Just About a Teddy Bear with a Wonky Nose*

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Scribe Doll

“What does he think I am? A baby?”

Deep embarrassment was making me peevish.  I did not want my mother, grandmother – and, especially, the guests – to think I was still a little girl who liked teddy bears.  After all, I was five.  It was bad enough that I was already in my pyjamas and slippers, ready for bed, when everyone else was staying up – but rubbing it in with a teddy bear was insulting.  Luckily, my mother’s boss – the man responsible for my social discrediting, this Christmas Eve – was not present, so I was able to ridicule him with as much haughty outrage as I felt.  It was not the first time he had triggered my anger.  When I heard he went hunting pheasants at weekends, I used my mother’s mechanical typewriter to write him a letter which began, “Dear Murderer” before spiralling into accusations and heartfelt wishes that he might be appropriately punished for his crimes against animals.  I then gave the letter to my mother to take to him, never doubting that she would deliver it straight into his hands (even then, diplomacy was an alien concept to me).  When, a few months later, I heard that he had injured his thumb whilst cleaning his hunting rifle, I cheered.

And now, that horrid man was giving me a teddy bear for Christmas.  Not just that – but a cheap and nasty-looking one.  My other teddy bear, which my mother had bought me the previous year, and which sat on an armchair, gathering dust, was made of wool and velvet, with articulated paws.  I will never know why I did not play with him, but he was a quality bear.  This one was stuffed with some kind of mediocre sponge, and was not even brown but some kind of non-descript pinkish-reddish-orangey, with white muzzle, tummy and feet.  Dark brown bead eyes with large black pupils, an upside down, vaguely  heart-shaped piece of red felt for a mouth, and a little black nose which was stuck off-centre.  A cheap teddy bear with a wonky nose.  Couldn’t my mother’s boss at least have spent a little more?

Of course, there would never be any question of my playing with such a low quality toy but I could not stop staring at the wonky nose.  Defective.  No one would ever play with him.  He would just lie there, under the Christmas tree, on top of the scrunched up wrapping paper.  Later, the lights would be switched off, and he would lie there, alone, in the dark, with his wonky nose.  Suddenly, tears were streaming down my face.  No one would ever love Teddy, and he would be thrown away.

I took wonky-nosed Teddy to bed with me, to comfort him.  I told him it would only be for that night, because it was Christmas Eve.

I fell asleep, hugging Teddy, for many, many years to come.

He now lives among my woollen jumpers.  He is still with me.

Scribe Doll

* With thanks to Rosy Cole for inspiring me to write this, with her story Elephant’s Footnote.

IMG_0663

 

 

Posted in Odds & Ends | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

A Room of My Own

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Scribe Doll

There is a tree outside the window of my new room.  An oak, with ivy wrapped around, embracing his body and lower branches.  His body, yes.  There is something male about this oak.  A wise old man ready to share stories about this part of South West London before there was a street here; before they built the house with the room I moved into, two weeks ago.  A room with a strip of stained glass on top of the large windows, where the morning sun floods in as soon as you part the curtains, in the morning, bathing you in bright gold.

After seven years of camping in someone else’s living room, the first room of my own.

After the removers leave, I have a moment of panic, as I step over all the boxes, knowing full well that I will never be able to fit the contents of the one-bedroom flat I had, what feels like a lifetime ago, into one, albeit large, room.  I have strained my right elbow ligaments during the move from Norwich, and my whole arm now feels inflamed, but resting it is not an option.  Slowly, I stack up into a corner the thirty photocopying paper boxes of books and CDs, then start pulling off the parcel tape, and arranging them in double rows on the two shelves that belong to the room.  After an hour, I observe a worrying hammock effect, so frantically remove the books.  The shelves straighten up, again.  I think.  The lower shelf had better carry DVDs – they are lighter.  In the centre, I build a pillar to support the top shelf with the help of my hard back collection of Harry Potter, and Mark Kurlansky’s The Basque History of the World.  All the unread books go on the top shelf, but in a single row.  The other, built-in shelves, and the bookcase I brought with me, are sturdy enough to bear the majority of my other books.  I have too many books, I know.  I resign myself to re-packing five boxes of books, and stacking them in a corner, behind the armchair.  A small price to pay for a room of my own.  The armchair, I have pushed next to the window, so that I can sit and watch the squirrel vandalise the clusters of rusty leaf buds that are bursting out of the tree branches, and throw twigs at unsuspecting passers-by.  The squirrel came close to my window, a couple of days ago, and peered at me.  Then it was the turn of the magpie.  They are spreading the word in the animal world, that the room has a new occupant.  At night, I can sit in the armchair and look up at the moon as she smiles down on me.

