REAR WINDOW NORTH BY NORTHWEST

I witnessed a crime from my kitchen window last Sunday morning. Stirring around the kitchen sleepy-eyed, I made coffee while I habitually looked out the window. We live on a leafy street in northwest London, a good street in a good neighborhood. Sunday mornings are the only time the street is devoid of traffic noise. Our one-way system doesn’t stem the flow of pizza delivery motorbikes, child carrying vans, lumber toting trucks, Porsches from our banker contingent and the odd Prius and G-Whizes, although they’re well-behaved and don’t drive us mad.

Thieves are also aware of our sacred morning of silence. The man I saw was blatantly without disguise, his face naked for me to see and remember, which I do. He was tall, dark haired, olive-skinned and wore a beard. His beard was not closely cut, yet didn’t conjure images of Walt Whitman either. It was a Mama Bear beard, right in the middle. The criminal was nicely dressed including a leather jacket, which is why when I first saw him try to break into the private gardens that are entered between the houses, I thought maybe he was lost, or a new resident; although, my instincts told me otherwise, told me I should watch him.

Then, in the broad daylight at 8:30 in the morning he broke into a car. I saw him fiddle with the lock, open the hatchback and rummage around. I raised the window noisily and stuck half my torso out the window. He heard me at once because our windows creak like an old lady’s bones and the sound carries half way around the world. Maybe you’ve heard our windows.

He looked up at me and took his time about moving away from the car.

“What?” He said.

I said nothing.

“What. What can I do for you?”

I remained silent.

“What. Let me see.” He pointed at our house. “Okay. I’ve got your house number. I know where you live. I’ll be back.”

Quite astonishingly he slowly walked away while he continued to threaten me.

“I know where you live. I’ll be back, I’ll be back.”

After I lost sight of him I thought of calling the police and I bemoaned the fact that my phone was upstairs and that I didn’t snap a photo of him. I threw on some clothes and wrote a note to the owner of the car, then ran across the street and placed the note under the wiper.

I never heard from the owner of the car.

Sunday will roll around again before I know it. What would Jimmy Stewart do?

LOVE ME TENDER DARK AUGUST

“August is not my favorite time of year. My father was buried in August; the sun was very bright and it was humid and steaming hot. It was so hot that I refused to wear black.”

Those sentences are drawn from my memoir about growing up in a funeral home with my charismatic mortician of a father. Every year when the anniversary of his death descends on me I always forget that Elvis died a week later that same year – 1977. I liked Elvis very much, but I loved my father and he was the true sovereign of my life. So while the earth that covered his fifty-two years was still moist and fresh, I heard that Elvis, a young king in his own right, had died in the bathroom of Graceland. I felt nothing, numb from the previous week’s events.

There were similarities between the two. My father was a bit flash. He loved good quality fabrics and expertly tailored clothes and daringly branded himself in them; he wore his suits with an unusual flair and talent, especially for an undertaker. When Elvis wasn’t slinging around his god-awful costumes, he was pretty sharp, too. My father’s quiff, disturbed forever by a distinguished balding, at one time rivalled Elvis’s jet black head.

Elvis and my father were Southern boys and possessed a distinct gift with women that can be found nowhere else in quite the same way. The flaw that marked them both hurt their wives, two women who wrestled with their adoring love for these rogues and a constant need to re-evaluate their marriages.

Some wicked little thing was born while they were in service to their country, my father in World War II and Elvis in Germany in 1958; it dogged them for the rest of their lives. My father, cold and hungry, trembled in a trench and dodged his buddies’ body parts as they flew past him and thus took his first drink from another soldier’s bottle. A sergeant introduced Elvis to amphetamines when they were on manoeuvres and we all know how that ended.

A friend said that she always felt August was the true end of the year. It was for Elvis, it was for my father.

At some point in September a sharp air arrives and I wake up, relieved that the dull ache of August is over.

August

When my eyes are weeds,

And my lips are petals, spinning

Down the wind that has beginning

Where the crumpled beeches start

In a fringe of salty reeds;

When my arms are elder-bushes,

And the rangy lilac pushes

Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!

Light your tinsel moon, and call on

Your performing stars to fall on

Headlong through your paper sky;

Nevermore shall I be cursed

By a flushed and amorous slattern,

With her dusty laces' pattern

Trailing, as she straggles by.

