The Venetian Diaries

Oh the irony! I am scribbling the draft of a blog on snatched hotel stationery;  at a corner table in Harry’s Bar where Hemingway wrote Across the River and into the Trees.  It is humbling. Papa himself always sat at the heavy oak corner table. The panel walls are more English than Italian. I press my cheek to the warm wood and I detect a waft of his ghostly breath.  It smells of Prosecco and a fresh peach Bellini, it smells of Aperol and gunpowder.

The barman is dressed in an art deco period white dinner jacket and black bow tie. It is 10.30am and far too early to be dressed this way. He serves us rough, broken almond shortbread and the best coffee we have had in two days. Without speaking my wife hands me more paper as I furiously write. It is like she is feeding the furnace of a steam locomotive.

Days ago the doctor confirmed I was diabetic. The unwelcome but inevitable family inheritance has come home to roost at my 50^th birthday. I picture my father: confused and lengthening vacancies in between insulin injections. I think on my sister’s half amputated foot. Her organs burned out and propped in her coffin at the age of 47. I think on my maternal grandmother; sweetened blood bursting the walls of her 57 year old heart. Their genes half century ticking like a time bomb deep in my bones.

Ernest knew. Hemochromatosis. His father had it.  Oinbones showed the same symptomatic signs. He didn’t wait around. Heavy drink and see the world until the small hours of the night when he swallowed that shotgun.  He knew how the story ended because he wrote it himself.

And in this bar: Harry’s Bar, dear readers, Hemingway wrote a novel about the ages of man. He wrote about our creeping greyness and thickening blood and the lessons we learned as we think back on our youth. He wrote about seemingly meaningless acts 30 years prior that take on new meaning and symbolism as we ponder them from the vantage point of age.

Once I knew a Venetian. She was the only one I ever met. 1983: the communal payphone in the university dorm rung for me. A halting Italian accent on the other end is Paola, my roommate’s legendary friend. We call him Jarhead as he is an army brat and has lived all over the world. Memory does not afford me the story of how they met; no doubt at some sunny Mediterranean military base. Jarhead  had spoken of the girl he had met and her promise to one day show up on his doorstep in America. Now she had made good. She is at the Port Authority bus station in the city. She had made the long trip alone; across the sea from Venice. The army brat does not know. We entice him into the car with some concocted tale of an emergency situation in the city.

Paola surprised Jarhead.  His face was consistently stone and never betrayed by emotion. He cracked that night.

Paola- petite and exotic with the soul of an artist stayed for weeks. I was painting a mural on the wall outside our dorm at the time: a screaming white mask with heavy dark eyes. One night, Paola deliberately painted the sole of her right foot with the remnants from the black can and pressed the print on the wall. There it stayed for ever; or at least through 1983, reminding us that she had passed through.

And now, thirty years on, what do I remember of that dorm room? The aging lazy boy recliner we had rescued from some vacant lot, the mural outside the door and Paola’s footprint on the wall.

And now, thirty years on, I was in Paola’s city, in Pound and Maughan’s bar,  at Hemingway’s table.

An elderly American tourist shuffles past the door of Harry’s bar; white Reeboks and a baseball cap with the name of a battleship on it, “Bridge of Sighs. Not size. It’s SIGHS . You know- exasperated”

The skin of my face seems to be collapsing and collecting in my vast double chin in every photo that I review on our camera.

My wife laughs as I tell her, “ Mr Pineapple would like the Bridge of Sighs, he is naturally exasperated”. The elderly American tourists shuffle onto the Ponte della Paglia in white Reeboks and jostling to have their photo taken. Bridge of Sighs: the prisoners last view of the sea and sky before descending into the darkness of prison. How ironic thousands turn to looks at it, their backs to the sea and sky every moment since.

My feet are swollen. We walk and get lost. We stop for a coffee and get lost again. There are no cars to watch out for. The last of the cars are abandoned on the end of the long bridge Mussolini built to the mainland. Boats are the default setting for transport. Boats and feet. I scan the lapping canal water at the base of crumbling facades. I am looking for Paola’s left footprint on the wall.

The plague ravished this city. It did it time and time again between the in the 14^th and 17^th centuries. Half the population would eventually succumb. Venice, it seems,  has never recovered from the shock and every few meters there is a reminder of the tragic past and frailty of life. Every other shop window contains the mask of a plague doctor: black shrouded and with a long hollow beaked mask. 400 years ago the beak would be filled with herbs as a misguided science against the disease.

The city is stunningly beautiful. Built on pines driven into the mud 1600 years ago and now long petrified; the medieval homes of wealthy merchant survived while the rest of Europe burned and burned again. The crumbling plaster falls from the facades, wooden bare shutters drawn throughout the day. It is the aging beauty of Sophia Loren. Weathered and lived in, radiant and timeless.

