Barack Obama vs. Jimmy Savile

No one in the UK is following the US presidential election anymore. Why? Because everyone is glued to the Jimmy Savile case. It's a double whammy. Not only has the country's long-treasured children's TV presenter, beloved national radio DJ and charity champion been revealed to be a nasty sexual predator and paedophile, but its most trusted institution—the BBC—has been exposed as a harbourer of such vermin.

First of all, who allowed Savile to get away with this behaviour for so many years? I'll tell you who: the Great British public. As a British citizen, I’ll take my share of the blame, as painful (as I will come on to explain) as that may be. The buck stops with us, not with the BBC, not even with the head of our state, whose role it is to protect us, but with the people who make Britain so great. The British public allowed a bully to win, time and time again.

The problem begins with the way we put our dignitaries on pedestals and have a long history of doing so. We do so because, ultimately, we are afraid of them. We feel they have power over us. We do not stand up to the upper echelons of our society, even when they behave atrociously. I’m not talking about our celebrities; we are nothing if not weary of celebrities, even Royals behaving badly (Fergie, Princess Margaret, Harry) are given little sympathy when they are caught with their pants down in celebrity hang outs, but we do hold an unquestioning reverence for our beloved Queen and her chosen ones. People like Jimmy Savile, who are knighted and ratified by the head of our state, are therefore afforded the same respect. How could the Queen get it wrong? How could he be a bad person? Who are you or I to question him? Herein lies the problem. Respect by default is dangerous. It is what bullies thrive on.

Sir (making a point here) Jimmy Savile was a bully. Watch any old footage of him and look closely. You will see a bully. You will slap your forehead and say, "of course". He grabs a woman in a crowd and kisses her on the lips, making a lascivious smacking noise with his mouth. He puts his arms a little too tightly around a bunch of teenage girls on Top of the Pops. He sits a young child he has "fixed" something wonderful for on his knee and grins with satisfaction. He is the original child snatcher, handing out goodies in order to have his wicked way. And we all fell for it. We're not so much angry at him, or the BBC, but at ourselves. Why did nobody say anything? (They tried.) Why did nobody do anything? (They were afraid.) As a victim of repeated bullying, emotional abuse and sexual harassment myself, let me tell you, it is the hardest thing in the world to say something, let alone do something, about it.

I don't make that admission lightly. To this day I am afraid of saying it. I am afraid you will judge me, tell me it was my fault, that I wore the wrong dress, or made a suggestive remark, that I am exaggerating, or that I couldn't take a little office banter. But it wasn't like that. A bully had me in his clutches. He was my direct employer, the proprietor of the company I worked for, who hired and fired at will, and thus directly in control of my livelihood. He knew this and took pains to remind me, every day, that if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have a job. He had me convinced that no one else would ever hire me, that only he saw my special talents, that everyone else thought I was a pain in the ass. A pain in the ass I may have been, but that does NOT give a boss carte blanche to subject me, or anyone, to months, even years, of abuse. So, as I said, I am guilty as charged. I am guilty of not speaking up and complaining. When I finally did it was a small, quick, secretive private litigation that I won. I don’t remember the exact wording of the paperwork, but I think I might have agreed, legally, never to name him. I might have agreed to that. Like he deserved protecting. 

It is, and always has been, extraordinarily difficult to stand up to bullies. Clever bullies make you think it's all your fault. They flatter (you can just hear JS: "now then, now then, now then, do you know how gorgeous you look in that dress?") and then they make it all your fault ("goodness gracious, will you look at what you're doing to me, will you look down there under my pants; how's about that, then?")

But he's not here to defend himself. He lived in an era where sex with a 14 year-old scantily clad teenybopper in a rock star’s dressing room was thought of as being about as illegal as driving at 85mph on the motorway. If you get caught, you get a ticket, but if no one catches you and no one gets hurt, no harm's done. We now know that 14 year-old girls, whether they are throwing themselves at a celebrity adult male or not, are more often than not irreparably damaged by having sex with a man twice their age; even if they think they want it. That's why the law exists to protect them. But it's more than just the age difference (she says, defending herself after being so on the fence about Megan Stammers and her teacher boyfriend). It's about power. Who holds more power in the Megan Stammers situation? She does. He has more to lose. These days, if a man chooses to get involved with an under-age girl, he knows he is likely to face the consequences. He's likely to think long and hard as to whether it is worth the risk. Is it love? Is it something he is committing to long term? Or is it for kicks. Clearly in the case of Saville – since he was never reportedly in love with any of these girls, or made a long-term relationship with one of them – it was for kicks. Which makes him a predator, not a man who has simply fallen in love with a woman who is not quite technically a woman yet.

James Savile (interestingly, an over-sexed, confident and cunning Scorpio Tiger if you believe in that malarkey) didn't just bully individuals, he bullied several institutions, he bullied a corporation, he bullied the CPS (the British justice system), he bullied a whole nation. He even—by default—bullied a monarchy. No wonder no one stood up to him. He did not allow anyone to question him. We've been told that when they did, he threatened them. He is beginning to sound like nothing short of a tyrant. And he didn't stop there. Looking at the mess that high-ranking BBC employees have found themselves in, he is clearly still bullying from beyond the grave. Surely no one now thinks it was anything other than fear that motivated poor Peter Rippon’s decision (whether or not it came from higher up); fear of standing up to a bully. What might the Queen say? The Queen who in fact, at the time of writing, has yet to say anything about all this (and you really would have thought she’d have learnt her lesson after her faux pas in not making an immediate statement following the death of Princess Diana—who, incidentally, was unquestionably the victim of bullying). The British monarchy has a rather worrying and antiquated habit of sticking its head in the sand when something uncomfortable crops up concerning “one of their own.” As long as they continue to do this, bullies will not believe they are ultimately accountable. It’s only a mere 500 years since we were allowing our monarch to behead his wives without repercussion. The king was once able to execute at will for what was called treason, but was really “disagreeing with the monarch.” And you knew what would happen to you if you disagreed with the monarch’s right to execute a person accused of treason. No wonder we have a legacy of fear. And look where it’s got us. The BBC is reeling in the aftermath of mounting revelations about sexual harassment on what appears to be an endemic scale. The whole situation has called into question the very integrity of one of the most trusted organizations in British history. What should we do now? Maybe we need to look at how our American counterparts call their leaders to account. 

The United States, while in no way a perfect society, is a young country built on a foundation of truth and justice at all costs. It is a nation that actively disenfranchised itself from its founding state of barbaric British monarchs. Accountability has always been at the heart of the US justice system; the notion that no one is above the law is at the heart of its constitution. We may still be fighting for equal rights in many arenas, but every citizen is accountable for their actions, and entitled to a fair trail when their behaviour is called into question. The American people even put their own president on trial; they were prepared to lose one of the best presidents they had ever elected because they insisted he be held accountable for his unacceptable actions. I don’t see the Queen standing trial on behalf of her knighted subject and employee (as far as he was an employee of a crown-owned institution), Mr Savile, materializing as an event any time soon. Britain may have invented human rights with the signing of the Magna Carter 800 years ago, but it was the first independent American states that suggested, almost 600 years later, that no one man (or woman) was better than another by virtue of his or her birth. Any man could become the head of state.

And any man did.

And will again.

Obama will win another term not because he got everything right the first time (he didn’t) but because he has always stood accountable to the American people. He has always spoken up for what he, as a man, believes in... such as same-sex marriage. People know they are voting for a man and not a party (or a party’s puppet). He may not have been able to fulfil all the promises he made the first time around, but he’s a decent, upstanding, trustworthy man of integrity. In fact there’s so little dirt on this man, his opponents still have to harp on about the insane notion that his birth certificate is a forgery. His opponents are bullies who rely on little other than bullying tactics to make people scared to stand up to them, lest they be cast out and end up all alone. Bigotry in numbers works best, as everyone knows.

