Tag Archives: non profit

The London Riots

Posted on August 11, 2011 | 3 Comments

I’m a Londoner. I will always be a Londoner. My grandfather grew up on the Old Kent road. My mum was born on the Peabody estate in Pimlico. I spent a lot of time as a kid staring out the window of my grandmother’s flat over at Battersea Power Station never understanding the optical illusion which meant I could only see three of the four towers.  I walk these streets weaving in and out of tourists, on autopilot, pointing out landmarks to Lula where I used to work (I temped A LOT) and the places I got fired from. I cross the roads to avoid places I kissed people I shouldn’t, I smile as I stroll past bars, restaurants, museums and shops – scenes of first dates, first sightings, drunken birthdays and my first pair of knee high boots.  It’s in my heart. London will always be my city no matter where I live.

Which is why this city also has the power to break my heart.

I worked for almost ten years in the area of social inclusion – creating and running projects (with the help of amazingly talented committed staff and volunteers) that supported people who were socially excluded to feel more connected to the communities that make up this city and other cities around the country.

Then I watched the riots play out across the UK and wondered what difference any of it had made. There are too many conflicting thoughts at play in my mind and in the minds of everyone I talk to right now. I feel a mix of shame, embarrassment and anger. I also feel huge sadness at the divides that have ripped our communities apart, the dangerous and widening wealth gap , the lack of respect and pride others, especially the young, seem to have for this city and the awesome people who live here.

In the days that followed the riots, people piled onto the streets with brooms to clear up the mess. I actually cried at pictures of people pouring tea for riot police, at those forced to defend their own property, at children who swept away broken glass in front of shops smashed up in their streets. It gave me hope and it restored my pride and faith in this city. Up to a point – show me a picture of Boris Johnson or David Cameron right now and I’d happily tear it to shreds. I’m also frankly appalled by some of the racist, right wing rhetoric appearing on Facebook and Twitter, often coming from people I know.

We’re leaving London in 10 days. Walking away from London at this point feels strange. I feel like I’m deserting my city, throwing my hands up and walking away in despair whilst shaking my head. I feel like I should stay and be part of something that I hope develops from this – a greater sense of community and pride in our homes. And two years ago, working in the volunteering sector I would have felt a huge rush of energy at the potential that could come from such a hideous chain of events. Unfortunately, Cameron in all his wisdom has dismantled most of the voluntary sector that could have been harnessed to transform the will on the streets right now into long-lasting action. Shame on him.

Having said that I can’t wait to get back to Bali. Perhaps because it’s smaller there the ex-pat community relies on itself rather like a tribe for support. It’s that sense of community that we never properly felt when living here (despite the fact I worked on community projects) that we have found in Ubud, and which I hope London begins to find again.

Whatever happens I wait with baited breath. I want to bring Lula back every year and walk her through these streets pointing out the places where her great grandparents house was bombed out and where they rebuilt it. I want to show her where her nana went to school,  and where I first kissed her father. I want to show her  the city that I love so much. I want her to grow up feeling like she’s a Londoner and feeling pride in this city and her heritage.

And right now I feel like it could go either way.

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Warm crabs, dead cats

Posted on February 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Tupperware of crabs is warm in my hand. I am warm in the taxi. It is nearly midnight and the taxi (fecking surprise here) is lost. So lost that I think I might just try looking for the hatch and perhaps Sawyer to keep me company.  I am sick of taxi drivers waggling their heads and telling me yes, they know where they are going and then getting lost. If I empted the warm crab curry over his head I wonder what would happen. But I just wonder about it because I’ve read Shantaram and I don’t want to go to prison in India.

I know, you’re wondering why I am holding a Tupperware container of warm crabs in the back of a taxi at midnight in Bombay whilst we cruise the now emptying streets asking strangers the way to Pali Naka. Well so the hell do I.

I went earlier in the evening to meet one of the unLTD India award winners. She then took us home and fed us an eight course meal with crabs as le piece de resistance. This is my doggy bag on my overstuffed lap. Anyway she runs a programme that provides support to the night schools in Mumbai. These night schools are basically for young people from the slums like Dharavi who work all day and who then come at night to study to get their High School Equivalency (like GCSEs). With this certificate they can increase their chances of getting more highly paid work. Or just work. So we went to one of the night schools in a building so worn out it looked like it needed putting out of its misery.

And all the kids were bent over their work, scribbling away (actually they were momentarily bent over their work and then they were one and all staring at the weird white girl come a visting) and I felt so depressed all of a sudden. There were  fluorescent lights and crumbling walls and I knew that the kids had already worked a twelve hour day and were staring at me wondering what overprivileged planet I came from. And I was wondering the same thing to0 (white girl has eyes opened in India – it’s like a headline from the Onion).

