The London Marathon

Oh my freaking god!

Today is the London Marathon. It's 7.30am and I have been up for the past two hours. I barely slept and my stomach is churning over with nerves.

Am I running?

No.

This pre-marathon frenzy is just my excitement and anticipation. My husband and four of our friends are running today in what is reputedly the best fundraising event in the world. For all of them, this is their first ever marathon. I've watched them work their guts out over the past 4-5 months in preparation and I feel so proud of them all. To run a marathon requires not just physical capacity but huge reserves of mental strength and discipline. It's very tough.

If this is how I feel I can't imagine what it must have been like for them over the past few days. No wonder when I met up with a few of them yesterday, they could barely eat or talk.

I have never been to the Marathon. I've heard it's brilliant. That the atmosphere is incredible and that it is a day where the whole of London comes together to cheer on our runners. I can't wait.

Go Team!

Nail the Bastards!

My mate Jerome is having a hard time with his employers. They are diddling him around a treat and after a long and ranty phone conversation, we decided that he would launch a one man campaign against them. We decided to call this the Nail the Bastards! campaign.

You might want to know who these employers are who have elicited such eloquent ferocity? Well I can't say specifically but what I can say is that Jerome works as a public servant. I am very biased when it comes to the public sector. I don't have a high opinion of it having toiled for a local council for two years. I have a strong opinion and that opinion is that it is bad. My opinion is that if you must work within the public sector- get in, get skilled up, get out.

So although I was sorry to hear of Jerome's troubles, I was not at all surprised that he was having them given who his employers are. Still, I was livid for him and determined that he didn't take it lying down:

You gotta be focused and get what you want, I lectured. Don't take no for an answer. This is a battle and you have to be prepared to fight. Listen to me - are you prepared to fight. You can't let them get away with this. You are a one-man campaign you understand? This is a war that you are going to win. Are you listening? This is WAR.

By this time Jerome had been listening to my ranting for well over an hour but still he complied:

I'm going to nail the bastards.

And hence, the revolution is on.

Yes Prime Minister

Last week I went to the Houses of Parliament for a work launch. I'd never been inside the actual buildings before and so approached the expedition with a touristic avaracity. Everything seemed so interesting, right down to the thorough security screen at the entrance and all the pollies rushing past me looking intense and harassed. I was in heaven. My West Wing fantasy come to life in a Yes Prime Minister kind of way.

My boss who was with me sauntered around the place as if she was born to be there. I half expected her to start waving to people, calling out things like:

Hey Bob, where's that policy paper we went over yesterday? I want it on my desk in an hour!

Instead she casually mentioned:

This is where we might be doing a show next year. It's your project.

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Gulp.

I looked at the space we were in. The walls of Westminster Hall were erected in 1097. When you walk through this grave and stately building, you can feel the air particles resonate with the combined history of every single one of those years.

A show. Here?

How on earth can we do this building justice?

Time to get working.

Bob - where's my paper?

Dream Mail

Whenever I have an especially vivid dream about someone, I see it as a sign for me to get in contact with them, if I am in contact with them. Life doesn't always allow this to happen of course. I had a dream about Obama awhile ago but unlike Scarlett Johannsson, I'm not gonna try email the guy.

Recently, I've been part of a dream mail sequence. Last week my friend Sophia got in touch to tell me about a dream she'd had about visiting me in London. It was vivid, real and a bit disturbing so she texted me to tell me about it. Yesterday I emailed my friend CJ in Perth because of a dream I'd had in which I was checking to see how she was settling in back at home after a six month travel adventure. Today I got an email from my friend Mack in Canberra. The opening line of his email was that he had had a dream about having coffee with me in London and then realised that we were actually having coffee in Ginos in Perth. So he got in touch.

There's something reassuring to me that in a time where email and internet are king and queen and all the post you ever get in your letterbox are bills, that reaching out to someone can be determined by your dreams.

I think that's a good definition of the word lovely.

A Magic Place

I was telling my friend how I bumped into my favourite artist, Paula Rego at the shops the other day when she suddenly announced:

London is a city where you can be single.

Startled, I took stock for a moment wondering if she was trying to tell me something. Unperturbed she carried on.

Its a city where there is so much going on. So much for everyone. It embraces you and anything can happen. You can be alone in this city and you'll be ok.

