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Crossing the yellow line

SarahAlderson

November 20, 2009

So the yellow tabarded ones who announce your train is late and who never know why are on patrol. In amongst the heaving rush hour crowd one man dares step over the yellow line. It causes more outrage than a Guantanamo inmate escaping the barbed wire fence and crossing into Cuba.

‘Get back behind the yellow line sir. You’ve been told,’ says one. I half expect her to whip out an AK47 or at the very least a baton.

‘No I’ve been advised. Not told,’ he says calmly.

It seems like a reasonable put down to the lady who I really want to tell is actually on the other side of the yellow line herself. She doesn’t like his response and so she calls for back up from a PCSO on her walkie talkie. I mean really. I wonder why she is doing this. Firstly because the man isn’t doing anything wrong, secondly – why call a PCSO? A non-verbal infant has more power to make you do something than one of them.

And thirdly, and most importantly, the man is now on the train to Bedford which is being held up as the PCSO tries to wrangle him off it. The train is waiting to depart. I am waiting for it to depart because my train is behind it and I want to get on it, absolutely HAVE to get on it, because otherwise I’m going to miss the preview of New Moon which I’ve just won tickets to and I can’t believe some lady in a yellow tabard is standing between me and RPatz. I am enraged. I start arguing on the man’s behalf demanding that the train be allowed to leave because she is holding up thousands of commuters who need to be places.

‘Madam,’ she says, ‘The man swore at me. I have the right to work without abuse.’

‘He so did not swear at you. I was standing right here,’ I retort in front of hundreds of other commuters.

‘Actually,’ A voice pipes up from the crowd, ‘he did swear at her before.’

‘Oh.’ Hmmm I think, now I look stupid. ‘Well – ‘ I say, ‘Is it worth holding up hundreds of people because your feelings got hurt?’

‘How would you like to get sworn at in your job?’ she asks me.

‘Oh it happens all the time,’ I say. I’m thinking of my work husband – admittedly he doesn’t swear AT me but I think the guy from The Thick of It is his hero. ‘I don’t let it bother me.’

The long and the short of it is finally the PCSO with no power gets the man off the train. Wus. I make it to the cinema and without missing a single second of morose indie soundtrack, tortured teenage angst faces and underage hotness but only because Michael Sheen (he of Frost Nixon) is stuck in traffic. Thank you Traffic.

After the film I’m reflecting on the craziness that London commuting causes and wondering if the man is still being held and tortured by the yellow tabards, when a man next to me at a crossing starts screaming at a car that cuts him up. There’s such anger, so much pent up rage everywhere I think, as I step carefully away from him. Is it the result of living in a mammoth city built on stress and speed? Will it be like this elsewhere? And how have I become immune to the swearing and the disrespect? Shouldn’t I care about how the yellow tabards are made to feel? Where’s my goddamn empathy? I need to get it back. Maybe I’ll find it in India.

Though even if I do, the next person who gets between me and Edward Cullen or Eric Northman is going to see me cross that yellow line.

Travelling with my parents? Like, as if.

SarahAlderson

2 comments

November 18, 2009

I have just met someone and am explaining to them about this little adventure.

‘I’m going with my family around the world.’

‘Oh wow – that’s amazing. Are your parents retired?’

‘Huh?’

‘Your parents – are they retired?’

‘Er…’ I’m thinking why is she asking me about my parents and their employment status? Talk about non sequitur. Then I twig.

‘Oh my god. No. No no no no no. I’m going with MY family – husband. Child. Definitely no parents involved.’

She laughs. I laugh. We all laugh. I’m slightly hysterical with the laughing. Two disturbing thoughts ramraid my head. One – she thinks I look like the kind of thirty something year old who’d actually go away travelling with their parents. I can’t even picture that. What would someone like that look like? A Morman? What do they look like? Do I look like one? No. I can’t get a frame on it. Nothing.

Before I can get too offended, my brain computes the second fact; that she’d automatically discounted that I might have a family – as in my own family. A – god don’t say it – CHILD. Or, no way, a husband! Madness. What madness.

