June 1, 2005
News and gerberas
Lynn Crosbie reviews a new book by Melissa Bank. Deep Throat is revealed! Mike Barrenger visits Seattle. The Guardian remembers the end of Rhodesia on June 1st 1979.
In other news, the red gerbera is the official flower of Kerry and Stuart’s wedding, and all plans are going beautifully. I am over the top excited! Our venue is beautiful and there are really only fun things left to do. Plus I get to marry Stuart.
May 31, 2005
Schmedding
Did I tell you our Mini-Honeymoon is in Brighton? I’m so excited, as I’ve never been there but always wanted to. Weddings are all consuming. Check out some details and links to our fantastic photographers at Our Wedding Details Website!
May 30, 2005
Bank Holiday Monday
Bank holidays are not so exceptional when you don’t work. We spent this afternoon flying kites on the beach and it was wonderful. I am quite good with the small kite, but the power kites are too difficult for me. Stuart was dragged halfway across the beach with his. Wedding preparation in full force. We’re burning our CD party favours right now. I’m currently reading The Whistling Woman by A.S. Byatt, which is rich with knowledge and thick of plot. I still prefer Drabble, but this novel has Drabble-istic themes.
May 28, 2005
Quote of the Week
I think this is a bonafide quote of the week from a Guardian survey of French voter intentions.
Aziz, 32, Oyster opener, Le Wepler brasserie, Place de Clichy: I won’t vote because I’m not French, I’m Moroccan. But my kids are French, and for them I would vote no if I could because with this constitution people will come from abroad and take the jobs in France.
In other news, my novel is 75,000 words long since last night.
May 27, 2005
Poem
The Crash in Amagasaki
My proximity to tragedy
is measured by small degrees
of space and time.
These are simpler to chart
than a distance to safety
constructed squarely
of coincidence.
May 27, 2005
Kerry continues to learn to cook
There is wifely progress. I made spaghetti sauce on Wednesday from scratch all by myself. The secret ingredients were red wine and nutmeg. Oishii! It successfully served a family of five.
May 27, 2005
A tragedy?
Today in The Guardian, Madeleine Bunting puts forth the argument that teenage pregnancy is not such a tragedy after all. That there is no diminished potential because these mothers would have had low aspirations, baby or not. Appallingly, she asks, “Why is it that in Labour’s crusade against teenage pregnancy, it can’t recognise that some of these teen mums are making reasonable – even moral – decisions about what they value in life, and what they want to do with their lives? How did opting for baby and motherhood over shelf-stacking ever become a tragedy?”. I will attempt to answer her. Because giving up on someone’s potential based on statistics is the ultimate let-down. That teenagers are not the most reasonable people in the world. What kind of a mother can a thirteen year old be? Because it’s fueling a vicious cycle that we should not condone as what kind of life is this baby going to have? That there are young mothers who beat the odds and become successful, but most people don’t. That stacking shelves is an honest income and there is pride that comes with that (and further opportunities) that doesn’t come with living off the government for the rest of your life. Teenage motherhood is romanticised in the media, and there are little girls who crave it to fill the countless holes in their meagre existences. There must be other ways to make them whole that come with much less compromise.
May 25, 2005
There were no holes
It finally feels real. Yesterday we went to Blackburn to give notice of our intent to marry. Our names will hang on the wall in the registry office for fourteen days, and if no one registers any objections, we’ll be ready to go. I am very excited! But the trepidation! What if someone objects!?
May 25, 2005
I let my girl have s-x at 11, admits mother
An excellent article on the strange relationship based on fear of grand conspiracy that most people have with political correctness. Marcus Brigstocke writes, “not everything that happens to us that we don’t like is because political correctness has gone mad. Some of it is because things need changing. Brace yourself – but some of the old ideas that we call “traditions” are rubbish.” And this article observes with acuity that perhaps low-cost books in supermarkets are not democratising literature, because most of the books are cookbooks and crap. Alice Munro has achieved enough for one lifetime.
