more on english laundry soaps

I used the last of my flatmates' laundry detergent this afternoon. As I didn't feel like writing my essay about Russia, I figured that I would briefly procrastinate by stepping outside to replace the empty soap bottle. I dropped my house keys and four pounds into my coat pockets and set off for the 98 pence store on the corner. I only brought four pounds because I didn't think laundry detergent could possibly cost more than four pounds, and if it did, well, I assumed that I wouldn't want to buy it. But being a champagne socialist complicates matters. I was insistent on replacing it with the same brand of "non-biological liquigel" that my flatmates had previously purchased. The biological detergents have enzymes in them, and are not as gentle on clothes. Athough I'm not sure why I care; all of my clothes come from charity stores. Anyway, the 98p store failed to stock Persil non-bio liquigel. I wandered the aisles for awhile in search of it, getting distracted by the Valentine's Day section with its temperature sensitive coffee mugs with photos of men and women whose vestments evaporate when coming into contact with hot liquid. I absentmindedly doubled back to make sure that I hadn't missed the detergent, humming "Its gettin' hot in here, so take off all your clothes..." and marvelling at the stacks of Ribena black currant juice with which people here appear to be obsessed. I popped into the A&E Discount store nextdoor and was similarly disappointed. I considered buying some green jeweled hair clips but thought better of it when I remembered that I hadn't brought my wallet and I had to save my precious four pounds for the elusive laundry soap. I grew increasingly exasperated when I realized that the turkish store across the street didn't carry my non-bio soap either. Annoyed, I resigned myself to walking a bit farther and braving the long lines at the Morrisons, "Britain's Best Supermarket," according to the billboard-sized poster above its car park. I pushed my way past the crowds of Sunday shoppers only to discover to my horror that the Persil non-bio liquigel sitting on the shelf in all of its gleaming glory cost four pounds and NINETEEN PENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I angrily fingered the four pounds in my pocket pushed my way out of the store in a huff.

I decided to console myself for my misadventure and continue procrastinating by stopping at the Ocean Breeze Fish 'n Chips on the way home.
"Hi," I greeted the turkish man behind the counter, "A small chips, please."
"Open or closed?"
"I'm sorry?"I don't know why this question caught me off guard, but it did. I was confused, because I didn't think the chips came in a sandwhich or on bread of any kind, and I was worn out from my laundry soap search.
"Open or closed? You don't understand?"His eyes sparkled with mocking and he chuckled mightily.
"No."
"You speak English?" He stared at me as he scooped up the fries, erm, chips.
"YES [Very well thank you!]"
"Where you from?"
I refrained from pointing out that his question lacked a verb and that technically he really shouldn't end his English sentences with prepositions. Like Winston Churchill once exclaimed, normally "That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put!" Instead, I just smiled my widest most insincere American smile and sweetly answered, "The United States." Now give me my damn chips!!! I lunged for my remaining two pounds thirty pence and walked home wihout my non-biological liquigel.

Overheard

I used to live a few blocks away from a fantastic Japanese noodle restaurant called Fujiyama, and the last time I was there I overheard a bemusing conversation between two British ladies with matching gray bobs. "...yes, she acts on stage in New York, yes, New York!" "Well, my online name is Laura London...because my cat's name was Laura, and I live in London." "Did you see, the BBC had a wonderful series on a few nights ago, all about Islam, yes, fascinating, and all the more so because I have this friend who is a professor, you see, who knows all about those things, you know..." I was tempted to lean over and exasperatedly interject, "YES. I know," but I luckily remembered that I wasn't supposed to be evesdropping. I took a sip of wine, looked down at my noodles, and ate a chili.

The reason I mention this now is that the BBC is now showing a new documentary that everyone should watch. Iran and the West is a 3-part series that includes interviews with former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Rafsanjani, and Khatami. Should be interesting. Fascinating, even...all the more so because you have this friend who, you see, knows all about these things, you know...

We Don't Like.

When I was a little girl, my mother drove me crazy by speaking in the royal we. I remember with particular clarity one incident wherein my mother informed my friend's mother that "We don't like fried foods." "Speak for yourself!" thought my indignant five year old self, "You don't cook anything delicious because dad won't let you because he doesn't want you to get fat!" ("Because he's a misogynist jerk," realizes my twenty-five year old self). As a result, since confronting the reality that I too could have children if I so chose, I've become hyper-aware of mothers' tendencies to subsume their identities to those of their children. I am very, very conscious of striving never to speak in majestic plurals. When I talk to my brother, or when I babysit, I am careful not to assume, to overstep, by using the royal we. It does not amuse me. Or as this country's monarch, Queen Victoria, famously said, "We are not amused." I am afraid I will end up as dazed and confused as my mother as to who I am, and worse, crush someone else under a collapsing identity.

Despite this paranoia, I was excessively amused by the following bumper-sticker-sized sign declaring simply that "We Don't Like." I first saw this weeks ago, long before the holidays (probably not long after my last blog post, if that gives you an idea of just how long ago this was), when I went out on Brick Lane with two girlfriends and a guy who, while I love him, doesn't share my friends' and my feminism and can make unfortunate comments that have more in common with my father than I am comfortable with. The four of us were sitting outside of a curry house/bar on a wooden picnic table in the cold when a man handed us each a "We Don't Like" sign. "I don't like the royal we," I told him. "It amuses me not," I said in what I hoped was an amusing way, blowing smoke in his face for good measure. "What is this?" I asked. He informed us that he was part of an improvisational theater group called We Don't Act, and he urged us to come to his show the following week. "We" said we would consider it, and then I asked him coyly, "So what don't you like?" He thought about it for a second and said, "Hrm. I don't like violence. And I don't like having wives." "Wives? You don't like having wives or you don't like having a wife?" "A wife." The three women at the table, well, we were not amused, and we realized that this sign could succintly express our displeasure. In unison we held up the signs towards our solicitor friend and chimed together, "We Don't Like." After this, the signs came up nearly constantly throughout the rest of the night, mostly in response to any borderline misogynist comments from our friend. We joked that we should bring the "We Don't Like" signs to all of our seminars, and hold them up silently whenever a student made a tedious, annoying, or poorly argued point. Just think how amusing this could be during meetings????!!!!!




