In the basement at parties - The mantlepiece again - ana qibla wuludaty, ila ummi, ma'a alqitt, 'caesar'

H is somewhere behind there. My friend from my Arabic classes was there too. We talked and didn't really pay full attention to the pictures. I think art galleries are for those at a loose end and with their full minds available. We just had a social time amongst the exhibits :)

H switched the lights on and off for fun. I took a little film of him appearing and disappearing again between the giant displays. It was very soothing down there in the basement. It could do with a couple of sofas for people like me to rest in, while thinking and making notes.

Another section of my parents' house. The sheep's skull used to be there for decades.. but is now up in my father's study. I can't tell who is in that little oval photo at the front, so will have to check next time I am there.

This is the best one. That photo of my mother resting with the cat Caesar while pregnant is one of my favourites. Guess what this says:

أنا قبل ولادتي، داخل والدتي، مع القط بجانبنا

V, W, X, Y, and Z - Alphabet of my mother

V - very keen on going out for little walks and a chat. Last time we had several expeditions from the house. One was to St George's Square, where we sat on a bench in the sun and I saw her eyes shut so gently, just like that, still sitting up, pretty much mid-sentence. Like a little dormouse needing rest. Smile.

W - wanting me to answer the phone, even though I am out driving for hours each day, go volunteering and doing errands, and sometimes shut out the world by sitting on the sofa watching a film.

X - extremely good at being tolerant, I have never been ticked off for being late, or for not visiting often enough or not phoning enough, etc.

Y - yoghurt with prunes! Her favourite pudding, one she didn't try to get us to eat.

Z - 'having a zizz' my parents' word for 'having a nap'.

O, P, Q, R, S, T, U - Alphabet of my Mother

O-juice, a childish name for orange juice.

P - that piano..I bought a very second-hand piano when I was around 12 with my birthday money. My mother had to spend way more than that to get the ancient, but beautiful piano moved from St George's Square, round the corner to our house and up the stairs. It had dark scrolled legs and brass candle holders, but not too many hammers! They'd fall off inside. Mmm, it smelt lovely when I opened the lid and made strange noises by reaching down to play with the metal strings!

Q - Queen, I don't know whether she has met the Queen. If she has, she is keeping quiet about it.

R - refusing to play cards with us point blank, though she let us use a lovely double set of French playing cards they must have been given as a wedding present. Or did she never realise that we had started to use those cards? They have come with me to this house.

S - the Studio at Ovington Square. How can she have managed with such a huge, cold space to live in? The kitchen was primitive. There was no wardrobe or washing machine. No storage. No freezer. A paraffin heater.

T - theatres, threads, tatting, toblerone...none of these have any resonance. Tricycle, tidbits, Tyndrum...nope. "Tink, tink" is what she says when clinking her spoon against something, but I don't really know what it means, just a cheerful expression.

U - Umbrella, up, uven! 'Useful' as in 'a useful bit of string' when handling something clearly useless and which I'd bin straight away.

اريد ان اقرا عن امك من فضلك

...

والدتي ولدت في فنتينبلو في جنوب مدينة بريس, عام ١٩٣٨. درست  اللغة الفرنسية, الروسية, اللاتينية. لا درست امي في جامعة ولكن عملت في لندن. 

كل اليوم تحب ان تقرا الجريدة وتشرب قهوة كبوجينو في مقهى صربي. 

...

So - that's my bit of writing about my mother. Please dive in and write something short about your own mother, in the comments box. If it's too long I will give up and not be able to read it. I need to read actual Arabic. 

Another time I will write something about my father.

...

I, J, K, L, M, N - alphabet of my mother

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream - My father was the one who'd recite this one! We'd have tinned peaches with our vanilla ice cream, or my father would make chocolate sauce. A different version every time, just like mine now.

J - my brother. They both go out together to cafes, new ones each time, which is easy because London is built of cafes.

Kisses - she kissed/kisses me on the top of my head if I am sitting on a chair in the dining room and she is walking past. Very nice. That's my normal. I catch my sons with kisses too if I can.

Liver - and kidney are her dishes for when my father is well out of range. Delicious, I'd eat it with her.