Look closer: skulls are chiselled and sculpted into the walls. Stray cats are held in high regard. They keep the rats at bay which rules this city by night. Despite the reputation I have yet to see one and it disappoints.

We have lunch in a rough eatery in the Rialto market. I have Pasta Pescadore. I am Col Kurtz. Sell the house, sell the kids. I am never coming home.

I am reading a guide to Venice’s 400+ bridges. I coax my wife on the long walk to Ponte Delle Tette. “This I have to see,” I tell her as I relay the story of how 15^th Century prostitutes would stand topless on the bridge or on nearby balconies. It seems this was a quality assurance exercise. Mrs Head reluctantly poses on the bridge in a more dignified and modest pose.

Our hotel bed is positioned facing the window, not the telly. I like it that way. A switch to the side opens the electric shutter and the lagoon is in front of us. A day of boats on shifting water remains in my inner ear and the large bed rocks with my lingering equilibrium. I shut my eyes and my sea legs wobble.

My wife is silently reading a guide to Venice Bridges. She tells me the story of the Ponte Dei Pugni: the Bridge of Fists. In the 17^th Century fights on the bridge were common place and an accepted means of settling disputes. “There is a marble footprint embedded in the stone of the bridge,” she reads aloud, “to mark the spot where the fighters stood at the start of a bout.”

And so it was. I scuffed the bottom of my walking shoes, my swollen feet on the marble footprint. I pushed off of the spot with the same foot my sister had half amputated. I was a fighter. I am a fighter. I pushed off from the footprint and shadow box on the bridge. I will not succumb like Ernest did. I can change my destiny.

Paola’s footprint now forever linked on the Bridge of Fists.

I thumb through Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees:

 

‘Tell me some true things about fighting.’

‘Tell me you love me.’

‘I love you,’ the girl said. ‘You can publish it in the Gazzettino if you like. I love your hard, flat body and your strange eyes that frighten me when they become wicked. I love your hand and all the other wounded places.’

 

Keep the Faith,

 

The Head

The Skull

The smell of the breakfast cereal called Fruit Loops immediately takes me to my childhood home. We all know the power of the olfactory and its innate ability to forge a link in some cranial abyss: a link that we instantly associate with a time or a place, or both. For me, nearly 30 years removed from the land of my birth, it is Fruit Loops. The faux fruit aroma from the brightly coloured rings instantly transports me to my mother’s kitchen.

There are others, dear readers. The smell of soft whipped vanilla ice cream, of pickles fermenting in good quality olive oil, of cut grass and barbecue smoke, of the ocean: all remind me of home.

England is the smell of damp brick, of mud centuries old. It is the smell of rain and frosted breath. England smells of thick, cold air and blankets.

My daughter returned from a trip around the world last week. In less than a month she had seen sights I can never hope to in my next 50 years: the steamy streets of Kuala Lumpur, the neon deserts of Vegas, the slick shine of dolphins in Australia. On her return she eagerly distributed gifts from her suitcase. The colourful cartoon toucan on the box was unmistakable; she had brought us Fruit Loops from the golden hills of California.

And when I ate a bowl for breakfast, dear readers, it was not some industrial chemist’s interpretation of 5 fruit flavours that I savoured. No. Drawing the smell deep into my lungs (drawn slightly more efficiently having been a non smoker for 3 months now) I shut my eyes and was transported to my mother’s orange and oaken kitchen. My reminiscence was disturbed only by my youngest daughter’s observation, “These remind me of nanny’s house.”

And so the story might have ended there. Lacking conflict or resolution, it might not have been a story at all. Instead, it might have merely been an observation; a moment of illustration to be relayed in passing.

The great glass box will soon be no more. The school is being redeveloped and with it the administrative block and office that surrounds me will be transformed into something quite different in the coming months. Today we met to consider the immediate implications; where items will be stored, where office staff will be re-located during the building work. One of the Assistant Heads pointed to his jumble of teaching resources and wondered where they could be housed. I scanned the shelf and the treasures it held; a wooden marionette, a replica Eiffel Tower, a skull. A skull.

Not smell this time, dear readers; it was not the aroma or lingering odour that transported me back to my youth but the sight, the view the image of the skull on the shelf.

The summers of my youth were spent camping with my family. It was one of those purpose-built camp sites which while set in a pine forest clearing, still had electrical access and showers.  Each evening my father would build a bonfire and we would toast bread smeared with peanut butter and jam while he turned the portable black and white television to the local baseball game.

Afterwards, as darkness settled on the summer heat, the game would finish and Doctor Shock would come on the tv. He was my hero. Dr Shock’s Scream In: a cheaply made studio dungeon hosted by a local magician dressed like a corpse. Zombie make-up and hammish magic tricks would fill the gaps as he introduced the next segment of some B movie horror offering. The Crawling Hand, The Slime People, The Screaming Skull; they were titles to enthral an 8 year old.

