Friday 27 November 2009

The Odd Multi-Lingual Encounter: A European Tradition?

Once upon a time in the not-so-distant past, I used to write poetry. Every now and then I'd write something that I actually liked. I read the stuff too, my own and other people's, carefully curated, at open mic nights. Somehow, all of this activity stopped when I moved back to Philadelphia in 2006 and hasn't really picked up again, despite ample time and plenty of provocation. Today, however, a simile occurred to me which, while not perhaps poem-worthy, seemed worth noting in more prosaic form.

So I'm at an academic conference at L'Université Libre de Bruxelles, which is conducted in French. This is fine. I can cope with introductory remarks and (to my surprise!) papers on topics I already know quite a lot about. There was a lady speaking a hybrid of Russian and Czech and I could even extract the gist from that. Admittedly, my linguistic skills weren't up for the lady who peppered her paper (in French, on a topic I didn't already know quite a lot about) with Polish and German, as well as some opera singing (really), but on the whole I was pleased with myself.

The trouble came with the coffee breaks, the little pauses between sessions, lunch, etc. I always hate these parts of conferences anyway. I'm too new to this scene to be presenting anything, which means no one knows who I am or what I do and so there's no easy way to lapse into conversation and whole thing makes me horrifically uncomfortable. I suspect this has been acerbated by living in London where people don't talk to each other, which has no doubt aggravated my tendency to paranoia and anti-social behavior (of the hiding in corners, not hitting people, kind). Anyway, during one such coffee break in which no one was speaking English, it occurred to me that speaking a foreign language in a social situation, with intelligent people, is a bit like jumping rope. Bear with me here. It's a classic playground scenario. As there were two languages on the table, let's say there's some serious Double Dutch going on. You're standing there watching the kids who are jumping and you think, "I understand what they're doing, I think I could do that" and you begin to think about jumping in. This in itself is tricky, but you've been practicing in a controlled environment and think you could just about handle it. But just as your feet are about to leave the ground, you realize that jumping in is only half the battle – once you're in, you have to keep up and who knows what those turners, who are really professional-looking, will throw at you. So you end up slinking off to the swings. Again.

I think the jumping-in panic is acerbated by being a native English speaker. Whatever arguments we make about the serendipitous fact that our mother tongue "just happens" to be the world's lingua franca, we are strongly cast in the role of the playground linguistic dunce. Complicating our position on the bottom run of the language ladder is the aplomb and confidence with which foreigners butcher English. All around us, in the cosmopolitan cities of the Anglophone world and beyond, we are accosted with tragic misspellings and mispronunciations. Of course we generate plenty ourselves; while an undergrad, I recall seeing an English department memo that read "Your invited!" An English major and member of the department Honor Society, I contemplated asking for a tuition refund. By in large, though, when we're confronted with these errors, we tend to laugh them off. We may ridicule the source of the error amongst ourselves, but rarely do we dish out the degree of vehement angst directed at me by a Czech sandwich shop employee when I had the audacity to express my wish for a butter-free sandwich with the offensive phrase "bez masla" instead of the correct "bez mas-LEM" (emphasis hers).

I'm in no way defending widespread Anglophone monolinguism – it's fantastic what worlds open up with even a cursory working knowledge of another language, and there are plenty of notable multi-lingual Anglophones I can think of, including many of my acquaintance. Still, I don't think that weak NNS (non-native speakers, a lovely EFL term) of English realize just how many breaks we give them. Lousy pronunciation, random syllable emphasis, disregard for number agreement, dodgy past participles – we frequently let them slide as long as we get the gist. In dealing with foreigners, your average Anglophone assumes a completely utilitarian approach to language. Has person X communicated what they meant to say? Yes? Cool. Admittedly this has its downside – EFL teaching is horrifically utilitarian and actually painful at times if the teacher happens to love the language, and I also think its fostered an image of English as a less beautiful and expressive language than it actually is. But that's for another day.

I contrast this generally laissez-faire Anglophone-to-NNS attitude with my experiences speaking my second and third languages, the aforementioned French and Czech. While I am frequently surrounded by supportive friends who speak these languages and humor me (it helps if they've had some wine), the following two reactions have been known to occur: 1) An immediate switch to English; 2 ) a blank stare. The second doesn't particularly bother me and is most likely my fault and easily rectifiable if I stop, calm down, and repeat. But the first really gets my goat. It's so completely unhelpful. Here I am , trying, genuinely endeavoring, to communicate with you, in your country, in your language. I know I'm equal to the task of ordering dinner, because I've done it before and have actually had real conversations in this language, so I can't be that incomprehensible. If I barged into your establishment and started ordering in English, that would be rude and you could be justifiably cross with me for my implied cultural imperialism and sense of entitlement. But I haven't done that. I've ordered a sandwich using the genitive and not the instrumental, or I've paused a milli-second longer than is tolerable when asked if I'm going to eat ici ou sortir. The auto-switch to English feels like a dismissal and creates an imbalance in Anglo/non-Anglophone world; when's the last time you heard a barista in London or New York immediately switch to Chinese or French or Russian to help a customer who was perfectly able to conduct the transaction in English? Admittedly English-speakers are likely more used than anyone in the world to adapting to accented versions of their language (just look how many exist among native speakers). But it seems to me that linguistic foreign relations would greatly improve if the other side could make a similar effort to acknowledge that foreign-accented speech, while not perfect, is not actually incomprehensible and might help stem the seemingly unstoppable flow of English into every nook and cranny of everyone's life, everywhere.

These phenomena seem to me to make the assumption of Anglophone monolingualism a self-fulfilling prophesy. Still, I shall soldier on in pursuit of my personal linguistic nirvana – a stress-free conference coffee break.

Konec/Fin/The End

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Uncivil discourse? The increased difficulty of conversation.

Recently I've been doing a lot of rather nebulous thinking that can basically be boiled down to a simple question: who's allowed to say what, and, to whom are they allowed to say it? What makes one's opinion or point of view valid? Can you say something provocative if you back it up with research and demonstrate a genuine knowledge of the topic? Is it okay to use the internet to spew random thoughts, or should we be applying academic rigor to the throwaway rants and political statements we all indulge in occasionally on facebook and similar?

The question of the "right" to speak is particularly troubling when one's unavoidably out of context. No matter how long I live here and how politically aware I am, no matter how many books I read or episodes of Panorama I watch, I will never be British. This will never be my country. Does that mean I can't critique it? Can I direct or act in a British play, or should I confine myself to work by American authors? Can I speak to my experience, or do I need to sit silently, because I haven't somehow earned the stripes necessary to chime in? This is an issue, to a degree, of enfranchisement. I pay taxes, but I don't have the right to vote. If something annoys me, I can't take direct action through a ballot. I can't write to my MP, I can't run for any office myself. The only recourse is to generate my own narrative, to say what I see and what I experience.

We all speak – each of us – from a deeply personal position that is the result of our upbringing and life experiences. The idea that anything is ultimately knowable in a completely impartial sense is absurd. There is no via negativa I know of that can completely subtract the subject. And why would we want that, anyway? It's the variety that's interesting in the first place.

It strikes me that the very people who object to expressions of opinion that differ from theirs tend to react in deeply confused ways, using rhetoric that is identical, if inverted, to that of the speaker they're attacking. Who is this helping? Why are we so terrified of conversation? Why do we want to rob people of the right to their own narratives? Obviously there's a special category for hate speech – Nick Griffin's controversial appearance on Question Time rightly highlighted this issue. But as the vast majority of us are not BNP supporters, or the sort of right-wing fundamentalists attacking the scientific content of Texas textbooks, surely we are capable, as intelligent adults, of civil discourse?