I was in fits of giggles that entire night, and I don't foresee the "We Don't Like" sign getting any less funny anytime soon. This is probably because "We Don't Like" a lot of things--most notably blogging. I am not a blogger, and I realized why. Not only do I at least attempt to privilege the present over the virtual, I prefer talking to people individually. Its difficult for me to write solipsistically for a wide audience. We also don't like CCTV and constant surveillance of citizens in England. As I was riding the night bus back from Brick Lane that night, I took a photo of this sign that enthusiastically [creepily] declared, "Our new buses are fitted with digital CCTV so that you have a safe and pleasant journey. We have prosecuted over 60 people for vandalism and graffiti on our buses. You are being monitored NOW by cameras fitted to this bus. So just sit back and smile!"


We Don't Like.

Paris

Windsor Great Park

I recently spent a weekend as a guest of the Queen Mother at Cumberland Lodge near Windsor Castle. In between a series of scheduled bars (including one before and after both lunch and dinner) the International Relations department discussed such lofty and pertinent topics as dilemmas of China's rise, partnerships amongst India, Brazil, and South Africa, reflections on the end of the world, the decline of America, and the death of capitalism. Mulling such things over whilst surrounded by such finery and decadence, really put the champagne in champagne socialist.

The Royal Lodge:


The Royal Landscape:

Pineapple

After eight weeks of eating Sunday roasts and drinking pints of London Pride every evening at Ye Old White Horse, the Knights Templar, the Princess Louise, Shakespeare's Head, and the George IV pubs near LSE, I realized that I could use some exercise.

My flatmate generously offered me use of the fancy Nordic track in the garage (pronounced here with the emphasis on the first syllable, GARE-age), but I confess I felt a little too much like a caged hamster on a treadmill. In secondary school I used to run all of the time, going so far as to join the cross-country team, though I admit that running everyday was of secondary interest to the comraderie and the parties in the mountains. I remembered that when I attempted to revisit running here, dutifully setting off in the direction of Brockwell Park. Running has the benefit of making me too tired to think about anything in particular, which is good for me, but few people jog for fun here, and I got some alien looks as I shuffled past the Nigerian currency exchange stores and laundromats. There is a nice view of London from the center of Brockwell Park, which sits atop a hill, and I suppose the view was worth the expedition, but as I ran down I passed a group of people sauntering up the hill to drink beer and smoke. The men were all wearing tight black jeans and the women high heels. They were all thin and no one felt obligated or inclined to run. They moved past in a little cloud of cigarette smoke. It smelled fantastic, I wondered why I wasn't with them, and I vowed never to go running again.

A few days later I went to a classical jazz dance class at a studio in a converted pineapple warehouse near Covent Garden. I hadn't been to a serious dance class in at least three years, and when I realized that I could still keep up I felt as if I had stumbled upon a pile of bricks of cash stashed and forgotten about in the back of the closet or under the mattress or in the basement or something (haha, yeahhh...people do this in rural America....and there is a banking crisis on now afterall). It really was an extraordinary feeling; it made me inordinately happy. Also, at the same time it was useful for me to recognize that I was not the most prepared student in the class. Sometimes I get arrogant, and complacent, within my familiar circles of policy wonkette subject matter expertise. Dancing was simultaneously energizing and humbling, and ultimately centering, and reinvigorating.

The woman who taught the class was also really amusing. She has green eyes and wild curly red hair, and a semi-operatic voice that leaks out when she sings lyrics in lieu of counting. If the class danced a section well, she stepped back and bounced up and down excitedly, punctuating her jumping with little yelps of "YES!" She narrated one portion dramatically, instructing the group to, "Grab your heart, rip it out, throw it on the floor, turn front to the mirror, wipe your mouth a bit, yes, well, almost, yes, then...walk away, disgusted! You're disgusted!" and then "...On 'one' you hit the floor, 'two' you are lying on the floor, broken, but then! on 'three' 'and' you hit the floor with your fist, pound pound, 'four', you look up, you recover, that's right, raise your head, you're BACK! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm such an expat. I'm going to Paris tomorrow for Thanksgiving. To eat frog legs and freedom fries.

Last year I spent Thanksgiving camping in Oman. We ate spaghetti and coffee from a camping stove on the rocks.

Two years ago I was in the middle of nowhere, in the forest in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. My friends and I took a bus through a snowstorm to a small town in Moravia for Thanksgiving dinner with this eccentric man from, of all places, Sandpoint, Idaho, who'd moved to the Czech Republic in the early 90s for cheap drugs and mushroom hunting. He was, randomly, a friend of my friends' parents. It was a fabulous dinner, though my friend's and my enjoyment was tempered considerably when we were, as the women in the party, forced/encouraged to do all of the dishes while the men folk smoked before we took the bus back to Prague. You can imagine how well I handled that.

Even though I haven't been in the United States recently for Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Its such a successful national holiday, premised on gratitude, food, and with no specific religious foundation so everyone feels included.

So why don't I stay in the United States? Two words: Sarah Palin. If you haven't yet seen her Turkey interview, well, you need to:

Happy Thanksgiving.

Oh, and if you've ever wondered why our Thanksgiving bird is called a Turkey the answer is more obvious than you might think.