The show would start, at least in my remembrance dictates that it started with a close up a stage skull and organ music. This was followed by a piercing scream as the show’s title would overlay the scene. The Dr Shock would be summoned from his coffin (bizarrely) by his toddler daughter Bubbles.

We would huddle around the flickering black and white telly burning our tongues on the pine smoked jam sandwiches and watch as Dr Shock stroked a live rat or pulled a rubber chicken from a hat whilst encouraging us to watch the commercial break. Then each of us would dare the other to walk to the toilet block and brave the macabre shadows that lie there in-between.

And there it was, in the Assistant Head’s office; a skull. A skull reminding me of those treasured summer nights around the campfire; a  rickety black and white portable television flicking in the dark of the forest. The sound of baseball cheers and beer jingles echoing amongst the pine trees, giving way to Dr Shock and Bubbles’ screaming skull. The warming envelope of my childhood was there on the shelf.

I pull the skull down and hold it , looking into its vacant eyes like Poor Yorick. “We will have to keep this safe,” I mutter out loud. The Assistant Head looks puzzled as he scans my face for some clue as to why the prop is any more important than the rest. “You know it is not real, don’t you?” he offers.

But I know better.

I sniff the air for a hint of burning peanut butter and jam, or pine, or even the waft of the toilet block across the campground. There is none. I hold the skull’s jaws open and make a screaming noise.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Free Gift

I made my 50^th visit to the gym yesterday: half a century of work-outs since joining early this year. 50 is a significant number. In 24 days I will turn 50 years old. But in honour of my 50^th gym visit the nice man at the reception counter gave me a gift. It was a meaningless trinket but I appreciated the thought.

50 visits: fine, let’s mark it by all means. 50 years old is not fine. A reminder isn’t needed in regards to half a century of life on this planet. I am not exactly embracing that milestone.

That incessant advert keeps turning up on the television: the one where some aging British B celebrity is selling funeral insurance for the over 50s. From £5 a month I can leave something behind for my loved ones. And I don’t have to visit my GP, no health questions and I get a free Parker pen just for enquiring. Mrs Head smirks every time the advert comes on the telly. I pretend I am too old and deaf to notice.

Meanwhile back at the gym, I open the gift: it is the latest issue of a well known men’s magazine. Not THAT kind of magazine, dear readers, rather one that focuses on articles such as

20 Abs-Busting Exercises,

What Women REALLY Want

and Protein Shakes- We Test Tell Them All.

I like my gym but I am the odd one out there. It is a young person’s dominion, full of fit 20 somethings; all toned and rock hard. I have identified only two or three other members who are older than me and they don’t seem to attend that regularly. At five sessions a week I have become a curiosity, a thorn amongst roses, if you will. In that degree everyone seems to know me. The staff all greet me by name when I walk down the stairs from the street and into the basement gym in the bowels of the great hotel once owned by a man who went down with the Titanic.

They check in with regularity as I sweat away on the rowing machine or treadmill. I picture them in the backroom watching me, worrying in huddled whispers that the old fat man will have a heart attack in the middle of the gym. That wouldn’t be good for business. One of them will walk past and casually ask how the school is going. I nod and smile breathlessly not having the stamina for a conversation. I know what they’re thinking: How could an ambulance ever get a stretcher down the steep stairs beneath the hotel?

50 minutes of cardio work later I held for the sauna. 50 is a significant number these days. The sauna is full and I squeeze in (literally) to get a seat on the hot wooden benches. Two American tourists, using the gym as hotel guests sit in complimentary white robes and slippers discussing the English music festival scene. Another steaming bather is flipping through a copy of the same magazine I was given on entry. “50 visits?” I offer as I indicate the magazine in his hands. He nods and continues reading.

He is young and toned and 25 and is reading an article proclaiming that the Brazilian or Hollywood is out and a full bloom of pubic hair is making a fashionable come back. I remember them first time around. I am not getting old, I am retro.

At some point, when I wasn’t watching, I went from being the younger to the older generation. I strike up a conversation with the magazine reading 20 something, pointing to the muff article and telling him, I remember them first time around. “I’ve seen you in here a few times,” he politely retorts, changing the subject from the picture of Kate Moss’ ounce of Old Holborn on the page in front of us. “You work hard for an older guy.”

He laughs to emphasise the remark was meant as banter but the fact he recognises me reminds me how out of place I am in this place far below the posh hotel.

I feel the need to tell him “I don’t feel old,” as I rise from the bench, joints cracking like a bowl of Rice Crispies as I do so. I tell him it all reminds me of that Pink Floyd lyric “And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.”

“Pink who?” he says and turns the page. It is an article about the Falkland Islands and the threat of the area becoming a new flashpoint, 30 years after the original conflict. I don’t have the fortitude to tell him I remember the first one.  I slink out and go off to order my free pen, just for enquiring.

