Hands off my mate- touche pas a mon pote...and other anti-racist rants

If you are a pro-European and an anti-racist, now is not a good time to be living in Europe. 
And it's a particularly bad time to be living in France.
French Jewish friends of my parents have recently to decided to leave Paris, where they have lived their whole lives, because the anti-semitism has become unbearable.
And somehow, I am not surprised.
When I was 18, three decades ago now ( how scary! ) I spent 8 months au-pairing in sun-drenched Provence in the South of France.

The family I was working for had 2 very young children, one born while I was there, the other 3 years old. 
And then there was the stormy teenage daughter from the husband's previous marriage, only a year or so younger than me and raging against the world. 
The wife was a young, vivacious, bronzed Madagascan Princess who had somehow ended up married to a " not-quite-as-successful-as-he-would-have-you-believe," car salesman, living in a tiny village surrounded by vineyards and conservatism.
It's a strange job, being an au-pair.
 For a while you become a member of a family you are not actually part of.
You become a surrogate parent, a temporary confidante and an expert cleaner. 
You have to learn to carve out a niche where there was never a hole. 
But once we all worked out how I fitted into the ups and downs of someone else's family life, we muddled along well enough together.
And if I sometimes heard things I wasn't meant to hear or they sometimes shared things I wasn't meant to know, they learnt to trust that their secrets were safe with me.
But there was one thing that was never a secret.
And that was the dad's racist views.
He wore them proudly, like a badge of honour.
" Es tu raciste Becky?" he asked me on one of my first days there.
I stared at him wondering if it was a trick question.
 Wrapping his arms proudly around his dark-haired Madagascan wife, he asked me again:   " Are you racist Becky....because I am."
Now, older and wiser and braver, I would probably have challenged him.
Then, a shy 18 year old in a strange, new home,  I just shook my head and carried on sweeping the kitchen floor.
The strange thing was, that apart from this one view, he was a kind, caring dad and an adoring husband  to his foreign- born bride.
It was just that being racist was " the new cool."
Le Pen was on the rise.
His anti-Arab message sweeping across the South of France like an infectious wave of discontent. 
To be pro-Le Pen and anti-Arab in that tiny, red-roofed village was the trendy, right thing to be. 
No foreigners were going to come and destroy their centuries old way of life.
Which was strange because, as far as I could see, no strangers were trying to!

In Paris anti-racist protesters were marching through the streets, wearing hand shaped badges with the words
 " touche pas a mon pote," ( hands off my mate ) 
written on their palms. 
But in the South of France no one seemed to be campaigning.
In the huge, multi-cultural, port city of Marseille where I sometimes spent my weekends, discontent and anger were bubbling on every hot, dusty street corner.
Walls were covered in racist slogans and pictures of Le Pen were pinned to every lamp-post.
Being racist in Marseille was not just a token topic that you tossed around the dinner-table before discussing where to buy the best cheese.
If you were racist in Marseille, you were pro-active with your prejudice.
And if you were anti-racist, being inactive was ceasing to be an option. 
Arriving one Friday afternoon from the station, visiting the family friends I always stayed with, the wife put her fingers to her lips.
" We need to be quiet," she whispered in her perfect English, " Pierre had a late night last night. He is sleeping."
I nodded and crept into the living-room wondering why her friendly, hard-working bank manager husband wasn't at work and why he had been out so late on a Thursday night without her.
At dinner, I found out.
Impeccably dressed as always, even when relaxing at home, he took a sip of his favourite local red wine  and told me what he had been doing until 4 a.m. the previous morning.
He had been out with a can of spray-paint, covering over every racist slogan he could find in his local neighbourhood.
He risked his job.
He risked being arrested.
A tiny act of rebellion against a flooding swell of racism.
But I have never forgotten it.
It is always the smallest, most measurable and unexpected acts of bravery, that give us the greatest amount of hope and courage.

This morning, in Calais, on the other side of the Channel, French riot police are trying to close down the migrant camps and send the unwanted foreigners back to where they came from.
And I am wondering why people would choose to leave their homes and family to sleep on the hard, cold ground.
I am wondering why they would choose to risk their freedom for nothing more than the  dream of a better life.  
And I am wondering if I would be brave enough to do it.

