Luda and I have been in Istanbul for the past week, significantly assisting the Turkish economy now. I've been too busy and too tired to do the blog, so this is a quickie to let you all know we are alive. And I mean alive.
The bombed restaurant was where we ate every single day we were in Marrakech. We missed the bombing by days. We bought our silver up the back, upstairs from the restaurant. Our private ATM was behind there. I have photos I took of Luda in front of the mosaic that now appears as crumpled and shattered mosaic. We are all very upset at the craziness of this act: the Argana was a wonderful restaurant with a great atmosphere and view, and the food was excellent. We don't know what happened to our lovely waiter who'd become a sort of friend. It's been an awful shock.
I left too, as a young woman with a lot of hope and adventure in my heart, but I also left behind G, my soul mate, the love of my life. I left behind my mother and grandmother and the mountains and street dancing and proteas. Every other member of my family had joined the ranks of rats leaving a sinking ship as we fled the dangerous South African political and social regime. My entire family went to England. So I saved up my own fare to England from my job as a medical secretary, where I spent most of the time sitting on the floor reading medical books as I had no idea how to work a switchboard so seldom answered the phone. I booked a ticket on the Pendennis Castle to Southampton. I was already packed, with a new, crisp passport and visa, before I'd even had the courage to tell my mother I was leaving her own scary regime. I was nineteen. The ship pulled away, the streamers snapped, and I was free.
My father, a prominent lawyer, had a rambling old house overlooking Canterbury with fields that stretched down to the village. I went to high table with him at the university where he was a Law professor. I walked the Kent countryside. I collected daffodils. I ate chestnuts. I saw my first snow bound mole. I plucked pheasant. I wore big coats and bellbottoms and white plastic boots and white eyeshadow. I met my stepmother who smoked a pipe and had a Vidal Sassoon haircut and argued as ferociously as a terror guarding his favourite stuffed chair because I wanted to bath every day, and Actually, this Is Not What We Do In England. I slept upstairs in a loft space and when I woke the windows were frosted over and the ground crackled under my feet. I scored a news reading job in television, I was moving with the groovers, wearing hot pants and white lipstick and enormous hats and green suede platform shoes. I knew the innards of the underground like my own arteries. Until a man in the tube, standing behind me, opened his coat and plonked his willie on my shoulder, moved with the rhythm of the rain, and ruined my coat with his DNA. We weren't allowed to report this stuff back then, but I fled at the next tube stop. I took buses for a while where I preferred to strap hang than risk sitting next to potential eruptions. I went an Osibiso concert at Crystal Palace with a terribly nice young Lord with a Terribly Rich Mayfair Family, who wanted to take me home to meet Mother and Father. I shopped at Wallis and Marks and even did nervous sorties into Harrods. I lived in a marvellous old flat in Belgravia that belonged to the Peruvian consul. I learned to say *u&k in a frightfully posh accent, which I learned from my frightfully posh housemate, Victoria.
I'd left G, and my heart behind, but hey, this was England, this was the Seventies, this was big hats and Carnaby Street, this was late nights and late breakfasts, and semi-starvation and occasional trips to the country to visit my father and his new wife. One day G phoned, playing Nillson Schmillson's I can't live If Living Is Without You, and begged me to come back to South Africa to him. I fell on my bed sobbing, I fell on the floor sobbing. My father said For God's Sake, don't go, you'll never get back here there's going to be a blood bath in South Africa it's coming you're giving up your job I'm only just getting to know you. If G wants you, said the Man Who Wants to Be My father, then G must come to England.
The bombed restaurant was where we ate every single day we were in Marrakech. We missed the bombing by days. We bought our silver up the back, upstairs from the restaurant. Our private ATM was behind there. I have photos I took of Luda in front of the mosaic that now appears as crumpled and shattered mosaic. We are all very upset at the craziness of this act: the Argana was a wonderful restaurant with a great atmosphere and view, and the food was excellent. We don't know what happened to our lovely waiter who'd become a sort of friend. It's been an awful shock.
I'm in England, in Sarah's house a half hour from the wonderful 14th Century city of Norwich, place of churches, crumbling walls, narrow lanes, tea shops, antiques, and rickety and stately homes. I feel very content, very balanced, very ordered. It's strange to be "civilised" after so long; strange to walk into a clean, sanitised mall even if the youths here have hair like toilet brushes and a man had a spider web tattooed over his face. I needed a little sidestep from my Istanbul adventure, and I wanted to see my family who have been living the English life since we all left South Africa in the seventies.
