just a short walk in November...

Just a short walk, Fitzrovia to Victoria Street, but the whole of this amazing city in a thirty minute stroll.

First I walk down great Portland street and see a group of Africans, they are gathered on the pavement outside the post office and some on the other side of the road where a handbag wholesaler is. I’ve seen them before, I wondered if there was a big market in handbags amongst the expat Africans, then the crowd grows, more and more people come, they are unfurling banners and putting on pale blue tee shirts then three motorcycle cops arrive, two fat white one  slim black in leather trousers and what look like guns but \I’m not sure. Some of the African women in the crowd give the black policeman to glad eye and he walks to the other side of the road. A lorry with crush barriers arrives and a man unloads them one by one as the policeman hooks them together penning in the growing crowd. They unfurl banners, I realise this is the Congolese embassy, and remember there are elections.

 My heart bleeds for them, and then they begin to sing, that deep wholesome heart string pulling African sound, a crowd gathers, more banners are unfurled. I never knew there were this many Congolese in London, the singing grows louder it is sublime, I think they are chanting the name of their leader but it is like an impromptu gala on a cold November morning. A big red double decker bus turns the corner and the black bus driver slows down and leans out of his cab laughing, he is a Congolese bus driver, the crowd roars in approval his bus trundles on. Now there are about a hundred people, laughing and singing and several banners, a few men in army fatigues hover at the edge of the crowd. On my side of the road another band arrives, white tee shirts, less of them, big men, much more serious. The traffic cops stand around watching but the crowd is good natured. One banner reads, ‘stop western influence in the Congo’ and I remember, the tragedy of the Congo that is has more than 70% of the world's coltan, used to make vital components of mobile phones and computers, 30% of the planet's diamond reserves and vast deposits of cobalt, copper and bauxite. Much of this is illegally exported through Rwanda. Precious tropical hardwoods are siphoned off through Uganda. To make matters worse , DR Congo is a country under international trusteeship. Important decisions are taken by World Bank technocrats, UN officials and increasingly by international NGOs. "Elikia" means hope in Lingala and there is much of it throughout the country.

Onwards to Bond Street, to rub shoulders with the rich and marvel at the diamonds and rubies and emeralds in the windows, when I come across another group of protesters. This time standing outside Emporio Armani, the anti fur people with some really grisly photos; apparently fur is ‘hot’ now, although not for mink and arctic foxes etc

.

They smile for my photos hand me a flier which is too awful to read and I move on, I’m running a bit late now. Cross to St James’ and down the hill to the Palace when I’m stopped for a third time. This time a friendly policewoman says to wait until the walkway over St James’ Palace as some rumpty tumpty band music plays. Soldiers in grey over coats and bearskins (tough on the bears) are marching about in the mindless ways that soldiers march, someone banging the big base drum.

A crowd of tourists are snapping and chattering, excited, I feel this Ruritanian spectacle almost as embarrassing as the fact people still wear fur coats. But penned in as I am I have no choice but to wait until they march off to the sound of drums and various brass instruments.

Released I head for St James’ park and to my lunch date.  A final sighting makes me smile and remember what is important in life.

 Thanks Banksie or whoever you are...found on a building hoarding in that temple to Mamon - Bond Street.

'tis the season to be merry

Like the first cuckoo or the switching on of the Christmas lights, the fist pile of vomit heralds the beginning of the Christmas party season. Oh joy! The only time I actively dislike living in Fitzrovia is the month before the festive bloat-out – happy holidays! Anytime after 8pm one is likely to encounter girls in vertiginous heels puking in rubbish bins, staggering, their mascara an oil slick across their faces, trailing coat and handbag behind them. They gather in crowds in doorways emptying vodka bottles, attempting to light soggy cigarettes. Sobbing wetly into a friend’s shoulder or chanting raucously they clatter and twist down the capital’s main street. Men are not exempt from this yuletide ritual, vomitoria are set up in and around the city where they can puke into plastic bags hung around their ears and sleep the drunkenness off, far from the risk of traffic accidents and opportunist muggings. Not everyone makes it; early one Saturday morning I found a well dressed bloke lying face down half in the road half on the pavement, dead drunk. A gentle prodding of my boot failed to elicit any response. I determined to rouse him if he was still there when I came back from the early morning bagel run. He wasn’t - perhaps the cold, damp pavement had finally seeped through those natty pin stripes.