I have put my work table by the window, too.  This way, I have a choice between glancing out at the tree or the sky, or at the postcards I have Blu-Tacked to the cupboard door, in front of me.  Postcards with Commedia dell’Arte characters, reproductions of National Gallery paintings, and a photo of a Venetian Palazzo, which I took with a sharply-angled tripod, some years ago.  Like so many London houses, this one is also affected by land subsidence.  Furniture has to be propped up in front, so that it does not tumble forward.  My table is on a slight slant, the furthest edge higher than the end at which I sit and work.  This is a room that could feature as a character in a short story, or a novel.  A room with a personality.  I know we are going to get on well.

It takes me nearly two weeks to unpack everything.  I have left the best till last, as a treat to unwrap once the hard work is complete.  I unroll my posters.  There is room for two on my walls.  I had forgotten I had most of these.  I must decide which ones I will hang up.  There are joyful Dufys, and a Rosina Wachtmeister cat with a mouse suspended upside down in his belly.  There is a glamorous, 1951 black and white photo by Willy Maywald, of a woman in yards and yards of Christian Dior skirt.  My soul is still a little bruised, after recent tempests.  I hang up my beloved National Gallery print of Verrocchio’s Tobias and the Angel.  I need the Renaissance sense of peace for my mind.  Also, a print I bought at Villa Farnesina, in Rome, three years ago, but which has remained rolled up until now.  Sodoma’s depiction of Alexander’s wedding to Roxane.  I need the Baroque lusciousness as a balm for my heart.

Out of a box stuffed with shredded paper, I pull out another old friend.  A papier mâché Venetian Commedia mask, half gold leaf and half colourful Harlequin, complete with oversized nose.

Finally, with care, I unwrap another treasure I have not seen for many years.  Something I bought in Murano, from an artisan glass blower.  A small glass unicorn.  Transparent, with swirls of cyan blue flowing through its body.

I place the unicorn on the shelf of one of the sturdy bookshelves.  Right next to my collection of world fairy tales.

This is a room for dreaming, planning and building.

Scribe Doll

Posted in Odds & Ends | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

Images of Norwich

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Scribe Doll

I do not have a good relationship with Norwich Castle.  I am sorry.  I thought I would get used to its odd, sandcastle mould shape on the green hill but I have not.  I find it too sinister.  Edinburgh Castle evokes memories of my happy childhood books by Sir Walter Scott.  Durham Castle brings back recollections of my happy university days.  Castel Sant’Angelo, in Rome, makes arias from Tosca swish though my head.  The Tower of London – with all its bloody past – is, for me, the home of gorgeous, intelligent, sadly maimed ravens.  The first thing I saw in Norwich Castle, during my very first visit, about eight years ago, were the disturbing death masks of men who had been hanged there for murder.  I felt queasy.  Macabre souvenirs of violence punishing violence.  Of wrong in judgement of wrong.  That is all I can think of when I look up and see the square, stout Norman cube of stone on the grass mound.

IMG_0661

*   *   *

Norwich is a treasure trove of small, independent bookshops.  At the top of a winding, cobbled street, opposite a teddy bear shop, stands the Doormouse Bookshop.  It is a jewel of a place, where the owner can tell you all you need to know about Norwich, past and present.  The wonderful collection of unusual, second-hand books covering a wide variety of subjects includes an impressive collection of children’s books.  The kind of books that make you wish you were still a child – or a parent.  You can smell the love of books as soon as you walk in.  Along St Giles Street, there is another inspiring second-hand bookshop, J.R. & R.K. Ellis.  Enter at your peril, for you will not want to leave again without an armful of books.  These are the two I have loved from the start.  There are others.

*   *   *

When I first went to live there, I read somewhere that The Golden Triangle was Norwich’s answer to London’s Notting Hill.  Well, whoever first said that may or may not have been to Notting Hill…  However, it is reputed for its good pubs and bistrots.  Because of its proximity to the University of East Anglia, it has a large student population, giving the area a youthful feel.  There is also a grocer, in one of the streets off the Unthank Road, where you can buy as much or as little as you want of vegetables, pulses, fruit and spices.  A jewel of a place, where I once bought fragrant, shiny, fresh bay leaves.  The owner just snapped a small branch from the tree for me.

