mint tea & no sympathy

Housework not my forte
After feeling rather proud of myself last night for Herculean housework efforts I then discovered that I'd not actually switched off the fridge. Explains why despite the bowls of hot water it was taking so long to defrost. However all clean and beautiful now and back under the counter and stocked back up. Now running the washing machine at full capacity to wash throws which are needed to try and protect upholstered furniture from feline claws. Had to dash to supermarket to get more cleaning supplies at 4pm. Scotmid let me down by being entirely out of iced Chelsea buns - apple turnovers are a poor substitute.

Harry Kalmer if you are reading this
I demand that you start a blog!

When you are angry - destroy vegetables
I'm being domestic - it seems to bring me back to some kind of centre. Last night I collapsed on the sofa and watched sit coms but this morning I actually did washing up, bitched about the 16 plus things nipping at my brain to my houseguest B. She had to download emails so I went and sat outside in my coat on my bench which is painted in pink, blue and green stripes to match my shed and wrote my 'morning pages' with a cup of tea in my new cup. What a glorious day - cold but blue blue sky, nippy in the air.

We left the house at 11.30am in search of vegan lunch. We got the bus up as parking is impossible in the centre of Edinburgh. On the way we went to a 'young person's clothing shop' CULT on the Bridges. B 'eye shopped' and I knew I was eye shopping as the biggest size is probably a 14. It must be hell to be a large teenager aching to get a hip Bench label coat to swan about in.

We went and looked a the menu of 'Spoon' a new cafe I've discovered in Blackfriars St but it wasn't very vegan friendly so we walked down to St Mary's St and had lunch at Banns. Banns is all vegetarian but to our disappointment failed miserably on the vegan pudding front.

B had to go and return her mom's car to Fife after lunch so I wandered up to Cockburn St as I needed to buy a birthday card. I looked in at Crystal Clear on Cockburn St as I was about to open the door my friend HA opened it. I had no idea she was over from Amsterdam. She was shopping for a crystal wand (!). We went up to EH1 the cafe/bar on top of Crystal Clear for her to have late lunch and me to have my first caffeine hit of the day.

I bore the pants off HA telling her about my various life woes then probably to her relief went off to get a birthday card. I was meeting an ex-student at the Balmoral for a lap up afternoon tea to celebrate her 45th birthday but no student when I got to the Palm Court and she wasn't booked in. Was of course a huge mix up because she couldn't get a reservation and she asked them to tell me to go to another hotel but they failed to pass on the message.

Salvaged the rest of the afternoon by browsing in Waterstones and then drooling in Harvey Nicols food hall. I resisted Portuguese Custard Tarts for 95p and salmon pate and came home determined to use up ingredients in the house and defrost the fridge. As I type the bins are full, the counters are chocca and the fridge has bowls of boiled water on the shelves to dry and dislodge the ice.

I found some lamb in the fridge and hauled out Claudia Rodin's The Book of Jewish Food and made Masala Chicken (Chicken in Coconut Sauce) which substitutions lamb for chicken, leak for some of the onions, not sure what I'll use as substitute raisins but appears to be palatable so far.

Dealing with Anger
I came across this article by Thich Nhat Hanh Losening the Knots of Anger which is timely as I am so A N G R Y. Yup I've had a really really angry week/month/year.