I tell myself that she’s only thought this because I look like I’m 17 and the idea of me being married and having a child is stupendously unbelievable because we’re not in West Virginia or Sunderland. But hang on. I’m back to the Morman theory again. No. Definitely that can’t be it. I don’t look like a Morman though I don’t exactly know what one would look like – I recall a vague memory of Chloe Sevigny in a channel 4 show about Mormans and she looked like she’d stepped out of Little House on the Prairie.

So it must be that I look 17. I am afterall wearing Topshop today. My skirt is barely brushing my underwear, I have chipped nail varnish and smudgey inexpertly put on eyeliner and a pink sparkly lipgloss from Hard Candy – the 13 year old’s make up of choice. I look exactly, most definitely – that must be it- like a 17 year old. I have even been caught today staring lustfully at a poster of New Moon and plotting when I’m going to go see it on repeat without John finding out. A proper 32 year old professional would be wearing Jigsaw, hems to the knee, precision drawn Mac eyeliner, Lancome lip gloss and have no chippage with the nail polish. A proper 32 year old would not be having lustful thoughts about a teenage vampire. Though I see that Sam Taylor Wood begs to differ, at least about the teenage bit.

Yep that’s why she thinks I’m going travelling with my parents. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she’s looked at me and thought God forbid how did that loser ever bag someone / get impregnated?

That’s impossible.

As a super social ape I am starting my own shrewdness

SarahAlderson

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November 13, 2009

Two days ago I was walking along the street, slipped on some cobbles and reaching out to steady myself, grabbed hold of a man’s penis. It’s been two days and I can still feel the giggle bubbles of hysteria breaking over me every time I think about it. It gets better though. After grabbing his penis I then had to spend two hours in a meeting with him – he wasn’t a stranger. I knew him. I had to sit and eat lemon tart and discuss NHS commissioning with him whilst trying not to laugh or look him in the eye without thinking, ‘I just groped your penis.’ No matter how long I live, no matter how many Frankie Boyle podcasts I listen to, this will forever remain the funniest thing that has ever happened to me.

I met Mark Earls too – the author of Herd. He was really nice, I say that even though he got a gift hamper and I didn’t and even though his 8 minute session was better than mine and my work husband’s. He got me thinking about social behaviour and how we humans like to follow the herd. Mark says it’s because we’re ‘super social apes’. My penis grabbing is surely evidence of that very fact. He should use that as an example in his next book.

So we’ve proved I’m a super social ape but I think it’s really clear that I’m not following the herd. Or the shrewdness – because that’s the collective term for a group of apes. Bet you didn’t know that. I didn’t either until I looked it up. Resigning is not an example of mass behaviour.

The book Herd actually has this as a subtitle: How to change mass behavior by harnessing our true nature. So I’ve just ordered the book because I want to know how to create a mass movement of people who say Fuck it and jump off cliffs. Not real cliffs. I mean the metaphorical cliff called working 9-5 for someone else. I’m going to create this movement by figuring out how to harness our true nature. I think that my penis grabbing might be the first step on this path. But I also think that to do this properly I need to read the book. Then I might ask Mark for some help because he’s cleverer than me. Then I’ll get back to you when I’m ready to launch the movement. Until then buy Herd and Fuck It.

What costs more – cilit bang or a tiger?

SarahAlderson

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November 10, 2009

‘They’re moving into our house so you can buy me percy pigs.’

I love Lula’s mind – her reductive view of the world. I wish life was really that simple. I wish I could spend £1300 a month on percy pigs but that wouldn’t simplify things it would only complicate them – I’d be unable to squeeze my obese frame through the doorway to fend off the bailiffs.

The reason she thinks the rent is paying to keep her in percy pigs is because I failed to explain the concept of a mortgage to her, because I couldn’t explain it to myself let alone to a child, so instead I told her that people were moving into our house so I could afford to buy her percy pigs and stickers and hair clips.

I’m now pondering how to start explaining the concept of money to her before she thinks I can buy her a tiger or something. She knows it doesn’t grow on trees because that’s my standard response when she asks why she can’t buy everything pink in the shop including cilit bang. But that’s where her knowledge stops.

