The Joy of Slob

I'm not an overly neat person, but neither am I a slob. On scale of 1 to 10, I'd probably rate a 6.5 on tidiness.

And for so one so neat, I seem to know an abnormally large number of untidy people. The first really untidy person I've known, is one of my best friends back home.

I remember years ago, driving around Anglesea in Australia. Anglesea is a small sea- side town in Victoria. I'd heard that my friend was staying there over the Christmas holidays, and being in the area, I decided to look for her, though I did not have her address. Unphased I drove around the sleepy town till I saw a car parked in a driveway, full of old newspapers,

My Friend's Kitchen Floor

unmarked exam papers and several half-read novels, anarchically disarranged amongst children's toys and discarded audio tapes. Between the car and the front door was a trail of old towels and kid's clothes. Eureka. I'd found her. There was no doubt in my mind, and I was right. "There you are," I said as she opened the door. "How did you find me?" she asked. "Oh", I lied, "I recognised the car."

A few years later, I hired a cleaner. I found her details from an ad in the local rag. She turned up for an interview. Her name was faintly familiar but I couldn't work out the connection.

We had a cup of tea together and she explained that she was needing some extra income as her ex was a bastard and she had no other source of income. She explained that she was a writer, and not really a domestic. She went on to say that her own house was a rubbish dump and that before deciding on taking up cleaning, she'd toyed with the idea of moving to Los Angeles and setting up a practice for people wanting to realise one's inner slob.

I hired her on the spot, and after she left I realised what was familiar about her name. Her ex was in fact a childhood friend of mine, directly descended from Fra Filippo Lippi. He'd told me a few year's prior that he'd married a very untidy woman. And I'd thought he was exaggerating. See what happens when people emigrate to Australia. From angelic Lippi to Melbourne slob. Remarkable.

Then there's my husband of eight years. Of German birth. "Well at least he'll be tidy, being a German", a friend commented. ASIF! Before him I'd had an American lover with bad teeth. So much for stereotypes!

My good friend, my old cleaner, my husband - tidiness doesn't worry any of them. How can they be so messy?

But two weeks ago I had an epiphany. Husband away. No house guests ... why tidy up? Let's see what it's like to let it all go. So now, if I drop something, I wont pick it up. If I spill something, I wont wipe it up. I open the mail after work and instead of organising it into neat piles, I just leave it on the table. I've stopped making the bed. I sling dirty dishes into the sink, not even rinsing them. Instead of eating at the table, using a plate and flatware, I eat out of cartons, sitting on the couch, and when it is bed-time, I just leave the wrappings and half empty wine glass on the floor.

I throw my clothes on the floor instead of hanging them up. I leave the groceries at the front door in their plastic bags after shopping in the supermarket. If I need anything from them, I get it directly from the bags, rather than the fridge or cupboard.

When I take clean clothes from the drier, I chuck them onto one of the many piles of dirty clothes. I don't clean the grill. If I want a glass of coke, I just open another bottle, not worrying about the various half-drunk bottles lying around the apartment.

When I get up in the mornings and try to get ready for work, if I can't find clean clothes, so I just put on anything.

And guess what? I feel LIBERATED!!!!

Way to go! Now I just have to find the ex-wife of Lippi's descendant. I'm sure we can set up a successful Californian pop psychology company.

Discover you inner slob and find true happiness.

Nightmare in Manhattan

I stepped out into rush hour on Fifth. There was blood in my mouth.

I clenched my lips together, squeezing the blood-drenched gauze that the dental nurse had squashed onto the place where a molar had happily lived for more years than I care to remember. The nitrous oxide was wearing off.

Ah, the dental nurse. I remembered. I had realised we were off to a bad start when I sat in the dental chair, a view of high-rise offices eighteen floors above ground level facing us. She was putting the lead apron over me, ready for the xray.

"Here's your bullet-proof jacket", she joked. "To protect you from the snipers". She waved her hand towards the window. "Or a crane falling", she added, lest I failed to latch on to her sense of humour.

Now normally after a fix of nitrous, I leave the periodontist with an urge to buy clothes. But not today. I half-heartedly entered Cole Haan's. But how was I to buy anything? The periodontist had told me not to talk. But for how long? I thought of the blood, of cranes falling in Manhattan. The traffic seemed noisier than usual. The people around me looked like the people in the carriage on Anna Karenina's last train ride. Time to go straight home. I took a cab and opened my Kindle. I'm reading Tom Rob Smith's Child 44.

"The system might carry them into the Gulags or to a building, just behind this one, on Varsonofyevsly Lane, another State Security compound fitted with sloping floors, log-paneled walls to absorb bullets, and hoses to wash away rivulets of blood".

I snap the book closed. The day had started badly anyway. And I'm not referring to the periodontal experience.

I'd called my daughter back home before I left. It appears she's being stalked. A long story. Frightening actually. But maybe it wasn't true. Nothing about it had made sense, but you never know ... It had had an Ian McEwan like quality in the telling.