What makes me angry ...
1. 2 people having a loud conversation in the reception area of the place I'm working so I can't think straight while blogging or when I'm speaking to people on the phone.
2. Portobello Baths 'make over' which has resulted in a unisex changing room and taken away one of the women only nights in the Turkish Baths and increase the price of a locker from 20 p to £1.
3. The Labour Party /Tony Blair/ The Scottish Parliament with special reference to Jack McConnell (bleugh!)
4. My peace group which is about as peaceful as an evening drive through the Falls Road.
5. The woman who is currently trying to grab power while sending 'poor little me look at all the work I do for the group' and 'I'm so hurt' emails.
6. The women who have taken over the group with their own agendas which are antithetical to our philosophy. (This used to be called 'entryism' in the olden days ie 1980's)
7. The women who are on 'our' side but have run out on us leaving a small beleagured band to try and rescue things.
8. The people who have been using our name to get money in our name without asking our permission first.
9. The documentary maker who claims to be wanting to make 'an inspirational documentary' but instead has been riding roughshod over us and despite supposedly making documentaries about brave peasants in Mexico seems to have no real concept of the idea of 'democracy' 'consent' - all a bit worrying since he is a part time lecturer in Government & Politics (well education is down the pan in this country anyway).
10. The lengths to which people will ditch their principles for vanity and power (I'm sure there is supposed to be a third word there but I'm JUST TOO ANGRY TO REMEMBER IT).
11. The member of my peace group who keeps on talking about how 'The Jews are buying up Baghdad'.
12. This makes me angry on behalf of my dad, my uncle, my two aunts, my grannie, 4 cousins (assorted)Cousin Enid, Great Auntie Gertie, all my relatives who died in the Russian pogroms (assorted) and the entire French branch of my family who didn't see the end of WW2. None of them appear to be surrounded by property particulars relating to Baghdad.
13. I'm angry that the next meeting my 'peace group' will have will be in the mother's flat of item no 11.
14. I'm tired of being F**king nice all the time. Other people are not being nice why should I?
15. I'm sure that there is more on this list but one should add that yesterday I was walking across the park and came across a group of boys throwing rocks at a 19thc water fountain which had frozen water in it. Big big mistake as Mint Tea ROARED at them.

I'm pissed, I'm angry, and the only thing that stops me inflicting physical damage on people and property is because
16. I'm so effing angry at being so tired.

Now Thich Nhat Hanh suggests being mindful of my anger, noticing it, living with it. How do you suggest I take what I feel to this 'peace group' meeting. If I do say something I'll be a not nice person if I don't my anger will be the size of Loch Ness by the end of March.

New blog discoveries <3<3<3
Heart@work

If I find a blog and systematically start reading the archives then I think its time to keep an eye on it.

Art is not a luxury. The artist is so necessary in our lives. The artist explains to us, or at least asks the questions which must be asked. And when there’s a question asked, there’s an answer somewhere. I don’t believe a question can be asked which doesn’t have an answer somewhere in the universe. That’s what the artist is supposed to do, to liberate us from our ignorance.

Maya Angelou from Shambala Sun interview with bel hooks.

Asylum and Immigration Bill
This is from Fizzylogic who has been living through the issues as her au pair's boyfriend is just about to be 'exported' to the Congo.

For your UK readers: things are going to get a lot worse if the new asylum and immigration bill becomes law, which eliminates the right of appeal almost completely, further criminalises asylum seekers, and worse.

The third reading is in Parliament on 1 March. Write to your MPs this week to oppose the bill.

[THIS IS AN IDEAL OPPORTUNITY TO USE THE EXCELLENT FAX YOUR MP - ONLY ONE WEEK TO GO]

The Council on Tribunals, the Bar Council, the Law Society, JUSTICE, Liberty, the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, the Immigration Appeals Tribunal and others have given oral evidence critical of the proposed legislation.

Information and links are available here.
and under briefings at www.ilpa.org.uk

Loyalty cards II

Another thing good people are always beating themselves up for not being more good - I mean take R for example worrying about the moral choice between organic or fairtrade bananas, worried that her empty flat should be filled with asylum seekers when she sainted woman stands bail money for asylum seekers on trial. Good people never give themselves enough acknowlegement of the good they do - do.

