3 posts tagged “tea”
A telephone call from Doha:
"What did you do today, darling?"
"I finished an essay for uni, Mum. Went to a party last night. Not much. You?"
"Oh, I insulted a suspected mass murderer at a dinner party about his stance on women's rights."
"Ah. So same old same old, really."
If parents are meant by duty to instill a sense of perspective in their children, mine are succeeding admirably, though perhaps not in the way the platitude intends. A background: my Australian, Caucasian, atheist father works as a director of an architectural firm in the (usually) safer countries of the Middle East, building projects which go from the sublime to the ridiculous to the frankly absurd. I have no idea how he does it. I could tell you stories of culture clash that defy imagination: sheikhs quite seriously demanding flying cities or stadiums shaped like gigantic tents isn't even the half of it.
That, however, is not the point of this particular post. The point is that sometimes my mother accompanies him.
My mother is around five feet seven, blonde, and the approximate weight of a healthy 14-year-old. She is not an intimidating person physically. She is, however, a self-described hellion. This, considering that she is operating in a cultural environment which to varying degrees sees women as private beings without right of access to education and power, occasionally causes, um, diplomatic problems.
In the past, for instance, she fought with a sheikh over his insistence that his son had the right to go to study in London while his daughter did not- and possibly made the sheikh even firmer in his belief that educated women are terrifying creatures, if they're going to fearlessly dismantle his beliefs over a dinner table. Today, however, she shared a story that was so extraordinary the only logical next step was to tell the internet.
Somehow, due to the colossal oddness of the Arabian wealth 'scene' where most of my father's clients percolate, she ended up at a dinner party sitting next to a condescending elderly man whom she worked out, through a combination of memory and talking to his faintly indiscreet wife, to have once been a senior member of a political regime infamous for its colossal bloodiness. I will not mention which one because I don't want to cause trouble, but we're talking significant genocidal crimes against humanity here. I have no idea what he was doing in the Middle East. This was a man who, based on the evidence, is likely to have committed stuff the International Human Rights Tribunal normally has conniptions about. BAD THINGS.
And, of course, my mother, noticing during the (understandably strained) conversation that his wife and daughter did everything for him- served his food, poured his tea, translated when he decided not to speak English- decided to ask him whether he was capable of pouring his own tea or doing anything for himself.
"That is what women are for," responded Probable Mass Murderer, and my father promptly averted his eyes.
The conversation fortunately did not escalate to anything explicitly undiplomatic, but this was the parting exchange: the man, who apparently was Muslim, said he would teach my heathen mother to pray, to which she responded that she thanked him, and to show her gratitude she would bring along some rubber gloves and teach him how to wash up.
If anybody asks what my mother does for a living, I think I may answer "professional hell-raiser." I doubt she would object.
I can say, without any (noticeable) coercion, that England is a country which deserves positive adjectives: charming, interesting, full of character. It welcomed me to its well-padded ex-imperial bosom with only a minimum of bureaucratic aneurysms, spectacular misunderstandings and syntactic clashes, and gave me a thorough mothering, as Mother Countries will tend to do.
Despite this, I'm perfectly contented to change my status back from ex-pat to, erm, pat (what does that even mean?) Australia, in the lived sense, is my aunt coming to visit in her ute from the bush, bringing a sheep skull as a gift, admittedly to minor hysteria from my mother. Australia is a citywide public transport network which is less system of commute than national amusement. Australia is the mullet showing its shameful face once you're a barely acceptable distance out of the CBD, generally on blokes (and I do mean that word in its fullest sense) wearing old AC/DC T-shirts with no sleeves, or singlets, or nothing on top at all except a beer can in the relevant hand.
Lexicon-wise, Australia means swapping phrases like 'bugger that for a game of soldiers', 'faffing about' and 'old chaps' for 'walkabout', 'she'll be right' and 'onya, mate'. It means not being called 'sweetheart' or 'darlin' by anybody selling anything of any sort, because said anybody should know the likelihood that an Australian girl will reward the epiphet with a punch in the gob. It means remembering that 'me' and 'my' are perfectly interchangeable, that any public figure of any position is liable to be called a wanker by the press if they do something 'un-Australian' (still the worst insult around), that a spade is generally a fucken spade, and that vowel sounds should be so broad and flat they are the linguistic equivalent of the Great Sandy Desert. Yes, that is its real name. Yes, Australians are that imaginative all the time; my road, which happens to be half houses and half a bloody great cliff, is called, with similar flair, 'Cliff Street'. Great minds, my lot.