*   *   *

One of my favourite places for coffee, is Cinema City.  This being Norwich, it is inside a 15th Century merchant’s hall.  In the café, the ceiling is high, arched, with dark brown timber beams holding it up, in stripy teams criss-crossing beneath the vault.

I like going there for their delicious white hot chocolate.  Edith Piaf murmurs broken-hearted love songs through the loudspeakers.  Sunday lunchtimes, though, there is live music.  A young man plays wistful tunes on his guitar, sitting in the bay window seat, below the coat of arms painted on the glass panes, sunlight bouncing off his blonde hair and goatee.  I picture him in a ruff and a velvet cap, instead of his jeans and white T-shirt, and imagine him as a Tudor lute player.  He strums Desafinado.  A Brazilian song, in Norwich, in a 15th Century building.  Anachronistic, but it works.  A guess when beauty of music meets beauty of architecture,  the alchemy produces gold.

 *   *   *

There comes a time when decisions have to be made, and when you realise that perseverance and “sticking things out” would be equivalent to meaningless stubborness.    When a door won’t open, there is no point in ramming your head against it.  It’s your head – and not the door – that’s likely to break.  When all is said and done, you need a job to live somewhere.  A job which I was not able to find.  And so time’s up for the Norwich experiment.  Perhaps we will meet again.  And so I bow to Norwich, give it thanks for its many gifts, and put my belongings back on the London train.

I shall always be grateful to Norwich for holding up a mirror to me.  I would not have seen the unrepentantly urban mouse in it, otherwise.

IMG_0654

Scribe Doll

Posted in Travel | 14 Comments

New City, New You – or New City, Real You?

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Scribe Doll

There is something liberating and strangely peaceful about moving to a place where you do not know a soul, and nobody knows you.  People tell me that you can be whatever you like, then.  Reinvent yourself – that all too trendy phrase.  My experience, since moving to Norwich (where I got off the train not knowing anyone at all), last February, has not been so much of becoming a new me, as of starting to discover the original me.

IMG_0643Sadly, I cannot be “whatever I want to be”.  What I want to be – or wish I were – is for ever eluding me, in spite of my efforts.  Certainly, if I could mould my personality to my liking, I would have a different one from the one I am lumbered with.  In London, Norwich or Brussels, it is still me.  What I have found priceless, in a new city that still feels so strange, is the slow but steady discovery of who I am and what I want.  I think it gets to a stage, when you spend too long in the same place, where your pattern of behaviour becomes one of reacting, rather than acting.  If you spend too long somewhere, the inevitable repetition, or routine, of your daily life fixes you in a kind of mould.  People get used to your pattern of behaviour and start making assumptions about you.  Assumptions you do not want to disappoint for fear of losing your place on the social grid (better in a bad place than nowhere, right?).  So you make sure you stick to your pattern.  That, in turn, can stop you from meeting new people who could form a new and different opinion of you – and from altering your own opinion of yourself.  Eventually, you are no longer sure if you are doing things because you want to do them or because it is part of what is expected of you – expectations you are actually working hard to maintain just as they are.  It is a vicious circle that keeps going ‘round and ‘round.  In a way, you become still.  Motionless.  You sprout roots which, over time, reach further into the soil, and become tangled around large rocks.  Secure.  Impossible to pull out unless you cut down the tree.  Except that you are not a tree.  You were born with legs, for walking.  And, surely enough, you can sometimes lose track of what it is you really want and are (not that anyone really knows that one).  Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello had a theory that we exist only in function of other people’s perception of us.  Typically Pirandellian in its bleakness but he does have a noteworthy point there.

IMG_0644

In a new city, you do not have the pressure of remembering the lines of your role.  There is no one around you to pick up the cues, anyway, so you can devise a new script.  There is no one to give any new acquaintances you make a potted biography of you by way of introduction, so your new acquaintances are given the rare freedom of making up their own minds about you, without outside influence.  Similarly, you have the luxury of the same freedom.  You can even start thinking differently about yourself.  Oh, look – I had no idea I liked that.  I didn’t know I could do that.  In a new city, where you have not yet fixed a routine, you walk more slowly, you look around, you allow yourself to hear new sounds rather than listen out for ones you expect.

IMG_0649

Perhaps it is this state of reduced expectations (in the sense of preconceptions) that leaves room for surprise and awe.  And I do not mean awe in the misused and abused sense that US and now British teenagers (and now, infuriatingly, so many adults) give it when they say that a film or pair of jeans is awesome (I could weep!).  I mean the ability of being overwhelmed, swept off your feet by surprise before something that fills you with respect and wonder.  I think for as long as you can feel awe, you are alive.

