Once I'd stopped thinking the multitude of other pedestrians were trying to walk into me on purpose on the London pavements, I had a magic few hours trotting about on my way to my niece Tilly's christening where two of the precious ladies in my life, Mum and Rosie, had enabled for me to be for a whistle-stop visit. Despite a dodgy experience in the hairdresser where she turned me into the wrong kinda fox (at what point did I ask her for orange?)...What a joy! The cool air, the golden and russet leaves - rather unfortunately matching my locks, and, the people looking err....happy. I marvelled as a Sikh man with a curling moustache and beautifully neat yellow turban tipped his head back and roared with laughter with another stranger in our lift at Euston station. Yes, the UK I'm sure is riddled with problems, but it was great to be back. I gazed at more happy looking people and had lunch in a pub, then a trip on a sleeper through the country under a blanket of darkness, and put away a bottle of Merlot with 'Uncle Aweeee' as Rashimi calls him. There had been a mix up with the ticket but the conductor didn't mind a bit that it would be waiting for him to stamp on the platform at Blair Atholl. Humour. Trust. And seemingly lots of it still in this land, for all the gloom we're fed in the news.
It was a beautiful weekend where I got to be like an old lady and observe things going on - the way you never can when you're wrangling your own offspring. The strands of my life seemed to weave together: from a moving radio programme about the British leaving camp Bastion in Afghanistan which cast me back to those days, and J and my earlier married life - the golden trees a reminder of our November wedding day 8 years ago. And in the church, a prayer Mum had written for our baby brother Patrick, who didn't make it further than four months on this earth, and died on that day 35 years ago when I was four years old, followed by a reading from Deuteronomy which describes the moment when Moses sees the promised land and then dies at the age of 112. As I read the names - the Plains of Moab, and Jericho - the city of palm trees - I could picture that view from Mount Nebo. We've seen it with our own eyes. And everything seemed to be represented that day and whipped together in a lovely round ball, albeit for being there without my own. And though I missed my boys, I was also grateful for that weekend that allowed me to put my head up and notice a few more things than normal.
The weekend brimmed with laughter and happiness and wine with that little beaming face in the midst of it all - welcomed into the community as she was, so warmly, yet unknowingly. And it made me realise how many important things happen in our lives which we will never have a recollection of. And though recollections seem like everything when you're adult - the most important work has probably gone into us by the time we start to remember any detail. The formatting of our hard wiring in that comfortable cocoon of unknowingness.
Roger the rector who had married Harry and Rosie, spoke wisely, and reminded us that by looking at the perfect and innocent face we can help ourselves to accept others, even those we may not like or agree with, by remembering that every human being starts in this perfect and beautiful state.
As the aeroplane cruised back towards that land that Moses was promised, I watched my neighbour - a teenage boy, lace the black straps of his tefiillin round and round his arm and nod over his Torah for a while, the black box snugly against his forehead below his yarmulke. Then he neatly ate his tray of kosher food and didn't allow himself to catch my eye. I wondered if at this age it's difficult to be different.
As we landed, a beautiful sunset turned the towers of Tel Aviv a rusty yellow and created silhouettes from the lines of palm trees. 'Welcome' said the Israeli passport controller with a warm smile. A first. I found the car and drove back along route 1 towards Jerusalem and towards the dwarves who had spent the weekend with St Grace while J was in Iraq, and me in Scotland. It was good to have un-scattered ourselves again.
The dwarves are particularly good at fond goodbyes and warm welcomes - and this welcome was no different. Within minutes we were on our tummies in the playroom and the room was filled with polystyrene aeroplanes and empty Haribo ('lips and teef') packets. Rashimi dressed up in his pirate outfit from uncle Duncle and dragged me outside to have a look at 'thidney the thpider' who was so small I could hardly see him, let alone his web. But he had been there all weekend, according to Rashimi, 'even in the wain.'
On their first night alone, poor St Grace got the fright of her life when she thought someone was trying to break into the house. In fact it was our security guards who wondered who was in the house as they knew J and I were away. As they shone their flashlights into her room, and rattled at the doors, St Grace ran into the boys' rooms and carried them into her own one while they slept. Then she locked her door and telephoned for help in the darkness from under her bed. Luckily she rang the right people whose numbers I'd given her, and they came over at 1am and resolved the problem. She did all the right things, and she and the dwarves shared a bed for the remaining nights so they'd be near her if there was a problem. She is a wonder that woman. The dwarves slept all the way through the panicked calls. As she explained to me: 'They are my child, so I do what I do with my child.'