Many immigrants are desperate people prepared to do the jobs that no one else wants to do, for wages that no one else would accept.
Immigration is the result of injustice and prejudice and the unfair distribution of wealth.
It is the result of the devastation of war and the imbalance of power. 
Perhaps before we let UKIP brainwash us into believing that immigration is the cause of all our problems, we should look at the cause of immigration.
Perhaps before we follow in the footprints of the South of France and let being racist become "the new cool ," we should look at the bigger picture.
It's time to pick up our spray cans.
It's time to creep out of our homes in the middle of the night and cover every wall with just one word:  WELCOME. 

London dreaming and generational slipping

It happens to us all of us in the end.
And the truth is, I've  known the day would soon come.
But still, there is nothing that can quite prepare you for it..
We were sitting, pic-nicing with some of our best and oldest friends l and in Lincoln's Inn Field in the Centre of London when we found out.
The sun was shining, the beer was cold, the French bread and cheese were delicious.  
All was right with the world.
We were free of the responsibilities of parenthood, with a whole weekend of pure enjoyment ahead of us. 
We felt almost young again.
Just like the good old days.
And that's when it happened.
 One of our friends, turned to his wife and said: 
" Have you told them yet?"
I took another swig of beer and waited, expectantly.
" Told them what?" she asked.
'You know," he said, " about the...." and he folded his arms together and rocked them from side to side as though he was holding a baby.
" Oh that," said his wife .
And so she told us that one of our university friends ( not quite friend enough  to be part of our " meeting up once a year for the weekend," gang ) has just become a grandad.
For a moment none of us said anything.
And for a split second the sun seemed to lose its heat.
Because there's something about the words " grandma,' and " grandad," that make you feel, not so much old, as passé.  
Suddenly we are not just the last generation, but the generation before that.
And the problem is that, even though we are, most of us, parents of teenagers, inside we are still teenagers ourselves.
We haven't actually started doing all those things we meant to do, like changing the world and following our dreams and living the life we meant to live when the stressful part was over..
That was meant to happen tomorrow, when we had time.
And all of a sudden, we could be grandparents and there might not be enough time for us to actually be the difference we want to see in the world.
Because nobody listens to the generation before the last. .

" Well," said one of our friend's philosophically breaking the silence, " if it was going to be anyone,he's the best person to be a grandad.  He's been 50 since he was born."
We all laughed and went back to drinking and eating and lazing in the sun.
And we had the best weekend, as we always do, with friends whose company is familiar and easy and a constant pleasure.
We stood on the silver, Millennium Bridge watching Tower Bridge going up and down.

First time Ive ever seen Tower Bridge  up!

We went to the gift shop in the Tate Modern  so that we could pretend we were cultured and drank cocktails in the afternoon so that we could pretend we were decadent while Arsenal won the cup.
We  ate delicious Malaysian food in bustling  Soho  and wandered back drunkenly to our Lincoln's Inn apartment through the bright lights of a warm London night.

Bright light wanderings

And as we drank milkshakes in artist-filled, Brick Lane Market on Sunday morning we clung onto the dream that we were still young and trendy, or at least only just middle-aged and almost cool.

The sun didn't stop shining and we didn't stop laughing and we wished we didn't have to go home.
Weekends away with friends are like islands of pleasure in an ocean of exhausting  weeks.
But somewhere deep inside, I felt the flutterings of disquiet. 
If one our friends has already become a grandad,  perhaps we are running out of time.
Or perhaps it is just that we need to make more time to do the things we always meant to do.
Perhaps tomorrow has come and we should be spending more afternoons drinking cocktails and more weekends with friends and more hours dreaming of better things.
And that way, when we do become grandparents ( and I can't help hoping that it will be a little while yet! ) at least we will be ready to enter the generation before the last without regrets.

Which is why I have made my big decision ( only big to me ) to leave my job and begin to live my dream.
So here's to life and love and friendship and days of garden-shed dreaming.

Big decisions

The strange thing about decisions, is that usually it's not the big ones that are the hardest to make but the little, every day ones.

Deciding to move country, go travelling, change jobs, those decisions often seem easy.  