In the shower, I hear one of the gym staff calling my name and asking if I am ok.

I am singing softly:

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Opal

It was our wedding anniversary this week. Me and Mrs Head have been married for 18 years although we’ve been together longer; living in what is called common-law marriage. 18 years is a long time. I’m told you can murder someone, plead guilty and be released maybe twice over in that time frame. To sport-minded folk like me it equates to 4.5 world cups or the same number of Olympic Games. It is a long time: 18 years.

And therefore it needs to be commemorated in some way. It needs a title. Silver Anniversary, ruby, gold, Diamond Anniversary they all have their own number attached. Every year since that March day in 1994 I have tried to remember the passing of a another orbit in our marital journey by giving my wife a trinket that reflects the anniversary theme attached to that year. In 1995 it was something made from paper. 2004: something made of tin.

As our 18^th approached I had to find something Opal.

Opal?

I had to google it as well. To me they were the classic name for the chewy fruity sweets that evolved into Starburst.

But it turns out the Opal has a popular culture attached to it that makes me wonder  why it is not more popular.

It certainly is reflective of our personal history played out during the past 18 years.

In the Middle Ages, the opal was considered a lucky stone because it was thought to possess all the qualities of other gems. I nudge Mrs Head and prompt her: “Well that’s our marriage isn’t it”? Marriage is the ribbon we tie using the dexterity and skill of all our previous relationships. It is the sculpture chiselled with the qualities of all the other gems.

Fissures vein out deep and penetrating bringing a unique swirl of character and colouring to our stone.

Asperous and unfinished when it was taken from the mountain, with polishing it became a thing of beauty; the rough and the smooth it seems, dear readers.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Boiled Veg Rule

Mrs Head likes to tell the story from her youth. Growing up in her grandmother’s house, she would arrive home early on a Sunday morning having dispensed of a bottle of cheap cider in the park with her friends. By 11am (and having been tucked up in bed for less than two hours) her grandmother would shout up the stairs that the Sunday roast was nearly ready. Of course it was. The pots had been boiling since 6am and the windows frosted with the condensation of boiled veg and cheap cider breath.  ‘Nan’ as she was known didn’t care. It was her Sunday ritual to have the dinner on the table before the morning was out.

My wife has fond and lasting memories of those Sunday mornings. And a few years back, when her grandmother made that journey we all must make alone, we made sure to share the boiled veg story in her epitaph. We still wake on Sunday mornings and sample the air for the smell of cabbage and parsnips.

Sunday dinner is still a tradition but now it arrives on the table later in the day.

As we surface from not –so-cheap cider oblivion Mrs Head turns on the tv to one of those pretentious and pompous Sunday morning cooking programmes. You know the ones dear readers, the celebrity chef silently laments having to share screen time with the B celebrity plugging his/her new book. Narcissistic ingredients, reassuringly difficult to obtain in the Tesco Metro are listed with the proviso; “Do not substitute, it will not work- you have to have Madagascar vanilla pod.”

We don’t have the dishes they make on the telly. We can’t. Mrs Head is very particular about what she eats. Things that are mixed together are out. I often tease her that her kitchen would be served well by using one of those industrialised prison-style trays that have half a dozen individual compartments. That way the corn can’t touch the chicken and the roast potatoes stay well away from the carrots, as God intended.

Today we watched a comedian trying to make beet root rosti with smoked haddock. There are only a few foods I won’t eat an beet root is one as it tastes of dirt, in my humble opinion. The Mrs loves beet root as does the rest of the family.

We all love fish. Perhaps love is too strong a word as my wife won’t eat shell fish but does like fish and chips. She also likes smoked haddock or mackerel.

Today’s recipe called for a smoked haddock fillet on a beet root rosti. I commented on the fact that Mrs Head would like this dish. To my surprise she declined.

“No not with the fish on top.”

I countered with the fact that she always ate smoke haddock.

Her reply was “I only like fish when it doesn’t look like fish.”

I’d forgotten. She was her grandmother’s grandchild. She had rules.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Tall Grass

 

There is an old joke that goes…

One afternoon a Tory Minister was riding in his limousine when he saw two men along the roadside eating grass.

Disturbed, he ordered his driver to stop and he got out to investigate.

He asked one man, “Why are you eating grass?”

“We don’t have any money for food,” the poor man replied. “We have to eat grass.”

“Well, then, you can come with me to my house and I’ll feed you,” the Tory Minister said.

“But sir, I have a wife and two children with me. They are over there, under that tree.”

“Bring them along,” the Tory Minister replied.

Turning to the other poor man he stated, “You come with us, also.”

The second man, in a pitiful voice, then said, “But sir, I also have a wife and SIX children with me!”

“Bring them all, as well,” the Tory Minister answered.

They all entered the car, which was no easy task, even for a car as large as the limousine was.