I've been filming with a little eight year old girl in Ramallah, without my trusty Egyptian sidekick, who is sadly unable to come here from Jordan. How I missed her as I ran down the street in the little village in the West Bank with my film camera, tripod and a bag full of stuff - as a gaggle of school girls tittered behind me and copied my accent as I tried to give directions in Arabic. The current assistant is nice but not that energetic so she's always a bit far behind. She explained how she is trying to buy a flat in Jerusalem but everything is too expensive. Gazing out of the window onto the rubbish strewn verges of the West Bank she said: 'I think everything in this country is too expensive, apart from human lives.'
I've been tootling about with the boys as usual when I'm not working. We wandered together down the busy main street near us to do the shopping, struggling back laden with pomegranates and potatoes and melons and onions, with bunches of complimentary mint and coriander and walnuts haemorrhaging from the bags. And I wondered how the dwarves had also convinced me to bring two scooters, a pirate hat and the cutlass with us on the trip. I made a reluctant Rashimi take the cutlass and the hat, but then he ran about waving it in the Lozenge's face, shouting: 'I'm going to cut your head off.' Not the best time and place for threats like this so I made him carry a melon instead.
I had a night out for the first time with other Mums from the Lozenge's school. Without exception they were funny and interesting, and quite an array of mostly blonde: 3 Swedes, 1 Dutch, 1 Danish, 1 Norwegian, 1 Palestinian, 1 Italian and 1 Brit (moi). Of the many great conversations I had over bottles of French and Italian wine (we're all wary of buying wine made by Israeli settlers so we stick to European in case) I agreed with a beautiful and pregnant Swede that we'd gone off flags. They often seem to represent the far right of things these days. But she admitted to being quite proud of her own flag last Thursday when her country agreed to recognise the State of Palestine, a symbolic gesture which does a lot to lift the spirits around here. In response the Israeli Foreign Minister sniped: 'The Swedish government should understand that Middle East relations are more complex than a piece of self-assembled IKEA furniture....' as he announced that Israel would be recalling its ambassador to Sweden.
The Lozenge and I stole off together for a music class. As we drove through the city, the light fading and the streetlights pinging on, he took my hand off the gear stick and held it in his, singing along to Paul Simon's 'I am an alien from Mars' one song on his favourite CD. As he wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed my cheek as we drove along, a man driving a tour bus on our right caught my eye and gave us a big smile. Rachel the beautiful French music teacher welcomed us with coffee for me and some cake for the Lozenge and got him to 'draw his dream.' He drew an elaborate picture of 'plumbing pipeth where all the water goeth around and around' and she fashioned his little dream into a music session starting with a pipe organ and explaining how air makes a noise when it rushes through a pipe - just like water when it gurgles with the air in a plumbing pipe. Then they hopped around the room doing quaver and crotchet rythms - ba, ba ba, ba, ba ba. We drove back, the cool dark air pierced by the howl of police cars racing towards some other zone of fury and violence in this magic and tragic city, and the Lozenge clambered from the front seat into the boot so he could watch the moon as we headed for home. 'I'm sure thomeone is up there looking down at us from that banana moon, Mummy.'
It was a beautiful weekend where I got to be like an old lady and observe things going on - the way you never can when you're wrangling your own offspring. The strands of my life seemed to weave together: from a moving radio programme about the British leaving camp Bastion in Afghanistan which cast me back to those days, and J and my earlier married life - the golden trees a reminder of our November wedding day 8 years ago. And in the church, a prayer Mum had written for our baby brother Patrick, who didn't make it further than four months on this earth, and died on that day 35 years ago when I was four years old, followed by a reading from Deuteronomy which describes the moment when Moses sees the promised land and then dies at the age of 112. As I read the names - the Plains of Moab, and Jericho - the city of palm trees - I could picture that view from Mount Nebo. We've seen it with our own eyes. And everything seemed to be represented that day and whipped together in a lovely round ball, albeit for being there without my own. And though I missed my boys, I was also grateful for that weekend that allowed me to put my head up and notice a few more things than normal.
The weekend brimmed with laughter and happiness and wine with that little beaming face in the midst of it all - welcomed into the community as she was, so warmly, yet unknowingly. And it made me realise how many important things happen in our lives which we will never have a recollection of. And though recollections seem like everything when you're adult - the most important work has probably gone into us by the time we start to remember any detail. The formatting of our hard wiring in that comfortable cocoon of unknowingness.
Roger the rector who had married Harry and Rosie, spoke wisely, and reminded us that by looking at the perfect and innocent face we can help ourselves to accept others, even those we may not like or agree with, by remembering that every human being starts in this perfect and beautiful state.
As the aeroplane cruised back towards that land that Moses was promised, I watched my neighbour - a teenage boy, lace the black straps of his tefiillin round and round his arm and nod over his Torah for a while, the black box snugly against his forehead below his yarmulke. Then he neatly ate his tray of kosher food and didn't allow himself to catch my eye. I wondered if at this age it's difficult to be different.