Money - she likes people who have it, and likes to see it spent on beautiful items. Hmm, you can't spend it and still have it, I'm a banker's daughter.

Nou-nou - my mother's own mother was the 3rd child in Paris. At some point a wet nurse came to the family, leaving her own little one behind in Normandy. She was called Nou-Nou, a baby name for her. I have just looked it up, it's the formal French word for nanny, well, I never knew that.

...

Hozier - Take me to the church - listen to the softness in the singer's voice

Disaster tourist in Oxford - Taste of Cherries by Abbas Kiarastami - Sitting on a kerb

Disaster tourist

I stood and looked up at the black burnt timbers of the one damaged section of the Randolph's roof. I wonder how long it will be before the structure is cool enough for a scaffolding roof to be put over it. When it rains the water will add to the water already poured in by the fire engines. I wouldn't like to be managing that building. Imagine the smell and the damp and the damage inside. My own house is quite complicated enough.

Taste of Cherries

Each time I watched further into the film, restarting from the beginning.

I found the pressurising attitude of the central character worrying. Was this representative of his internal problem? The soldier and even the birds rushed away from him. I don't know where to start with making comments. It's similar to engaging with a poem, the more I am in the zone of floating about with thoughts and memories, the more I could discuss any topic under the sun and relate it to or find it in the film. It would depend on the person I am talking with too and what they say.

I could give myself some sort of severe constraint in order to make myself write comments replying to my own self, based on and circling around the film. One small page of my note book, 3 words per line, fill each page, stick to one topic per page, keep going up til the tiny notebook is complete, then leave it, never to return. That sounds intransigent enough to produce results!

It's mulberries in the film anyway, so why put cherries in the title in English?

Kerb

I called my mother, she was in the car.

I told her 'I am your one and only daughter' when she wasn't quite sure who was calling her. Then she said I had sounded different, she hadn't recognised me, so I explained that I'd just finished work, so maybe that was it.

Then I sat down on a kerb, by a bike park. One or two people looked at me as if I were in trouble, but I wasn't, just chatting and listening carefully, blocking out the whole city.

My mother was looking on the bright side a little too much, so I said 'Things aren't 100%, are they?' which she agreed with. I could hear it in her voice.

A, B, C, D - alphabet of my mother

Apple - My mother used to cut up an apple into 8 pieces and then peel it. She'd do this once my father had left the table after dinner. My brother and I would stay at the table to chat about how I was born or other important things. When I was pregnant with Thomas and feeling that I needed to stay sitting on the bean bag instead of standing up to make lunch for them, she brought me a saucer with apple cut into these same shapes :)

Books - She would read standing up, or walking up and down the stairs. She could even translate from French to English for us, to explain why she was enjoying a particular section of a Claudine book she'd just picked up. Sometimes she'd have the newspaper and would read out one phrase because it make her laugh. My father used to say that she just counted the pages, because she read so fast. I think she read out of order too, jumping around in a book.

Chicken - She'd make very tasty roast chicken, with no fuss or explaining what recipe she'd followed. She just cooked it. Then she'd simmer the bones to make soup, again with no fuss, she'd just do it.

Dancing - I don't think she was ever a dancer, but she did mention a film in the late 50's which involved twisting in the aisles. She has never been interested in Scottish Dancing, so I went along with my father and learnt it with him.

Enjoying - cafes, making toast, throwing the keys out of their bedroom windows when I rang the bell at 3 in the morning after a party, buying me apricot Danish and cappuccino at more cafes, laughing as I push her in hospital in a wonky wheelchair, agreeing to bunk off church and talk together before meeting up with my father after the service for the drinks afterwards.

Basically everything is an opportunity for imperfect happiness.

Finding - or rather, not finding things.
One of my talents is to suggest looking under her side of the bed for whateveritis!

Great swear words - her mantra when stressed when we were teenage was 'boredom and nausea' which I now realise is a translation of Sartre's book La Nausee.

Hats - those big floppy hats for weddings used to cause big trouble if my brother and I somehow squashed them while they were on the shelf behind us in the back of the car. Oh dear!

Crisis night and day

Not so fun. My mother was ill. Not very. I checked on her each hour for a while, then judged she was sleeping pretty soundly. I did not sleep soundly at all.

