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England

The Fourth Test

Posted on August 11, 2009

My time at Wake Forest University overlapped with Tim Duncan’s, the now veteran NBA star of the San Antonio Spurs. At the time, Duncan was widely considered to be the best college basketball player in the nation. Expectations were high for Wake Forest to pull off a national championship, especially when Duncan made the unusual move of staying on for his senior year of college. He was, unfortunately, surrounded by an average team and the national championship was not to be (John Feinstein covered the whole collapse in his book, The March to Madness). Any longstanding Wake Forest fan could have predicted the failure having had years of experience watching the team clutch defeat from the jaws of victory. Tim Duncan or not, the Wake Forest fan knew the Demon Deacons were and always will be the underdog. I was one of those fans who, game after game, was drilled in the emotions of underdog-ism: irrational exuberance at glimpses of genius, elaborate excuse making for inexcusable sloppiness, exquisite anguish during the choke of the final minutes, and the hot afterglow of despair or, on the rare occasion of victory, disproportionate glee. In short, the entire range of human emotion in two, twenty-minute halves, which may explain why being the underdog is so addictive.

My collegiate training in the art of the underdog certainly came in handy for the half of my career I spent working in the music industry. Piracy and iTunes made the traditional music business an underdog of an industry, but, as if this wasn’t bad enough, I had to work for the underdog of the underdog, EMI Music. Year after year by any measure EMI has been last amongst the major record companies. The glory days of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones are gone, but even Coldplay—EMI’s most recent Tim Duncan—hasn’t saved them.

I suppose that becoming a British citizen was the natural if extreme conclusion to my long-running affair with the cult of the underdog. I was reminded of this yesterday listening to Radio 4 commentators agonize over England’s dismal showing in the fourth test match of The Ashes, the biennial, month-long cricket tournament between England and Australia (imagine March Madness only without the excitement of whittling 64 teams down to 2 and with breaks for tea). I got interested in The Ashes during our first summer in the UK in 2005. England won that year for the first time in 18 years, and for the last week of play every workplace TV was tuned in for the benefit of those who hadn’t called in sick to watch it from home or hover outside The Oval in hope of catching a glimpse. England lost the tournament in the following series and in the majority of series before, but the joy in the underdog victory of 2005 was palpable across all of London.

It’s not just cricket but most aspects of British life that fit the underdog profile. Summer, for example. Or, in all things geo-political, where Britain is dwarfed by America, yet predictably Britain’s interest in Obama could only be reciprocated by her former colony if Princess Diana rose from the grave. Despite all this, Britain churns out literature and films and music and painting that exert a global cultural influence far in excess of the measly population of this oddball island nation. It is our not so little underdog victory in which I am happy to share the disproportionate glee.

Cotswolds

Lurching Towards Mesey Hampton

Posted on August 4, 2009

We spent Sunday afternoon at a dog show, the V.W.H. Hunt Farmers & Supporters Club Terrier and Lurcher Show, at the suggestion of the local Bon Vivant who happens to be one of the aforementioned official “supporters.” Although the show would feature a dog agility competition, the first challenge of the day was to our mental agility and required that we locate the village where the show was being held, Mesey Hampton. This was not to be confused with the village of Maiseyhampton less than a mile to the north. After only one argument and a harrowing u-turn on a narrow road, husband and I found the V.W.H. Kennels.

My rural education resumed with haste. The grounds had two rings roped off, one for the Terrier classes (Jack Russell, Border Terrier, Lakeland/Fell, and Patterdale type) and one for the Lurcher classes. Much to my juvenile delight, the latter included competitions for both “rough” bitches and “smooth” bitches. Alas there were no rap video hos, only lovely greyhound-ish looking ladies. Bon Vivant Jr. ignored my guffawing and patiently explained the general principles of the proceedings. This was a dog show for country people and their working dogs. The terriers would be judged on the features that made them useful for hunting, like the ability to stick their snout down a hole, rather than the poncey stuff reserved for the world of pedigree shows. This was the anti-Crufts or, if you’ve seen the film Best in Show, the “anti-Best in Show” show. The atmosphere was relaxed, without poodles or bows or doggie blow dryers, and blissfully free of women in fringed costumes dancing with their dogs to “Achy Breaky Heart.”