Australia also, in one of its most blissful advantages, means no longer being faced with accusations of perversions against humanity and the spirit of imbibement when I make the confession that I DO NOT LIKE TEA. In England, this sort of truth would have gotten me ostracised, had anybody believed me. The scenario, which occured perhaps fifty times, would be a friendly offer of tea, followed by my refusal, followed by a blank look and a repeated offer of tea, followed by my more insistent refusal, followed by a blanker look tinged with panic about how this anomaly in the universe could possibly be tolerated by natural laws.
Generally the interplay would conclude with the English person laughing, saying the equivalent of 'Of COURSE you don't like tea, you charming Australian person- what a joke! What a lovely antipodean sense of humour!', and thus reassuring themselves that my heretical rejection of the National Lifeblood was a hilarious jape and that their belief in its universal properties of Good and Wholesomeness could remain unmolested. They would then, five minutes later, proceed to offer me tea again. This situation was repeated so often that it's a miracle I didn't go on a murdering spree armed with broken pieces of china teapots and garrotting-strings off teabags.
Probably the worst purveyors were the waitresses, who slipped tea into the end of their order in the manner of politicians paper-clipping bills about sound pollution in their constituency to the back of huge boring bills about tax brackets. "A salad for you and the special for your friend? Right. And you'll be wanting tea," they add, as they move away from the table, nodding. "No," I am forced to call, halfway across the restaurant to their backs as they retreat rapidly back into the kitchen like crabs returning to their burrows. "Beg pardon, love?" they yell back. "No tea," I bellow, usually several times, to shock them out of the familiar blank-panic expression which crosses their faces.
More often than not they'd bring tea anyway. And then proceed to charge me for it.
My theories as to English tea-usage, from an outsider's perspective, all strive to explain its status as a panacea for all emotional and physical ills, and all fail. A replacement for the messier and generally more expensive process of emotions and their requisite therapy? A shot in the national imperial arm, as a reminder that once the women striving to pick the tealeaves in the fields of Ceylon had British overseers? A mass hypnotic device designed to keep the masses in line and properly raising their pinkies? Unsatisfactory explanations, I know- but the dogmatic insistence upon it, the fact that if you gave an Englishman an autopsy you'd probably discover that their blood had long away been replaced by weak brown fluid, begs for a theory of some kind. Suggestions?
At least Sydney and Melbourne are so thoroughly preoccupied with pretending to be Italian coffee-makers (I swear there are more people who think Starbucks is the world's greatest plague in my country than there are people who vote) that I won't be dealing with the substance involuntarily from now on.
Modern technology is a wonderful thing, but when it prevents you from posting blog entries save with the intervention of another computer, a USB key, emails and a cooperative older sibling, it loses a bit of its charm. Apologies in advance for the haphazardness of the following, which was compiled over the week or so I’ve been living in London rather than posted at convenient intervals. Luckily, none of it is particularly heavy reading, shockingly enough.
++ Much as I hate to say ‘Australians are this’ or ‘the English are that’- just kidding, I quite evidently don’t hate saying those things at all- Australians appear to have a unique approach to difficulty. It’s a blend of stoicism, cheerfulness, occasional profuse swearing, and utterly taking the piss.
For example, on the morning that my stay in Norwich ended, I had five bags containing all my worldly belongings, including two heavy suitcase-like things and an unfeasibly pink dressing-gown, to transport from one side of London to the other. I was an excessively overburdened vagrant. To put this into perspective, sharing the load between myself and a friend whom I am now going to recommend for sainthood produced two lots of pulled muscles and various threats to the gods. Being left alone and charged with heaving the whole load by myself, on and off platforms and trains, made me feel as if I’d just been told to go conquer Asia Minor using a spatula.
Nevertheless, the Australian in me kicked in. If it had to be done, it Had To Be Done, no complaining or bemoaning of fate, so I just did it. Not only that, I found the entire situation hilarious, and after knocking myself over carrying the largest suitcase off the train at West Dulwich had a convulsive laughing fit for about two minutes. Being Australian 101: embrace inadvertently looking like an idiot, particularly if it involves serious bodily harm.
