Not one extra prune

My mother and aunt stayed with us on Malta for a glorious two weeks this October.  I luxuriated in their presence.  Their daily routines were fixed.  In the morning after their showers they had breakfast, eating exactly the same thing each day.  A bowl of porridge and five prunes followed by a pot of tea with one slice of wholemeal bread toasted, with butter and marmalade.  Then they would hand wash all their dirty clothes.  My practice of dumping all colours into the washing machine was an anathema to them.  They are of the generation that hand washed, bleached and bullied laundry into blistering white submission – my half grey whites did not do!

The sun here in Malta dried their clothes in a few hours and they delighted in the speed of the whole affair.  Then, after tidying my flat with equal thoroughness and a demanding level of order and neatness they filled their water bottles and headed out for their daily forced march.  They would walk the promenade beside the Med each day, choosing St Julian’s Bay one day from Sliema and then the next heading right towards Valetta.  These walks were no mean feat in the burning sunshine.  They allowed themselves just two breaks during this four-hour marathon.  One was for ice cream cone, or a ‘poke’ as my mum calls it.  

My Mum, with eight decades under her belt, would order their cones with a smile, asking for loads of the white cooling ice cream on top.  God bless the Maltese café staff who universally responded with unrestrained generosity filling the two small cones to abundant heights.  The happiness with which these two grandmothers/great grandmothers devoured their treat had to be seen.  With two hours of walking in the baking heat it felt like a life saver and their toes practically curled in delight at the delicious coolness.

Then on for another two hours of walking and chatting.  These two have so many memories to share, so much news to tell and experiences to debrief they talk non-stop for the whole two weeks.  Listening to them chatting away from their beds to each other until they fell asleep was the best background music to have.

The second pit stop is for a large cappuccino and they have by now found the best cafés to stop at.  

Not only the café but also they also have a favourite table near the door from where they can observe the world go by.  My aunt has an eye for detail.  Noticing people who chew with their tongues out, peculiar gaits, unusual hairstyles or fashions ensembles.  She notices everything and views the entire spectacle with excited voyeurism.  This is fortunate, as my mother sees nothing.  She is a ‘starer off into space’, happy in her own skin and head with a coffee mug held tight in delight.  So this unusual team works well.  My aunt points out what my mother would have missed and my mother restrains her sister from tucking in shirt tails, turning down labels that stick up and generally rearranging the hairdos of complete strangers.

I tease them because they do not vary their routine.  Not one extra prune, not one different flavour of ice cream ventured, not even their footwear has changed in the last few years.  But they are happy, fit and in great shape.  Their laughter and giggles filled the flat and our lives from the moment they arrived until they disappeared into the departure lounge in the airport on the way home.

So if anyone happened to see me standing at Malta International Airport last week waving and sobbing at two elderly ladies while tears tripped down my face try to understand.  Such people burrow into your heart and letting them go is akin to open-heart surgery.

My 9 Favourite Pastimes

1. Still Game.  A wonderful series set in a run down estate in Scotland populated with aging characters.  Doesn't sound uplifting or funny but it is.  Watched the whole series and mourn the fact that there are no more new ones to watch.  Here is one of my favourite episodes, just love how even wallpaper can roll back the years for us all. 

2. Lie To Me

This is a modern series about a company that specialises in reading the micro_expressions that speak the lies we tell.  It wears a little thin after a while but love the idea and how it is executed here. It is not on youtube, but keep you eyes open for this one

 3.  Rummycube – one of my favourite games at present.  This game depressingly reminds me how slow my brain has become.  Other players shout how long I take when it is my turn.  It is just the speed my brain is at present.

4. Swimming in the Med – there is a feel good factor about being the sea that swimming pools cannot compete with.  Is it the salt, the odd jellyfish or the waves that I occasionally swallow?  Don’t know but it hits the spot.
5. Café Frappe – coffee and ice in a blender, make my own and drink half pints of the stuff.  Addiction is a terrible thing!

6.  New Scientist – a wonderful magazine that I enjoy vicariously via my brother, usually three months out of date.

7.  Good friends to laugh with and sit at cafes with.  Here in Malta, like the Med elsewhere you can sit for hours out front with one cup.  Easily the cheapest outing and yet brilliant fun!