Loyalty cards
I was talking to R this morning she recounted being shocked to speak to a young academic in her department who on being told that Michael Moore had advised people to 'tear up their loyalty cards' on being asked what people should do about the state of the world. R had been slightly disappointed by the anodyne advice by Mr Moore but was more horrified when Ms Young Academic chirped about what loyalty cards she held to national supermarkets in the UK and started to compare the products of each one (Beware Tesco very bad selection of low fat products!). Where as I'd have said Beware Tesco - Tesco fortune used to gerrymander London votes... Ms Young Academic is apparently a vegetarian as therefore used to the idea that what we consume has an effect on the word. Indeed at its extreme we buy the world we want into existance. However Ms Young Academic hadn't twigged that she was not talking about choice when differentiating between supermarket brands. When we don't have local shops, when mangetout is imported from Zimbabwe where the population is starving, where cheap food is making us unhealthy and denuding our land of nutrients chooing between supermarkets is no choice.

R and I then talked about for want of a better word 'How to be a good person'. Some of our choices to be good people not driving and taking public transport are actually choices which enhance our lives. Instead of rushing by car trying to fit more in, in ever decreasing time we instead spend time in the world, seeing the world. The joy of having a dinner on the train to London with the countryside wizzing by.
The downside of being 'good' R confesses to standing in quandry in a supermarket 'organic' or 'freetrade' 'Organic' or 'freetrade' ??? when infront of the banana counter. 'I wish' she said with feeling 'the goverment would sort this out so I wouldn't have to think about it!'

How to be good? Sometimes I think its actually part of the little things in life. Keeping up with friends. Calling people, being with people, going to my mother's annual coffee morning yesterday and spending time with her friends. I don't think it always necessarily means sacrificing yourself for others, selling up everthing and giving it to charity. We have duty of a quality of care to people in our lives. Working too hard, being depressed, or too messed up to offer that are all signs that our lives need to change. I do believe that we have to help ourselves first then the people around us. Help is too strong a word what I really mean is that we should be with the people around us. We need more being and less doing.

Yes be ourselves first and then be with other people.

The good thing is that after my loyalty card discussion I felt better about my very expensive organic box bill.

The meaning of conicidence or synchronicity?

An interview with WG Seabald

Also discovering the New Yorker online - particularly Mavis Gallant's memories of Paris

Been rediscovering the London Review of Books

Quick round up

I am a liberal quaker according to this... from Willa.

The 80's reappear like a mist and tarot cards from Rebecca's Pocket.

Went to a 'networking' event last night for film-makers. The DJ and low level ambient lighting meant that a) you couldn't hear what people were saying and b) you couldn't see them. As I'd had rather more to drink than I ought on a Thursday night it was probably a good thing I was mostly incapble of talking. Hendrix-Cat has had flu and I've just been tired tired tired (due to lack of sleep) so we left the 'networking' event at 10pm and sckedaddled up the High St. F with several Stella in him decided to ride S's (much to big for him) bicycle on the pavement. S was green with envy when I told him I'd had 2000 + visitors to Mint Tea & Sympathy so please go and visit him to cheer him up. Obviously if you can employ him as a researcher he'll be even more happy.

At last updating my links
Willa is the first blog/online diary I ever came across. I'd been searching for Willa Muir (wife of Edwin Muir) online. I was delighted by my new find. Willa has two cats and through her I found Shopcats and today a link for a recipe to knit a cat basket.

Its harder now that I read about 20 or so blogs to remember where or through whom I stumbled across them.

Unconnected
Steve Cisler disconnects from the digital world and visits people and organizations not on the Internet.

What kind of wool am I?


You are Shetland Wool.
You are a traditional sort who can sometimes be a
little on the harsh side. Though you look
delicate you are tough as nails and prone to
intricacies. Despite your acerbic ways you are
widely respected and even revered.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Via Fizzylogic

Corita Kent
from Keri

we must
we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.

nobody is going
to do it
for us.

as the young boys
ski
down the
slopes

as the fry cook
gets his last
paycheck

as dog chases
dog

as the chessmaster
loses more than
the game

we must bring
our own light
to the
darkness.

nobody is going
to do it
for us,

as the lonely
telephone
anybody
anywhere

as the great beast
trembles
in nightmare

as the final season
leaps into
focus

nobody is going
to do it
for us.

