Corner shop community

I went to the corner shop as usual on a sunday morning to buy the paper and was greeted by an unfamiliar face at the till. He could see my surprise so I asked and he replied, slightly annoyed, 'everyone has been asking that. He's moved on, gone back to Turkey.'

I realised I didn't even know his name. Yet i felt i had got to know the corner shop guy, who always greeted me with a smile and 'how's my friend' (Gustavo). He liked to tease Gustavo for his unkempt hair while stroking his trim styled beard.

When I got home we were both sad that we hadn't had the chance to find out his name, and tell him how much we appreciated his warmth, how he had been a key part of our local community - people you recognise and trust.

Had he been forced to leave by new owners, perhaps there was there some family problem that meant he had to leave London?

A few weeks later I bumped into this Kurdish ex-shop keeper and asked him what he was up to, that we missed him. He told us that he sold the business and had graduated from university. It was great to find out our assumptions were wrong and he was happy.

Searching for images of corner shops I found a blogger who had written about these guys. They used to give her a bottle of wine when it was her birthday. So I guess they were something special.

Fragments on a Night Train

Didnt anyone tell them?
You go on holiday to escape yourself
To give yourself a break
from yourself
your petty worries
your daily habits
your work routine

But here they are lugging their burdens in large wheeled bags onto the train flying through the night with light dreams of fields unseen.

I realised soon that i wasnt the one observing I was a mirror on their world.
They were watching their children and each other through my eyes

My presence alone, i need not speak, reflected back their lack of imagination.
A silent outsider I echoed back their dull coversation and their focus on food, phone games, multi distraction as the sights and play of light on europe sped past unnoticed.

Would they crack the glass and make me real with questions I couldn't ignore?
I waited but they turned their large backs and lay down to sleep.

As I too lay down, the soft carriage beats and humming wind carried me back to the same seat alone in a night sleeper to Delhi from Calcutta with another family, this time in brightly coloured clothes, sharing their food and excitement enveloping me in their family circle without conversing, but communing through their indian spices and smiles.

A fragment I found in an old notebook as I was tidying my desk and arranging a trip to Italy for a friend's wedding. We're going by sleeper train. My favourite way to travel.

Wedding Fever

Let the wedding season begin! 

The summer that stretches in front of me will be punctuated by weekends away celebrating love and watching friends launch off the platform of happiness, hope, friends and family. 

Last weekend I was in Dorset for a very English wedding in the sun and rain with too much booze and the traditional trio of men giving speeches. 

Although fewer and fewer people marry now, for those that do, we are starting to reinvent these rituals and traditions.  We reinvent them when we make the myriad miniscule decisions from what to wear (does the bride wear white as a symbol of a new start rather than virginity, and is the groom formal? Can a guest wear white?), to where they marry (in a church because it’s a religious ritual, or because it symbolises your childhood community or tradition, or in a registry office or a field), whether the groom wears a ring (to symbolise equality? – both wear rings), who gives a speech, whether you ‘cut the cake’, whether the bride and groom stay apart the night before and leave on the night of the wedding. Each small decision and big decision – what vows are said, religious or atheist ceremony – is shaping the ritual and its meaning.

I think rituals can have a transformative power, not just for those directly involved, but for everyone there. They mark passages of time, they bond those there and they collectively reinforce values. So if you marry in a church you are probably consciously or unconsciously reinforcing your traditional values. A wedding creates a public space where your community comes together. When your community is fragmented, online, global, not just where you live and grew up, this is a modern way of creating a community in the physical, binding you to it, and giving it a part in supporting your relationship.

But it’s not about the hype and madness of a ‘fairytale wedding’ that will somehow magically transform your relationship into one of perfect romance. If we reinvent the ritual to symbolise crazy feats of perfection where the bride has to look the best she ever will and is treated like a princess, what does that symbolise? The more ‘perfect’ the wedding, aesthetically and materially, the more perfect will be your marriage. I prefer the story of friends of ours who married with two week’s notice in Mexico with a handful of friends and family, found a band on the street, asked a local family to cook the food and off they went. The focus became the excitement of life after the spontaneous romance. 

Marriage should be liberation, setting you free to live your life with someone who loves and supports you, setting off on an adventure together, not ‘settling down’. And the weddings that reflects that are the most inspiring and the ones you most enjoy

Mind you, our wedding was a drunken festival so I’m not sure what that symbolises for our married life.

