The weathered wood sprite danced towards the door, shouting over a tweeded shoulder at someone unseen.
“I’m away on now. Sure, I’ll see you through the week”
If Richard Burton had been from Belfast, this is how he would have sounded: vocal chords toughened by cigarettes and soaked every day in whiskey. Like Richard Burton, the wee man declaimed as though to a packed auditorium. He was, in fact, in a quietly comfortable, reasonably upscale restaurant in Shepherd’s Bush where I was peaceably enjoying mushroom risotto and a glass of red wine.
“Where are you from?” I raised my own voice to match his, guldering from my seat in the corner. All heads in the restaurant swivelled from him to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I half-saw the restaurant owner shake his head.
“The Ormy road” he said.
“C’mere” said I, gesturing that he should join me. “What part of the Ormeau Road?”
I knew the road of course, and an enjoyable, roisterous conversation ensued about the Ormeau Park golf course, the Nazareth convent, the bakery and the gas works. The wee man was in full voice–no volume control.
“What brings you here?” I said, after we had exhausted conversation about the Parador and the Errigle Inn, the Curzon cinema and the Oriel Pharmacy.
“Ah sure I just came in to get a drink off a friend who works in the kitchen” said my new best friend. “He lives below me, just up the street a bit”
“You didn’t eat here then?”
“Dear God no. Far too effing expensive. Not for the likes of me. I hardly eat anyway—stick to the whiskey” A phlegmy laugh. “No I just called in to see Stephen. I was on my way home when you shouted.”
Behind him, the restaurant owner came into focus. He was sorrowfully polishing a glass with a look of a man who knew the night’s business was done.
I looked more closely at my table companion, and could see the puck was down on his luck. His head was the size a coconut, and similarly rough and whiskered. Under his tweed jacket he wore a jumper of patterned acrylic. It had been some time since he’d visited a dentist. But his Belfast-Burton eyes burned bright. He was dapper in a derelict kind of way.
“Are you working?” I asked.
“I’ve a wee job at the convent doing maintenance” he said.
My ears pricked up. “You could maybe help me find someone to get rid of a wardrobe with a smashed glass door?”
“Just effing buck it out on the street. Let the council take care of it. Get a friend to help you at night—effing hurl it out. That’s what I effing do. Say you know nothing about it if anyone effing asks. That’s what I did with my boiler. Just effed it effing out.”
He was on a roll now. Around us, tables emptied.
“They’ve my gas off. Effing disconnected it. I can do without it. Eff them. Bucked it effing out.”
“Cold in winter though” I murmured, noticing that the last family in the restaurant were gesturing for their bill.
“Cold? Cold’s no bother. I have no glass in my windies in the flat. Have them covered with chicken wire to keep the pigeons out”
I air-scribbled for my own bill. It arrived with speed.
“I’m sure it’s dear” said the wee man, looking as I pulled notes from my wallet. I felt a stab of shame.
“Here” I said, proffering a fiver.
“Ah, you don’t need to do that” said Jono, for we were now on first name terms. He pocketed the note.
“Get yourself some chicken wire.”
“I’ll probably get some cigarettes”
“Awfully bad for you…”
“Ah sure, the harm is done”
At the bar in the now empty restaurant, the owner nodded ruefully. The harm was indeed done.
“Sorry” I mouthed at the owner as we left. He didn’t say to come back soon.
On the dark, wet pavement Jono shook my hand, eager to get off to the off-licence. .
“If you’re ever passing the convent just come in and ask for me. If they don’t know me just say you’re looking the man in the white overalls. I’ll be up a ladder somewhere. I might not remember you, but sure I’ll know you when I see you”.
That’s where we left it.
Behind us, the lights went off in the restaurant. It was 9pm.
I don’t own a pair of socks, and although I have many pairs of shoes, I prefer my feet to be bare when I am in the house. This won’t do in Armenia, where I now know people always wear slippers when they are lounging at home. It’s not just because of the cold, it is a culturally expected behaviour and it won’t do to do otherwise. (BTW, should you find yourself living in the shadow of Mount Ararat, also be careful not to put your handbag on the floor–it’s just not done.)The need to remember to cover my feet is new on my list of worries when I imagine myself in Armenia. The sock thing sounds small, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me. It therefore requires noticing, and remembering and planning and doing, which can be the last straw on difficult days when you retreat from the outside world and don’t want to try anymore.
Emily Brandt
Emily served every day of her 27 months in Armenia, and now recruits for the Peace Corps. She found it tough and her candour chips the sugar-coating off my romantic view of soft diplomacy and international service. This will be more Survivor than The Sound of Music. Reading her blog makes me wish I was on my way today, for I am terrified that I will spend more time waiting to go to Armenia–talking about it, getting cheered on for it, and packing a play box version of a traveller’s trunk, than I will be able endure away from home and its familiar comforts. I have a Trump-level distaste for losing face and could not stand the shame. More importantly, if I flake, I would be costing some one else a place, wasting tax-payers money, and letting down the projects I am slated to support. Oh please don’t let that happen. Let me be up to this. I really want to do it.