According to this article, tabloids are the information gateways of choice for most British people. I am horrified. Especially since this family are the most sensational news item to sweep Britain since Happy Slapping. Mum’s three daughters get pregnant within a month, and the youngest is 12. She blames the government and lack of sex education at school, as you would. But she is proud of her daughters. Alright. I am tired of prams being the accessory of choice for teenagers, teenage pregnancy glamourised in the media (though admittedly not in the Daily Mail, but in those trashy women’s magazine’s printed on newsprint with articles like “I had a baby at 10 but my mum supported me” and “How I survived marriage to a knife-wielding maniac). I have recently become an expert on all of this. Yesterday I went to an NHS walk-in clinic to see if I could get a prescription for the pill. Unfortunately, they told me, they couldn’t and I needed to be registered with a GP for that. However, at 25 I just barely qualified for a contraceptive service for young people, and I could go to their clinic at 4:00 and they could hook me up. Fair enough, I thought. Stuart came with me, and there were three school girls in uniform walking up the street toward us as we entered. “I guess they’re going too,” he joked. They were. I was the oldest person in that room by a good decade, and the place was crawling with babies, going to show some had learned their lessons the hard way. The average age in the clinic was 14 years old, and maybe younger. I was handed a form that requested me to fill in what school I went to, and I decided this was way too much so I left. I’m glad these girls are being responsible, I guess, but there is nothing responsible about having sex at that age. And probably these girls were the minority and most don’t plan so far ahead. It’s a no-win situation. I think these clinics make young people think that pre-teen sex is normal, even socially acceptable but yet shutting them down would make the problem worse. I hope all those ugly awkward adolescents who no one wants to have sex with yet realise how lucky they are.
Now reading “Park and Ride” by Miranda Sawyer, a fascinating pop culture romp into British suburbia. It even comes with its own website! I am currently residing in British suburbia for the first time, and so enjoying Sawyer’s insights into fitted wardrobes, The Trafford Shopping Centre and Preston, the most average town in Britain, all of which I’ve had contact with this week.
May 23, 2005
Sailing take me away nani nani
London was splendid, saw so many people, replenished my wardrobe and bought a beautiful wedding dress. Had a wonderful time with Bronwyn, Paul and I got drunk together, Claire found us mochi and I saw Adam and Ainsley at their party, for the first time in years. It was a great week, and Stu came down for the end of it. We had our fun. Moreover the weekend papers were excellent. I have become enamoured with The Independent. We went to the Notting Hill Oxfam which was like a designer boutique and I got “The Peppered Moth” by Margaret Drabble for two quid. And we went to a book sale underneath the Waterloo Brige (millions of people swarming like flies round Waterloo Underground). I got a book by Alice Thomas Ellis, who I discovered recently via this obit on a fascinating life. On the train journey there and back, I read the two stories in Carol Shields’ “Duets” and that woman was brilliant. I also got a copy of Mslexia. So it was a great week for learning. I missed meeting Priscilla Presley signing her new book in Waterstones on Oxford Street by two hours. But I did catch her in the Observer Review.
Happy Slapping is sweeping the nation! A bizarre ritual of public violence and humilation is all the rage with the kids. Maybe the same kids who wear hoodies, which have become the disparaged apparel of late. They were banned from a shopping mall in Kent. Perhaps hoodies are only difficult when you police your nation with CCTV but what do I know? I do know that England has social problems galore, and happy slapping is the tip of the ice berg, but that many of these problems are precipitated by inane tabloids concocting trends with their headlines screaming delightful catchphrases.
And no wonder I loved the weekend papers! Joan Didion was profiled in the Guardian Review.
I haven’t been writing much since we got to England. There’s been too much else to read- in a way Japan was helpfully isolating and now there is far too much candy. I have also snapped the prong off my plug adapter for my computer so who knows when I’ll write again? I seem to be destroying technology left right and centre tonight. However one interesting thing has been happening with my novel. For a time, the hero had a gay relationship. Then I realised, first there were too many gay people in my story as it was, but moreover that it wasn’t believable. So Kevin’s boyfriend “Gary” became “Charlene”. I did it via auto-change and rereading it again was really interesting. Gary had been fat and unsympathetic, but there was something disturbing about such a characterisation for a woman. As well, Gary was irritating and in one scene Kevin is nearly moved to hit him. That could NOT happen to Charlene, it just couldn’t. Lots of re-writing ahead, but it’s interesting what you learn along the way.
Further current events, I am obsessed with the Penguin 70th Birthday editions! I have bought Virginia Woolfs, and want Zadie Smith as well as others. There is inevitable controversy though, as only two of the 70 writers are black. I understand this virtual non-representatio is a problem, but at the same time my heart is with Penguin’s somewhat languid defense- that they never really thought about race in compiling, that it was to be a selection of Penguin’s top-sellers and that James Baldwin is not one of them, and that publishing under-represented people was never really their forte anyway. I just think it’s a wonderful collection, though I suppose if there were only two women represented my blood would be boiling. It’s a difficult situation and only too relative.
Off to Blackburn Lancashire tomorrow (four thousand holes! though they are rather small- hope they don’t make me count them all) to get our marriage licence. You might remember Blackburn as the registry office where they make all us foreigners go before we get married. Lets cross our fingers for smooth sailing.
After all this time, I still love Eastenders.