The highlight of the day was when Bon Vivant Jr.’s girlfriend lent husband her smiley dog, Gypsy, a half-Collie, half-Jack Russell mix, for a spin around the agility course. Husband looked like a half-mad, oversized leprechaun, mouth pursed into an “O” and eyes agog as he coached Gypsy to jump and weave in a perky voice while running behind her in a dainty, trotting gait. Luckily Gypsy was trained in agility and completed the course with ease while more or less ignoring the strange man distracting her. At least husband didn’t climb through the tunnel as the lady before him did in an attempt to get her dog to follow (she failed). To the shock of almost everyone, husband managed to bag a second place time with Gypsy’s champion moves. He was awarded a blue rosette, which now hangs proudly in the kitchen, and Gypsy got a bag of treats.

California

Stalking David Hockney

Posted on July 27, 2009

I’m just back from Los Angeles and, despite having lived there for ten years, felt like I was seeing it for the first time. My eye, accustomed to the wobbly stone and green and brown landscape that is the Cotswolds, was startled by this paean to mid-century design, all stucco cubes in mustard yellows, olive greens and shell pinks set against an aching blue sky. Now I understand that only an Englishman could and did paint A Bigger Splash.

As a teenager my sister had a poster of Hockney’s iconic California image hanging in her bedroom. We lived in Florida but every summer we visited my grandparents in SoCal for two weeks, and we loved that poster because Hockney could have painted it from their back patio. The only difference was that the diving board was rotated 45 degrees in Hockney’s version and instead of a director’s chair, my grandparents had a non-adjustable teal green chaise lounge. It was constructed of hundreds of rubber chords strung taut on a metal frame, and it left ripples of angry red welts across your skin after just a few minutes of lying on it. Still it looked good in its own mid-century, minimalist way. I’d even go as far as to say it would have been a better choice than Hockney’s deck chair, it’s low horizontal line echoing the planes of the sliding glass doors and flat roof.

In 2005, right before I left Los Angeles to move to London, I spent a lunch hour at an exhibit of Hockney’s Yorkshire paintings in watercolours. I was alone except for the gallery assistant in this quiet mecca, a block from the riot of Los Angeles that is Venice Beach, and the fact that Hockney had turned his artistic attention to the rural landscape of England felt somehow like a private pre-welcome party for me. The following year I spent more lunch hours at a second exhibit of Hockney’s Yorkshire paintings, these in oil, at a gallery on Derring Street in London around the corner from my then office on Hanover Square. The Cotswolds weren’t even in my consciousness back then, but Hockney’s images of wheat and rolling hills and country roads covered in a canopy of trees were burning themselves into my psyche for later recall. It was like Hockney knew about my move to the country before I did.

One of the joys of reading is that thrill of recognition when an author conveys something you have felt or thought or done and does so with flair and sometimes wit and above all authenticity. These moments offer the paradox of human connection via the largely individual pursuits of reading and, for the author, writing. David Hockney’s California and Yorkshire paintings make me feel the same way. I know he has painted other places and people and things, but these paintings are the ones that make me feel understood, perhaps like only and Englishman could.

P.S. Artsy’s David Hockney page is a cool resource on all things Hockney. 

California Random

Vacation in the Past

Posted on July 26, 2009

My family has been coming to Canters Deli on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles as long as I can remember, which is at least part of the reason why I am so irritated that my mother has just asked the waiter for a cup of matzo. How can she not know after thirty-plus years that matzo ball soup (at Canters at least) only comes by the bowl and not by the cup? And why is she asking the waiter for a cup of matzo, leaving out the “ball soup” part? Does she want a cup of unleavened crackers? My ninety-year old grandmother sits oblivious at the other end of our horseshoe-shaped, baby shit brown vinyl booth. Her head is suspended above the table at a forty-five degree angle, like a wrecking ball swinging from a crane, as she clutches half a corned beef on rye in both hands. A frosted coral mouth swoops in to take a bite, the red ragged edges of the meat protruding lasciviously from between the crusts while a small fly nests in her silvery helmet of hair. I am too transfixed by the scene of savagery—of old age, our food chain, of all of human history—even to swat it away.