IMG_0652

In a new city, since you do not have a road to follow, so you have to find new stones to build another one.  So you can, once again, enjoy the creative process of building, with all the stress, hardship but also dreams and hopes that come with it.

Scribe Doll

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

Easter Break in London

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Massaging warm olive oil into my hands, face and legs, then wrapping in hot wet towels. To heal cracked fingertips, smooth hardened cheekbones, and soothe sore red skin irritated by too many layers of clothing.  It is the Norwich cold.  Standing on the bathroom scales and shrieking.  I have acquired an extra five kilos in Norwich.  It must be the cold.  All the extra eating and yet feeling constantly hungry.  All the extra chocolate to keep warm.  I have never eaten this much chocolate before.  Just when my friends are putting an end to their Lent chocolate renunciation, I begin mine.  I put on a skirt and high-heeled shoes – oh, hello, I can see my ankles, again – to go to the theatre.  I hide my rubber-soled, practical boots out of sight.  I do not want to see them for the next few days.  I also bury my green waxed jacket, large enough to accommodate the two thick jumpers I have been wearing over each-other for the past few weeks.  I slip on my tailored gun metal coat with the black velvet collar, instead.  I arrange a black beret on my head, pinching the edges to make them sharp, and pulling it down at a slant.  Although it is very cold in London, I can risk exposing my left ear to the elements.  There is no wind blowing in straight from the Urals to stab my eardrums, here.  I dare take a peak in the mirror.  Good.  Well – better than the recent Michelin man reflection.  As I walk up the Old Vic Theatre staircase, my step feels lighter than of late.  Funny how too many layers of clothing restrict your movements and make you feel clumsy.

 

Two hours of wonderful, beautiful words and highly-polished acting.  Henry Goodman is perfect as the proud Arthur Winslow.  The Winslow Boy, by Terence Rattigan.  If only I could write like that.  No word out of place.  Characters with layers and layers of conflicting motivations.  “Let right be done.”  It is easy to do justice but not so easy to do right.  Inspiring words that send me floating back to Waterloo.

 

After Norwich, I am very aware of the London crowds and loud voices.  In Norwich, even on a Saturday lunchtime on the Market Place, you do not brush other people.  One night, about two weeks ago, in Norwich, I was walking home from a writers’ do.  I walked for over half an hour without seeing a single human being.  I had taken the wrong turning and was following a long, tree-lined road, unsure whether I was heading towards the Golden Triangle area – or Edinburgh.  The wind bent the tree tops, and their dark shadows swooped before me, teasing my anxiety with threatening shapes.  It began to snow.  The kind of snow that blows into your eyes, nose and mouth, and finds its way in the nook between your scarf and your throat.  In London and other cities, I have walked through some rough districts and felt more in control of my anxiety.  As an urban mouse, I have developed a different kind of alert system.  It is based on a split-second assessment of faces, body language, and on adapting your own bearing to the circumstances.  On making yourself either larger or invisible.  Here, in this empty street, I slid into panic mode.  I feared I had lost my way.  And the streetlights would be switched off for the night, soon.  I pulled out my mobile and dialled a friend’s number, in London.  “Please talk to me,” I said.  “About anything.  Just talk to me.”  Finally, the glimpse of two human shapes by the traffic lights ahead.  I ran as fast as my cold-constricted breathing would allow.  Two women.  I asked the way.  They clearly viewed my terror with amused puzzlement.  Like a child scared of things adults know do not actually exist.  Later, when I recounted the episode, someone asked, “Why didn’t you just knock on the door of one of the houses and ask for directions?”

I stared in total bewilderment.  Knock on a stranger’s door? At night? What planet is this?

One where there is still kindness, decency and where fear has not dug in its claws.  May it never do so.  A different world, worth safeguarding.

This morning, Langlais’ Messe Solennelle at the Temple Church.  The first outing of the organ, after two years of restauration.  A clear, proud, uncompromising tone.  The choir voices, brilliant like diamonds against the stone pillars.

After the service, I walked towards St Paul’s, listening to its baritone bells fly towards Ludgate Circus.

To those who observe it, happy Easter!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ1OdhT7s9o

 Scribe Doll

 

Posted in Odds & Ends | Tagged , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea*

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Scribe Doll

I am like a woman who keeps being lured towards the mad, bad lover, while a perfectly nice guy is standing around, available.  I have always been fiercely judgmental of women like that.  Why don’t they think with their brain instead of their heart? I have always asked.  And here I am, torn between two cities, vacillating between the gentle kindness of Norwich and the ruthless excitement of London.

