49. MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN ....

Mad Dogs & Englishmen

It seems the magic number 6 has been following me around - never mind the 6 degrees of separation that led me to there and not here!  It was 6 degrees in Nepal and I felt it after midsummer Perth.  Ditched my winter clothes for Morocco and froze there too as the temperature plummeted under desert winds. Turkey should be warm .. ooh yeah! But guess what? Everyone was wrapped to their eyeballs in pashminas, leather gloves and blanket coats and six was tops. Oh, it's spring in London, I'll go there for some Vitamin D and warmth. Cor blimey and bleedin' nonsense and all that; my first stop after a hot shower at Sarah's Norwich Five Star Accommodation on my personal trip advisor, was a hasty sortie into that font of all nasty Chinese high fashion label rip-offs was Primart or mark, all the same to me, for some leftover winter clothes to clothe me against #6.

The sun doesn't come out here - now, anyway - long enough to thaw wings. And certainly not enough unless there's a wedding to clear the air - take decent blue and light photographs. But I love the country.  I love the long and winding lanes, the verdant greenery, the quaint Victorian houses and grand Georgian ones. The spires, churches, steeples and graveyards. The blossoms and soggy marshes and fields of yellow and splotches of red and the mad blue vein nosed drivers who careen along country roads with their tops down, scarves blowing into watery eyes.

I loved being at Sarah and co.  The warm, mad, delightful family where nothing is predicted and where everything happens and everyone pitches in and nobody minds and a nobody quickly becomes a somebody who will never again have nowhere to sleep.

When idle time happens and a foot or wrist is available, out comes the henna and deep Sarah goes into concentration, into her world of amazing designs which are transmuted onto skin. Children materialise from extended families, expand and contract and levitate the house, a thousands tons of washing are done, a thousand loads of dishes, but there is always time for a hug, a kiss, a smile, a beam of love across a room, an occasion to make fairy wings or tempura or toast marshmallows.

Thus armed, I took the train from Norwich to see my Bloom cousins, in Hampstead Heath.  Racing through fields and past tiny blurred villages, past hills and dales and dazed cows we gobbled the countryside faster than an Australian can warm up beyond 6 degrees.  I moped a bit on the train about things and ifs and whens and whatevers and being cold;  then we slowed, and the driver announced in a sombre voice befitting the occasion that "There is a fatality on the line, the lines have to be cleaned, we apologise for the hiatus in your journey."  And I got to thinking about how I'd left this happy home bound for London cousins and more bonding, and someone else woke up and thought Friggin' 'hell, I can't do this any more and leapt into my path. Life Over.  In 8 seconds. We were delayed an hour and I arrived in London in one piece but sombre.

I took the tube to Holburn, clattering down the crowded stairs and up the packed giant escalators and through the creepy wind tunnels where a forlorn hello player played a forlorn Elgar. Slipped onto the narrow, dim, dangerous platforms, and the smells and whooshes and head down leave me alone commuters in suits and hats and stilettos were the same as when I was last here: only the posters had changed to fit the politics and the media.  Osibiso and cheap pub meals in my day, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and ads for cheap phones now. Halfway somewhere I thought I was on the Blue Line instead of the Red Line, or the Jubilee Line instead of the Central Line or Northern instead of Ealing. I leapt off at the next station, feeling whirled around and disorientated, stopped a hurrying man in a bowler hat who looked blankly at me when I said, Please, Sir, Hope you Don't miss your Train, I'm Australian and haven't a clue about anything that goes on in the Northern hemisphere, but how do I get to Holburn? "You're standing in it", he said, walking away in a hurried huff.

Cousin Matthew collected me on a street corner, and I climbed into his sleek black Saab eating a sharp English apple, much as I probably would have done as a kid. Not a nannosecond had passed in connection time although it had been 15 years since my last visit and soon the mob arrived with shrieks and hugs and kisses and exclamations of You Haven't Changed A Bit! (Which is an older way of saying, my how you've grown!) We sat in his and Viv's English garden, bursting with lobelias and pansies and stocks, herbs and hidden walkways and bounteous lavender.  I spent a few nights there, communing with my wonderful, excitable, interesting and talented cousins:  checked out their African mask collections, their ethnic jewels, remembered the spinning wheels and paintings of shared childhoods that now graced their London homes.