‘Mummy, when we go travelling we are going to have so, so, so much fun.’

‘Yes, darling we are going to have lots of fun.’

Oh god, I think, now what am I going to do? In an attempt to make Lula feel better about leaving behind all her friends and toys, I have been spinning her various scenarios involving buckets, spades, beaches, platypuses, tigers, elephants, buried treasure, fairy palaces, real princesses (Thailand has a royal family right?), Mickey Mouse and kangaroos. No wonder she’s finding it hard to get to sleep tonight. I did this because I wanted to prepare her for diahhrea and feeling ill. I figured if she’s reallly excited about the princesses and the kangaroos she’ll not demand to go home when she gets ‘farty poppy tummy’.

The plan sounded good in my head but now she’s so excited I’m not sure our trip can possibly live up to her expectations

‘Mummy when we go to the moon we’ll have so much fun.’

‘Yes we will – wait…did you say moon?’

‘Yes.’

‘Er, we’re not going to the moon.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re going to India and because we’d need a space ship to go to the moon and we only have a Honda.’

‘Can we get a spaceship?’

‘No, it would cost a lot of money.’

And I wonder why I didn’t explain the concept of money back when we bought her that Fisher Price till. It would have been a whole lot easier.

Monkey Beating and rabies

SarahAlderson

1 comment

November 7, 2009

Note that rabid animals may pose a risk.

Quite why I have decided to read the health, risks and annoyances section of the Lonely Planet guide to India is unclear, given that we’ve already resigned and forked out several thousand pounds on tickets, it’s all a little too late. I should just have skipped straight to the photos of Goan beaches.

But now here, with words like encephalitis teasing me with their erotic Japanese allusions, I have to keep reading. I trip lightly over the tales of travellers diarrhoea – I don’t mind being in the 70% the LP prophesies will succumb to the tummy sucubus – I see it as a far easier solution than giving up chocolate. I am hoping that I can even return to pre-pregnancy size. Oh shhhhhhhhh you. Have you had a baby? Then you know what I’m saying. If you haven’t then just back the hell off. I’ve had dysentary. I’ve had parasites in my intestines. I can take it. I’m tempted to dig out the most unsanitary meat vendors in Mumbai and ask for steak tartare. No, I joke. I’ve promised to go vegetarian. I shall just have to brush my teeth with tap water and hope for the best.

After the diarrhoea comes a list of diseases so terrifying I have to check I’m still reading a travel guide and not a sci-fi horror novella. It goes like this – Japanese encephalitis (causes brain damage), meningitis (can kill), hepatitis (I skip this as I have had the shot), malaria, thrush, fungal infections, respiratory infections, swine flu, avian flu and there – in block letters – RABIES. I don’t care so much for me. Well ok, I do care a little, though less about the dying from diseases I can’t spell and more about the indiginity of lying comatose, sweaty and unmade up in some ramshackle hospital in the middle of nowhere. It’s vain I know. But I think I’d rather die. But I do care, absolutely and completely about exposing Lula to all that. What if she decides to pet a monkey? Or refuses to take her malaria pill? I can’t even get her to take a teaspoon of calpol when cunningly mixed in a bucket of chocolate butter icing. How will I get an anti malarial down her gullet? Maybe in the manner of giving deworming tablets to dogs. We will have to clamp her mouth shut and stroke her throat in downwards motions. Suppositories won’t work will they – given the likelihood of delhi bellyness.

I re-read the health warnings again, hoping my first alarmed speed read has made me miss vital information like ‘this last occurred in 1976 so don’t worry about it’ or ‘beer will provide adequate immunisation.’ But no the words haven’t changed. The rabies isn’t in block letters anymore though.

Honey, I say, I’m having second thoughts.

Too late.

I start to think about it in more detail, analysing every sentence. The very fact they’ve included fungal infections and thrush arouses my suspicions and I nod to myself having figured it all out. They’re blatantly covering all bases. The very fact the LP has only just stopped short of including strep throat, period pains and ingrown toe nails makes it clear that they’re thinking bases, coverings and litigations by ambulance chasers (the LP didn’t tell us about the monkeys – SUE THEM!) I flick the page to see whether they’re listing things like apendicitis too. But that just takes me to the list of annoyances – corrupt policman, wandering hands, pickpockets, violent robbery. Not much different to taking the tube in London then.