Back home. A dose of Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen eases the pain and I fall sleep, the TV blaring. A nightmare of a day obliterated. Temporarily.

I awake an hour later. The TV news is no longer on - it's now showing a documentary on Pete Seeger. "There is a season turn turn turn". Wonderful", I think. "The world is not such a bad place after all." My mood brightens. Life is good.

Then just as Seeger breaks into "Guantanamera" the phone rings. I look at the display, and the time. It's an Australian mobile number and the time there is six in the morning. No one I know wakes up that early. My heart hits my stomach.

There's an X-generation voice on the other end. Things were certainly taking a downward turn! "This is your daughters friend", it upwardly inflected. "Yes, yes, what's the matter?" I snapped. "Oh nothing. She's together. I'm at her place now. She's asleep." Then silence. Then ... music.

I recognise it instantly. Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side". From Seeger to Reed, from one extreme to the other. It's a long song. Precisely 5.58 minutes later the X-generation voice returns. "And the coloured girls go Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo". I interrupt. It's one thing to listen to Lou Reed playing over a phone line 12,000 miles away, but I didn't really fancy listening to Ms X-Generation's rendition.

I was fast losing the gentle visions of world peace brought about by "We Shall Overcome". The world suddenly reverted back to horror. In any case, I mused, Seeger probably supports Obama!

"Did you like the song?" Ms X-Generation again. "Oh yes", I yawned, "I've heard it many times. I think he first sang it before you were born. I see him round Manhattan sometimes. He's old and ugly. Like me."

I don't think she heard me. She was in free-fall, talking about a cousin who was a neo-Nazi, and Christians who are intimidated by women. I let her talk, asking a question now and then.

I find out heaps, but nothing adds up. Her story and my daughter's are worlds apart. I tell her this. There's silence and then she speaks. "Oh I probably shouldn't have talked", she tells me. "That's what happens when you drink all night", I snap.

But she's off again. "MY parents are tolerant and forgiving", she says in tones reminiscent of religious hippie cultists, looking pityingly at the world of men-in-suits, or just "suits" as they now call them.

I look at the clock. Over an hour has passed. I suggest she get some sleep. She agrees. We hang up.

I look around my apartment. NOW what am I to do? Read the book about Gulags? Look at the gaping gum in the mirror? Love my neighbour?

Lou Reed or Pete Seeger?

"A hustle here and a hustle there
New York city is the place where ..."

Lou Reed it is.

Sleeping in the City that Never Sleeps

A Qantas flight. Sitting in the emergency exit seats. Two female flight attendants buckle up opposite us as the plane prepares for landing at JFK. The usual small talk. "Where do live?" "We live in New York," I answer.

"How wonderful", the flight attendant opposite me answers. "Going to Broadway shows every week!"

ASIF!

When I first came to New York I made sure that I saw a Broadway show or two - but every week? I don't THINK so. In fact the only time I see anything at all of the island, is when I show a visitor around. And of course on my daily commute to Queens and back.

So, what DOES a woman of a certain age DO in Manhattan in her spare time?

The answer is - SLEEP.

I think most New Yorkers sleep-in on the week-ends. I think this, because on the rare occasions that I've been up and about early on a Saturday, the shops have all been closed. I used to think that everyone was asleep because they'd been out partying, our attending shows. Now I'm not so sure.

I was an insomniac before I lived here. A good night's sleep was something I NEVER experienced. I'd toss and turn until around four in the morning and then doze off, only to awake around six.

New York has cured me of insomnia. In fact, sleeping is now my favourite activity. I have become a connoisseur of sleep.

Before living in New York I saw sleep as an unattainable boring thing. Something akin to death. A just not-being-there sort of thing. A negation of the experience of living.

But this is not the case at all. There are all sorts of sleep. And by that, I don't mean the scientific categories of REM and NREM sleep; I mean the different types of sleep experiences.

My favourite type of sleep is the starting-at-eight-in-the-morning-weekend-sleep, when you drift between a state of dreamy wakefulness and actual sleep. When you hope that the phone won't ring or that there'll be any other distraction to jolt you from the floating bliss into the harsh reality of being fully conscious.

Then there's those few moments before sleep when thoughts become vague and almost meaningless. One minute you are thinking about a work meeting and the next you are wandering in a meadow picking daisies. And by the time you realise how silly this is, you are out of it and darkness truly descends.

The most annoying sleep-type is the being-asleep-with-the-telly-still-on. This type of sleep is not at all restful. Dreams tend to blend in with the telly, ... or is it the other way around? The drifting an and out of this type of sleep is not pleasurable like the starting-at-eight-in-the-morning-weekend-sleep, especially if you've left the telly on CNN. Not in my dreams, Obama!

Last week a Melbourne friend emailed me about such a sleep. We'd been discussing movies about Alzheimer's.

"... We had visitors and red wine and after they left post 1.a.m. I watched "Away from Her" in a drunken haze and kept nodding off and having to rewind so many times that the lines became blurred between Julie Christie's condition and mine!"