But aren’t I being slightly harsh on the bullies here? Let’s hear it for the bullies for a moment. What maketh the bully?

Most bullies are, as we know, cowards. They are so afraid of being nobodies, of being alone, that they will covet power at all costs. They do not want to govern, they want to rule. They do not want to lead, they want to be followed. They have insecure egos that need feeding with adoration. Why? Most likely because they, themselves, were the victims of bullies. To stop it, we need to break the chain, and it needs to start at the top. We need to end the era of accepting "untouchables". Just because a person is born into a certain family, or blessed by the pope, or has raised a million for the homeless, or is running for president, does not make them a good person by default. They must be judged directly, and solely, on their actions. Indeed the actions of these people, because they are part of the elite, must be more visible and accountable than even the common man. 

Going back to Jim, I wonder if someone perhaps bullied our idolized British icon? (Incidentally, if you're American and you're reading this and you're struggling to relate to Jimmy Savile, think Jerry Sandusky and multiply by at least ten.) What exactly do we know about him? That he never married, that he lived his whole life with his mother and preserved her room as she left it when she died, reportedly even dry-cleaning her clothes once a year. Hold on! Did no one think this was a little weird? A night at the Bates Motel? Anyone? He was just a little eccentric, was he? Maybe his mother had him under her spell? Maybe it was someone else. I doubt we’ll ever know the whole truth. 

I look back at the people who bullied me. In every single case (except the last, when I broke the pattern) I thought it was my fault, that I had done something wrong, either by being not good enough, or being too good. Perversely, I even looked up to some of those bullies and yearned for their acceptance, such was the depth of my low self-esteem.

And another reason victims of bullying don’t speak out is, who the hell wants to live through the whole sick ordeal again? Being asked, “So where exactly did he put his hands? And where did he put your hands? And he pushed your head in which direction exactly? Are you sure it was at that exact angle? Did you ever actually utter the word ‘no’?” Not only that, but you’re expected to have proof as well. “Yes, there was me, him and his BMW that he pulled into an underground parking lot when he was meant to be giving me a ride home. Ask his wing mirror, it will swear it’s all true.” No thanks. I’ll just get on with my life and take it to my grave. Bullies depend on victims thinking like this. They specifically pick victims they are sure will think like this. They do not pick people with high self-esteem, they pick people who have such a lack of self worth that they even doubt themselves. Did it really hurt so bad? Surely someone else has it worse than me. If I complain, I could easily lose my job/not be able to pay the mortgage/feed the kids.

If you have even the merest suspicion that you were perhaps bullied by someone, anyone, in your past, then you were. If you have ever, vaguely, sort of, in a low moment, faintly worried that you were abused, then you were. Get over it, forgive and forget, but don’t play it down, because we know what happens to victims of bullying who bury their pain. Don’t be a victim; be a survivor. If it ever happens again, tell people. Even if they don’t believe you or nothing comes of it, just telling people will make it real for you, and make you less likely to accept it happening the next time. Because if we don’t know how to protect ourselves, as adult victims of bullying, how can we protect our children? 

The human race has a long history of abusing children. Only recently have we begun to agree that it is wrong. It is absolutely imperative that we do everything in our power and stop at nothing to stamp it out.

Last night, the BBC, desperate to prove that it is not afraid of pointing the finger inwards, that it holds itself accountable to the British people, broadcast a Panorama special about the whole affair, and today it sent its head honcho to answer questions in parliament. Day late and a dollar short, I'd say. I haven't seen the Panorama programme yet because I can't get the BBC iPlayer where I currently live (in France) but I've read reviews (on the BBC website of course), and I watched a short clip of former BBC Director-General Greg Dyke explaining how most commissioning editors at the Beeb feel they are autonomous, that their duty is to the British public before the D-G (Q.E.D. by Panorama). But it doesn't matter what they show us now, we want to know what the hell they were doing then. Talk about closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The BBC has just been exposed as an elitist, unregulated sham of an institution. We can now imagine years and years of secretaries suffering in silence, brilliant women being passed over for promotion, talented individuals being marginalized for "not playing ball". Everyone can see it for what it is now, and it’s shaken the country to its core. 

My rose-coloured glasses, I must admit, came off a little while back.

I yearned for that elusive "Top of the Pops" ticket when I was 12, about as much as I yearned for Jim to “fix it” for me (so glad he didn’t now!) In the days before You Tube, and Facebook, and X Factor, it was the only way to get your five minutes of fame if you weren’t actually that special, to be part of something big and wonderful and glittery, always thinking, Oh, will I ever be picked?! Will I ever be good enough, or cool enough, or lucky enough to get in?! Well I finally got to go to Top of the Pops when I was around 30, on a kind of VIP ticket, as I knew a producer. It was a huge disappointment. All I saw was a load of overpaid pop stars drinking too much and taking cocaine in the green room. Yes… I said it, I have seen illegal drugs taken on the BBC premises. Why didn't I report it immediately? Are you serious? I guess I should have complained about John Leslie groping me, too, on a separate occasion. But you don't. You don't want to be cast out once you're in. So you "pay your dues". The same goes for many elitist institutions, like expensive British boarding schools, the armed forces, or the Catholic church. Even now I'm scared. Even now, a small voice in me says, "Be quiet. What if someone reads this one day and subsequently doesn't hire you for a dream job?" (Maybe I have to trust that someone could hire me because of it.)

I have often been part of organizations in which I didn't really feel I belonged, and thus I lived my whole life in fear. If I criticize, I will be cast out, because I am officially a nobody, and the elite classes and power-hungry heads of big establishments will continue to remind me that I should not forget my place.

Well my place, I finally worked out, was not on my knees under the desk of some repulsive man on whom I believed my future wellbeing depended. My place is at my computer, writing, and publishing freely in this incredible domain that we call the Internet, in the hope that my words might give just one person the courage to stand up to a bully and break a chain, in the hope that we continue to talk about this issue and join forces to stamp out bullying of any kind, and fight to protect our children from any form of abuse.

And your place—if you’re a US citizen—is out at the polling stations on Tuesday, November 6^th, ensuring that your country doesn’t lose a decent, fair, accountable man at its helm.

The Banking Crisis and Cruise Control

Okay, I sold out, I got a real job (if you can call working in finance “real” at the moment.) Yes, for the foreseeable future I will be spending my days at the very heart of everything that is front-page news in these fickle financial times. I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but that’s okay because it seems no one else does either.

We should have seen it coming.

It’s not like we didn’t have a strong hunch that there was something rotten in the state of the European Union, it’s just that we were desperate to believe it wasn’t true. The recent spate of corruption uncloaking that is taking place at the very core of what our society is built on is a bit like having it confirmed that we’re not alone in the Universe. How would we feel if the Martians arrived and we couldn’t call their existence science fiction any longer? Every day a new story breaks about corruption in banking, journalism, politics, all the institutions the common man once regarded with reverence. Those days are gone. The bubble has burst. The newspapers are packed with revelations. How will the movies keep up? Real life has become more nail-biting and sensational than a George Clooney political thriller.

Only scarier, because it’s all true. The Martians really have landed.

When I first heard the song “Anarchy in the UK” by The Sex Pistols (years after it was first released I might add), I misheard it and thought it was about Amnesty, which was topical at the time as Amnesty International was making waves in South Africa. Anarchy was a new word for me so I looked it up and was shocked by its meaning. I immediately had visions of riots and lawlessness and ineffectual policing. But I lived in London, a place I knew to be relatively safe and well policed, especially when compared, say, to South Africa at that time.

