From The Kitchen Table

Scotland does like to have tartan with everything. I listen to the radio in the night a lot because I don’t sleep well and normally I switch between Radio 5 and the World Service but in Scotland it seems to be all Scottish programmes – Fred McCauley who is a great comic but seemed to be on all night when I listened. The next night there was what seemed like hours of an interview with two students about their poetry website. Switching from Newsnight with global news to the Scottish version is like leaving a rave for an evening of whist.

Still, I was pleased to see that local Edinburgh lad Chris Hoy had done so well in the Olympics along with three other gold medalists and I congratulate them all. It did seem though that nothing can be simply celebrated and enjoyed without some glum nationalist coming out to say that it isn’t good enough because Scotland doesn’t want to have anything to do with the UK. The Scots sport minister wants his own Scottish team with their own flag. Bit sad for their athletes – Chris Hoy seemed to have enjoyed being a part of the larger team. A Scots piece in the Times bewailed the overwhelming bagpipe and tartan angle applied to culture in Scotland with the danger of a nationalist annexation of matters cultural (and I suppose sporting too)

That Edinburgh is a UNESCO World Heritage site doesn’t surprise me at all. It is a truly wonderful city and I’m always happy to be back there. I am, however, a bit surprised that it has status as the first UNESCO city of literature. According to the official Scotland web site “few people realise that, outside of London, Edinburgh has more literary associations than any other part of Britain. Almost every well-known literary figure has visited and three of Britain’s most successful writers, J.K. Rowling, Alexander McCall Smith and Ian Rankin, presently live within a mile of each other.”

I don’t want to kick up a fuss but Oxford has, I gather, more published authors per square mile than anywhere in the UK. When I lived in Blackheath the local bookshop would put “local author” on any book produced in the vicinity in the hopes of encouraging us to buy it. If they tried it in Oxford, there’d be no place for the books. Edinburgh has three successful writers living there apparently. Gosh, terrific but hardly, dare I say it, so special as to warrant the city of literature label. I see Colin Dexter around all the time and sometimes have to jump out of the way of Richard Dawkins on his bike and that’s before I’ve had much of a think about other successful authors who live here. And before I’ve looked at dead authors. Or the academic authors.

Still, must admire the chutzpah of the Scots. They got their lovely city literary status which our lovely city didn’t. And it is an wonderful city – even if they do go on about their three authors!

Now here’s a review you won’t read anywhere else. Or possibly not.

In the Fringe programme is a performance of Aykbourn’s How the Other Half Loves and intrepid friends set off to see it. They didn’t realise they were being intrepid but that’s because they didn’t realise how far from the centre Murrayfield is. They knew it was not the usual fringe experience when they were checked into the community hall, individually by name. The man who introduced the event was apparently so delighted to see such a large audience he almost forgot to mention the two intervals. And when the intervals came about it turned out that the audience had to get their tea and chocolate digestives in two shifts. As they were leaving, one of the rather elderly audience apparently said to his companion – “oh, it’s dark. We ARE out late.”

Not to be missed, I feel.

Edinburgh; festival time. It’s a world of its own really. The Madrid crash registered only about 12 hours after it happened and normally I’d have been aware of it, almost as it happened.

Since most of the media decamp northwards at this time of the year for the Festival, the Fringe, the Book Festival, the Television conference and even the politics Festival there is no shortage of comment and reportage, although not from me. Sitting in the book festival café in a brief interval between the curtaining rain, I realised that the familiar looking bloke on the next table was, indeed Ming Campbell and that the huge laugh during Yasmin Alibhai- Brown’s one woman show emanated from Christopher Biggins.

Yasmin, who we met about five weeks ago, on holiday, told us about her show so, of course, we went. It’s the story of her early life in Uganda and her relationship with Shakespeare. It was really excellent. Informative, clever and amusing. The friends we went with, who had recently been to Uganda, loved it and we all felt we want to find out what happened next.

We’ve seen some good stuff. On the Waterfront, directed by Berkoff (a man who I think is a genius) was very good indeed. Our only quibble would be that the actor playing Johnny, the criminal leader shouted all his lines. A measured menace might have been more effective (and made some of the words more audible). A Life in the Theatre was also a great show with excellent acting by the two players and the one-man Lies Have Been Told about Robert Maxwell was a marvellous 90 minutes.

Each year I begin to think that I can probably give Edinburgh a miss. And now I’m hearing people saying “next year” with an ease that suggests that maybe not just yet.