I left too, as a young woman with a lot of hope and adventure in my heart, but I also left behind G, my soul mate, the love of my life. I left behind my mother and grandmother and the mountains and street dancing and proteas. Every other member of my family had joined the ranks of rats leaving a sinking ship as we fled the dangerous South African political and social regime. My entire family went to England. So I saved up my own fare to England from my job as a medical secretary, where I spent most of the time sitting on the floor reading medical books as I had no idea how to work a switchboard so seldom answered the phone. I booked a ticket on the Pendennis Castle to Southampton. I was already packed, with a new, crisp passport and visa, before I'd even had the courage to tell my mother I was leaving her own scary regime. I was nineteen. The ship pulled away, the streamers snapped, and I was free.
My father, a prominent lawyer, had a rambling old house overlooking Canterbury with fields that stretched down to the village. I went to high table with him at the university where he was a Law professor. I walked the Kent countryside. I collected daffodils. I ate chestnuts. I saw my first snow bound mole. I plucked pheasant. I wore big coats and bellbottoms and white plastic boots and white eyeshadow. I met my stepmother who smoked a pipe and had a Vidal Sassoon haircut and argued as ferociously as a terror guarding his favourite stuffed chair because I wanted to bath every day, and Actually, this Is Not What We Do In England. I slept upstairs in a loft space and when I woke the windows were frosted over and the ground crackled under my feet. I scored a news reading job in television, I was moving with the groovers, wearing hot pants and white lipstick and enormous hats and green suede platform shoes. I knew the innards of the underground like my own arteries. Until a man in the tube, standing behind me, opened his coat and plonked his willie on my shoulder, moved with the rhythm of the rain, and ruined my coat with his DNA. We weren't allowed to report this stuff back then, but I fled at the next tube stop. I took buses for a while where I preferred to strap hang than risk sitting next to potential eruptions. I went an Osibiso concert at Crystal Palace with a terribly nice young Lord with a Terribly Rich Mayfair Family, who wanted to take me home to meet Mother and Father. I shopped at Wallis and Marks and even did nervous sorties into Harrods. I lived in a marvellous old flat in Belgravia that belonged to the Peruvian consul. I learned to say *u&k in a frightfully posh accent, which I learned from my frightfully posh housemate, Victoria.
I'd left G, and my heart behind, but hey, this was England, this was the Seventies, this was big hats and Carnaby Street, this was late nights and late breakfasts, and semi-starvation and occasional trips to the country to visit my father and his new wife. One day G phoned, playing Nillson Schmillson's I can't live If Living Is Without You, and begged me to come back to South Africa to him. I fell on my bed sobbing, I fell on the floor sobbing. My father said For God's Sake, don't go, you'll never get back here there's going to be a blood bath in South Africa it's coming you're giving up your job I'm only just getting to know you. If G wants you, said the Man Who Wants to Be My father, then G must come to England.
But I didn't listen to my father. I went back to South Africa. Where everything in my life collapsed, in a catastrophic way. I walked into a different sort of bloodbath. Wordlessly, G dumped me a few days after my return. I fell apart. I remembered my mother telling me, when I wanted to be a doctor, that I should marry one instead, before I lose my looks, "sun as they are". I did; he was handsome and intelligent and I loved his parents and his violin and his brass bed and his Porsche. We had a daughter. He dragged me, kicking and screaming and carrying on, to Australia, that I dreamed was populated with drunk tattooed people who chased sheep and drove trucks. He wasn't so nice, after all. It took me 14 years to escape from him, and when I did, one of the first places I returned to, was England.
And here I am again, amongst the blackberry hedges and the rape seed fields and wonky houses. I have such a sense of familiarity in this country. I have a flotilla of cousins here who I will see next week. And my brother and his family will soon open their doors to me. I've spent most of my life an emotional orphan, living in alien lands away from family. Here, in Sarah's house which is filled with much laughter, major interaction, everyone working and relating as a cohesive unit into which I'm immediately absorbed, I can't help wondering how different my life would have been had I not sailed away on that ship or married G.
But I did, and I didn't. Instead, I've filled my life with travel and adventures. I'm proud of my journeys, and that I can face anything now. T.S. Elliott wrote - The aim of all our travelling is to return to the place and know it for the first time. I wouldn't be the me I am now if I hadn't pulled up the known and filled myself with the unknown, the scary, the challenging. One one level while I yearn for stability and the security of a solid family life, I'm also so much more because I haven't had it. Sometimes I don't know where I belong; I've felt more alive in a circle of Samburu warriors, ocre drawn on my face, than I have at my local supermarket.