- Charles Bukowski
Septuagenarian Stew

From Whiskey River

Dinner Party Hell
My friend R absolutely refuses to attend these kinds of social occasions. And after reading Nancy's description of a dinner party in Chennai refusing to hostess one seems in the order of the day.

The art of turning the everyday into the extraordinary

The Quilts of Gee's Bend via Caterina.

Anne Morrow Lindberg once said, "When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and are just as pleased."

I've been away from Edinburgh. A day trip to the countryside to have a consultation with my medical herbalist.

Not only did I get an hour long consultation (unheard of in the NHS) it was great to get my whole life taken into consideration.

I went with K who has also had a raw deal from conventional medicine - as she can drive I got a lift. One and half hours drive from the central belt. It was refreshing to see the hills sprinkled with snow. a rather Chinese style water colour effect with drifts of mist among the pine trees, a signpost to 'Dull 1/4 miles' - a real place name.

J the herbalist doesn't have a waiting room so while K was in the consulting room I walked in the garden where she grows her herbs, all died down at this time of year. Admired the double snowdrops and talked to the cat called Lottie (I'm afraid that cat's don't get anonymity on my blog). Beautiful tabby with white legs and tabby splodges on legs and head, white tummy and chin as a cat ought to be). J's youngest child about 3 played in a sandpit in the garden. Bundled out with longjohns and corduroy dungarees to make the most of dry weather. The air was wonderful so clean and pure.

After our consultations and clutching bottles of herbal medicine and the promise of agrimony to come in the post we went off to search for a farm shop cum tearoom for late lunch.

I was charmed by the farmshop which had about 6 russety hens scratching around outside. Two planters were favoured spots with the soil scattered out from raking and scratching. After lunch we went round the shop. In the freezer I found 'Lamb and Apricot sausages'. K assured me that if I ate them tonight I wouldn't die so I bought them.

I made a huge effort did some washing up - at least enough to get pots and pans to make dinner. Fried up the onion, garlic added the sausages, then some butternut squash, organic carrots, a bit of tomato puree, harissa. Then I boiled up potatoes for mash. Yum!

Making Happy

I few years ago I was commissioned to to be a camera woman for a documentary.I 'met' a group of women via a feminist email list. They had got funding to make a documentary into sectarian in Scotland. As part of the documentary we went to Belfast during the July Parades.

The seacat was filled with Scottish orange bands going to join the parades in Ireland. In Belfast itself I was aware that a helicopter was buzzing across the skies and it appeared never to leave day or night - surveying the city. Two days before the parades started there already were the smoke plumes from the bonfires which start the 'celebrations' rising above the city.

After booking into our hotel (carefully chosen as it was not the most bombed hotel in Europe) we went driving around the city visiting the murals in the Loyalist Shankhill. Yes the pavements and streetlights are painted in red, white and blue... and the murals have disturbingly high Saltire Flag count. We found a group of children with a small bonfire already being built up - they were delighted to be filmed beside their bonfire. The July Parades for the protestant children seemed to me to be a thrilling time with the promise of a party. What child doesn't love a bonfire? The children to me seemed crucial to the whole shebang. Though obviously they must have got adult help to get the pallets which were neatly stacked into something resembling an ancient broch. Here is quite an interesting account by an American journalist with photos.

We also visited the Falls Road, where the lampposts had green, orange and white, the 'peace' wall and a republican cemetery. That evening we left the hotel and walked to Sandyrow to view the bonfire on a piece of waste ground. We had seen that bonfire before it was lit. A thin column of pallets about 3 stories high with an effigy on the top (for the life of me I can't remember if it was the Irish PM or the Pope). The whole structure looked highly dangerous. Even from the edge of the wasteground I could feel the heat on my face. I moved forward to get better shots, flames were leaping up and out off the tower which was leaning. There seemed to be danger of the whole thing toppling over. Around it was an outdoor disco, mixed in with old standard favourites were 12 inch remixes of The Sash. It was packed with people of all ages. People climbed up and sat on walls, feet dangling out of windows to see the hellish spectacle. I soon retreated backwards afraid that the heat was going to shrivel the rubber on the Canon XL I was using.