All that changed last August.

Sitting in a cottage in rural France with no TV  (I was on a writing retreat) I was glued to the Internet and watched, with horror, footage of places I grew up in being torn apart. When I saw the bus stop in Ealing where I used to wait with my Grandma to take the Number 65 to Richmond Park surrounded by burning cars and smashed-up store fronts, I couldn’t hold back the tears. Kids were running through the streets like barbarians and no one was stopping them. How could society have come to this? Sure, I was proud to see Londoners cleaning up and holding their heads high, mirroring the survivalist mentality of New Yorkers after 9/11, with a renewed sense of solidarity and belonging amongst people who cared, but was the real issue brushed aside in this effort to portray union? When terrorists attack there is an enemy to focus our anger at. What do we do when we are an integral part of the enemy? When the enemy is the system we have voted for and supported with our taxes? Perhaps a degree of secret self-loathing set in.

Lack of policing was so obviously at the heart of the matter, and not just the physical lack of policing in the moment. An entire generation seemed indifferent to law and order. What ultimately motivated these rioters was the belief that that they could get away with it. They were unafraid of authority. And make no mistake, throwing them in jail for a few weeks or making them clean streets for a month of Sundays will never erase the memory of the adrenalin rush they got from walking away with a handful of mobile phones in full view of a copper.

When I was 14, I got into trouble with the prefects. I was at a well-policed boarding school and I’d challenged someone three years older than me when I felt she was abusing her authority to be a bitch to one of the new girls. I was hauled up in front of the entire sixth form, handed a punishment of no TV for week, and reprimanded for having no respect.

“You have to earn respect,” I brazenly answered back.

That earned me another week with no TV. 

But I stand by my statement. “Do as I say, not as I do,” should refer to the things that adults do that are not suitable for children. It should be, “Do as I say not as I do, until you are old enough to make these decisions for yourself.” It should not be interpreted as, “I instruct you to be a decent human being while I cheat, lie, and generally treat people like shit.”

In the UK, and in the democracies based on England’s ancient feudal system, we have been raised to respect Money and Power regardless of how Money and Power treat us and behave. This must end. There has been a wholesale code of silence surrounding the misdemeanors of those in charge. We even came up with a term to make them seem less wrong; we called it “white-collar crime.” When an 18 year old (possibly the result of a loveless one-night stand and raised by a permanently stoned single mother) smashes his way into a shop in the middle of a riot and steals a computer, saying, “I’m just getting my taxes back” (not even aware that he’s never paid a penny to the taxman in his life), we want to lock him up for a while, arguing that this is the only way he’ll learn. When a privileged, Oxford-educated 26 year old (possibly the heir to a small fortune and a friend of a friend of Prince Harry’s) manipulates interest rates, ensuring his buddy gets his bonus, at the tax payer’s expense, we give him a slap on the wrists and tell him he has to report to the head boy for a week. It’s unlikely we’ll ever get the names of the bankers who committed these crimes, they will be shielded by the organizations they worked for, the organizations that will pay hundreds of millions in fines for the rogue behavior of its employees. No one shielded Alexis Bailey, the primary school teacher convicted of intent to steal. Notice that was intent to steal; we’ll never know exactly what drove him to be standing with a group of people in an electrical store in the middle of the riots, but when confronted he gave himself up to police, he pleaded guilty in court, he said, “Sorry,” immediately, and yet he will probably pay for his mistake the rest of his life.

White-collar crime occurs when people have access to huge sums of money. It is driven by greed. You don’t get a great deal of corruption in nursing, say, or teaching, because people who gravitate to those professions are usually motivated by compassion. Cap the salaries of bankers and pay them on the same scale as teachers and let’s watch what happens. The problem is clear, when big money and/or fame is on offer, people get obsessed with it and crave it like a drug. It is perhaps the last big taboo in terms of sociopathic behavior, the insatiable desire to accumulate money. As a society we – to date – have enabled it.  

I actually feel sorry for debt-collectors. “Excuse me, sir, you haven’t paid your last two credit card payments. You owe us five hundred pounds.” I wonder what they say next if the response is along the lines of, “Take it off what Barclays Bank owes me, personally, for what it knocked off the value of my shares by its fraudulent activity.”

So where are we going? We can’t go on like this. More British High Street banks are about to fall from grace, and regarding the euro zone, there are only so many times you can rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. Either we descend further into an anarchic society, rapidly running out of ways to plug the holes as they appear. Or those who hold power and control the money must earn our respect.

When our authorities have the humility to say, “It’s our fault. We messed up. We got it wrong,” (and to say it immediately after the event, not after a year-long and costly government investigation brings it to its knees and backs it into a corner and it has no choice but to apologize) we might start to move forward. So far all we’ve seen (ironically so in the banking world) is the buck being passed, again and again and again!

Currently we have corrupt politicians, corrupt bankers, corrupt journalists... and let’s not forget all the Olympic officials pocketing profit from illegal ticket sales. Corruption is not a new concept; it is endemic in a society where Money and Power are sought after. But with modern technology, perpetrators are running out of places to hide. And without role models (even pseudo honest ones) what hope is there for the future generations? It is, as Sebastian Coe said of the Olympic ticket scandal, “deeply depressing.” If we’re going to move forward in a more positive direction, we must replace those cornerstones of capitalism, Money and Power, with new goals, and raise our children to strive for them above all others. It’s important to earn a living, it’s important to have some security, but it’s much more important to be honest and humble in all that we do.

There are two basic qualities I look for in a person I’m becoming friends with: Integrity and Humility. Integrity is another word I once looked up, in an effort to understand it better. To paraphrase, it is when you say what you mean and you do what you say. Humility is a lack of ego, the opposite of arrogance, the ability to admit you were wrong and apologize for it. The last person I discussed these credentials with agreed readily with me. Subsequently and sadly he turned out to have neither. An awareness of the existence of Integrity and Humility does not, by default, guarantee their presence.

(Having said this, I just reminded myself I now work in investment banking. I get paid to write about all the things—GMO crops, nuclear energy, the dairy industry—I am opposed to. Don’t talk to me about Integrity. I guess I shall not be a friend of mine for a little while! I hereby immediately and humbly apologize for my lack of integrity.)

And now you’re wondering how I’m going to link all this to the news that Katie Holmes is filing for divorce from Tom Cruise. Well...

We should have seen it coming.

Really... is anyone surprised? Since his couch-jumping appearance on Oprah we’ve been waiting for the bubble to burst. Some celebrity couples (Brad and Angie for example) make you think, it probably won’t last but it could. With others (let’s say Tom Cruise plus A.N.Other) it’s never a matter of “if,” just “when.” We’ve watched Katie get thinner and look more and more miserable, willing her to break free. My first thought, when I read the news, was, maybe we’ll see the girl smile again. And the shit must have really hit the fan because she’s taking the Cruise-machine to task and going for full custody. Watch them not fight it, under threat that she’ll do a reveal-all to the (utterly corrupt and unethical) press.

So it wasn’t a week of many surprises, even Merkel’s submission to Hollande at the EU Summit was expected in the circles I now socialize in, but there was one fact I read that, literally, shook me to my core. I had to re-read it several times before I could fully take it in.

Tom Cruise is turning 50 on Tuesday.

In case you suspect that is a typo and he’s really turning 40 and you’re still 25, I’ll say it again and write it out:

Tom Cruise is turning fifty on Tuesday.