A funny thing, this family business.  Viv explained it on a "visceral level" - there'll always be the connection between family.  I realised how sorely I missed them over all these years and again wondered about the what-ifs, and sliding doors.  And how different my life would have been .. but I'm here again, and circles have a habit of revolving like doors.   I tubed to Bond Street, walked aimlessly around the shops apart from a short sortie into Marks and Sparks for some of their divine undies;  musing at myself for being not the least bit acquisitive as I don't have a home, or a cupboard, or a bookshelf or soapdish to put anything in.  Even at 19, and 21, and 23, I had a hook for my hat.  My only possessions are in a locker in Istanbul, with my nametag, tied to the metaphorical toe.   Travelling light gets easier - if only it weren't so friggin' cold!  Viv liked my earrings - she's now wearing them. I gave her a lavender bush to plant so that there would be another bloom in her garden ... when we tramped across The Heath where dog walkers ran amok with rent-a-poo, Viv told me about the father I never knew.  He used to shout a lot, she said. He wasn't popular.

Sarah and Sean in loving parental mode (!) drove from Norwich to fetch me from Hampstead Heath to drive me to Kent and to my brother and his family. For those who don't know this is one hellova ride of love; negotiating ridiculous London inner and outer rings. We stayed overnight at their friends; deep in the countryside of Plaidstowe where oasthouses reach to the sky, rabbits run wild and red breasted robins sit on chestnut trees. We traipsed down muddy lanes and across stiles and through paddocks to eat at a local 15th century pub where we talked about That Woman and the Black Diamond and nipple piercings and whether, now that they'd moved away from Big Smoke to Little Apples, would both these gorgeous men enter the local cake baking competitions.  All that was missing were the toffee tins to put these images in.

Sarah, Sean, Sue

And so through to Kent and more family. I asked if Sarah and Shaun could stay overnight in my brother's house, as they'd driven so far and for so long.  I'd stayed for days, in their, enjoying their hospitality and humour.  Just one night, a shower, a quick meal?   No. No?  No.

To my utter embarrassment, and shame, they were turned away after a cup of tea and a Marie biscuit. Into the long cool afternoon, wondering about families. I was mortified, after all they had done. Yet again, blood may be thick, but it's not generous. I think this is why they're looking so pissed off in the photo.

So I sit in my family's gardens of vines, roses, olives, daisies; in a greenhouse of vegetables, in a conservatory with a mohair blanket on my knees, thermal underwear in layers, another cup of tea to warm my fingers as I type, too friggin' cold to go outside and inspect the asparagus, or berries or tomatoes, while my family rush around full of the joys of spring, mowing lawns and planting kohl rabi and picking freeshias for my bedroom in sleeveless shirts - they're still marginally African after all and do like a good dose of serious sun to thaw them.  The rest of England has stripped down to their undies and are sitting on desolate windswept beaches eating soggy fish and chips and mopping their melting icecreams.  Bleedin' cold blooded loonies!  I know, because we drove to Whitstable and tried to do the same but had to leave when there was danger of my sticking to the metal railing.  In between, a drive to Canterbury, where my stepmother lives; to her old house next to a pub where the drunk patrons used to pee through her letter box and where she had a bucket of cold water ready to staunch their willies, and where she tried to resuscitate her frozen goldfish by pouring water over them and giving them cpr with her forefinger.  I kid you not.  I seriously Kid you Not.