8.  Visiting and being visited by loved ones – I shall not name each one but they know who they are!

9.  Earning money writing – of all the things I do, this writing business earns me no money and yet I have a dream of doing what I love and being paid for the same.  One must have dreams right?

PS And yours? 

PPS cannot delete the 4 below, so please ignore this gremlin - it means nothing. 

codes of behaviour - the mob!

Your Perspective can change quickly.  I can remember sitting in this café with a sore back and the effort required to lean even 5 degrees forward or backward was akin to a cheese grater on my spinal column.  I bought the same drink I have now and even sat at the same table but I could no longer smell the coffee, notice the waiter’s welcoming smile or even see the people with whom I was sitting.  My field of vision was restricted to a portion of my lower back and its surrounding nerve endings.  Each movement had to be planned in advance to prepare for the forthcoming pain.  I grew to recognize these pre pain signs, sweat to the brow and upper lip, a tightening of the stomach muscles and a roll of the shoulders as if to accomplish the required adjustment by means of the upper body alone.  People stare at you when you do such odd affected motions.  They cannot help themselves. 

Perhaps it is a lingering memory of the pack we once were.  Such movements would signal ill health, weakness, frailty and an urge to turn on the weakest pack member stirs within all the rest.  Nature’s way of strengthening the pack.  Not only killing off a substandard member but providing, by eating them, useful nutrients to the rest.  In such a win win situation pack members would be assiduous about noticing limps, stiffness, poor skin or coat health.  Of course, turning on a weakened pack member also insures that you, yourself do not become a victim.  Finding a weaker member, other than yourself, is therefore a sensible strategy.  It is thought that this self-protection lies at the heart of mob psychology. 

It has long been noted that groups of people in mobs have a communal morality much lower than any individual member.   They will tear you limb for limb, stone you to death, happily lynch and set fire to you when perversely not a single individual on their own would sanction such gross atrocities.  So what is it that makes such a discrepancy in codes of behaviour. 

The answer lies in the mobs first act of violence.  Once it is taken each member of the mob knows there is a definite possibility that the mob could turn on them just as easily.  What can they do to prevent such an outcome?  They must out do the first violence, up the anti so to speak.  By this means they prove their loyalty to the pack, keep the rage targeted on some one other than themselves and in doing so trigger an ever ascending spiral of atrocity in others for the exact same reasons.  This fuels the final carnage. 

So sad that many leaders of thought, idealists and innocent have fallen victim to the mob’s senseless selfish violence.  Perhaps it has ever been so, survival of the fittest and all that?  But, I like to think that ideals and truths also have strengths that persevere despite the mob’s advantage of numbers.  That the actions and words of brave noble people echo across the millennium and will out last and outshine the foul deeds lesser minds devise.

Forfucksake Sam

Sam couldn't remember exactly when he was renamed Forfucksake Sam but it seemed now to be a constant prefix for everyone in the kitchen who spoke to him.

“Forfucksake Sam, get those dishes washed we going down on the Titanic here!”

Or when the manager shouted, “Forfucksake Sam, we need those bins emptied and cleaned pronto!”

Even when being kind, the chef would say

“Forfucksake Sam, there’s a burger for your lunch on the counter.”

Sam grew to ignore the implied insult and just treated it as a title of sorts.  It was bloody hard being a kitchen porter and physically it pushed him to limits that were way beyond name-calling.  Standing at a station washing dishes for eight hours made his backache until his arm muscles grew strong enough to cope.  Having his hands in soapy water so long had caused eczema and it wouldn’t clear.  His doctor warned him that it would be a chronic condition if he didn’t stop.  His fingers were like huge red inflated sausages with dry skin flaking off all over. 

When he examined them at night and covered them in cortisone cream they seemed not to belong to him at all.  They gave the impression of strange appendages that had been grafted on along with the title Forfucksake.  Some shifts he would find himself holding his mouth in a peculiar way, off to one side and twisted shut.  As if there were words he wanted to shout but had to hold him in at all costs by this pursed contortion.  He passed the floor manager screaming at a waitress on the stairway, and as the manager screamed abuse the waitress cried, head bowed weeping huge monstrous tears over a face young and raw like juicy meat.  Sam had wanted to intervene but passed saying nothing, this, like the deformed hands and his title Forfucksake, was another symptom of his new persona.  