Another Christmas task, more joyful than avoiding puddles of sick is the sending of cards on the PEN list. PEN is campaigning organisation for imprisoned writers and journalists. Each Christmas they send members the names of imprisoned writers and journalists so we can send each one a seasonal greeting card. This year for the first time in three years the Cubans were absent; previously they had been the biggest group. I laboriously copied out addresses to the various prisons where poets, journalists and bloggers were incarcerated. So well done Cuba, or felicidades  companeros! This feel good news may be due in part to the 2009 PEN Cuba campaign and of course to my jolly messages sent each December.

Top of the list this year are the Vietnamese: poets, bloggers and writers have all fallen foul of the law – what is happening in that country? The Viet Nam war is far enough away to be part of GCSE history syllabus – who won? Did anyone? I guess freedom of speech lost. Their illustrious twenty imprisoned scribblers will be my card list. The Chinese come a close second at seventeen – but then the list doesn’t include dead writers- China is followed by Turkey at four, international pariah Iran with three and curiously, Spain, one.

Mexico is not on the list because they have another method of silencing the Press. Thanks to the coke habits of their American neighbours anyone who speaks out about drug gangs is a target. The blogger, known as 'Rascatripas', was murdered on 9 November this year, in Nuevo Laredo. A message on his bound and decapitated body read: 'This happened to me because I didn't understand that I shouldn't report on the internet’. His murder follows the September killing of another blogger and journalist Maria Elizabeth Macias Castro, also left dead and decapitated on 24 September 2011. Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the wMorld in which to practice journalism. PEN International recently launched itsDay of the Dead 2011 campaign, highlighting the violence suffered by journalists and writers in Mexico. In the last five years, 36 print journalists, writers and bloggers have been murdered there. Newspaper facilities, websites and chat-rooms are targeted by organized criminal gangs seeking to silence anyone shining a light on their filthy trade.

Back to Christmas, the sparkly lights are up everywhere glittering and twinkling as shopkeepers hope the tills will start ringing. The grim determination of the weekend shopper in the run up to Christmas is a marvel to behold. If you ever though retail therapy was fun, check out these faces as they trudge through the gloom dragging their spoils behind them. For its pleasure quotient, I reckon Christmas shopping is right up there with root canal work and crushed fingers. I avoid the West End this time of year –it’s just too depressing; unlike writing uplifting notes to those who no longer have the right to do anything at all - which really does give me the warm fuzzies.

So Season’s greetings to inmates of  XX labour camp: Nguyen Van Hai independent journalist and blogger, Nguyen Xuan Nghia, poet and writer, Nguyen Van Tuc, farmer, poet and human rights defender. Ngô Quỳnh, student and author of dissenting articles, all detained in September 2008 and the others spending the season of goodwill away from loved ones. May none of your fingers be crushed and your teeth remain in their sockets and may the New Year bring Peace and Freedom. 

QUISQUEYA: Pity the rich

QUISQUEYA: Pity the rich: It flopped on the mat, exuding the thick, glutinous scent of money. 'Quintessentially Discreet' with offices in salubrious Bahrain, Jeddah, ...