The Australian ex-pats with whom I’m currently staying expressed amazement bordering on shock when I turned up cheerfully encumbered with what we estimated was about three times my own body weight. My muscles filed for divorce from the rest of my body, but every time I think about completely stacking it on West Dulwich platform (that’s ‘falling over spectacularly’, for non-Australian readers), I start giggling again. I would have gotten 6.0 from the Russian judge for form, I think.
++ Lessons in Comparative Architecture 1- Antipodeans know how to do space. The British Isles are populated in a way resembling sardines in tins, if statistics are to be believed, and so appear to have embraced cramped conditions as a national art form. It’s a wonder they don’t have championships concerning who can live in the smallest space. Shoeboxes would barely get you to the semi-finals.
By way of contrast, I’m now living with Londonian Aussies whose (perfectly unassuming) bathroom is literally ten paces from end to end. Everywhere is filled with air and light. You can move without tripping over furniture or books or various small children. I’m afraid shoeboxes, or even authentic Tudor housing with doorways that crack you across the head and claim it’s historical concussion, can’t compare to that.
++ There are signs, rather like in witch-hunting, which can tell you unequivocally whether your teacher is a specimen of academic and personal magnificence. The crucial sign for the first is that they will fill two full comments-pages on your essays with comments which don’t so much discuss the actual essay as talk about aspects of your topic they happen to be passionate about. It feels as if, now that they’ve marked the bloody thing, they’re going to use it as an intellectual springboard and have some fun.
The crucial sign for the second is that they will open the comments-page with a reference to a conversation you once had about whether Venus would be of any use on a touch football team.
Needless to say, my New Zealandic Virgil ex-tutor fits all the criteria.
++ The things-being-closed curse, which regular readers may remember from my jaunts around with my family before settling in Norwich all those months ago, has reached a new low, or high as you may choose to define it.
Monday being rainy, I decided to spend the morning at the Tate Modern, and after two hours of Pollock, Rothko et al headed confidently for the top floor for some cherry-on-top pop art to finish. I got there, wandered a bit- insert required remark about what pillocks some artists seem to be, including the one who decided housing live parrots in an art gallery was a charming idea- and then heard a loud and slightly worrying sound. There was dust. People holding walky-talkies abandoned their posts by the gallery’s doors- which, of course, meant that children rushed to touch ‘untouchable’ displays, because children are mercifully children the world over- to see what was happening.
What exactly HAD happened is still unclear, but considering that the top floor was fairly quickly evacuated and large barricades erected in front of the Pop Art section while people in hard hats ran around with intent expressions, I’ll bet one of the following:
1) Some of the pop art literally popped;
2) A Lichtenstein painting fell off a wall (I always wonder why this doesn’t happen more often in art galleries), meaning that its onomatopoeic ‘WHAM’ slogan was finally appropriate;
3) Part of the ceiling fell in.
As for why this stuff happens to me, I haven’t the foggiest.
++ Signs 2: There are signs which should guide you towards making shopping decisions. For instance, when trying on a pair of red shoes in a shoe shop, if four different people, all complete strangers and only two of whom appear to have a firm grasp of English, tell you to buy them, taking their advice is probably a good idea.
So I now own a pair of red shoes from London’s Oxford Street. Democracy in action, ladies and gentlemen.
++ Nobody can accuse myself or Girl-Charli (she of the Virgil class, and more specifically of ‘yellow card’ fame) of failing to pay attention to the New Zullander or our Virgilian subject matter. Indeed, we charged around the British Museum, stopping only to make disparaging remarks about the ‘acquisition methods’ of English archaeologists (see in the dictionary under ‘Stealing’), looking for artefacts pertaining to Aeneas, he of Aeneid fame.
What did we find? One measly little amphora. Inexcusable. The historical limelight was hogged by Hercules, that great big lout who didn’t even have the sense to get out of cleaning the Aegean Stables, and Achilles, World Champion Sulk, who threw even better fits of pique than Dido. Where is the justice? The even-handedness? We were righteously enraged.
And so, as righteous rage often goes, we got hold of a Feedback Form.
In it we lambast the establishment (I believe we began it with ‘Dear British Museum’, to cover all bases) over its notable lack of Aeneas-depicting artefacts for over half a page, ending in the memorable and ringing sentence, “What would Virgil say?!”
I personally have no idea what Virgil would say, nor the British Museum either, particularly since we added a postscript in which we helpfully suggested a future exhibition on the extremely historical subject of pirates.