Dorothy Parker

THE BRITISH BUTTERFLIES OF FASHION

My husband was once in the fashion business; he designed and sold clothes from his shop in London’s West End where he hosted many luminaries in the worlds of politics, entertainment, advertising, and so on. Although its outreach is global, the fashion business is a small town. Twice a year one tends to see the same people in Milan, Florence, Paris, Berlin, and London. They take the same airline, stay in the same hotels, eat in the same restaurants and find time to shop in the same stores when they’re not scurrying around to appointments.

My husband never did that. After his buying appointments, or after a big show, he drifted to out-of-the-way cafes in less desirable areas of town. You haven’t lived until you’ve lined up at the Hare Krishna cafeteria in Milan, or discovered the only vegetarian restaurant in Florence. A museum was more inspirational to him than the newest club or bar. And he usually shopped for antiques or furniture rather than spend moments of stolen time off in a clothing store, the pastime for the fashionista. He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the Marais before anyone else would be seen dead there. At first my head turned towards the glitz and glamour of St. Germaine, but I soon began to look forward to the unusual.

The first time I went with him to Florence he forgot to warn me about the cobblestones and the long hours of standing and walking. I almost crippled myself wearing the wrong shoes. He also forgot to tell me that smoking was allowed in all of the buildings, offices and showrooms and that I would reek of it for a week. I came near to passing out from dehydration for lack of water and fresh air. The water was my fault.

Dog-tired at the end of a crazily packed day, there was nothing more exquisite than to sit at a table in a noisy but baronial restaurant with the fine aroma of juicy grilled portabella mushrooms served by career waiters who seemed to have nothing else on their minds other than their desire to see us beautifully fed. I held back from plopping my entire face into a bowl of lemon infused pasta made by the hands of an Italian mamma. To then further indulge in a plate of profiteroles smothered in chocolate sauce so delicious that I still remember the first bite, well… damn.

However, the habits of eating and sleeping came a lowly second to the rituals of clothes designing, buying appointments and the planning of a new season. The clothes my husband designed and sold were not cheap. But ten, twenty years ago more people could afford better quality clothes. And clothes were designed to be perennial. The new coat would pass fashion muster for more than one season. Labels were discreet. People desired to express their personality and weren’t swallowed up into a large corporate brand.

After he left the business to strike new stakes, there have been times when I have sorely missed those days of high fashion and the pleasure of the touch of hundreds of the finest fabrics. To have such luxury at one’s fingertips is a privilege. One of those nostalgic moments hit me solidly in the face when I found myself in Primark. I swore a private oath that I would never give in and step across the threshold. But I did. How do they do it? How can they sell clothes so cheaply? I bought a sweater for £3.97. I don’t think I’ll do that again. Surely and sadly there must be child slaves sewing away in some god-forsaken warehouse. Where is the Jamie Oliver of the rag trade? I don’t mean to single out Primark. There are plenty of wholesalers and retailers who sell their souls for a buck, a pound, a Euro.

So as this unexpected wave of nostalgia washes over me I give you circa 1820 drawings taken from a private collection. Unfortunately, not mine.

OVERHEARD IN HOLBORN

One doesn’t much think of anything particularly exciting going on in Holborn, and with good reason. Holborn is the “small town” of lawyer-ville, a solicitor’s haven, if you will. Men and women carry black leather box-like briefcases. Assistants roll flight bags behind them and women wear sturdy shoes and clothes that make them unhappy. The Royal Courts of Justice live in Holborn and have done since 1882. Quaint streets are hard to find and the pubs and nightspots have serious names like The Knights Templar.

But there is a small plaza in the center of it all, an unlikely location for a very nice little hair salon where I go to touch up the roots with K. who survived a three-week tour of Mexico oblivious to the panic that surrounded her. She thought that for some reason everyone wore masks in Mexico, quite like the Japanese when they have colds.

I can’t read without my glasses and I can’t wear glasses in the salon or they’d look like a room full of infants had dragged them through brown paint. So I try to write. I’ve read that many writers can work anywhere. I can’t. I need a semblance of calm and most of the time the slightest whimper can blow my concentration to smithereens. And it is for this reason that I spend about a half an hour eavesdropping; although the falderal that takes place is so loud I can hardly be accused of being a nosy Parker.

A middle-aged woman bursts into the salon with a teenage girl trailing her.

“This is Lucy" (not her real name). She booms. “She’s just won a BIG talent competition and she’s going to be a BIG STAR. She’s down to London to record tomorrow and we want to make her look really, really rock and roll. We want her to look edgy, really trendy, and really rock.