The next day we followed the bands which I would estimate about 40% of which came over from Scotland to participate. Extraordinary sights, a dog with an orange collar complete with white fringing, a man dressed in the full orange outfit and a bowler hat, standing on a pair of steps in the middle of the parade filming his comrades with a video camera.

Turning and looking down an alley and seeing behind the crowd a group of armed soldiers.

We went all the way out to 'the field' to hear the speeches. After dinner we drove around the city to see the aftermath and got stones thrown at the car.

I most definately felt I was in a foreign land. At one point we visited a bookshop to buy some background material and I can remember being surprised that we could pay for the books in pounds.

What most disturbed me though were the land rovers. In Shankhill we came across one driving at about 5 mph slowly past the houses. It was armoured which meant it had a grill instead of windows, blanked sides, and a sort of metal skirt nearly to the floor - I suppose to stop bombs being rolled under it. I found it so creepy.

Some years ago I made a documentary about my family and in the process looked through about 1000 slides taken of my early life by my dad. After a while I realised that in reality there was a 5th member of our family. This was Nimrod a longwheelbase land rover which was our constant companion in long trips into the mountains. There is always a little tug of heartbreak/nostalgia/warmth when I see one on the roads. The contrast between Nimrod and the way the land rovers were being used in Belfast was when the reality of the conflict came home to me.

A day of change
Told the job which has been dangling me for 5 months to go and 'stuff its self'.*

Went and had coffee in one of the best cafes in Edinburgh.

Before that I went to Unicorn Antiques and spent £48 on two china teacups. Yes there were cheaper ones but the azure blue detailing won my heart. Hendrix-Cat may keep her spirits up with red shoes but its china china all the way for me.

I plan to get some Russian tea to complement my new cups.

Went to see a Mighty Wind with L - my new black winter jacket with the fake fur trimming recieved complements!

*Bowlderised naturally

The ethics of rabbits and foxes

What kind of person searches for 'mint tea sex'? And in anycase isn't there a danger of getting burns from the boiling water?

Yesterday started bright, clear, dry and I put out my washing which I was desperate to dry. About 1.30 I looked up from the computer aware that the room had gone dark and noticed the sleet out the window. I ran out the house shouting "f**k! f**K!"to the amusement of my neighbour who was also in her garden trying to rescue sheets.

Then a friend phoned up and pointed out that since I've stopped going to the vigil sometime between 1 and 2 each Saturday the weather has gone bonkers, torrential monsoon like rain the previous Saturday and sleet yesterday. On Thursday I was at my new temp job. I was completely raging and raging in my head - that was the day that there was an electrical storm, thunder, lightning flashes. This is not normal weather in Scotland. The electricity damaged the buzzer for the front door. So I had visions of being trapped in a Government Agency reception area all night long with nothing to read but leaflets on landownership. More oddly in the previous year of Saturdays which I have had to stand outside I have only had two experiences of rain - which is again weird considering where we are standing. I had thought this was due to 'the great deity which I do not belive in' being on our side but perhaps not....

This new found talent has potential. Perhaps I should tout my abilities to turn weather systems? Surely there must be someone willing to pay for this?

Time for a new business card:-

Mint Tea

Weather Goddess

"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."

William S. Burroughs

Two Poems by M Oliver

A BITTERNESS
I believe you did not have a happy life.
I believe you were cheated.
I believe your best friends were loneliness and misery.
I believe your busiest enemies were anger and depression.
I believe joy was a game you could never play without stumbling.
I believe comfort, though you craved it, was forever a stranger.
I believe music had to be melancholy or not at all.
I believe no trinket, no precious metal, shone so bright as your bitterness.
I believe you lay down at last in your coffin none the wiser and unassuaged.
Oh, cold and dreamless under the wild, amoral, reckless, peaceful flowers of the hillsides.

