For the love of my cats
It wasn’t meant to happen like this but now I have two homes – one in mainland Europe and one in the UK. Picture the scene: France’s Pet Reception Area at the Euro tunnel crossing to the UK. My car is idling outside containing two kids and four cats – a predelivery to the removal truck arriving.
Frenchy looks at my cats papers and asks “… verr ur de udder pypers?”
“I beg your pardon?” I squeaked, both feet leaving the ground at once. “What other papers?”
“Du bluud test pypers!”
At which point I thought the ground would swallow me up. Not two years ago I wrote an article on the very subject and warned readers that in order to take a pet abroad there were various hoops to lump through, and to re-enter the UK, there were several more. One of them being a blood test required six months before the actual move date - and the one red-tape hoop I overlooked!
My husband, supervising the removal men in Brussels, became so distraught he resorted to the only way he knows how to cope and headed straight to the local pub, patiently waiting outside for them to open at 09h00. However, his sorrows could not be sufficiently drowned as after his first pint the bar's beer pump broke and sent him on his way to find another.
By the time I got home my husband had arranged an extension on our Brussels home lease, held back some of the furniture and a few boxes in order that he and our cats would have a place to sleep. The next morning the removal truck left for the UK.
Many who read this may relate to just how such a traumatic event could turn one’s life upside down. I don’t know what I would have done had my husband not been so resourceful.
We have now moved into my new UK home (my son returned to Brussels via the Eurostar to cat-sit) – all the boxes are unpacked, furniture polished and carpets cleaned. This afternoon I drove back to Brussels to spend a few days with my cats, an event that will now occur on a regular basis.
My husband recons I should start reading my own articles, and perhaps write another based on my experience. Perhaps this occurrence is still too fresh for me to see the irony...
In the name of art
In one week I’ve been to Germany, twice in fact, on both occasions on assignment, then I returned home to Belgium for one night and have since been to the UK, also twice - to buy a car and jump through the various legal hoops assigned to those seeking to buy property abroad.
Tomorrow I am again re-returning to England to collect my new car. In between all of this I’m trying to write a features article, pack boxes, find a new school for my daughter in England, send my son off to read Aeronautical Engineering at university, cancel debit orders, close accounts with utility companies who claim they’ve never supplied me, have my mail forwarded to my new address, as well as research three article all due in the middle of September.
Strangely, I’m only mildly panicked… perhaps the proverbial pawpaw is still to hit the fan.
Over breakfast the other day
A waif-like figure swooned by me in the hotel’s reception area, briefly compelling me to consider what I was about to consume for breakfast. I decided to forego a plate of cooked food, settling instead for coffee and a side plate of small cakes of rocklike consistency – you know, the kind you’d give to a budgie to sharpen its beak. One of these cakes contained sultanas, reminiscent of large fat ticks one finds on African cattle.
Being of the Dark Continent myself, and somewhat dim-witted, I like to dunk biscuits into coffee. I was never allowed to do this as a kid and when caught would get a smack on the back of my head. Thus, with some trepidation, and when I thought no-one was looking, this is what I did. At which point a large chunk of cake dislodged itself and sank like a stone then clunked on the base of my cup. Experience has taught me not to go fishing after it with a spoon as this creates the concrete mixer effect. After spooning out the sultana that had subsequently bobbed to the surface I drained my cup and was rewarded with a soggy mass of cake lying at the bottom which I spooned out and consumed.
“Lesi sidingakalo ba nambitheba” a deep throated Zulu voice behind me made an observation to his companion that this must taste delicious.
When Africans encounter one another on a foreign continent it’s a little as I imagine it must be when two Masons recognise each other across a crowded room. We exchanged a knowing look and a moment later were locked in an African soul shake, agreeing that only another African could truly appreciate the joy it brings to find an unexpected gift at the end of cup. My Zulu friend cackled softly as though the day was perfect and he couldn’t think of any place he’d rather be.
Its chance encounters like this that adds colour and spice to life, buoying one’s spirit.
The luxury of sleep
Driving to Germany this morning was tough going. It was only a two and a half hours point to point trip but when you're falling asleep at the wheel and your passenger is fast asleep it can become hazardous.
After a day of driving to other destinations within Germany and photographing stuff along the way I collapsed onto my hotel bed tonight weary to the bone. In fact I fell asleep whilst downloading photographs. The bite of my egg mayo sandwich was still resting in my mouth when I woke with a start 20 minutes later when my daughter immerged from the bathroom.
Now, at 2 a.m., I've tired of making animal shapes against the wall, using the moon as a spotlight. My daughter's deep breathing is a little irritating, probably because I envy how she can fall asleep so easily, or maybe I find it annoying as I need total silence before I can even consider sleep; that and the fact that I've always got so much going on my mind, the least of which is sleep.
Then I got the book out I'm reading at the moment and was just drifting off to sleep when my daughter sat bolt upright in the bed next to me and mumbled something about Marilyn Manson and then promptly collapsed back onto her pillow.
Now the itching has started. When I get really, really tired I have imaginary fleas crawling under my skin and in my hair and no matter what I do or how many showers I take or water I drink, they'll only leave after I've had a few hours sleep.
It's going to be a perilous journey home, no doubt undertaken with all the windows open and Black Sabbath blasting the blurry eyed insomnia out of my head.
