Let an umbrella be your smile

An asset, not a monkey for your back. 

Chaos HQ marched around with umbrellas last Sunday* to kick off Refugee Week, a collaborative effort to highlight the positive contributions of asylum-seekers to Britain.

We brolly-paraded for two reasons. Firstly out of a moral conviction best captured by Pete Postlethwaite in Brassed Off: 'If this lot were seals or whales you'd be up in arms but they're not are they? They're just ordinary, honest human beings and not one of them with an ounce of bloody hope left.'

Secondly, we suspected it might rain. It did.

I recently met a nice lady at the park who reminded me of Britain's historical commitment to sanctuary. We small-talked about children, crap weather and other bog standard things. Then she quietly told me that she was born in Prague and came to Britain at the age of seven via the Kindertransport rescue mission. This humanitarian movement saved thousands of continental Jewish children by resettling them in Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Bridge over troubled water. 

No matter how much I read about such things, to actually meet someone who was part of it was a very moving experience. She wishes, she said, that she could have seen her parents through adult eyes.

The man who kicked off our umbrella march along the Thames captured the mood perfectly when he said: 'We are proud to be British. We are proud to protect refugees. We are proud to be refugees.'

I was reminded of the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Gogol Bordello: 'Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants.'

One nation, united under a rain-cloud. 

Right now you can find posters up in the underground that helpfully point out that many British cultural staples - fish and chips, M&S, the Mini, the Milibands (delete as appropriate depending on your political and lifestyle leanings) - come from immigrant stock.

A very useful reminder to counter the constant printed downpour of negativity on the subject of immigration.

The kingdom belongs to such as these. 

So be proud this week and every week to support refugees - as British a thing as understated tea and royal bunting.**

Show your support even if you're little - like my pair of short migrants, who slept through the event in spite of a very boisterous drum core. And be welcoming even if your fellow humans are a little different from you.

Consider it theoretical karma in case you ever have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

We are all foreigners, somewhere.

*You can find great photo coverage of the event here.
**Actually, what on earth is bunting?

Swimming with poets

I did something unusual last week - unusual for me in this season of life anyway. I went to a poetry reading with my friend Truffle. It took place in an auditorium full of well-behaved adults that was - I am told - built from a single tree.

The evening began with with a journey to King's Cross. I walked out of the underground and found myself swimming in a huge school of hip London fish. In spite of my yocal instincts, I wasn't alarmed, but rather thrilled to be surrounded by such an interesting, busy school of humanity.

Four years ago our little family left London as two and a bump for the cheaper burbs. Back in those boom days, I once heard someone sum it up perfectly on The Now Show by saying that London only remained  affordable to rats and investment bankers. As a pair of twenty-somethings, we were generationally out of luck. But things change, and somehow we swam back.

Well-appointed rat-flat with far-reaching river views.  

From my time here four years ago, I remember charity campaigners outside tube stops. But since I've been away, 'chuggers' (charity muggers) as they are now affectionately known, have spawned like mad - their numbers are now so great that they are encroaching on the habitat of Britain's native red squirrel. King's Cross was awash with them.* 

As I awkwardly dog-paddled my way upstream towards King's Place (the Guardian headquarters), a chugger singled me out and extended the ko finger. I recoiled and did my best to parrot the 'I'm busy ignoring you because I'm an urban sophisticate' face that I saw other people giving him. Then he hollered: 'hey beautiful laaaaaady!'

Now in spite of the fact that he had just said this precise thing to both the nun and the poodle walking ahead of me, I was still quite chuffed (though not enough to stop and get chugged). You see, Ana often says 'fish fingers now', but she rarely says 'hey beautiful lady.'

The reading, featuring Anna Robinson and Ian Sinclair amongst others, was hosted by Poet in the City, a charity that aims to bring poetry to new audiences. The theme - urban life - couldn't have been more perfect. Elaine Feinstein, who read from her 2010 book Cities, said an off-the-cuff remark that really struck a chord with me. She prefaced a poem by explaining how she'd once found herself cornered in a house by two very small children. 'I felt my life was over,' she said slowly, 'but it wasn't'. And then she enumerated some of the things that came later - flights of fancy to Budapest, boozy dinner parties, Ted Hughes, navigating Singapore with broken ankles by wheelchair - a whole life.

Of course her comment wasn't aimed at me - but it felt that way - like she was a poet fairy godmother, who had apparated just to say: 'take heart - this story is still unfolding, and we are in early pages.' And though I may never hope to journey to Bohemia with Bohemians, or Singapore with invalids, I truly related to her in that moment (motherhood is the ultimate creator of common ground). I took heart.

Show me the way to your next London bar. 

Hanging out with a wise international food writer like Truffle has it perks - Truffle directed us to a pair of delicious grown-up fruit shoots at the swank Booking Office Bar, lodged in the newly-opened St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel. There - in spite of some rather kinky elevator music - we were able to relax in peace and talk in complete sentences about grown-up things like er, mothers and daughters.

My chair gave me a good line of site towards the bar, which happened to be housed in the skeleton of the old train station ticket counter. Architectural ghosts of the original structure abounded in the ceiling and the walls of the cavernous room, like dinosaur bones half-unearthed. I couldn't help but recall the words of Tobias Hill, one of the poets, who had repeatedly quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'Cities give us collision.'

Perhaps that's what I've been missing.