Deciding what to have for dinner, what to choose from a restaurant menu, what colour tiles would look good in the kitchen, what clothes to wear- those are the hard ones. 
Perhaps it's because big decisions have been hovering somewhere at the back of our mind for such a long time that when crunch time comes, we've actually already decided.
Or perhaps it's because big decisions tend to be emotive ones and it's easier to be governed by our emotions than the colour of a tile.
Or perhaps it's because those little decisions are the ones we have to live with every day and can make us feel perpetually  disappointed. 

"It doesn't matter what I order in  a restaurant," said one of my friends, " when the food arrives, I always wish I'd ordered what my friends have."

And that's how those little decisions can make us feel: perpetually disappointed. 

" My 2 year old has a tantrum every time we offer him a choice," said a parent to me yesterday.
" What do you mean?" I asked.
" Like, on Saturday we went to the park and we said: Do you want to feed the ducks at  the pond or go to the playground. She chose the pond but as soon as we got there, she started shouting and crying. I think it's because she was worried that the playground might have been more fun."

That's the trouble with little decisions....the playground might always have been more fun.

Whereas the big decisions have a " no turning back," exciting sense of destiny about them. And the strange thing about those big decisions is that, once you have made them, the rest is easy, however huge the consequences.
When, 9 years ago, Ninesh and I decided to give up our jobs, take the kids out of school, buy a camper van and go travelling, we thought the decision would be the easy part and everything we needed to do to make it happen, would be difficult.
And we were right about the decision, it took one evening of discussion, but we were wrong about the rest.
Once we were sure of our decision, the rest seemed easy.
The school supported us, the Theatre rented our house furnished - pans, Ninesh found a camper van on-line and before we knew it...we were off.
Waving goodbye to our home, to permanence,to indoor living, to our street and ( with a tear in our eye) to our neighbours, we drove off into the early morning mist in our slightly top-heavy camper van.

Living the camper van dream

And that big decision was the best decision we have ever made.
Not just because of all the amazing things we saw and the extraordinary things we did but because, for 6 months, we lived the unique adventure of just being a family.
No time-demanding, anxiety-causing strings attached.
Perhaps it was so easy to organise because once we had made the decision, Ninesh and I were driven by a shared dream, certain of what we both wanted.
And maybe that's the thing about big decisions, they give you a rare certainty, a definite purpose.
And even if the decisions are sad ones: leaving your family, leaving your home, giving up your job,  the consequences of making those decisions are so immediate, so all-consuming that for a while you forget your normal, irritating, every day worries. 
Big decisions free our minds, little ones clutter them.

So perhaps the thing to do, is to make a big decision every year.

I've just made mine for this year.
What will yours be?

Going Live with Jools Holland again

I usually find that if you do something once in life and love it, you should never do it again
Things never seem to be quite as good the second time around.
But last week I was proved wrong.
Ninesh and I got tickets to see " Later with Jools Holland," again and it was AMAZING.
Even better than the first time, though I'm not sure why.  
Maybe it was the chemistry between the eclectic mix of talented musicians- all under the same roof for just one night. 
Maybe it was the fact that we "knew the score," and were less in awe of the whole "going live," process.
Maybe it was that we didn't have to queue outside for an hour first but got to mingle with  the other guests in the bar waiting area.

Waiting

Maybe the atmosphere was more relaxed because  this time it wasn't the first night of filming in a new studio. .
Maybe it was the infectiously mischievous twinkle always hovering in Jools Holland's eye.
Or maybe it was just that everyone, singers and audience, were out to make it a night to remember.
Whatever the reason, we had the best time and heard some incredible music.
The studio is much smaller than it looks on TV so you are very close to the artists.
It 's like a friendly, intimate jazz club without the elitism. 
There are so many different people singing, so many different styles of music, so much tangible talent that you can't help but be swept up in the buzz of excitement that comes with live music.
And then there is the added interest of famous artists being interviewed live in front of you. 
It feels almost as though you are chatting to them in your living room.
We learnt that Neil Finn's wife is the bass player in his band, that once when he was playing on Later he stopped singing too early because he misunderstood a cue from Jools Holland and that Zara McFarlane comes from Dagenham.
Feeding my love of trivia and funny anecdotes. 
And because the tickets are free,-just register online, apply and keep your fingers crossed- the audience is a complete mixture of ages, cultures and styles
The line-up.was amazing last week: 