Maybe not. Recently I listened to an interview on NPR with Richard Dawkins. He was discussing his new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, and repeatedly had to fend off callers who wanted to talk to him about a sort of intermediary position, between religiosity and atheism, with a non-interventionist God, or in more abstract terms, some transcendental presence. Many of these callers, after describing what they were talking about, suggested that this might be a different understanding of "god". Dawkins shut them down, refusing to engage in the debate in terms other than his own. God, he argues, is understood by the vast majority to mean an interventionist, omnipotent being in the monotheistic sense, to whom one prays, etc. Using this word to discuss some more general metaphysical dimension is willfully misleading. But since when is language static? Could not deists claim it is unfair to allow religionists to hijack and appropriate the word? Why does a man of Dawkins' indisputable brilliance need to clamp down on the terms of a debate in which he is the leading voice? The same issue comes up with authors – Kundera and Beckett to name a few – who are so preoccupied with protecting their legacy that they cannot relinquish control and allow their works to become part of a general conversation about literature and culture. Why are so many brilliant people scared of letting their work drop into the general flow of discourse?

When I arrived in the UK and began to consume large amounts of British media, I couldn't help but notice the repeated and consistent use of the word "bully" – every newspaper seemed to contain an article about "bullying." I've discussed this with American friends and we generally agree that in the US we talk about harassment where the UK media uses bullying. American bullying is saved for playgrounds and childish, unsubstantiated acts of aggression and cruelty. Harassment, by contrast feels adult, premeditated; you harass a colleague to a particular aim, to make her feel small, to intimidate, etc. As I've observed –and now experienced – the bear pit of British public discourse, it seems to me that bullying is actually quite an apt turn of phrase. The speed with which the political becomes intimately personal is enough to give one whiplash. Look at "In the Loop" and its companion TV show – it's genius and I love it, but I can't help feeling disturbed by it. This deeply personal bullying in environments that should be about contesting issues, not attacking individuals, seems to produce silence or more vitriol, which means that however you shake it, the "bully" has won. Respond, and you stick you jump into the mud bath. Remain silent, and the bully claims victory.

So what's the answer? I don't know, but I'm reminded of the advice of a director I once worked with whose notes frequently included a reminder to "hold on tightly, let go lightly," a suggestion that it's possible to stand firm but not impervious, an acknowledgement of liminality as the space where we really, if we're honest, seem to do most of our living.

Tuesday 13 October 2009

A new reason to be.

I've been quiet now for quite some time. There were a variety of reasons for this - first my life was absorbed by teaching English to foreign students, then I went on holiday (Prague-Split-Brac-Split-Zagreb-Ljubljana-Prague) and then I thought I was moving to Dublin, which would have changed the tone and focus of this (admittedly somewhat unfocused) blog, which is supposed to be (chiefly) the reflections of an American in London.

In the end, the great move never happened and I'm now safely installed at Goldsmiths, doing the same PhD topic I'd have done in Dublin. Now that things are settled, I'm ready - and needing - to continue, this time with (hopefully) more focus.

Since the advent of fall and the start of the academic year, I'm found myself reading loads. My PhD (roughly speaking) is dealing with contemporary theatre in Prague and the various contexts that have created it. As a result I've been reading lots of inspiring stuff - Vaclav Havel on the role of culture in civil society and the importance of living in truth, Jill Dolan on the utopian peformative, Iris Marion Young on the "unoppressive city" in its infinite variety - while at the same time I'm back to reading the English press again, with less than inspiring results. Two themes emerge again and again:

1. Strong messages (frequently penned by female journalists), both implicit and explicit that the place of a woman is in the home with ambp (as many babies as possible); and

2. Britain is the best country in the world, not least because British journalists completely understand and can explain any culture in the world - even your own, my fellow foreigners - better than anyone else can. After all, it was probably once part of the British Empire and, if it wasn't, then it can't be worth much, can it? As an American, and one increasingly aware of and deeply thankful for the inherently various nature of country in which I was born, this is especially vexing. Whenever someone speaks about "American culture" my hackles raise - which one? Texas? Seattle? New York? Philadelphia? New Orleans? Iowa? Yet again and again, these multiple experiences are conflated into a monolith (and a culturally inferior one at that).

So, with renewed vigor and in the spirit of living in truth (but without losing my sense of humor and absurdity - both my own and others'), I resurrect Both Sides Now with a new manifesto - to respond to and comment upon the assumptions, generalisations and factually inaccurate ramblings of the British media as I encounter them. Because noting something and interrogating it is always a good thing. To be silent is to be complicit. And I certainly don't wish to be that.

A note before this week's digest: I should mention that I love the British press. I love Radio 4 (almost as much as NPR, though no one will ever shift Ira Glass from his deeply entrenched place in my heart). I love the Guardian (and how I usually agree with it). I love the Times (for its jumbo crossword and its ability to anger me). I love that in this country newspapers still mean something. But that doesn't mean they're exempt from scrutiny - perhaps it even demands it.

So, without further ado, the article that inspired this relaunch, appearing in this Saturday's Guardian under the headline "Marriage tax break will keep more women out of work, says thinktank" by Allegra Stratton, Political correspondent. The article discusses a plan to recognise marriage in the tax structure, introduced by David Cameron in his speech at the Tory conference last week. The digested sense of the proposal is that it would be benefit single-income families, but might actually discourage second earners, which Stratton notes are "usually women" from working, as their earnings would be subjected to a higher tax rate than their partners. After explaining the still-vague nuts and bolts, Stratton offers two responses. First, Tim Horton, research director of the Fabian Society, likes the idea of helping families, but says the plan "would bring about gender discrimination in the tax system...It would be a socially retrograde step." Okay, fine. Next it's Christina Odone's turn. Ms. Odone is listed as a journalist who "published a Centre for Political Studies pamphlet saying many women no longer want to work full-time." Why? According to Stratton, "Odone said many "real women" rejected work-centred culture and "realised themselves" as mothers."

Um...hello? Am I only one who sees this assessment, which goes unchallenged by Stratton (though perhaps her decision to enclose the real in quotes is telling), as problematic? What on earth is the definition of a real woman? What is with the apparent return to absolute definitions of anything, let alone gender roles? Are Odone and Stratton, themselves obviously "work-centred" enough to be published writers, figments of the Guardian's imagination? Are they "unreal" women? Unnatural? How are we still having this discussion in 2009?! Where is the outcry?!

In more trivial news, check out this parenthetical assessment of Aspen, Colorado, from the Sunday Times Magazine's interview with Black Eyed Pea Fergie: "lovely, like Switzerland with fat people". We have Giles Hattersley to thank for that perfect encapsulation of a winter sports capital. The last one I visited was Lake Placid, NY, also located in the alleged tub-o-lard that is the United States, but funnily enough, as home to an Olympic training and countless winter sports athletes and instructors (an attribute it no doubt shares with Aspen), there were plenty of non-fatties in residence. Admittedly, ski-wear isn't the most flattering. But come on, Giles, really? Are there no fat people in Switzerland? A quick google reveals this tidbit from the Portal to the Swiss Federal Goverment:

A third of the Swiss population is overweight. The reasons for excess weight and adiposis (obesity) are often rooted in the social environment, in particular in the “unhealthy” diet, which has negative effects on weight already in childhood. Today, one child out of five is already overweight or obese. (www.ch.ch)

That's right, Giles. Swiss people are fat too. Just like Brits and Americans. Why the inaccurate snarkiness? Why the perpetuation of erroneous myth that attempts to localize what is actually a global first-world problem? And finally, why do you repeatedly quote Fergie talking about her "mum" - Americans don't have "mums". You know we have moms, and we know you have mums - it's exciting, this bilingual English! Let's assume (at least in this case) mutually intelligibility and run with it! Hell, we might all even lose some weight in the process.