I know the feeling ...

The worst type of sleep, isn't really sleep at all. But it deserves a mention. I call it the post-sleep-horror. And it's when you wake up thinking that whatever you just dreamed is real. Another friend of mine had a terrible post-sleep experience several year's ago. She dreamed she had brain cancer. When she woke up she made a cup of tea and sat down to work out the best course of action. Should she tell her family? Should she go for treatment? Or should she act like it hadn't happened and continue a normal life until the inevitable? It wasn't till eleven o'clock that she realised it was just a dream.

The other morning I had a similar experience, although fortunately it didn't last for hours. But for at least ten minutes I believed that the dream I'd had prior to waking was real. I was in a really bad mood. I'd dreamed my husband had bought a twelve feet high ceramic camel. "Where on earth does he think we'll put it!" I mumbled to myself.

The phone rang. It was him, phoning from a ship on Australia's Bass Strait where he works. "Oh, it's you", I snapped, "now about that camel ..."

"No", I told the Qantas flight attendant as the plane touched down at JFK, "most New Yorkers don't go to Broadway shows every week". I should have added, "We don't need to!"

and then snow flew everywhere

"Bloody photos!" he emailed after describing a long ago Christmas in the London snow. By chance he'd come across an old photo and was describing it to me. It was of us - me, him, another couple, making sexual snow figures in a street in Golders Green a million years ago. "You and Val made snow breasts and Ray and I made snow dicks and then snow flew everywhere."

Going through old photos, moments of pure mentalese¹ - words being unnecessary and in fact, insufficient to describe the memories invoked - transport us back into half-forgotten worlds of pleasures remembered with a painful sense of loss.

And for the long-term expat, these memories are distanced not only by time, but by place.

I recently came across this photo when I was cleaning out some old boxes. I wonder who took it. The composition is excellent, and there it was wedged between appropriately out-of-focus photos of people long since gone from my own or my family lives and memories.

I recognised the girls in the foreground. The little swimming one is myself and the one on the right of me is little Jeanette Griffiths. I wonder where she is now ...

Summer in Australia - the days of those seemingly never ending Christmas holidays. A world away from Manhattan 2008. A world away from Manhattan 2008.

Whether photos evoke happy or sad memories, why do they make us feel a sense of poignancy when we look at them? They remind us of our lost youth, of the comparative innocence of us way back when. So distant are our old selves in the photos, that they may as well be of other people.

I'm going to put all my old photos on my Flickr. Then I'll throw them all out - well not the ones of my children, my weddings. And I'll have to keep the ones of my mum ...

And while I'm at it, I'll throw out or give away all my books. Well, maybe I'll keep that old battered "Crime and Punishment". And my D.H Lawrence's ... Anything I want to read will go on my Kindle.

If only I could get rid of it all, but the past clings.

I shall cleanse the past by assigning it to digital media, to a pristine series of zeros and ones.

Nice and clean. In the words of Dory Previn,
"... a bloodless death
Not grim
Not gory
More like Ali Macgraw’s new enzyme detergent demise in 'Love Story'"

Far-off beaches in black and white, London snow on Christmas days, people long forgotten staring back at me from dog-eared photos - into the hard drive you go!

Bloody photos!



1.Mentalese:A hypothetical language in which concepts and propositions are represented in the mind without words.

Letter from New York is now a blog

For years I've pondered turning Letter from New York, which started many years ago, into a blog. You'll still be able to see the old style Letter from New York HERE, and I'll be putting a link at the side.

Why now? Well Letter from New York has been quiet of late, and I THINK that using blogger software may encourage me to

WRITE AGAIN.

Stay tuned!

Another Brick in the Wall

After years of encouraging workers to take early retirement as a way to cut jobs, a growing number of companies [Home Depot, Walmart] are hunting for older workers because they have lower turnover rates and, in many cases, better work performance. More Help Wanted: Older Workers Please Apply, Milt Fruenheim The New York Times March 2005

I admit it's getting better,
A little better all the time.
(Can't get no worse)
Getting Better - Beatles

I read the news today oh boy, about how some chain-stores are employing older workers to do jobs traditionally held by teenagers.

It appears that after almost a lifetime of getting it wrong, baby boomers are at last finding their niche.

Drop-outs of the sixties are now in demand at places such as Home Depot, MacDonalds and Walmart. At last that much misused word "ironic" has found something to be applied to.

The children of the Age of Aquarius have apparently become valued members of society. As Robert Allen Zimmerman so aptly put it, "The Times They Are A-Changing'.

Who would have thought it? The Flower Children of the sixties, having fought for freedom and liberation from the bourgeois values of their parents, who believed in free love, who followed the teachings of R D Laing and Germaine Greer - are now spending their autumn years, at Walmart.

It doesn't really surprise me. We've gone through our whole lives somewhat perplexed as to what was expected of us.

As teenagers we had no real role models except for each other. We were breaking new ground. Unlike our parents' generation, we had access to birth control and a modicum of wealth. The world was our oyster, or so we thought.

