Review of Slumdog Millionaire

Sukhdev Sandhu calls it ‘a hugely important film in contemporary cinema.’ How do I take this film seriously, when in spite of all its merits, it fails utterly when it comes to female casting?

The reviewer Kevin Buist suggests that Danny Boyle couldn't decide whether to ask his actors to be realistic, or overly theatrical, as the film is a homage to Bollywood. It is one of those strange entities, a realistic homage to Bollywood. So I can take it for what it is, enjoy the film, and then dismiss it from my mind. But the thing is, this film is being compared to Charles Dickens novels, and as being in the cusp between art and commerce. So people are taking this film seriously. So I’ve to say, I’m sorry, but would you sit up and take notice of the women? I mean, really look at them, and look at the men.

The entire male cast look realistic. Not one of them could be mistaken for Tom Cruise or Amitabh Bacchan (expect maybe the guy who plays the Beggarmaster). But the female actors? Jamal’s slum-mother looks like she walked off from the cover of a fashion magazine. Well-shaped eyebrows, ethereal beauty and slim frame (which looks achieved by diet, rather than lack of nutrition). Hey, whatdyaknow, she looks like some fashion model turned actor. Jamal’s girlfriend, the slum-girl who becomes a teenage prostitute? She could be the twin of the woman who plays the mother, if the length of their pouts and silkiness of skin are to go by. And their similarity of features, I’m sure, has not occured because of the Oedipal reading the director wants critics to do from the text of the film.

I’m not taking issue with the utter passivity of the female roles in this film. I acknowledge that this is a male-film made in a male-world by men. But this is the west, and we do not live in a pre-feminist world like most of India does, so hey Danny Boyle and gang, please pull your socks up and pay attention. I cannot take the character of Latika seriously in the film because, she is a) a simpering, vapid siren who belongs on a catwalk and b) she has no agency.

I did say I wasn’t taking up the issue of female passivity, but really, I lied. The final scene where Jamal’s brother Salim completely goes out of character and urges Latika to run away, giving her his phone, and immolates himself in a bathtub full of money (!!), really, it was Latika who should have grabbed the car keys, kneed the mafia boss in the groin, and made off with Salim’s phone. Salim was born mean and selfish, and so he should have remained. And if Latika had shown even that little bit of spunk, I’d have forgiven her ethereal looks and general vapidness.

And no, I’m neither a lesbian nor too ugly to get the guys.

Are you from Indias

Are you from India?
No.
You look like someone I know from India.
Not me.
You’re not from India?
No.
Where you from?
Jupiter.
Are you from Bangladesh?
No.
You look like Pakistan-Bangladesh. Asian.
I’m not.
Where are you from?
From here?
Oh from here? England?
Yes.
You study here?
No.
Is this floor one?
No. The third.
-cling-

Queen Elizabeth Hall
the tiger lillies & justin bond
Sinderella
Thursday 18 December 2008 - Saturday 20 December 2008
Review.
Where’s the story?