But I cannot hold my mother’s obliviousness to matzo ball soup ordering etiquette accountable for my crotchety and pondering mood. I blame it on the cumulative contents of the vacation thus far, a pseudo vacation really, which started a week ago when we arrived in Florida to attend my twentieth high school reunion. On our first morning we brunched with my old childhood friend, A., at News Cafe on South Beach. Over eggs we talked of disease—my MS scare and her mother’s lymphoma. In matter of fact terms she explained that her mother is managing her disease but at the same time it is likely this is what she will die from. After breakfast we headed west for the reunion in Fort Myers. From within the air conditioned confines of her husband’s Mercedes (used, as she pointed out for what seemed like no particular reason), she updated us on the financial meltdown that is dominating her immediate family’s life. The story lasted the length of Alligator Alley and was littered with the usual suspects: commercial real estate market collapse, foreclosures, lawsuits, soured friendships, pondering when to pull a child out of private school. She talked about leaving Miami and starting over in Greenville, S.C. (where they’re “all just sitting around drinking a beer on the front porch”), dropping the word bankruptcy into the conversation as if she were breaking in a new pair of shoes by wearing them around the house. Throughout she was detached and impressively philosophical. It might be “the best thing that ever happened to our family” she mused before adding the admirable dose of self-flagellation: “We were very materialistic.”

A. and I have always had a kind of low-level, background competitiveness lingering in our relationship. We attended the the same high school and university. At both she outshone me in popularity (cheerleader, homecoming court) which I liked to think I made up for by marginally edging her out academically. But years ago A. had won hands down in the traditional success stakes: a stay at home mom with three kids and a wildly successful businessman of a husband. Last year she posted a picture of her ridiculously attractive and stylish family on Facebook and I joked with her to take down the ad from the Ralph Lauren catalog and stop pretending it was her family. I am relieved that my sub-conscious had the dignity not to feel a shred of victory over her current plight. My psyche somehow needed this better, richer version of me and without her I felt a little bit lost.

The reunion wasn’t all glum news. I reminisced with one of my oldest pals, J., about how in third grade we used to fight over who got Scott Baio and who got Jimmy McNichol in our imaginary boyfriend playdates in our imaginary hot tub. I had a snatched catchup with S., one of the few black girls in our high school class, just before we sat down for our Hawaiian-themed buffet dinner. She had been tall and athletic looking back in high school and still was. I had enough time to find out she was living in Atlanta, a teacher of some sort, in graduate school, and dating a long haul truck driver. I wish I would’ve talked to her more. I reconnected with P., whose older sister used to regale us on sleepovers by demonstrating her ability to open a beer bottle between her ample breasts. Back then P., like me, favoured an Aqua Net encrusted set of bouffant bangs, and we spent many Friday nights perfecting them with the curling iron before heading out in her red Honda CRX.After the reunion we flew to Los Angeles, where in addition to the matzo ball soup incident, I was subjected to twice daily nervous breakdowns by husband on the topic of why we ever left this sunny paradise. In between he checked his BlackBerry and muttered conspiracy theories about what was happening in his absence from work. I tried to ignore him and focus on the intense joy I experienced in our daily Mexican pilgrimages to Gilberts El Indio or Holy Guacamole, but the truth is I was starting to wonder why we ever left L.A. too. And herein lies the lesson: vacationing in your past is a dangerous game at which I had excelled. In ten days I managed to wedge in the entire psychological landscape of my childhood plus a good dose of mortality, which explains how I came to observe the whole sordid spectre of human history in that fly sitting on my grandmother’s head in a booth of a Jewish deli. I resolve to spend next year’s summer vacation firmly in the present, preferably someplace without BlackBerry connectivity.