So, feeling a bit better about it all, I start a list of things to pack: rehydration sachets, calpol, anti-malarials, percy pigs and a scalpel (the last three to be used in conjunction – we used to do this with pills for our dog). Then I google monkey beater hoping to find some sort of stick or whistle I can buy on ebay. The results are not what I’d expected. That’s not going to work and I’m not sure John will be that amenable anyway. But it also brings up this article ‘Monkey Man hired to scare real monkeys off train.‘

John’s off the hook.

I am taught a lesson by Alannis & Life

SarahAlderson

1 comment

November 4, 2009

If I had a bullet and a gun right now I’d kill myself

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I’m definitely going to kill myself

I am sending texts to my work husband. People are walking between the tables like prison guards at The Maze and I’m half expecting a baton to come crashing down on my illicitly texting hand.

I’m at some sort of unconference but I think they could have better marketed it as an alternative to a fume filled car. It’s kind of ironic that this mental torture is happening in Amnesty International’s HQ. I want to start screaming about human rights violations but then I turn and see the pictures on the wall of refugees and starving children and guilt swallows my temper tantrum. I decide to focus. On what my feedback comments are going to be.

At 1.01pm I can be found propping up the bar in the Barley Mow where I have fled so fast that the other people at the conference are probably still rising from their seats to join the queue for limp sandwiches whilst I am already pouring a cold beer down my throat. I contemplate staying here all afternoon making friends with Negro Modelo but then a woman with a voice like she’s been dragged over hot coals whilst smoking 50 B&H all at once sits next to me and orders a double baileys. I see the future and decide to be brave and return.

Refreshed from my pint and a quick spin around American Apparel (one skirt – check) I bounce back into the room. Within 5 minutes I’ve had to leave a conversation before I speared someone with my chicken satay skewer for being a twat. I think the beer has made me aggressive. No, I smile at myself, that’s just me.

The afternoon trudges by, though they cut the last hour – something which I feel I can take credit for – sometimes having an unpoker face works. Without saying a word I have curdled the atmosphere to such a degree than four grown adults feel the only cure is to bring proceedings to a premature close. Bliss – there is now time for a quick file and varnish at Nails Inc.

Like Alannis Morisette, everything seems ironic to me today. Yesterday I was waxing lyrical about how great work was and how I was having second thoughts about leaving. Well now life, that great, wise teacher has ripped the rose tinted contact lenses from my eyes and reminded that there’s quite a lot I don’t enjoy in my day to day working life. Today has once and for all cured me of my fear of jumping off the cliff. I am now running full tilt towards it.

Jumping off cliffs whilst drinking Galician homemade hooch

SarahAlderson

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November 2, 2009

‘You’re not stepping off the escalator Sarah.’

‘I’m not?’

‘No, you’re jumping off a cliff.’

‘Oh.’

That doesn’t sound like something I want to be doing. But I don’t want the panic to show on my face so I reach for my glass and laugh loudly whilst swigging back the contents in two gulps.

I’m having lunch ( wine, wine, some more wine followed by Galician hooch that is making my eyes water in much the same way as cheryl cole’s dress did) with my ex-ex-boss. He’s like the Oracle. When he talks, I listen. When he used to chuck things at my head. I ducked. Now the only things he’s chucking are metaphors I can’t unravel.

I’m not sure about the cliff jumping – it doesn’t sound too safe. Or sane. I prefer the escalator metaphor. No one has killed themselves jumping off an escalator. That I know of, but I’m scared to google and find out. More importantly it’s far easier to step back onto an escalator. Not so a cliff. That would involve climbing. If I even survived the fall onto sharpened rocks below. But maybe he has a point. Somewhere in the fog that is my brain, I’m sure he has a point. Thing is , I can’t actually figure it out because I have managed to drink away the fear. And with it all my memories of what else the oracle imparted about the cliffs and the nosedive I’m taking off them.

