Crimes and Misdemeanors

My Grilling Life in New Jersey has been particularly grueling these past few weeks.

Waiting tables in 107 degree heat and 99% humidity makes a shift drag like a ball and chain.

I have also been scolded more than is fitting or indeed necessary.

I haven’t been punished like this since I was ten.

This week I was reminded of  Mrs Holscher, my class teacher.

Mrs Holscher was annoyed because I was passing notes to my friend. She called me to the front of the classroom and told me to give her my hand. I duly presented my palm and she slapped it twice with a ruler.

This week I was subjected to a similar scolding. This scolding, however, was rather more protracted. It came in the form of a long, extremely detailed letter from an aggrieved diner.

All Mr Aggrieved-Diner wanted, he wrote, was to have a “nice night out.”

I was the large impediment to his goal.

“Many of the evening’s problems centred around our server. To start she was having so much difficulty opening our wine that I was sincerely concerned that someone at either our table or the next was going to wind up with a corkscrew driven into their neck….”

Since the restaurant is BYOB, opening someone’s wine is merely a courtesy but Mr Aggrieved-Diner clearly doesn’t know this. I can’t remember having the difficulty he described but no matter.

I tend to only remember the better bottles of wine and shampoo that I am asked to open.

Apparently it was when I returned to the table that “this is where the real fun began. One by one, she aggressively upsold our party, badmouthing our initial selections…(”If you want to have fish don’t get the scallops, have the salmon”) and extolling the virtues of a pricier entrée.

“Assuming she knew more than we did about what to avoid on your menu we largely took her recommendations.”

“She then, equally aggressively pushed for everyone to order appetizers. Three of us eventually relented and with her sales quota met she finally left us to our conversation…”

Mr Aggrieved-Diner clearly mistook me for someone who gives a f*ck about “sales quotas” (there is no such thing where I work), or indeed what the guests choose to eat.

Although I am a firm Second Amendmenter, I did not have a Glock to his head. When people ask me what I would recommend I tell them. C’est tout.

The letter sprawled over three pages. There was a lot of “she then” as in “she then, equally aggressively pushed for everyone to order desserts”.

“Not long after we finished she then arrived to push dessert….

“Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing the evening was only going to get worse. We arrived home about 30 minutes later and soon after I began to feel ill. Before long, I was dizzy, sweating profusely and alternating between bouts of vomiting and diarrhea…”

The screed ends with Mr Aggrieved-Diner imploring that “proper action” must be taken to “save future diners”.

The manager thinks that ‘proper action’ involves me paying for the meal.

It was difficult not to laugh in his face so I laughed in his face.

**

The next night I was handed a typed sheet from a diner.

“Life-threatening allergies” it announced in bold caps.

Please read this information. It could save my life!

Eating any of the following foods will close my throat:

A comprehensive list of potentially deadly vegetables followed. So did an A – Z of spices and herbs. Just in case it wasn’t clear ‘All food items containing the above – a list of seventeen ingredients including capers, Hoisin, Wasabi etc etc.

I was extremely tempted to say “Stay at home and have a tub of yoghurt, would you?”

Since when has being a server become a life-threatening occupation? I am a PONTI – a Person of No Tactical Import. A food sherpa.

I have only recently learned how to boil an egg properly.

There is a catchy ditty in the Gilbert and Sullivan opera “The Mikado” about ‘A little list.’

How very fitting that a waitress should find herself on this satirical take on the original song.

As someday it may happen that a victim must be found.

I’ve got a little list; I’ve got a little list

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed–they never would be missed!

There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs

All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs–

All children who won’t speak without an iPod on their head

But can E-mail, text and download without getting out of bed!

And customs men who insist on fumbling through your underwear  

They’d none of them be missed, they’ll none of them be missed!

CHORUS: He’s got ’em on the list–he’s got ’em on the list;

And they’ll none of ’em be missed–they’ll none of ’em be missed.

There’s the beggars who write letters from the Inland Revenue 

And the gossip columnist, I’ve got him on the list

Fake Rock bands, those “Pop Idols” and that Simon Cowell too,

They never would be missed–they never would be missed!

Or waitresses who make you wait and lawyers of all kinds 

And actresses who kiss & tell and wiggle their behinds

And poncey little singers who to entertain us try 

By dressing up as women and then singing far too high;

And the TV advertisers who just never will desist–

I don’t think they’d be missed–I’ve got them on the list!

CHORUS: He’s got “em on the list–he’s got “em on the list;

And I don’t think they’d be missed–I’m sure they’d not be missed!

The Freedoms that Come with Age

Tags

age, Camus, Vita Sackville-West

Jani Allan with Peta Eggierth-Symes and Dr Dorianne Cara Weil in Johannesburg, April 2016.

I am not looking for a man/woman/anyone to rescue me or ameliorate my life. I will save my own life. At least that way there won’t be a debt to be repaid.

Getting older is like being fined for something you didn’t mean to do.

There you are pootling along (within the speed limit these days) but there was no warning billboard saying “Steep Decline Ahead.” Or if there were you didn’t notice it until you were on the slip road.

Thereafter the signs come thick and fast.

But most of them fill me with deep relief and not inconsiderable joy.

The ideal American woman is the stepdaughter of a masculine society and as such lives with habitual sexualization and devaluation. In an ageist/lookist society women over thirty are considered past it. We are at the mercy of a mass culture that only celebrates older women ‘who still remain youthful.’

The shine in the eyes of a fifty-five year old Hollywood fiancée is really the white stare of desperation.

Me? I am on the shelf with the marmalade.

What a relief.

I can sit quietly gathering dust having been ejected from feminine subjection/evaluation by the consequences of ageing.

(When you get to my age people don’t ask ‘Is she attractive?’ They say ‘Does she drive at night?’)

Whereas once I would never consider putting out the rubbish without my face on, I now walk around the village sans maquillage and often, I fear, without brushing my hair.

I know that only by triumphing over self-consciousness can the feminine victim become the female heroes.

I don’t divide my wardrobe into thin clothes and fat clothes. I know that following fashion is signing a petition. Having style is issuing a manifesto.

I am liberated from justifying my life by the sexual or domestic service rendered. Nothing deadens the soul more effectively than dreary, thankless housework.

I don’t want to lose five pounds before I go to Paris.

If the truth be told, I don’t even want to go to Paris. I’ve watched ‘Midnight in Paris.’

I don’t do those BuzzFeed quizzes to find out who/what you were in a previous life. I know.

I am not looking for a man/woman/anyone to rescue me or ameliorate my life. I will save my own life. At least that way there won’t be a debt to be repaid.

I know that ‘never mind’ is really a useful piece of advice.

I no longer yearn “to be happy.” If all you want in life is to be happy you are bound to be miserable. Happiness depends on circumstances. Serenity is that deep abiding sense that all will be well even if circumstances are against us. But while happiness is not something we are entitled to or even programmed for, I now know that there is no virtue in being miserable.

As one grows older one is like a spiritual athlete who is capable of lifting great weights.

Women are capable of great psychic energy when they are no longer beset by the egotisms and hostilities of sexual passion. When one is no longer in competitive struggles one is truly free.