Doing it in the nude
There's something quite liberating in nudity. I couldn't sleep so I crept downstairs, butt-naked to come check my emails and work a little more on the article I'm writing about NYC, then watched a bit of telly with a fresh coffee. A bright light sparked to life in a dark corner of my mind and instantly I recalled with startling clarity that tomorrow is trash day and the truck rolls up at 06h00. Naturally I slipped on my son's size 12 trainers (abandoned at the back doors) and dragged our two trash-cans out onto the curb… still butt naked. I stood around for a while and wondered if any of my neighbours were peering at me through their curtains.
I think it's time that I keep record of all the things I've done in the nude, other than the obvious, I regularly iron in the nude, I sleep in the nude, once I even cooked in the nude but don't recommend frying bacon… once I even dived in the nude and I often write in the nude (my cats don't mind) and now I do the trash in the nude.
Something I've always wanted to do is drive a car naked. I'm leaving for Germany on a cool assignment on Wednesday and wonder what my editor's view would be if I included a sidebar promoting driving in the nude. I'd better give that some consideration.
My daughter's trampoline is outside, and I've always wanted to… no I better not, I could do myself an injury. (Sigh)
NYC
Just got back from NYC where I did a helicopter flip over Manhattan and Lady Liberty, did the limo thing to a couple of hot spots, went to several jazz bars and a hip-hop church in Harlem, did time in the Bronx, tour of the designer stores in the garment district and returned with flu.
For the past couple of days I've stayed in my crumb littered bed, surrounded by cats, paperwork, tissues and empty coffee cups. My son reckons I look like an old age pensioner, somewhat wild of hair and glasses sitting askew. I'm writing an article about mobile phones and how to not be taken for a ride by service providers when travelling abroad, a feature for an inflight magazine and a hotel review.
Neither here or there
This coming Tuesday I'll be familiarising myself with Dusseldorf's architecture - driving a VW Beetle cabriolet - the harbour district has some awesome buildings which appear as if they've been snatched from a Salvador Dali's masterpieces. And of course, being Germany, I suppose I'll need to critique several beer halls.
From Wednesday till Sunday I'll be in New York City; and in three and a half days need to cover chess players in Central Park, the Russian Tea Room, a groovy tea bar called Tavalon, jazz bars in Harlem, the Hip Hop Church in Harlem, a helicopter flip over the city, the Hudson River and Lady Liberty, an Excalibur limo drive through NYC and an interview with NYCs Mayor to get his take on the city going green.
When I return to Belgium I need to pack my spacious home into a truck and move to England. Pack my son off to University several hundred miles away and on my daughter's first day at her new school I'll be in Austria partaking (and writing about) a motor cycle rally.
I'm really getting to old for this. My camera bag back is already aching at the prospect of schlepping it around NYC. If you'd like to tag along and experience just one day in a travel writers life you're more than welcome… just remember, you're carrying the bag.
In another life
One or two of my editors have picked up on the fact that I'm pretty dangerous. Others cringe when they hear of the latest disasters I've unleashed on the world. My son reckons I'm not a freelance writer, more of a mercenary. It's somewhat troubling when I consider my previous life, when I was an elegant designer doll -- a picture of executive perfection in Gucci, Prada, Tiffany, Balmain; colour co-ordinated from head to toe with matching bag, shoes and gun holster. I walked like a run-way model and was refinement personified.
Then it all changed.
At some point in my life I decided that I no longer wanted to spend 2 hours a day pampering and preening myself - enough of the expensive hair, acrylic nails and YSL cosmetics. I donated it all to charity, invested in 4 or 5 pairs of jeans and comfortable shoes (okay, trainers) and unknowingly proceeded to transform myself from a self-obsessed individual to one that obsesses about the world around me (and wears the same pair of jeans for two weeks).
I was probably the most organised person on the planet. Now I'm surrounding by strategic piles of paper and chaos; every other week I'd be at the hair-dressers, now I go see my husband's barber maybe twice a year. The old me's car used to look like it had just been driven off the showroom floor. I don't know when last my car has been washed now - 2005 or 2006?
My husband reckons that perhaps I've begun to see what really matters; personally I just don't give a shit about glamour any more. And you know what, I look (and feel) a hundred times better for it.
But what I cannot figure out is where my common sense has gone. Please bear in mind that I've found my way across the Atlantic Ocean by navigating the stars and sailed single handed from Cape Town to half up the African continent … why then, after 4 years, do I still need to use SatNav to find my way around my own town. Why am I the one that get's caught out with a flat tire wearing a crusty old a dressing gown? Why am I the one that brings down the whole shelf of canned food in the store? And please God tell me why am I the one that finds the only toilet that's door needs to be held shut with my foot?
I would love just once to rise from a dinner table without looking as if an extremely localised seismic event just occurred on my lap; get into a car and close the door without leaving half my coat outside, wear light-coloured trousers without discovering at the end of the day that I have at various times sat in chewing gum, ice cream, cough syrup and motor oil.
Why the chicken crossed the road
It’s one of those rare sunny days in Belgium. The air is fresh and heavily scented with Jasmine. Early this morning Rosie (one of my cat’s) and I took a stroll down to bakers for fresh croissants’ - my daughter loves them. On route I passed one of my elderly neighbours who stood on his sidewalk staring fixedly at something in the distance. I enquired if anything was amiss. He told that one of his laying hens had gone walk-about and asked that should I happen upon her would I mind bringing her back.