Paolo Nutini

Neil Finn

Royal Blood

Lucius

Joan as a Policewoman

Zara McFarlane

From the thrashing, unknown duet Royal Blood to the famous, smouldering Paolo Nutini, there was something for everyone, whatever your musical taste.
I am a fickle music fan.
I often like one or two songs from a band and then nothing else they ever sing. 
So even though I love live music, I'm often bored in live concerts
" Later," is the perfect solution for people like me. 
Just a few songs from everyone and usually their best and most popular because they have a whole nation of watchers to impress.
For the first hour the singers were recorded and interviewed for the hour long Friday show. 
The most awe-inspiring display of musical talent was the improvised duet with Zara McFarlane and Jools Holland as she let her velvet-wrapped voice take the lead from his piano-playing fingers.
It was like listening to a spontaneous walk through constantly changing scenery.
But the song that will remain with me because, for the first time in a long time, it sent shivers down my spine, was " Go Home," by the "not-yet-famous-but-watch-this-space  Lucius."
http://youtu.be/ACBwXIzQou8
It was so entrancingly beautiful that when it had finished, I felt as though I was waking up from a dream.
But there was no time for dreaming because at 1 minute to 10 the countdown began, the excitement rose and as the title music died away, we cheered and cheered while the camera followed Jools Holland round the room as he introduced the acts. 

It was raw and real and over too quickly.
Before we knew it, we were clapping to a goodbye led by Paolo Nutini while Jools thanked his guests.
And that was it.
All over for the second time.
There was a moment's silence before the famous words:

" And that's a wrap. Thank you for coming," from the producer. 
Except that, as we were leaving, they announced there had been a problem with the recording of one of the songs for the Friday show.
I closed my eyes and wished.
And sometimes wishes do come true because the song they had to re-record was... 
" Go Home."
And so, before we went home, I got to hear my new favourite song, live, again.
Maybe, Lucius will be the group that make me a less fickle music fan!
Or maybe we'll just carry on applying for " Later," tickets and I will let Jools Holland guide my musical whims.

Cup final musings

Last week our son's football team won the cup.
It was only a little cup, only a small game in an unimportant league.
But to the team, all under 15, and their faithful parent fans, it meant more than any championship win anywhere in the world.
The teams were equally matched, either would have deserved to win - but his team did ....and their fans went wild.
After almost a decade of playing together as a team, almost a decade of turning up for training in the pouring rain and freezing cold, almost a decade of nearly winning, at last- they actually won.
They haven't had an easy time of it over the years.
 Different managers, temper tantrums, yellow cards, injuries - just like any team.
But what has been amazing for us parents, has been watching them grow and mature.
They started playing as " under 6's."  
Joss, shy and insecure, had to be dragged along on the day he joined.
A group of small boys in shirts and shorts 3 sizes too big.

And now, almost 10 years on, they are taller than us, with their trendy high-hair adding at least 2 inches and their orange shirts always half tucked into their black shorts- not cool any other way.
And I am amazed at what they have learnt:
how to kick a ball in a straight line, how to pass it to others and not just keep it themselves, how to throw-in, how to tackle without hurting, how to attack and defend, how to angle kicks at goal, how to lose without giving up, they even learnt to play and accept the off-side rule.
As spectators and parents we have watched their characters grow and develop, watch them take on roles and positions .
They have learnt tenacity, self-control (most of the time), determination and most of all they have learnt to work as a team.
And so the cup final last week was not just a game, it was the culmination of all they have learnt and worked at and strived for.
They had lots of missed opportunities, goals saved and missed, but they didn't give up
And when the final whistle blew and they won 2-0, the cheers, almost a decade of pent up emotion, reverberated through Arundel and bounced off the castle walls.

The match was played on a floodlit pitch in front of the castle as the sun was setting  over the Downs..
An age-old game in an age-old city played by the generation of tomorrow.
And who knows what will happen next season.
It's hard to pin down sixteen year olds as they turn from boys into young men.
Hard to know if they will commit to training on rainy Saturdays and matches on freezing  Sundays.
But for now, at least, they are a team and they have won the cup and their hair is still looking good. 
Life doesn't get much better!