Vita Sackville-West’s character Mr. Bucktrout famously says

“It is terrible to be twenty…It is as bad as being faced with riding over the Grand National course. One knows one will almost certainly fall into the Brook of Competition and break one’s leg over the Hedge of Disappointment, and stumble over the Wire of Intrigue and quite certainly come to grief over the Obstacle of Love.”

When one is old..one can throw oneself down as a rider and think ‘well I shall never have to ride that course again.’

Some say that when one reaches a certain age, the waist is broadened the mind is narrowed. Perhaps mine has narrowed – but it has sharpened.

Picasso once said “Everyone is the age they have decided on and I have decided to remain thirty years old.”

What age would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

William Pitt the Younger was 24 when he became Prime Minister.

George Bernard Shaw was 94 when one of his plays was produced for the first time. Mozart was seven when his first composition was performed in public. Benjamin Franklin was 81 when he framed in the Constitution of the United States. Age has nothing to do with dreams and aspirations.

When one is done with the business of being women, they are the most powerful creatures on earth. Or so said Isak Dinesen.

I have come to understand what Camus meant when he wrote ‘In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.’

This column was originally commissioned by Verve magazine in New Zealand.

Calorific waves and a botanic feast in Philadelphia

Tags

Amish, Cinema, Flower show, Food, Food bazaar, Mennonite, Philadelphia, Wizard of Oz

America does spectacular spectacularly

Jani Allan takes leave from the restaurant to visit the City of Brotherly Love. She marvels at the calorific waves of the food bazaar where the offerings have been lovingly prepared by the Mennonites and the Amish. She also takes us on a tour of the celebrated Flower Show with its ‘celebrate the movies’ theme. 

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There are few times that I take off from the resto. If I don’t mule, I don’t eat. In the past decade I can count the number of times I have gotten my shift covered on one hand.

Once when a girlfriend got married and I made a speech at her wedding. A couple of times when I was ill and lost my voice.

But this week when Bev invited me to the Philadelphia Flower Show, the offer was more difficult to turn down than a duvet.

Is is often said that this, the oldest and largest of flower shows, is as much about what folks are fleeing from as what they are flocking to. I wanted to flee from the icy tundra of New Jersey. This year it has been a desperately cold season with sleet that claws at the soul.

At crack of ten, Bev and I drove to the picturesque town of Yardley to catch the train to Philadelphia. We took her car, because my little car behaves like a baby-carriage in snow.

At the station you could tell at once who were flower-show bound: those that I refer to (fondly) as being in the metallic age: silver hair and gold teeth. They are the senior citizens in toothpaste white trainers who only have to pay a dollar for the train journey.

Bev told me that we were going to meet a couple of girls at the Reading Terminal Market for lunch and then mosey across to the Convention Centre where the Flower Show is held.

The Reading Terminal Market, established in 1892 at 12th and Arch Streets, is the nation’s oldest continuously operating farmers’ market. It is one of the greatest public markets in the country.

Bev got into her lecturing mode (which I love as she Knows Stuff.)

“By 1809, city-owned market sheds, called shambles, lined the middle of High Street, extending west to Sixth Street. New markets opened in other parts of the city as the population grew. By 1890 the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company purchased this block for its new terminal. The merchants’ refusal to relocate for the new building resulted in an agreement to erect a new market tucked beneath the train shed and tracks.”

In Wild’s Panorama of 1838 it was described as a place

“Where steaks and cutlets line the reeking way;
And rounds and sirloins tell of cattle one!
Here hangs a porker’s face, –and there a jowl—
While yonder “roaster” swelters for the dish;
And every hook is garnished with a fowl,
Or choicest specimen of flesh or fowl.”

In another guide book of 1868:

“Here the thrifty yeomen of Delaware,
Chester, and Montgomery counties may be
Seen selling mutton, veal, beef, and poultry
Of their own raising and preparing, “pound butter,” the product of their won dairies, with
All the vegetables and fruits in season fresh
From their won gardens and orchards.”

Iron Goddess of Mercy tea.

It’s a vast food bazaar with more than 80 stalls. Giant lobsters signal feebly in huge tanks (remind me to get on to PETA about that) and oceans of seafood lined the fishmonger stalls. There were Babel-high towers of Amish cheeses, a Versailles of chocolatiers and bakers, all the teas in China, honey from 23 different flowers, hand made crafts and American quilts..

It was all I could do not to be knocked down by the calorific waves on display. I watched transfixed, as Amish bakers twisted soft pretzels as though they were knitting with yarn.

“What do you fancy?” said Bev.

The choice ranges from Asian and Middle Eastern to authentic Mexican, Philadelphia and Amish.

Noticing a clot of young girls wearing small bonnets I squeaked “Oh look! Amish!”

“Mennonites!” snapped one of the golden girls I was with. ‘They’re Mennonites. Look at their sneakers.”

They were indeed wearing neon-coloured takkies that sported flashing lights. Verboten by the Amish who wear clothes without buttons because buttons indicate a certain showing offiness.

I ended up having a cup of lentil soup and buying a tiny bag of raw almonds. My girl chums were less stringent. Bean burritos, hoagies, sausage sandwiches and Bassett’s ice-cream.

“If I lived in Philly, I would be at Reading Terminal Market every day. I would also be 100 lbs heavier,” I heard one woman admit cheerfully. She must have weighed 250 pounds.

**
Then it was time for the Flower Show.

I read the blurb:

The silver screen will burst into living color at the 2015 PHS Philadelphia Flower Show from February 28 to March 8 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Honoured with the 2014 Grand Pinnacle Gold award as the world’s top event by the International Festivals & Events Association, the Flower Show will reach new heights in 2015 with the theme “Celebrate the Movies.”

Every guest will feel like a star and every garden a magical setting as the world’s great floral and landscape designers capture the beauty and spirit of the world’s great cinema.

My flabber is not easily gasted. But the Flower show came close. 

America does spectacular spectacularly.

As we walked onto a red carpet, a neon light flashed ‘Lights, Camera, Bloom.’ America’s glitzy garden floral homage to Hollywood is mind-wateringly luscious. A botanic feast remarkable for its profligate use of calla lilies, tulips, and irises.

By the time the show closes some 250,000 visitors will have passed under the giant screens playing excerpts from “Casablanca”, “Gone with the Wind” and “Ghostbusters.”

The show-goers will have been transported to a Persian pavilion beckoning across a shimmering lake; a spring terrain draped in fragrant flowering bulbs; and gazed at Trump towering bridal arrangements worthy of that ilk.

I wandered around enchanted by the inventiveness of the garden designers. “Cars”, “Frozen”, “Maleficent,” “Cinderella” and dozens of other movies were interpreted in plants and props.

An Australian landscape designer had created another world, corralling views while shaping a story:

Fifty Sheds of Green.

A survivalist’s steel bunker repurposed from a hulking fuel storage tank. The living area featured a wall-mounted TV, speakers and a recliner fashioned from a dentist’s chair. The tropical vegetation — including bottlebrush and eucalyptus trees — suggested an Outback wilderness where nature is struggling against an arid environment.