The Curly Wurly, thin in its wrapper, looked pliant and chewy, just like a real one. The Turkish delight, made in felt, had the flaccid appearance of the actual chocolate bar. The Sherbet dip’s stem stood at exactly the right length, and the Bassett allsorts man did his multi-coloured skip across the licorice-black of a packet with lumps and bumps in all the right places. The work of art called Sweet Sendsations was, for me, the star of the Koestler Trust We Are All Human exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall. The prisoner who made the sweetie stand must have asked for family and friends to bring her bags and bags and bars and bars of chocolate, so she could model exact replicas in felt, sewing on the brand and product names, exactly as they are in the sweet shop. The end result was a piece of craft work I covet–colourful, comfortably familiar, playful and brilliantly creative. Sadly it was not for sale. I have no idea whether she created woollen pouches to wrap the real items (unlikely–they looked life size, not thicker) , or whether she used loo roll (middles and sheets), bread, match sticks, soap and other prison materials to craft the shapes she then covered in play school squares. I couldn’t touch the candy bars, because they were behind glass, but gosh I wanted to: temptingly tactile, they melted my heart.
Dame Rosie Winterton DBE has been relieved of her duties as the Labour Party’s Chief Whip in the latest cabinet reshuffle. She has held the position for six years, holding Labour MP’s together (at least on the floor of the House of Commons) under the leadership of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn. The job, even at the best of times, requires savvy, empathy, humour, influencing skill, problem-solving ability, creativity, diplomacy, broad shoulders and iron will. Rosie, who I have known since we were at University, has all of these in spades. She is trusted and admired by MPs on both sides of the aisle. Rosie will be sorry to lose a job she loved and must be feeling cast adrift and rudderless today. (I haven’t spoken to her: I imagine her phone is ringing off the hook, people are piling into the office she must now vacate, and flowers are being delivered on the hour, every hour). She’ll be fine though; better than fine, for she is more than a title, and a position. Through very different phases in the life of the Labour Party, Rosie has been loyal to whoever is leader, to party and Parliamentary process, and to the ideal of democracy. She has been focused on making things work, bringing a very practical and pragmatic approach to her public service. I hope she enjoys the many toasts that will cheer her on to the next stage in her political and personal life, and that the next recess will bring a long holiday somewhere sunny. (She is MP for Doncaster Central. However much she loves it, her constituency is not bathed in warming sunlight in November). I hope she knows that MPs of all stripes will continue to seek her out for advice, succour and scuttlebutt, and that her doughty common sense and political wile will continue to allow her to shape and lead the future of the country and the party she has championed since schooldays. I hope she is able to spend time thinking about what SHE really wants, and how to make it happen, inside the House of Commons, and in the outside world. Now she can use her considerable skills in her own service, and free from cabinet-level duties she can perhaps do more for the future of the party, the parliament, and the country. She has an enviable ability to walk long distances, at speed, wearing very high heels. She has tireless energy. She is clear-sighted, charming and clued in. There will be no stopping her. You go girl x.
In common with many Western middle-aged women of some means and significant heft, I favour a layered, linen-look. I visit the dry cleaner as an addict does a dealer. I am a stranger to the clothes horse, peg bag, spray starch and steam iron. This won’t be an option though if I am to travel to parts of the world where tetrachloroethylene is in short supply. Could it be time to ditch the drapey dishcloth look and swap natural fibres for easy care synthetics? I fear my at-one-with-the-planet look and rustic peasant vibe won’t wash in the developing world. (Picture credits: Tim Brown)
My granddaughter, aged three, is now three thousand miles away. (I am the one who did the moving. I’m now in London, while she is at home near Washington DC.) She stayed with me for three days before I left her, and I noticed something odd. Most of the time, we were together, having messy meals, ill-judged outings, and toilet tussles ( “I flush grandma” at unnecessary and inopportune intervals). Every once in a while though, she would be listening to nursery rhymes by herself in bed, playing with her fruit loops on the kitchen table, or mashing her play dough into a rug, and I would be somewhere in the house, doing something else. Several times, she’d shout out “I’m OK Grandma” as if in response to a kindly inquiry. Except I hadn’t shown any concern, or asked her anything at all. “That’s good” I’d reply, feeling guiltily wrong-footed. Her Aunt, my daughter, used to do something similar. She’d sneeze, pause, look at me and then say “bless myself” filling the vacuum caused by my lack of parental piety. Now another generation is proving similarly robust in the face of family flakiness. One day, with luck, she will tell others that her granny didn’t fuss. I aspire to be an international version of David Walliams’ Gangsta Granny, but I suppose it is possible that instead of being labelled energetic, intrepid and creative, family history will record me as neglectful, self-absorbed and non-caring. Oh dear. Now, must get on…
In the winter months, the weather in Armenia is like that of Chicago. The roads and transport systems even in the capital, Yerevan, are not as good as those on the Miracle Mile or the Loop. Outside the city, sidewalks and pavements can be uneven and treacherous, even when there isn’t snow and ice. I can appreciate the Peace Corps concerns. Although I now have a couple of letters using the words “moderate” “mild”, “full range of motion” and “good mobility” it does have to be admitted that I am something of a stranger to Yaktrax and sturdy snow boots; and that my balance can be bad, and forward motion a bit of a challenge, even on the smoothest terrain on the sunniest of days. Still, there must be thousands of people with knees like mine going about their everyday business in Armenia, mustn’t there? If they can do it, so can I…
Marigold Moment 