When I stepped out of the bakery, with Rosie dutifully waiting by the door, I spotted the little brown hen across the road, crouched beneath a hedge. She was dozing in a sun-beam. When I crouched down beside her she opened one beady eye and considered me for a moment, then puffed her feathers and settled back down again. Evidently I held no threat to her. I swiftly scooped her up under my arm and continued on my way.
I seldom consider other’s perception of me and it’s little wonder that a busload of blue rinsed tourists slowed down. Evidently I was an attraction. I could just imagine how the tour guide described me. “… and this is an example of the local colour; Bertem’s infamous Cat Lady… today with a chicken under her arm.” I showed my teeth at the numerous flash lights and stalked off down the road with Rosie at my heels.
My elderly neighbour nearly cried when I handed him his little hen (who had dozed off under my arm). He made an idyll threat about putting her on the Sunday lunch menu next time she ran off like that. She instantly perked up and coo’ed at him, then brightly announced her return to the other hens who all dashed across welcome her home… and possibly to hear of her tales of adventure.
Grilled tomatoes and blood clots
I follow a very strict diet when I’m not on assignment - green salads, green olives, tomatoes and rice cakes. When I’m travelling I need to forego my Vegan diet for sake of ease and practicality (and because I’m fanatical about cleanliness and don’t feel comfortable with strangers handling raw food I’m to ingest) and eat only cooked vegetables and bread.
On a recent trip to England I spent a couple of days at a B&B at a picture postcard coastal resort. The hostess could not come to terms with the fact that some people chose not to eat products derived from animals and every morning she would present me with a full English fry-up breakfast. It was a song and dance repeated each morning. Perhaps she thought I’d have a change of heart overnight.
Each morning I would stare with private disappointment at the offering, followed by a withering look which asked how anyone could be so lacking in fundamental human decency. She’d scoop the plate up and stalk off the kitchen, then moments later she’d reappear with a plate of grey salad with watery cucumber and mushrooms that tasted of old newspaper. Each time I poked it with my knife, it recoiled as if I were tormenting it. But, not wanting to appear ungrateful I rearranged a few leaves (to give the appearance that I’d eaten some) and leave the rest.
On my last morning my hostess triumphantly presented me with a new offering. My jaw relaxed and I believe I mewed pitifully.
“I can’t eat that,” I told her quietly.
In a voice heavy with pain and years of irritation she responded. “If you don’t require a fried tomato for breakfast you only need to tell me.”
I thought it was a plate of blood clots.
London: Interview with a male sex worker
“Why are male sex workers largely being ignored by the media?” I asked. “Maybe because most of the people in the media make use of our services,” he smiled.
“But the television media, producers, politicians – they’re all alike," Sven continued. "Following their purported studies, they produce documentaries that only serve to make the fat cats fatter and assist politicians in keeping the masses in place. What benefit has prostitution or the escort industry derived for from these television shows? We’re just considered another group of misfits to look down upon by those in society that are insecure and emotionally impaired.”
“Tell me about your work and ethics”, I asked.
“I get a little peeved when I hear people referring to escorts as selling themselves. The only way I could sell myself would be into slavery. I’m not a commodity. I provide a service by offering my companionship, and sexual skills. As you use your skill to transcribe this interview into an article I use my body as the vehicle for delivering my service. I charge £350 to act as an event escort and £750 for the full house."
“I’m morally neutral about being a male sex worker. It’s how I’m used that gives it moral value. Paying for sex presents no ethical meaning. It’s not good nor is it bad, it’s merely a deed. My boundary is that I only have sex with a consenting adult. Be they male or female.”
“How do you cope with this lifestyle,” I asked.
“I’ve been doing this for so long now there is nothing to cope with. This is my life. In the beginning it was rough and I spiked -- I needed to do drugs to try and forget but then I got over it. I realized it wasn’t my soul I was selling, just a service. Everything started to go smoothly from that point and I stopped taking drugs.”
We spoke of his clientele and I enquired about his ethics when called upon by heterosexual male he knows to be in a relationship.
“Most of the people that make use of my services are married or attached men. Some are heterosexual and a few are homosexual. Some want excitement, while others need a secret escape from outside their bonds. Some are straight first timers wanting to release their sexual fantasies. But regardless of what you many think, these acts do not threaten their private relationship. I think if supports it.”
“What about morals?” I enquired.
“I cannot dictate the morals of the next man -– that’s a personal thing and the client needs to deal with that. Sometimes it's more about balancing their sexuality, as all they need is to be intimate with another man as a therapy, without necessarily having a gay lifestyle.
“I do not rape or seduce my clients; they find me through my adverts or via the internet. We speak on the phone and set up a mutually convenient date. It’s all very civilized. I don’t chase after them or hang about in bars, hoping to turn a few tricks. I don’t get young straight guys drunk and then lead them into sin; on the contrary I’m a professional businessman.”
“What range of sexual favors do your clients expect?”
All my female clients like my Tantra Yoni massage, others prefer oral sex and some want penetration, most want all three. My male clients get the same as the ladies, only I won’t let them do me."
We spoke of religion and Sven made a few poignant observations about extremists’ opinions of sex workers.
“Imagine how much more screwed up society would be if we all followed the doctrine whereby sex is only permissible within the confines of marriage. What of those people who are incapable of having such a relationship due to their personal circumstances? Would it be more acceptable for that person to exploit or hurt another when craving closeness and take them by force? Where are the morals in that? Surely it makes sense to go to a professional?”
One of the other travelers in my family
My husband replaced his Reeboks, which melted on his last trip to India, with a pair of Nike’s, but being considerate of his fellow travellers decided not to wear them on his recent flight to Mumbai because, as he eloquently stated, “…they smell like an Indian lavatory in the mango season.”