I am a camera

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed."

This is one of the memorable lines from a fantastic play I saw on friday night by John Van Druten, inspired by Christopher Isherwood's Berlin novel. It is showing at the wonderful small theatre above the Rosemary Branch pub along the canal from my flat. 

still from the film I am a Camera

It was a funny and poignant portrayal of two close friends trying to make sense of being artists in Berlin against the backdrop of the rise in fascism. The lead character who was the inspiration for Sally Bowles in Caberet is a crazy, drunken unsuccessful cabaret singer, jumping from rich guy to richer guys, buzzing with energy and overenthusiastic gushing. She's like a more wild, less good looking Holly Golightly. Someone you'd like to throw a decadent party with.

Cabaret

Catch it before it whirls off the stage. Its a great night out with brilliant performances from the whole cast.

Boys chatting football, girls chatting love

In the office while making a cup of coffee this week, I was impressed by a professional and serious discussion taking place about strategy by two of the few men in the office. They sound so serious, expert and intelligent discussing tactics and management.  It was only after a few minutes that I realised they were discussing football, a hobby. It was a way of having small talk and bonding (with the few other men around) but sounded more informed and intelligent than when they discuss work – their actual expertise. 

I am also amazed at the amount of chat by women about relationships, their love lives, family, parents, or friends. Not just in the office, but in the pub, over coffee, walking in the park. The analysis is often as in-depth as the football chat.

This is an old cliché. That men talk about football and women talk about emotions and relationships. Its obviously an absurd generalisation and stereotype. There are lots of women that love discussing sport. And I discuss relationships and love with my male friends just as much as with my female friends. Sometimes more.

What is interesting though is how these habits are ascribed gender characteristics. Apparently men talk about football because they don’t do emotions and are better at facts and physical strength. And women talk about love because they are better at emotions and relationships.

But I really doubt how much this is down to differences in men and women and whether these are ‘male’ or ‘female’ characteristics. 

I have a longstanding argument with my husband about the differences between men and women. I think that there are little or no differences except physiological and biological differences and everything else is a process of social conditioning and learning what it is to be ‘male’ and ‘female’.  I sometimes go even further and argue that women are ascribed characteristics that prevent them from succeeding in life. My pet hate is multitasking. I think women are told they are naturally good at multitasking because it means they are more conditioned to perform menial jobs that require juggling lots of small things, and gets men off the hook with domestic chores.  Multitasking is a useful skill if you’re a mother juggling a baby, cooking and your long list of things to do. Its useful if you have an administrative role at work. But its no good if you need to focus and concentrate – an apparently ‘male’ trait. 

Gustavo thinks this is absurd and that men and women are clearly totally different and have different clusters of characteristics because of their gender.

Well a new report out this week by the think tank Demos put this debate on the political agenda. In the report Yvonne Roberts argues that there is evidence to support my theory that it’s all largely learned and conditioned by parenting, schools, and the wider society. She does point out that the scientific evidence is confusing and could be used to draw either conclusion.  

But while the jury is out on the evidence, I think it makes sense to try to keep gender away from characteristics as much as possible because of the constraints that this can put on equality, success and happiness.  The report argues that confusion about what is masculine and feminine restrains women (it’s not feminine to be tough at work and push for promotion, and women are good at multitasking so take the lion’s share of domestic work) and it also constrains men (its not masculine to be good at communication – a skill required to find job where there has been a shift from manufacturing to predominantly service economy).
 

Roberts adds some evidence to my previous post about the lack of good female role models in film.  In a study of Hollywood films released from 2006-2009 out of 5,554 lead characters only 29% were female and out of these a quarter were eye candy (compared to 4% of men). Roberts asks the same question I’ve been wondering, ‘So where are the positive heroines?’

Female Warrior, Greek statue

Interestingly a worthy new group, the Man Collective, has been set up to help men redefine what masculinity is. They feel they are part of a generation of men who feel lost and confused about their role now that they are no longer the ‘breadwinner’. 

I have many male friends struggling with this inherited idea they should be the ‘breadwinner’, earning enough to ‘take care of the family’, while in reality their partners are earning more or they aren’t in a position to earn enough to be defined as the ‘breadwinner’.  And this is despite the fact that they know rationally this is absurd, that we don’t live in that world anymore, and that one of the reasons they are attracted to the women they are with is because of their ambitious or success at work. 