The story line? In a dystopian world, a guy has retreated to the bush to create a verdant redoubt against a world turned hostile to humans and plants alike.

“It’s a bit of a bloke-y garden, it’s masculine but it’s not just aimed at men,” explained the designer.

People moved and surged. Many times I was nearly run over by a Hover-around. At other times I was poked by someone in a wheelchair. Americans en masse are massive. Some had the shape of Chesterfield suites, bless them.

There were cooking demonstrations – fifty nifty things to do with Basil etc and flower arranging classes.

My best were the teeny displays, no bigger than a jewellery box complete with tiny plants.

One representing “The Wizard of Oz” had the detail of a Persian miniature.

Tiny striped stockings indicated an upturned witch. An open door in the little house allowed one a glimpse of a shelf of crockery that was falling.

When it was time to call it a day, I asked Bev about the hundreds of people who were sitting in rows outside the hall.

“They’re resting,” she explained. “We can go into the member’s lounge and rest in privacy.”

We plopped down at a table.

One of the girls opened a bag of Irish potatoes she had bought at the market and proceded to eat them with some miso soup.

There was a small misunderstanding when she disappeared with Bev’s bag, but in the end all was well.

It was sleeting when we got off the train in Yardley.

Bev and I did the penguin walk – head forward – to her car.

“I can’t afford any broken hips!”

The car was iced over like an igloo.

“Oh nooo! I’ve forgotten the ice-scraper!” said Bev.

I took the Ikea catalogue I had been given and used it to de-ice the windows of the SUV. I knew it would come in useful for something.

Everyone should go to the Philadelphia Flower Show at least once in their lives.

It is a consoling thought that while political crises and fashions appear – only to vanish – gardens and their laws of birth and death endure.

The Soundtrack of my Life

Tags

Cape Talk, cape town, classical music, Hillbrow, johannesburg, pop music, queen, Stan Katz

My mother advised me that Tchaikovsky was ‘chocolate box’ music.

Jani Allan grew up in a household where pop music was banned. She was raised on a strict diet of Chopin and Hanon. At ten she was a classical pianist and child prodigy. Stan Katz played her the Bee Gees every morning on 702 during their courtship. She set the soundtrack when she returned to South Africa as a talk-show host on Cape Talk.

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Music expresses the quintessence of life and its events. It is precisely this universality that gives music the high worth that it has as the panacea for all our woes.

Forget paracetamol and don’t even think about calling the doctor: listening to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, so they say, is the quick route to feeling better.

According to a survey carried out to mark BBC Radio 2’s Faith in the World Week, whose theme was the “healing power of music” in a poll of 1,000 people, nearly 90% of respondents agreed that listening to music can make people feel perkier when they are sick or are under the cosh.

Music speaks crescendissimo about the civilisation in which it is birthed.

Mozart perfectly reflects the polished perfection of Salzburg. Don Giovanni is a direct reflection of the culture in which it was created.

“What is their music?” is the question asked in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In some way, knowing ‘their music’ enables you to know them.

The dictionary describes music as “an art form consisting of sound and silence, expressed through time. It is a system for writing musical sounds with their pitch, rhythm, timing, volume, and tonality.”

That’s the clinical definition.

According to Schopenhauer music “stands alone, quite cut off from all the other arts.”

“Music affects the innermost nature of man powerfully. It is deeply understood by him in his most secret consciousness.”

Music’s power, according to Schopenhauer, lies in the fact that in music we do not recognize the copy or repetition of any idea that exists in the world.

This is why the effect of music is much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.”

Our imagination is so easily excited by music, and now seeks to give form to that invisible yet actively moved spirit world which speaks to us directly, and to clothe it with flesh and blood, i. e. to embody it in an analogous example. Which is a great misconception and a piece of utter perversity;

Cintra Wilson once said

‘You can hear the longing for fame in your stomach when listening to your favourite music; you can feel your spirit reaching towards your ultimate greatness, and the intrinsic undertow of millions of arms reaching out to embrace you, begging for you to come into their love….”

Music can indeed make you unfold like a flower fast-forwarding in a nature video.

**

My mother was a classical music snob. My first musical memory must be when I put my hand through the mangle of the washing machine. My mother first put Chopin’s Preludes on the record player and then me on her lap.

“Listen to that piano playing,” she ordered.

Alfred Cortot’s brilliant technique sliced Chopin into lacework which swirled around the room.

When I began to play the piano I was astonished to realize that black marks on a staff, when interpreted, could make one’s heart sing or weep depending on the intervals. Perfect fourth. Optimism. Perfect Fifth. Triumph. Minor third. Uncertainty.

I would dance around the sitting room in my pink ballet tights and matching pink headband to Tchaikovsky. My mother tolerated it but advised me that Tchaikovsky was ‘chocolate box’ music. The musical equivalent of Tretchikoff.

Recently Lana Del Rey sang Once Upon a Dream to the music of Tchaikovsky and all the satin ballet slipper memories came glissando-ing to me.

**

Growing up, I was not allowed to listen to pop music. My days were devoted to two hours of Hanon (for technique) and a further two of practicing the piano. When I was 16, on my way home from a piano lesson, I bought my first seven single. It was  “See Emily Play” by Pink Floyd. It was an act of rebellion.

After lights out I would listen to John Berks broadcasting out of Lourenco Marques on my transistor radio hidden under my pillow.

He played ‘Papa was a Rolling Stone,’ by the Temptations (I loved the way he talked over the opening bars), Matthew and Son and ‘Never my Love” by the Association.

On Friday nights there were what were called ‘sessions’ at the Lemon Squeezer in Victory Park. A band called The Staccatos sang ‘Cry to me’ and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy closed the evening with ‘In the Midnight Hour.”

Eventually my mother gave up trying to stop me listening to pop and admitted that ‘Obladi Oblada’ was quite catchy. She also liked ‘Eleanor’ by the Turtles.

My memories of Hillbrow were driving in the car with the top down and listening to Talking Heads ‘Swamp” on our way to see Ella Mental or Via Afrika or Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mnchunu. Hillbrow was edgy but not dangerous.  Someone once offered to sell me some grass. I thought he meant a grass mat. Later I would listen to Otis Waygood Blues band and of course Alvin Lee, the fastest guitar player in the world, The Allman Brothers, Rodrigues, Cream…

There was a curious innocence in our jorling.

**

When I was sent on assignment to Cape Town there was the thrill – it never grew old – of landing at D.F. Malan, finding a hire car and putting on The Cars ‘Heart Beat’ City.

Once I saw George Benson in Cascais. I became quite emotional and had to remind myself to breathe when he sang ‘In Your Eyes.’ That was back in the day. These days I am more Leonard Cohen than George Benson.

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

A Canadian writing the musical narration of the biblical tale of David and Bathsheba. Now that’s what I call music.

The most exhilarating music of all was that played at the Last Night of the Proms which is held at the Royal Albert Hall every end of summer. There is wit and funning in ‘Sea Shanties” and gungho British nationalism in Land of Hope and Glory. You’d have to be tired of life not to respond to this music on a visceral level.