I understood what she meant. Its true. London is a city of possibility and change. Of shifting boundaries, ordinairy miracles and open embraces. It welcomes you. Somedays when you walk down the street, you can feel the buzz of the city flow through your bloodstream. London wants you to tap into her heartbeat so you can be in sync with one another. She calls out to you in so many different ways. If you live here you will have days where out of the blue, you will bump into your childhood icon at the shops. Where a stranger chases you down the street to give you back your umbrella that you left on the tube. There will be days where you despair at the weather and the grottiness. The lack of space and how it takes an hour and ten quid to go around the corner. London also requires you to be a people person. If you are not interested in, and curious about people and by that I mean the human race, then you best get out.

Underneath all the dirt, miracles and crowds lies a city with a raw brilliance which has been created through a fusion of time, population and coincidence. You know this is so because as a citizen, you can feel it.

Not all cities are great. Some are only great for periods of time before they sink back into obscurity. This is London's time and I'm glad I'm here to witness it. To be a part of the pulsing heart that is this great city.

Javed Akhtar

Last night I had a work event on at the Nehru Centre which I was not too keen on going to. The event was a poetry reading and Q & A with Javed Akhtar; a famous poet, lyricist and scriptwriter from India. My reluctance stemmed from the fact that the reading was going to be in Urdu - a language which I do not know except for one word - Shukria. My boss hustled me along nonetheless.

Just go for a bit, she said. Then you can slip out.

Yeah right, I thought. I'm going to be stuck there for the whole night.

When Javed came onstage, I immediately felt a sense of familiarity about him. A few minutes it occured to me why. He was a male version of my boss. Except from a distance, he seemed less tired.

He started to speak in English. He welcomed the audience and made witty jokes. His eyes sparkled and he looked liked he was constantly smiling on the inside. He was one of those people who when onstage, light up. Effortlessly.

I sat up straighter in my seat.

Javed recited his poetry for about 30 minutes. In that time he spoke mainly Urdu but from time to time, he spoke some lines in English. Maybe about 10 sentences. When that happened something in me lit up too.

During the Q & A, someone asked him about what it was like to be an artist to which he replied, Schizophrenic. I was still laughing when he went onto explain that he regards creative endeavour as a paradox. Being that you have to keep loose and open and fluid for the ideas to arrive but when they come, you must then force them into an infrastructure and operate to a rigid system to deliver those ideas.

He talked about form and the importance of training which he summarised by saying: You have to learn to draw a straight line before you can bend it.

Someone else asked him what his source inspiration was to which he replied, Deadlines.

I stayed till the very end. I couldn't have left as I was glued to my seat.

Eventually my boss hustled me out in the same way she had hustled me in.

Wait one moment, she said, I have to say Hello.

So we stood with a crowd of others and waited for Javed to exit the auditorium. It seemed that everyone wanted to pay their respects.

When he came out he went straight over to my boss. His eyes lit up upon sight of her and they smiled at each other and exchanged greetings in Urdu. I was so delighted to see them two of them together but I wasn't sure why. He smiled over at me, probably wondering why there was a lone Chinese person present amongst a crowd of Indians. I beamed back. I felt so lucky to have heard him speak. What a guy. Magic.

When we left, I asked her what she had said to him.

I told him off for giving me a fake mobile number the last time we met.

We laughed and went home. Inspired and smiling on the inside, and out.

Thank you Mr Akhtar. Shukria.

Give and Take

I don't know what it is about me at the moment but I seem to be surrounded by young women (and by that I mean younger than me in their late 20's, early 30's) who just want to talk to me. About themselves. Endlessly.

I saw a friend recently whom I have not seen for a very long time. She is a delight but during our catchup, she talked about herself non-stop. I don't think I even needed to be there.

Another friend cornered me the other day to spill her ongoing tale of woe. It's not the first time and it won't be the last. I don't think she listened or heard anything I said. I think she just wanted a face to talk to.

My neighbour loves to talk too. At me. By me. To me. But not really with me.

I'm getting a bit fed up with all this. I'm a curious person and I genuinely like to get inside another person's heart and mind so that I can understand where they are coming from. But this pattern is starting to bug me.

Sometimes when I'm in this situation I feel like that other person is trying to suck up all my energy. That I have something that they want.

For god sakes - what on earth could I have that they want!?

So I took a step back from it all and remembered. I remembered when I was like them. Younger, unsure and trying to figure it all out. Continuously on the brink of something but never knowing what that something was and not knowing how to get it. I remembered when I was in the company of an older, sympathetic ear. I remember how I used to blab about myself non stop and never stopped to ask that person:

By the way - how are you? What's going on in your life?

What goes around comes around.