*I should add that they have my sympathy - I have done similarly rubbish jobs where people shout at you all day. It ain't fun. You usually don't find yourself in such a job because you are a natural jerk, but rather because you are broke, which is to say young.

This week at Chaos HQ

Vamos

Moving moment

Snakes in the grass

My time on this island began in Oxford nearly a decade ago. I arrived in my early twenties with my beloved by my side and not much else.

I quickly discovered the particular fish-out-of-water-feeling that comes with landing on foreign dirt - like that first cold step outside after a swim - a lonely, shivering kind of uncomfortable that starts at the pores and ends up in the bones. Thankfully (somewhat) temporary.

Travel with me alone towards Iffley. 

Like many before me, I discovered that England is expensive. Especially Oxford. Especially since we were already broke. So my beloved and I cultivated free hobbies, like walking.

One day we left Jericho and wandered into Port Meadow, an ancient common northwest of Oxford. We passed The Perch, the Trout (pubs), the ruins of Godstowe Abbey and kept right on walking. Quite unplanned, we walked 35 miles that day. By chance we bumped into a self-proclaimed recovering journalist called Linda Ellerbee who was trekking the length of the Thames for her 60th birthday (and later wrote about it). She walked with us for a while before hitching a ride on a narrow boat. It was from her that we got the bonkers idea to walk the length of the Thames, which we later did.

Return to dust. 

Iffley lies down the Thames Path in the other direction, south of Oxford, past Christ Church Meadow. There is a 12th century church there called St Mary's. It is so old that the faces protruding from the stone have returned to blank slates. Accross Iffly lock, there is a meadow, and in the springtime the meadow is full of an unusual-looking native flower called snake's head fritillary.

Rose by another name.

We spent our two Oxford springs searching out snake's heads in the grass; skint, foreign, blessed with companionship and sturdy feet. A less lucky twenty-something called Keith Douglas wrote this about Iffley four years before he died at Normandy in 1944:

What sudden fearful fate
can deter my shade wandering next year
from a return? Whistle and I will hear
and come another evening, when this boat
travels with you alone towards Iffley
as you lie looking up for thunder again
this cool touch does not betoken rain
it is my spirit that kisses your mouth lightly. 

This ramble into yesteryear's photo album was inspired by Flashback Friday, hosted by the lovely Cafe Bebe.

Bright post, big internet

Standing in the armpit of strangers is one of the most beautifully-written posts I've read in a long time. My post of the week comes via Elsie Anderton, chatelaine of The Babylon Lane Tales, and is actually more than a week old (all of us here at Chaos HQ struggle with simple concepts like 'time'). Thanks to the lovely Ella of Notes From Home, and the BMB blogger of the week, for hosting.

After a few short words of this lyrical post, you too will extricate yourself from a stranger's armpit and walk in her shoes to that place where you can just be you, with the memory of a small hand in yours. Reading it, I was reminded of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, one of my favourite books.

As you might infer from a title like Bright Lights, Big City, the book has bupkis to do with babies. Even so, the last two lines have become my parenting mantra: 'You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again.'

The good side of the city. 

In other news, Chaos HQ is relocating to the bright city from the dim suburbs. As such, posting will become even more sporadic over the next few weeks while I argue with my ISP and rummage about in a mountain of boxes for my lost brain.

I will move slowly, punctuated by moments of flailing about. I will try, fail, and eventually succeed at learning everything all over again.

Even pack rats get the blues

I live in a homing beacon for crap toys. For the past three years an entire galaxy of 'cheap and nasties' (term courtesy of A&E Mum) has found the magnetic draw of my house irresistible. My research indicates that this is due to my home's geographical location on the conversion point of two ancient polymer ley lines—it is essentially a semi-detached plastic henge.

For the first three years I didn't mind. I became a bit of a toy-pagan myself. My Mama Stockholm Syndrome reasserted itself and I began identifying with the junk, even giving the most hateful bits names: Creepy Dog, Molly Dolly, etc. But the clutter that alighted innocently at first began to flock in an increasingly Hitchcock-esque manner. Before long there was something menacing and undeniably stickerman about.

The Clutterati. 

Things went bump in the night—against the arch of my foot any time I was so foolish as to set foot out of bed. By day I was mad-dogged by their fearsome leader. Sometimes I could have sworn that he changed location without any human moving him.

One morning I had a premonition of a mighty judgement coming: a vision of myself turned into a plastic cat lady, buried under shape sorters and poorly-drawn fake plastic kitchen food. Clearly something had to be done. But for the life of me, I couldn't think of what.

Then, while stumbling over toys one day, I landed upon an insightful documentary on this very subject called 'Toy Story 3'. Inspired, I commenced operation 'Crap Toy Desertion'. Now the teeming plastic masses are in bin bags in the garage, bound for the charity shop (which is where most of them came from in the first place).

Riding off into the fake sunset. 

I can once again walk across my own sitting room without risking foot injury. All that remains is to hang garlic above the doors to prevent a recurring infestation.

I feel unburdened, weightless, peaceful, as I sit here. The first toy was the hardest to toss. But each one became easier, more rewarding, until I was chucking them into bin bags more rapidly than Sylvester McMonkey McBean throws Sneeches into his Star-On machine.

Hang up your plastic saddles. 

I had a joyous epiphany: having children doesn't have to mean a houseful of crap. Funniest thing about possessions: they grow to possess you, if you don't show them the door first.