Travel allows one to be anonymous. Impersonal. We don't have to reveal; our commitments have to do with timetables, not emotions. On a train of strangers, we're less vulnerable than when we're sitting with a significant other, trying to make a point. We can be impulsive, inventive, invisible. Or highly visible. Since Luda returned to Sydney, I am so invisible that people have tried to walk through me, never mind walk over me! Together we were a dynamic force to be reckoned with. She agreed: "It takes 2 forces to produce energy and thats what made us so visible. Even when we were buggered we still hit the streets lit up like Christmas trees with the knowledge that magical finds would soon be ours.... we were happy.....our eyes were the windows to our soul.....we were like that saying in When Harry Met Sally...'I'll have what she's having' and that's why we were like a giant honeypot attracting many bees.............oh I miss it! "
Wandering around the shops of Norwich, I had no desire to buy anything besides that which would keep me warm. It's a strange sensation to know that everything I acquire, I have to carry with me for the forseeable future. In Turkey a man tried to sell me a pair of summery platform sandals. I'm going into winter, I told him. I have to fit them in my case, I told him. No problems, he kept insisting, they make you taller. Unh huh. THAT again! So instead, I bought two beautiful little Southern Indian beads that I can take everywhere and that don't weigh much.
And this got me to thinking about my obsession with beads. I dream about them. That I find beauties in dark souks. That I'm creating jewelery. During the day my head is full of new designs and I read books of bead history and culture when I should be watching the news of an insane, angry world. I scheme with Sarah how we can do our own book - and the delights of heading back to Morocco to the festivals and the people wearing those astounding designs of astounding components. I see beads and jewellery in their cultural context, so photography is of major importance to me now. I thought I'd want to give up the jewellery thing, but I'm delighted I have a whole new path with a new way of seeing. I thought I'd lost the pulse racing, heart hammering sensation when I found a treasure I really connected with: now I know when I've found a treasure, buried in buckets, listening to the goose pricking on my skin as a treasure geiger counter.
My special collection has grown in leaps and bounds since being under the subtle tutelage of Sarah. We marvel at the mysticality of these little pieces of art, at the creative secrets they contain. So what's their allure? Every one has been created by a person, so there's a soul connection. Whether it's been carved, washed up on a beach, annealed, excavated, blown or hammered - someone in a foreign culture, many long before recorded history, has had a vision which he has brought to life with his hands. The source of every bead is evidenced in its shape, form and design. Beads outlast cataclysms, famine, floods, wars and they've been currency from the beginning of mankind. Tiny, beautiful, transportable and always growing in value, they tell so much more of a culture than a five carat diamond. Trace the history of a bead and you have a history of the world; a culture, an individual. Put a string of diamonds around a neck, and comments will be made about its financial value. Put a string of beads around a neck ... each one collected from a significant point, or each one with a significant history, and a story begins. True or not, they hold a crowd.
So if I hadn't slipped through my sliding door all those years ago when I returned to South Africa thinking I was going to marry G, I most probably wouldn't be involved in the passing around of stories. Bead stories. Or be here, now, doing this.
I read this to Sarah while I'm writing. And she asks me if I've heard of Hag stones, the ones in which witches used to tunnel and hide when bad spells were being thrown about. Hag stones? are you for real? You've been living in Norfolk too long! They're for real, she says, running around the house to gather her collection and returns with a handful of marvellous pieces of rock in strange shapes, which she's tied in bunches to window sills, door handles and uses as a key ring.
Yesterday Sarah was dressed in a very revealing bustier, a red frothy skirt with roses and skulls, with a pinkish petticoat, high red leather boots with diamante horse shoes, and bunch of red flowers in her mad flowing hair. Today she's in various shades of grey, layered like the colours of the rocks she's showing me and tell me about evil witchery. Which one do I believe?
Norfolk legend has it that when witches were dancing and throwing around evil spells, the only way to hide from the spells was to tunnel into a stone. When it was safe to come out, the witches escaped, leaving a hole right through the stone. These stones have long been used as amulets: putting a piece of string through the hole releases the spirit of the witch and the wearer will always be protected from evil and negativity. They're also gifts from the Goddess Gaia, the Earth Mother, to remind us of the divine feminine, and the wonder and magic of creation and the protective element of the circle.
And Sarah had found them on her local beach. Beach? In England, there's a beach? We do an immediate about turn for the day, and in five seconds I'm in my hiking boots and dressed for hag stone fossicking on a beach in England.
Two goddesses, out on the prowl, looking for hag stones while a watery warm England strips off their clothes and heads out for fish and chips in old villages. The beach is grey, bleak looking, with slippery stones under my feet and nobody daring to go in the water. Old folk with dripping icecreams totter down the pier to the Folk show at the Pavilion; some folk singers entertain the elderly. My eyes are peeled to the ground looking for these rare pieces which I'm determined to find to add to my "treasure necklace" of beads found on this trip.
I spot one immediately - as easily as looking for treasure beads in brimming buckets. We find another and another and another .... but I have to be selective as they weigh as much as ... rocks. I'm as happy as a hag on a free spirit day ... it's warmer, I'm on the beach, I've added to my bead collection, I'm having fun with Sarah, and I'm learning quickly that many of the pieces I bought intuitively while in Morocco are museum quality.
Oh yeah! Who cares if I'm invisible. I can find rare hag stones on a long stretch of beach if I ever needed somewhere to hide.