Random

L is for Les Ions

Posted on July 10, 2009

Last year I went to the ballet at the Royal Opera House. My seat was in a box just off stage left, from where I could peer directly down into the orchestra pit. I don’t remember much about the ballet (La Sylphide I think), but I do remember looking down at the conductor and thinking with some sadness that I am probably too old to ever be able to do that. By which I meant, at thirty-six, it was unrealistic to think I could ever become an orchestra conductor. Not that I ever aspired to be an orchestra conductor, or a musician of any sort. I terminated my music career at will upon graduating from the eighth grade (everyone knows high school marching band is for losers), having scaled the heights of third chair flute in the Fort Myers Middle School band. But in that moment at the opera house I sensed the realm of all of life’s possibility slipping away just a little bit as I came to grips with the middleness of both my age and achievements in corporate management. It would almost be tragic if it wasn’t so narcissistic.

Of course I blame my parents for this obscene level of self-belief and sense of control over my own destiny that allowed me to think well into my thirties I might be capable of one day usurping Sir Simon Rattle if I just tried hard enough. They have always thought I am smarter than I am. (My father still thinks if I would have taken my SATs again I could have breached the Ivy wall instead of settling for my respectable yet second tier university). I suppose this life philosophy has served me well despite the inherent dose of denial. But it also explains why I am having so much trouble coping with a factoid my neurologist let slip on my recent visit.

It turns out those three sessions of intensive steroid treatments I did back in March only treated my symptoms: the brain swelling which subsequently caused me difficulty in speaking. They did nothing to address the underlying cause, a series of lesions on my brain. In fact the aftermath of these lesions will always be with me. Should I ever have want or need for another brain scan, I will first need to be shot full of dye so the doctor can tell any new lesions from the old ones.

None of this squares with my core belief system of you are generally in control of your life, even if I no longer quite believe I have enough years left to learn how to conduct a philharmonic. Surely there must be something I can do to rid myself of these lesions, some combination of oily fish and pomegranates and yoga if no miracle drug is yet available as my neurologist claims to be the case.

And so in the absence of any answers from science I have turned to the transformative power of language. Lesions are for lepers or people with venereal disease. They simply will not do. Therefore, I have decided I have les ions, which I like to pronounce lā-ē-uh, with a trademark French grunt on the last syllable. It still sounds vaguely scientific yet at the same time foreign and alluring. And best of all it makes me feel, just for a moment, like I am in control.

Random

Charity Begins at Waitrose

Posted on July 10, 2009

Near the exit at the Waitrose supermarket in Cirencester there are three tall perspex boxes with piggy bank style slots on top. When you checkout, the cashier gives you a charity token, a green plastic “coin” you can deposit in the perspex box for your charity of choice. Waitrose then makes charitable donations proportionate to the number of green disks in each box. The charities are rotated on a regular basis, but recently one of the boxes was designated for a local MS center. I am not ashamed to say that I got in the habit of lingering by the perspex boxes on my way out to observe what my fellow shoppers deemed to be worthy causes. Imagine my disgust at the number of people who thought that the town needed a better playground or that disabled kids might benefit from horse riding lessons. I thought about making an impassioned plea for tokens for the local MS center, but thought better of it. I’d hate for my outburst to get me banned from the store. This is the only place in a fifty-mile radius that sells Skinny Cow Triple Chocolate ice cream bars.

The truth is that getting up close and personal with a health issue will make you act in an extremely self-interested way. (Just look at Michael J. Fox. I don’t ever remember him talking about Parkinson’s disease when he was on Family Ties.) Which explains why I’ve just requested an information pack online for the London to Paris charity bike ride for the MS Trust in May 2010. Well, that and I’ve been catching up with old friends ahead of some upcoming high school and college reunions and am alarmed by the number of triathlete, yoga teaching overachievers who apparently haven’t gotten the memo that we’re pushing forty and officially letting ourselves go. Start saving your green plastic tokens now. You’ll need them when I come asking for sponsorship next year.

Cotswolds

The Cotswold Show

Posted on July 6, 2009

Over the weekend we attended the granddaddy of village fetes, the Cotswold Show. It was awfully sporting of Lord Apsley to throw such a big party for the Fourth of July at his ancestral seat of Cirencester Park. It reminded me of the graceful way Britain handled a more recent defeat at the hands of America, Andy Murray’s semi-final loss to Andy Roddick on Friday night at Wimbledon.