When I tell people in Norwich that I am frantically looking for a job, they receive my need as a personal plea.  They stop, listen, ponder and give advice.  More often than not, they also give me a lead.  An e-mail address, a ‘phone number, someone’s name.  Here, there is none of the frequent “Hmm”, “Err” or “Ahh” and fleeting “I wish I could help” of my Londoners, before they slip back into their own rushed lives.

Here, I met and talked to a man – a musician – who said, “What can I tell people about you, to help you get a job?”

Here, in four weeks, not one person has asked me “what’s your accent?” and that makes me feel accepted for what I am.  Here, I am not a misfit or a fool.  Though what I am, I do not yet know.

There is an aura of contentedness around the city.  It is I who am not yet content.  What do I miss most? – How can I admit this without appearing stupid, or spoilt, or shockingly superficial? – I miss hearing and speaking other languages.  I have spoken almost nothing but English here.  Two weeks ago, after the new Pope was elected, my friend A. Skyped me from Rome.  Hearing her speak Italian was like listening to Vivaldi when one is tired and sad.  Speaking Italian to her was like savouring delectable sweetmeats.  I drank and ate every word with voracity.  I feel as though I have been eating the same dish for a month, and the dish lacks salt.

Someone I met on my street told me of a café where people meet once a week to speak other languages.  I rushed there like a thirsty traveller who has been given directions to a fountain.  A group of very friendly, smiling people having coffee around a large wooden table.  They greeted me with spontaneous warmth.  Within seconds, something jarred.  Something in the body language; in the topics of conversation.  Then I realised what it was.  They were not native speakers of the languages they spoke so fluently.  They were all British.  Once again, I felt that lack of salt in my food.  Once again, I wanted to kick myself for caring about something so insignificant, when I had before me such kind, accepting people.  People who are willing to help me.

I remember spending a week in Abruzzo, once, where I spoke nothing but Italian.  At the end of the week, I began speaking to myself in English and French, to stop myself going mad.  I would feel the same in any other prevalently monolingual place.

The blood of three nations runs in my veins.  I first saw daylight in a fourth, and entered adolescence in a fifth.  From childhood, I was fed on four languages, and taught to think in four different ways.  I cuddle animals in Russian, argue in Italian, reason in French and write in English.  I am like the patterned costume of Arlecchino.  I need all my hues around me.  I need to inhale more than one colour to be able to breathe.  How can someone made up of bits learn to live in a whole?

Norwich is what you make of it – I hear almost every day – but you need to give it time.  Time.  How much time? And how much money?

My American adoptive aunt always says, “You can have anything you want in life.  You just can’t have everything.”  At my age, and with my (lack of) prospects, I cannot afford the luxury of even so much as looking at the moon – let alone wishing it had a fence around it.

I guess, when all it said and done, it all comes down to which man shows he means business, and offers an engagement ring.  In my case, my fate depends on which city will offer me a job.  To the city that gives me that, I shall be true.

In the meantime, I wish I could tear out my brainless heart, and think with my head.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHkikZ3fcdw

Scribe Doll

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , | 20 Comments

Poverty, Yes – But St Francis Also Loved Animals

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Although I am not a Catholic, I was overwhelmed when, last Wednesday afternoon, a friend texted me the words, “New Pope elected!”  Immediately, I went onto the Italian Radio and Television website, and remained glued to it for several hours.  The excitement of the crowd in Piazza San Pietro was palpable – and contagious – even through the 13 inch screen of my laptop.  Let us admit it.  The Anglican Church may have – in my opinion – some of the best choral singing around, but few can produce a sense of solemnity or a lavish historical occasion like the Vatican.  I was born in Rome and I have always taken the splendour and ornate architecture of the city somewhat for granted.  However, now that I have spent nearly three decades in more, shall we say austere surroundings, there are times when the sight of the Baroque Cupola – only ever centred on manufactured-for-gullible-tourists souvenirs – and the perfect anatomy of the marble bodies that preside over magnificent fountains, bring on a sense of longing for a less Puritan lifestyle.

I wanted to cheer and jump around the room, when Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran emerged at the window and announced, “Habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Georgium Marium Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Bergoglio qui sibi nomen imposuit Franciscum.”

Papa Francesco.