There were many things to enjoy and appreciate about the performance. The last time I was in Queen Elizabeth hall was for a piano concerto, and before that, a book reading by Salman Rushdie. It felt as though the sacred space (books and classical music, are closest I come to feeling religious) was profaned, and so delightfully. Men in drag are always fun, profanities release you from the dull chains of ‘decency’ in the social sphere, and the music: dark cabaret and operatic falsetto, was brilliant.
The first song set up the scene: Cinderella the crack whore, controlled and pimped by her evil stepmother and Cinderella’s expectation to meet and be rescued by a Prince Charmer, a famous rap artist. The next few songs, tell about Cinderella’s dead mother who was also a whore, more about the evil stepmother, and Cinderrella’s aspirations and dreams and monologues à la vagina. Cinderella also comes and demonstrates to a number of male audience members what her job entails. OK… then what? Then a song titled Evil, about the …er.. stepmother.. and then, lots of cavorting in the aisles and on audience (all male) laps, peruading them call the stepmother ‘evil cunt’. At some point, the stepmother’s skirt and wig unravel and Cinderella exhorts the audience to call her ‘ugly cunt’; this the men do enthusiastically. After the interval, there’s a song called, wait for it…. yes, you’ve guessed it: ‘You’re Evil.’ In Sinderella’s words, one may ask, ‘Where’s the fucking story, you cunts?’
It is mentioned in passing by Cinderella in one of her songs about what a typical crackwhore she is, that Prince Charmer, after few weeks of a-courting Rella, has fallen prey to and died of cancer, just like her mother. Apart from the technical failing of, hmm, going nowhere with the fairytale (nevermind that there was so subversion of the story, there was simply no story, reconstructed or unreconstructed), there are many aspects of this show that I found disturbing. What the audience seemed to enjoy most were the profanities. Every time there was a ‘fucking’ or ‘cunt’ or ‘blowjob’ accompanied by Cinderalla’s ‘interactions’ with the audience (mostly male), there was lots of laughter and clapping. The show was nought but men in drag constructing and donning female psyches, and with the male and some female audience’s help, sundering, eviscerating them. ‘I want to pour poison into your cunt,’ sings Cinderella to her stepmother. Bottomline is, it was drag misogyny masquerading as ‘alternative’ and performed for the entertainment of male and female misogynists. There is such a thing as misogyny among women, and it was exhibited by women in the audience, thankfully, only a few, standing and clapping at key moments of the performance. They might well have been applauding the comedy or the music, or the sheer outrageousness of the show which is refreshing after a year of behaving well and ‘normal’, but I consider it misogyny, even when it isn’t active or passive hatred of women, but the choice to be ignorant of it when it is expressed by someone else.
There was a song sung by the original trio in the group, while Cinderalla stepped out to ‘change’. It was the best five minutes of the performance. They should do more of the dark, operatic songs with unusual pauses and run riot with the melancholic drag queen in surreal setting motif. To sum it up, if you want to retell/reinterpret Cinderella, please get beyond the first act.

Belle De Jour Meets Bridget Jones

Take That, Chick-lit Bitches!

Choice extracts from the Diary of Felicity Arnold

Saturday, 21/04/07
Smoked my last ciggie. I'm in fathoms-deep shit. Can't work because my mind is crawling with feelings for the one guy who is utterly wrong for me. He is fat, obnoxious, married and catholic, and morally, on the other side of the realm from me. When we hug, his belly comes between the top half of my body and him. Now I'm so emotionally entangled. The thing began as pity for poor bloke obsessed with me. Investigating the pity, I found it was partly amusement, sadistic amusement in watching him wriggle, and partly self-congratulatory, sychopant-seeking revelry in hearing him pour out his adoration for me. Now he's eaten part of my brain and left a gaping need it seems only he can fill. I spent an entire day moping in pyjamas, hurrying in the bathroom lest I miss his call. He's been calling everyday lately. But of course, he didn't call today. Had tons to do which I didn't. Worse, he's having a baby anytime now. The wife's probably in labour as I speak. God I miss the bastard.

(a little later)

Still no phonecall. Need to get out of this. I'm still pretty sure all he wants is to fuck me; that's how it started. He yearns to bone anything remotely resembling a pussy on legs, as a rule. Why would it be different now? Sharing a few jokes is tops but when it comes to brass tacks, all he wants is a rough and tumble in the sack. Grabs me to cop a feel everytime I'm too near him, and I'm the type to let him; now it's affected my brain. And EVEN if he does harbour real feelings for me, which, he says he does, but I'm doubtful of, there's no way he's gonna shake up his comfy home atmosphere, with all his moneyed crazy as coots cath. circle of friends who are crawling with kids and his utterly complacent wife who thinks (I know, I know, a bit judgemental of me) a husband is a necessary tool to help one produce chidren (the lord's little blessings), and sex is a bitter grease to necessitate the process. Aw... why wouldn't he call?

Friday, 27/04/07
That was last saturday.
Monday - I sat on his lap in 'our' cafe and confessed I'd missed him over the weekend. Let him drag me to my place and curled up in bed with his erection nestling against me and his love words in my ears.