At odd moments he found himself examining himself when shaving as if to try and find the person he was before this killing year in the hotel as a kitchen porter.  When he looked in his eyes he saw a broken figure looking back, weary and watchful for the next unexpected deformity to appear, mentally or physically.  He was watchful over himself and others.  You had to be in the kitchen, there was hot oil, burning gas hobs and perhaps more dangerous than all, the cleaning fluid.  To clean the deep fryers you had to use almost neat acid and it got everywhere.  Even his lungs seemed filled with the toxic stuff after a long shift-scrapping gunk from deep within the bowels of the machine.  Some nights he coughed long and hard and wondered if the lining of his lungs matched his grotesque fingers. 

But he liked his fellow workers.  They were an odd bunch but real.  The alcoholic cleaner from Albania, the Afghan chef, missing an ear, the Philippino waiter who minced into the kitchen swinging in time with the music.  The laughter was constant in between the shouting and Forfucksake Sam knew that what you saw was what you got.  In the relentless work load of the kitchen there was no energy for fabrication or pretence.  You worked until you dropped, you could not maintain anything under veils of restraint and tack.  It felt raw but genuine.  When the load was quiet, a rare event, they’d put the music on and each would do a small gig at their station in time to the music.  A moment of abandonment and celebration of life.  They would give each other advice and Sam grew used to “Forfucksake Sam, this is no life, you need to get the hell out of here!”  He saw evidence of kindness too, Forfucksake Sam give me the other handle of that, you’ll break your back!”  It seemed that words mattered not a jot.  Deeds counted and when your arms ached like pulled teeth all became clear.  People are not what they say, thought Sam, they are what they do.  Of every second of every day they show you what they are made of.  Forfucksake Sam realised that even his title had been earned on this odd battlefield of a kitchen.  

Corridor and playground conversations

The PE teacher at my son’s school in Greece was going through a rough time.  Every break time he would tell my son another installment of the bitter divorce he was going through.  It was a kind of debriefing and my nine-year-old son drank in the whole sorry tale.  How love can turn to hate.  What women can say and do to make your life miserable. 
How betrayal colours not just how you see the world but even yourself.  Custody battles, court hearings, his hatred for his in-laws, this plot was as twisted as any soap opera.  My son loved it and looked forward to the next installment.  Being new to the school and a foreigner my son was lonely and having these conversations let him see that suffering was universal not just his own lot in life.  It came at exactly the right time and I hope on some level having a listening ear helped Mr Anastasis too.

As one of my sons, Lewis, walked along a school corridor a heavy set teacher, middle-aged and built like a barn, no neck, half shaven with a smoker’s hack stopped him and said,

“Never long for any day, any moment but this day and this time.  Enjoy this second.  Remember this and you will have a happy life!”

Decades later Lewis, as best man, shared this with wisdom at his brother’s wedding and I feel grateful to this insight from an unlikely source.

Burning Shoes and Stuff

There was a young bored sports teacher covering a class for a colleague in Rhodes, Greece.  He noticed some loose threads on his trainers while he sat cross-legged.  He tried pulling them loose but they were made of tough nylon reluctant to be parted from his shoe.  Inspired he pulled out his cigarette lighter and burned it off in a flash.  Turning his attention to his other trainer he repeated his earlier success.  Unfortunately, in his eagerness to complete the task he managed to set fire to the material and the shoe began to burn.  He used the class register to beat the flames out while my son sat mesmerised by this unexpected entertainment in his classroom.

We had a chemistry teacher we nicknamed ‘Sexy Sam’.  In the sad cruel ways of teenagers he was as far from sexy as we could imagine.  The ironic title stuck and spread.  The class tell tale after some months squealed to the teacher his new name.  For weeks after we endured the nauseating spectacle of a preening ‘Sexy Sam’ convinced he was the object of longing to the upper sixth.  He made renewed efforts to live up to his heady title and began wearing lurid silk shirts and skintight trousers.  He was renamed ‘Seedy Sam’ and held this title for ten years.  Teenagers hold and perpetuate grudges big time!