His decision did have a certain element of danger to it though – one of grip. You see, Jonathan likes to leave things to the last possible nanosecond; last passenger calls are usually attached to his name. Grip, he explained to the attendant at the boarding gate, was the cause of his delay. To quote from his email: “Most of the world’s major airports have highly polished floors so rubber soles are a must for sprinting across the terminal to make last minute connections. This is where I came unstuck - my leather soled boots fail the grip anything. Any effort put into forward motion is rewarded with the biped’s equivalent of wheel spin.”
I warned him about packing his camera bag in with his checked-in luggage, but does he listen? You see India’s customs scan luggage as you leave the airport and his bulging suitcase attracted some attention. The security guard pointed to the monitor which outlined his camera bag containing several lenses that did in some small way bear a resemblance to a series of small hand grenades all neatly lined up. To quote again from his email: “I mimed someone taking pictures with a camera - he seemed pleased. Emboldened by his initial reaction, I went on to mime someone zooming a long lens in and out. In hindsight, this was a foolish thing to do given the similarity of this action to the much used hand gesture employed by Europeans to signify that someone is a wanker.” Quite how he managed to get through airport security without experiencing some quality time with a rubber glove I don’t know!
Jonathan’s biggest concern, he later told, was that security staff would actually open his case and see the firewall he had not declared. I wonder how he would have mimed that one.
To be British
It saddens me to say that Americans are constitutionally incapable of getting a joke, and clearly wit is not as venerated a quality in America as it is in Britain. Its not that there aren’t Americans with an active sense of humour, just far fewer and when you encounter one it’s a little as I imagine it must be when two Masons recognise each other across a crowded room.
So you may understand how it pains me to have to explain irony in articles I write. An editor across the pond recently asked me to tell of the most embarrassing moments I’ve had whilst travelling/doing my job.
I started the article off by telling of an experience I recently had on an aeroplane to north Africa. I leaned over to get something out of my camera bag and just at that moment the person sitting in front of me threw his seat back into full recline, I found myself pinned helplessly in the crash position. It was only by clawing the leg of the man beside me that I managed to get myself freed. The editor asked that I elaborate further – he didn't get it.
Another scene the editor could not grasp happened on a flight to the Middle East where I knocked a soft drink onto the lap of a Rabbi sitting beside me. The flight attendant cleaned up the mess, mopped down the Rabbi, then brought me a replacement drink, which I instantly knocked onto the Rabbi again. Till today I don’t know how I managed to do that. I only recall extending my hand towards my fresh drink and watched helplessly as, like some plastic movie prop, it mercilessly swept the plastic cup from my tray onto his lap. The Rabbi looked at me with a stunned expression and voiced a curse that began with ‘oh’ and ended with ‘sake’ and in between words I’d never heard a man of the cloth utter. "What were the words in the middle," the editor asked.
I always seem to have disastrous encounters with public toilets. Like the liberating experience I had in a futuristic, automated toilet at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. After feeding it the required coinage, the door opened automatically and I walked into a newly disinfected wet floored toilet. Actually, the whole toilet is decontaminated and dosed with disinfectant following each use, leaving a wet seat. If I could read French I might have understood the sign that explained what I was about to experience. It told that I had only ten minutes to ‘go’, after which the entire cubicle, and everything in it, is doused in green disinfectant then hosed with clean water – which is what happened to me. Then to add further insult, the door automatically opened, exposing me, gasping and spluttering, jeans and knickers around my ankles, to all of Paris. I kid you not, the editor asked why my pants were around my ankles.
My closing paragraph told how much I ached to be graceful and how I would love just once in my life to rise from a dinner table without looking as if I have just experienced an extremely localised seismic event, get into a car and close the door without leaving ten inches of coat outside, wear light-coloured trousers without discovering at the end of the day that I have at various times sat in chewing gum, ice cream, cough syrup and motor oil. The editor asked me why I would sit in such things.
And I quote: “Please explain what these things that happened to you actually mean”, he had asked. “My readers won’t get it.” Needless to say I withdrew my article.
Okay, so maybe this is an extreme case and I should not brush all Americans with the same tar brush, so I won’t, but I’m seeing this trait more and more regularly. Recently I read an American glossy containing a brilliantly written article, penned by a British author, which was littered with the editors bracketed comments throughout, explaining the irony.
Soul City
It should have been a dead give-away of the pleasing experiences which lay ahead when the fresh faced doubleganger of NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) enquired politely if he may sit in the seat beside me on a flight from Newark to Columbus, Ohio.
When I looked out of the passenger window to survey the city we were about to land in, I was half expecting a little shit-splat town in the midst’s of cornfields and was thus taken aback at finding a city of white-collar workers as opposed to farmers pushing ploughs. In the few days I have been here I have found the people, like my new in-flight friend Jeremy, to be hugely polite, always ready with a big smile. In fact, these folk so impressed me that I made a note of their mannerisms:
Everyone respects everyone and show due courtesy to those doing a job well. Columbian's are a courteous, well mannered people like the world once was. These folk are genuinely pleased when you are satisfied with your experience/their service. This courtesy has a contagious affect. Coming from a somewhat aggressive society myself I found the kindness extended to me somewhat startling - even when I took my press badge off.