Once under way, one of the poor fellows turned to the Tory Minister and said,

“Sir, you are too kind… Thank you for taking all of us with you.”

The Tory Minister replied, “Glad to do it.

“You’ll really love my place. The grass is almost a foot high.”

 

I am sure you have heard it before, dear readers. Like all good jokes, one can recognise an element of truth in the absurd. Caring conservatism: cupping the cheek with one hand whilst exploiting with the other.

What follows was sent to me as a transcript from a House of Commons debate on January 31, 2012. It is shocking in the presumptions it makes. Andrea Leadsom, a Conservative MP speaks about….actually I am not going to say anymore. The MP speaks for herelf.

 

House of Commons 31st January

10.31 pm

Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con): Last year’s riots were unprecedented in their violence and in the damage done to our society. We saw headlines such as “Mob Rule” and “Flaming Morons”. I hope never to see such things again. We owe a debt of gratitude to the police, who had to clear up under such difficult circumstances.

No one made those young people loot and steal and cause so much damage and fear, and there can be no excuse. The punishments meted out were right and I fully support them, but since those days the headlines have changed. We are not talking about the riots and the problems caused by those people, but asking why they did it. What caused that disorder? Is it moral decline, that the young have no respect, the benefit society or something more fundamental?

I want to prevent that type of appalling activity from becoming the norm in Britain or any other society, as I am sure all hon. Members do. To do that, we need to look seriously at prevention. I want to put the case that prevention is not just kinder than cure but incredibly cheaper.

I want to focus on a topic that we do not often discuss in the Chamber: the importance of love. Love in a prevention context begins with conception. It needs to go on throughout the baby’s life, but the critical period is conception to the age of two years. There is a very important reason for that: a loved baby who has his needs met will generally learn that the world is a good place and that people are generally kind. That baby will grow up expecting to be able to form secure bonds, make friends and hold down a job, and will generally have more capacity to lead a normal life.

On the other hand, the baby who is neglected or abused, or inconsistently treated, suffers two profound impacts. First, the baby who is left to scream is unable to control or regulate his or her feelings. When a baby knows something is wrong, he does not know whether it is because he is too hot, too cold, bored, tried or hungry—he just knows something is wrong, and he looks to an adult carer to sooth his feelings, relax him and get him back off to sleep.

When a baby is left to scream all the time, the stress hormone in the baby’s body—cortisol—rises to a level where it harms his immune system, and that harm can be permanent. What is more, if the baby constantly experiences raised stress levels, he becomes tolerant of his own stress level. You or I, Madam Deputy Speaker, might be excited by a scary episode of “Doctor Who”, but somebody with a high tolerance of their own stress level might need to go out to stab somebody to get the same level of excitement. Being permanently left to scream therefore has a profound impact on a baby.

The second impact is even more amazing. When a baby is born, his brain is barely developed; he simply has the amygdala, with the fight or flight instinct. Between six and 18 months old, the frontal cortex—the social part of the brain—starts to develop and puts on its peak growth spurt. That growth is literally stimulated by a loving relationship between baby and carer. Playing games such as peek-a-boo or gazing into baby’s eyes and saying, “I love you” and “Aren’t you beautiful?” literally stimulates the development of the baby’s brain. Conversely, as we saw from the appalling situation in Romanian orphanages, the orphans, who had no human contact at all, literally suffered brain damage; they were unable to communicate in any way, because they had had so little human contact.

If someone does not love their baby, and they do not bond properly with him in those first two crucial years, they are literally impairing their capacity to lead a normal life. The sad truth is that research shows that 40% of children inBritain are not securely attached by the age of five. That does not mean that they all go on to become criminals, psychopaths, sociopaths, paedophiles or drug addicts, but it does mean that their capacity to deal with the things life throws at them and the problems they will encounter is much lessened. They are less likely to be able to cope with holding down a job, making friends, and forming and keeping a relationship. At the extreme end, a baby will have been severely neglected or abused, and that is where we will find sociopaths. Sociopaths are not born, but made by their earliest experiences in the first two years of life.

Before we all go out and throw up our hands in despair, I want to make the case that there is a huge amount that can be done. Things do not have to be like this. If we as a society committed to making the very earliest intervention to provide the support needed for families, we could do so much in the first two years of life, when the baby’s brain has the ability to reach its full potential. We could turn things around and do great things.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

The Head

The Radio Mast

It was the farm hands’ Eiffel Tower. Just beyond the swampy edges of the small American town where I was raised, the lattice and clapboard mast of the local radio station jabbed at the sky.  Flashing its call letters above the cattail reeds it would send out a crackling mixture of country music and live broadcasts of our local high school football games. The radio waves would no doubt bounce around those low-lying swamps and fall mute on the ears of muskrats, opossum and deer.