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When I was dating Stan Katz and he was station manager of Radio 702, he would play me a song every morning on his show.

It was the Bee Gees – You Win Again.

As my playout song on Cape Talk I decided on ‘United we Stand’ by the Brotherhood of Man.’

For united we stand
Divided we fall
And if our backs should ever be against the wall
We’ll be together, together, you and I…

I was sanguine about the country in those days.

Write in and share the soundtrack of your life.

Four Christmases: I still have the brooch

Tags

christianity, christmas, Clifton, England, Italy, New Jersey, relationships, religion, South Africa

Jani Allan recounts spending Christmas in Italy, England, South Africa and the United States. 

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Parma, Italy

I once spent Christmas with a family in Parma, the city where Verdi was born. I still have a rosary of strung-together memories of that trip.

Parma is an ancient city, the origins of which date back to the Bronze Age. (The present-day Piazza Duomo is built on the necropolis constructed around 1500 BC.) It is thought that the city was most probably founded and named by the Etruscans.

As a History of Art student, I knew the Romanesque Parma Cathedral with its 16^th century fresco masterpiece by Antonio da Correggio. I knew, from pictures in my Janson History of Art, Giotto’s frescos in the Arena Chapel. I had analyzed and studied the composition of Da Vinci’s L’Ultima Cena. I knew the architecture of St Peter’s.

But nothing prepared me for the experience of actually seeing these marvels.

The profound richness and nobility of the human spirit is embodied in these churches, cathedrals, baptisteries and monuments

Why, to stand before Milano Cathedral or in St Peter’s is a spiritual in itself.

My boyfriend Mauro did not share my interest in Fine Art. He grew impatient with me as I stood speechlessly gazing at Giotto’s pale, quiet fresco cycle.

‘Che faccia! How much longer you-a want-a to look?” he demanded to know. Vieni qua! Let’s go! When-a you going to be feeneeshed to look?”

Italy was experiencing the lowest temperatures and record snowfalls in a century. Mauro bought me cashmere long-johns and sweaters and a Moncler hooded parka with real fur trimming. (I was pre-animal activist.) He bought me Italian leather boots and a doctor’s bag.

We drove to Milano in his Porsche. The snow fell like soft boulders.

Mauro started rolling a joint. He was expert at steering with his knees.  As he turned to offer a toke to his friend in the back seat, the car in front slammed on its brakes.

We smashed into the car in front of us and the car behind us smashed into us…the chain reaction caused a sixty car pile up.

“Che faccia! Now look what you made me do!” Mauro shouted at me.

**

Still, I was enchanted with Italy. Even the autogrills – the equivalent of corner cafes, is a gourmand’s paradise. There are shoulder-high pyramids of Baci chocolates, yard long bars of nut-studded chewy nougat, candelabras of salamis and hams, wagon-wheel sized cheese and barrels of fuschia-pink pistachios.

At twilight the streets wear their twinkling lights like bijou necklaces. Students in fruit-drop coloured anoraks gather in the piazza. Exquisitely-dressed women bicycle wearing full-length sables and post-box red borsalinos.

Italian families are the warmest and most caring in the world. The Italian mama lives to serve her family.

‘Have you remembered your gloves? Are you wearing rubber-soled boots? The pavements are slippery. Is that all you are going to eat?’

Those Christmastide mealtimes lasted for hours.

Parma is famous for its food and rich gastronomical tradition: Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses, stuffed pasta dishes like “tortelli d’erbetta” and “anolini in brodo”.

Mauro’s mother’s speciality was pasta with Fragno black truffle: black pearls from the Appenninis. Dom Perignon Champagne flowed. Endless jokes and stories were told. ‘Ti ricordi quando….e ti ricordi anche…”

“Do you remember when….do you remember when…?”

I laughed until I cried. I made a mental note to write in my diary ‘Laughter is the sound you hear most often in Italy.

On Christmas day Mauro’s mother gave me a gold brooch. It had been given to her by a family friend. The friend was Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia.  She showed me a photograph of Mauro sitting on his lap.

I still have the brooch.

**

Surrey, United Kingdom

Perhaps my most meaningful Christmas was when I was in the UK. I had joined a bible-study group and had become that most annoying of things – a reborn Christian. Reborn Christians frown at people as they stroll into the pub.

Don’t they know they should be filled with the Spirit, not spirits?

I had made firm friends with a handful of American women.  We met twice a week and studied Kay Arthur’s Precept Bible Study Courses.

The Names of God. Covenant. Revelation.

That year all the Christmas cards I sent were magnificent and biblical.

Wilton Diptych

The One of my favourite cards was a reproduction of the Wilton Diptych. I had seen the original in the National Gallery.

The small portable diptych of two hinged panels is an extremely rare survival of late Medieval religious panel painting. It was painted for King Richard II.

I sent these Christmas cards with tasteful little stickers saying “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

I made bobotie for the bible-study class.  (A Christmas miracle in itself, since I don’t cook. As someone once said, if God meant you to cook he would have given you aluminium hands.)

On Christmas Eve, I took Communion – for the first time as a Bible-believing Christian in a little church in Kingston Upon Thames.

The next morning I drove up to Holy Trinity Brompton.

I loved the worship band.

“I walk by faith

Each step by faith

To live by faith I put my trust in You.”

I especially liked the bit about “No weapon formed against me shall prosper. If my God is for me who can be against me”

After the service, we ate delicious little mince pies and said Merry Christmas a lot.

I was walking with the Lord. I was happy.

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Clifton, Cape Town, South Africa

2000.

I have never been a fan of Christmas. It’s the time that I traditionally molt and refuse my food. It’s family time and since I don’t have a family (well, a human one), it’s difficult to become excited about stuffing a turkey.

There is something especially trieste about Christmas in Clifton.

The fake holly and faux snow in the shop windows at the Waterfront are depressing. So is the brain-numbingly ghastly music in the supermarkets (“Baby its cold outside”? No it’s not!)

Even Christmas cards depress me.

All those cards of reindeer dancing in the snow with ‘Wishing you and yours a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year” and an illegible scrawl across the bottom.

“Looks like Glue Rowen? Geraldien Owen? Do I even know a Glue?”

Christmas is consumerism on steroids. ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry while stocks lasts. Order your genuine imitation leather saddle-stitched wallet and get two free! Special, never to be repeated offer. Please rush me your digital watch with thirty functions including an egg-times and billiard ball counter etc. etc.

Even the fashion magazines are annoying. Do people really wear those chryselephantine gowns?

What about those party-hearty revelers who claim to be whooping it up in St Tropez with Serge (Gainsbourg) or is it Plett?

Do they really?

I very much suspect that come Christmas morning they wake up in Woodstock suffering from a gigantic hangover from drinking too much Asti Spumanti.

Christmas should be cancelled in Clifton.

Victoria Road is like a parking lot. You can’t get in or out of your apartment. The beaches are jammed with foreigners (Gauteng) and the alcohol is kept in cages just when you need it most.

**

Lambertville, New Jersey, USA

We don’t talk about Christmas here. There’s a lot of Happy Holidaying. Children are brought up to believe in the cult of Santa.