A city is a city is a city - mostly its only the language spoken that differentiates them, but here in Columbus I have found that the city draws its soul from its community - a cultural and arty crowd working together to put the city, already ranked No. 3 "Top Cities of the Future" on the tourism map.
Labels: Columbus, NCIS, Ohio, Sean Murray, Timothy McGee
Columbus - I city to die for
I've recently returned from a fabulous trip to Columbus, Ohio, where I had a rather terrifying experience. I wanted some great cityscape shots before dawn and asked the hotel manager to arrange this for me. At 4 a.m. I was frog marched up to the roof by a little stick of a man, then climbed the ladder to gain access to the steel girders skirting the perimeter of the roof. Let’s just get something clear right now… I don’t even like being this tall, I don't wear high-heels, so standing on flimsy trimmings tacked to the roof of a sky-scraper ,with a strong wind encouraging me to fly, and nothing but a sidewalk 42 floors below, I became somewhat anxious. In fact, I started crying for my mommy. But I suffered for my art, rigged up my tripod and took some amazing pictures; I only stopped shaking after I had my 'aaaaa opena', which a rotund and busty waitress in a Creole kitchen thought I was in desperate need of. I shot of bourbon never tasted so good.
Pee-proof plasma
Whenever I go off on a press trip I return home to find my husband has acquired another electrical appliance. A designer coffee peculator, new desktop, DVD… this time it was a plasma wide screen television with a surround sound system thing (and bloody wires everywhere!).
So now we need to find a suitable table to stand the TV on (no holes in the walls please) with shelves for the SKY satellite box and the two DVD machines; but the table needs to be covered on the sides and back, preferably with glass doors.
It’s not that we don’t have a nice TV cabinet - we do - it’s just not pee-proof. You see we have nine cats one of which has taken to pee’ing on new electrical items. We’ve lost three toasters, two kettles, an iron, two SKY satellite boxes – one was two-days old – my laptop, my husband’s desktop, my daughter’s desktop, my son’s printer… you get the picture. The problem is, we never get to catch the fathom piddler at it in order to administer suitable discipline. So you may understand why I’m so anxious to find a water-proof cabinet.
After traipsing around several furniture stores in Brussels we found two viable options but could find no sales assistant and was told that the sales staff don’t work on Saturday’s (shops are closed on Sunday’s here). This Belgian logic makes sense – after all, life in this country is so hugely expensive that both husband and wife need to work and as such, only have Saturday mornings to do their shopping, so why not run the whole show on skeleton staff. After waiting around for about 15 minutes (the manager was outside having a smoke break) I took him to the items we wanted, but neither product was in stock and if ordered, would take a week or two for delivery. We went off to another store on the other side of town and guess what, they didn’t have stock either! The stress of trying to find a business that actually wants our money is just too high, so we returned to the first store and placed an order. I just hope it gets here in time.
And if you’re going to suggest I get rid of my cats, think again. They’re all rescue cats and are like my children. In fact they’re more like children than my own children are, although my kids don’t go around pee’ing on things. Well, okay, there was that one time when Penny-Lane did a bag of potatoes in the kitchen, but she was still a toddler so that doesn’t count.
Perhaps I should investigate the disposable nappy option.
Crushing camera bag
Tomorrow I’m getting up at the crack of dawn for my 5km power walk in the woods, then it’s a two-hour gym session, an errand I try to do five times a week. (All the people I know barely drink at all, never touch tobacco, watch their cholesterol as if it were HIV positive, jog across to Germany and back about twice a day - all which guilts me into exercising as often as I can.) At 10am I’m meeting a European rock band to shoot an album cover.
It’s at times like these (and whilst on press trips) that I wish I could magically produce a camera assistant from somewhere. Someone who can swap lenses and camera’s, load the digital card content onto my laptop, be the spotlight for dark room shots, feed me grapes, and most of all, carry the darn camera bag. It doesn’t matter how much weights I push in the gym, it always does my back in. And it’s not as if I can leave any of the lenses behind either, I need to lug them all along, like a wardrobe on my back.
A few months ago, whilst looking for tulips to photograph in Holland my camera bag caused me to over-balance and I stepped heavily onto a wobbly drain, did a series of graceless pirouettes, spun across the road, smacked face-first into the side of a barn and, after teetering theatrically for a moment, fell forward into a bush of something foul smelling.
Sometimes I don't know why I bother getting out of bed.
Weird people and zombie spit
I may have mentioned before that life without the direction of my GPS is hard; I lose myself at the first turn. I cannot tell you the number of times I have gone looking for the toilet in a cinema, for instance, and ended up standing in an alley on the wrong side of a self-locking door. Recently, whilst on one of my dawn forest wanderings I happened upon what was evidently an extended family of... well, lets just say this family tree had no branches. They are an indeterminate number of individuals, who live in a seasonal collection of shanty homes in an area of perpetual wooded gloom. They gathered near a water-well and watched my approach. I asked for directions and was met by flummoxed, dead-end expression that you have to be fourteen years old to produce with conviction. For a fleeting moment I felt concerned for my personal safety then realised it was only their zombie no-one-home looks that unsettled me. They were ugly too and really dumb and looked like the ate squirrels.
I stood around awkwardly for a while then decided to re-explain were I needed to be, speaking a little slower than I did before. An old man with a toothpick resting on his tongue sauntered bowlegged out of a shed and directed the crowd who were looking at me open-mouthed to hop onto the back of the pick-up .