Nobody listened. The big radio stations from the city 30 miles away would shoulder barge the feeble local signal and belittle its small town ways. But the mast kept churning out its radio waves year after year.

It had to.

Because there were occasions, dear readers, when the local station would become the centre of our universe.

Should the New England winds mix with the wet air from Virginia, you could be sure the station would be the sole source of announcing the Snow Day. Should the roads be deemed impassable, this small radio station would inform our local populace immediately that the local schools were closed. To the big radio stations from the city our swampy town was an afterthought. To La Tour Agriculteur we were not just the big story, we were the only story.

So we would huddle around the kitchen radio; blankets around our shoulders as we waited for the news. The radio turned to 1510 AM as it would only be for high school football and blizzards.  And when the announcement came, dear readers, when our school was cited by name, it sparked the sweetest celebration or bitterest disappointment. The taste of snatched time and the world turned upside down; of school work giving way to sleds and toboggans and snowmen. Or conversely; the austere and practical perseverance of school in session with a wonderland outside the classroom window.

Far past the point where the swamps empty into the river, which in turn empties into the estuary which in turn empties into the sea: all the way across that sea, I sat last night and watched the falling snow. It was my decision now. I could not wait for the disembodied, faux country accent riding on the milky sky from the town’s edge. The radio station on the edge of town could not compete with the city. It would not stand a chance against Europe.

Here things work differently. Here each Head Teacher decides for themselves whether their individual school remains open or closes due to the snow. Most Heads play a cagey game of wait and see, surveying what other local schools do before making a decision.  But I tend to be the catalyst, the first domino. I will call it first.

I sent a text to every member of staff asking for a report on the road conditions where they lived. I weighed up the factors; would travel be safe for children and staff? Would the ice keep many children away regardless? Would parents be able to get to work if they suddenly became responsible for their child’s care?

The staff, sensing my question and where it could possibly lead responded with “Horrible here, can’t get down the side roads.”

At 7pm last night I called school open. So did everyone else. The main roads were passable and the forecast was for cold dry skies.

This morning the ride to East London was only slightly slippery. On the A13 I head out of central London and into the low-lying docklands of the East End. I prod the car radio tuner searching for our high school football game or even Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Patsy Cline…

I remember that the road to the county hospital passed by the radio mast of that hometown station.  We would go by in my father’s car on the way to visit sick aunts or grandparents and I would see the great citadel. It held magical powers to bring about snow days.

And this morning in some East London kitchen a child sits with a blanket around his shoulders. He is not huddled around the radio but waits for his mother’s mobile phone to buzz and play an electronic xylophone tone. He will be disappointed.

The decision will be for school with a wonderland outside his window.

I am the man behind the curtain. Ignore the man behind the curtain.

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Social Kiss

Fridays were always educational film afternoons in the classrooms of my youth. You know the films, dear readers: black and white and veiled in Cold War propaganda, by the time we viewed them in the early 1970s they were already horribly dated. The Simpsons make a good job of parodying the experience which makes me think (and shudder, in equal measure) that they still might be in use in my American homeland.

Regardless, it is one such viewing experience that leads me to the topic of this blog. The film must have been focussed on the varying customs and practices around the world and how they differ from our own. Perhaps the intention was to highlight the oddity of such alien customs. Certainly, the reality was that the classroom of 8 year olds (myself included) would cry out in derision when something strange came on the screen, something as outlandish as “Look- they eat mayonnaise on their French Fries-Ewwwww!”

But the film was building to something even more sinister in the final scene. I clearly remember the gravel-shaken voice-over explaining that we were in fact watching a scene from Soviet Russia. Many of the details still register in my mind: two men were pushing a wooden boat down the banks of the River Volga. The disembodied voice, no doubt puffing on a Lucky Strike growled at us to watch as the two men said goodbye to each other. Without warning, without an adult advisory, without a letter home to our parents: the two Russian men kissed each other on the cheek.

Cue the eruption of an 8 year old “Ewwwwwwwwwwww” that was felt on the Richter Scale. It was a legendary “Ewwwwwwww.” Some say they felt it as far away as Canada.

I remember feeling stunned. I didn’t know what stunned meant but I can recognise the feeling now, 40+ years later. I recall the realisation that my mouth was open in disbelief: I had never seen two men kiss before.

The gravel-voice re-emerged from overtop the projector’s flickering rhythm, “…and the man is just going on a short trip down the river.”

 

 

Four old friends walked passed me in succession last week. All four stopped to greet me: three with a single kiss on the cheek whilst the other walked past with a hello. There was nothing awkward or embarrassing about the encounter- we all knew the social boundaries we had set- the unwritten rule for our greetings.