Cluttered memories

I have been thinking a lot about "clutter" over the last months.
Partly because of the number of times Ninesh has had to pull important documents out of the recycling bin: cheques, passport applications, insurance documents, all enthusiastically binned by me in my constant desire to keep our house free from unnecessary "stuff".
But mostly because we have spent many weekends over the past year, trying to help my parents-in-law empty their 4 bedroomed home of the clutter accumulated over almost 50 years of marriage.
We started gently with the shed and the garage, getting rid of old flower pots and mouldy books. 
But all of us knew, right from the beginning, that the biggest problem, was the attic.
It's a big attic, running the width of the house and it is piled from boarded floor to pitched roof with "stuff".
Huge suitcases, paper-filled tea chests, children's toys, christmas decorations, curtains, duvets, newspapers.  
Like unpeeling the layers of an onion, the attic reveals year after year of my parents-in-laws married life in reverse chronological order:  the most recent unwanted Christmas presents balanced precariously on top. the love letters of their courtship buried right at the bottom.
When, at last, we pulled down the attic ladder and ascended into the chaos my decluttering fingers were itching to recycle, throw away or donate the seemingly insurmountable mountain of debris.
I could feel the words of Dr Seuss  burning on my tongue.

                                  " This mess is so big and so deep and so tall,
                                    That we can't clear it up,
                                    There is no way at all."

But with the house sold and a moving date pending, surrender was not an option. there had to be a way.
And so, grabbing a dusty, overflowing box  from the furthest corner, we began.
We worked and worked.
By the end of the day we had driven to the tip and local charity shops so many times  that our car could probably have driven there by itself.
But, like the porridge from the magic porridge pot, the stream of objects flowing through the attic hatch seemed never-ending and the ocean of chaos in the living room seemed to be constantly growing.
And in the middle of it all, stood my mother-in-law.
"My father always used to drink from this" she says, stroking a small, dusty cup.
" Look, this is Ninesh's certificate for coming second in athletics when he was 6" she hands it to me, "You should keep it." 
"And here's the horse his sister used to play with. I'll give it to her when we visit next weekend."

And for a moment I pause.
My decluttering frenzy halted by the anguish in her voice.
To her, these are not just dusty cups or bits of paper or broken toys. Instead, 
They are something precious and irreplaceable.
 They let her touch her past and bring it back to life.
We are not just throwing away rubbish, we are dismantling memories.

When my parents-in-law were first married, they left Sri Lanka to live in Canada.  My father-in-law worked for the High Commission, so they knew they would probably spend their lives moving from country to country. 
But while they were away from Sri Lanka, civil war broke out. 
As Tamils, their families were forced to flee and my mother-in-law's family home was burnt to the ground.
Her niece narrowly escaped with her life, everything else inside the house was set ablaze.
Nothing left.
A whole family history destroyed.
Nothing left to hold in your hand and remember.
Perhaps that is why, over the years, everything has been kept and moved to the attic:
A baby tooth, an old pram, a worn-out blanket, an electric heater, a single earring, a newspaper announcing the death of Lady Diana.
Any of them could be important one day.
It is hard to know which of your possessions will form the invisible scaffolding that holds your life together and gives your life meaning.
Everything could be an important something.
So best to keep everything, just in case.  
Perhaps it is too easy to imbue objects with meaning.
But it is also too easy to think they mean nothing.

I walk over to my mother-in-law and touch the cup that belonged to her father.
"You have to keep it," I say.

By the end of the day, we were dust-covered and exhausted but the attic was almost empty.
I surveyed the piles of torn magazines, bagfuls of airmail letters and boxes of bric-a-brac that were strewn across the living room, dining room and kitchen floor.
" Well," I said proudly, " The worst part is over, the attic is empty. What a constructive day.
 My father-in-law smiled and poured us all a big glass of wine.
" True," he said, "that's great.  Now there's just the other attic. The one above the extension, it's quite full.......?"
And I am wondering if you can just have too many memories! 

Running the right way in the wrong direction

A few weeks ago my 16 year old niece went to her first ever football game. 