When I decorated the restaurant I didn’t dare include anything that might offend the atheists.

The local Catholic Church put up a charming nativity scene last week.

Someone stole the baby Jesus.

Diary of a Christmas Decorator

Tags

christmas, decorating, my grilling life, restaurant

For those who think that Christmas decorations are a matter of lassoing a few strands of lights around a tree and fixing a plastic wreath with a red bow on the front door, don’t bother to read further.

***

Jim Hamilton used to be a Broadway set designer. These days he focuses more on architectural design – shopping centers, interiors of restaurants and homes of the scions of society – but for Jim, The Look is everything.

Some say he even hired a manager once because he liked his look – that of a funeral undertaker. I firmly believe he hired me because he liked my (then) look. At least, at the time, he told me that I looked like a fashion plate. (That was years ago. These days I have of course gone to seed with a vengeance. The bloom has long gone from the rose.)

It was in the middle of November that I bumped into him in the lane that leads to the restaurant.

He asked me if I would do the holiday decorating at his restaurant.

“Erm. Yesnaby” I said, undecidedly.

I was flattered that he would entrust me with such a gargantuan task, but I dreaded that I would displease him.

“I want them up by Thanksgiving,” he said fixing me with a rheumy eye.

I stuttered idiotically. Greatness has this effect on me. 

***

Monday 24^th November

A summit of decorators has been scheduled.

There is Pat, an elegant woman and lifelong friend of Jim’s who decorated the restaurant for years until it became toomuch.com.

Then there is a dishwasher who has come in from Trenton, a Vietnam vet who is a local character and a server who is seeking to make additional funds to finance the petrol for her trip to Tennessee for her daughter’s graduation.

The decorations have been stored in black bin liners in the Executive Chef’s garage.

Like so many sheathed dead bodies, they have to be lugged to his truck, transported to the restaurant and then hoisted off the truck and stored in the downstairs area of the office.

There are huge – eight foot tall – arches, wreaths, swaths and more arches – all wrapped in black plastic. There are countless boxes of faux foliage, holly, baubles and berries.  And there are tangles –  lianas – of Christmas lights.

While the dishwasher and the Vietnam vet position the arches in the Gallery, Cindy unravels the lights, ninety-nine percent of which don’t work.

Pat and I set out to find the amber light strands that Jim wants. We are unsuccessful. After considerable deliberation we settle on mixed cream and amber strings. Some $250 worth.

Six hour day.

Tuesday 25^th November

Vietnam vet is the electrical guy. He is also the guy with a transistor radio which he almost-tunes to a station that is playing heavy metal. There is lots of ACDC.

“I’ve seen these guys! I’ve seen them!” he bawls above the din. “They came out on stage like animals escaping a cage.”

I yearn for ‘Oh little town of Bethlehem,’ but I don’t want to annoy the Vet. He is temperamental and is likely to walk off the job.

Six hour day.

Wednesday 26^th November

Vietnam walks off the job. 

He has taken three days to complete the wiring on three arches.

Cindy and I resolved to finish the job ourselves.

It starts snowing. Not the charming filigree flakes but the large wet ones that cause the windscreen wipers of my little bug to jam.

I drive to Living Earth, a nursery and holiday accessory store that is filled with mind-wateringly beautiful stuff to make sure yours is a Christmas filled with rampant consumerism.

Plants, flowers, wreaths, poinsettias the size of dinner plates. I am in search of antique ribbons which they will make up into bows before your eyes.

When I pay the bill I understand why the locals call it

Living Wallet.

Jim’s exhortation to finish the decorating by Thanksgiving is not possible. There are five rooms and I am one person. Fiddling with fir will cut your fingertips. My thumbs are so cracked I can’t take my contacts out of my eyes.

Sunday 30th November 

I have persuaded Abigail to help me with the holly garlands. While she is on the ladder the new manager comes and informs her that he is a fashion designer and interior decorator and that he has done these things himself.

We are in the presence of greatness

It is day six of decorating. My crew has lost interest. Besides they have lives to attend to.

My Pomeranians are neglected as latchkey children and my editor’s emails go unanswered.

Friday 5th December 

Jim delivers the coup de main. He comes into the restaurant on Friday night and demands to see me.

He doesn’t like the white and amber lights! He wanted all amber! I explain to him that I couldn’t find amber lights in any local stores,

“If I find amber lights you’re in trouble,” he tells me.

My apartment has been bombed. I have been held up at gunpoint. Who knew that amber lights would be my coup de grâce?

Saturday 6th December

Jim calls me at the crack of nine to summon me to the restaurant to instruct me further on how to realize his vision.

I jot down frantic notes as we go from room to room.

More lights. Advent wreaths. Window boxes. A Christmas tree outside that has to be lit…

He makes quick drawings of The Look of the window boxes and The Look of the topiary that needs to be planted in the urns outside the front door.

People’s lives are going on but I am in stasis with the decorating saga. Like writing a book, it started out as an adventure, and then became a mistress and finally is a card-carrying tyrant.

Every morning another box from Amazon.com thuds on my doorstep. Every day I shuttled to and from Finkles Hardware store buying extension cords, staple guns (to disguise the extension cords), hammers and nails.

On Wednesday morning I go to Jim’s atelier to meet with Charles Tiffany who will install a chandelier in the resto Delaware Room.

“Do you want ribbons or garlands on the chandelier” I ask.

“Both!”

I am tasked to buy another Christmas tree for the Garden Room.

I started this project as optimistic as someone who starts a crossword puzzle with a fountain pen. Now I am faltering. I ask Jim if his phone can receive pictures. I don’t want to make a mistake and buy the wrong tree.

He waves me aside impatiently.

“Go and buy a fu!@#ng tree! How hard can it be?”

I drive to Flemington. It is perilous driving a car that has the horse power of a perambulator. As each SUV and Hummer roars past me, my little bug feels as though it is about to wobble off the road.

There are no suitable trees at Michaels or Home Depot or any of the other three places that I try.

I have to call in a favour from my mortgage broker friend. He comes to fetch me in his wife’s Audi SUV. I (again) go to Bountiful Acres. It’s like an FAO Schwartz for Christmas decorators. Fake trees run at about $300.

“Get a real one,” Tim urges me.

I have never understood the annual American ritual of tree slaughtering, but in the interests of the man whose taste I admire above all, we join the puffy-jacketed throng milling around in the dark looking for an appropriately sized and shaped tree.

We drag the tree into the restaurant. I text waiter Steven saying “Please put the tree in water or the blood will be on your apron.”

Steven texts back:

“I won’t become part of your Christmas nightmare.”

Next day Jim looks at the tree.

“Let’s forget about the tree. I’ll take this one down to the shore.”

(He has a house at the shore.)

Finally on Sunday morning,  Pearl Harbor Day, Jed and Kevin, my two Christmas elves, taking pity on my solitary muling, come and perch on ladders and rewire the arches so that they have only amber lighting. They also lasso lights on the Christmas tree.

(Another helper had started putting the lights on the tree from the bottom up. “Brain dead,” explains Jim.)