After a few halcyon years of rebellion with no clear purpose, most of us ended taking up some career, usually one that mysteriously presented itself. And then we had babies.

But unlike today, there was little guidance. One minute a rebel, the next a parent. Suddenly presented with a small infant, and without the support that is available today, we stumbled our way through parenthood. At least there were no videocams to record our dismal efforts.

Photo albums show us, almost children ourselves, holding our babies and looking uncertainly into the camera lens. We did our best. Ignoring our own parents of course, and without the abundance of parenting resources available to the young parents of today.

Quite honestly, most of us had no idea of what we were doing. One day we were marching against Vietnam and capitalism and the nuclear family, and the next we were entrenched in the system raising children. It was all too much, even for children who had dreamed of San Francisco and flowers in their hair.

Even our mate Robert Allen Zimmerman was turning into a born-again Christian.

We divorced, changed jobs, saw our children through guns and Barbie Dolls (my god - the ensuing moral dilemmas) and carried on living.

Our music of rebellion was watered down, and played in elevators and airports. The musak-ing not only of our ideas but of our art.

We thought, "It can't get no worse", but the worse was yet to come.

Our growing children, taught by teachers who seemed half our age, would argue with us. But hang on ... weren't WE the ones who were meant to argue against the establishment?
Our children moved from childhood to adolescence, from wanting guns and Barbie Dolls, to wanting antisocial pets, like ferrets and rats.
I remember my friend Pauline, inviting me and my children to a Melbourne Cup party. Pauline the rebel - "You can bring the kids but they can't bring their rats". Life it seemed, was no longer about "doing your own thing".

"What was the world coming to?", as our mothers used to say. We looked into the mirror and our mothers looked back. The Age of Aquarius was fast morphing into The Age of Depression.

John Lennon was shot,. Woody Allen slept with his daughter. Germaine was becoming menopausal but we couldn't say it. Talk about a confused generation.

About ten year's ago, a larrikin of the sixties who I sort of knew, died. The first of us to leave this world. I didn't go to his funeral - it was in Queensland, over 2,000 miles from my then home in Melbourne. But some of his mates went.

Three mates, frozen in the sixties; they set off in a mate's car that wouldn't have passed a roadworthy even with a dishonest Queensland cop. On the way north, a tyre went. They stopped on the highway. Children of an urban life, lovers of tyre-changing feminists, they stood together on the highway, staring in puzzlement at the deflated piece of rubber. Oblivious to the on-coming traffic, one stepped back in awe. And then there were two.

A second funeral was arranged. The two survivors returned. The story turned into a yarn. The Melbourne babyboomers recounted it in pubs and at dinner parties. We couldn't even get death right.

Another friend threw in the towel. Just gave up the ghost as they say. As the aging flower-people vigilled around his bed he briefly came out of unconsciousness. "Goodbye Earthlings," he smiled, and passed on.

But most of us survive. The world may turn a whiter shade of pale, but listen .. we are here ... we are alive and well,

And working at MacDonalds.

Viva La Revolution!

The Neighborhood

Hey girl what's it like to be in New York?
New York City, imagine that!
Tell me, what's it like to be a skateboard punk rocker?

Leroy says, "Send a picture"
Leroy says, "Hello!"
Leroy says, "Aw, keep on rocking girl"
Yeah, keep on rocking
Michelle Shocked "Anchored Down in Anchorage"

Let me take you for a very short tour of my neighborhood in Manhattan.
It's late Saturday afternoon, and I've decided to step outside my front door (you can see it on the left).
First stop is the nail shop.

On Saturday afternoons I like to indulge in the New York women's pastime of "having my nails done".
There's rarely a block in Manhattan that doesn't house at least one nail salon. They are invariably run by gentle Korean women and provide an oasis of calm and comfort.

The nail salons have names like 'Eve Nail', 'Mary Nail' and 'Jane Nail'. I go to Eve Nail as it is in my building. You can see it on the right.
Across the road is "Blooming Nail". It always makes me smile as the name reminds me of the Outback Restaurant's "Blooming Onion".

I turn left, and still in the same block as my apartment, head toward the coffee shop. (it's just under the London-looking subway sign in the photo on the left).

But I have photos to take. So no coffee. Instead I make a 180 degree turn and cross the road.

We are walking south and are now about twenty metres from my apartment.

A few blocks north is Spanish Harlem. I'll take you there another day. But today it's my immediate neighbourhood, as I'm a bit tired. So let's continue walking south.
There's also a fruit stall which is a few metres from the closest supermarket.

On the left is a street stall - selling socks and other items of clothing.
New Yorkers expect everyone to walk at the same pace. This avoids people-jams. I pause to take the photo and am jostled. The photo is blurred. But it'll have to do. I walk on.

And here is the supermarket.



No parking lot though. We either carry the groceries home, or get them delivered. It's only half a block.