The show thoughtfully placed a dog scurry event right next to the port-a-loos at the entrance. This gave husband something to pass the time while he waited for me to stand in the inevitably much longer ladies’ line (some things never change). Next up were a multitude of opportunities for a grown man to reclaim his lost boyhood. After posing for pictures next to the steam trains on display, husband took a crash course in archery. We made a mental note to return for the ferret races at 2:30pm and headed off in search of lunch.

Hamburgers were washed down with a beer—Cotswold Summer Lager for me, Doom Bar for husband—while a middle-aged band serenaded us with Lynyrd Skynard with a British accent. (Skynard is apparently as obligatory for British as American county fairs.) Overhead a group of parachutists floated into the main display area. Earlier there had been Evil Knievel-esque motorcycle jumps here, and later the local hunt would show off their Modern English hounds before a man with a Cockney accent and a medieval outfit did a falconry display.

I’m sure Patricia Marx could fill an entire On and Off the Avenue with the shopping on offer at the show. We got so distracted with the coracles, a traditional Welsh fishing boat, and rare breed livestock that we forgot about the ferret races. Oh how any one of these retail outlets would liven up the Pottery Barn/Banana Republic tedium of the average shopping mall (fancy an Old Spot piglet with your Martin stretch cotton trouser?). I settled for a tweed flat cap from Rydale, which was both more portable and affordable at £8.99.

We ended the afternoon at the fun fair. Husband had earlier promised to take me on a spin on the diminutive ferris wheel. Much to the amusement of the two ten-year old girls in line in front of us, he bailed just before it was our turn to ride. The ten-year-olds obligingly let me share their compartment with them. As we surveyed the grounds from atop the wheel, they briefed me on the ferris wheel scene in Southern England. Apparently the ride at Gloucester Quay is not to be missed.

Cotswolds

Notes on a Summer Landscape

Posted on July 3, 2009

The acid yellow of oil of rapeseed has long ago given way to chunky sage green foliage, threaded through with papery orange-red poppies. Deep green seas of wheat have faded to sage green too. Some are already in the throes of becoming the wheat we know, germs bleached and wispy and standing on end like a blond shot through with static electricity. Fuchsia thistles spike the hedgerows and plumes of cow parsley persist, party favors of spring.

Random

My Neurologist and Me

Posted on July 1, 2009

I went to see my neurologist yesterday for my three-month follow up. I am still not used to saying I have a neurologist. It’s like when you first get married and it feels wildly foreign to refer out loud to your “husband.” But the strangeness comes with a hint of pride. I would rather have a neurologist than, say, a proctologist or a chiropodist. It somehow feels more glamorous, more high brow, more befitting of me. The corporeal mutiny of age inches forward—an extra chin here, an autoimmune attack there—but that one vestige of youth, my vanity, remains.

My check up was more of a check in. In fact, my neurologist would make a great shrink. He has mastered the therapist’s technique whereby the patient poses a burning question and the therapist manages to get the patient to answer it for herself through a deft combination of silence and answering a question with another question. The burning question of the appointment was what to do next: nothing or scan again. The latter option means I would be actively searching for evidence of new “activity” in the brain despite a lack of symptoms (the doctor dismissed the lazy arm that cause me a spasm of panic earlier in the month within the first two minutes of our appointment; it’s not a MS symptom). If the scan reveals symptom-free activity it is enough to get you an MS diagnosis, which is the trigger to start on meds. American doctors are generally pro-medicine of all kinds, so odds are if I was in the US a doctor would advocate a scan. Brits on the other hand opt for the wait and see approach at this stage. And in this matter I’ve decided to side with the country of which I’ve most recently become a citizen. I shall stick my head in the sand and enjoy the symptom-free life I’m experiencing now for as long as it lasts, hopefully for the next sixty years or so.