Blackpool comes to Lambertville.

My futile search for meaning, unity and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world, devoid of God and eternal truths or value continues…

Maleness is wonderful, really, isn’t it honey? Perfect denial of reality.

Tags

erica jong, Gender, Men, restaurant week, Women

And so, praise the Lord, another Restaurant Week has come to a close. Restaurant Week is the week when most of the regulars stay well away and people we have never seen and may never see again descend on the restaurant. Why not?

A mere $29.95 (tax and gratuity additional) will get you a three-course meal at a restaurant that you would traditionally reserve for a special occasion. Like announcing you want to consciously uncouple. Or propose marriage.

Last week on Monday night a female co-worker – let’s call her Miss Bunny – and I served about 50 people. No hostess, no bus, just the pair of us. (Sounds like a Cole Porter song right there, I know).

Miss Bunny and I hardly needed to speak to each other. We anticipated each other’s needs. Just a tip of the head and I knew that she wanted me to finish clearing table eleven. I reached for the olive oil and found she had already herbed a little ramekin for me.

We worked together in focused silence speaking an unspoken language of co-operation and mutual support.

The restaurant was as busy as an oven at Christmas.

At the end of the night we plopped down, exhausted but strangely elated.

“V-power!” said Miss B. “V-power!” I agreed, swigging my split of champoo.

When women work together in high-stress situations, there is no yelling, no cursing, no bullying and pushing.

The difference between men and women is a topic as old as dirt.

Monday night’s tiny triumph got me thinking on it – and forgive me if I repeat myself – how many women do you know who have committed psychological rape?

How many women do you know who haven’t been the victim of a metaphoric rape? Rape by phony promises. Rape by betrayal. Rape by fraud.

There are men servers I work with – and don’t get me wrong I love them dearly (well that’s what we all say before delivering a coup de grâce, isn’t it?) see life as a contest in which they are constantly challenged and must perform to avoid the risk of appearing to be what they perceive to be weak.

The female servers will carry two cups and a creamer. The male servers will stack a ziggurat of coffee cups and yell “Out of my way! Coffee coming through!” Efficient, yes, but in my reference, very dim.

Men seem to see life in a world where they feel powerful by acting in opposition to others.

Why else would a former Marine (don’t get me wrong, I love him dearly) karate chop the air in close proximity to hot plates I am carrying?

Why else do they flick the napkin off your shoulder? Why else do they walk slowly in front of you when you are hurrying?

Why do they snigger triumphantly when you don’t have the strength in your wrists to carry three heavy platters of food? In short, why aren’t they helpful like women?

Men are never as bossy as when they are wearing aprons.

It is said that born rebels who defy society are not oblivious of it, but hypersensitive to it.

Men who defy authority see it as a way of asserting themselves and refusing to accept the subordinate i.e. law-abiding position.

Even when men are relaxing, their machismo is never off-duty. They’re always regaling you with stories about contest, how they defied authority and how they will sort out so and so if he dares darken their door again etc. etc. The stories about their wives are usually told in a whiney voice. “So my wife said to me, who is going to put up the chicken coop, honey?”

Women’s anecdotes tend to reveal how bad they felt when they’ve violated community values.

“I felt so bad, I didn’t realize it was a formal occasion and I turned up in jeans!”

Some sociologists believe that for a woman, the community is the source of power. Life is a struggle against the danger of being cut off from their community.

Men, on the other hand, have an overweening need to feel independent (even if in reality they couldn’t exist without Her Indoors serving him supper and washing his socks).

Empirical studies have shown that in the work arena women make infinitely better managers. Their managerial style is more democratic. They are likely to consult others and involve employees in decision-making. Women prefer to maintain an atmosphere of community, rather than an autocratic hierarchy.

Of course women get ripped off more often and slagged off more often and disobeyed more often. The reason is easy to explain. It is easy to rip-off someone who is avoiding a confrontational stance.

Success, for women, usually means getting along with everybody. For this reason they lay themselves open to being taken advantage of by avoiding confrontation.

Even the meaning of conflict and the means that seem natural to deal with it are fundamentally different for men and women.

Men and women don’t only play by different rules. They play different games. What game is it that makes a male server belch in a female server’s face?

A few weeks ago, I timidly asked the acting manager if we were all in. I pointed out that I was the low man on the totem pole. I was yelled at as though I were a Standard Three pupil although I have more degrees than a thermometer and I have interviewed princes and kings.

When the same question was asked of the same acting manager by a male server, the male server was rewarded with an extra table. Either the acting manager has animus towards me in which case he is not being fair, or, the male server’s demands are taken more seriously than my timid request.

When I was in the newsrooms in London there wasn’t such drama.

In the newsrooms I have had female news editors that had grit and guts and held their own in what was then, a predominately male-dominated world.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course I love all my co-workers dearly.

But clearly, men and women speak not different dialects, but different genderlects.

Men talk to preserve their independence (so-called) and assert their status in the hierarchical order. Thus they will tell you how they red-flagged someone in the bar; how they told a customer there was nothing wrong with the pork chop; how they challenged the State Trooper who pulled them over etc. etc.

Women are not that bothered about how they appear. They don’t mind self-deprecating humour. They aren’t flexing their sociological muscles. They will say “I think that woman on fourteen hates me!”

(Most male servers automatically think that all the customers they serve are charmed or a little in love with them.)

Then there’s the thorny issue of cash.

For men, possession of money is power, sexual prowess even. Why else would the male servers chant “I made more money than yoo-oo tonight. Just want you to know I made more than you-oo.”

Doesn’t this smack of ‘I’m the king of the castle’ playground behavior?

For women – or for this one at any rate – money simply represents security and not being dependent on others. When a female server gets a bad tip she will agonize about it. “I thought they were happy. I know the sweetbreads took a long time to come out,” etc. etc.

When a man gets a bad tip the response is usually: “Jerk!”

The key issue for men is retaining their independence (or the illusion of it).

How many women have been left in the wake of a man who just wanted to be free? When a man wants to be free he wants freedom from obligation, the relief of feeling claustrophobic and freedom from responsibilities. These are all regressive reasons, characteristic of infantile thinking.

When women discuss freedom, they mean not having to worry about their husband’s dinner or who is going to car pool to yoga.

Generally I’m with Erica Jong on this one.

Maleness is wonderful, really, isn’t it honey? Perfect denial of reality.

Jani writes to Melissa Bachman

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Melissa Bachman

Dear Melissa,

I have to hand it to you.

That pic of you sitting gloating triumphantly behind the huge male lion you killed has gone viral.

I’m not saying that people aren’t admiring your big strong teeth or even your big strong breast implants.

But your timing was all kinds of special. A week after we hear that the western black rhino is officially extinct, you post this picture of yourself on all your social media sites. Now you are front page news in many countries. Even the comedian Ricky Gervais has weighed in. He thinks you are a great hunt. Typo.

When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. What then do we call a person who shoots a wild animal?

Not for food, or even for their pelt. Just for pleasure.

Help me on this. I want to understand what frisson of pleasure do you get when you see a creature toppling to its knees? Which do you prefer? A crocodile? Or a giant bear? Which turns you on more? Heaven knows you have killed enough species to be an expert.