It wasn't that she has always wanted to go to a match or been desperate to be part of that " more important than life or death," football experience.

It was more that she had promised her boyfriend, a Crystal Palace fan, she would go with him 

She had taken him to an interactive theatre event - something she loved, and he said in that case he was going to take her to a football match - something he loved.

Donning the appropriate colours, my niece joined in with the spirit of the match, supporting the right team once her boyfriend had pointed out which one that was. 

 She came back after half time, ready to full of football wisdom and ready to cheer but got more and more concerned as the game went on.

" Someone needs to tell them," she said anxiously to her boyfriend.

" Tell them what?" he asked.

"Tell them they're running in the wrong direction," she explained

And that's how my niece learnt that in a football match, the goal ends change at half-time.

 And  what looks like running the wrong way, is actually running in the right direction.

And it set me to thinking, that life often feels like that.

Like sometimes everything we do is taking us further from our dreams.

That however hard we try to run in the right direction, something pulls us in the wrong one.

" Life is what happens while we're making other plans," that's what John Lennon said.  

And he is right.

Sometimes it's hard to remember that it is life,  and not the plans, that is what's important.

And perhaps, if we stand still for a moment instead of running, we will realise that it's not that we are running in the wrong direction but that our goals are constantly changing. 

Life is full of "half-times,"- starting school, leaving school, falling in love, falling out of love, getting a job,losing a job, buying a house, selling a house, getting  married, getting divorced, becoming a parent, watching your children leave home- and when you come back for the next part of the match, without us knowing it, our goals have moved..

And even if it feels like the wrong direction, we are usually running the right way.

After the excitement of her first football game,  my niece was persuaded to go to another match.  

Not Crystal Palace this time, but their arch rivals, Brighton and Hove Albion.

Shamelessly exchanging her Palace colours for the blue and white of " The Seagulls," she entered the stadium near her home for the first time.

Now a football expert, she didn't query the change of direction at half-time and could say things like " penalty," and " off-side," and " come on ref, use your eyes! "

And when Brighton and Hove scored, no one cheered louder or raised their arms higher than she did.

Which is why, the next day,  she was on the front cover of her local paper, The Argus: famous forever as a one-time-only-die-hard Seagull's fan. 

Which just goes to show, that  in the end,it's not the direction you're running in that matters so much as how loud you shout and knowing just when to cheer.

Mixed-race disconnections

The strange thing about being the white mother of mixed-race children, is that most of the time people don't think they're my children at all.
When they were little it had it's advantages, it made it much easier to ignore them when they were having a tantrum in the middle of the street.  Older people would search the faces of nearby parents wondering who this nightmare child belonged to and their eyes would never rest on me!
But as I pushed them in their pram through town or held their hands when they were toddlers, people would stop me and say:
" What lovely children.  How many hours a day do you look after them?" 
" 24," I would say.
" It's a hard job being a nanny," they would say, touching by arm supportively.
Or others would say: 
" Aren't they beautiful, how long have you had them?  My friend's daughter has adopted 2 lovely little African children."
Perhaps people just jumped to the conclusion that it was unlikely someone who looked like me would have "lovely," or "beautiful," ( subjective, I know ) children. 
But I don't think that's what they meant.  
I think they would look at Joss and Mia's cafe-au-lait coloured skin and assume that their parents had skin the same colour.
And I don't blame them.  
Mia and Joss look nothing like me.
 I think they must have inherited all their father's genes.
But it's a strange feeling living in a world that immediately assumes a  disconnection between you and the people you love the most. 
And it's not just a " white, thing.
I was walking down our road with Joss and Mia one Friday afternoon a few years ago and two Muslim men stopped us.  They were on their way to the Guide Hall round the corner which doubles up as a mosque on Friday afternoons. 
We smiled at each other.
" How come you've got two little Asian kids then?" one of them asked.
" Fancied a change, so I did a swap! " I said, hugging Mia and Joss close.
We all walked away laughing but a tiny bit of me wished they hadn''t had to ask.