I pretty much knew this was my decision before I walked into the doctor’s office, but that didn’t stop me from subjecting him to a thirty minute interrogation. I was desperate for my symptom-free three months to mean something of statistical significance about reducing my chances of developing MS. It doesn’t. It means what it means which is that I’ve gone three months without any symptoms. And that is a good thing in and of itself. And that’s all. I was hoping there would at least be some sort of ceremony to present me with my “three months symptom-free” Alcoholics Anonymous style token, something I could carry around in my pocket and finger inconspicuously when I was feeling insecure. Something to hold onto.

The one bit of new information I did glean from my questioning was that more instances of MS occur the farther away from the equator you go in either direction. My neurologist slipped it into a response to a question I had about treatment in the US versus the UK, citing “the equator effect” in explanation for why he couldn’t give me an accurate answer.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean,” I asked, concerned that this man in front of me was actually a quack witch doctor masquerading as a neurologist. This would not be good for my frail ego — which as I’ve mentioned is dependent on having a neurologist—nevermind my health. Next he’s going to tell me cats can suck the air out of babies’ mouths. But instead he went on to explain the epidemiological phenomenon of MS and the equator, which I later confirmed on the Internet (a validation process which I am sure sends shudders up the spine of every doctor in the land). Unfortunately the relationship is not causal, which means I won’t be changing the name of this blog to An American in Quito anytime soon.

Cotswolds

Chuck-the-Wellie

Posted on June 21, 2009

The Great British Summer is officially here. Thousands marked the summer solstice by watching the sun rise at Stonehenge, but I took my cue from a more traditional kick-off to the summer calendar: Royal Ascot. While I did not attend this year, I did catch a glimpse on television and was struck by just how anachronous the whole spectacle appeared. A BBC commentator was interviewing the aged couple who owned the horse that had just won a race. He was stiff in his stove top hat and blunt cut morning coat, showing no hint of pleasure at his victory. She was excessively coordinated: shoes, bag, dress, jacket, and lampshade hat all in shades of black and white. Both were completely lacking in the sartorial ease that characterizes our fashionable neighbors across the channel. I daresay the addiction to matching coordinates exhibited by m’lady would be enough to make mademoiselle strangle herself with her Hermès scarf or gouge her eyes out with her Chanel ballerina flats.

Still I am smitten with all forms of British tradition, and yesterday we attended a more casual yet equally important event in the summer social calendar: the first fête of the season. We cycled over to Chedworth where the weather behaved as expected—wind, drizzle, sun, and clouds in alternating cycles of approximately fifteen minutes each—while the whole village defiantly carried on with the requisite fête activities of jumble sale, Tombola, barbecue, dog show, and chuck-the-wellie competition, with tea and cakes served in the village hall. There will be one of these every weekend day in a village somewhere in the Cotswolds from now until the end of August, including our own Charter Fair next Saturday. We are, somewhat distressingly for my romantic fantasy of my quaint rural life, a town rather than a village, owing to a charter granted by King Henry III in 1227 giving us rights to hold both a weekly market and an annual fair. Thus we have a fair rather than a fête.

As such, we have to make a bit more of an effort. Rustic amusements such as chuck-the-wellie would just seem out of place amongst the grandeur of a climbing wall and vintage chair-o-plane rides and, gasp, a fire engine. (The fire engine appears twice on the official programme of events. First, we pause for its entrance, then the band plays a bit more, and then, we have a designated time slot to admire it.) Faced with such excitement the wine bar has chosen to shut its doors for the day. The memories of last year’s deluge of punters asking to use their facilities and the unseemly smells wafting in from the cricket team’s barbecue stand were just too much.

Personally, I think they’re overreacting. It reminds me of the response of Notting Hill’s posher residents to that other great British summer event, the Notting Hill Carnival. Many West London home owners board up their stucco terraces and flee the city while the rest of London floods in for three days of food, floats, and Red Stripe induced fights. More than a few of these Notting Hill refugees will be heading for the retreat of their weekend homes in the Cotswolds where they may happen upon the quaint charms of a local fête. Should they arrive at our Charter Fair next weekend they will no doubt be disappointed to find such charms are not to be enjoyed over a glass of rosé .