Unwritten Rules for Greeting Acquaintances

1. Some people kiss on one cheek
2. Some people kiss on both cheeks
3. Some will kiss only at Christmas and birthdays
4. Some don’t kiss at all
5. Some kiss and hug
6. Some just hug

Quite a ways this side of the River Volga, I have been discussing social kissing with my…uh…social circle for the past few weeks.  I have been polling friends and family about this issue over the past week or so. People tend to stick to one their one default setting when greeting acquaintances. These defaults tend to be rooted in what we experienced as children in our own families.

My family were not kissers. Or huggers. I can’t remember being forced to kiss a relative and not even someone as familiar as my father or my sisters. In fact I remember kissing the cold forehead of my sister at her funeral ten years ago and thinking it was not just the last, but one of the first three times I had made such a gesture in my entire life.

However, our default greeting can be hijacked. This can happen when we enter into an exchange with another person who has their own default setting on greetings. Therefore if a kisser greets a non-kisser- which one wins out? Does the need for manifested intimacy automatically over-ride the need for comfortable distance?

One friend commented that she finds such situations embarrassing. I take that to mean that she is scanning the greeter carefully, trying to pick up on body language that will indicate if this particular greeting is a kiss or not. I imagine this causes not ends of banged heads, aborted kisses that end up awkward bounces.

I do not have such stress in my life. This is because I have my own default setting and I stick to it. I am probably more physical, more tactical, dare I say more oral than most. This is  despite not because of my up-bringing.

I tend to kiss/hug all my family close, extended members when I see them. This includes my brother in laws etc. It is a manly hug and a kiss on the cheek. All very Sopranos. In fact Mr Pineapple, who abhors kissing by the way, blames the great Mafia tv series on the fact that men tend to hug more when they meet these days.

My sister-in-law is the exception. She does not like to be kissed (at least by me) and rarely is the gesture exchanged. In fact, I can recall two times in the 20+ years I have known her when she has offered a kiss towards me: once on my wedding day and another when I was in the hospital and she was departing at the end of visiting hours. I don’t feel any less close to her than the rest of the extended family- it is just her default setting.

I tend to kiss people who visit my house but will not necessarily repeat the gesture on the street. Being in my house suggests intimacy. It is as much a welcoming gesture as anything.

My own observation is that most of our close friends are not kissers. Those that are tend to be single cheek-pressers: in other words they press against my face and make a smacking or muwahh sound. All these non-kissers may elect to kiss at significant points in time like Christmas or birthdays but it is the exception rather than the rule.

Alternatively, friends who are from The Continent or beyond tend to kiss on both cheeks. I make the assumption that someone who is not British will want to greet me with a kiss on both cheeks. That way there is no awkwardness; just a natural flow and kisses are dispersed on either side of the face.

It doesn’t stop there. What could be worse, dear readers, than the man who when shaking hands elects to go for the 1970s “Right On” grasp of interlocking thumbs? Only two people still use it- my uncle and Mr Pineapple’s aging builder. And Mr Pineapple confesses to liking it. Well liking it more than all that man-hugging he blames on the Sopranos.

And so this excursion into amateur psychology arrives nowhere. Certainly there must be a hypothesis to be made in regards to the matter at hand; there are two types of people those that kiss/don’t kiss and those who let the other person decide for them. But the act is symptomatic, I reckon; a reflection of our confidence and assertiveness.

In my mind’s eye it is Friday afternoon educational film time. Tony Soprano and Paulie Walnuts are pushing a wooden boat down the litter-strewn bank to the Hackensack River. I think there may be a body in a carpet wrapped with chains lying in the bottom. The two paisans stop and embrace. They pound each other’s back to show respect but not the slightest hint of tenderness in the gesture. Tony kisses Paulie as the boat is pushed off from shore.

And somewhere a Russian school child is cringing and going “ewwwwwwwwwww, you call that a kiss?”

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The 28th Anniversary

Like all the best immigrant-made- good stories, I can confirm that I had £90 and a cheese submarine sandwich from The Italian Kitchen deli in my pocket.

28 years ago today, I arrived in this country for the first time. Correction: I arrived in any country for the first time. I was 21 years old and had never been outside my native USA. Correction again: I had never been anywhere beyond the East Coast of my native USA. January 15, 1984.

Hours earlier I had left my two roommates in a cockroach-infested basement apartment on the outskirts of Trenton New Jersey. All three of us were penniless students at the local college, living on fried baloney sandwiches and sleeping on mattresses on the floor. We would take our clothes into the shower and wash them as we cleaned ourselves. The ceiling above the shower had collapsed some months prior, in keeping with the general lack of maintenance in the apartment block. Always one to make an opportunity of  a crisis, we used the hole to speak easily with our upstairs neighbour; Winnie. She was a single mother with two beautifully well-mannered kids. For what little we had, Winnie and the kids had even less. We would share our clothing, food and music with them through the opportune hatch in the shower ceiling.