Monday 15 June 2009

Eurostar-lag…a post-continental malaise?

Last weekend, Paul and I went to Paris. We went to attend the wedding of some friends who had very graciously provided us with a lovely excuse to absent ourselves from London (though to be fair, we are never hard to persuade away). 72 hours of loveliness and one departure-lounge breakdown later, I'm back in London and feeling a bit deflated.

It's sunny here, which is nothing to quibble with, especially as it lasts so long (which is something I personally quibble with, though it seems churlish to do so – one should never insult the sun in a country which sees it as infrequently as the UK), but the sun has got me missing Prague. Paris, with its carriage doors, squares and hilliness, reminds me of Prague, which gets me thinking about lovely summer days sitting on the balcony terrace at Grand Café Orient, drinking Gambrinus at the river bar and white wine in Letna park, and sunbathing at various lakes …

My thoughts have been running in this direction all day, making it slightly challenging to focus on anything I should be doing, such as working, studying Czech, unpacking from Paris or preparing to go to Copenhagen on Thursday. I can come to no other conclusion but that I am suffering from Eurostar-lag, a psycho-physical manifestation designed to impress upon the UK-based sufferer the superiority of life on the continental landmass. In my case, such preaching is hardly necessary – count me in as a card-carrying member of the choir, such a zealot, in fact that, as with my last four trips to the UK, I couldn't keep myself from tearing up in the Gare du Nord departures lounge. I'm starting to think that the extreme counterintuitiveness (counterintuitivity?) of repeated trips "home" to London has induced in me a sort of breath-restricting, back-pain-inducing case of PTSD. No surprises there, really. After all, repeating an action but hoping for different results is a tried and true litmus test for madness. If anything, it's worse in Paris, where you go through UK customs while you're still in France!

But enough malaise! Here, a list of things to celebrate about Continental Europe:

  • Café culture: an affordably priced pitcher of wine or a latte, the day's papers, a comrade with whom one is equally happy to chat to or to sit with in mutual contemplation; also my personal antidote to shopping and rampant consumerism
  • The architecture: 17th and 18th century buildings look so good in the sun
  • The absence/diminished presence of English: a chance to practice one's language skills or just ignore anything that you don't feel like dealing with
  • Human-sized cities: places it's possible to travel to all four corners in the daily living of one's life
  • Music and dancing: somehow more accessible
  • Rivers: the kind you actually see every day, without having to make a special trip
  • Intellectualism: hand-in-hand with café culture, the idea that it's cool to be smart and thinking is for everyone
  • Antique book stores: they sell post-cards too – in Prague, I found one of PA Amish country once
  • Expat communities: so what if it's a bit like never-ending university? I'm through caring. And I loved university!
  • Train stations: Belgrade, Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest, Ljubljana, Trieste, Milan, Krakow, Moscow: oh, the possibilities, and not an airplane (or UK border control officer) in sight.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

An Open Letter to Zoë Heller

Dear Zoë Heller,

How lovely to open my copy of the Times Weekend Magazine and discover an excerpt from your contribution to the Ox-Tales Short Stories Collection for Oxfam! And how serendipitous! You see, normally I read the Saturday Guardian and forgo Sunday papers entirely – there's really no substitute for the New York Times, is there? – but since I spent Saturday discussing post-Communist liberalism, I didn't have time to pick up the Guardian. I don't particularly relish the Observer, so London Times it was and (quelle surprise!) there IT was – your story.

I must congratulate you on the sparkling wit, the incisive, detailed observations – in your portrayal of an American family on vacation (forgive me, holiday) in the Caribbean, I think you may have attained a previously unglimpsed apotheosis of meta-parody. Everything was on display: provincialism, puritanical attitudes to sex, bad taste in resort wear, souvenir consumption, over-emotionalism, over-eating! Only one thing would have made it better – if only you could have set it somewhere reachable by ferry from mainland America. Not only does the island setting give Americans credit for a) owning passports and b) flying (though, to be fair, we could be in Puerto Rico, which would negate point a), a location to which Cheyenne (the perfect name!) and her family could have driven would have allowed the introduction of an iconic pièce de résistance – a McCain/Palin bumper sticker. How could you not?

But, Zoë, perhaps you did. I'll just have to run to Oxfam and buy your story as soon as I mail off a contribution check to the RNC, hoist the Stars & Stripes over my London flat, cover my davenport with plastic slipcovers and make another batch of freedom fries.

Yours, etc.

Becka McFadden

Preorder Ox-tales at: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/books_oxtales.html

Saturday 23 May 2009

Going Gym…

So recently, I've joined the gym. I'm about a month in and I must say I'm enjoying it (apart from the process of getting there, which involves a sojourn on the dreaded 207 – see previous post). It's a continuation of a workout habit that developed when I was in the States this spring; I'd always disliked gyms until I started going with my mother. My previous workout experiences had been tragic: weight room circuits in middle school gym class presided over by teachers not inspirational in their personal fitness levels and hyper body-conscious trips to the Villanova gyms where getting on a cardio machine involved joining queue of scarily orange girls who didn't really look like they needed to be there. I think I've always been slightly uncomfortable in the gym because my physical activity vocabulary (badminton, figure skating and ballet) don't translate particularly well to running and pumping iron. Also, there's no music, apart from icky techno that I don't like. The gym isn't beautiful or artistic, but in my rediscovery I forgive it what it lacks because of the stress relief it provides. And, living in London, I certainly need that!

My gym, located on an out of the way street in Acton, is chilled out and pleasant, with a nice timetable of classes and a delightfully friendly staff. At least the men are friendly. The women, by contrast, appear not to understand me. Yesterday, I stopped by to do 30 minutes on the cross-trainers and had to wait 5 minutes to buy a bottle of water from the receptionist, who was busy showing two Polish girls around the gym. "May I have a bottle of water, please?" I asked, when she finally noticed me. "What?" she said. "Water," I replied. "Oh, wata" – is the American pronunciation of water (that rogue voiced final r!) that challenging for Brits? Today, I called in because, after a week off from yoga class, I couldn't remember what time it started. A girl answered the phone. "Hi, could you please tell what time today's yoga class starts?" "What?" I tried again: "What time is yoga today?" Success! "11.30."

Looking back over these exchanges it strikes me that perhaps it's not my accent, but rather my sentence structure. I've just engaged in the guilty pleasure of "Wife Swap" on Channel4 Catchup (it is Saturday morning after all…and the newsagents opened late, delaying my Guardian consumption) and it's striking the number of words that reasonably respectable and normal people in this country omit from their speech: "Let's go bed", "Like bacon?", "We're going Westfield, laters", etc. Perhaps if I'd just grunted "Water?" and "Time yoga start?" I would have avoided these communication problems.