We could pop across the road to one of the local bars. Or to Hooligans, another local bar which you can see here between the Bagel shop and the locksmith. Perhaps another time.

But I've walked too far on my lazy Saturday afternoon and I turn back before reaching the end of the block. Now I can see the sock stall from the other side.

The sun has come out from behind a cloud and the socks look brighter now.

If I were a healthy type, I could go to the local fitness club that is directly opposite the apartment building.


So we are nearly back to where we started.



The doorman has come out to enjoy the sun. I say hello and he swings me through the revolving doors.

My neighbourhood; my little piece of New York. How could anyone not love this town?

The Art of Not Doing

I am in a contemplative mood. I am musing about life in New York.

I think that I have discovered a new art. But perhaps it is not entirely new. And I realise on reflection that I've come across it before. I wrack my mind. When and where was it?
I remember. Several decades ago. A small village in Java. At a time long before Westerners were the enemy. The locals tried so hard to please. So much so that it seemed to our Western minds that they were lying.

You'd enter a shop and ask, "Do you sell rice?" "Yes!" you'd be assured. Only to be answered when you attempted to actually buy some, "Sorry Missus but we have no rice."

You'd walk away bemused. What the hell was going on.
What was going on was two realities, both equally valid. The shopkeeper, eager to please would agree to anything. If you'd asked did he sell Porches no doubt his answer would still be yes. Anything to please. "Yes" is good; "No" is bad.
The locals understood. Just because he said "yes" didn't mean "yes". You were not meant to embarrass him by actually following through. What he really meant was, "I wish I had rice to help you, but I do not, even though I do so wish it."
Westerners would rant and rave and go red in the face, feeling they were being tricked or ridiculed. The shopkeeper would be shamed.

Not a good thing.

But those days of freedom and travel, of a safe Asia and a happier world are far away. Memories are obliterated by the hard reality of life. There is only one reality now, and that is of hard work and the daily grind. Or is it?

It seems to me that dual realities are alive and well and embedded in New York.
In New York people work hard, and play not at all. But just because they can't play, does not mean that they would not like to.

So they have two realities. The one that they live through daily. This is Reality #1. Reality #2 - the "other one" - is an easy life of social engagements, friendships and the warmth of human interaction. And it exists. Really!

It doesn't exist on the subway, the work-place, on the streets or in apartments. But like the Javanese storekeepers rice, it is nevertheless a fact.

Deep in the cerebral cortexes of the New Yorker's brain lives this other happy and social life.
At times however there is a disconnect and the happy life that bases itself in New Yorkers' brain cells, Reality #2, appears to be part of Reality #1. "I'm having a fiftieth birthday!" a friend told me. "I'm holding it in a restaurant and there'll be a band. I'm inviting fifty people. PLEASE come. Yes bring Jo and it starts at 9:00 Friday 23rd. You MUST come."

When I was new to New York I'd enthuse, and hurry away to write the details in my diary. I'd wait for the day, excited to be going to the party. The days would pass. The party would never be mentioned again. I'd assume I was no longer invited. The 23rd would come and go.
But of course it was never held. It was never meant to be held. Like the Javanese vendor's rice, it existed in Reality #2.

"You MUST come to our family Christmas dinner," a new acquaintance told me when I was fresh to the city." Are you sure?" I asked. She insisted.
That was in November. I waited for details. None came. I started to worry. Was I meant to just turn up? Perhaps she'd changed her mind. But why didn't she say?

Eventually I fronted her. "What can I bring on Christmas Day?" I asked. She looked puzzled - "What?"

I explained. Like the rice vendor she looked embarrassed. She didn't know what to say. She was struck dumb.

I sensed I'd made a cultural faux pas. I changed the subject. All was well. Reality #1 reigned supreme and all was well with the world.
Another evening after work, several years later. "Please come to dinner at my place," a colleague insisted. My mom will cook. Southern food. You'll love it."
"Yeah, yeah", I though. Reality #2. But a few days later she questioned me, "You haven't forgotten? Saturday night. OK?" "Sure!" I replied. My god, this was for real! Lucky she reminded me.

So on the Friday before the big day I phoned her to get her address. "Why do you need it?" she asked, obviously completely stumped. "For tomorrow." "What?" "Dinner...", my voice trailed off. "So were you really going to come. It is too late now. You should have said!" She was clearly annoyed. Another social faux pas.

Sometimes the Art-of-Not-Doing progresses right to the knocker. Talk about skating on thin ice. Arrangements will be made. Subway maps consulted. The pretence - or should I say, Reality #2 - goes on right up till almost the appointed start time.
Then the event will be 'cancelled'!

Oh but we had such fun. The anticipation, the plans. It was all worth it. And what a grand occasion. We really MUST do it again! Perhaps we'll do it next month. Better still, why not make it a monthly event?

Think about it. It makes perfect sense to me now. Just because you don't have time to do anything ... Just because you are too bloody exhausted in the weekends and at night after work, doesn't mean that you can't PRETEND that you have a social calendar. Well, "pretend" is the wrong word. The events are are happening. Social events are organized, planned to suite everyone concerned's social diary. Venues are carefully selected. It's all there but the actual event itself.