Now I don’t give a toss about Integrity, Humility, Money, Power, or even when Katie Holmes might smile again, I just feel horribly old.

French Kissing

Shortly after I arrived in France last year, my friend took me to a big party in a big house in some fancy suburban spot on the outskirts of Paris. The family who lived there had something of a von Trapp obsession. There were ten children, each one played a different musical instrument, and they were regularly called upon to give recitals in the music room, which was in the basement of the five-storey Swiss chalet style property that was painted pastel green with pink shutters. Party guests had been asked to dress in white. It was a “white party.” I’d never heard of such a thing; apparently quite a trend in France.

It stands to reason that a girl with equal propensity for wild gesticulation and wanton consumption of red wine does not possess any white items in her wardrobe. When I’d asked if she had something I could borrow, my friend’s French girlfriend (who was somewhere between a size zero and a minus two) had sheepishly held up a strip of material that I mistook for a napkin but on closer inspection turned out to be a white, strapless mini-dress that would have looked great on the 9 year-old me. In desperation, and lacking the budget or time to go buy something, I’d borrowed an off-white work shirt from my friend and was wearing it – loosely belted in – over jeans. Even though he said it was an old shirt, I steered clear of the Merlot and stuck to Champagne. Everyone else was in perfectly pressed white linen dresses and crisp, dazzling, starched-collared, open-necked shirts. I’d never experienced snowblindness before. It was painful. I had to wear my sunglasses until midnight.

At the time I had around ten words of French at my disposal (compared to the thirty or so I have now). I took to hovering at the edges of little groups, understanding nothing, but nodding and laughing occasionally, following the cues of others. Whenever I needed a break, I escaped to hang out with the youngest child, the two-year old. She had yet to start speaking (can you blame her for delaying competing with nine siblings?) and was still waiting to be assigned her chair in the orchestra. She was my perfect companion. We sat behind the buffet table for hours, building towers with plastic cups and pulling cheese off cold pizza slices.

Early on in the evening, during one of those moments when I was pretending to be an adult, I was standing in a small circle of people, next to my friend, listening politely to a stream of indistinguishable French, waiting for a suitable pause in which to excuse myself and go in search of Champagne and toddlers. Suddenly, a tall man in a dress shirt appeared in front of me and filled my empty Champagne glass. Someone introduced us (we’ll call him Pierre... it’s a safe bet that was his name anyway) and I held out my hand to shake his, the way in which I usually greet people when I first meet them.

“Votre main?” Pierre exclaimed. The group laughed in perfect unison. I looked blankly at my friend, who quickly explained,

“Your hand, he said. He’s asking why you offer your hand. It’s considered a little formal.” I turned back to face Pierre who, in the next moment lunged at me, grabbing my right shoulder with his left hand so I couldn’t escape, and dragged his sandpaper cheeks (French men don’t shave on weekends it seems) across each of mine, making me wince with pain. As if this wasn’t torture enough, with the “kiss” on the right cheek he had deposited a speck of spittle that I was desperate – ready to gnaw off my own knuckles desperate – to wipe off. I silently cursed the white shirt that made it impossible for me to do the quick shoulder to cheek maneuver for fear of leaving a nice peachy smudge of face powder on it.

Okay, before I go any further (and believe me there is so much further to go) in my observations of the French and their boundary issues, I should really confess my own. I do have this thing about my personal space.

People, for me, are like dogs. Some I want to pet and cuddle. Some I want at arm’s length... a long arm. It’s not so much looks-based (although I’m a German Shepherd magnet and repelled by Pomeranians – seriously, if you want a cat, get a cat, why do you want to get a dog that looks like a cat?) Initially it’s an energy thing. Most big dogs and babies gravitate towards me and I towards them. Cats cross the street to avoid me. Which suits me just fine (see above reference to Pomeranians and cats – interchangeably egregious as far as I’m concerned). As I get to know someone, even if I had an initial bad gut reaction, I usually warm up a little and get happier with the physical contact thing. But if I have literally never set eyes on a person, have never heard a thing about them, am not meeting them through someone I know well... well, I don’t particularly want their bodily fluids on my face. Is this just me?

I’m not good at faking it. And while we’re on the subject, let’s just clear up one fallacy. I’ve had two guys in my life tell me they wouldn’t date me principally because they never date actresses, because how could they ever trust what an actress would say or do. Well, here’s the thing. Actors are not actors because they know how to twist true emotions or pull the wool over anyone’s eyes in a real life situation. Actors know how to convey what they are actually feeling in a strikingly visible way. They respond viscerally. It doesn’t matter whether the stimulus causing that reaction is happening in the context of a drama on stage or a situation in real life, what comes out is the truth, not a carefully calculated response designed to have some specific effect on the observer. How I greet people is always a genuine expression of how I feel about them. Or how I feel they feel about me. If I’m not sure if they like me, I’ll usually hold back, even if I like them. Until I like them so much I can hold back no longer. But I’ll expand on that little nugget of a moment later. And not here. 

I accept this is a cultural thing I am dealing with. It is French custom to kiss on both cheeks – arbitrarily hitting air or cheek – on meeting anyone, male or female, young or old, whether for the first time or the hundredth. Well, I may live in France but I’m not French. I’m sorry but this double air kiss, “mwah mwah” meaningless bullshit is never going to be my thing. It’s my preference to shake hands until we’re more familiar. I usually like to move onto the hug when we’ve made a significant connection. Sometimes with a kiss, that often lingers in the air a few inches from the cheek at moment of hugging impact. And my nearest and dearest get enveloped into bear hugs that are hard to extract myself from. My personal space, I like to choose – with a kind of mutual energetic agreement – who comes into it and how long they stay. And because I’m not good at faking it, I’ve forced myself to lie, on the odd occasion, with the old, “Don’t come too close, I’m getting sick,” line. This is a rare, desperate measure, I mean we’re talking the last time was ten years ago, and only because I was sick of my uncle’s lecherous golfing buddy thinking it was his right to try and shove his tongue between my tightly sealed lips every time we met.

Briefly going back to the dog thing and by way of an aside (and sneaky segue) I want to make it clear that I don’t kiss dogs. Okay, there was Zoe – my one and only Sapphic canine love affair – but otherwise I am not interested in having my face licked by a creature not of my own species. I am very loving towards dogs. The ones I like, anyway. I have taken care of many and given them much time and affection, but they are still dogs. Having said that (said sneaky segue coming up) I feel a little more affinity with dogs lately. Having had to pee three times in public during the Paris Marathon a few weeks ago, I’m wondering what makes me so different from them now. Yes, I did that. I ran a marathon (and peed in public, due to impossibly long lines for the scarce toilet facilities) – more about which much, much later. It was, indeed, a huge personal achievement, although the true miracle is the fact that I didn’t kill anyone during the training process. The guy who almost crippled me on a pedestrian crossing when it was my right of way, the group of American tourists walking forwards while looking backwards, and the woman who exhaled a huge plume of cigarette smoke into my path all came close, but narrowly escaped the full extent of my wrath. I found releasing a stream of expletives and breaking into a minute’s flat out sprint usually quelled my anger. And here, now, I find myself wondering, is there simply a general disrespect of boundaries going on in France? Is it acceptable to ignore someone running across the street just because you’re in a hurry to turn right? Is it acceptable to stand in a bus shelter exhaling smoke over a newborn baby in a buggy because it’s raining and you don’t want to get wet? And don’t get me started on the number of people who don’t pick up after their dogs in Paris... I can’t go there right now. I break out in hives thinking about it.

Well, I thought I’d seen it all. And then I got taken to a Parisian nightclub.   