Canterbury Cathedral and Dan

I have a mad family.  They live spread out like a fine tablecloth around England.  One of them lives next door to the current squeeze of Pippa Middleton, in a house so large you need a telescope to peer down the avenue to the front door, across the acres of fields and wild flowers, through the wrought iron gates and cottage size ornamental urns.  Others live in frightfully alright terrace houses with five floors and lofts and attics.  Others live in houses with Japanese gardens and raked stones and bridges.  There are ties, made and broken and mended and stripped and torn apart and disowned and denied. After all the years of trauma with The Mother, my brother and I sat down and corroborated our childhood abuses. He remembers being taken out of school for good and threatened with self education at the age of 13 when he asked for a ride to school in the snow;  I remember being locked in the roof for interrupting; he remembers being alone in hospital at 8 post tonsillectomy; I remember being alone in hospital between iron lungs and oxygen tents with diphtheria.  We both remember a woman who wore a white fox fur and wielded her ivory cigarette holder like a whip and used her tongue like one on her babies, but was obsequiously wonderful to all else.  He remembers a father who went nuts when he was called by name and not "Dad", I remember a woman I never felt deserved to be called "mom" and never will again now, especially after finding The Secret that slammed shut that sliding London/Cape Town door and led me to marry when I shouldn't have.  Come in, spinner, come in ... your time is coming.

The night grew long and the tales more disturbing and tragic as we ate home made bread and blackcurrant jam, apple juice and fish from Whitstable.  Steve's wife became Lady Gaga as the tales deepened, but as they did, we both let go of all the wrongs of the past.  Do you remember the fights, he asked?  Yes, some, I replied, especially the one where She threw a bedside lamp at Him and it couldn't reach its target because it was still plugged into the wall.  Do you remember that you and our daschund Lulu used to hide in the same spot when in trouble?  Did you know, I added, that when she died I found a spreadsheet of all the men she was concurrently shagging - names to the left of it, dates at the top spanning 30 years, scores to the right?

Steve's led a stable, happy life with his wife and boys, travelling a lot, spent looking through a lengthy lens;  I've kept running on wide angle.  But we grew up as orphans, paving our own way on all levels.  And I got to thinking that nomads never made stable societies or communities, they couldn't acquire;  they weren't literate.  They had to be stationary to grow the crops and reap the seeds and bake the bread and make the paper and tell the tales, and acquire the land to increase the cattle ... and then I had a panic attack about not having a home, a car, books, a cupboard of clothes, a warm body and close giggles when the ceiling closes in.

Brother Number One and I - now that The Mother is dead, said we should Do The Book, bugger the consequences, now that we're old and wise enough not to be victims.  We thought we'd use Za Za Gabor as our womb donor;  Arnold Schwartzenegger as her long time younger lover as the former needs a job now; I'd be played by a young Shirley Temple, then Jessica Lange in King Kong, then Merryl Streep with a better South African accent, then Helen Mirren in Calendar girls.  Woody Allen would fit in there somewhere too.  The missing sibling link and the Story Thereof would be played by himself,  his dyed blonde hair flowing long as he flings his arrow from his bow.  Mr O.  Bride of the Father would be played by a motor bike riding, vidal sassoon cut, golf playing, pipe smoking, skilled liar and hollywood den mother with a bad memory who would have to pass all auditions.  The Lodger would be played by Alan Bates or a rolling troupe of different characters.  The house would be the one used in The Shining.  Queen Latifa would be the one person I loved who rescued me from roof spaces and had a lap bigger than the Transvaal.

Brother Steve found a book on the internet called "Meet the Czechoslovaks", by Walter and Beryl Storm. It's a story of my parents years long stay in Czechoslovakia; of the fascinating neighbours and life in the country post war, and the 2 year plan and the places they ate and the fields they helped their neighbours plough. It's also the story of my brother's parents, but while in Czechoslovakia - long before he was born - they'd changed their names from Harry and Beryl Bloom to the above, to protect themselves in a communist, Jewish-suspicious Europe.  Hence Susan Storm Bloom.  All the years of asking our parents about our heritage, our history, our links, and it took the internet to fill in the blanks of childhoods past.  I was conceived during the writing of that book, and was never mentioned, as perhaps they thought I wouldn't "take" as The womb donor had lost seven children by the time my seed was planted.  I was just a hypothesis, I suppose.  They were busy socialists in an exciting, troubling time: I do remember their tales of living in Europe and being invited to every cocktail party and art gallery opening they could so they'd get free food and make important contacts.

And cousins make connections - my daughter skyped cousin Dan like they'd lunched together yesterday.  There is something special about visceral connections.

I am almost warm, thinking about it!

So, tonight, back to Istanbul - via Zurich.  I'm looking forward to less introspection and more SHOPPING!!!!!!!  And temperatures above six degrees!