He walked right by me, his sharp beady eyes never dropping his gaze for a moment. He removed the toothpick from his mouth and spat at my feet; but it wasn’t even like spit. It was more like the sort of thing a praying mantis would regurgitate on to its forelimbs and rub on to its antennae. It was lime green with little streaks of red blood in it and, unless my eyes were playing tricks, two very small grey feathers protruding from either sides. He grinned at me and strode off, climbing up into his pick-up and sped off in a cloud of dust.
I wandered around for a little longer then spotted a church steeple which looked familiar; I was home an hour later.
A lot of things about Belgium have started to unsettle me which is perhaps a good thing because I’m spending this weekend in Kent, the garden of England, house-shopping!
English countryside
You've heard me complain about Belgian drivers, Belgian customer services… okay so, I've got a lot to say about most things in life, but have I ever got onto my soap-box about the rules and regulations surrounding property acquisition in Belgium?
In short the Belgian government will only consider giving you up to one third of your annual take-home pay (after they’ve taken off 52% tax) towards a mortgage loan. That’s right – one third! Which should just about cover an out-house. Then on top of that they add between 15- to 25% tax to the asking price. Then there’s stamp duty and solicitor’s fees... No matter how closely you cross your legs, you’re gonna get screwed – and you know how tight I am with money.
This past weekend I took a drive down to France and crossed over to the UK via the Channel Tunnel and headed to a very pretty area in Kent (the garden of England) to do some house-shopping. Soon I started losing the will to live after meeting numerous limp-wristed estate agents who all insisted on showing me totally unsuitable properties, even though they knew what I was looking for - perhaps they though I was some pleb and hoped to palm off a dud house. Then I met Emily from Your-Move: a tall, buxom lass with spirit and charisma who clearly enjoyed her job. Within half an hour she’d arranged to take me around to a view a few properties that were right on spec.
It was the third property I fell in love with - a substantial home in a small Kent parish which epitomised everything an English village should be, complete with an ancient smoke filled pub, a post office, a fish and chips shop, a village square, thatched cottages, an ancient church dating back to the 11th century, and a village vicar. I’d found exactly what I was hoping for and put in an offer which was subsequently accepted. So, once all the paperwork is out of the way, in about six to eight weeks I’ll be relocating to England.
I’ll need to keep an apartment in Belgium as I foresee returning on business regularly. But for now, I’ve had enough of the bureaucratic bull-shite. However, this does not preclude me telling you about customer serive in the UK.
Labels: Channel Tunnel, England, Kent, Your-Move
Sex for sale, but at what cost
Amsterdam: Nowhere else on earth will you find so many beautiful, sparsely dressed women, of all ethnicities, shapes and sizes (as well as the odd male and transsexual), who blatantly display their wares from behind shop windows, offering sex for money.
The Dutch are known for their practicality, open-mindedness and business sense and when this is combined with today's lax society, it culminates into a culture that attracts thrill-seeking tourists thirsting after commercialized sex and soft drugs. From massage parlours to window prostitutes, brothels to ‘fruit performers’, live sex shows to ‘smart shops’ who openly trade in marijuana, the red light district of Amsterdam has it all.
Since being labelled a legal profession in 1988, the Dutch have installed a number of support mechanisms to maintain the health and social responsibility of their prostitutes who undergo mandatory AIDS testing every three months. Brothels and sex clubs are also regularly inspected. So, what has changed? How safe is the sex on sale?
Mariska Majoor, a former window prostitute, and founder of the Amsterdam based Prostitute Information Centre, revealed some concerns to me recently.
“Brothels have to conform to the same rules which apply to any business. The government is hoping to control prostitution and stop the exploitation of minors and illegal immigrants. As prostitution is now officially labeled freelance work, which tax officials have taken a keen interested in, prostitutes are recognized as ‘employed’ and as such can apply for bank loans. However, none have been successful in their loan applications.”
The rules the government have imposed are considered ladened with self interest.
“The rules and regulations are only beneficial to the Government, like the taxes we pay. Surely we should also derive some form of benefit from this," she said.
It seems that all these working girls have accomplished is swap one pimp for another.
Labels: Amsterdam, Dutch, Netherlands, smart shops, window prostitutes
New world dawning
Television news bombards us with images of destruction, famine, disease, and war. It’s constant and unrelenting. No wonder we despair at the future mankind is forging for itself, one filled with hopelessness and egotistical world leaders armed with nuclear bombs.
However, what television news does not show, is a trend in the citizens of the world who chose to no longer wait for governments to deliver of their empty promises and instead take command of what is in their immediate control, teaching other like-minded individuals by example.
As a reporter I travel to many developing nations, those with just emerging markets, and have seen this thread as a constant in all of them.
In poverty stricken Africa I met a Ugandan businessman who formed Rwenzori Coffee Company and empowered his farmers by teaching them how to tend to their plants and negotiate good market prices. Recently I met a group of Malawian coffee growers who were facing the near collapse of the industry and banded together to form the Mzuzu Coffee Company - now one of the most sought after coffee exporters in Africa. It only takes one person with foresight, a person who has lost faith in government policy and decides to take control of his own future, enhancing his community and benefiting everyone surrounding him. And in Sri Lanka I met a farmer who ploughs back all his profits into the community by buildings houses, schools, day-care facilities and clinics.
Last night I met another such man – a soft-spoken, unassuming fellow who saved more than 1,200 refugees from a bloody thirsty militia during the Rwandan genocide by turning his hotel into a sanctuary. He rationed food and swimming pool water (all services had been cut, including telephones and electricity) and without a weapon, single handedly defended his ‘guests’ by bribing generals, using his charm, business savvy and diplomacy. I am of course speaking of Paul Rusesabagina of Hotel Rwanda Fame, the movie which received numerous Oscar nominations.