The hours leading up my departure for the airport had been spent partying. It was our way and certainly my trip across the pond to undertake a three-month stint as an exchange student was not a necessary pre-requisite for a party. Even as I lugged my duffel bag to the door I remember my roommates putting on my favourite album of the time. The songs still instantly transport me to that time.

I remember little of the flight itself other than the smell of the marinating onions and good quality olive oil used by the Italian Kitchen deli wafting through the economy class seats.

My first glance of what would be my adopted country was the green patchwork farms of Sussex from the window of the airplane. It was mid-winter and the sight of green grass surprised me. In the airport at Gatwick, I remember the yellow signage pointing out the taxis and trains were alien and distinctly European.

I caught the train to Victoria station in London. As I waited for the staff from the college I would be attending to meet us, I quickly stepped outside and onto Buckingham Palace Road for my first glimpse of London. But that has already been covered in a previous blog.

The staff drove us on a lightning tour of the London sites. Big Ben (St Stephen’s Tower) was in scaffolding being cleaned and repaired. I had no premonition that these streets would become my home, my neighbourhood in the years to come. I was 21. My wife had just turned 14 years old a week prior! I knew no one in the country other than those in the car.

We stopped at a pub called The Stick and Weasel in City Road. Years later I stumbled upon the same pub by chance. On January 15, 1984 I ordered a gin as I thought that was the British thing to do (I had seen the movies), but the mini bus driver advised me that men tended to order beer in pubs.

And so we left London that gray and damp January day for the long drive north to Lincolnshire, where I would be based until the Spring.

28 years later, I am proud of the life I have made. I have a wonderfully close family and many friends. I cannot walk down the streets of this London neighbourhood, in the shadow of St Stephen’s Tower without bumping into someone I know. My wife (now of a riper age) and my children are also well-known to all. I have become a Londoner.

I remind my wife of today’s date and its relevance in our family history. She shrugs indifferently. There is little time for sentimentally when one is a Londoner; you just get on with it.

But I need to mark the occasion.

I put on the old song that played as I exited the cockroach-infested apartment, Winnie and the kids waving from the window.

Oh…I’m living in the future.

I feel wonderful.

I’m tipping over backwards

I’m so ambitious

I’m looking back

I’m running a race and you’re the book I read

Keep the Faith,

The Head

The Nicotine Inhaler

I need to make a few things clear before we start:

1. I could care less whether it is fashionable or not
2. It is all or nothing: cold turkey is the only way it will work for me
3. It has little to do with health
4. I will not be sanctimonious. I won’t. I mean it.

 
Last night, Mrs Head and I made a joint-pact to quit smoking from Monday Jan 9. It seems a good day to make the commitment as it is her 42nd birthday. Officially, I am going to try to quit. Mrs Head insists she does not smoke. The fact that she buys, lights up and inhales nicotine in the form of a burning wrap does not constitute smoking it seems. Even at 41 years old she will not light up in front of her mother. So in some absurd but strangely accepted logic, it is just me who needs to quit.

That, dear readers, is between Mrs Head and her conscience.

I started cutting down today and as of mid afternoon I had smoked 5 less than normal. Twenty five a day is my norm- over Christmas it was probably sneaking up towards 40. I went from 8am to 1pm today without stepping outside into the alley next to the construction site that will be the Evangelical Church of Jesus Christ Built on the Rock and having one of my favourite Benson & Hedges.

Normally 7 minutes of every 90 are spent topping up the nicotine in my system. 7 minutes. 11 drags/inhales/puffs. That’s how long it takes me to finish a fag. I have it down to an art. Just enough time to go outside and breathe the East London air; just enough time to clear my head.

Withdrawal symptoms between occasional fags as I prepare for the cold turkey of Jan 9 have been soothed by one of those strange nicotine inhalers. One pops a cartridge of liquid nicotine into the middle and then it works just like a cigarette. Except there is no smoke. Or taste. Or enjoyment.

I am reliably informed by the office staff seated just outside my glass box that the inhaler looks exactly like a tampon applicator. Hence there are fits of laughter every time I put it to my lips and inhale. Irritability is a well-known side effect of chemical withdrawal so I don’t find them funny.

Fair warning, then, dear readers: the focus of upcoming blogs will most likely be trained on the internal chemical battle for my body. Will I cave and go back to my habit of the past 14 years (yes I started late) or will this be a milestone decision?

The school receptionist who is an enthusiastic smoker announces she is going to the alley. She says she is checking for stray cats but she comes back stinking of Bingo snout. I lift the tampon applicator/nicotine inhaler and suck so hard on it that the excess air in my system makes me cough.

The PA offers me a stick of gum. The chewing gum packaging is reminiscent of a 6 pack of condoms. It seems she has never realised. I make the observation and the office dissolves into giggles.

Perhaps my senses are sharpening already and emerging from their chemical dependent haze, dear readers?

I will keep you posted.

Keep the Faith,

The Head