In the cold and sober light of my office that afternoon, I recall that by saying I was jumping off a cliff he meant there was no way I’d want to come back to London to a similar job. That opportunities would arise and I’d end up somewhere completely different, doing something completely different. So long as that other place isn’t Gregg’s in Glasgow, that’s fine.

As well as feeling faintly nauseous and head spinny, I also come away from lunch feeling inspired and filled with self- belief. The kind of belief that only alcohol can fuel. My self-belief is as up and down as Danyl’s at the moment. One day I’m completely fanatical about how everything is going to be amazing and wonderful. I look at John and tell him how brilliant it is and how I am going to make a living wherever we are. I will find some hidden talent and we will make enough money to live on the beach in a bohemian dream (with no Kaftans but maybe some hareem pants), we’ll school Lula somehow (via the cbeebies website) and fly home a few times a year (or maybe we’ll just skype to save our carbon footprint). It goes all blurry at the point I have to think about what I’m working as to make this vision complete. Then the next day I’m in the depths of despair turning to John every five minutes for reassurance that everything is going to be ok, (see just like Danyl must be doing with Simon Cowell every minute of every day – and just for the record it’s not going to be ok Danyl, Olly is going to win or the twins, not you).

I’m also reading Shantaram. Have you read it? It’s good. I didn’t like it at first because I found it a bit too self-satisfied. But the story is pretty gripping. It’s based on the author’s own experiences – he escaped prison in Australia, made his way to Mumbai, started working for the Mafia, extra-ed in Bollywood movies, lived in the Slum working as a barefoot style doctor, smuggled passports and all sorts into war zones, smoked a lot of dope, got the crap beaten out of him in an Indian prison, rode a horse into Afghanistan during the war with the Russians to bring black market contraband to majahadeen fighters. Just a few of the things then that we’ll be doing on our travels. Reading Shantaram is making me feel calmer and more confident. I figure that if he found work, then so can I. Though I can’t ride a horse. And my Hindi needs some practice.

The crying princess and the Guardian photographer

SarahAlderson

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October 30, 2009

The photographer from the Guardian came to take our photo. Lula wore her pink princess dress. With wings. Technically making it a fairy dress I guess. She was supposed to take centre stage, with John and I vying with each other to hide behind her wings, well out of sight and hopefully too blurry for the bank manager to recognise us, but as soon as he started papping she became a crying wreck and I became one of those awful stage mummies cajoling with chocolate and promises of treats if she just smiled or said cheese to the nice man. It was especially frustrating because only the other day she was posing in her ballet outfit for me like she was working a Vogue front cover. I actually had to delete a few images because of the decidely coquettish upwards glance she was giving me through her lashes. I know what happens when you take pictures like that into Boots for processing.

The bribes didn’t work. So the photographer took a tea break looking at his watch, whilst I got down on my hands and knees and pleaded in whispers.

‘Lula darling, listen, it will look really, really shit, I mean bad, if the photo of you in the paper made it seem like we were forcing you to do something against your will – like going travelling around the world. And remember you do want to go around the world. Remember the mangoes? And uncle Richer in India?’

Still crying.

‘Sweetheart the man has come to take a picture of you as a fairy princess. And he won’t believe you really are one if you are crying. And you won’t win the competition.’

…Why did I have to make up something about a competition? I think, Please don’t let her focus on that…keep talking keep talking…

‘Ok, how about this – we stop it with the crying and you can have whatever magazine you like including Barbie. I won’t stop you. I’ll even buy you a Barbie.’

Still crying.

‘Lula, if you look miserable in the pictures the neighbours will take the clipping and add it to their folder of child abuse allegations which after hearing you scream for three whole hours because I refused to give in to your demands and buy you a Barbie toothbrush after you refused to open your mouth at the dentist, is a pretty big folder.’

Still crying.

In the end the photo he got was of me holding her in my lap. Lula’s looking down at my hands. You might not notice unless you look closely but she’s bent over my iPod in a trance, watching Mamma Mia (the princess wedding scene as she calls the wedding of the girl who looks like she’s 12 to that pug faced guy who can’t act). I’m looking out the window and am in hysterics. Due in part to Pierce Brosnan’s singing but more to the fact that the front page of the family section will have a picture of me shoving a tv screen the size of my hand into my daughter’s face. No doubt the comments page will be overflowing with protests from outraged parents incensed by our casual approach to parenting and flagrant disregard for our daughter’s happiness (at least they don’t also know about the chocolate bribes).