And who cares about that anyway.

Now I am a New Yorker. Without Reality #2 I'd been socially deprived. After all, one needs the occasional dinner party, the occasional drink with friends after work, the trip to the country on a Saturday. Just because I don't have the money or the time doesn't mean I should be deprived of life's essentials.
"Yes we must meet for drinks next Friday," I tell my friend Barbara as we talk on cell phones while we travel to our respective workplaces. Barb, being a true New Yorker agrees. "YES! she says. Let's do it".

We go into detail. What time is convenient to us both? Where will it be busy but not noisy? We will both have to re-organise our schedules.

An observer from another country could not be blamed for thinking that we are planning a major life-event. An expedition to Antarctica perhaps. But no, it is a simple half hour social appointment to a bar mid-way between our two apartments. After all, we are BUSY PEOPLE.
There was a time that I'd call Barbara the day before to confirm. Or even a time when I'd turn up at the appointed hour.

Not so now. Like Barb, as soon as I've closed the flap on my cell phone, the rendezvous is forgotten. Maybe I'll think of it when my mind wanders as I'm on hold to AT&T's customer service center in India. Nice to think I have a social diary. Nice to catch up with Barb!
But there ends the experience. And after all, why not. We had our fun. We didn't really need to actually meet.

So nowadays I forget it. We planned it. We enjoyed it. It's over.
In my rare spare nanoseconds my mind wanders. I remember being cross with the non-rice vendor. Thinking he was a loon or a liar. Now I understand. He couldn't afford the rice. We can't afford the time. That doesn't mean that we don't want it; that we can't pretend, that it isn't a reality.

I feel like traveling to Java to find him. To apologise and to explain that I now understand. In fact I think I'll do it! Why not? It should be a good break.
And perhaps YOU would like to come too? Make it next January. We can book on Singapore airlines. I've heard they're quite good. I've got the frequent flyer miles. And it's years since I've been to Indonesia. We can stay in a nice hotel and read books on the beach. It'll be so much fun! You WILL come, won't you?

Promise me you won't forget ....

Good Day Bluebell Wednesday

Bluebell Wednesday is a little girl who lives on a boat on the Thames, so close to the centre of London that every morning she awakes to its chimes.

Bluebell has a mummy called Amy, a daddy called Jamie  and  thirteen aunts and uncles.

Amy and three of her sisters - Rosie, Gita and  Edith -  get together from time to time to play in their quartet called the Dirty Pretty Strings.

Bluebell Wednesday's eldest aunt, Lakshmi lives in the Peak district of England where she looks after lots of funny little children who speak with strange northern accents. Her aunt Edith is fifteen years old and goes to the Lady Manners school on Castle Hill. One day you will see Edith on the stage as she will become a famous actress.

I grew up in Australia with Bluebell Wednesday's maternal grandmother. Her name is Di. Her brother is Gary. We had friends with names like Sue, Helen and Julie. I was called Katie back then. I  hated my name as it was an unusual name at that time. I wanted to be called Susan.

When Di and I  grew up and had our children it was the seventies. I had a dog called Sunday. If I hadn't already used that name I would have called my firstborn "Sunday". Instead I called her Ebon. Di's first children were twins -  Dara and  Lakshmi. Our more conservative friends named their children James, Daniel, Emily, Cecily, Matthew, Lucy, Simon and Penny. Not even for them the staid names of our parents' generation.

My expat friends named their children Yarra and Ned. My brother, whose name is Timothy, had friends who called their children names like Daffodil and Sunshine.

People in the country were calling their sons "Jaidyn" and their daughters "Kylie" and Kirrillee". And through all this, the ever-reliable Australian  working class families were still bearing Trevors and Waynes.

At the turn of the century when the Lakshmis and Sukis were reproducing, rebellion set in with babies being named Jack, Jessica, Thomas, Emma,  Joshua, Sarah, William, Emily , Michael, Jasmine and John.

I am now in America where people in the Blue areas are naming their children  Emily, Michael, Christopher and Sara. In the Red areas they   prefer Chelsea, Tiffany, Brittany, Conner, Madison and Taylor.

My daughter  Ebon  is now an adult. She loves her name and goes by her given name only. Not for Ebon a family name. Like Cher she is mono-monikered. The only time her name caused her any pain was once at a hippie festival when there was an announcement over the load speaker for an "Ebon" to come to the stage. She thought there was another one and was devastated. Fortunately it turned out she'd misheard and the announcer was saying Evan. Two "Ebons"? ASIF!

I wonder how much one's name influences our paths through life. I always think that if I'd have been a Sue I would have been more stable. I think I would have lived in the leafy suburbs and married an accountant. My car would have been a Volvo and I would have joined the local tennis club.