Pity the rich

It flopped on the mat, exuding the thick, glutinous scent of money. 'Quintessentially Discreet' with offices in salubrious Bahrain, Jeddah, and Maputo – is a magazine for the rich who are the teeniest big embarrassed about their filthy lucre. Such folk are now are encouraged by editor Lucia van der Post that discretion is the way the wealthy should respond to the current spate of financial difficulties affecting the little people.
For the Bahrainis and Greeks trying to buy up Mayfair properties, the Russians and now Italians hoping to get their wads out wobbly banking system or the slimy ruling classes avoiding the little local difficulties in Homs or Saudi, welcome to a world where the rich can be discreet without fear of extra judicial killings, paying tax, or any unpleasantness.
There is a new trend of discrete luxe, which provides a way for the cognoscenti to appraise your net worth, without the proles – with their low rent designer gear - getting in on the act. Should the rich feel a little nervous their discretion might slip out of their Hermes bags they can always exchange their rubies and emeralds for fake copies to be worn, just in case the hoi polloi take exception to your rocks.
The conundrum of where to stash the cash is always vexing to the tax avoider - the recent cave in or fondue faint of the Swiss banks at a G20 meeting means they will no longer guard the secrets of their banks as firmly as they once did- the rich are once again searching for tax havens. Montenegro is suggested; here, Russian oligarchs rub shoulders with old European money in a country that has no currency of its own and will soon be transformed into the Monte Carlo of the future. Six hundred and fifty berths for super yachts are planned.  If this does not appeal, then try Spain, which has a manana attitude to tax planning. The 'Beckham law' allows multimillionaires to become non residents for the first five years of their stay, saving themselves 25% tax. Never mind the forty per cent youth unemployment, the rich are safe here.

The cherry on the cake is the very generous UK tax regime using a law of 1799 which allows wealthy foreigners to have non-dom status and pay no tax. There are believed to be over 50 billionaires living in London – and aren’t we all the better for it? House prices may quadruple, but there is the trickle down effect – or so rumour has it. Sadly it has not trickled as far as the rioting inner cities, the lumpen proletariat are growing restive. Wherever you look tents are mushrooming, banners unfurling, the unwashed hairy ones are morphing into serial protesters and whisper there is support from pissed off pensioners and distressed middle Englanders – people who are a little hacked off by the discretion of the wealthy who, oh so delicately slip their cash out of their countries leaving the less judicious, the more outre pay their tax bills - more fool them!
The Greeks have a special take on the discretion of the wealthy. During the Nazi occupation of their country in WW2, the Germans discreetly removed all the Greek gold reserves, an amount believed to be worth today around $35 billion, and, you guessed it they won't give it back. Every time I see Mrs Merkle waggle her finger at the profligate and by implication dishonest Greeks, I wonder at the discrete thieving Germans who like the Greeks had massive debts at the end of both World Wars but they they were allowed to repay them slowly to allow their economy to grow. The current German government with all the discretional generosity of the rich do not offer the same facility to their European cousins but instead take on the mantle of post Franco's Spain -the 'gran olvido'- the great forgetting.

Of course the Germans, like the expat tax dodger do not wish the searchlights of the tax payers to shine in their dark corners, because if they pay back Greece for their theft then other countries might remember their money was also stolen under the jackboot. Russia may have some questions to answer too and perhaps all countries, which it is why it is so much more satisfactory for the discreetly wealthy to borrow money at 1.5% and lend it at 7% and let the mugs who pay tax settle the bill.
So, having donned your replica gems, found a place to keep your wealth, just stop looking over your shoulder! Offered to the rich, is the close protection of minders who will keep the disaffected masses well away from you. Worried how these goons will behave as you flit from tax haven to offshore, worry no more for they, 'conduct themselves according to the cultural religious environments in which they are required to work'
But let it not be said that the rich are thick skinned, they care what is said about them. Which is why 'reputation protection' is a must have. These magicians provide a service which can brush all nasties under the carpet and offer to undertake emergency injunctions and are able 'stop whole publications and broadcasts' should cruel and hurtful things be said about their clients.
If you find your friends are holding their noses a little as you approach then these wizards can energetically manufacture their client’s upfall -   success in the bag – they offer  reputational advancement, because, as we all know,  'your reputation is your most valuable and fragile asset'.
Alright, I hear you say, the rich are good for us. We all benefit from their wealth creation activities. In an excellent article in the Guardian, George Monbiot begs to differ, he asserts the rich became rich by a combination of luck, being born in the right social class and a psychopathic urge to dominate and control. Using statistics he shows that over the past 30 years  a handful of people have got their hands on the loot, assisted by neoliberal policies imposed on rich nations by Thatcher and Reagan. He quotes these astonishing figures: from 1979 to 2009, US productivity rose by 80%, the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.’ The same pattern is seen in the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%.
So I pity the rich, to live with such fear - the loathing is a given - shuffling their wealth about from tax haven to tax haven, being forced to wear fake gems, terrified their children will go to the 'wrong' school and being afraid that people will say nasty things about them, looking to upfall their reputations at every turn. And especially I pity the smug finger wagging of the wealthy, individuals and countries who blame the poor for being feckless and screw the rest of us oh so discretely.