THE PONDS
Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them-

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided-
and that one wears an orange blight-
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away-
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled-
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing-
that the light is everything-that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.



From In a Dark Time

Forgive me its been four days since I last blogged.

I've been thinking about Muriel Rukeyser again. Knee deep in poetry/politics/life and seeing it all as one.

In a 1978 documentary film based on the creative lives of three women artists, "They Are Their Own Gifts," Muriel Rukeyser responds to a filmmaker's questioning of her personal definition of "the political":

I don't know what political is . . . it seems to me it's the thick of life . . . and it's the references and associations of life . . . and that that must be what people mean when they say political. I think it means the network of our lives. Anne Herzog

Then I found her FBI file which is online in pdf format - all 120 pages with all the informers names blacked out.

The file often refers to the classes Rukeyser taught on poetics at the California Labor School. When reading this thesis which has been put online I found this -

The Party itself, including the CLS, was riddled with informers, many of whom were former friends and colleagues. Though by the early 1950's she was devoting most of her time to her job as a writer and artist at the People's World, Pele DeLappe witnessed first hand such personal treachery. "A woman who worked in the registration office of the Labor School turned out to be an informer. And she had been one of the most rigid about Party ideology." [38] For a community that had for so long thrived on the close network of friends and family, the realization that sources from within were helping to destroy the Party was devastating.

~~~~~~~

The past few days and weeks have been devastating. I feel I have thrown myself into something, been struggling with the issues involved and have had my work betrayed. I keep on thinking about a friend of mine who went and did an MA in Peace Studies in the US after she graduated from Oxford. She spent a year living with people from all around the globe studying the theory behind peace studies and trying to put it into practice in her everyday living. Many years after she graduated a South African student from the year below her testified to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he had been a spy at the time he had been attending the course.

I feel as if I'm living in a looking glass world - all the things I had come to believe in are not what I thought they are. After a while there is no firm ground left to stand on.

I believe in the BBC ! I believe in the BBC !

I do feel a bit like I've been in Peter Pan recently. Let me tell you that Tony Blair may think he's Mr Darling but we all know he is really Captain Hook.

For some odd reason - reason leaves British governments. Inevitably half way through their first term and most definitely before they get to their second. Labour governments also tend to get slightly paranoid. Often this gets translated into 'its all the BBC's fault and if it weren't' for them then our rapidly deserting supporters would be rallying to our cause'. B******S! Rubbish ! They haven't got any policies, people have got poorer, they are racketing around the world making it more unstable, and hanging onto the coattails of power. The electorate isn't so stupid and they aren't influenced by a report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme at 6.06am. They are however influenced by the moral bankruptcy and water treading of the Blair government.

Blair's henchman aka Alistair Campbell's response to the refusal to believe the spinning is to try and systematically bully the BBC into submission.

I have watched the BBC starting with children's programmes in 1977 when we came to Scotland (my parents refused to get a TV in South Africa on the grounds that the SABC was apartheid government propaganda). My imagination has been filled by such delights as Ivor the Engine, The Archers, Dead Ringers etc.The BBC is of course not perfect, programmes about brain diseases on Radio 4, Fame Academy, Patrick Keilty (and never mind Andrew Gilligan please please please shoot Sue Lawley at dawn - preferably tomorrow). However it is the premier public service broadcasting network in the world, beloved by people who tune into the world service, millions of people across the globe rely on it for an unparalleled quality of service in terms of news, current affairs and entertainment.

SO HANDS OFF TONY !! THE BBC IS BIGGER THAN YOU !!

Any flipping minute I'll have to go and start standing outside Bush House with a placard.