Perhaps not, though. I've recently had to apply for a European Health Insurance Card, a nifty little thing that allows me to receive medical treatment free of charge anywhere in the EU. As I'm not an EU national, I had to call up to find out what additional info I needed to send. I got an automated menu, which understood none of my responses. This wasn't tough stuff: "Apply for new card," I said. "Apply for new card!...APPLY FOR NEW CARD!" I switched accents and did my best mockney – presto! It worked!

Fellow expats, respond! Does this happen to you? Do you feel occasionally that while you believe yourself to be enunciating clearly, the reactions of those around you imply that you are speaking with a mouthful of marbles? Or occasionally not at all? Are we really harder to understand than West Londoners, innit?

And on that note, going gym now. Laters!*

*Pronounced in RP, of course.

Tuesday 12 May 2009

Bank holiday barmy-ness…

D

A bit late, but nevertheless…

So, it's May Bank Holiday Weekend! I spent last year's May bank holiday in rural Berkshire, attending a May Fair that involved pig racing, yummy barbeque and more varieties of fudge than I had ever seen in my life. This May, I'm in London and you might say that the differences are noticeable. While in the country-side, three day weekends present an opportunity to place bets on swine or to frolic about in the great outdoors with family and friends, it seems to inspire a great deal of lunacy in the metropolis. As evidence, I offer last night's events, arranged chronologically:

  • 8.30pm: Paul and I are playing our first game of Scrabble since my return to the UK. Suddenly, the noise of a helicopter drowns out the Beck album we are listening to. A glance out the window that the helicopter is of a police nature, hovering over a house on the street perpendicular to ours.
  • 9.00pm: Deciding to brave the great outdoors in search of Indian food, we unfortunately need to go in the direction of Perpendicular Road. We discover it is closed off with police tape for two blocks south of its intersection with Our Street. Policemen stand guard on the corner and swarm around what we assume is Alleged Crack House or similar.
  • 9.05pm: Having found another route to the Main Road, upon which the curry house is located, we are distracted by yet another horde of police and perps, sorting out the aftermath of what appears to be a dogfight conducted outside an estate agents.
  • 9.06pm: Taking advantage of the police preoccupation with Alleged Crack House and Dogfight Aftermath, a youth on a BMX bike goes tearing down the street with another (seemingly stolen) bike in tow.
  • 9.07pm: A driver pulling out a parking space connects with another car as bike boy whizzes around the corner, then reemerges a few minutes later with a different (also seemingly stolen) bike.

By this point we'd arrived at the curry house of our choice, only to find a waiter standing confusedly in the doorway, staring up and down the street and clearly wondering how and why his restaurant suddenly came to be located on the dodgiest road in West London.

Oh for the pastoral days of racing pigs and fifty flavors of homemade fudge…

Monday 27 April 2009

When in Buda…Pesky pronunciation & the BBC

On Saturday, while listening to BBC Radio 4, a long held suspicion of mine was confirmed.

This suspicion stems from the coverage of last November's US elections and revolves around the winning candidate's name. I spent part of the evening watching the BBC coverage before switching to CNN online and noticed that the BBC journalists at home and in the States seemed to be having a feud amongst themselves. Observe:

BBC journo in UK: And how is it looking for BARR-ack Obama in North Carolina?

BBC journo in NC: Well, as you can see, this student union is full of supporters and volunteers in the Ba-RAWK Obama campaign and they're clearly hoping for victory.

And back and forth the evening's coverage went, competing pronunciations over the eventual winner's name parried back and forth like a game of syntactical tennis. Having just discovered the BBC Have Your Say message boards, I made the mistake of submitting this observation to the conversation. The BBC message boards should come with a disclaimer discouraging foreigners from contributing their views as any such opinions will be dismissed out of hand despite their validity. I was variously accused of trying to teach the British how to speak, as if I'd suggested a complete overhaul of pronunciation, rather than merely suggest that British journalists do President Obama the courtesty of pronouncing his name the way he does. I was not suggesting that the pronunciation of the second syllable in the name Natasha should rhyme with "posh", not "trash", as it frequently does here, nor that the first syllable of my last name is Mick, not Muck or Mac. I didn't suggest that the entire Anglophone world start dropping the 's' in Paris. It was just that the BBC could perhaps stop mispronouncing the name of the most famous man in the world at the moment. It's not even difficult. If English tongues can handle Ahmadinijad and Medvedev, surely Barack is possible?

Clearly the majority of the English think their pronunciation's perfect. Where does this certitude come from? This Saturday, I learned the answer – from my old friends the BBC!

In the ten o'clock hour, a program on Budapest that would air later in the day was being discussed. When the program actually came on, the presenter said she'd received messages from listeners saying they thought she'd find it was actually "Budapesht". Never one to assume competence in others, she phoned the BBC Pronunciation Bureau (It exists! I knew it!), who told her that the British say "Budapest". "Others," she announced, somewhat disdainfully, "may call it Budapesht [never mind that those "others" include the Hungarians] but WE say BudaPEST!"

Tuesday 14 April 2009

“Is YOUR Career Making You Infertile?”

I had never really pondered this question until it confronted me yesterday in The Times (I know, I know…but it was in a café. I didn't buy it or anything). Essentially, the gist of this article, based on research by Professor Elizabeth Cashdan at the University of Utah, is that driven career-women are exposed to high levels of stress, which cause their estrogen levels to drop and some estrogen to be replaced by androgens. This results in lowered ovulation and can even produce a change in a woman's WHR (that's waist to hip ratio, for the uninitiated, and ladies, apparently we're in deep trouble if our waists aren't roughly 70% of our hip circumference). See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article6073045.ece for full version.

I don't have a problem with the scientific argument presented – Cashdan is actually studying WHR across cultures, from a decidedly anthropological slant (See http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/cashdan/whr.pdf.) I do object to way article's author, Peta Bee (also published in The Daily Mail) has twisted the research into a not-so-subtle attack on professional women: the notion that "career women" (is it me, or does that read like something of the back of a 1960s Air Stewardess Barbie box?) are not attractive to men. Their bodies are "straight up and down." Dr. Laurence, a London fertility doctor contributes this bit of wisdom in the article's last paragraph: "It is no biological mystery that so many studies have shown men are drawn to women who are curvaceous and have a narrow waist, indications of health and fertility." The article lambasts Kiera Knightley bodies in favor of the Marilyn Monroe/Jessica Alba variety (poor Keira's WHR is only 80%! She best stop acting, now!), implying that if only women cared less about getting ahead at work, they'd stay home, bathing in estrogen, which according to our good London doctor "makes [women] relaxed, calm and thoughtful, the perfect state in which to become pregnant."

Yet only a paragraph before, this same medical gentleman informs us that a woman's sensitivity to estrogen is determined in puberty and largely unalterable. He does not, however, consider an obvious question that follows. Is a woman's career drive, her sense of competitiveness, a function of estrogen (at least in part) and if so, are less estrogen-rich women drawn to high-powered careers because they're not maternally gifted? Bards in medieval society were frequently scrawny or otherwise unfit for work – they were the only ones who could be spared and only their infirmities secured them time to create songs and poetry. Also, a professional life, in my experience, makes one a better mother – I was inspired by my mother's career and loved that fact that she had an active life outside the home. I didn't feel cheated, and while it's true that I spent my time sans maman with a nanny and not filed in an over-subscribed daycare centre, I have only good things to say about my mother's combination of work and motherhood. I'm not really surprised that the good Dr. Laurence ignores these questions, but I am surprised that Bee does. A bit of cyber-digging revealed that she herself has had a child and that her own life represents a third way unacknowledged by her article. Why doesn't she speak up? Where's the female solidarity?