Tuesday - Dropped keys down to him early morn, kissed him, rolled on top of him and said, let's have sex and get this whole nonsense out of the way. He refused to fuck; said 'I've waited one and a half years not for a quick fuck. I want the whole deal. Mistress. Proper. Stayed in bed four hours. Chatted online while attempting to do office hours, went to his office around 5.30, almost fucked standing up (bled a little), stayed till 9.30.

Thursday - Four hours in bed again. Then online chat. Then he came for a quick cuddle before he left home to wife, gave me four-five lovely old books he'd bought at this book stall on ----. Too short a while. I sent 'xx' as a text. then I texted 'It's been three hours since you left, and I'm still wet. x.' The wife read it. He told her (I'm listed as Dave) 'I had a water fight with this guy called Dave, and he's a bit gay is why the x.' I also left teeth marks on his shoulder - very distinct. He stopped at his garage before entering house and hit himself with a spanner type thing and made it into a big industrial type injury to cover the teeth marks. Said to me, 'Actually gpt sympathy from the wife. Tee hee.'

Friday - Today. Went to meet P--- for goodbye drinks, as she's leaving to Australia. He came in, and I had to pretend he was the same and I was the same and nothing has changed between us before everyone. I felt sick. He slipped out when I was saying goodbye to her and told me to come up to his office for a hug, but his colleague was standing at the entrance and I was feeling funny already so I said I had to go and left.
Feel sick.
He called and I told him and he said, Can I see you monday and I said I don't know and he said I won't give you a choice, I'll just tell you I'll see you monday. Then I texted 'You left the untreated corn saplings in proof 4 acetate instead of 3. Call me if you want it switched.'

08/08/08 8 months 4 days

What do I lose if I lose him?

I'd lose everything and nothing. Because he is everything, but so am I.

ps- Need to talk less and kiss more.

Real Indian Writing?

A House For Mr Biswas
By V.S. Naipaul

I’ve always been uncomfortable with most of ‘Indian English’ fiction that stagger the shelves. Even if one or two of the writers actually live in India, and have not been living in England or the US since their Oxbridge-Harvard days, they are from the upper echelons of Indian society, the super-sophisticated, westernised, English-speaking cream, and their fiction is everything they are. http://www.pugmarks.com/week/writers.htm Half of them went to St Stephens (the Indian Eton) and on to oxbridge.

I did not imagine that Naipaul, of all people, Trinidadian, only Indian twice removed, would portray a world and people I know intimately. The vast Indian middle class, people with their eyes to the west but feet firmly entangled in a history and culture which they view with myopic eyes, and with little understanding. The people in Naipaul’s early novels (of the mid twentieth century) are the family I’ve grown up with.

Mid to upper caste, not necessarily Brahmin, lower-middle class to middle class people, who slave themselves to educate their sons. Tellingly characterised, is their pride in being old-fashioned juxtaposed with their pride in their children holding new-fangled views. Says Mrs Tulsi in pg 211 about her son disagreeing with her views: ‘…Owad is going to college, reading and learning all the time. And I am very old-fashioned.’ She spoke with pride in Owad and pride in her old-fasionedness.’

Shama, Mr B’s wife, holds her ‘bureau’ close to her heart, a piece of steel furniture with a secret locker that I’m intimately acquainted with, as it travelled many one bedroom tenements with my parents and me. The one steel bureau (Godrej most preferred) that comes with the dowry and lasts an entire lifetime, how did it survive the boat to Africa and then all the way to Trinidad?

The sullenness that characterises familial relationships, boy am I familiar with that. I come from a people that only smile at strangers, because they feel warm and friendly only with strangers, for whom they throw open their doors and hearts. With family, one is usually sullen. Like Mr B’s sister Dehuti, whose sullenness holds no meaning, and is an attitude fixed by habit, simplifying relationships (pg 326)

School. I remember how strange and exciting my English lessons used to be, how exotic the idea of playing pranks and sharing picnics. In our school, there simply was no time for play. Bullies did not exist because of the limited time we spent in the play fields unsupervised. I suffered school just like Mr B’s son Anand, who realises that ‘Pranks’ were only permitted in English Composition. (pg 403). Like Anand, we had to endure ritual before every exam (He was given many blotters, many pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler and two erasers, one for pencil, one for ink. Shama, braving his anger, sprinkled his shirt with lavender water when he wasn’t looking. She put a dry lime in his pocket to cut bad luck) pg 496.