Do you have any feelings at all? Apart from vanity, that is.

I see from all your pictures, you wouldn’t dream of going on a hunt without heavily mascara-ed eyelashes, a piece of statement jewellery, your glossy hair, neatly braided…

Perhaps that adds to the revulsion people feel when looking at you with your ‘trophies.’ Because you see, sweetie, equality of the sexes, like Communism, is great on paper. In reality it is something else. Biologically a woman is the giver of life.

When she takes life it is an aberration. When she takes life for fun it is perverse.

Your utter disregard for animals and nature is breath-taking.

I read that you desired to kill an adult male lion as it is the most sought-after trophy by wealthy foreign hunters.

The Maroi ‘Conservancy’ gang – Hannes, Laurens and Julious (sic), did your bidding and imported a lion to the area so that you could kill it. I know that you know that this is called canned hunting.

Trophy hunting is an obscenity beyond the obvious one. Trophy hunting for lion is killing healthy members of an imperiled species.

Do you know or even care that when an adult male lion is killed, the destabilization of that lion’s pride can lead to more lion deaths as outside males compete to take over the pride? Read National Geographic and learn a few things. I know I did.

Once a new male is in the dominant position, he will often kill the cubs sired by the pride’s previous leader, resulting in the loss of an entire lion generation within the pride.

Trophy hunting by definition is counter-evolutionary. It is based on selectively taking the large, robust, and healthy males from a population for a hunter’s trophy room.

These are the same crucial individuals that in a natural system would live long, full lives, protecting their mates and cubs and contributing their genes to future generations.

See why everyone thinks you are bloodless, callous and recidivist?

Your grinning happily behind a dead lion has shocked people in a country that is almost unshockable.

In South Africa rape and murder are commonplace. Let’s be more explicit. Baby rapes are prevalent. But it took your narcissistic exploits to energize a country that is compassion-fatigued.

Amid the sad and irritating news which leaves the populace numbed by your career of legalized poaching – murdering – animals touched raw nerve ends. Hunting for sport is bloody and antiquated.

In a mere four days the Stop Melissa Bachman Facebook page has had over 95,000 hits.

You awakened a vast tribe of anti-hunters who are intent on urging the international animal protection community to muster support for the plight of animals and the environment.

For that I thank you.

The website of the Maroi Conservancy – your enablers – has crashed.

When the site was up there was some feeble defense along the lines of ‘providing employment to the locals’ and ‘conservation’.

Since when does killing an almost endangered species count as ‘conservation?’ You’ve been drinking too many Klipdrifs and coke with the manne.

The money that does come into Africa from hunting pales in comparison to the billions and billions generated from tourists who come just to watch wildlife.

According to National Geographic, despite the claims that trophy hunting brings millions of dollars in revenue to local people in otherwise poor communities, there is no proof of this.

Even pro-hunting organizations like the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation have reported that only 3 percent of revenue from trophy hunting ever makes it to the communities affected by hunting.

National Geographic published a story in which Jeff Flocken, the North American director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare wrote; The United States government is considering whether to add lions to the list of species protected by the Endangered Species Act. Such protection would ban the importation of dead trophy lions into the U.S.

A recent study led by a scientist from Duke University showed that as few as 32,000 lions are left. Approximately 600 lions are killed every year on trophy hunts – 80% are killed by Americans.

A few years ago I read about a South African woman who was attacked by a male ostrich. She engaged it in a fight to the death with her bare hands and managed to strangle it. An ostrich has a kick stronger than a mule and their toe-nails are sharper than a serpent’s tooth. She was knocked to the ground several times and suffered a couple of broken ribs and a punctured lung. Perhaps the whole of the human race would have celebrated your “victory” if you had been attacked by the male lion and managed to kill it with your bare hands.

I don’t know if you have ever heard of a bloke called Mahatma Gandhi. I don’t think his name comes up a great deal in the bomas you hang out in after a good day of killing. He once said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Given this premise I am afraid you and your animal killing chums are egregious, recidivist and morally bankrupt.

Yours etc. Jani

P.S. Isn’t it deeply ironic that “Melissa” means honey and sweet?

ends



Read Jani Allan’s column on rhino poaching here

On Friendship

I think my Pomeranians have taught me much about friendship.

After a gruelling shift I walk down the lane in the violin case dark to my little apartment. My footsteps quicken. I peep through the window and there they are, waiting expectantly.

They are greeted in order of seniority. Breeze (aka Tallulah Wiggles), whirls like a top spins waiting to be picked up. China hasn’t quite mastered the full-spin so she does a ballerina three-quarter turn.

Molly, agitated with delight, runs into the other room and picks up a toy, squeaking it excitedly. She promenades around the apartment, beeping it while I prepare their late-night supper

After half an hour in the company of my pups – interesting how God is dog spelled backward – the cares of the day boil down to sediment. Often times I will look up from my computer keyboard or a book to see Breeze gazing at me with the consummate devotion of a Believer.

I am so humbled by her adoration that it makes me a better self to be. Those who know me will testify that I am the best Pom Mom in the world. While I wear schmattas from the Gap, my little girls have real shearling coats. At night, when the last tweet has been sent, the peace plant has been spoken to and I am about to switch off my bedside light, I look at the three small furry sleeping soundly on their designated areas on the bed, and I think my life is as beautiful as a Beethoven Sonata.

I may have made questionable judgements about those I thought were friends. I have, in main had rotten luck with men. But my pups fill me with a kind of constant ecstasy. Everything they do amuse, entertains or comforts me. How many people can you say that about?

In my self-imposed exile in America the silence from some of my soi-disant friends has been deafening.

Of course there have been rare exceptions. One friend and her daughter came to see me in America. They arrived shortly after 8.am on 9/11. As they drove across the Verrazano Bridge in New York they saw the Twin Towers collapsing. We will be forever friends – even if months go by without us speaking.

I am blessed to have a friend in Missouri. We speak three or four times a day. She is the remote witness to my life. As unselfish as the wind, she listens to the trivial details of my life and we laugh together. She is a friend for all seasons. My young friend (now a short gallop away from Blenheim Palace) continues to surprise me with his intuition and generosity.

Great friendships don’t happen in flashes. They ignite slowly and burn steadily until a great fire of warmth wraps you in its cloak.

Perhaps I have erred in my choice of friends because anyone can be a friend when you are at the top of your game and you can provide food and drink and amusing banter.

It is easy to find people who will kill time with you.

The trick, I think, is to find those who wish to live time with you.

On Monday night I took the Poms to my friends Dee and her husband. The plan was to let the pups run in Yang Chin meadow. Four Temple dogs and three poms… It was a sight to warm any dog-lover’s heart. We drank champagne at the fireside and Dee played the harp.

Later, much later, on arrival home, I thought I had lost China. Immediately I felt like a switchboard with all my nerves on Emergency Alert.

I raced up and down the sleeping streets calling her name. China! China! Chahooey! Chahooey!

Panic-stricken, I called Dee. I knew that although night’s shutter board was still down, she would hop in her car and help me search for my child. Now THAT’S a friend.