Equally worrying are the lack of responses posted in reply to the article. Reading it enflamed me, but it doesn't seem to have done much for the readership of The Times. The four comments on offer range from something along the lines of "this is all men's fault. I have to compete with them, so I can't have children" to "all this proves is that women aren't good at being men" (who knew that ambition and professional drive were solely male attributes?) to "I have an hour-glass figure and I ALWAYS get pregnant on the first try."

All of this is beginning to make me nervous – with notable exceptions, English women are the most motherhood-worshipping, career-deprecating, anti-feminist crew of sisters I have ever encountered and articles like this make me fear that a Handmaiden's Tale-esque social experiment could gain ground here with terrifying ease. In a way it already has – the default oral contraceptive in the UK contains double the estrogen of my American pill, which (quel surprise) isn't available here. It must have been designed with "career women" in mind.

 

London Job Hunt, Day 2 & Miss Singapore on Westbourne Grove

Success! I have just received confirmation that as of today, I am in charge of UK development for a fascinating, international theatre company. This news is especially welcome as a perusal through yesterday's Guardian revealed that its Media & Arts jobs section has shrunk to a page. A PAGE! But, more important than any financial gain that may result from this is having once more a project to sink my teeth into and to distract me from PhD decisions, as well as a new group of interesting theatre types with whom to discuss, work and collaborate.

(Quick aside: Paul has just come into the room and begun reading over my shoulder. He points out that the company is composed of foreigners, not Brits, which may explain why I've been successful.)

This news comes on the heels of an absolutely lovely UK weekend, which began Friday with a visit to John, Sarah & Beatrice in Oxford, where the rain forbore long enough to go for a walk to a charming pub, a pleasant Easter Sunday that included a trip to St. Paul's Cathedral followed by a delicious Paul-created dinner with Andy and then a luxuriously lazy Monday, which consisted of brunch at Harlem on Westbourne Grove at 3.30 in the afternoon, the discovery of a classic black All Saints skirt at Traid for a tenner, the acquisition of inoffensive sunglasses (mine being broken), white wine in Richmond with Bran and a late-night curry at Kathmandu Inn. Who knew such bliss was possible?

I should say more of brunch, before signing off to go bask in my success for a few hours before I am confronted with the amount of work I actually need to do and begin to go a bit frantic. Harlem's schtick is American Soul Food – collard greens, corn fritters, BBQ chicken, cobb salad (!!!). We've been meaning to go there for ages, but have been repeatedly distracted by a pizza restaurant on the same block that does the most fantastic, New York style pizza I've ever had outside New York. Anyway, yesterday we finally made it. We toddled in for the Sunday brunch menu (held over for Easter Monday) at 3.30 and found ourselves sitting next to a table of late twentysomethings whose conversation was extremely eaves-dropping friendly and quite improbable. Things we learned:

  • One of them, who was being messed about by some guy not worth her trouble, was a former Miss Singapore, who competed in the Miss Universe pageant.
  • There is a facebook group and world-wide network of former Miss Universe contestants and whenever Miss Sing goes to a new city, she endeavors to meet up one of them.
  • A serviced flat across from Selfridges costs £4000/month.
  • Even if you're on the guest list for Mahiki, sometimes you still have to wait.

As we were leaving, I said to Paul that it's good to have these encounters every now and then. One thinks one is living a relatively pleasant life, full of friends, travel, yummy food and sartorial goodness, with some left over to share, and then you encounter the world of former Miss Universe contestants and begin to wonder if you've ever lived at all…

Friday 10 April 2009

London Job Hunt, Day 1

So today, I endeavored to apply for a job a trendy vintage store I have been frequently patronizing for the last two years. It has a regular turnover of staff and garments spread over a variety of locations and only two shops actually receive/price clothes. I had spoken to a staff member, obtained a number for the office, and called them this morning. I confess to anticipating a reasonable level of bitchiness – I've watched too many episodes of Project Runway to expect anything less. But good lord! Nothing prepared me for Fashion Geezer. His list of offences:

  • Answering the phone with "Hello" and then responding to my inquiry if I had reached the right number with, "Is this about a job?" Too bad I'm not assessing his people skills. (Quick aside: why is it somehow okay to be horribly rude/dismissive to potential employees who you expect to treat your customers with respect, courtesy and charm if hired? It's like kicking a dog repeatedly and then asking it to allow small children to dress it nonstop for five hours.)
  • Asking a variety of fashion related questions (fair enough), some of which I honestly didn't know the answer to, some I did, and others which I was unable to answer because I couldn't understand what he was saying.
  • His flagrant assertion that I was not a permanent resident. A: How do you know? B: What does it matter if I have a work permit? C: Discriminate much?
  • This situation (which I acknowledge is not really his fault and is part of a larger problem w/British/American English). Fashion Geezer (Dude or Boy would sound better but I could tell by his voice he had to be over 60) asked me if I knew what di-voor-ray is. I reproduce his pronunciation phonetically. I tried to google it, thinking it would be something like this: devouré or devouree. No. It's devore. How do you get di-voor-ray out of that? And do you know what it is? It's flocking – thick pile fabric (like velvet) with the thick bits burnt off to make a pattern. I owned an entire, full-length dress of it in 1998. Why do the English, who historically detest the French, adopt and then mangle/mispronounce French words that are completely inscrutable to any non-Brit who may have the misfortune to encounter them? Keep the accentual marks or change the pronunciation, but doing neither is ridiculous!
  • When I replied after the devore-fiasco that no, I didn't have a fashion degree (despite costume experience and good knowledge of periods from theatre), but that I had a good eye and was a quick learner, attributes their website requests, he then told me it doesn't say that (it does, really – I double-checked after I got off the phone, just in case I'd read it wrong) and refused to speak to me any longer.
  • Second Man, who I spoke to next, booked me to come in for an appointment, but I realized when he hung up the phone that he hadn't actually told me to which of the company's various locations I should report.

All of this is highly disturbing on several levels. First off, I have never received any manner of advice whatsoever (or indeed any conversation beyond "Do you want me to open the case for you") from anyone in these shops (and I have been to all of them) so I question that anyone beyond the admittedly savvy girls who receive and price things has encyclopedic knowledge of the entire contents of the inventory. Mostly, they put things on hangers, keep an eye out for thieves and ring people up. I can do that. I can also wear interesting clothes that give people ideas and inspire them to buy stuff, and I can make pleasant conversation and suggest things they might like to try. Surely this is more useful than slouching behind the counter glaring at all and sundry while mentally reciting an alphabetized list of British designers from Ashley, Laura to Westwood, Vivienne?

Rest of the day spent sending out C.V. to hopefully less vitriolic destinations. Dear God.

Job Search, Day 1 (Intro)

Hello dear readers (if any of ye there be),

Today, I am embarking on London Job Search, Part III. The previous two attempts have been horrifically demoralizing and ego-devouring, so I've decided that I shall set this particular endeavor apart by writing about it, my logic being that at the end, even if I do not succeed in finding a job, I will at least have an interesting chronicle of my search. Also, I hope that regular, sentient reflection will provide some sense of perspective and humor that was lacking in previous attempts. Of course, should anyone reading this wish to employ me, that would be another lovely outcome. And if anyone wishes to reply to this series of posts saying something akin to "all London employers are rubbish not to fight to hire someone of your wit and talents" I shall certainly not be opposed.