While by no means can I call Naipaul's writing, Real Indian Writing, as, of course, India is one country characterised by its resistance to be characterised, whose identity is its many identities, whose voice is its plurality. Naipaul's diasporic Indians are the most real for me; these are the people, the masses, that masala-movies were originally made for; these are the conservative, ever-suspicious, comical Indians with hearty sullenness, who indulge in everyday melodrama to survive the hammering mundanity of their ration-shop-lives.

I belong now to a new caste (separate from the society from which it has been released, pg 604), created by the very education for which my parents have slaved, like Naipaul’s parents slaved. I can see why Naipaul has been consistently famous for being bitter and twisted, and terrible at relationships. Patrick French’s excellent biography attempts to throw light on him, and as French says, how hard and how terrible it must be for Naipaul to have struggled desperately to move from the margin to the centre, and I imagine, how excruciating to find himself viewing the oppressed, his own people, through the eyes of the oppressor, to whose side he’s crossed? (Emanuel Litvinoff)

Jazz Black

On me your voice unfolds
Like they say love should
-anon

Jazz black
A Thunderstorm in eyebrows
held tender as at twilight the weeping skies
The jangle and ka-boom of a canon stride
The hunger in your face
As you stare at me
As you stare at yourself
The mountain god made you
With a wisp of a shadow
Mixed with rain drenched earth
The soul of a kite
And shoulders of a pragmatist
Music in your veins
That pulse through to your heart
As this songbird
Perches on you
Shimmering wings that flew
For several summers
South into your arms

Afternoon After

A still grey afternoon of sombre truck
Desiccates the spirit within
That gossamer thing
Suppressed under layers of heaviness
Of successive siestas
Through yawns emptying delight
Freshness of the morning
Given way to optimism
Of clear eyes unclouded by dreams
Of long nights on itchy mattresses
By the side of moist warm bodies
Of stale lovers

Who in evening glow shimmered
Whose bodies undressed glowed velvet
So removed from the late night’s chancing
When to a whirling moth they seemed
Pretty butterflies to drunken eyes
In the dry drunk desperation
Of late early party mornings
When anything would have done
Had done them, being done for
Again and yet again

The Case For Singledom

Clean Sheets
Compact convenient one person meals
cooked to perfection
and appreciated fully
No pig like grunts in the middle of the night
no nasty yawns that sound and smell like death
no phone calls in the middle of a particularly interesting
bit of prime time telly
toilet seat devoid of dribbles
tables devoid of mug stains
the dishes done when they need to be done, not before, not after
no nasty surprise waiting
when you open the door to your abode
occupied, however temporarily, by your other
nothing precious precariously balanced
making your heart jump
Beautiful Silence

Batman

Winged terror obscuring the moon
Comes flying from beyond
The dark

Telling traces or trails he leaves not
Never to be found or seen
Only imagined

Like shy scent of brine blood spilling
From a hole in the head filling
Your nose

Of murkling molasses, milding mushrooms
A trudging aftertaste of peril
Slow sweet

A grip of bat claw piercing bone so
Dense, descends gliding
The span

Of his wings, petrifying black hearts
That leap as quick as he scales
Mere walls

Muscle and bone in a cave of head
Still as sarcophagus
Batman stands

Points of Light

crushed
ccdim
pupils awash in cataract
blinking blindly
Points of Light
blurred by the window glass

Beckoning string of pearls
white now
ccThere yellow
phosphorescence of
a blue and green sea creature
ancient and wily
luring fresh meat to walk
tantalised towards it
mesmerise with its miasmic
interior of pitch tar
Pliant Penumbra
studded with glitter
like a starlet with potential
like the sky itself
lights
glow
low
ebb
by

Getting Ready

Slick wetting streams
Off the slope of my back
Steam sprouts and floats
Like elusive dreams
Through the gap above
Luminous white curtain