In the end, China was found sitting placidly between the screen door and the wooden door. Of course we use the term ‘friend’ loosely. I have friends with whom I natter happily but would never dream of calling if I was in real trouble. It would be an imposition.

I have ‘’first responder friends’’ – those who are on speed-dial for when I have to be dragged to hospital.

I have a friend in Australia who has been my confidante for more than thirty years. At the outset of our friendship, I fancied I was something of a mentor to him. As the years passed the roles have reversed entirely. Although considerably my junior, now it is to him I turn for life-advice. It is his email addie that I search for and press send when I have good news.

I haven’t seen him since he lived in the marvelous villa in Bantry Bay and I lived in an apartment the size of a throat lozenge in Clifton.

But I know that when I see him we will take up like a piece of knitting those circumstances forced us to lay aside. Every stitch will be in place. We will remember the intricate pattern and our souls will continue to knit together.

If I were to draw up a manifesto on the rules of friendship it would start as follows:
1. Your friend is for your growth and for the deepening of your spirit.

2. If your friend intentionally damages your spirit this friend will also coil around your limbs and crush you.

3. Friendship is about sharing – laughter, pleasures and the little things because in the little things, ‘‘the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

Kahlil Gibran wrote one of the best explanations of friendship ever.

He wrote

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger.

And you seek him for peace.

ends

You can also read this blog at janiallan.com

Birthday Blues

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Birthday

I have always thought that making a fuss of your birthday is in poor taste. Why on earth would anyone be interested in the day you were born? Working in the restaurant I have come to recognise the kind of people who believe that their birthday is a special day – for everyone.

One is expected to smile benignly when told that ‘It’s Courtney’s birthday!’ (They’re all called Courtney.) One has to help festoon the table with hideous silver balloons. One trips over mountains of expensive-looking presents that are piled up in the passageway to the table. One tactfully tries to move the presents so that one can pour the wine.

Finally Courtney arrives looking ravishing. She is wearing the kind of Jessica Simpson shoes that are meant to be looked at not walked in. She is displaying acres of tanned, healthy skin and her hair, freshly $400 Keratined, looks like a commercial. When it’s time for dessert, one has to retrieve a huge hideous cake with loopy letters saying ‘Haffy Birfday Courtney’ from the walk-in. The cake is invariably tres leches with rococo cream icing and has to be cut into 43 slices. Courtney doesn’t eat a bite. You stay thin either by starving or waiting tables. In her case it is the former. All of which made me remember other birthdays in other countries.

My best birthday was when I was ten. I was given a small black pony. My heartbeat in my small chest was like the wings of a bird. Tears sprang to my eyes when I saw him in the paddock, tugging at the grass. I put my ear next to his while he drank water and heard the gulp gulp as it slid down his throat and thought that I would die of happiness. I brushed him with a brand new dandy brush until my miniature spaghetti arms were limp. When my mother refused to buy a fly sheet, I cut up a green candlewick bedspread and stitched a rug for him on my dolls sewing machine.

After school there was a little party with paper cups and chains and picture-hat biscuits. They were Marie biscuits with marshmallows in the center and pretty icing. As was the tradition in those days, all the little girls attending the party brought small gifts that were laid out on my bed. Handkerchiefs, Lakeland coloured pencils and Sharps toffees in a tin with a kitten on it. Time passed. I am twenty one. I am wearing a fabulous chamois dress and I am getting engaged to a chap called Roddy. We decided to get engaged on my birthday. Robert Hodgins, my painting lecturer from Wits is there. The party is to be held at a farmhouse near by. Unfortunately, while Roddy and his friend are trying are to burn fire breaks up the driveway so that they can put candles in paper bags on either side, a fierce wind blows up and flames from the fire engulf part of the house. The image of the farm hands running out of the house carrying furniture has never left me.

I am 29. I am at the St Geran in Mauritius. I am surrounded by strangers who have become instant friends – just add Indian Ocean. People called Gaetan are wishing me happy birsday. (sic) I am 30. My office at the Sunday Times is so filled with flowers it looks like a florist shop. Or a funeral parlour. My success is measured by how large the arrangements of St Joseph’s lilies are.

Five years later the beat is still going on. I am collected from my apartment by in a limo. My escort calls the radio station as asks the DJ to play ‘Give me All Night’ by Carly Simon, because, he says ‘That’s how long it is going to take to celebrate my birthday. My friend Barbara has arranged a party for me at a chic supper club. I am wearing Errol Arendz and high heels.

More time passes. I am in London on my 40th birthday. Alone. I walk around Hampton Court Palace alone and linger in Henry VIII’s Chapel Royal. I am alone but not lonely. Something in the spiritus loci resonates with me. I commune with the ghosts of the great writers who lived on this sceptred isle. I meander down the Long Water, the stretch which Henry created specifically so that barges coming from Chelsea would have a glorious first view of the Palace as they arrived.

Pootling around Surrey I come across a village – well, its only a couple of hamlets – called Friday Street. Nearby is the Silent Pool. It is said that Guinevere was bathing in it when some knights came upon her. She submerged herself to avoid detection and since then the pool has remained without a ripple…. I explore my amazement at this green and pleasant land. Everything pleases me. Even the fact that the local Hedgehog Hospital is called Miss Tiggywinkles, after the Beatrix Potter character. But that was England.

Usually birthdays are a time of melancholy. They remind one of one’s mortality and what one has yet to achieve… The wounds which haven’t yet healed and that which is no longer within one’s reach…

My memory is indeed a misty landscape in which shrubs of the heather of recollection crop up from time to time. At times there are memory banks of lilac heather, at times, sparse, spiky fingers of memory-nightmares that poke through my gauze-thin skin.

These days the only family I have are three girls, who have a leg at each corner. How does one celebrate when one is a stranger in a strange land? My first year in America was the fateful 9/11/2001. At first it was something of a relief to have a reason not to celebrate, but gradually, as I became, for better or worse, part of a small Norman Rockwell community, my birthday was allowed to resurface.

Last year there was a garden party in the park-like surroundings of a friend’s home. This year I spend most of the day being interviewed by a journo from Boston. We meet with one of my best friends whose two little boys have my heart captive. The five year old gives me rosemary and a spray of foliage from the garden. An Elizabeth Lock ring wouldn’t have brought me any more joy.

I get dressed up in a tulle skirt and combat boots (to keep it real). About ten of my friends have gathered at a local restaurant. Veuve Clicquot does indeed flow and yes, there is even a ridiculously wonderful champagne cake which Abby Wabby has baked. I shriek and giggle and blow out the candles. For a few hours I turn into Courtney! Why, there is even a present table. Later we wander through the deserted streets of the village singing at the tops of our lungs. There was a small incident when Matteo, the beautiful, leaned against a picket fence which promptly collapsed. But that’s a detail. I write this demi-blog, dear readers, because I have turned (yet another) corner in my life. In these sunlit uplands, I am learning that if you are with people who feel affection for you its OK to admit it’s your birthday. In fact it IS cause for celebration.

Praise the Lord and pass the Pommery.