Okay. So to start off, I should provide a rough outline of my C.V. Here's what we're working with:

Theatre (Creative): Lots of acting, some directing and dramaturgy, a fair bit of choreography

Theatre (Production/Admin): A year of development & marketing for a rather lovely, smallish company in Philadelphia; 4 years of self-producing in Prague; freelance development & marketing in London since last Sept.

Writing/EFL: 1.5 years of teaching EFL in Prague; 1 in London; 3.5 years of tutoring writing in the US

Office: 10,000 summers (okay, about 7) in a law firm in Harrisburg

Skills: Scarily fast typing (80 wpm), good net skills, competent at most MS programs (apart from Access – what is it for?)

Qualifications: BA English (mcl), MA Theatre, EFL Certificate (not at CELTA b/c I did it in Prague where no one cared. This may become a sticking point later, so stay tuned)

Now, on to the sort of job I am seeking…basically, theatre production job ideal, some EFL teaching/writing tutoring/exam prep would be fine, I'd love to be someone's summer research assistant, I'd enjoy working in fashion retail but my retail experience (not listed above, as quite brief) is in luxury home décor and gourmet food, and I wouldn't mind any sort of part-time, office-y type job. I also at this point do not care if I do any sort of extra/model-y type stuff, as I've done bits of this before and in any case anything I do will be only until October when I will (hopefully) start a PhD. Things I will not do: anything to do with food preparation, water, cleaning products or children under the age of 15. Also, nothing that requires me to wear a name tag (unless it's someone else's name).

One more thing…in the interest of fairness, I will not list the names of any place of employment with which I have dealings by its real name.

And we're off!

Meanwhile back in London…

So here I am, back in London at last after 6 weeks in the US, during which I wrote, somewhat regrettably, nothing. That's not strictly true, as I did write two complete PhD applications with writing samples, bibliographies and research proposals. But you don't really want to read about professional/geographic dialects in the 17th century, do you? In any case, I don't wish to. Not at the moment anyway. I suppose in a way the silence makes sense, as this is a blog about a previously Anglofilic American, who is fast turning into an Anglophobe under the influence of London. How fitting then that my first relevant (for these purposes) observation came while I was in the air, midway between New York and London.

Despite fearing it would depress my already ambivalent spirits, I decided to throw caution to the wind by watching Easy Virtue, which is a delightful film based on a Noel Coward play. It's about a glamorous and slightly shocking (of course) American racecar driver who falls in love with and marries the son of a crumbling aristocratic family from, you guessed it, the UK. Predictably, misery ensues for all (American has sat for Picasso! Doesn't over cook her vegetables! Can't prevent idiot sister-in-law from doing the can-can knickerless at a church fete!). As I watched, I felt compelled to write down the following dialogue/lines, which seemed to particularly resonate w/my experience of the UK:

Father: Smile.

Daughter: I don't feel like it.

Father: You're English, dear. Fake it.


American girl: Coming here has been the most demoralizing experience of my life.


American girl again: I can't live here. Nothing can.

To which this American girl says: Too right. (At least not for very long anyway, or without being transformed in the process into someone utterly unlike myself).

Having set the tone for the flight, I decided to continue on with Revolutionary Road. I have been avoiding this film, which I also very much wanted to see, for weeks, on the grounds that it would likely confirm my worst suspicions about the pitfalls of marriage, but having survived Easy Virtue without recourse to the galley (refuge of alcoholics and social drinkers on am flights – you can separate the pros from the amateurs given the number of trips back and the knowledge that such a system exists in the first place) I felt somewhat invincible. I didn't write down lines on RR, tone much to serious and just generally brilliant and deserving of 100% attention without distractions of rummaging for moleskine, but as the film ended, I couldn't help but be struck by its similarity to EV. Voici:

EV: Film made by Brits about the stultifying nature of life in Britain. Set in the 1920s.

RR: Film made by Brits & Americans about the stultifying nature of life in the United States. Set in the 1950s.

Two critiques of society, two vintage time periods that allow the audiences to conveniently ignore the contemporary resonance, should they desire to do so. Of course, you'd have to be completely oblivious to miss the obvious relevance, but still neither of these movies offers the unavoidable scrutiny of American Beauty or Disturbia, par example.

With about an hour of movie viewing time left, I decided to watch some of La Vie En Rose (Why, by the way, was this film, La Môme en français, released in English-speaking countries under a different, but still French, name?). While doing so, I tried to think if any of the European films I've seen (and I've seen quite a few by now) depict the sense of "hopeless emptiness" (RR) that so many well-made and critically-acclaimed Anglophone movies seem to. Possibly Caché (Hidden), but otherwise I can't think of any that get at quite the same sense of quiet desperation. Perhaps when Pink Floyd referred to hanging on in quiet desperation as the English way they were speaking of the language, not the nation, as it seems to be a transatlantic problem. Given the exuberant work of Baz Luhrman, perhaps Australia's exempt. Or perhaps I just haven't seen enough Australian cinema.

Monday 2 March 2009

Island living

And now for a slightly frivolous ramble…

Before my trip to the States, Paul-my-love and I took a trip to Paris, which was lovely. I always get slightly nervous when travelling to places I've wanted to visit for a long time; there's always a chance that they will tragically fail to measure up to my idea of them. This was not the case with Paris however – the entire experience was fantastic (apart from the confiscation of my coffee at Eurostar check-in) and, as we trained it back to London under cloudy skies, sharing a table for four with an English businessman obliviously occupying my window seat and inhaling and exhaling somewhat maniacally, a new, if slightly silly, idea occurred to me. Perhaps life is just better on continents. As soon as the idea took root, examples of island-oddities flooded my brain:

  • Prison islands: Elba, Alcatraz, Riker's Island, Guantanamo Bay, Australia (initially anyway)
  • Island of Jersey: home of recently discovered murders
  • Block island: sole preserve of 16th century English (this being an interesting, not messed up, oddity)
  • Three Mile Island: home of a nuclear power plant located near my parents' house which nearly suffered a meltdown in the 1970s
  • The British Isles: 2 millennia of political and religious upheaval
  • The Hawaiian island of Molokai, which began as a leper colony
  • Iceland, Antigua, Manhattan: financial crisis much?
  • An unnamed barrier island off the coast of Topsail, NC; essentially a strip of beach on which some adventurous families constructed elaborate beach houses, only to have them destroyed by a storm shortly thereafter

Literature and lyrics further support the idea:

  • "A rock feels no pain and an island never cries." – Paul Simon, who, incidentally, spent significant time recording and performing in the UK with Art Garfunkel in the 1960s.
  • "Island life is living from a cup of broken dreams." – A contemporary assessment from English singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn (whose album is beautiful, by the way).
  • "No man is an island, entire of himself." – A bit obvious, but there's no quarrelling with John Donne.