As a teenager, I visited Assisi on more than one occasion before the earthquake that destroyed so much of this beautiful Mediaeval city.  On one of those trips, I bought a postcard, elaborately decorated, of what remains one of my favourite poems, St Francis’s Cantico delle Creature, or  Canticle of the Creatures.  We studied it at school in our Italian literature class.  At the age of six, when I was off school, my mother once parked me with some friends in a Rome film studio and I sat in the cutting room, watching Franco Zeffirelli’s film Brother Sun, Sister Moon – a biopic of St Francis of Assisi – being fast-forwarded (the friar on the donkey trotted faster), rewound (the friar on the donkey galloped backwards) and being cut (film strips on the floor).  Years later, at an age when I should have known better, I committed the socially unforgivable faux pas telling one of the members of the cast I had just been introduced to, “Oh, I saw you in that film when I was a little girl!”

Papa Francesco.

Cardinal Bergoglio’s decision to be named after a saint who despised riches, is welcome at a time when money is the idol the Western world worships.  His humility of manner inspires trust.  Of course, like any other man in his position, he will not – cannot – single-handedly change the world.  He will make mistakes and probably put a few noses out of joint.  However, Pope Francis is starting out from a point where many of us are disposed to like him, are full of hope for his pontificate, and wish him well.

Much has been heard in the Media, this week, about his humility, his defence of the poor, and his approachable manner.  It is early days yet but, speaking for myself, I long to hear Papa Francesco’s view on animal welfare.

The saint in whose footsteps he chooses to follow was also a great defender of animals.  To my knowledge, the Church has never openly spoken out against cruelty against animals even though one of its most prominent saints believed that they are our fellow-creatures – God’s creatures.

“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

For thousands of years, we have treated animals like inferior creatures whose sole purpose is to feed, clothe, entertain, transport and serve us.  We feel very clever when we teach animals tricks but how many of us learn the lessons imparted to us by animals?

It is not my intention in this blog to advocate being a vegetarian.  Or not to wear leather.  I once had the honour of meeting the owner of an abattoir, who treated animals with such high esteem and gratitude for providing him and his family with their livelihood, that – in spite of our differences – I developed much respect for him.  After years of using synthetic shoes and bags (which cannot be recycled) I have started opting for leather.  I hope that someday, when I am wealthy enough, I can have shoes and bags made of wool and natural fabrics.  What I personally  believe, is that, someday, humans will thrive, prosper and be healthy without the need to spill the innocent blood of creatures whose permission nobody asked before using them for our convenience.  Creatures who, unlike humans, never kill for sport.  Creatures who, in spite of what we do to them, continue to forgive us and give us unconditional love.  And yet we still do not feel shame.  Until we evolve sufficiently to create this ideal world, we can only do what we can, how we can, and with what we have at our disposal.  But, I think, the time has come to start to pick up one brick at a time, and start building a new world where compassion and respect are no longer virtues but natural, common characteristics.

Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Perhaps the animal rights argument could be approached from a less emotional perspective than it usually is.  Perhaps we should be kind to animals not just out of pity for weaker, defenceless beings, but because our dignity and self-respect demands it.  Because, if we were cruel to animals – for no matter what reason – we would feel somehow diminished in our own eyes.

I like this quotation by Abraham Lincoln: “I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.” In other words, do we want to achieve whatever we achieve with blood on our hands? The blood of creatures who did not choose to spill it for us?

The Church advocates compassion.  True compassion should extend to all our fellow-creatures.  If we do not respect animals, how can we fully respect our fellow-humans or even ourselves?

Lincoln also said, “I care not much for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.”

So my own wish for the new Pontiff, is that he may find it in himself to help people learn to be kinder to animals.  He has chosen the name Papa Francesco, after the man who said,  

“Not to hurt our humble brethren [animals] is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission—to be of service to them wherever they require it.”

I believe, it would make us into better creatures.

Scribe Doll

 

Posted in Animals | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Birthday in a New City

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Scribe Doll

My friend B. gave me a gift card for a coffee shop chain, for Christmas.  He said it would allow him to buy me a coffee or hot chocolate if I ever really needed one, and he was not there in person.  I figured that if I were in London, he would want to buy me a birthday mugful, to celebrate.  So, in a way, I had him with me, in this new city where I am still a stranger, as I ordered a gingerbread latte.  Half a shot of espresso but double ginger.  No milk froth.  Take away.  “There you are, young lady,” said the barista.  Young? I had not heard that in a while.  Lately, in London, men have been offering me their seats on the Tube.  It made me smile, as I followed the winding streets towards the market place and the now familiar sights.  The Big Issue seller with the jester hat, guaranteeing “no horse meat” in the magazine.  The market stalls with their bright stripy canopies.  The  imposing, stern Norman church, rising at the top of the slope, dominating the square.  The rain seeps through me in spite of my umbrella.  It generally rains on my birthday, even when I am in a Mediterranean country.  I think I was born on a rainy day.