Now, I’m a super sociable girl and I’ve stacked up many visits to many nightclubs in my time. Big ones, small ones, fancy ones, and dives. I’ve done the velvet rope – both sides. I’ve been through pop, rock, techno, and a Swingers-inspired big band revival. I’ve danced in sneakers, Doc Martens, four-inch heels, and – once, on a beach in Fuengirola – nothing but a bikini, a sarong, and a hollowed out pineapple that used to contain a liter of sangria. I’ve seen and experienced my fair share of drunken kissing and groping and flirting and crying (over finding my 14 year-old boyfriend’s mouth suctioned onto my best friend’s neck), but I’ve never seen anything the likes of which I saw last Friday night. I’ve seen better behavior in a zoo. When I read Tristane Banon describe how DSK was “like a rutting chimpanzee” when he came on to her, I didn’t understand what she meant. Now I think I do.

My friends and I were on the guest list for some VIP area upstairs. We walked up a plush red-carpeted circular staircase and entered an intimately lit room decorated in Gothic style with an eclectic mix of beautiful antique and kitsch furniture scattered around the edges of the designated dance floor. At one end there was a bar selling what I call ten-buck beer (this is a generous description since they were charging 8 euros which is more like $12). At the other end of the long room, a DJ was spinning a seriously stylish selection of tunes. It wasn’t long before we were swinging our hips to The Doors remixed by Thievery Corporation.

I like to keep my hair off my neck and face when I’m dancing, and it’s rather long at the moment, so I had it scraped up into a high ponytail. I used to wear it the same way when I was five, and the boys in kindergarten would think it hilarious to pull it during story time. So when I felt something tugging the top of my head and turned to see two grown men giggling, I thought I’d stepped into some kind of freaky time warp. A few minutes later, after shifting our location on the dance floor, a group of guys barreled into us, and one of them grabbed my friend’s glasses off her face. Together we managed to wrestle them off him before any damage was done. I spun around searching for a bouncer who might have witnessed all this. But the bouncers were all downstairs with the common people... this crowd were supposedly the VIPs, the respectable ones who knew how to behave. My French friend hardly turned a hair.

“They’re just drunk,” she explained, rather redundantly. Drunk they may have been, but these were not depraved teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks. These were well-dressed, clean-cut looking men in – I’d say – their early to mid thirties.

And then the ass-kicking started.

I’ve metaphorically had my ass kicked countless times in my life, and I’ve done a little reciprocal “kicking” myself, but I’d never actually experienced shoe to butt contact. And never thought I would. Yet now, here, in 2012, in a Parisian nightclub, I was witnessing a group of guys who had decided it would be incredibly funny to kick the butts of a group of girls and then quickly turn around feigning innocence. They weren't softening the blows because we were girls, either. It actually hurt. It was so bizarre, I could only laugh. A girl a few feet from me didn’t see the funny side at all. She flew at one of these guys, lashing out with a ferociousness I’d never seen first hand in a woman, but I thought I might have to develop quickly if this kind of behavior was de rigueur in Parisian clubs. The guy who’d kicked me was now trying to kiss me. I pushed him away in disbelief. If this was supposed to be a mating ritual, I’d fallen down the wrong rabbit hole.  

Of course not all French men are animals. I’ve met some incredibly charming, respectful, generous, intelligent, sensitive males on terra Français, and every culture has its losers who let the side down, but I’m wondering if there’s a connection between the assumed right to kiss a perfect stranger without asking permission and the assumption that it’s okay to attack a woman’s head, derrière, or eyewear after spending a month's rent on beer.      

The Swiss – who never seem to mind a handshake if that’s all that’s on offer – like to kiss three times. Back and forth and forth and back and back again for luck. With my co-ordination it’s a miracle I haven’t headbutted any of my friends and relations who live in the country that is like France gone through a wash cycle with a pre-wash, extra-rinse and added laundry bleach. And the Germans have banned any kissing in the workplace. I guess I could move to Germany and get a desk job. But I’ve recently read some alarming tales of debauchery in Berlin bars. Maybe I’ll just keep working on my French until I can say, “Don’t come too close, I’m sick,” without the merest trace of an accent.

I’m not against kissing, kissing is wonderful, I love kissing; but I want to choose who I kiss, I want them to choose me, and I want it to come out of genuine feeling, not out of cultural obligation. Perfunctory kisses are no fun, they are a chore, they are uncomfortable; they are not good kisses at all. They are some of the worst kisses. But the best kiss? That's the one that you've waited forever for... and is even better than you ever imagined. Another story for another day!

       

Real Life

THIS POST HAS BEEN ARCHIVED

To Eat Meat Or Not To Eat Meat, That Is The Question.

How long have you been a vegan?” is a question I’ve been asked several times over the past couple of months. When you live in one place and hang out with the same people on a regular basis, they get used to your strange quirks. When you’re traveling around the world and meeting new people every week, you do find yourself answering the same questions over and over again, and nowhere is veganism more of a mystery than in New Zealand.

On my second day in New Zealand I saw a huge billboard advertising beer in the center of Auckland. It showed a random picture of the countryside with the slogan, “The Most Effective Cure For Veganism Is Bacon,” emblazoned across it. This threw me into a kind of angry, ambivalent mood. On the one hand it was an outrageous thing to say, but on the other hand I was encouraged that the word veganism had even made it into Kiwi vernacular. Well that was hopeful thinking. Never mind that I have encountered a person who has never heard of autism, I have encountered several people who have never heard of hummus!

Poor New Zealand. In terms of food and nutrition they are a little behind the rest of the civilized world. The latest buzz phrase is “gluten-free food.” I remember this concept hit the streets of Los Angeles around 1995 and was all over London by about 2001. That’s ten years ago (I know... scary isn’t it?!) In New Zealand it is still quite acceptable to put huge amounts of MSG into food, even food that is fed to kids, and if you ask if something is dairy-free, you’re likely to attract some odd looks. Why would you want something dairy-free? Roughly half the people I’ve met actually pronounce the word “VAYgan.”

Well the short answer is “8 years.” The long answer is, I gave up meat, dairy, eggs, and all other land animal-derived products, such as gelatin, 8 years ago, while keeping seafood in my diet. I had a variety of reasons that more or less fell into three categories: ethical, nutritional and environmental. About a year ago I stopped eating fish entirely for environmental reasons; I simply don’t want to contribute to the decimation of the world’s natural fish resources, which is scheduled to occur in less than 50 years. I still think farming fish is a little on the wrong side, ethically, although I remain in a long debate with myself over the issue. I confess I once caught a fish and pulled it out of water, thereby killing it. I do believe it is hypocritical to eat animals you would not be prepared to kill with your own bare hands. And before we go any further you should know that I am not, strictly speaking, a true vegan, because I eat honey and currently have no problem with this. I am aware that there is a warrant out for my arrest, the global vegan police are still looking for me.

With Bill Clinton coming out as a vegan recently, and the UN declaring that we should all be moving towards a vegan diet where and when ever possible, “vegan” is the buzz word of the decade. But veganism is a major political issue. Militant vegans will declare that it is unacceptable to be “mostly vegan,” that you have to follow some strict code if you wish to use the word. But I have to point out that, unless you are living as a Buddhist monk in Bhutan, you will never be 100% vegan. It is highly likely that you drive a non-vegan car, live in a non-vegan house and use non-vegan appliances.

I used to cling to this hypocritical dogma myself. While I readily admit I was only a fishy vegan for many years, I believed everyone should live true to the title they awarded themselves. I once gave a girl an earful for professing to be a vegan but occasionally eating something containing dairy or egg to please a hostess who had made some delicacy at a dinner party. And I ripped the poor child a new one when she, herself, served hot buttered rum, made with real butter, at a holiday party. She wasn’t going to drink the stuff herself, she just knew some of her guests liked it.