People like Mr. Paul truly humble me and it gladdens my heart to see some hope for future generations.
Gun control laws
I'm researching an article about gun control and made the following harrowing discoveries... perhaps there is someone out there that would find this of interest. - In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20-million dissidents, unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
- In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million Armenians were rounded up and exterminated.
- Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13-million people were exterminated.
- China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20-million political dissidents, were rounded up and exterminated.
- Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians were rounded up and exterminated.
- Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
- Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, 1-million people were rounded up and exterminated.
That’s 56-million people in the 20th.
It's now been 12-months since gun owners in Australia were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500-million dollars.
The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent; assaults are up 8.6 percent; armed robberies are up 44 percent.
But that's just one country - in recent years South Africa had its gun owners hand their weapons over to the state - and now South Africa has the highest gun crime rate in the world.
You won't see this data on the American evening news or hear President Bush, Governors or other politicians disseminating this information.
Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.
So the next time someone speaks in favour of gun control, please remind them of this history lesson.
Labels: australia, crime rate, gun control law, south africa
Reviewing a Porsche & covering the Monaco Grand Prix
Next week I’m driving to Stuttgart in Germany where I’ll be collecting a Porsche Boxster. From there I continue onto Lugano in Switzerland and then on to Monaco, where I’m covering the Monaco Grand Prix. It is one of the most outlandish, gaudy, politically incorrect, un-green and boorish settings on the calendar and apparently it's marvelous. But I’m having a hard time getting excited about it. The trip there will be awesome – the scenery is spectacular but Monaco, Monaco - where aristocrats play the roulette tables, tax dodging millionaires throwing over-the-top parties on their super-yacht, newly lipo’d and botoxed super-models mooching around. I don’t know if I can cope with such pretentiousness. Then there’s all the testosterone in the pits with the self obsessed racing drivers.
Why is this still happening, Grand Prix’s I mean, in this day and age. I can think of a few African countries whose GDP is but a fraction of what one Grand Prix rakes in.
But I’m shooting my mouth off. I may still eat my words.
I have a job to do and God, it’s an awesome job. It does have it’s down sides though – like living in a $10,000 hotel room and walking around in the race pits and being seen (with a 70kg camera bag strapped to my back), trying to look impressed with the world in general and drinking Dom Pérignon.
I need a camera assistant – anyone offers?
Labels: Monaco Grand Prix, Porsche
A mindless wandering
I’m not an outdoors kind of person. And no matter how much I protest, these seem to be the kinds of assignments editors are hell-bent on sending me on.
Camping for instance, I’ve done once in my life. Okay, twice if you count the time when I was five and my late-father put up a tent in the back yard then told me I could not come back into the house because I’ll get shot if I startled him or my mother. You see, back in the then wilds of Africa, my parents slept with a shot-gun on either side of the bed. Thandi, our house-keeper's daughter, and I lay whimpering all night listening to the bush-sounds. Our shrieks of terror did manage to frighten off a large animal that came sniffing around the tent in the quiet black hours just before dawn. Later our tracker told us it was a buffalo - one of the most dangerous animals in Africa.
The other time was in Mozambique when my then young son, Ashley, (turning 19 in a few days, whilst I’m in Monaco) and I were travelling to Malawi. I was woken by an unfamiliar sound and instinctively sat up into a spider the diameter of a saucer, dangling off the ceiling of our two-man tent. I screamed and brought my hands up to shield my face from the monstrous arachnid, then saw three luminous green slugs on the back of my hand. I began clambering out of my sleeping bag when I saw the faces of wild beast staring at us through the tent’s window flaps. Ashley and I were hysterical at this point and couldn't get out of the tent fast enough. When we settled down to a panic, I slowly became aware that there were people standing around us... and that I was butt naked.
I find the woods unnerving. The air always seems thicker in there, more stifling, the noise different. Some people go into the woods and never come out again, which is what nearly happened last week, when a local (American) friend and I went for our early morning constitutional and headed off into the surrounding farmlands.
“I have a very good sense of direction,” said Joy. “I can find my way around without a map,” which was rather comforting to know as I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper packet without a GPS.
We were so busy talking that we didn’t notice the direction we had taken and before we knew it, we were deep in a forest, with no idea of how to get out. We walked this way, then that way, over a fence and through jungle-like thickets. I had run out of Coke-Lite, I needed to pee and panic was frantically nipping at my heels. Then the flies found us. Bored with their aromatic cow pats they homed in on us (evidently the smell of fear is more appealing). If a fly wants to be up your nose or in your ear, there is no discouraging it.
Joy was somewhat bemused at me lost inside my own little buzzing cloud of woe, waving at my head in an increasingly hopeless and desultory manner, blowing constantly out of my mouth and nose, shaking my head in a kind of furious dementia, occasionally slapping myself with startling violence.
“Found it!” Joy announced. She had jogged on ahead to establish our whereabouts. I stumbled out of the bush near my home in the delirious stagger of someone wandering in off the desert in an adventure movie, sweat-streaked, hair akin to wind-blown pubis, mumbling uncharitable thoughts, and frothing little nose rings of Coke-Lite.
I joined the gym that very day. No more wandering in the woods for me, even those in my back yard.