Undrape the towel
And smooth over
Little globules of penetrating
Moisturiser
Little blobs of sweet smelling defeat

Nourish and feed the need
To flatten spurts of thorny
Animal
Cultivate a culture
Of shiny baby necessities

Give me your look
Give me your love
Give me your need
So I can feel
Necessary

I pull over clothes
Over my supple new nakedness
Tempered, perfumed
Acceptable
In civil society

Preferring waxing to
Shelves of stubble
On display counters
Inured to Pain
But open to criticism
Getting ready
To exfoliate
extract and expunge

Tinny

The wood of my desk vibrates
Before you sound
Your need to be picked up

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

I blow my breaths away from
Your sensitive maw
Your ears bring me disembodied
Voices brimming with need
For mindless chatter

I hate you
Though I look at you longingly
Sometimes, and touch you to
See if you would come alive
Startle me with a sudden

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

A trick, if I really think about it
Black and sinister
Like black pudding
Lurid invitation to partake into some

Unimagined sin
Though curiously commonplace
Can it be real
Or am I just hearing voices in my head

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

Bringing news I do not want to hear
Keeping me near persons
I do not want to be close to
A lifeline I do not need
To live

Consuming me like marriage
My ears bleed
As my tongue peels
off banalties like
banana skin

Tinny, a cry shattering the air

The Woman (first draft)

I saw a woman in an orange coat and a green hat
who loudly said, 'He was so damn cute'

I was walking and it was raining
the overwrought sky was in a sulk
miserable people huddled with their armpits
fingers in pockets
chin on the chest

And there was this woman
in an orange coat and a green hat
exclaiming loudly
not giving a damn about the weather
not caring that this
was a world of greys and steel blues
of whispers and smiles
and not exclamations!

She was talking to this man
as they were walking along
with their pointys up and out

brown jutting, an affront to the very air
oh how the people behave
these those from the land of orange suns
and indecent mangoes
and head turning flowers
and strange religious pastes

And so I was walking as I said
one step at a time
huddling into my armpits
skirting puddles with stolid shoes
with doubled up laces

and here was this woman
in her orange coat and green hat
throwing her damn into the air
cutting the sheet of rain with her cute
leaving behind her a reverberation
of a remembered warmth
that I left behind on my way

That Undeserving Bitch

'She was a nobody. Hardly Sharukh or Amitabh, or even a Preity Zinta or Kajol.'

'Here she's almost forgotten.. except for a stint as a judge in the indian version of dancing with the stars.. she's just got two films.. no one remembers which was her last release..'

'in the sense that a lot of people r saying that she's got no real merit.. in the sense, it's just real good luck that she was abused by this goody character. otherwise, as far as india is concerned, she is a has been.. '

Such seems to be irritated thoughts of many Indians that watch in disbelief as Shilpa glides on red carpets to accept contracts, accolades and even the British PM's handshake.

Why such ungenerous sentiment from the land of milk and honey?

Shetty was one of the biggest celebrities to grace the Celeb Big Brother, which is usually populated by third rate British has-beens with flailing careers.

She did not initiate all the brouhaha that followed her entrance into the big house. Goody and co did.

Indians everywhere seem to be asking, 'Why is the whole of Britain over-reacting to the racism issue and why oh why are the British putting Shetty on a pedestal?'

Especially since she has provided only flops in recent years.

Why is an issue is being made in India out of Shetty's level of fame or status of her Bollywood career. The Indians are trying to judge and measure the situation by the actress's box office standing, because they wouldn't know how to judge it by the standard of Goody's racist behaviour. And they wouldn't know to appreciate Shetty's attitude in the Big Bro house the way a nation that prides itself on good behaviour would.

Who cares about the horrors of a coining of a rude nickname in a nation where young girls take safety pins to hold in defense in public buses, where the loudest voice is the only one heard, where the idea of a queue only co-exists with the idea to jump it, where the police are doing their duty only with lathis and dicks?

How many races co-exist in vast numbers in India? One. They would have no comprehension of how big an issue racism is in modern times, especially in Britain that is like a rainbow tribe, where the whole of the white population like to think of themselves as tolerant and well behaved (with their pretty-please and thankyous) and entirely absolved from their guilt-ridden colonial past.