This is too much evidence to dismiss as merely the ramblings of a train-rattled mind. The reoccurring theme throughout all of this seems to be that islands are exclusive places; they seem to breed insularity. Look at Britain's skeptical attitude towards Europe for much of its history. There's something about sharing a common land mass that forces an element of teamwork and perhaps, because ingress and egress has historically been easier, a higher level of tolerance. It's very difficult to seal off the outside world on a continent: witness the Berlin wall as an attempt. With an island, there's no need for barbed wire and sentries; the sea does it for you. Are Continentals and Islanders destined to be at odds? Can we ever live happily on each other's turf? Could this theory explain my tumultuous relationship with the UK?

Of course what it doesn't explain is Paul, an islander happily at home in continental surrounds, particularly those containing mountains.

But then, this post makes no claim to authenticity or accuracy and was only ever a frivolous ramble.

Friday 27 February 2009

L’esprit des corps

So, on my recent BA189 flight from Heathrow to Newark, I found myself seated next to an English girl, perhaps a few years older than me, who possessed an American-sized engagement ring and an interesting portfolio of the artistic type. She was also wearing cool trainers, and it occurred to me that it would be nice to speak to her. I always feel like going west takes FOREVER and a little conversation to pass the time is always welcome. But months in the UK have taught me that one doesn't speak to strangers unless certain conditions are met, so our interchanges were limited to "excuse me" and "thanks" and the like as we passed to and from the loo.

Then, as the plane neared Newark, one of the conditions for conversation was met. It began to get scary. After the crew was seated for landing, the plane began to ride like a bucking bronco as it descended through dense clouds and high winds. There was rollercoaster-esque semi-screaming from the passengers and a vertiginous drop in the pit of my stomach. The lack of encouraging words from the flight deck did not help matters. Cool-trainers-girl and I peered out the window at the circling clouds and looked at our journey monitors, which seemed to indicate the plane beating an increasingly jagged path in the direction of Philadelphia. I was beginning to wonder if someone had broken into the cockpit, perhaps planning to fly us into City Hall or the Amtrak building, when:

Cool-trainers-girl: This landing is crazy!

Me: Yes. It is.

Cool-trainers-girl: It's never like this.

Me: I know. I would feel much better if they'd just tell us everything's under control.

Cool-trainers-girl: Do you think it's the wind?

Me: They did say it would be windy when we took off.

And that was it. Apart from expressing our relief at being once more on the ground, we didn't speak again. The interaction occurred only when necessary, only when the least rational and most paranoid parts of our brains were thinking things along the lines of "what if this plane crashes?"

The experience made me think of a play I directed in November. It's called Neither Here Nor There and is about Italian immigrants to the UK in the years leading up to WWII. The war starts, Italian businesses are vandalized and the Italian men are shipped off as POWs on a recomissioned cruise ship that's torpedoed en route to Canada (the Navy forgot to mark it with a red cross to indicate prisoners were on board). Back in London, the blitz is underway, and as the women left behind have to deal with the rubble, suddenly the Italians aren't such a problem. Suddenly it's okay to talk to them, to be comrades in arms. Everyone's rendered equal by the shared tragedy.

The same thing happens on the tube today – no one speaks until you're stopped in a tunnel, or fined by a ticket inspector, or in a carriage where a Portuguese teenager leaves a bag on the train and you have to have a debate about whether or not to pull the emergency alarm. A disaster – whether large or small in scale – is all that's needed to precipitate conversation.

Take the recent snowfall – at the start of February, London had a proper snowstorm. It was lovely. Best of all, it made people lovely. Suddenly everyone was talking to everyone else. I was asked to photograph two different groups of people while walking home from Hammersmith. They were people I didn't know! Neighbors I hadn't met before were building snowmen in their front gardens. It made me wish London could be perpetually blanketed in snow. The snowstorm-as-conversation-starter argument may initially seem to contradict the comrades-in-arms theory, but actually they blend perfectly. The snow was technically a common enemy, but one we were all happy to lose to, since losing in this case was actually to win: a day off work, a day to sleep in, a day to build snow creatures, a day to bask in the warm glow and bonhomie that comes with confronting the enemy.

These interactions are so pleasant, and such a change from the norm, that it makes me wonder if I could somehow perpetually manufacture mini-disasters. I would make so many friends! On my travels through London, I could spill several coffees a day, break heels and trip down the escalators in the tube. I could also just hope for more snow. Or perhaps move to a somewhat friendlier place.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

Bibliophilia, a replacement for Anglophilia?

Well, here I am, on day two of my love affair with the British Library, day two as holder of a reading pass, a genuine card-carrying intellectual! (Only not really, because I'm sitting here in the café, drinking a latte and taking a break before I look at Havel in the original Czech, and while that's all very valid, I suspect that if I were a real intellectual, I would not have checked facebook, but would instead be reading the New Yorker blogs. But hey…it's only day two. I'm still a bit starstruck.)

I can't believe it's taken me this long to get here. Actually, The British Library was one of the first places I came in London. In the summer of 2006, when I was travelling solo around Europe before heading home, London was my last stop. I was running somewhat low on funds and staying in Pimlico, so I told myself I was allowed one transport day pass with which to see something not in walking distance of my hostel. I chose Bloomsbury, maneouvered around the building site that was St. Pancras at the time, and spent a very lovely late morning perusing the exhibitions at the British Library.

I hadn't been back since, and I've no idea what I was thinking in waiting so long, because coming here has felt like coming home. O academia! O the obscure monographs on arcane subjects, o the furrowed brows, o the rows of desks and bearded professors kissing their lovely young students on the cheek in slightly lascivious greeting! O the book holders, complete with weighted beads so that one doesn't have to hold a book open in order to transcribe passages onto one's laptop (one in a sea of many)! O the certainty with which the woman who authorized my reading pass told me to come back once I've started my doctorate and get an extended pass! O the individual desks with their individual laptop plug-ins and reading lamps with little brass switches! O the wild-haired academic boys and quirkily dressed academic girls! O my people!

I shall stop rhapsodizing now. I realize I'm being a bit absurd. But really, this place is for me what a Star Trek convention must be for Trekkies – a little piece of world where the external rules and values mesh harmoniously with one's internal system. It doesn't matter that I'm in a city I don't like in a country that has rejected all my overtures at friendship. I am in The Library, which transcends nationality and even its own geographic location. It is so wonderful that, had I rediscovered it sooner, it might have saved my London experience. Perhaps I would have written that novel my Uncle Arnie has been telling me to write since I was eleven. Perhaps not.

I'm visiting the States in a couple weeks and I'm starting to regret it…after all, my current pass expires in May. Do I really want to lose an entire month of this bliss? Speaking of which, I really should be getting back to my (individually numbered and appointed) desk now.

Friday 6 February 2009

Miss-ing the point

So on Monday, it snowed in London, lots – the most in 18 years. All the schools were closed, so my love and I went for a walk in the snow, in the park nearest our house. As we entered the park, a group of teenage "youfs" approached us, bizarrely whistling the theme from the Disney's animated movie Robin Hood. It was hilarious and unexpected, and I started to laugh until their leader (Robin?) said to us, "Hello Mr. & Mrs."

Now, I object to almost all forms of impersonal address: "Miss!" "Ma'am!" "Dear!" (and most dreaded of all) "Mrs!" or "Madam!" I don't think I would object to being called "Mademoiselle" and I certainly don't object to "Slechno!" even when shouted at me by bums selling the Czech equivalent of The Big Issue. In trying to dissect this phobia, I've deduced that it's an age/identity issue. After all, the speaker, the person shouting "Madam" or "Miss!" at me, has to look at me and answer this question: "Is this female I see before me a Miss or a Madam?" I imagine that every flier distributor in London uses a complex mental algorithm that calculates a bunch of stuff about me, from my hair color (dyed or natural?) to my choice of bag (sensible or statement), coat, umbrella and shoes, before deciding which address to hurl in my direction. In actual fact, this is probably not the case, but the truth remains that these addresses carry weight.