And here I am again, amongst the blackberry hedges and the rape seed fields and wonky houses. I have such a sense of familiarity in this country. I have a flotilla of cousins here who I will see next week. And my brother and his family will soon open their doors to me. I've spent most of my life an emotional orphan, living in alien lands away from family. Here, in Sarah's house which is filled with much laughter, major interaction, everyone working and relating as a cohesive unit into which I'm immediately absorbed, I can't help wondering how different my life would have been had I not sailed away on that ship or married G.
But I did, and I didn't. Instead, I've filled my life with travel and adventures. I'm proud of my journeys, and that I can face anything now. T.S. Elliott wrote - The aim of all our travelling is to return to the place and know it for the first time. I wouldn't be the me I am now if I hadn't pulled up the known and filled myself with the unknown, the scary, the challenging. One one level while I yearn for stability and the security of a solid family life, I'm also so much more because I haven't had it. Sometimes I don't know where I belong; I've felt more alive in a circle of Samburu warriors, ocre drawn on my face, than I have at my local supermarket.
Travel allows one to be anonymous. Impersonal. We don't have to reveal; our commitments have to do with timetables, not emotions. On a train of strangers, we're less vulnerable than when we're sitting with a significant other, trying to make a point. We can be impulsive, inventive, invisible. Or highly visible. Since Luda returned to Sydney, I am so invisible that people have tried to walk through me, never mind walk over me! Together we were a dynamic force to be reckoned with. She agreed: "It takes 2 forces to produce energy and thats what made us so visible. Even when we were buggered we still hit the streets lit up like Christmas trees with the knowledge that magical finds would soon be ours.... we were happy.....our eyes were the windows to our soul.....we were like that saying in When Harry Met Sally...'I'll have what she's having' and that's why we were like a giant honeypot attracting many bees.............oh I miss it! "
Wandering around the shops of Norwich, I had no desire to buy anything besides that which would keep me warm. It's a strange sensation to know that everything I acquire, I have to carry with me for the forseeable future. In Turkey a man tried to sell me a pair of summery platform sandals. I'm going into winter, I told him. I have to fit them in my case, I told him. No problems, he kept insisting, they make you taller. Unh huh. THAT again! So instead, I bought two beautiful little Southern Indian beads that I can take everywhere and that don't weigh much.
And this got me to thinking about my obsession with beads. I dream about them. That I find beauties in dark souks. That I'm creating jewelery. During the day my head is full of new designs and I read books of bead history and culture when I should be watching the news of an insane, angry world. I scheme with Sarah how we can do our own book - and the delights of heading back to Morocco to the festivals and the people wearing those astounding designs of astounding components. I see beads and jewellery in their cultural context, so photography is of major importance to me now. I thought I'd want to give up the jewellery thing, but I'm delighted I have a whole new path with a new way of seeing. I thought I'd lost the pulse racing, heart hammering sensation when I found a treasure I really connected with: now I know when I've found a treasure, buried in buckets, listening to the goose pricking on my skin as a treasure geiger counter.
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| Sarah, doing Abbey Road |
So if I hadn't slipped through my sliding door all those years ago when I returned to South Africa thinking I was going to marry G, I most probably wouldn't be involved in the passing around of stories. Bead stories. Or be here, now, doing this.
I read this to Sarah while I'm writing. And she asks me if I've heard of Hag stones, the ones in which witches used to tunnel and hide when bad spells were being thrown about. Hag stones? are you for real? You've been living in Norfolk too long! They're for real, she says, running around the house to gather her collection and returns with a handful of marvellous pieces of rock in strange shapes, which she's tied in bunches to window sills, door handles and uses as a key ring.
Yesterday Sarah was dressed in a very revealing bustier, a red frothy skirt with roses and skulls, with a pinkish petticoat, high red leather boots with diamante horse shoes, and bunch of red flowers in her mad flowing hair. Today she's in various shades of grey, layered like the colours of the rocks she's showing me and tell me about evil witchery. Which one do I believe?
Norfolk legend has it that when witches were dancing and throwing around evil spells, the only way to hide from the spells was to tunnel into a stone. When it was safe to come out, the witches escaped, leaving a hole right through the stone. These stones have long been used as amulets: putting a piece of string through the hole releases the spirit of the witch and the wearer will always be protected from evil and negativity. They're also gifts from the Goddess Gaia, the Earth Mother, to remind us of the divine feminine, and the wonder and magic of creation and the protective element of the circle.
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| Sarah, looking for hag stones |
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| Moi, with found hag stone and new fake Fendi bag |
Oh yeah! Who cares if I'm invisible. I can find rare hag stones on a long stretch of beach if I ever needed somewhere to hide.
Great stories as usual - getting more like a book every time, if ever you have time.........! Cheers and thanks for entertainung and educating all your fans out here - I LOVE getting your updates.
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