I’m currently having a slight change of heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am still a vegan (a honeyed vegan, mind, with nothing fishy going on), but my angry ambivalence has recently given way to a dry Kiwi-inspired sense of humor, and you are now as likely to find me joking about bacon flavored beer (please let this be an urban myth!) as you are to find me soaking my lentils. These days I will celebrate if I see just one person chose one vegan meal in place of a usual meat-centric one. I recently made a 12-year old a falafel sandwich. She’d never tried anything like it and she loved it. She ate bacon and cheese pasta for dinner the next day, but I know she’ll ask for falafel again. That is better than nothing. But what really shifted my attitude was a farm visit. 

Within a few minutes of my arrival on a high country livestock station in the South Island of New Zealand, which is approximately a one-hour drive from the most basic local amenity, I was taken off on a guided tour of the 100 square mile property, led by the farm children, aged 6 and 7. First up was a feast fit for a vegan’s eyes. Their mother, the farmer’s wife, clearly has the Midas touch when it comes to growing vegetables. I have never seen such sumptuous heads of broccoli, so many varieties of lettuce, such huge zucchini and so many waxy-looking new potatoes. Yellow squash, mint, strawberries, rhubarb, red cabbage and carrots completed the vegan smorgasbord. But my paradise was shattered with one cluck of a chook.

I confess, I think of egg-laying hens and I am enraged at the idea of thousands of cooped-up feathered animals (seriously... read the regulations on what is legally acceptable as “free range”) being kept in captivity for the sake of a fluffy omelet. But here were ten clucking girls with the run of the yard. They looked healthy and perfectly happy to me. And there were two eggs ready for collection.

The children and I were reaching a slight impasse. They had never met anyone who didn’t eat eggs. They’d heard of vegetarians, and had even met a few, but could not fathom why a person wouldn’t eat eggs or drink milk if no animal was going to die. Talking of animals dying, I couldn’t help teasing them a little. On hearing that the farm boy's favorite meat was venison, I had to ask whether he was planning to barbecue the cute deer they’d rescued from a barbed fence. They’d named him Bambi.

“No!” squealed the farm girl. On further enquiry about whether they were intending to eat their horses, cats or guinea pigs, I was assured that they do not eat their pets.

“So let me get this right,” I feigned. “It’s okay to eat animals unless they have names. If you give them a name, you don’t eat them.”

“Iggs-actly,” the farm girl reassured me. I was relieved that their cute Shetland wasn’t going to be served up as pony escalope.

So it’s okay to eat the sheep and the cattle, and the cute pigs I met the next day, but nothing that has been given a name. Animals that have been named do not get eaten.

I had a sudden urge to run up the hillside, gather the troops, and start naming them all, or at least shout out at the top of my lungs,

“Mothers! Save your children! Name them... quick!” While I knew Bambi was safe, I was worried for his brothers, and sisters, and aunts and uncles, and cousins two or three or four times removed.

The tour of the farm continued, with a long drive with the farmer’s wife, across some of New Zealand’s most beautiful countryside, the Southern Alps loomed over us all the while. I saw sheep and deer and cows and bulls and baby calves and lambs and llamas, and they all looked incredibly healthy and happy. If this wasn’t how it is, would this land be a concrete jungle? I couldn’t help wondering. I paddled in a glacial stream with the farm girl, cupped my hands and drank water from it (something I had never done before), and I watched the 7-year old boy help his father make hay to feed the thousands of animals in the winter. That evening, the farm boy and I chopped the fresh vegetables we’d picked from the garden, and made a huge dish of roasted vegetables. I ate mine with beans and they ate theirs with lamp chops. Not once did they question my choice.

When I went to bed that night, I lay awake in the dark with a certain unease creeping over me. And it had nothing to do with my problems with eating animals. On the contrary, I was conflicted. Much as I hated the idea of breeding animals for food, much as I believed consuming animal products is a veritable health risk, much as I supported the UN’s call for a move towards a vegan diet, I really, really liked and respected these people I was staying with. This farmer, who was out in the fields during every hour of daylight, his wife who could grow vegetables the quality of which I’d never seen in my life, his kids who helped out responsibly on the farm... they were wonderful people. What’s more, they fully respected the choices I’d made. Their livelihood depended on the sale of meat and I was a conscious objector. And they still respected me. Wasn’t it only right that I return that respect? These kids were gorgeous; they were intelligent and responsible, and affectionate, and had huge personalities. Their mother was one of the kindest hearted people I’d ever met. She looks after the pets (including the children, her husband, the shepherds, and all the named animals), she feeds them, clothes them (the ones without fur, which does not necessarily include her husband), waters them, and gives them fantastic hugs. She also tends to the vegetable garden, grows giant lilies and roses, and keeps house. She’s amazing. I liked them all and they seemed to like me. Before we’d sat down to dinner, I’d watched the mother read the ingredients on the back of a sauce bottle and look up with a commiserating sigh as she explained that it wasn’t vegan-friendly because it contained skim milk powder. I hadn’t seen a Kiwi read an ingredients label yet, let alone make the connection that skim milk powder is, indeed, an animal product. It was this level of respect, this care, this hospitality that I was losing sleep over. Because I knew I had to return it somehow.

This family did not wake up one day and make an active choice to go and kill animals for a profit. This farmer inherited this massive farm from his parents. It is a stunning property that I will always feel incredibly privileged to have visited. What right did I have to deny them their inherited family business? What gave me the right to declare that what they did was wrong or cruel? Yes, I know the science, I know the results, I know what harm the consumption of animal products can do, but the fact that I can choose not to consume them is a privilege! These were not ignorant people blindly consuming products from fast food conglomerates; these were people getting on with the livelihood that had been thrust upon them. The 7 year-old farm boy is already learning to hold a gun because he knows he will, one day, inherit this farm from his father.

I finally drifted off to sleep, but I noticed one or two changes in my behavioral patterns the next day. I roamed the farm with less judgment than I’d had the day before. I watched sheep get “drenched,” I marveled at a pack of deer (who shall remain nameless) roaming across the highest peaks of the farm, and as we all helped ourselves to a hearty dinner, I turned a blind eye as I watched the farmer stick the tongs he’d just used to pick up his steak deep into the bowl of veggies. I bravely used the same tongs to help myself to a healthy portion of stir-fried veggies with chickpeas à la steak jus.

You’ll never get me to agree, in principal, with the practice of raising animals for food, and I still believe that one day, maybe in a few hundred years (hopefully less), without too much disruption to the livelihoods of good families, livestock farming will become an outdated practice, almost as unpalatable as cannibalism and slavery. I know this is unlikely to be in my lifetime, but I can start by making a stand. Blessed with the privilege of free speech, I can make a point, I can tell people all my reasons for being “mostly vegan,” but at the end of the day, I would never want to deny a family their livelihood. If someone has inherited a business that involves raising animals for meat and, with all the best will in the world, they can’t see anything wrong with doing that, and if they have the highest standards, and treat their animals with the greatest care, and can pretty much tell you where every piece of meat they put in their mouths comes from, then this vegan cannot, currently, argue too vehemently against that.

So here is my plea to you. Drink milk if you like it, but find out the facts about what it can do to your body by reading The China Study, or Skinny Bitch. Eat meat if you like it, but find out exactly where it comes from and please, please don’t support cheap food chains; that’s not real meat, that’s (in the farmer’s words) “crap that is swept up off the floor when they’ve finished cutting up the animal.” The big giants of industry will try to persuade you otherwise, but don’t be fooled. They do not care about animals and they do not care about you, the only thing they care about is their profit margins. If you must eat meat, eat it sparingly and only buy it from a local farmer. Get to know him, tour the farm, and be comfortable with his practices before you buy his meat. If you can’t do that, please eat chickpeas, beans and nuts until you can.