Once upon a time I nursed in France with a wonderful French nurse who had trained in the UK about 20 years before. Her English, as one might expect, was perfect but her idioms betrayed the years since training. She would, for example, talk of elderly patients as “zis old bird” which outdated slang I used to find slightly unsettling and rather amusing.

I now find myself trying to check my own language. Not for ****!!! type expletives (which have remained encouragingly unchanging I find) but for arcane language or references revealing my own antiquity. It’s a bit challenging sometimes because I also try to avoid current slang despite being surrounded by people whose universal mark of approval is “cool”. There is definitely a time to abandon “cool” and I’m there. This limits my vocabulary a bit but I try to make “fab” sound post modern ironic (whatever that is)

I read a story decades ago about a time in the future, a time of great pressure and little joy, where citizens were given a fortnight to holiday where they would in the past. They were however absolutely required to return at the end of the two weeks or the state would send out officers to take them back. The couple in this story went back to the late 50s England and decided to stay and attempt to fool the hunters. How they were found out was through a small error; the man did not hitch his trousers up slightly from just above the knee before he sat down as, apparently, everyone else in the 50s did. I fear that, like him, it will be the unforeseen verbal error will get me.

Heigh Ho.

Ah here comes summer. And here come the summer visitors – huge groups of teenagers from all over the world who take over the streets of Oxford. I swear there are more this year than ever before. I hate to be someone who moans about tourists – I’m planning on being one myself shortly – but with the best will in the world (which I don’t actually have) it would be difficult not to snort a bit when plastered like a flattened fly against the walls of Christchurch as a group of about 90 Spanish kids flooded down the pavement toward me as I attempted to walk into town.

Many of them come for the language schools which is good for the local economy but not always good for the locals. Just like that bulging financial section in London. It does sometimes occur to me that just because you can transport hundreds of kids from country to country doesn’t mean you have to.

Several of the groups are given a sort of Oxford quiz when they arrive to orientate them. They are meant to find out facts about the town and university. This means that hordes of Chinese girls and Spanish lads ambush locals like me with a seemingly innocent question – “do you live here” which they then follow with a slightly harder one “which college is that” and then proceed if allowed to ask every question on the sheet “when was Balliol college founded, where is the Martyrs memorial” and so on. The culmination this week was looking out of the window by my desk on the ground floor to see about 10 faces crowding it several of which were shouting through the narrow, open gap “how old is Balliol College.” I know that travel is said to broaden the mind. I hope it broadens theirs because it sure as hell is narrowing mine.

If the groups aren’t finding out facts about an ancient university, they are moving in great groups often with identifying clothing or accessories. The pics are just two of visiting groups which appealed.

Strangely, for July, the sun has been shining and this is the anniversary of the great summer floods of Oxford. Last week the colleges had an open day and even — gasp, began to draw attention to themselves. Jesus actually had a banner outside which said, I hope, welcome to Jesus but I thought Lincoln college had a nice Oxford touch (it’s the picture in the middle). When I first moved here it would take a lot more than rushing up to passers by asking which college was which to find out – many colleges had no name plates as far as I could see and it took me a good year to find out. I’m glad it’s changed but there is a challenge for a town like this, between the working university, the commercial town and increasingly the entrepreneurial university which also entertains large numbers of people in the summer. For the moment, I’m quite glad I live in the unfashionable part of the town, south of the river.

This week I have:

added a link to a blog by Nathalie D’Arbeloff who won the Mary Stott prize awarded by the Guardian. She asks where the older women geeks are so I felt that it was only fair to put in her link. She’s an artist and writes about stuff a bit like me – rather random or if you prefer, far ranging but with lots more pictures, obviously. She says she’s a geek as well – I leave the tech to others but am fortunate in my contacts.

saw the 39 Steps at the Oxford Playhouse which is completely terrific and funny and I recommend if it comes to a town near you.

thought about the wonderful Mary Stott whose prize Nathalie D’Arbeloff won and the story that I’ll post about her another day.

joined Facebook finally (now it’s not as fashionable as once it was) and agreed that just as I don’t drink in the same pub as my sons (unless we’re all together) neither will I touch their pages.

been shocked to discover that Jacques Brel, who is one of my very, very favourite singers is also a favourite of Alastair Campbell, one of my very unfavourite political people.

met old friends for lunch by arrangement and one by serendipitous chance and been pretty glad that not all communications are digital.

Not written on anything properly.

I’m quite a keen European and I’m sorry that the Irish referendum has turned down the Lisbon Treaty. I’m not for a second denying that the EU has many, many faults, one of which I would suggest is their failure to make clear what the Treaty involved.

