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.
May 19, 2005
I have a wedding dress
I have a wedding dress and it’s beautiful.
I don’t yet have a honeymoon destination but I will.
I am loving London, and Bronwyn and even this rainy day. Everything else is daunting, so we go shopping.
May 16, 2005
My Big Fat Lancashire Wedding
As a Canadian with a Lancashire wedding just around the corner, I found My big fat Yorkshire wedding very amusing. Bronwyn and I are going to visit the London Library. And over in Canada the anti-choice protesters pull out the big guns at the drop of a hat.
I’m off to London for a week tomorrow, looking forward to some serious wardrobe upgrades after a year in Munchkin Land and bookish things with Bronwyn. I am also going to buy my wedding dress!
May 14, 2005
Lamb Tagine
In Part One of Kerry and Stuart learn to cook, we are making Moroccan Lamb Tagine for “tea” tonight. We do have problems with our cooking dynamic, as Kerry accuses Stu of taking over and dominating cooking, he tells her she’d only get bored of it anyway and then she does. But I am serious about this and today I cubed lamb bits with the utmost attention.
Today I read “The Guardian” in print, and it was fantastic though I can’t wait to get The Observer and The Times tomorrow. Yesterday we joined the Lancashire Library, and I got a ton of books (though sadly they had not one Margaret Drabble) including Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, which apparently inspired a song by The Cure, and was one of my favourites as a child, along with Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce and A Handful of Time by Kit Pearson, as I went through my obsession with time travel. It’s still a really good story.
Have to go take on the lamb now. This weeks been one of great fretting and dislocation but I think things are coming down to earth.
May 11, 2005
Culture is everywhere!
Now reading the brilliant Juniper Tree Burning by Goldberry Long, who will be my professor in September. It’s a great story, told just so you’re dying to turn the next page, and the writing is excellent. I also received a copy of the 2005 Acta Victoriana in the post today, and am really enjoying most of it. Now stressing out about weddings and immigrations. Real life has too many technicalities. My trip to Sainsburys today was a celebration of colour and taste. A woman asked me if I wanted anything else at the deli, and I said “No thank you” and I was thrilled with my ability to give a polite response. It’s been awhile.
Due to over-zealousness, there is a £50 credit on my Mastercard and I intend to spend part of it on Waterstones 3 for 2s! Oh England, I do love you.
Donkey worker’s rights at Blackpool Beach. On preserving the memory of Gwendolyn McEwen. The ever-brilliant India Knight on smut packaged as good fun.
May 11, 2005
Surprising Things
– the taste of zucchini
– that moving from a one-roomed apartment into a house is terrifying, resulting in one carting all one’s possessions from room-to-room and following boyfriend whenever he leaves the room
– the size of sweet potatoes
– that it costs nearly $2000 to immigrate to Canada
– that accessible culture is overwhelming and makes you want to crawl into a hole
– how exciting it is to be able to talk to people in shops, and so you do it loud and muchly
May 10, 2005
Madness
We flew from Osaka to Manchester via Singapore and Zurich. There is no sense to that. It’s good to be back but alack! It seems we have a wedding to plan. Madness will ensue.
May 7, 2005
Almost gone
This last week has been Golden Week, a clump of national holidays all at once, and it’s been absolutely golden for us as well. We’ve been drunk nearly every night, seen wonderful people every day, we’ve eaten wonderful food and relaxed and enjoyed this amazing place. We’re getting fed up with saying good bye though. Tonight was my work’s sayonara party. There are four of us leaving at once, two of us are getting married and another two are having babies this summer. We’re a close group and it was pretty sad. Today we went to Kokoen Gardens at Himeji Castle, which was beautiful and peaceful. We’ve been eating up Japanness and there was it. We also had a tea ceremony, which was really cool. Last night we went out with our friend and his wife, and I had my hair cut in the day. The day before we had Stuart’s work’s sayonara, which was brilliant and got seriously out of control. We met up with all kinds of students on Wednesday, and it was great. Tuesday was Kobe, Monday friends and fishing. I really am finding it hard not to go shopping again. You can find stuff in this country you wouldn’t even knew existed, but the fact is you need it. In Japan, it’s all about goods and wears.
I’m going to miss my beautiful apartment, and prikura. I’m going to miss Miffy goods, and 100 yen stores, and kimonos, and karaoke. I am going to miss our beautiful friends and our bicycles, Morty and Gladys even more. And the kindness of the people, and the funniness of random things, and the strangeness of every day life. The every day adventures. This wonderful lifestyle that allowed us to do Habitat for Humanity in Thailand, and to subsist on a rather sumptuous diet. I’ll miss my loft bedroom, and train travel like it’s a vitamin pill. I will miss the mountains more than most things. I’ve never left a home I might not return to. It’s going to be a long heartbreak.
But, I will be reading The Guardian in person in just one week’s time. We’ve decided that weekend papers will not be part of our (tiny) weekly entertainment budget, and rather are vital and necessary. Oh the Guardian! This week, delivered this brilliant manifesto on the subconscious opting out from the musical zeitgeist. On how writers are doing it for themselves. Gunter Gass on today’s Germany, which drove us to find out exactly what “a mess of pottage” actually is. Great new Virginia Woolf stuff. And a profile on Nick Laird.
The house is halfway clean, suitcases packed, pocky and magazines ready for the plane. I don’t want to go but I have to, and this just means I will miss here forever.