Sometimes people change their names to fit what they want to be. The twins I knew who were born in 1974 and named Zero and Chaos, changed their names in the late eighties to Mac and John. My elderly aunt Nell came into her own at eighty and changed to Eleanor to be more dignified. My mum's first name was Christina but they made a mistake at her new school when she was ten and called her Hazel. She was too shy to correct the teacher so she became known to Hazel to all but her mother and sisters. I am sure I used to see a personality change  when she switched between the names. With her sisters she was demure as she  answered dutifully   to the name "Chris". Quite a change from  the sarcastic and somewhat bitter Hazel that she became   in the company of her friends.

When I was about sixteen and wanted to be like Simone de Beauvoir or Glenda Jackson, I changed from Katie to Kate. A secret part of me however, still yearned to be Susan.

When my children were very small, I used to spend a lot of time  with my friend  Margaret. She had young babies too. We'd practice referring to them by other names to see if our inner image of them altered. I remember Margaret going over to Ebon in her bouncinette saying, "Pamela, do you want milk? Pamela! Good sweet little Pamela!" But no way could we get our minds around Ebon as a Pamela! ASIF!

Nowadays most of the  interesting names I hear belong  the babies of my black friends. "Asia" and "Africa" are lovely names. My white friends have grandchildren called Hannah and Amelia. No more the Zeros and Cosmos. Not even a Suki or a Polly. And certainly no Ruby Tuesdays

And so it was with joy and hope that I heard of the birth of Bluebell Wednesday.

A belated welcome to this world little Bluebell.

Soon you'll be able to hear your mum play the cello as part of her quartet, "The Dirty Pretty Strings". You'll be able to run around on the banks of the Thames, loved and admired by Lakshmi and Gita, your aunts. Your grandma Di and your great uncle Gary will shower you with love and gifts. When you go to school you will shine and outshine the Sarahs and the Williams. And later, you will still be out partying when Big Ben chimes midnight. You will never be a dedicated follower of fashion. You will make your own indelible and colorful mark on the dreary grey of London town.

Bluebell Wednesday, the world is your oyster!

On Greek Gods, Noah and Manhattan Hairdressers

Hairdressers must rank amongst the top ten in strange, in the long list of New York professions. Which is probably why I enjoy visiting them.

I've had a long list during my eleven years in Manhattan. At first I despaired of ever finding one. I'd heard on the Australian bush telegraph that a good hairdresser - as we know them in Australia - was almost impossible to find.

"Darhhhling", my gay friend Robin explained, "You just HAVE to lower your standards - you're in America now!".

My (Australian) boss in those early years of Manhattan living, recommended a very short lady hairdresser in an Upper East Side salon. I've repressed not only the hairdresser's name, but the name of the salon, although I went there regularly for almost two years. The human mind sensibly puts mental survival ahead of memory, and all I can remember - apart from the fact that the hairdresser was so short that she didn't have to bend down to cut (also read 'chop' my hair) - is her strange co-worker.

The co-worker was a blonde and obvious transvestite, who I never saw cut one head of hair. She'd just stare admiringly into the mirror at her station for hours and hours. She was made-up and coiffured to look (well, from a distance) like Kim Novak in 1955. I stared too. It was amazing.

After I'd settled into New York life, I felt that I was independent enough to change hairdressers. As if on cue in an Off Off Off Broadway production, Robin announced that he'd found one.

"Darhhhling, I've found a hairdresser JUST LIKE an Australian one. Well she isn't Australian but she's NORMAL!!" he announced one day as we roamed around the Union Square farmers' market in search of aubergines that would coordinate with his lounge chairs. "NEVER forget the fruit when decorating," he intoned.

'Normal' coming from Robin, was a bit disconcerting, but I had faith. And so I booked in at Madison's (the hairdresser's name, not the avenue).
Madison lived in a poor area of Manhattan. Her building didn't have a doorman, and when I arrived for my appointment, men from the local halfway house were asleep on the steps leading up to the front door. I carefully avoided stepping on the brown paper bags lying around, knowing that they concealed empty bottles of plonk or metho or whatever was the latest Manhattan cocktail of the time.

The door bell didn't work, so, being a shy person at the time (god, THAT'S been knocked out of me) I didn't want to call out. Madison was on the third floor and there was not a sign of life around except for the gurgling sounds coming from the open mouths of the surrounding drunks.
Eventually Madison came down looking for me. "It's OK", she explained with true New York hootzpah, "all my clients get confused". And she took me upstairs.

Madison had a husband. His name was John and he collected antique cameras. Thousands lined the walls on especially made little shelves. The bed (it was a 'studio' apartment) was unmade. No coffee ("We're health freaks", she explained as she lit a cigarette).
I was starting to wonder WHERE she'd wash and cut my hair, when she drew aside an old velvet curtain to reveal a one meter square recess that housed a sink and a chair. Things were looking up!

She told me to sit and as I did so she started to 'cuss' as they say here. "I forgot I broke the expletive deleted scissors on my last client!" she yelled. That SHOULD have been enough! I was beginning to HATE my good friend Robin.