As we landed, a beautiful sunset turned the towers of Tel Aviv a rusty yellow and created silhouettes from the lines of palm trees. 'Welcome' said the Israeli passport controller with a warm smile. A first. I found the car and drove back along route 1 towards Jerusalem and towards the dwarves who had spent the weekend with St Grace while J was in Iraq, and me in Scotland. It was good to have un-scattered ourselves again.
The dwarves are particularly good at fond goodbyes and warm welcomes - and this welcome was no different. Within minutes we were on our tummies in the playroom and the room was filled with polystyrene aeroplanes and empty Haribo ('lips and teef') packets. Rashimi dressed up in his pirate outfit from uncle Duncle and dragged me outside to have a look at 'thidney the thpider' who was so small I could hardly see him, let alone his web. But he had been there all weekend, according to Rashimi, 'even in the wain.'
On their first night alone, poor St Grace got the fright of her life when she thought someone was trying to break into the house. In fact it was our security guards who wondered who was in the house as they knew J and I were away. As they shone their flashlights into her room, and rattled at the doors, St Grace ran into the boys' rooms and carried them into her own one while they slept. Then she locked her door and telephoned for help in the darkness from under her bed. Luckily she rang the right people whose numbers I'd given her, and they came over at 1am and resolved the problem. She did all the right things, and she and the dwarves shared a bed for the remaining nights so they'd be near her if there was a problem. She is a wonder that woman. The dwarves slept all the way through the panicked calls. As she explained to me: 'They are my child, so I do what I do with my child.'
I've been filming with a little eight year old girl in Ramallah, without my trusty Egyptian sidekick, who is sadly unable to come here from Jordan. How I missed her as I ran down the street in the little village in the West Bank with my film camera, tripod and a bag full of stuff - as a gaggle of school girls tittered behind me and copied my accent as I tried to give directions in Arabic. The current assistant is nice but not that energetic so she's always a bit far behind. She explained how she is trying to buy a flat in Jerusalem but everything is too expensive. Gazing out of the window onto the rubbish strewn verges of the West Bank she said: 'I think everything in this country is too expensive, apart from human lives.'
I've been tootling about with the boys as usual when I'm not working. We wandered together down the busy main street near us to do the shopping, struggling back laden with pomegranates and potatoes and melons and onions, with bunches of complimentary mint and coriander and walnuts haemorrhaging from the bags. And I wondered how the dwarves had also convinced me to bring two scooters, a pirate hat and the cutlass with us on the trip. I made a reluctant Rashimi take the cutlass and the hat, but then he ran about waving it in the Lozenge's face, shouting: 'I'm going to cut your head off.' Not the best time and place for threats like this so I made him carry a melon instead.
I had a night out for the first time with other Mums from the Lozenge's school. Without exception they were funny and interesting, and quite an array of mostly blonde: 3 Swedes, 1 Dutch, 1 Danish, 1 Norwegian, 1 Palestinian, 1 Italian and 1 Brit (moi). Of the many great conversations I had over bottles of French and Italian wine (we're all wary of buying wine made by Israeli settlers so we stick to European in case) I agreed with a beautiful and pregnant Swede that we'd gone off flags. They often seem to represent the far right of things these days. But she admitted to being quite proud of her own flag last Thursday when her country agreed to recognise the State of Palestine, a symbolic gesture which does a lot to lift the spirits around here. In response the Israeli Foreign Minister sniped: 'The Swedish government should understand that Middle East relations are more complex than a piece of self-assembled IKEA furniture....' as he announced that Israel would be recalling its ambassador to Sweden.
The Lozenge and I stole off together for a music class. As we drove through the city, the light fading and the streetlights pinging on, he took my hand off the gear stick and held it in his, singing along to Paul Simon's 'I am an alien from Mars' one song on his favourite CD. As he wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed my cheek as we drove along, a man driving a tour bus on our right caught my eye and gave us a big smile. Rachel the beautiful French music teacher welcomed us with coffee for me and some cake for the Lozenge and got him to 'draw his dream.' He drew an elaborate picture of 'plumbing pipeth where all the water goeth around and around' and she fashioned his little dream into a music session starting with a pipe organ and explaining how air makes a noise when it rushes through a pipe - just like water when it gurgles with the air in a plumbing pipe. Then they hopped around the room doing quaver and crotchet rythms - ba, ba ba, ba, ba ba. We drove back, the cool dark air pierced by the howl of police cars racing towards some other zone of fury and violence in this magic and tragic city, and the Lozenge clambered from the front seat into the boot so he could watch the moon as we headed for home. 'I'm sure thomeone is up there looking down at us from that banana moon, Mummy.'
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