The issue of 'racist bullying' was what the whole of Britain was reacting to with horror. Horror at one of their own people treating a guest in such an uncivilised manner. It put everyone here to shame; even the college porter stopped me to assure that he condemned the behaviour of Goody and co, even ashamed of them. The British were suddenly thrown back into the skin of coloniser/tyrant which they feel they have almost escaped, albeit slightly slyly, out from under the shadow of USA (ironically, the real Big Brother)

To Shetty's credit, she behaved beautifully through it all. She never for a moment forgot that she was representing her people, and was utterly dignified and fair (or at least appeared so) peppered with typical Indian overinvolvement with the cooking and pissing people off with too many onions and spices.

It was enormously gratifying to watch the brown native setting an example in civilised behaviour to the white master race (another irony is that JAde herself is mixed race). Take that, you erstwhile colonising pigs, the uncivilised savage part of me wanted to chortle.

So I do believe Shetty deserves her millions and tv and movie contracts and the PMs handshake for putting the whole of Britain to shame and making the British wish that She, and not Goody, belonged to them. Only by making her win, again and again, can they attempt to absolve themselves of this latest sin and everlasting history.

De-Liberating Love

Nothing grows in a vaccum.
When people, things, expectations, negative emotions, rationalisations crowd around, they shut off the light, the air, the oxygen, the nurture. No space to grow. Nothing to thrive on.
I suppose some plants make a show of growing, in a jar of water, or even thin air.
They even sprout leaves, nod, talk about furniture.
Then they say, 'Oops, there isn't any more nourishment in this jar of water. What do we do now.'
Nothing. Wheres the soil dammit?
Soil? What's that like?
The stuff that binds us together with each other and the earth. Stuff that gets replenished all the time so in turn it can replenish us. Stuff of life.
No soil. Might as well be in a vaccum. Oh shit, we are in that too. Water unreplenished, the air cut off too. By a wall of bricks. Bubble wrap. Canvas. Now what?
We die a slow death, or fast. You choose.
I choose fast.

Sarah

I had lunch today in the Infolab cafe with Davey. I hadn't been in there for more than a year, since the end of last summer actually, when I was unceremoniously kicked from the waitress job I held by the woman who supervised the place. Pauline was her name.

Sarah was behind the counter today, and I couldn't help but widen my eyes in surprise when I beheld her over the still same tortelloni bake and pork cuts. The menu hasn't changed a whitt, but Sarah has dramatically bloated.

She must be eighteen now. I couldn't help follow her with horrified eyes whenever she waddled past cleaning up tables and bringing out food. Last summer, slowly over the lunch times that we worked together, she had told me her mother was working for Uni Catering too, in the management school, that she had just found a new flat and was all excited about having her own place and a proper fulltime job, about how she was seeing Pauline's son who was nineteen, and asked me eagerly if I thought he was Fit, when he slouched by one afternoon to pick her up.

The most riveting fact she told me was that she had never been to London, and had no immediate intention of ever visiting it. Why good god oh why on earth wouldn't you visit London I haemorraged, I mean, it's LONDON. Like Paris or NewYork. People from my part of the world dream of seeing London, and you are only a three hour train ride away.

She didn't like big cities, she said. She had visited Manchester a few times and wasn't impressed.

Later I wasn't so surprised when I met white 30 and 40 yr olds that never visited London, or any of the big cities (Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, even Leeds or Sheffield) for that matter, as they were unequal to the ordeal of venturing out of their little towns and meeting strangers who spoke in a strange tongue of differently accented English than theirs. 'Have you heard the Newcastle accent,' one white person shuddered dramatically, 'only thing worse than the Liverpudlian accent luv.'

Sarah was happy. She worked 70-80 hours a week, went out and got pissed every night, and smoked like a chimney, like every other girl or boy her age who was in full time employment.

My first day at work, I had asked her innocently, 'Are you a student?' She had said, 'Good god no. why would you think that.(I think she was secretly flattered, though that might just be the narcissist in me). I hated school and have no intention studying anymore.'