She used the kitchen scissors (though I can't imagine a kitchen existed in this camera-land - was it cunningly hidden behind the sofa?) and gave my hair a quick wash in cold water whilst telling me horror stories about her landlord.
When it was blow-wave time, she discovered that her dryer was broken. Like a psychiatrist unsuccessfully administering ECT she tried to jolt it into action.

"Oh well, there weren't ALWAYS dryers and we managed didn't we Hon?" Speak for yourself I thought, but acquiesced and with my hair badly towel-dried, paid, said goodbye to camera-man, and left. The drunks were still asleep. The world was normal after all. How comforting I thought as I caught the subway home thinking of what I'd say to Robin at work next Monday.

"She's wonderful!" I told him 36 hours later. "A real find!". And indeed she was. I was a client of Madison for the next few years until she moved to Queens to enjoy as she so quaintly and impossibly put it, 'a more rural life'.

You see dear reader, I REMEMBER Madison. My mind has not obliterated her as it did her predecessor - so I KNOW that Madison was OK and that Robin was impeccably right again.

A succession of hairdressing failures followed. Clay in 'Bumble and Bumbles' wasn't too bad. (Was it Bumble and Bumbles that started the trend of having your roots dyed to show you'd been to your hairdresser?) But it was hard to schedule Clay in, as he was bi-coastal as well as plain bi. This means that he worked on the West coast of the US some days and the East on others. I'd forget where Clay WAS on the planet, and so eventually moved on.

Then there was the aromatic hairdressing salon in Hoboken - one of the many sad experiences during my exile there. I'd have to scrub my hair for weeks to get rid of the smell of avocados after my visits. Tiffany just plain refused to cut any hair that she hadn't drenched in a flavour of vegetable oil. Of course you could CHOOSE your flavour. I once seriously considered celery, which only goes to show what Hoboken can do to an otherwise normal human being.
Now my search is over. No longer under the influence of Robin, who has long since left Manhattan and his aubergine-tinted apartment, I found my own hairdresser. Her name is Glamour and I've written about her before.

Not only can Glamour cut hair, but she doesn't babble on. She ALWAYS has scissors that work and her dryers ... sheer perfection - true engineering miracles.
Not that I'd call Glamour normal. She is half French, half Italian, and commutes to Manhattan from Philadelphia. She once cut the hair of the rich and famous, but they didn't tip well enough. The logic of this escapes me. The price of a haircut at her previous place of work must have been about $500. Now it's $30.

But I suppose if they don't tip, what does money matter? Or something like that. I'm learning to suspend reality when it comes to Manhattan hairdressers.
I've been a client of Glamour for over a year now. Kept the same hairstyle; always go on a Thursday after work; always tip well... everything was starting to seem - NORMAL! Till last Thursday. I should have known it couldn't last.

There is a new hairdresser in the station adjacent to Glamour's. She has a normal name, Monica, but that is the most normal thing about her.

When I was there last week, I watched in stunned silence, as she kept forgetting to cut her client's hair, in order to entertain the whole salon with some story about a rabbi, a red dress with a long slit up the side, and what happened at a wedding. I could not follow a single word of it.

Glamour kept hissing at me, "She's ALWAYS like this!" as Monica jumped around, illustrating various parts of her story with actions and gestures that made the mind boggle.
I stopped looking at her, as every time she noticed me looking, she'd elaborate and explain again, some part of the incomprehensible story for my benefit.

Just as I blanked her out of my mind and was drifting into that dream-like state you get when you feel safe and comfortable, she yelled at Glamour - "Who was that man in the fairy story where there is long hair?" "You mean the Rapunzel story?" Glamour suggested. "No No NO!!!" Monica was jumping up and down. Her client was just sitting, her wet hair hardly touched.

"No no - the one not in a story, in the Bible" - Madison was REALLY excited. She started suggesting answers to her own question.

"Hercules!!! That's it!!!" Glamour sighed. Now MY hair wasn't being cut. "He wasn't in the bible. Do you mean a Greek?" I was forced to join in, against my better judgment. Anything to stop the prancing and to get this show on the road
"Sampson!" I screamed above the din. "BLOODY Samson! Read yer bloody Bible! See yer rabbi! Ha Ha"

Monica was happy. "YES YES YES. And I LIKE you!" she yelled back.
I remembered reading somewhere how Americans confused Joan of Arc with Noah. "Do you know who Joan of Arc was?" I asked them both. "YES YES YES!" Monica screamed. "And her animals that went up the ramp two by two?" She looked puzzled and then started shrieking again.

Eventually things began to calm down. Hair was cut. Hairdressers were tipped. On my way out I approached Monica and tapped her on the shoulder. "Don't forget to go home and read your Bible" I told her. She smiled. And as I was going through the door I heard her ask Glamour what country was I from was I was so funny. "Australia" Monica told her. "I wanna go there!" said Monica. And the prancing began again.

My only regret is that Robin is back in OZ. I'd just LOVE to recommend him to my new find.