Then we passed by hundreds of shacks on the way there. From two storey solid ones, to corrugated iron and plastic ones down to cardboard and tarpaulins stretched over the pavement to just people lying sleeping on sheets of newspaper. To finally people just lying stretched out on the pavement. And then we saw a kitten so newborn it was still covered in mucus. And it tumbled onto the pavement mewling and then fell under a car.

And now in a cab with my crabs. Lost. It all feels a bit much.

Guess that’s India for you.

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Done the tattoo parlour. Next stop a wax.

Posted on January 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

I just had a bikini wax. It involved a butter knife, wax so hot I assume they climbed the nearest volcano and dipped their wax tub in a flowing lava bed to warm it up and two women. All behind a shower curtain.  You want to hear about the rest of my day?

I staggered like a drunk who’s just popped 10 vicodin out of bed at 10.45 this morning. I’m getting better. Yesterday was early afternoon. Day before that late afternoon.  I hopped in a rickshaw, the driver didn’t have a clue where anything was – Mt. Mary’s steps – no. John Baptist Road? – no. Domino’s Pizza (running out of landmarks) -no. It became clear they don’t do the Knowledge in India. Eventually we made it. I thought about asking for a discount for the time he spent getting lost then realised that wrangling over 3p was ungenerous of me.

Then I was piled in another rickshaw, sandwiched between two people I’ve just met who work for Ashoka. When you’re sandwiched in a rickshaw it’s like being the spam in a sandwich where you have taken both palms and flattened the bread down. But in this instance it’s actually quite comforting because it’s like having air bags on both sides.  I love the way they drive. It’s insane. I used to think that if you learnt to drive in South East London you could drive anywhere – including Baghdad but now I’m rethinking that. I wouldn’t drive in Mumbai if you told me that Alex Skarsgard and Javier Bardem were going to be at the end of the road waiting for me. Or a pot of gold. No way. It’s mental. The rules seem to be thus:

-          There is no side to drive on – you drive on whichever the hell side of the road you like

-          If you are a rickshaw driver you OWN the road

-          You have to beep your horn the entire journey or you lose

-           There’s a point system for how many pedestrians you can mow down and the winner gets dinner for two at the Taj

Yet for all the craziness there’s no road rage. If this was London and people were cutting you up, overtaking on the inside, bumping into pedestrians and beeping at you for not running a red there would be blood. The rage would be apoplectic and dangerous and deadly. But here, not so much as a middle finger or a snarl. Just head waggles. I love that.

I was taken to a restaurant that’s like the Indian version of Wimpy. Or the BHS cafe my mum used to take me to when I was a kid. And we chatted about evaluation.  I’ve been in Mumbai 48 hours and I’m sitting discussing monitoring and evaluation and youth led social action. That’s me. Dedicated to the cause.

After lunch I go to the waxing place. After that  I wish I had popped 10 vicodin.

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Burrowing through shit (as Tucker says)…

Posted on December 7, 2009 | 1 Comment

Opposite me are six men in suits. They are grey and weary  and joyless. Having said that, I am pretty joyless right now too.  I wish they would stop holding these conferences on high floors. It’s just tempting fate. Either I’m going to jump or I’m going to push someone. Though, as it’s a voluntary sector conference I’d have to navigate around way too many soapboxes to make it to the window and I’m lazy.

After the first three syllables spoken by the keynote my brain of its own accord switches off like when they stick a knife in the cerebral cortex of a Terminator T800 model to stop it rampaging.  I know that my work husband is bored too because out the corner of my eye I can see he is mauling his pen like a hungry cocker spaniel chewing on a bone. This is a dead giveaway that he is either thinking or bored. In this case I opt for bored because there’s nothing to be thinking about other than how to make it to the windows and he has just reached for his stash of Rennie and popped one which means he is bored and frustrated. Join the club. I wish he had something stronger I could pop. I gaze out the window and see the tower of the Truman brewery and sigh audibly.

Four days suddenly seems like a very, very long way away. As in, about as far away as the paleozoic era looking backwards. It feels like we’ll have colonized the moons of Jupiter before I get to hand over my security pass.

In truth I am feeling very ambivalent about four days’ time, because in four days’ time life as I know it ends. Maybe I’m institutionalised – like the guy from the Shawshank Redemption who gets paroled and finds freedom all too much so hangs himself. At least I’ll have a soapbox to stand on. I’m reminded all of a sudden of a Malcom Tucker line – It’s like the Shawshank Redemption, though we’re burrowing through more fucking shit and there’s no fucking redemption. He could have been describing this conference.