Imagine the humiliation of the Victorian spinster forced to correct the unsuspecting stranger who addresses her as Mrs., or the way the title might haunt a woman who's lost her husband to illness. English school children call all teachers, regardless of marital status, "Miss," perhaps a holdover from the days when the only respectable profession for an unmarried woman was education. Even Ms., which I use under duress (I would prefer to use nothing but my name) is dodgy. It's consciously evasive and begs the question, "What is she hiding? Why does this woman not want me to know her marital status?" The absence of "Ms." from the cacophony of street-addresses is telling; it's something we tolerate in nonconformist women, we humor them by accepting its use, but don't admit it into pop-parlance. At the root of this issue is the question why, in the twenty-first century, marital status is even indicated in a woman's name. Men's names reveal nothing but their gender. With a doctorate, interestingly, one becomes genderless; both men and women can educate themselves into the ranks of the androgynous, but again, that doesn't trickle down to the street, or in my case, the park.

Why did this upset me so much? When someone, like Robin Hood boy, calls me "Mrs.", I feel older than I am and as if I am being mistaken for someone I'm not. I'm sure some girls love hearing it, and that's great, but at the end of the day it's just plain unfair to confront the female half of the population with hypotheses as to their marital status on a daily basis. To solve this, perhaps we should reinstate "Master" to refer to all unmarried men and see what chaos ensues. Or we could all adopt, "Hey, you!" Genderless, casual, vaguely proletariat...it has potentional.

207 - A Microcosm on Wheels

I feel a bit guilty writing here, as if I am being disloyal to my new moleskine, which, truth be told, I have yet to make more than about a 20-page dent. It's the full-size one, but still, it seems sad that it's been eclipsed by the arrival of my new (at)la(st!)ptop, an MSI Wind netbook. As we've only been together a week, I can't tell anyone in good conscience to run about and buy one yet, but we're off to a lovely start, my pretty little girl and I.

Today I had an interesting bus experience. I got the 207 – bus of misery – from Ealing to Home today. I nearly missed the bus upon which the incident occurred, as I was dashing across the street. I had briefly considering stopping for some Starbucks, but thank goodness I didn't, as I would have missed what transpired next…

I got on the bus in front of Sainsbury's. It was crowded in the manner of many a 207 before it, and it soon became apparent that contributing to the general malaise of the crowd were two bus inspectors. I had got on at the front of the bus, and in front of me, indeed preventing me from sitting or less obtrusively wedging myself and my stuff somewhere, stood one of them, in the process of ticketing a woman.

Woman: But I haven't got £25.

Inspector: That's okay, you don't have to pay now.

Woman: Well, that's good, because I don't have £25.

(I should mention here that the woman was British and posh-ish, in a mad cat lady, crumbling upper middle-class sort of way. The man was of an Asian persuasion, both were terribly polite.)

Inspector: Well, you can mail it in.

Woman: This is terribly unfair.

Inspector: Well, you have information to appeal the charge.

Woman: This is terribly unfair.

Pause

Woman: May I have my pass back.

Inspector: Yes.

Woman: May I have my pass now please.

Inspector: I just need to fill in a form and get a print-out.

Pause. Woman pokes Inspector in the back.

Inspector: Please don't touch my back.

Woman: Well, you're leaning against me, and it doesn't feel good.

Inspector: I'm not leaning against you.

Woman: You're crowding me out.

Inspector: You can say excuse me.

Woman: I don't have to say excuse me, you're leaning on me!

Inspector: If you'd said excuse me, I'd have moved.

Woman: Well, I'm saying it now.

Pause

Woman: May I have my pass please?

Inspector: Yes.

Woman: May I have it now, please?

Inspector: No.

Woman: Why?

Inspector: I told you that I need to write a report and get a print out. You'll get your pass back, but it does take some time.

Woman: Why don't you get on with it then?!

The two of them never struck up a conversation again, contentious or otherwise, but Woman repeated the entire escapade to the woman who sat down across from her at the next stop, who happened to be from Jamaica, which reminded Woman how much she loves Barbados. Or she did love Barbados, but she doesn't anymore because it's so expensive and too many rich people go there and she can't be asked to spend the same amount of money on food in Barbados as she does in London. And these buses – these buses are awful. They're set up so you can ride without paying – over half the people on this bus probably haven't paid. The old buses were better. The ones with conductors were better. But they'll be getting rid of these buses soon.

Woman: He ticketed me.

Jamaican Woman: What? He ticket you?

Woman: Yes.

Jamaican Woman: How much?

Woman: £25.

Jamaican Woman: I don't have 25p!

Woman: He's gone now.

Jamaican Woman: What?

Woman: He's gone.

And on and on…it wasn't her fault that she got ticketed, it was the woman in front of her – Polish, with a pushchair – and she pushed the button, but with the baby and everything it didn't work or she didn't notice…but they've given her the print out of her ticket usage and she always pays and there was money on her card. But she's not appealing, no point in appealing. There was a woman appealed, it was in the papers, and she lost the appeal and she had to pay the costs. So it's not good to appeal. But she's not paying it either.

Jamaican Woman: I don't have 25p!

Two things about the encounter struck me – first that the Woman and Inspector both used their natural politeness as a weapon. This seems to be an English thing. I was on a flight from Newark to London once. It was due to leave at 8am and all the passengers had somehow rolled out of bed and presented themselves at the airport by 6, only no one was getting checked in. We stood in a queue, waiting for instructions. Somewhere behind me was an older English lady, complaining with the sort of restrained indignation no American can truly muster, than she could not HEAR what was going ON. And REALLY, one might exPECT to be informed of any CHANGES to the SCHEDule, or if there was a PROBlem. Indeed, there was a problem, and the flight was delayed to the next morning, at which point she was in as persnickety a mood as the day before. She even managed to get upgraded to first class, complaining she was being stared at by people in the coach cabin: I don't wish to be looked at! Excuse me, sir, these BOYS are staring at me!

As an American, I have a good opinion of my ability to be righteously indignant, but no one can beat the Brits for polite aggression.

Friday 9 January 2009

And finally...

I have decided to start this blog, which I have been contemplating for ages. Maybe my impetus is the recent edition of Talk of the Nation on NPR dedicated to blogging, maybe it's the accumulating mass of little things I've written that are sitting on my hard drive, but the time has come.

I'm an arty, 27 year old American girl living in London. Before London, I lived in Prague, Czech Republic, which remains my favorite spot in the world. Before Prague (and after it, for a year), I lived in Philadelphia, PA, another great city. Before that, I grew up next to Hershey, PA, home of chocolate (which I don't particularly like).

My work interests consist of academia and theatre (and how they do or do not get along), but I'm also fascinated by language, fashion, religion, travel, politics and wider cultural issues, especially relating to women. Mostly, I enjoy ruminating on my changing relationship with the US: the things I learn about it by not living in it, the ways in which British and American culture diverge and overlap.

I'm curious to meet others straddling this (or other) cultural/national divides, other bi-national couples (my partner's English) or just anyone who fancies reading a slightly random, internationally-inclined and reasonably well-written blog.