Generations of women, rightly, have been trying to redefine femininity. Men need to do the same. And together we need to try to loosen the expectations of gender and allow for men that enjoy gossiping and women that run companies.

So an ambitious woman who is good at negotiating is not masculine, she’s just ambitious and good at her job. Or when a man is sensitive or makes an effort with his appearance he’s not ‘in touch with his feminine side’, he’s just more balanced and making an effort.

One of my favourite quotes from Roberts paper is from Edward Glover who gave an influential series of broadcasts for the BBC, arguing that women were naturally weak, needed domesticity to impose discipline, without which they would fall to ‘an orgy of knitting. Failing such solace they are inclined to eat their hearts out.’ 

Harsh! Although I quite like the image of an orgy of knitting….

Honey Bee Justice

On Friday my husband opened up his urban honey bee hives for UNICEF’s lovely youth climate ambassadors. He pointed out an interesting honey bee twist in generational fairness. 

When the hive starts to get crowded because there is an abundance of forage and good living conditions, instead of the younger bees leaving to start their own hive (as happens with humans), the elder bees leave with their queen. They leave, so that the younger bees can benefit from their accumulated resource, stability and wealth, and can create their own queen and their own colony from a strong position in an environment that is proven to support life sustainably.

In the honey bee world, parents leave their assets for their children at the point at which they most need them, in youth, rather than at the point at which the parents can no longer use them. The elder bees have the responsibility for moving on and starting from scratch, rather than expecting the children to. 

In my job at UNICEF UK I've have been thinking and writing about intergenerational justice in the context of climate change for a few years now. Children are being left with the burden of climate change largely caused by their parents’ high-carbon lifestyles. 

Children everywhere, but especially in developing countries are growing up in an environment that is more at risk of disasters, drought and instability, largely because of the lifestyles of previous generations, especially in developed countries. This goes against a core human instinct and a common shared value across many countries that parents try to leave improved opportunities and accumulated wealth for their children, or at least attempt not to leave the world in a worse state for their children.

There seems to be a growing interest in this as a framing concept  – not just for ascribing blame – but for finding an equitable solution. And it is uniting young people across countries with very different contexts with a shared sense of injustice and agency. 

Intergenerational justice seems to have now become a mainstream political concern in the UK. Ed Miliband recently stated that his overriding focus for the Labour party was fairness between generations, not just social and financial equity within generations. Ironically Nick Clegg and David Cameron, started with David Willets's publication of The Pinch, have also used the argument of fairness between generations to justify the budget deficit – on the grounds that it will reduce the burden of debt for future generations (some may argue that it might do the opposite for the current young generation as they have to take out greater loans to pay for higher tuition fees and waiting for job opportunities to pick up again - implemented by the very same David Willets as Eduacation Minister).

I met David Willets at an event on intergenerational justice and he said he hadnt really thought about solutions to the generational inequality in climate change.

If the solution proposed is along the ‘polluter pays’ principle – those most responsible should pay, compensating those least responsible but bearing the brunt.

Maybe honey bee justice would see be retired baby boomers downsizing and handing on their wealth, knowledge and resources to the younger generations creating the solutions to a more sustainable world. Or maybe just spending their life accumulating benefit, knowledge and assets in order to create an abundant, healthy world for their offspring to start with.

Number 10 Frowning Street

I'm the cockroach Prime Minister of course, and I have to hurry back to Frowning Street....

At the end of the next short play, as our hero's (a mint leaf) friend 'scar' (a skull on top of a ghost) dies in his arms, he cries, "but are you dead or just asleep?"

And in another, the unwittingly funny moment when Sandy Salt (a sea shell) explains how her father, a 'no swimming' sign is trying to stop anyone going into her mother (the sea) as she had already had too many people in her.

Everyone knows children's imagination and insights can be moving and inspiring. But it was the genius idea of Scene and Heard to ask children (aged 10/11) to write short plays that professional adult actors would then perform. None of the words are edited and the actors did an amazing job of bringing trippy obscure characters to life, adding just enough humour but not undermining the children's sentiments.

It was one of the best nights out at the theatre I've ever. Check it out next time. I wish this was done more often. Helping children, particularly those from tougher parts of London, to express themselves, but also helping the audience to remember and enjoy children's unbridled imagination, innocence and wisdom.