elisabeth_brooke@hotmail.com

farewell to Sally

I had been waiting for the inevitable. And yesterday it began, the sound of feet clumping up and down the stairs, laughing they carried sacks and threw them crashing into the back of the van. A life - a life in sacks. She died as she lived, marginalised, neglected, isolated. The cancer she refused to treat spread across her whole body and doubtless she was in a great deal of pain as her life ended. Cowardly, I did not visit her in her final weeks - but then nor was I invited to- I wanted to remember the vibrant, nutty Sally. She's been my neighbour for nearly twenty years, the batty lady upstairs who'd return home with 'objects trouvees' : flowers discarded by a Mayfair florist, odd and 'unsual' pieces of wood, and occasionally tables, chairs, picture frames, the detritius of the affluent. These OT's would then be added to 'mount stufu'   pile which, when I first met her had been a small pile in the centre of her living room and became, by the end of her life, the four foot high mound filling the whole room and spreading like lava into the hallway and the kitchen, turning the corner and filling up the passage and trickling into the bedroom. It became impossible to sit down in the living room and then stand in the hallway until finally the only place to carry on any conversation at all was to stand very still behind the front door and make no sudden movements. Being a bit of a closet neat freak I was desperate to clear mount stufu  offered to-but there was always a reason, quoted volubly and a great length why it could not be done. I tried once, picking up the flotsum at the edges and saw how anxious Sally became, I stopped. It was not just stuff - she needed the bulk and clutter as a kind of buffer against the world. Her hoarding of random objects, eccentric behaviour and, as it transpired, wilful self neglect developed from mild, lifelong eccentricity.
She was a woman of wide and varied interests. Growing up in a patrician Philadelphia family, by all accounts she ran a bit wild on the early death of her mother, ended up in Art school and rubbed shoulders with Rothko and other edgy artists. Divorcing her husband, she became an artist's model and she moved to London in 1968 to see Fonteyn dance and tracked the ballet to Varna and beyond. An enthusiast for Kibuki she followed a troupe touring in England and was adopted as a mascot. Lifelong devotee of opera and ballet she had encyclopediac knowledge of both or so it appeared to an outsider. Her forebears escaped the pogrums of Eastern Europe and she read obscure and detailed histories of Russia and Eastern Europe and could quote facts about the Polish death camps or the Stalin's famines. Conversations with Sally often begun with, 'I am very worried about the Chinese water table', followed by a long discourse or printing methods or hydroelectric dams or natural medicine. A passionate bibilophile one of her diversions was selling second hand books for the old Commies of Russel Square, where well meaning relics from the glory days of the Soviets, a sprinkling of East German spies and various trades union activists rubbed shoulders, inevitably returning home with armfulls of the more obscure histories of WW2 to add to the three deep, wall lined bookshelves. We went to the Socilaist film co op together, enjoying such delights as Bunel's les Hurdes and talks but old soldiers from the International Brigades. A passionate sauna user, she introduced me to the steamy claustrophobic delights of damp steam. Through these lengthy sweats, any personal enquiry was ignored and replaced with diatribes which eventually became rants as her grip on reality unravelled - like the balls of wool stacked high in her flat, together with birds to hang on the christmas tree, ribbons of every conceivable colour which she used to tie the bouquets she threw onto ballet and opera stages; paint brushes, bubblewrap, kimonos, baskets, empty cardboard boxes, piles of free newspapers and beautiful crystal champagne glasses, for she was after all a lady and had many exquistite objects.