That billboard in Auckland was wrong. The most effective cure for veganism (if “veganism” can be defined as “the pious attitude of people who stop consuming animal products as far as they are able and proceed to seethe at others who do so much as sniff a gelatin-laced jelly bean”) then I can tell you that the most effective cure for veganism has nothing to do with bacon, and has everything to do with staying on a well-run livestock farm that is lovingly cared for by a good Kiwi family.

Contraception vs. Chaos

Kids are wonderful. We all know that. Well, some of us know that. Some of us would beg to differ, on some occasions. And the problem is, once you have them, any of them, you can’t imagine being without them. Each individual child is an angelic godsend... except when they’re not. Each individual child is a perfect, unique gift... except when they’re not. Each individual child is a blessing... except when they’re anything but. But let us also not forget that each individual kid was the result of a choice, conscious or subconscious, to forego that TRUE godsend... which is contraception. And don’t throw those figures at me about the failure rate of each method of contraception because I will argue that, except for the very, very odd occasion when there was a true glitch in the system, most of these statistics could be proved wrong if we could wind back time and find out that a pill was forgotten that one day, or the condom wasn't checked that one time.

Oh what do I know, I’m not a family planning statistician and I don’t have my own kids, but I do know this, sex without contraception usually leads to kids... except when it doesn’t, the agony of which I have also witnessed. I have watched several close friends struggle with fertility problems; I have seen their pain when they look on as other women get pregnant the moment their husband comes home, smiles sweetly, and asks, “How was your day, honey.”

I know many people, with many kids, but I haven’t met many families with four of them. That’s because I’ve never been to New Zealand before, where a family of four kids is considered relatively modest, average at the very least. So when I found myself in a household with four kids, their ages ranging from 8 to 15, to say it was a shock to the system is something of an understatement.

The woman I'm staying with is a single mother of four. She is a single mother of four and works full time. She is a single mother of four and works full time and runs an efficient household... and she still manages to have lot of fun with her kids. This is the great the thing about Brit/Kiwi hybrids, they get the best of both worlds. They have that inbuilt British survivalist mentality (“Get that vacuum out at 11pm, and do the dishes before you go to bed, hard work never killed anyone, lass!”) mixed with the “She’ll be right, whaddaya reckon?” laissez-faire Kiwi attitude.

Anyway, the main point I'm making here is that people seem to have an awful lot of kids in New Zealand. In Los Angeles, most of my friends have one child. In fact the most populated household I know in LA contains two adults, two kids (aged 5 and 2), two (outside) dogs and two (indoor) cats. And that feels like chaos! In New Zealand they seem to breed like rabbits. Well, I guess they have the room. Seriously, there is no one here. I went to the beach on Saturday. It’s a stunning beach, just north of Auckland. The weather was beautiful. Last time I was on a beach on a Saturday, it was Zuma Beach, several miles up the coast from Malibu. Well, getting a spot on Zuma beach on a Saturday afternoon in July that gave me enough room to spread out my super-size beach towel, erect my beach umbrella, and not be forced to smell someone’s sweaty feet was a veritable bun fight. I couldn’t look in any direction without seeing a smorgasbord of people and hearing a cacophony of sounds. On the Kiwi beach the other day I saw the grand total of five adults and two children, and overheard a seagull having a fight with a magpie over an apple core. You might think that sounds a little boring, but imagine what it’s like living in a household with six or seven people. You need the damn beach to get away from the chaos!

Talking of chaos... although impressively organized chaos, it must be said... here's what I witnessed last week. This woman I'm staying with, this highly successful executive, who runs the best part of one of the biggest banks in the Southern Hemisphere, this superwoman, leaves the house at 7am on Friday morning, she has back-to-back board meetings, she gets home at 4pm, shovels some food down (she skipped lunch), and spends the next two hours making pizzas and setting up games for her 10 year-old’s graduation party. Balloon blowing, cake making, and disco ball rigging had been delegated to the 15 year-old and 12 year-old before she’d left the house that morning, and the 8 year-old had his share of jobs (sign making and tidying) when he got home from school.

With an hour left to go, this Superwoman races around the house, picking up clothes and toys, and gathering up other random objects (where do kids find half the stuff they leave lying around, anyway?!) whilst hollering last minute instructions. Without a moment to spare, at 7pm, a group of thirty 10 year-olds descended on her immaculate house. She immediately divided them into five teams in order to do an “Amazing Race” style challenge around various stations in the house. In the dining room there were word games to be completed. In the living room there was a blindfold game. In the garage, teams of two had to carry medicine balls balanced between their heads around an obstacle course, and upstairs there was apple bobbing in the bathtub (it was pouring with rain so this location was an inspired contingency plan). She supervised most of it herself, using a small army of other mothers whom she plied with Champagne first. At 9pm, she threw the last of the kids out, put her own ones to bed, loaded the dishwasher, downed the last of her wine, and got out the vacuum cleaner.

Okay, let’s back up a few months. I remember a friend of mine in LA giving her child a birthday party. This glamorous woman sits in an office all day negotiating contracts for some of Hollywood’s most sought-after talent, for which she is paid handsomely. She has two assistants, a part-time housekeeper, a full-time nanny, a weekend nanny, a gardener, a pool guy, and a dog walker, and a massage therapist comes to the house twice a week. She paid a party planner to hire a venue to give the kids a themed tea party. I think she had a manicure and pedicure an hour before it started.

Well, never mind the comparisons between the mothers, the point I actually want to make is about the comparisons between the children. There aren’t many. “I’m not going to bed,” and “It’s not fair she had more cake than me,” are the same words in different accents. There’s gratitude for you!

I was standing in my kitchen in LA a few weeks ago with my old Mexican housekeeper and she suddenly announced that she thought I should have kids soon because I’d make a really great mother, and I told her that this was a little unlikely since I was single and about to go off travelling by myself for a year. She laughed and said maybe I didn't need a man, maybe “God” would give me a baby, like he gave Mary a baby. Perhaps God is a sperm bank, I mused, smiled wryly and said,

“You don’t seriously believe that Mary got pregnant without having sex, do you? You have two children, you know how babies are made. You get that Joseph got Mary knocked up out of wedlock and then, to protect her honor, some bright spark put it about that she’d been impregnated by “God,” which made it okay?”

No, clearly she didn’t believe this, because she looked at me in horror, quickly crossed her chest, and mumbled something under her breath that I took to be a prayer for my poor depraved soul.

The point is, throughout time there has been an imbalance in those who want to get pregnant and those who don't, and you don't tend to ask people if they wanted four children or if they wanted none. Forget the Immaculate Conception, someone needs to invent the immaculate contraception. Maybe we should all be made to hang out with a bunch of screaming 10 year-olds for a few weeks right before we make any life-changing decisions. That might just do it.

Just Call Me NZ1

“Kia Ora!” I read on several signs as I trudged through Auckland Airport’s arrivals corridors after my anti-climactic flight. When I was growing up in London, “Kia Ora!” was a lurid, artificial drink with a crazy animated commercial featuring a wide-eyed monkey and little black kids swinging from trees in that highly un-PC way they did everything in the late 70s. I think they renamed the drink, “Orangina,” but I’m not entirely sure.