Slowly, insiduosly, I began dropping hints that studying something she really wanted to wouldn't be such an ordeal. She was so good at her job. What about something like Hotel management? Her eyes sparked for a moment. She really has pretty eyes. 'Yeah, summat like that would be awright i suppose..'

Obviously, no one in her family had ever talked to her about accomplishing anything in life other than a lifetime of servitude to uni catering. This is unimaginable to someone like me, freshly sprung from middle class India whose very apogee of aspiration is Higher Studies.

Sarah would probably marry Pauline's son and pop out two kids in three years. Pauline's brother-in-law works for uni catering too. So does Sarah's mom, who smokes more than her daughter, and constantly swipes her cigarrettes. So uni catering would be kind of all-in-the-family in a few years time. And the family would go on resenting the students, even though students are what the whole economy of little Lancaster sustains itself on, and would go on failing to realise that it is but a small step from servitude under unscrupulous catering bosses to uni life where you can discovver untold potential within yourself in the course of your flowering three years amidst uni-promoted boozing in the nine uni-bars and the several in town that offer student discounts.

I'm glad I got booted out of the job. The ricotta was greasy, the mozzerella chewy, and the hot chocolate pudding from the microwave. Maybe I'll pop by again in six months, before I get kicked out of the country by the home office, and see if Sarah is still working here, and leave all smug with a greasy undertone of pity.

Making Blackberry Jam in November

We should have removed the twiggy bits before we froze them berries.

I had spent the summer in India and got back at the end of September, and John had waited for me to go blackberry picking. We hunted the roadsides of the hilly cattley bit of Rochdale (to those of you who know Rochdale only by its football hooligans and scally centered towny bit - there's a beautiful beautiful valley too, just behind John's house) for the tumbling finger snagging deep purple staining bunderberries.

We strained; well, I strained. Little Gabriel, showing impatience typical of his age, wasn't impressed by the quantities we found, and started eating then and there, whatever we did find. John had his new camera growing out of his face, as he clicked and clicked his darlings, one of whom glared at him malevolently and ordered him every ten minutes to lend a hand.

I stooped, I stretched, I winced as the thorns pricked, but I was indefatigable in my short denim dress. Summer was making a last ditch attempt to impress before she burst into her autumn plumage, and the sun kissed and kissed us all afternoon.

Amidst a raging argument over whether the tree i spotted was laden with elderberries or blackcurrants (I was proved wrong after a later google search for distinguishing features)Gabriel climbed up John's shoulders to ravage some high up branches, John pretending to come over all faint from the poison berries that were mimicking blackcurrants.

Some glorious sunlit photographs (of a lot of exposed leg and dark blond boy)and a white plastic bag seeping with shameless violet juices, we returned to the car. Gabriel having gorged himself on the berries, had to expel them in a hurry. John, laughing, Hang on son we'll be home soon, to the much contorted berry-stained face.

Having got back, the furious home-maker despatched the berrybag to the freezer before I could turn around and register what he was doing, in the hippopotamus way I have, and I left it there. The twigs will come off when they come off, I thought.

They finally came out of their unseasonal hibernation as we got jam making yesterday. A bitch getting the frozen twigs off the frozen berries. A bitch trying to convince my darling I knew how to make jam (Yes, they still aren't cooked enough; No, you don't have to stir every five seconds; Yes, that's all the sugar we need; No, absolutely no point standing and watching the pot, as it will take about an hour to be ready; Yes, that is an acceptable ocnsistency; No, you don't have to taste the jam every five minutes, this is not stew). He still checked out five different recipes on the internet. After much chastising him on not sterilising the bottles properly (upended jars previously inhabited by peanut butter, old jam and colour-turned unidentifiable liquid), after washing them again myself to satisfy my pseudo sense of hygiene, we poured, closed and sealed.

And today, I had my first dollop on buttered brown toast. Perfect!

Headache

Looping streams
Threading needles
A bunch of red sparks
in water, in a vase
thomm! thomm! rrrrrrrllll
%%^^>>>>

haha, that's a controversial title. i love it.