But that's not what I wanted to say.

What I wanted to say was that to those men and women who listened and listened and advised and nurtured and helped guide me through those woolly, wilderness years. Thank You. From the bottom of my woolly, wild heart. Bless you.

G20 - Do I Stay or Do I Go?

The G20 summit kicks off in London tomorrow and I have been debating with myself as to whether I should go. Speaking to friends and colleagues, I have had a range of opinions from:

Oh no - you should stay out of there. It's dangerous. Riot police and troublemakers. People who are not after a solution but who just want a fight

to:

Yes! Let's go! It'll be interesting and it's important to be involved. To participate.

The media have been having their usual field day with their reports anticipating violence and trouble and vandalism. I just don't know what or who to believe. Which makes me think I need to go and see for myself.

The truth is - I really want to go. I am so curious. I have never been to a protest on this scale before. Years and years ago, I was an environmental activist campaigning against logging of old growth forest in Western Australia with the Wilderness Society. It was a heady two years. Through the intensive process of learning how best to manufacture dissent, I picked up skills which I still use to this day. Lobbying, mobilising large groups of people, consensual decision making, efficient meeting structure, facilitation. I also developed values which I still hold like the application of non violent direct action. It was invaluable training and I have experienced little like it since.

I suspect that my avid desire to participate tomorrow is partially a desire to relive the glory days of old. But my problem is this. Everything I have read or seen to date about the protests leaves me cold. These groups that are mobilising to end the war or to stop climate change seem to only be protesting for the sake of it. What are their real solutions or alternatives? It's all very easy to say something sucks but not so easy when you are responsible for fixing the suckiness.

Change is change is change. It's a phrase that is easy to chant when you are walking down the street with thousands of others. But at the end of the day - you can't be pissed off if you pass responsibility for that change onto some unknown figurehead because you just want to shout and scream but have no solutions. Lobbying is important and it is our responsibility as citzens within a democratic society to monitor our governments. But I do not see how "Bashing bankers" and causing civil unrest is of any benefit to our society as a whole. That is not lobbying. It's juvenile.

Where are the thinkers and the real problem solvers? Where can I find them in the summit tommorrow? Or have they stayed at home, pissed off that the event has been taken over again by the media and a bunch of hooligans.

We'll see...

Black Is Back

When I lived in Perth I rarely, if ever dressed in a lot of black. Under the blue skies and sunshine, black just seemed like just a wrong choice to me. I wasn't a fan of neutrals either. Instead I embraced colour. Reds and greens; violet and yellows. Don't get me wrong. I didn't go around looking like a peacock but the Meditteranean climate of my home town meant that I reflected the sunny, warm surrounds in my dress sense. I also had a vague mistrust of people that wore all black (apart from Goths - I like Goths) or all neutrals.

What are they trying to hide?, I would wonder. When there are so many colours to choose from, why would you choose the absence of colour? What's wrong with them?

My oh my - how things have changed.

When I first moved to London, I stubbornly stuck to my love of colour. I was not going to give in. So what if everyone else was in grey or black. Sheep . What's wrong with them? Why are they afraid to stand out?

I must say, this was abit unfair of me at the time and obviously I was only seeing what I wanted to. After all, Londoners are hardly sheep when it comes to dressing. The women have a wonderful unique style of flinging layers and accessories together, usually finished off with a massive, great handbag. The men do the whole Professor thing really well (well cut suit jacket, jeans or trousers, scarf, leather satchel) or embrace the Eurotrash look. I'm generalising of course.

Life was going along swimmingly until one day I woke up and something horrible had happened. I was dressed head-to-toe in BLACK. I looked in the mirror and asked myself,

Why? How could this be?

I blame the long winters. On seeing so much grey, I started to wear it. And black. And neutrals. My theory is that winter makes you want to hibernate. To blend in and not stand out. You don't want to extend your senses to the world around you because you can't even extend your right arm out of your sleeve without getting frostbite. Winter is a season of laying low and hence you present yourself that way to the world.

Hmm. Is that rubbish? Probably. After all Christmas and New Years falls within winter and that is party season with coloured frocks galore and shiny shoes.

Here's my followup theory. London is a dirty place. Who the hell wants to be doing laundry all the time. Wear black and it hides the dirt. Case closed.

That's my excuse anyway.

P.O.H.M.

It's official! I am now a P.O.H.M.

A Prisoner Of Her Majesty. A bona fide British citizen.

What does this mean exactly? To be honest, I'm not too sure.