K. smiles and nods, “Okay.” And then wisely asks if she has something particular in mind.

Oh yes. Oh yes.

The lady, who seems to be Lucy’s advisor, friend and expert, gets her arms and hands going and says extremely loudly, “I’m thinking purple tips. You know, put some layers in there, tip them with red or purple, you know, very rock and roll.” As if we needed reminding. “Yes, I think purple, yes purple.” Lucy, who looks very sweet, but not very rock and certainly not very roll, has not said a word. She’s very short and petite, and I’m wondering how long ago she gave up dolls.

K. nods again with a forced smile and I think is struggling with the idea of ruining Lucy’s gorgeous waist length, thick brown hair.

Next up, the stylist. He arrives quietly at Lucy’s side, makes mirror eye contact with her, says hello and asks, “So what are we doing today?”

The lady, horrified, says, “Oh! You haven’t been briefed?" He says, no.

“Lucy has just won a huge talent competition and she’s going to be a very BIG STAR …” Word for word she goes through it again – we all do.

The stylist gets the picture and goes away to leave K. to begin the process of livening up poor old Lucy’s dull hair, which of course is not dull at all. Meanwhile, the lady pulls out a bottle of makeup remover and cotton pads from her bag. She begins to dab at Lucy’s eyes until they’re smeared with the last traces of her mascara. Finally, after three dabs Lucy is without. I wonder if this was pre-planned. I carry a lot of things in my bag, but never a bottle of eye makeup remover.

“Promise me something Lucy.” The lady pleads confidentially.

“Okay,” Lucy speaks.

“No, really. Really promise me something.”

“Okay.”

“Promise me that you will never, ever wear black eyeliner ever again for the rest of your life.”

“Okay.”

“You’re going to be a BIG STAR. You have beautiful eyes and you don’t need black eyeliner.”

In comes lady number two with a camcorder.

Lady number one: “Okay Lucy we just want you to do a short piece about how you’re here at the salon and you don’t know what’s going to happen and you’re really scared. Ready? Go.”

Lucy: “So here I am at the salon with K. and I don’t know what she’s going to do to me and I’m really scared.”

And then - can you believe it - I have to have my hair washed.

Back at my station I hear lady number one say, “This is going to be very rock, very rock,”

In a small, soft voice that I think must turn into something unrecognizable when she sings, Lucy says, “But I’m singing pop songs tomorrow, not rock. I don’t sing rock.”

I’m always in such a hurry to get out of the salon, but not today, a day when I am desperate to see the purple tips, the layers and the pale eyes of Lucy, the young girl approaching BIG STARDOM. I’m done, blown dry as a bone, a dab of shiny product rubbed on to finish and I can’t think of one good excuse to continue to sit in their company without appearing to be the eavesdropper that I am.

LET’S GET POLITICAL

 

It’s been the worst week for modern British politics, and for many of us, maddening.  Forget the expenses debacle, although how could we.  It’s those two seats won by the British National Party that deeply worries me.  There goes that trip to Yorkshire this winter.  All other parties have condemned the vote and the BNP, but there exists an anger and dissent that runs so deeply in the UK that those who feel disenfranchised have lashed out with their vote.

We’re told that many who voted for the far, far right aren’t aware of the bigoted and racist past, present and future of their new party.  Their representatives have disguised themselves in a dangerous cloak of rhetoric regarding their genuine care and protectiveness of the British people.  Good god, they even spout that they’re not racists.  They represent themselves falsely.  Their additional mission’s bulls eye is immigration.  I’m an immigrant.  Should I take this personally even though I’m a white American and not the brown and black skin they normally target?  Do they mean to target me as well?

And what a blow to those veterans who walked and wheeled themselves to Normandy again, sixty-five years later, only to be slapped in the face with the victories of the same sort they fought so bravely against.  Is the irony lost?

The leader of the BNP received eggs in the face today outside Parliament, but somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.  A small little town, a village of unwieldy bigotry is growing here.

 

 

The Expert at the Card Table

He looks like Hugh Grant except everything about the conjurer is longer; his face, his limbs, and these days, his hair.  His name is Guy and he’s a full time barrister who moonlights as a card sharp.  There’s something to say about that, but I’ll leave it to his clients. 

He walked onto the stage in white tie and tails, the Full Monty, as it were. By the way, did you know that the Full Monty is not about taking your clothes off, but putting them on?   In the early 1900’s a three-piece suit tailored by Sir Montague Burton, creator of the largest menswear manufacturing business in the world at the time, was known as the Full Monty, and customers asked for the Full Monty by name.