No clear thoughts, just an anxious jumble. Decided I would not drive anywhere on Friday. Fixed a taxi for H and cancelled my 2 appointments in Oxford. Slept and sweated and dozed for 6 hours in the day. Didn't help my mother at all.

Better evening. Dressed, went to Sainsbury's, called in at shop where I used to volunteer, felt more human again. Listened to some poetry videos, clicked to let someone to be a member of a Facebook group I am on, submitted 2 poems.

...

That was Thursday night and Friday daytime.

Having my mother to stay: it feels like Christmas

The cat from next door has started to go straight to her bed in the mornings. I go in and see them both in the bed. Having a memory foam top layer was a good decision.

I move the tv cable from downstairs to upstairs and back again each night and morning. It is important to my mother to be able to see the woolly mammoth dissection programme. So I'm crawling around under my son's desk more than I ever have before to do the plugging in and unplugging.

Soon we will open up the old stationary boxes her mother kept the Christmas decorations in. They have been passed on to me. I think we can use an unused fireplace as the spot to install the crib. Maybe this year I can put logs and dry leaves from the garden around it. Every year it looks different.

I have not been able to spend Christmas with my parents for various excellent reasons for many years. We can have a mini one here instead. I even have a pudding with cherries in the middle.

She is on the sofa sleeping, with a duvet and the cat on top of her. A real version of family stuff going on in our own stable/house.

Fire hazards

There are more levels of discomfort than I had imagined.

Just one smoke alarm, but I open the windows of the guest room at the top of the house.

Just one smoke alarm, the windows have been screwed shut, but the room next door has easily lifted sash window.

All of the above, but I will have my nearly immobile mother in the guest bed with me, how would I make that safe? I have asked my father to help, he says he will unscrew the window, so that will reassure me.

Anyway, it is just for her first night back at home. We might be telling each other ghost stories, or I might teach her some Arabic.

...

In fact she was just mobile enough to sit laughing watching tv with my father, so I left them to it and she was with him instead.

Oh my God! London - 1 Saturday

This is me being over the top, but London is just amazing.

---

I have lost the little notebook with my info about Saturday, which means that some poems of mine have gone awol too. Oh no. And good grief. That's one way of getting published.

---

 Lunch visit with my mother at the hospital.
So very lovely to be pushing her in the wheel chair and generally hanging around.

I buy an Arabic newspaper, I buy one a year at the moment!
My mother suggests I circle the words I do know on the front page.

Off to do some work, peering at this translation I am doing.
Cafe packed out, so I sat in the bookshop, Arthur Probsthain (again).

Chatted to woman near me, turns out she knows Jenny Lewis,
What a very small world, she has done the Praise workshop I am going to.

Back to see my mother, we all meet up there,
Because we are very noisy when we all get together we all go to cafe.

Debate plans and current situation, bit of a war cabinet at the cafe,
Then I decide we must have a family photo, someone kind takes a few for us.

Off to my evening event, Reuters News Oratorio
Drenched thoroughly due to making some bad decisions.

Roam around the church before it starts, can't settle down.
Try the upstairs balcony, but I am not one of the cast.

The church is huge and gracious, peeling walls, cracks, darkness above.
Warm crypt with cryptic route to loos, unusual.

Finally sit down with a group of people, we chat and chat.
The improvised - and - structured performance is how it is.

I sit and lean forwards, look here, look there.
People do their thing with guitars, cellos, other musical instruments.

Jude stands at the piano and does her thing.
What I adore is the seriousness and stance of people in the middle of their own worlds.

I just have to give my whole attention to what is happening,
Let it be and let it continue, witness it, be part of the essential audience.

Imagine a poetry reading with no listeners?
That is how important being the pew-bound crowd is.

There was burning afterwards, scrolls from a dream project in Olympic Year,
A version of the Wailing Wall for Bethnal Green.

The private and unread scrolls were tipped into the fire, a brazier in the rain.
We held and relit our candles while this all went on.

We wondered whether by now some of the wishes had come to pass:
The wishes for a baby, for a partner, health.

By the end our little group had refound itself on the steps of the church,
But we had to break it up and go home. Twitter/email details...all given.

What a wonderful day and evening.