I know that I can now vote and "sign on" (British for going on the dole). I can go through the faster line now at Heathrow airport and I can live and work anywhere in the EU. I'm pretty happy about all of this (well I hope I won't have to sign on anytime soon) but what does it mean to me? Lavendar Lee.

During the citizenship ceremony today, I looked around me for clues. There was lots to take in. The ceremony was held in a beautiful Georgian country house which was now a heritage property, used by the local council. Stunning though it was from the exterior, the inside had sadly capitulated to some terrible design choices. Dark terracotta walls. Fake white lilies. Cheap Pre-Raephaelite prints framed in gaudy, epoque borders. The room had been decorated to effect a false grandeur which contrasted greatly with the Pat Benatar-esque hairstyle and blue-pink lipstick of the woman hosting the ceremony. She was a hoot. As we lined up to register, she asked us all in quick succession:

"God or No God?"

This was to ascertain who of us Brits-to-Be would be pledging their oath to God and which would be pledging theirs to the Queen. As I was a No God, I got asked to sit with all the other non-believers on the side of the room where a cardboard poster of the Queen smiling benignly down at us. I'm not much of a Royalist or a Monarchist or whatever the hell you call it but it was nice to have the old bird smiling at us as we pledged away. I couldn't help but notice that one of the cheap prints on the wall, placed directly behind the Queen's head was:



It's called La Belle Dame Sans Merci, which translates to
The Beautiful Lady Without Pity!

Is it just me - or were they trying to tell us all something about the Queen?

To further add to the sense of ceremony, the Mayor came along too. His arrival was announced by his, I don't know - footman? This footman then ponced down the aisle swinging some kind of fake golden chalice from side-to-side, followed by the Mayor who was all dressed up in his heavy red robes and golden chains. He was a short man with a curled upper lip so I took an instant dislike to him as I always think people with that lip shape are sneering.

The ceremony then preceeded in its rather predictable kind of way. We all got our certificates, had our photos taken and sang the national anthem.

The national anthem!

I'm about to digress so please excuse me.

When I told my work mates that I was about to become a Brit - there was much laughing and teasing about me having to sing the national anthem at the ceremony. I don't know why the national anthem always brings out such hystericism in people. I can only bring it down to the fact that as children we were all tortured into learning it.

One of my work mates ever so kindly printed out the words of the British national anthem for me. Imagine my shock upon reading it properly.

As an Australian, I had been raised to sing about the joys and beauty of our lovely land:

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are young and free;
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil;
Our home is girt by sea;
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
Of beauty rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.

It's pretty uplifting. There's not really anything noxious about it. People have said that the use of the word fair is racist but I think those people are reading out of context.

Then we have the British anthem which is:

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!

O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all!

I particularly like the lines "Confound their politics. Frustrate their knavish tricks." The Brits are not as nice as the Australians. After seeing this it became clear to me that, as Dorothy said:

"We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto."

Mind you, compared to La Marseille, it sounds like a nursery rhyme:

Let's go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny's
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!

Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!

Now that I am a Brit, I wonder if I should hate the French. It is tradition after all and if there was one thing that the ceremony indicated to me, it was being a Brit was being part of years and years and years and years and tears.... oh.. and years of tradition. The fake Georgian interiors. The fake picture of the Queen. The fake gold of the swinging chalice.

But you know what? It didn't matter because I was surrounded by a bunch of people that weren't fake. They were real and they were clearly all very happy (apart from one lady) to become British citizens. They were from all over. Sri Lanka, Nigeria, South Africa, Mozambique to name a few. To be in their company reminded me how great a place London really is. It has a tolerance and breadth that I have not encountered anywhere else. It's noisy, crowded, polluted and inefficient. But it's also green, patient, honest and current. To be a British citizen means that I can live, work and play in London - to me, the most multicultural city in the world.

And for that - I am truly grateful.

Ever Eventful

It always bemuses me when the events industry is glamourised. Twelve years ago, I accidentally fell into coordinating my first paid event. It was a two day conference for two hundred delegates. The woman who was supposed to be in charge was having nervous breakdown because her husband had just left her. She asked around her friends to see if they knew of anyone that could help her out. Somehow my name came up in the conversation and upon meeting me briefly, she said:

"You'll do,"

and that was that. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was the start of a career path.

It turned out that managing events is something that I could just do. It just came naturally. I didn't go and study an events or production course like many people choose to do these days. In fact, I think these courses are bollocks. You need to learn on the job. Does that make me old school? Maybe. I am in my mid 30's and in the events industry that's veering on ancient.