I wasn’t this freaked out before childbirth. I was so ready for that.  So ready in fact that at 8 months I was sharpening the knife and preparing to give myself a c-section I was so done with waiting. This however, this stepping into the realms of the unemployed and possibly insane, this I’m not ready for at all. I have no idea how I’m going to feel on Friday when I wake and realise that I don’t have to go to work. The place that after home is where I’ve spent most of my time in the past 8 years and which has occupied way too much of my brain space. Mostly I’m scared about who on Friday I’ll be.

I will be me of course, but I’ll be a different me. I will not have a title for one thing.  I am starting to understand why Princess Di fought to keep her title in the divorce. One grows very fond of such things. If I’m not Head of Projects what will I be? I try to list all the other things I am known as to make myself feel less of a nobody – mummy mo (to the bean), sugarplum (to a select few), Lardarse (to my brother – this doesn’t make me feel better strangely), Blossom (to my dad). Once I was called a MILF by a random stranger…that does make me feel better.

Where am I going with this? I know this is classic psychotherapy material. I must rid myself of ego and all that but one thing at a time. I need to rid myself of my security pass first and that’s going to be a big enough challenge.

Then I wonder what other things might change come Friday other than my bank balance, my alarm setting and my freedom from conferences that make me want to commit suicide. I wonder whether certain character traits I possess might disappear along with my business cards. For example what will happen to my perennial impatience, intolerance of stupidity, cynicism, sarcasm, brusqueness and flaring nostrils? Will they vanish too?

Yeah. Not likely. I hear you.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Bankers, Prawns & Hookers. Or why it’s time to say goodbye to London.

Posted on October 16, 2009 | 1 Comment

Last night I went out with an ex of mine from my uni days. He’s a financial accountant for a hedge fund now. When we met up and I walked next to him (he in his city gear, me in my voluntary sector gear ie. any more informal and it would have been beachwear) I felt like I was in Pretty Woman. And not the scene where she wears the red ball gown to the opera. The scene where a suited Richard Gere strolls up sunset boulevard with a girl who’s clearly a hooker. Not that I looked like a hooker. I hope I didn’t anyway. But because I could see everyone staring at him thinking, ‘Who on earth have you got on your arm? She’s not from round these parts.’ We were only walking through Berkeley square but I could hear the smashing sound as my world collided with this other, suited, booted world. I don’t step foot in that world anymore if I can possibly avoid it, and now I remember why. I felt like one of the prawns from District 9.

I used to work in that world when I was a young, sweet, innocent undergrad (ok I was never sweet). I would put on my poshest frock and work the reception of private banks and suchlike. I was good. They liked my voice. I liked the fact I could combine surfing the net with occasionally answering the phone and making coffee for visitors and could get paid for it. Then I got fired from Accenture (I wasn’t one of their graduate scheme people – just a lowly customer service person – I’m not very good at customer service) and my whole life changed. I realised that working for private banks and big corporates was like peeling off a part of my soul every day, walking it into hell and handing it over personally to satan. Or something similar. So I changed paths, jumping onto the charidee bandwagon and hitching a ride back into the light. Nowadays I’d never get a first job in charity, the competition is so fierce, but back then it was a lot easier. The wagons weren’t so full. Everyone in my year at uni aspired to be a banker. No one even knew what charity was. Even today I still get asked by people whether I get paid.  No I say, I live on the streets, forage through dumpsters and use freecycle for Christmas presents - I mean really. And so here I am today. 9 weeks left working for charity and yes, getting paid for it. Then I’ll be asking for it (charity that is).

Anyway, back to my story. I’m walking like pretty woman through Mayfair with an ex-boyfriend and we’re surrounded by suits. It’s feeling like a staging of an ENO opera. A Wagner one. It makes me wonder whether or not London really is my city. I am a Londoner. I love London – don’t I? But this London sucks. This London makes me feel uncomfortable and unhappy and like I don’t belong. I used to think that living anywhere else was inconceivable. Where else could be as cool as London? Nowhere. But the truth sinks in. The days of Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit rolling around in a Union Jack are gone (shame that). The days where you could go out in the east end without bumping into a crowd of drunk newcastle lads on a stag do have also gone. The days of Cameron are looming, winter is bombing down on us and the bankers are back (I know, I know they didn’t go anywhere, but you’d think after the financial crisis and all, they’d bed down and be embarrassed but they’re out there, strutting around like they’re starring in Wall Street. Where’s the shame?). It’s like Thatcher’s 80′s reign again. I was only a kid then but I still remember my nanny (my grandmother – we weren’t that posh), staying up all night to hear the election results. She hated Thatcher with a passion she usually only reserved for Jesus.

It feels like that’s where we’re headed to again. It’s so time to go.

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