spent a lot of time in and around my little shack, and I spent a lot of time with them, feeding them, playing with them and mostly trying to convince them not to bark and wake up the family whose house I lived behind (and who owned them) when I crept in after midnight. Dirty stop-out.

13. Next door’s cat. Come on, we’ve all done it, don’t look at me in that disapproving way. Our next door neighbours for a year or so had two cats, one of which was very adventurous. They had stupid names, though – Jazz and Mambo, IIRC. Anyway, Jazz (who we ended up calling Beardy, because, well, you can guess) took to breaking in through open windows and availing himself of our hospitality on a regular basis. You know, just hanging out in the kitchen and so on. This was possibly because the neighbours (identikit SW Londoners called Sam and Alex or something) didn’t have a catflap, so left their food out for them all day. And when it rained, well…. you can see where this is going. Plus the food was often nicked by other cats and foxes etc, plus Lucy and James (or whatever) were out a lot, plus we were naturally touched when little Beardy eyed us up as surrogate parents food-providers. So yeah, eventually we broke down and bought a small box of dry cat food – only a small one, I swear – and gave him the odd one or two. But no more. And we were just trying not to be cruel, I swear. We weren’t at all trying to steal him. Honest. Ahem.

(Originally posted a chunk of this on Vox)

You know, if there’s one thing that pisses me off more than people standing in front of shop/train/bus doorways utterly oblivious to the hordes of people trying to get past them, it’s people passing off work as their own, especially when they think that they can nick anything they find because it’s the internet, right, and everything’s free on the internet, and that makes it OK to completely rip off someone’s entire site, word for word, and pretend it’s your own, and no-one will ever find out, right? Wrong.