Penis envy and other fast cars
I'm not into material things (other than a good camera lense) and expensive sports cars possibly tops that list. However, covering the Monaco Grand Prix required a little pizzazz, or so I told myself. Hob-nobbing with the good and excessively wealthy required that I at least rock up in a decent set of wheels. This is what I should have stressed to the Porsche factory in Stuttgart where I collected my Porsche Boxster Tiptronic, maybe this would have urged them to provide me instead with a new 911 - you see the maid’s in Monaco drive Boxster’s! I was overshadowed by Lamborghini’s and Aston Martin’s, Ferrari’s… in fact, I felt someone intimidated. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need you to picture the scene.
I drove through Germany in a rather stately new Audi to pick up my loaner. Seat warmers, BBC radio, cruise control set to 180 km/h (and feeling like 60 km/h), roomy, loads of leg room. It’s a big heavy car that brings a certain message with it, one that says I’ve arrived.
I looked at the mid-engined Porsche in wonder and realised the luggage space area at the rear was perhaps big enough for my camera equipment and the luggage space in the front, under the hood, was big enough for my make-up bag. After repacking I lowered myself into the cramped car and assumed a lounging position (instant back-ache), my backside but a few inches off the ground. I prodded various buttons and eventually find the one that let the roof down. I slowly eased out of the main gates and tentatively touched the accelerator onto the motorway and an instant later I shot off at such a speed that my head become a howling sphere at the end of a whip-like stalk.
It takes a special kind of vigilance to make your way across a continent on which people voluntary ingest tongues, kidneys, horsemeat, frogs’ legs, intestines, sausages made of congealed blood, and the brains of little cows. Shared middle lane for overtaking is another such wonder that no-one told me about! I’d zip into a middle lane and was genuinely astounded that a 40-ton truck bearing down on me like something out of a Road Runner cartoon, felt he had right of way. I would veer out of the way at the last possible instant and then hang out of the window shouting abuse at the passing driver, before being shrieked back to the next crisis by my passenger.
That aside, my top cruising speed between my accommodations and the Monaco Grand Prix was around 220 km/h through tunnels and along the southern coast of Italy and the French Rivera. The acceleration of the Boxster is astounding, and the sound it emits is that of one very angry beast. What a rush!
I was planning on having a little maintenance work done on myself later this year – a lift here, a tuck there, but now I’m seriously considering doing the midlife crisis thing. But there again, that new camera lens I have my eye on needs a bigger car, something like the 911 perhaps. I’ll need to have a word with my man at Porsche about another loaner.
And the Grand Prix? Apart from being the most expensive F1 motoring event in the world, you’ll just have to wait and read the article I’m writing for Automotive Traveler.
Labels: Automotive Traveler, Monaco Grand Prix, Porsche Boxster Triptronic
Partially dressed musicians and a flash slave
I met two immensely desirable men last night; one was the front-man for Wednesday-13, an American glam-rock outfit and the other Jyrki, front-man for Finnish dark-rockers, The 69 Eyes.
Jyrki, well rehearsed in dealing with the press, dutifully answered all the questions my daughter and I put together in the car as we raced across to Antwerp; and despite the message he puts across in his music he’s a stand-up gentleman.
My daughter knows what’s happening in the rock music world; I on the other hand know the opera and the classics. On route to the interview, she briefs me about the artist, telling me what fans want to know (and no Penny-Lane, that does not include where do you buy your underwear!).
Wednesday is luscious and thankfully he hadn’t dressed for stage yet. Well okay, he hadn’t put on all his make-up yet. Clearly he had not been informed of our appointment and was a wise-ass throughout the interview, sidestepping just about every question I put to him. What did not help either was the fact that his whole posse was present and he insisted on wearing his sunglasses. I need to see eyes – you can read a lot from the eyes.
Last year this time I was interviewing Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and here I am trying to transcribe interview notes with a man who wears eyeliner (badly) and who clearly did not want to be interviewed. Hopefully Rolling Stone will understand.
And when I tried to photograph them on stage I couldn’t get my flash to work! In the dark I could not see that some person of vision in my household had switch my Slave button to off, reducing me to using the Canon’s built in flash. Nonetheless, my subjects were delicious and look almost edible.
I wonder if Wednesday would let me drink his bath water.
Labels: 69 Eyes, Audi A8, celebrity interviews, Jyrki, Robert Mugabe, Rolling Stone, Wednesday 13
Munich, beyond the museums
I'll be in Munich tomorrow (eight blasted hours of driving) and last night did a little last minute research as to the places I need to see, experience and photograph (and no Max, this does not include erotic nightclubs). I'm slumming it for two nights at a superb 5-star hotel in the city centre and then heading to an equally gracious boutique hotel on the outskirts for my third night.
Other than old buildings and a thousand museums I cannot find a compelling enough hook to coax people to board a plane and fly thousands of miles to visit the city (as you may have guessed this is a commission for an international airline's in-flight magazine). I can see it now, panic begins to seep in, snapping at my heels as I frantically zoom around the city in search of something remotely interesting to photograph.
The last time I was given a guided city tour the only places I saw were museums. Even though the management of these establishments allow me to photograph stuff most magazine prefer not to print photos of art (copyright laws etc.) so I end up photographing a room full of dead people's things that are on display, or uninspiring shots of the museums lobby.
Frankly, visitors to the city, armed with sufficient brochures and guidebooks, can figure it out for themselves and don't need me guiding them. My job is to tell about a destination's interesting side and find that someth