In all the time I've worked in events, I have failed to see what it is that could be percieved as glamorous. Rubbing shoulders with celebrities? Partaking of the free booze and food? Let me tell you - if you are doing these things when working at an event, you're clearly not doing your job properly

The truth is that there is no glamour. When you are managing an event, you have the following:

Stress - lots of it
Tight, shifting deadlines
Long, unsociable hours
Not enough money
Unwieldy artists/celebrities
Pain-in-the-ass agents
Hardened, drug fucked crew (not always but it's common)
Lots of complaints from everyone
Too much adrenaline
Payment problems
Being told how you could do things better by people who don't know what they're talking about
Typos in the publicity/marketing
Thanklessness

Should I go on?

I am in this frame of mind because (if you couldn't already tell), I am sick of mananaging events. All sorts - tours, performances, festivals, workshops, conferences, talks. Everything. I've learned alot about the industry during my time within it but nothing in that time has really caught my imagination. I don't want to be fuelled by adrenaline anymore. I also feel guilty that I never had to struggle too much for it. Like I said, it all came natural.

Maybe this is not the end but only a bit of a work whinge?

Time, as ever, will tell.

My Mentor

My boss is a fascinating woman. To try and describe her in a few sentences is a grave injustice but nonetheless, its my perogative on this blog of mine. I find her endlessly inspiring and very human. She wears her many flaws on her sleeve yet maintains her dignity. She's annoying, quixotic, funny, charismatic, rebellious, fierce and very very bright. She feels like family although I have only known her for a short while. I'm not alone in my evaluation. She is a public person and everyday I see many, many people flock around her like bees to a honeypot. She is both loved and hated in equal measures but always respected.

At some point in my work life, I figured that I needed a role model. A mentor. A guide. I wanted this because I sensed that it was an important part of my development. I wanted someone who would challenge me and push my buttons. I wanted someone truly brave. I needed this. I craved it.

I had hoped to find someone like this in my years of study. An inspirational lecturer or tutor but everyone came up short. I worked job after job but all my managers and bosses blurred into one another. Some were nice but no-one was special. I held out on a lot of people who were sort-of right. I wasn't interested in sort-of.

It was depressing how long it took me to find an inspirational female role model. Or maybe just one that was right for me.

Now that I have found her, I feel glad and lucky. But I also feel that I deserve it. I worked and waited a long time. But I guess these things in life only happen when it's right.

Can You Hear Me?

I spoke to my goddaughter today over webcam. She is two and a half and I am thirty five so we had a kind of schizophrenic dialogue which went something like this:

Me: Hello Emily. What did you do today?
Emily: (chewing on her teddy bear’s head). Grrr. ...Aiowwwwwwwww. Hellooooooo
Me: Why are you chewing on your bear’s head? Are you hungry?
Emily: Hello Hello Hello Hello Aiirrrrrreooowwwwww. Hahahahahaha. I’m two.

And so on. It’s the first time we’ve ever properly sat down to speak and see each other via webcam and I’m hoping that it becomes a semi regular thing. Even though I am far away from where she is, I still want to be a part of her life somehow. It’s a weird thing to see your own disembodied head dipping into and out of frame as you try and chat normally to a child that you have only ever met in the flesh twice. What strange times we live in now. Emily took it all in her stride, chatting to a veritable stranger on a screen. Someone that’s her Godmother but whom she doesn’t really know. She’s too little for this to matter to her or to understand. But I understand all too well and it makes me sad.

I have written about the tyranny of distance endless times. When the place you live takes you far away from your close friends and family. I have written about the expat life and its joys and downfalls. I thought that writing about it, living it and having time pass would mean that the ache would get better but I fear that it never does. I am sick to death about writing about it but just because you are sick of something doesn’t mean that it goes away. When I go about my day-to-day life, I’m ok. I love the life I live here in London. But on days like this when I am jolted into the life of your nearest and dearest back home, I get to see from their side how life has gone on and that I am not a part of it. Even though I know this to be the case, seeing their smiling faces in their house on the other side of the world provides a quick reality check that even though it is so familiar, it is not. This feeling sucks.

In theory, I get it all. In my head I understand that our lives go on, time passes and things change. It’s all a very logical process in my head. But in my heart, I wish that the vast ocean between us was not. I wish that I could play with my Goddaughter, chat and laugh with her mum and then get on the tube and come home.

As long as they are important to me, I don’t see how I will ever feel any different.