Oh my God! London - 2 - Sunday

Eating my way through my father's sour dough loaf, this time with his own plum and ginger jam.
Tube to Warren Street, more comfortable working on my poem translation on a seat.

Find my mother on her bed, so cut her finger nails and do other beauty tasks.
Dr arrives, a Glaswegian :), full update, so many tests, grabbing this opportunity.

Adventure with a wheelchair, backwards, forwards, lifts, doors, even the shop.
My mother's idea of heaven: cafe facing buses, tube station, PEOPLE, LIFE, LONDON.....

She manages to eat a hard boiled egg without an eggcup.
I go back and forth like a yoyo; plates, coffee cup and a human in a wheelchair,
Eventually we are all at the same table.

Kisses, goodbyes, odd to know I won't be back until next Saturday. Why don't I live near my parents?

On my walk along South Bank I go the the end of a little pier. Smile at a toddler who is trying standing on a metal tying up point for ropes. Then she decides to sit on it. Whole series of discoveries for her and her patient mother in the sunshine.

Disgusting colour of Thames. Will it one day be something healthier? At least the froth that used to be there is gone.

Lean against the wall and sit on the floor of the Turbine Hall, watch the babies and toddlers with their kind parents.
Bit of writing, then pick out nouns from what I have done and write with those, then pick out verbs from that new set of lines.

I get distracted by the women's hairstyles, always hoping for inspiration.
Decide to get some half-processed merino wool to make primary colour hair wraps out of, based on simple, bold colours of the Richard Tuttle installation above my head.

Films, a set of 3, set in a light bulb factory in China, so many flames.
Other one is just grey on black with occasional people, even I give up on that one.

Find 'Zaytoun', a DVD, for my Arabic film club, plus board books for the babies in my life.

Millennium Bridge: I always think of the stranger who once walked at my pace, level with me, whether I sped up or slowed down. It is a long bridge, so after a while I just walked at my own pace while this mysterious man walked along too near me. I deliberately didn't look round, but I saw that he was all in black and perhaps 30ish as he went off down some steps.

Back to the house to see my father, kisses, goodbyes.
See the owner of the Serbian cafe opposite, rush over to share the news about my mother, more kisses, goodbyes.

As I drive along the Embankment in the dark towards the A4/M4 I enjoy the sparkling lights of the new flats on the other bank and the bright tree decorations. Really I just love all the lights at night. It's my city and I love seeing it again each time.

I listen to my music and find myself imagining having a huge row in the middle of Oxford with a complete stranger on the pavement because I have decided to open my car window and share my music with the world. Don't know why this arises. By the time my mind is back in a state of calm I have got to the Hogarth Roundabout. Strange.

Other people drive oddly tonight. Twice I find myself stuck behind a smart car being driven very slowly at 50mph by a male driver on his own. It is 8pm on a Sunday, perhaps they are both drunk and can't decide to stop to clear their heads. This is a new danger.

Find a set of photos of the event I was at yesterday, brings it all back. I am the one holding a candle while holding a bag of books with Arthur Probsthain on the front! And chatting. The photos don't show the fact that I am still damp from being drenched before the performance even started. Many of the performers had worn coats.

أحبك - Poem for my mother

والدتي في المستشفى

كنت في لندن

اسمك آن

أنا بعيد عنك

أنا أحبك جدا

غدا في لندن

I need to switch these lines around so they have some sort of pattern. The vowel markings don't show in type, so you have to know that there are lots of kasras, the 'i' sound.

أحبك

هو الليل

والدتي في المستشفى

غدا في لندن

اسمك آن

أنا بعيد عنك

أنا أحبك جدا

Ok, so now there are 2 stanzas, first lines have 2 words each, second and third lines both have 3. Title is addessed to my mother, first stanza is stating facts and second is addressing her again. Neatly, it has her name at the end of the first line of that second stanza. On another laptop I could add a word which looks exactly the same as her name, but which means 'now'. That could go in the same place but on the first stanza. But then it would ruin the 2,3,3 pattern. 

There, all done, for now = aan/ann, oh dear, an arabic/english pun. Now to call and see if she is on the table, under the knife.

Born in Ormskirk

My timeline has thrown up some photos from Ormskirk. They are from 100 years ago. I was born 50 years ago, so it can't have been too different back then.