Guy said something about being overdressed as he removed his jacket, hung it on the old fashioned coat rack and then reached for a book that lay on a Victorian card table.  This book has been in publication since 1902 and is the grande dame of all books about card manipulation, also known as cheating.  

Guy’s slight of hand was interwoven within a narrative about a card sharp in the early 1900’s who because of his cheating ways was responsible for the death of an opponent who committed suicide when he lost the shirt off his back and everything else.  Guy isn’t an actor but I found myself more involved in the story than in the tricks, maybe due to Neil Patrick Harris’ direction.  Yes, Doogie directs, it was his first.  This directing debut took place at the Mernier Chocolate Factory in Shakespearean Southwark, our old stomping grounds.

The Chocolate Factory houses a full restaurant, a theatre and an art gallery. 

A small, but important note here about the absence of chocolate at the Chocolate Factory.  We had dinner before the show and there was not one sliver of chocolate to be found - not even on the dessert menu.  Good lord.

I admit that I’m not too impressed with card tricks, but my husband loves them.  I appreciated that a large flat screen TV, previously hidden on a black draped wall above Guy’s head, came to life.  It ruined the Victorian atmosphere, for suddenly we felt like we were the audience members of the gambling channel being treated to an intimate look at Guy’s incredibly long fingers as he did the deed.  

The narrative was compelling in that tale of trickery, deceit and death kind-of-way and he told it seamlessly while he used audience members to prove he was the real deal.  Couldn’t resist that.  Guy’s best trick was The Reformation in which a card was torn into quarters and restored in front of our very eyes.  Great, but… WHERE’S THE CHOCOLATE?

LANG MAY YER LUM REEK, MS. BOYLE

 

Unless you’ve been as secluded or sheltered as we perhaps mistakenly thought Susan Boyle has been, you’ve seen the clip or the show in which Ms. Boyle unexpectedly, but so beautifully knocked our socks off.  And there’s plenty to read and watch about the event, some pleasant, some condescending and one outing I mention here that disturbed me.

 Tanya Gold can be a controversial journalist.  She drove home her controversial-ness in her Guardian article about Susan Boyle.  I was truly shocked when she described the latest phenomenal singer on Britain’s Got Talent as a piece of pork on a doily.  Is this the way a woman supports and defends another when she’s been made a laughing stock?  A munter?  I had to look it up.  It’s British slang for an ugly woman.  That Gold uses this noun so freely is appalling.  I don’t think in this case Tanya Gold is being a journalist.  I know, I know, who is these days, but anyway…She didn’t say anything new about much of anything in her article.  Everything she described about the show is true, but it’s all blatant and transparent to anyone with two eyes and ears and saw the show or even the clip.

Tanya Gold continuously writes about her fight with obesity and former alcoholism.  Surely, with the help of insight, there could have been a better way to write her way though this without further demeaning Ms. Boyle and finger pointing people who had nothing to do with the evening, as she did with a list of fellows she thinks are ugly.  So what.

The thing that is different here that no one has mentioned is that in Britain, back in Vera Lynn’s days, a woman or man who wasn’t good looking could easily be recognized for their talent. 

 

Loads and loads of performers who looked like housewives or garage attendants sold records, took to the stage and made films. 

Miriam Margolyes

These performers were never treated with the disrespect with which Ms. Boyle was treated by the public, the judges and Tanya Gold.  I think that America for the most part was different from Britain in this way.  Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Barbra Streisand come to mind as a few exceptions, but mostly the US has always been attracted to the attractive – not so in Britain, which makes this whole thing all the more disheartening. 

It demonstrates the spiraling down of decency in the UK.  But isn’t that what the show is about anyway?  Relishing the opportunity to point out someone whom you think is in some way worse off than you; it seems to be less about talent until we are stunned by the real thing and then suddenly everyone remembers they’ve come to see some talent.

I never considered Susan Boyle ugly.  When I see a photo of a rapist on TV – he’s ugly.  When I see a child bullying another one – that’s ugly.  I think people are far too interesting to be ugly unless the ugliness is in their actions.  So for Tanya Gold to shove down our throats that she thinks Susan Boyle is ugly then she really can’t be that much different from Piers, or the crowd she writes about – can she?

 Lang may yer lum reek, Ms. Boyle. (That’s Scottish for “May you live long and stay well.”)