I used to accompany a group of journalists to Brussels on an annual visit for briefings by the Commission, MEPs and journalists based in Brussels. The last time I was there the big issue was communications between Brussels and the citizens of the EU, several of whom had cut up rough about the Constitution and enlargement. Doesn’t seem to have done a particularly good job in the case of Ireland, and probably elsewhere. But I am still wedded to the ideal of Europe and keep in my mind all its huge potential and dread the idea of the UK leaving the community. It’s a pity we don’t hear more about the positives – although I heard David Milliband some weeks ago giving a robust and clear defence on the Today Programme. Meanwhile, Will Hutton has said it very well in today’s Observer. Buy that man a drink.

I went to look up my quote from The First Post a few days after posting and hey – it had disappeared. So, as I am reminded by my publisher husband, I should have added that it was downloaded on Sunday 8 June. I didn’t make it up – really.

I remember when the UK joined what was then the EEC (European Economic Community) and the New Year’s party when we cheered our accession. Three years later I spent the 1976 New Year in Paris about to start work in a French hospital thanks to the recognition of nurse qualifications across the community. Although I was often very homesick in Paris I loved France, loved the city I lived in and finding out how ex-pat communities live. I was enchanted by the railway stations with the destination boards saying Milan, Rome, Barcelona, Zurich, realizing I could just get on a train and get out in another country’s capital. I am so glad I learnt fluent if imperfect French.

Exploring Paris, I saw the bullet marks in the walls of the Ecole Militaire and the plaques on the walls where a citizen of that city had been shot and died. My colleagues told me of landladies who wouldn’t let apartments to Germans and they pointed out a building near to our hospital which had been an infamous HQ of the Gestapo. Living in a city that had in living memory been occupied by a foreign force opened up my mind, but living there with people of my generation from all over Europe and beyond opened it further.

Among my colleagues was a young woman, like me about 25, who had fled her home country of Chile. She was called Marta and she was a nurse. Her boyfriend, a doctor had been arrested by the regime and she had left for her own safety. She told me of a surgeon, arrested at the table as he operated and dragged from the theatre. She told me how much she missed her mother and how much she worried for her. One day, Marta told us she was going home because her mother was ill. We worried for her, although with an imperfect vision of quite what was happening in Chile. Communications in the mid 70s were obviously much more limited than now. She told us she would be back in 6 weeks but she wasn’t. And although the hospital enquired at the Embassy and wrote to her home address we never heard from her again. I like to hope she simply decided to stay at home and grow older with her family. Whatever did happen to her, my loathing of Pinochet’s dictatorship has never faded.

The experience of working and socialising with people from so many other countries gave me a lifelong interest in countries and people outside my own (although sadly I have hardly travelled at all), And the contrast of the benefits of peace which allowed me to work in Paris whilst my colleague had to seek shelter because of internal war in her own country made me an enthusiast for the EU which has helped maintain peace for more than 50 years to a point where war – actual physical, destructive, killing war – between members of the EU is unthinkable.

A few weeks ago I was a little concerned when a creature dressed in the distinctive plumage of his class passed me on my way back from work to my south of the river home. I was pretty certain I’d spotted a member of the Bullingdon Club, a notorious group which has had more publicity that in probably deserves because Dave Cameron and Boris Johnson were both members. Only the very wealthy students get invited to join –the “uniform” which includes a pink tailcoat costs north of £3000.

When I looked up Bullingdon club I found the Wikipedia entry which covers it rather well I thought

“The Bullingdon Club is a socially exclusive student dining club at Oxford University, without any permanent rooms, infamous for its members’ wealth and destructive binges. Membership is by invitation only, and prohibitively expensive for most, given the need to pay for the uniform, dinners and damages”

More wordy but perhaps more informative is The First Post about David Cameron.

“At Oxford, he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, which is pretty much the embodiment of the very worst of the public school character: an arrogant contempt towards the “lower orders” (porters, waiters, scouts); a yobbish criminality; and a wallowing in utterly undeserved and unmerited privilege. It’s viciousness tempered by cretinism, and the strongest argument for class war I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a few”

Imagine then my feelings when last week the peace of a summer night was breached by drunken singing. It’s not the singing I object to – I’ve always been a south of the river type and happy to be lulled to sleep by the reassuring sound of police sirens, foul language and breaking glass. Rather it was a line of tuneless song carried clearly through the limpid night – “we don’t give a fuck what you think – we are the famous Bullingdon”.

Oh damn. There goes the neighbourhood.