I don't think it suited my mother one bit. She is a Sloane Square sort of person.

Women commented on the little bald patch at the back of my baby head. I must have liked sleeping even then! She must have been so annoyed at any criticism of her perfect first production. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall and see those snippets of interaction.

http://www.osadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-news/unseen-photos-ormskirk-unveiled-new-7825900

Assimilation

I was shocked recently when my mother used the word 'assimilated' to refer to the process her family/my family has gone through. All these years I have known her and not one mention of such a thing. I never realised that she was aware of this transition. Of course she was, it was so obvious it didn't need talking about.

To me it is clear as day. We just weren't here before the mid 1930's, apart from one grand parent. The rest were in other places. It's a long time ago now, but it wasn't when I was born.

Remote cafe visit with my mother

I called her while I was walking along the street
She agreed to chat a few minutes later once I'd found my cafe
So I found a table in the sunshine and we talked until my credit ran out

This 3 line business is getting wearing. There's something a bit false and prissy about it. We talked about this and that. I wasn't too sure about one of the stories she told me, but had no evidence at all to decide that it was a mis-remembering. Just because I had never heard that particular story doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Apparently she had taken a taxi with me at 2/3 days old, to get home from hospital. The house had been cold and empty because my father was still driving my grandmother all the way North to Lancashire from London. I can't believe he drove all the way there and back. That's crazy. But who knows, maybe that is what happened? March up there must have been perishing. How did they survive?

Between a film and a poetry workshop..

..I was able to phone my brother, father and mother. I leaned over a stone bridge in the sunshine, sat on a bench, sat on a wall, found a quiet street with another low wall to sit on. So lots f chatting and catching up until my phone ran out of power. I was probably speaking rather loudly but who cares, the traffic was doing its best to drown me out. My brother sounded as if he were underwater so w were repeating everything to eachother several times. I did say it would be better if we texted eachother.

My brother was on the Strand in London on his way to meeting a friend, my parents had just got back from a day of travel and excitement including lunch at The River Cottage. I asked my fatherctontell me exactly what they had eaten. The soup was celery with some little gooseberries included. My mother was on the sofa with her legs stretched out. I was with her when the phone died on me. I am sure she understood.

London - 3 - Driving home

After the big family dinner we eventually said all our goodbyes and I got into the back of the car. My mother always sits in the front passenger seat and my father in the driving seat on the right. I always used to sit on the left in the back.

As we drove back to Pimlico I could hear my parents discussing some plans for another dinner. They were almost arguing, one being bossy to the other, familiar uncomfortable frictions.

I just sat in the back uninvolved, able to look at the huge white facades of these London houses which we have driven past so very many times. It is like being in an endless rerun of the past with tiny variations.

The huge houses mean nothing to me though. We don't know who lives there, never will. They get cleaner in the boom times and may revert to the sad, dusty state they used to be in for years when they were just too big for anyone to maintain properly.

London morphs each time I go back, but I can barely see it in this area. The street lights are the same, so are the trees in the squares, the nearly empty pavements, the traffic lights and restaurants at the junctions.

Ouch my French

I have had a look at the text I sent my mother yesterday. It has two major grammatical/spelling errors. Bless her, my mother didn't text a word about them. She texted back using perfect endings and the feminine where it should be. Ouch and blush. I need to dig out my French dictionary. Texting from a station while waiting needs all the information to be in my head.

A couple of weeks ago I forgot how to spell soleil. It only came back to me when I saw a lorry or some advertisement with it written clearly and boldly. That is my sort of language learning/relearning. Accidental and effective.

Maybe embarrassment is the strongest push to learn things, the emotion shoves the information right into the brain without any effort.

I used to try to chat to my Grandmother in French, but it never seemed right. She was an Anglophile anyway, her heart was here and she was more at home in English.

Texts and phone messages

What do I do with my messages from my mother? Do I photocopy my mobile with the little screen showing her texts, one by one, section by section? I could just type them out in the same format and print them off as tiny prose poems from her to me.

The phone messages are much harder. They will expire after 20 days and are pure sound. What do I do? What can I do apart from listen to each one until it disappears? Type them out too?