And when we visited Sri Lanka with Ninesh's family it was even worse.
No one connected Mia and Joss with me, one of the tuk-tuk drivers thought14 year old Mia was Ninesh's wife and when people asked me if I was alright and I said I was looking for my husband, they would always take me to the nearest white man. ( Perhaps I should have been less careless!)
It's not racist.
It's about perception and accepted norms.
But it seems  strange that in this modern, melting pot of a world, people still find inter-racial relationships strange and mixed-race children " unusual."
" You're lucky," I tell Mia and Joss, " you'll always be different. Unique."
Joss shrugs and changes theTV channel.
" I just wish people would see me before they see the colour of my skin," sighs Mia. 
She's right and sometimes it upsets her a lot.
And as her white English mum I am helpless because it's a feeling I will never truly understand.

But even Mia can see the funny side.
She and I had gone to visit some friends in London. Walking back to the station, we had looped our arms around each other's waists and were chatting as we wandered from rich houses and perfect squares towards busy main roads with rubbish strewn pavements. 
 It was a warm night and we passed a busker strumming a guitar. 
He glanced up and seeing us sang out:
 " what a lovely couple."
"You should take it as a compliment mum," laughed Mia,less horrified than I thought she would be " you must look young."
" Or we just look so different from each other that he thought we couldn't possibly be related," I said, wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes.
We cannot step out of our skins.
All we can do is wait patiently for the world to catch up.
And while we are waiting, the best thing we can do is laugh.

Our family- spot the difference

Sports Relief, the big guilt game

Last Friday was Sports Relief day - again. 

Another evening of being bombarded by a celebrity sprinkled, charity-giving TV marathon. 

Lots of famous people do lots of funny or physically challenging things so that we , the audience, donate lots of our money.

Seb Coe, Olly Murs and Sally Phillips doing lots of funny things for Sports Relief

Humorous sketches and chatty hosts, intersperse the laughs with horrendous pictures of beautiful children in faraway countries dying from malaria or pneumonia or picking out food from enormous rubbish dumps. 

Often the celebrities have been flown over to the faraway places to experience the suffering first hand, breaking down in front of the cameras as they beg us to donate anything, anything at all. 

" Just pick up the phone and make that call.  
 £5 can be the difference between life and death. 
You can be that difference." 

It's very clever. 
It plays on our guilt at every level. 
We feel guilty that we are sitting in warm living rooms with big televisions watching people who don't even have a roof over their heads..
We feel guilty that our biggest worries are about work or exams or what to cook for dinner while there are people who don't even know if they are going to find enough food to make it through the day.
We feel guilty that even the richest of us can access health services for free when there are children dying from completely curable diseases.
As we watch people raising money by being sponsored to run marathons, swim in freezing water, cycle for miles, dance for hours, we feel guilty that we are sitting at home doing nothing.
And once we have watched the phone number for donating flash up on the screen, we feel guilty if we don't donate.
We feel guilty if our friends have donated and we haven't
By the time we crawl into bed after one of these fund raising nights. we have been emotionally battered into charitable submission.
And they are always on a Friday night to make sure that if we don't donate, our weekends will be ruined by our guilt.
 How can we go out and spend money having a good time on a Saturday night, when people are dying for lack of the £5 we didn't donate. 
They are sleek, professional, carefully planned assaults on our emotions these Comic or Sports Relief nights. 
 They are presented  by carefully chosen, familiar, popular celebrity hosts from a variety of backgrounds and genres to make sure that there is someone to appeal to everyone. They last for so long ( 6 hours ) that is impossible to put on the television any time between teatime an bedtime without coming across someone begging you to do the right thing.
And it's true, we should all do the right thing.  Those of us who can afford to give, should.
But the truth is, that although all of us could probably give more than we do, it is not individuals doing the right thing that is going to rectify the world imbalance in the distribution of wealth

.“While we do our good works let us not forget that the real solution lies in a world in which charity will have become unnecessary.” 
― Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah

It is completely wrong that anyone in this rich, modern world should be starving or dying because they are unable to access the medication that could save them.
It is completely wrong that anyone should be homeless or penniless.
But while the richest 300 people in the world are more wealthy than the poorest 3 billion, while the impersonal, enormous multi-national corporations make all the rules, while bankers feel that they are accountable to no one, nothing will change.