++ The creature commonly known as the ‘old boy’ or the ‘toff’ actually exists. He shows up in places with impeccably put together blazer, ascot, pocket-kerchief, cane and beautifully clipped moustache, saying things like “Oh, I SAY” and “oh, good show, old chap.”
I heard one behind me at the traffic lights today, evidently on his way to an aristocratic food-tasting event in Regents Park (no, I’m not making that up), blinked, turned, looked, and had to grab something to support myself and my self-control. Were it not for a handy fencepost and my white knuckles I would have laughed until my stomach hurt, and grievously offended the entire British establishment in the process. I want one to take home.
++ My finances are probably everlastingly grateful that I don’t live in London permanently. Were that the case, I’d find myself down on Portobello Road every Friday buying absolutely everything. Things you’ve never even imagined- from ivory-headed walking sticks to debutante dresses from the 30’s to a dagger which I admired for a full minute before realising that both it and its sheath bore the symbol of the Third Reich. (The store owner actually witnessed my expression change to horrified disgust, I think, since he immediately came across and relieved me of it.) ‘Street where the riches of ages are stowed’ indeed- EVERY age.
++ You know you’ve hit on a good bargain when the cashier of H&M looks at the price tag, looks at the dress, looks at you, says ‘Hold on’ and proceeds to charge around the extremely large store seeking out some higher authority to verify the apparent anomaly.
++ Happiness is buying Proust’s “Swann’s Way” at a second-hand bookstore in Notting Hill and reading it in Hyde Park sunshine, while eating possibly the best chocolate cupcake of all time (from Portobello’s Hummingbird Bakery, complete with its own personal individual carry-case). Happiness is also standing in Waterloo Station on Ascot Weekend, watching the be-hatted hordes depart for the races and quietly laughing yourself stupid. Any country where men can wear tops and tails, or even kilts, without apology is an utterly excellent one.
Actually, I’d be less interested in taking bets on the horses than on the women, most of whom seemed to be intent on their own race for the prize of a Right Honourable husband. “And the girl with the purple fascinator and the frilly non-entity of a dress is closing in for the kill… oh, but that filly in red with the lipstick and the pillbox hat is coming up from the inside… it’s going to be a close one, folks!” If I were a titled young man I’d be terrified out of my wits. However, that would imply that I had wits in the first place, which, I am given to understand, is in no way to be assumed when it comes to this nation’s crop of blue-bloods.
++ If the Metro system in is powered by souls, the Tube of London must feed on angst. This, at least, was my conclusion when within the one Saturday four of the lines decided, two for no discernible reason whatsoever, to stop working. The sheer amount of traveller frustration produced would, if converted to kilowatts, probably power several flights to the moon.
I don’t like to think that the Tube derives any personal satisfaction from games of this sort; it’s more optimistic just to think that it’s attempting to refuel. I may write to British Rail and suggest that they strap a few mewling teenagers in sneakers and very tight jeans to the front of every train and play them the occasional Avril song, just to cut out the middle man.
++ Given that most of my introduction by British friends to the radio soap ‘The Archers’ consisted of them explaining why characters kept on referring to a cow which had died 15 years previously- that, and refusing to translate a character’s mumbles because ‘nobody understands him, he’s from Somerset’- you will forgive me if I utterly fail to take it seriously.
++ How the English ever conquered anybody with breakfasts like bacon sarnies- slices of bacon between white bread, with brown sauce or mustard- is utterly beyond me. I have a mental image of entire armies sitting down heavily and saying they need a few more hours for the food to settle. Most British people, however, are keen to make the distinction between a ‘hearty breakfast’ (eggs, bacon, toast, baked beans, black pudding, various combinations thereof) and things like hash brown sandwiches or lard on toast- which, at least some right-minded Britishers agree, are DISGUSTING.
++ Whoever came up with the idea of having a life-size, animatronic, properly sound-affect-laden T-Rex in the Natural History Museum is either an utter sadist or was never a small child. Surely there is some category under the DOCS ‘abuse’ heading concerning Making Young Children Believe They May Be The Next Meal Of A Huge Flesh-Eating Beast.
++ Despite their incomprehensible breakfast habits, fetishist attitude towards tea and perpetual rude references to ‘empire’, the English are an all right lot. The fact that the Creative Writing Society bought me a large and very beautiful book on dragons as a farewell present may have something to do with this judgement of mine.