Giving up Steak Night Wednesdays

SarahAlderson

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October 28, 2009

‘When I look at a cow I just want to eat it.’

‘When I look at a cow I see a cow,’ John says looking at me weirdly.

‘But when I look at a vegetable patch I just see dirt. I think this means I am a carnivore. Nature made me this way. I can’t fight nature.’

The conversation has come about because of the Stern Report and Macca (Paul McCartney not Makka Pakka) and their combined vegetarian effort to save the world. In theory I agree. In theory I agree that they should make cows that don’t fart. They can splice genes and clone animals yet they can’t make a cow that doesn’t fart. Why not? I think they’re not trying hard enough.

‘It’s not just the farting,’ John says.

Yeah, whatever, I think. Actually I think I say that out loud.

‘What will we do in India? We shouldn’t eat meat there.’

Richard says we’ll see the butchers’ shops and not want to eat meat anyway. They will have to be pretty fly blown those carcasses, I think, something worse than a scene from Saw VI, to make me not want to eat them. Rich is a vegetarian – the meat counter at Waitrose is repellent to him, so our standards are different.

Also in India a lot of people are Hindu and cows are holy and you can’t eat them, can’t even look at them and think tasty thoughts (urgh not that kind you dirty person). I am quite distressed by all this – not least because this will mean the cessation of steak night Wednesdays.

Due to a miscommunication between John and myself, tonight we had to forgo steak and make do with a vegetable stir fry. I’m now so hungry I could eat my own arm. But John’s arm is tastier. I actually just took a bite out of it. See I am a carnivore.

‘We’ll have to give up meat,’ I say already mourning its loss. ‘We’ll have to be vegetarian – at least until we get to Australia.’

‘But we should try new things when we’re away – I’m going to do yoga. I’ve never done it before’

‘Yeah, been there, done that. I’m going to do Buddhism.’

Even I laugh.

stepping off escalators without valium

SarahAlderson

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October 27, 2009

I was talking the other day in a post about the sense of community we’re finding just as we leave – remember the jazz dancing neighbours spinning off lamp posts and the pimping out I’m doing of John? – in a similar way, just as I resign and prepare to bugger off for a rather long time, my job starts to get really exciting (as opposed to just exciting which clearly it is on a daily basis all you colleagues reading this), things are starting to happen, interesting people are appearing left, right and centre – money is almost literally being thrown in my direction, unfortunately not the sort of money I can use in Topshop or for buying ludicrously expensive moisturisers. It’s generally speaking public money – the kind that can only be spent on public good and positive outcomes for disadvantaged people. Our finance director won’t let me spend it on positive outcomes for my wardrobe which I feel is putting me into the disadvantaged bracket.

So because it’s exciting times, I’m starting to panic yet again that now’s not the time to go. That now is infact the time to stay. That if I come back I will be back to square one. That, horror of horrors – I will be FORGOTTEN. I decide I need to compose a Wilfred Owen style poem to myself.

Before I can begin writing ‘dulce et decorem est pro resign and go travelling’, someone gives me some good advice: ‘Don’t panic, you are only stepping off the escalator and you’ll be able to step back on it if you want to.’

Yes, I think triumphantly, women step off that escalator all the time to have babies. I did. I put away the valium feeling renewed and confident. Then I am reminded that just two weeks after having Lula I was phoning up my work husband and begging him, literally begging him, to give me some work or be responsible for my being sectioned.

How, I wonder, will stepping off the escalator be any different this time? Other than John having to negotiate the Indian mental health system and not the British one, in order to have me sectioned. But I look out the window and it’s not even 5pm and it’s pitch dark outside and my breath is condensing around me and I think screw that escalator, maybe I can find a nicer, sunnier, slower moving escalator in Bali. And if not I can always skype my work husband and beg for work. Or, plan b, drip feed myself valium.