How about some of those presenters on the Comic Relief nights giving away some of the expensive clothes they wear or donating the cost of a trip to the hairdresser. 
 How about some of our footballers earning £100,000 a week, donating one week's salary. How about Starbucks or Amazon donating some of the tax they haven't paid.
That would be a lot of £5s!
But the truth is, collective guilt is never as effective or powerful as individual guilt.
So once again, last Friday's Sports Relief made a record amount of money: over £51.000000 
Which just goes to show how much people are prepared to pay for one night of guilt-free sleep. Or maybe you'll feel better about yourself for even longer, perhaps even until Red Nose Day.

Romance is Alive in an MX5

Spring is here. 
I know it is, because last Saturday, for the first time this year, I drove our very old MX5 along the A27 with the roof down.
And it felt amazing. 
Music playing, sun shining, deep green fields flashing by. 
So close to the ground you are almost molten.
You never feel more alive than when you're driving in an MX5.
It was bought on a whim, this little black car of ours.
Ninesh phoned me one lunchtime a few years ago and said he had seen an old MX5 roadster advertised on the intranet.
" It's a bargain," he said. " A once in a lifetime opportunity.  The owner's going to bring it in tomorrow so I can have a look at it."
And the owner brought it in. 
And Ninesh looked at it, test drove it and bought it, all before the end of his lunch hour.
And then he phoned me.
" I've added it to our insurance already," he explained, " so I'll drive it home after work.
Don't tell the kids.  It'll be a surprise."
" It will," I agreed, " it's still a surprise to me."
I was just cooking dinner in the kitchen that evening when Joss came racing in.
" Mum, mum," he yelled, " dad has just driven up in a convertable.  Where did he get it from?"
" Why don't you go and ask him?" I laughed.
" Come on Mia," shouted Joss, pulling her through the front door.
I followed them, watching as they clambered in and out of the passenger seat while Ninesh proudly showed them the radio, the seats, how the roof could be pulled up and down.

" It's amazing mum,' said Joss, his eyes shining," it's only got 2 seats but there's a little gap in the back, just big enough for snacks! "
" And is the boot full of flowers?" I asked Ninesh.
He laughed.
 Our " boot full of flowers," story is ( literally ) Hollywood romantic.
I had given up my London: job, flat, family, friends, to begin an uncertain new life with Ninesh in California.
Jet-lagged and a little shaky from a customs interrogation, I stepped through the arrivals gate at LA airport and into Ninesh's arms.
" The car's not far," he said, grabbing my bright red suitcase and pulling it and me through the sliding doors.
Outside I stopped for a moment and breathed in the warm, polluted LA air, gazing up at the sun-filled, never-ending blueness of the sky.
"Welcome to the rest of your life," my mum had said as she and my dad drove me to the airport that morning.
And here it was, the rest of my life, just beginning.
" Come on," said Ninesh, dragging me into the cool darkness of the car park.
" It's not much," he said, pointing at a small, blue, metallic car parked in a corner, " but it's all I could afford and it will get us around."
I nodded, not really listening. I've never been that interested in cars.
" Shame it's not that one," I said, pointing at the sleek, black, shiny Mustang convertable we were just passing.
Ninesh stopped in front of it.
" I know," he sighed, " I've always wanted a convertible. Perhaps our key will fit it."
And leaving my suitcase in the middle of car park, he tried to fit the key to his car into the boot.
" Nesh," I gasped, " you can't just put your key in someone else's car. You'll be arrested."
Ninesh laughed, slipped the key into the lock and popped open the boot.
" I wonder where all those flowers have come from?" he grinned.
I stepped forward and stared into the boot. 
He was right, it was full of flowers.
I looked from Ninesh to the flowers and back to Ninesh, completely confused.
" This is our car," he said, " I wanted it to be a surprise."
" But we don't have any money," I said, " it must have cost a fortune."
" It was a bargain," grinned Ninesh, " a once in a lifetime opportunity. Welcome to America."
And so, with a boot full of flowers, music playing and sun shining, we put the roof down and drove into our new life.

And even if a very old MX5 in West Sussex will never be quite the same as a roaring Mustang in California, whenever I put the top down and feel the rush of the wind in my hair and the warmth of the sun on my skin, I will always believe that the boot is full of flowers.