I take a sip of my gingerbread latte.  For me, it will always be a taste of New York.  The memory of Broadway shows, of sheared rabbit earmuffs, of strolls down 42nd Street, of the Chrysler Building soaring hopefully into the sky, and of Billie Holiday’s voice blasting from a kiosk on Union Square on a snowy Sunday morning.  I fell in love with New York whilst still on the bus from JFK to Manhattan.  It is for me the city of Optimism.

Every city I have visited, so far, has greeted me with a predominant feeling or impression within a day or so.  Sometimes, within hours.  In Cambridge, it was the self-assured individuality of every building, and that unmistakable, moonbeam sound of King’s College evensong.  Cambridge, for me, is the joyful and blood-stirring Pursuit of Perfection.  The grey, majestic, Norman towers of Durham instill in me a desire for Reading and Research.  An echo of Ancient Knowledge.  Venice, with its Moorish arches and murmuring waters, advocates the Pleasure of the Senses.  Brugge, another favourite city of mine, with its crow-stepped gables and minutely crafted bas-reliefs, evokes the love of Precision, and Pride in One’s Work.

It is this predominant feeling that has not yet come upon me in this new city I appear to have moved to, that I am seeking.  Without this impression, I am lost.  I need to know how I feel about this city – an identity with which my mind can match it – so that I can have an anchor.  Only then, will I be able to decide whether or not to drop my anchor here.  Until then, I am like the unsettled Flying Dutchman.  When I close my eyes, at night, I cannot remember the arrangement of the streets and seek, in vain, to picture a specific landmark – even though it is a city rich in ancient and beautiful buildings.  I like the Cathedral spire that plays hide-and-seek with the fog, and its atmospheric monastic cloisters.  I am slowly befriending the odd-looking, cubic Norman castle and its promise of sinister tales.  My heart, lungs and thigh muscles are learning the rhythm of walking up the deceptively steep hills (when Noël Coward described this county as “flat”, he clearly had never been here, or was using heavy sarcasm).  I can recommend going to sit in Lady Julian’s cell, to enjoy the peaceful silence and collect one’s thoughts.  My inner urban rat natural distrust is easing into accepting the genuine friendliness and willingness to help of the local folk.  Their obvious love for and pride in their city make me feel welcome.  When I say that I am trying to move here, they reply that I could not have chosen a better place.  I guess there is no better place, for a writer and translator, than England’s first ever UNESCO City of Literature.  A city with a unique history of contribution to words.

I just need to find that feeling.  That impression.  A sign.  Please, Norwich, won’t you give me a sign, as a birthday present?

Scribe Doll

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Habit as an Enemy

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Scribe Doll

You do not need to travel across the Globe, to experience culture shock.  It can suddenly creep up on you where you least expect it.  Just a few hours away from where you have spent the last eighteen years.  Habit can turn on a sixpence, from stable friend to lurking enemy.  Habit is an addiction with painful withdrawal symptoms.

Silly, superficial things are suddenly making your day-to-day life a misery.

A bed at odds with the shape and nightly movements of my body, from which I wake up far from ready to face another day of novelties.  Sheets with an unfamiliar texture, that my skin rebels against.  I have complained about my unyielding London futon for many years.  Now, in this far better bed, my body suddenly whinges, “better the devil you know.”  Habit.

The silence, at night.  Listening out for the odd car, in the distance, longing for something to break the deafening quiet; for a lullaby of airplanes, road traffic or even the neighbours’ TV, to ease me to sleep.  I remember that it was partly the constant London noise, that drove me away.  Habit.

Shops closing at 5.30 p.m.  I suppress a giggle when the sales assistant tells me.  I stare.  She is serious.  I rush through my purchases, acting like the spoilt Londoner that I am, as though the early closing time is there with the sole purpose of inconveniencing me.  Then I think, people here must enjoy longer evenings, and I might soon enjoy those, too.  After all, late shopping can be a nuisance.  A habit.

Strolling across town at 7.30 p.m. on a week night, and hearing my footsteps echoing on the pavement.  I respond to the nod or smile of the few other passers by I encounter.  The dim, yellow street lighting casts sadness over me.  I long for the bright lights of Piccadilly and Soho.  I am suddenly and unbearably homesick.  Then I think, actually, how peaceful it feels to walk in a semi-deserted city, in the evening, and not have to be on alert, and not have to elbow my way through crowds.  The dim yellow street lighting gives the Mediaeval buildings a soft golden tone.  Golden enough to feed my imagination.  I could get used to walking along these narrow streets, in the evenings, and dream.  Another habit.