I say, “anti-climactic” because, in my true-to-fashion Kafkaesque way, I had been expecting the worst, so I was perversely disappointed. I arrived at LAX with my stomach in knots, having had nightmares of security lines stretching out of the terminal, officious airline staff refusing to change my middle row seat to a window one while I bawled my eyes out protesting that I needed a specific seat to help calm my flying nerves, and near riots at the security scanners with passengers refusing to be x-rayed and being carted off to be molested by TSA staff. What actually happened was, the nice woman at the Air New Zealand desk waived my overweight bag fee, there was not one single person lining up at the security checkpoint, through which I went without so much as a pat on the butt, and they called me forward just before we boarded to tell me they’d got me a window seat right near the front of the giant 747 I was about to board. When I got on, I found I had a spare seat beside me, to boot.

A week of frantic last-minute appointments and logistics and leaving parties and work commitments had left me more sleep-deprived than I can ever remember being, and for the first time in my life, instead of clasping my hands together and praying like mad as we sped down the runway and took to the air, I was fast asleep. I slept on and off for the majority of the 12-hour flight, waking only briefly to eat my two delicious vegan meals (dinner and breakfast) and to watch as we crossed the equator (something I’d done only twice before) and the International Date Line (a first for me) on the flight map. There were some 150 movies and 100 TV shows to choose from on the personal entertainment system in the back of the seat in front of me, and I was disappointed I didn’t have the energy to watch them. The airline staff were hospitable and friendly, and distinctly different most of the cabin crew I’d encountered in the past, whose behavior I have usually found falls into one of two extremes, either the bitchy, condescending, don’t-bother-pressing-the-call-light-because-I-will-never-come attitude, or the fake, in-your-face, robotic, watch-how-I-can-still-smile-while-I-clean-up-this-child’s-vomit approach. The Air New Zealand staff all seemed laid back and chilled and mildly sardonic; a kind of toned-down version of what you get on Southwest, if you’re at all familiar.

After the extremely handsome customs officer graciously let me into his country, I gathered my belongings and headed out of the terminal, marveling at the fact that I’d been wrong to laugh at my friend, who’d once dated a Kiwi underwear model who was visiting LA, and was convinced that all Kiwi men were going to be that good looking. I took the shuttle to my friend’s house, in a leafy suburb just south west of the city, and after a quick shower and change I was ready for my guided tour. As we drove into the city center, the roads and houses reminded me of both a small town in the English Lake District and a place I once visited in Maryland. Someone more knowledgeable in the history of architecture can no doubt tell me why. While downtown Auckland itself was clean and functional, it looked a little dated and tired, and I reminded myself that people came to New Zealand for the countryside, the spectacular natural landscape, and the charming towns of the South Island, and not because there is any great wow factor about the CBD of the country’s largest city.

As early evening approached, I found myself sitting at a waterfront table on the terrace of a new, trendy bar in the Viaduct area, with friends, sampling the first of my New Zealand wines. The sun was still shining at 7pm, a major bonus of flying south of the equator in early December. I started talking about my travel plans and one of the women at the table suggested I hitchhike my way down to the South Island because it would be cheap and fun. I looked at her and laughed, briefly, before realizing she was serious. She persisted.

“I would never suggest hitching on your own, as a woman, anywhere else in the world, but this is New Zealand, it’s completely safe,” she assured me. And something really fascinating to write about, I thought, laughing at my own fake bravado. Not in a million years will you catch me hitchhiking, on my own, across a foreign country with all my worldly possessions. And yet, as I write this, I have a sneaking suspicion I’m writing my own famous last words!

Before leaving LA, I’d decided I was going to take up wine tasting as a casual hobby on my travels. Everything else I did was going to have some connection to work and I wanted a pastime, something fun to do that was purely for my own entertainment. I’ve always loved wine but I do struggle to remember the wines I like. A few weeks ago I’d set up some wine tastings for my friend’s family’s wine and it had been a great educational experience for me, watching how the experts do it. So I had bought myself quite a fancy wine journal, and on my first night in Auckland, I had a great time making notes on the Hawkes Bay Chardonnay and the Martinborough Pinot Noir I’d been recommended. Sampling and savoring and making notes somehow slowed down my consumption and I was very pleased that I felt nothing but a mild buzz as we left the bar at 9pm and walked back along the harbor. About an hour later it was a slightly different story.

Somehow I’d managed to miscalculate the time difference. My friends were tired and wanted to head home. I was convinced it was only 6pm LA time (actually it was more like midnight the day before, but the Pinot Noir was clearly thinking for me) and I was already being coaxed into another bar by a group of young guys who seriously could have been underwear models but turned out to be Air New Zealand engineers. Satisfied that I had enough cash for a cab and a key, my friends left me in the safe, greasy hands of these aircraft engineers. Two shots of tequila and half a pint of beer later, I was swapping life stories with their boss, who happened to be from Bridgend in South Wales.

“Where are you from, then?” he asked me.

“Well, kind of London via LA,” I replied.

“You’re like an Air New Zealand flight,” he quipped.

It took me a minute to get it and then I fell off my stool I was laughing so hard. Two tequila shots, remember.

Luckily I had enough sober brain cells lurking in the back of my head to get out before I made any promises to join them as they moved onto their next location (although it was a close call and I had to sneak out the back to ensure I got away), and soon I found myself wandering up Queen Street, Auckland’s central high street, which is where I ran into Doug and Dan.

Just as I was wondering how far my high-heeled sandaled feet were going to get me before I gave in and did the rest of the journey by cab, I saw two regulation-cute guys embracing outside a small supermarket. In my best Bette Midler impression, I beamed at them, swished my arm in the air flamboyantly, and said,

“You guys are adorable!”

It had been a fun night, but I’d always been aware I was in a strange country and there’s nothing that could make you feel more at home when you’ve just flown in from LA than a gay couple embracing in the middle of a busy thoroughfare on a Saturday night. They declared me “adorable” too and insisted we all go for a drink. We stopped at an outside bar and Doug said he’d surprise us. He came out with three dark brown concoctions that he said he’d just invented. It was 42 Below vodka, manuka honey and ginger ale. I named it a “Kiwi Mule.” I just googled it and there are some recipes that include these ingredients and others, such as kiwi fruit, mint and lime. Maybe I’ll do a little research on best recipes for this drink alongside the wine tasting. And try to figure out how they’re all so fit and healthy down here with all this great booze available!

Around midnight, something kicked my brain back into gear (perhaps it was the manuka honey) and I realized the time difference made LA 21 hours behind, not forward, making it more like 3am to my body clock. So I exchanged big hugs with my new best friends, Doug and Dan (they’ve only been together 3 weeks but I do have high hopes for them) and jumped in a cab.

Earlier that day my friend had reminded me, after the second time I’d tipped a waitress serving us coffee, that tipping it not part of the Kiwi culture. I remembered, from my days in Australia, that this was something I’d never been able to get used to. As I watched the meter run up in the cab, I resolved to honor the Kiwi culture and not tip the guy. I did, however, only have $20 in cash on me, and so I asked him to stop when the meter hit $20 and I’d walk the rest of the way. We’d turned into my friend’s street and we were at number 54 (they live at number 102) when the meter hit $20. The guy stopped. I gave him the $20 and got out and watched as he drove away from me, in the direction of number 102, without a second glance. I hadn’t even been in the country for 24 hours yet, it was past midnight, I was a woman on my own, and he was going to be driving past the house I needed to reach anyway.

Glad I hadn’t asked him to let me out when the meter reached eighteen dollars so I could give him a ten percent tip, and with my feet aching in those high-heeled sandals I now regretted stuffing into my overweight suitcase, I started walking down the deserted street. I wasn’t scared; I was in New Zealand.