Like sea water they aid healing

Today my son, Daniel went swimming off the coast near our flat in Malta.  I watched frankly worried from the shore.  I dislike big waves when swimming.  Instead of feeling you are deciding your direction and pace in the water a greater force dictates, unseen with considerable power.  I wonder is it the lack of control or lack of power over this medium that disturbs.  My son has no such qualms and will do his swim sun, rain or hail.  After a day working indoors he is longing for the freedom of the waves and sea.  For many, the daily swim almost acts as a form of necessary therapy for body, spirit and mind.  There may be even some anecdotal evidence for this.

It is said, “Navy SEALS even say that if they have a scrape or cut, they know that being in the sea water will clean them up and speed up the healing process.”

Ancient Egyptians apparently, used salt water for stomach ulcers and external skin injuries.  Of course there is also Hippocrates from 460 BC – c. 370 BC who was a strong believer in salt water’s usefulness…

“Hippocrates, also known as Father of Medicine, concocted multiple cures using saltwater to heal cuts, scrapes, and even more serious skin injuries. He also used saltwater for internal problems, such as ulcers of the mouth or stomach. Hippocrates became interested in exploring the healing powers of saline after he observed how quickly fishermen’s hands and other minor skin injuries healed after exposure to seawater.”

“The Romans treated stomach ulcers and digestive problems with the solution by preparing drinks for their patients. They also made ointments to treat skin injuries, and had patients bathe in the solution to clear up skin diseases and combat itching and inflammation...effectively recommending saltwater as a primary medicinal for skin care and common skin problems.”

I don’t know if is true but I remember being told Alexander the Great urged his wounded solders to bath in the sea and dry in the sun to heal wounds.  Given these days were all long before antibiotics the sea was probably a reasonable option if you had an open wound, ripe for infection.

World War aircraft crash victims who went down in the sea strangely healed better than burn victims on land.  It is not just humans who have benefited from the magic of water treatments.  Hydrotherapy is used in veterinary clinics up and down the country where it allows animals, especially post operative, to strengthen muscles when weight bearing is too much.

Perhaps there is something deep in our psychic about being from the sea originally?  After all, our ancestors crept ashore millions of years ago before evolving into land animals.  Who knows, but I do love water enough to feel genuinely horrified when adults announce they cannot swim.  It feels so unfair that they have missed out on this delightful therapeutic experience.

My son is talking to a Greek man on the rocks with his two small daughters playing at his side.  All my sons speak Greek with a distinctive Rhodes island twang, as they were brought up there, and it is a very strong dialect indeed.   The man seems overjoyed to find a native Greek speaker on a Maltese shore so far from home and they rattle away their own language.  

He tells Daniel all about his life.  Working in a small family owned business for decades.  Of how he met and married a tourist. Then he spoke of the dreadful economic situation in Greece at present that saw him lose his business and turn his home into a liability rather than an asset.  Of his separation from his wife.  Then he holds up his hands asking,

“What did I do wrong?  I couldn't have worked any harder. I never cheated anyone.  I love my family more than my life!”

He stops and stares at the sea shaking his head at the mystery of it all.  Then he continues,

“It's wreaking even village life in Greece, everyone is having to leave to work abroad, to earn money.  Only the old are left, alone.  It is all changing.”

He describes in fast Greek, how he works in Germany and Malta, wherever a job comes up.  Desperate to make progress but aware that he is barely afloat financially these days.  He says. 

“  I had my own business in Greece and was good at it.  I made something good of my life.  I did, I really did.”

Then he turns his palms heavenward and explains,

“Now, I try and get hotel jobs, any jobs.  Just any work to support my family.  I’m not giving up, but I do want to understand what happened.”

They talk for an hour of politics, world affairs, Greek village life (which they both adore) football and even Greek history and language.  His two small daughters, half German and half Greek, speak perfect Greek and tell Daniel stories they know by heart.  The tales of heroes and villains and great deeds from Greek mythology, as their father smiles proudly.

Then as they part Kostas, hugs Daniel to his chest as you would a dear brother and wishes both of us well.  There is a sweetness about Greeks that takes the breath away when they open their heart to you.  Even in their pain, you somehow gain.  Like sea water they aid healing.