I slalom on the narrow pavement and overtake the other pedestrians.  I have always walked very fast, and have little patience with people who advance slowly.  I often fantasise about London’s Oxford Street pavement being divided into two lanes – one for dwindlers and ditherers, and the other for people who whizz, like myself.  Around the corner, I practically collide head-on with another pedestrian.  We both stop, though my feet practically screech on the cobbles.  She smiles.  “After you,” she says, gently.  I find myself smiling back.  “No, after you, please.”  More smiles, and we continue along our opposite ways.  What calm, nice people, I think.  I drop my pace.  Why rush? I am not late anywhere, and it is not like I am going to store the saved time anywhere, am I? It is just another habit.

In go to a church service.  A solemn building, rich in history.  I notice glances in my direction.  I am the stranger, the new person.  My clothes and body language must scream London.  After the service, I am surrounded by people welcoming me, smiling, expressing hope that I might come again.  The urban rat in me, used to being ignored, feels a little overwhelmed.  The fact that I did not take Communion, this morning, has been noticed, noted and now remarked upon.  Do I know that I am most welcome to go up for a blessing? I bite my tongue and refrain from asking if anyone at all was watching the vicar instead of me, because I sense not criticism but kindness around me.  I smile, shake hands, and walk backwards towards the exit.  I suddenly feel the urge to run, escape.  I long for the anonymity of the Central London churches I frequent.  The same churches where I so often feel so lonely, because I do not feel that I belong.  There is no pleasing me.  I could kick myself.

I need to get used this city’s kindness.  It is a gentle city.  A city where many street lights are put out at midnight.  It is just a question of getting used to a new place and new ways.

I think I will stay a little longer and try to form new habits.  I do not know if I can.  But I think it is worth trying.  After all, the city is proffering her hand to me.

 

Scribe Doll

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

Trying Out a New City

Posted on February 17, 2013 by Scribe Doll

Is two weeks long enough for a new city and you to decide whether you would make a good team?

Well, two weeks is all I have.

The fog was so thick, this morning, it had swallowed up the Cathedral spire.  In a city where I do not know a soul, it was unnerving not to see the familiar landmark.  In a new city where everything and everyone seems strange and alien, buildings become your first friends.  The winding cobbled street with the Teddy Bear shop.  The unnaturally white, unnaturally square Norman castle that looks like a sugar cube; or a sandcastle come out of a mould.  The large, late Mediaeval church dominating the market place.

As soon as I got off the train, last Tuesday, I smiled.  I kept smiling even as I discovered, whilst dragging my two heavy suitcases, that – contrary to my previous notion – this is a place full of hills.  I wanted to introduce myself to this new city with a smile.  I wanted to make a good impression.

The city smiled back.  A shy smile, through the bleak grey sky and the grey stone buildings but, I think, it was a smile.

You prepare for so many possible problems and hurdles, when you go to an unknown place.  I thought I had anticipated every difficulty.  One thing I had not anticipated was acute physical pain.  Sharp, burning pain in my back where the cold and damp air had penetrated, grabbed a muscle in its fist and twisted.  Let’s see what you are made of.  Let’s see how determined you are.  Let’s see if I tighten my fingers around your shoulder blade.  What if I dig in my nails? What – not smiling? I hope the sun – that looked like a brilliant white china plate behind the grey clouds, today – elects to smile at me, soon, and steps out in its golden glory to warm my chilled back.

When I pack to go to a new city, I choose the most neutral clothes.  Nothing to attract attention.  I want to be able to spy on the city before it notices me.  My tweed flat cap is not suitable, I told myself, choosing, instead, the dark brown beret.  It is too striking, too bohemian – too London.  Then, at the last minute, I put it on my head.  That flat cap is me.  In this new city, I thought, I want to remember who I am.

It is a beautiful little city.  I can walk across it in an hour.  Passers-by smile when they meet your eye.  They stop what they are doing to show you the way.  A glint of amusement flashes across their faces when I tell them I am studying the city, as a potential new home.  “We call this city ‘the graveyard of ambition’,” someone told me, this afternoon.  It is the second time I have heard this, in three days.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because we have all these high-flying big city people coming here, taking a look, loving the place so much they decide to stay here.”

 

I have been to cities with much worse reputations.

 

Scribe Doll

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , | 33 Comments