When my daughter went to Summerhill, she was delighted, she had read all of Neal's books and was so excited when 'princess longlegs' came back at weekends. A helpful if slightly dangerous babysitter, once setting fire to some rice cakes the two of them decided to put under the grill.
Endlessly obliging, I have piles of small notes she posted through my letter box with all the lastest news: special offers on essential oils, books I was looking for, interesting radio programmes, tit-bits on the comings and goings of the residents: she was a bush telegraph for Great Titchfield Street, a Fitzrovia farandula.
Always eccentric, in the last five years the rambing got worse. Caught by her, I felt less like a rabbit frozen in the headlights than a butterfly pinned to a board. For my own sanity I had to crawl out under the tsunami of words - an hour was all I could take.
Then a series of disasters knocked her back. First, the gas board changed her gas meter and demanded a huge back payment which she fought over the course of two years. Eventually sorted, Sally never used her heating again, she had learned to live with the cold and now suffered the freezing winters stoically. Next, her handbag was stolen, together with her door keys at the Commie book sale. Breaking down her door after an eight hour wait saw her crouched on the floor wailing in despair.  Around this time I found out by persistent questioning that she had been living on a fixed income which had now run out. She joked about living in shop doorways, but her passivity terrified me. Homelessness, bagladydom are terrifying to me.  Only at the eleventh hour was she persuaded to ask for help. I was impressed, given she was a US citizen, had no passport and no right to remain and had only paid one week of income tax in her forty year residence, she was gathered up in the wide arms of the Welfare State.
Sadly, not even this this good news could shift her doom mongering, she was a fount of misery statistics, anectodotes and warning stories on any topic.  But always good for a laugh, well meaning and open minded  she pounded the streets of Fitzrovia, trailing her voluminous hand knitted bottle green shawls her flip flops slapping unforgiving pavements chatting with anyone who had the time of day. Impish and curious to the end, she sat on the chair lift lifting her into the ambulance grinning with delight as though she were going to her first day at school not an appointment with the grim reaper.

As the bags drag and clatter down the staircase a thick dust of book mites, dust bunnies, broken pens and drawing pins cover every surface - her life is discarded in the same messy, untramelled way she lived. Hail and farewell another London eccentric - goodbye Sally and God speed.

Green and Golden Days

To the park this morning, an unexpected autumnal heat wave. The misty morning sun shining on bedraggled dahlias, roses in the rose garden blooming for the third time this year, still massed ranks of pink, cerise, blood red and cream blossoms. The two bearded men who have made the rose garden home these past three years were sitting companiably under the arbour eating an early morning breakfast. Their beards are waist length now and their faces tanned and leathery. Whenever I see them I wonder what their story is, how come they ended up in the rose garden, but I feel shy, it's like walking into someone's house uninvited, sitting on the sofa and demanding conversation. They're not the only people who live in the rose garden. A young black woman, too young to be in such dire straits, also sits on a bench there sometimes, reading one of the free newspapers and avoiding all eye contact. I guess the gardeners must know they've made the rose garden their home, and leave them alone, but I wonder what it's like, in the long watches of the night listening to the foxes and owls and sirens of inner London. Not to mention the drunks, the hustlers and any number of lovers. During one summer, there was a woman pushing a big luggage trolley from Euston piled high with her suitcases, but she's moved on, I haven't seen her for years.
The men had moved from their usual bench on the left of the circular rose beds  and moved to the right side. Was this their winter quarters? In the warm morning sun one of the men had spread out  a blanket and lay face up to the sunshine drinking in the warm rays.
Perhaps it is they who pity us, as we hurry through the arbours jogging, power walking moving on to the next thing, while they bask in the perfume of sublime roses on a sunny autumn morning.