Retro gismo flashback

My previous post got me thinking about having lived through the dawn of this digital age ... cue fuzzy flashback...

I was first in my class to have a calculator and when I started work (as a mere child) in the early 80s computer programs were loaded manually from reels of tape with holes in. The 'computer' was actually just a terminal linked by a modem to the bank's national computer centre. I worked there on the staff help desk after panic set in when they introduced terminals with screens!  The actual computers took whole rooms to house the sort of memory you now get in the average mobile phone.

(An avant garde friend had an early mobile phone as big as his head - and that was pretty big! When he went to the bar we'd run out to the telephone box and call him to ask for crisps.)

Our home's first remote control device was for a video recorder, but was attached by a lead! I used to carry around a cassette recorder (pictured above) before the Sony Walkman, and can vividly remember the first time I heard a CD - Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega.

Apart from a brief foray with a Commodore 64 and flirtation with an Amstrad wordprocessor, I first saw a home PC in about 1990, but as late as 1995 at the local newspaper we sent stories via an Olivetti keyboard and modem. At the printer, stories were quite literally 'cut' and 'pasted' onto mockups and the lines between them were put on manually using teeny tiny rolls of sticky tape with a line down the middle.

By 1996 I had a  PC (a 256 with 4MB memory) and an email address - but I only knew 2 other people with emails! You couldn't imagine in those days that one day you'd own something like an iPad. It is not only music player and recorder, calculator, word processor, camera, means of communication, publishing device and video player. It's also camera, movie studio, orchestra, art studio, reference library and GPS.  I've just been using Facetime (Skype for iPads) to talk to a friend working in Azerbaijan. And it used to take 6 months for a letter to reach my missionary uncle in deepest Congo but he has a satellite powered laptop now and I can wave to him on Google Earth... up to a point.

Care to share some of your 'old tech' stories - what was your most exciting new gadget in the 'old days'?

Half a fish finger

My brother is a lawyer. He's big in mediation. Who'd have thought those interminable verbal battles with a troublesome little sister would hone the skills for alternative dispute resolution? It makes me proud.

My brother recently mentioned he'd been at a legal conference where participants were asked to come up with examples of a grudge. He chose the half a fish finger story.

Mum was always scrupulously fair - equal shares for both of us. Is there anything as precisely measured as the piece of cake halved under her King Solomon-like 'one of you cuts it, the other chooses' principle? Her system of social justice has had repercussions in both our lives. I have, for example, never considered myself inferior by reason of gender. But both of us then arrived fresh-faced in adulthood with unreasonable expectations that life would continue in the same spirit of equality and fair play.

In retrospect it perhaps wasn't as fair as it seemed - my brother was two years older than me, and bigger. He probably could have done with a bigger share. But still, when mum gave him an extra fish finger one day (I was about ten) I was incensed. And I never forgot.

My final words on so many subsequent arguments were: '...and half a fish finger!' For years, decades, I held it up as an example of hideous unfairness, persecution, favouritism... and probably the main reason that he ended up at an Oxbridge college and became a proper professional person and I... well, I didn't.

Although, two of my poems are circulating within family law circles - check out 'Weapons' on The Mediation Centre website - so I'm there in spirit... and they said at his conference that mine was a 'perfect example of a grudge'.

... unless you have a better one?

Time Travel - ahhh, it takes you back

I need to go back in time for this... I was going to post this just before the Doctor Who series finale, but then I missed bits and ended up watching it all on iPlayer, so in my reality we haven't got to the end yet... and we're looking forward to a heatwave... and I am all the characters in a fictitious version of somebody else's life.

Confused? You may find Army of Dave's Guide to Time Travel useful.

I rarely know exactly what's going on in this sort of programme as I spend most of the time muttering darkly about anomalies in the plot. I've enjoyed the re-invention of the Doctor so I should swerve around the plot holes (they're nowhere near as bad as the dreadful latest Torchwood... don't start me on that). It's all tosh after all... and yet I still have unsettling memories of the old Doctor Who, especially that episode where giant slugs squeezed through mines eating people. Urgh.

But anyway - here's what I wanted to share - Bill Bailey's Belgian jazz version of the Doctor Who theme tune... "c'est lui, dans la nuit... Docteur ...Qui!" I heard this when he first did it and have been quoting it to people for eons so was delighted to find it on YouTube. Enjoy...

Out of the Blue

I've scheduled this post to be published while I'm away for the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I wanted to share this link to: 'Out of the Blue' - a poem/film written by one of my favourite poets Simon Armitage and performed her by the excellent Rufus Sewell as a British office worker in one of the twin towers. It's in four parts on YouTube and about half an hour in total but well worth sitting through, or even just dipping into.

Excerpt from '10'
...
We are making our calls.
They are tightropes, strung

from the end of the phone
to a place called home
so our words can escape,

our voices trapeze
for mile after mile
or in my case traverse

the width of the sea.
My beautiful wife,
sit down in the chair,

put the phone to your ear.
Let me say.
Let me hear.

We are spinning a web.
But such delicate threads,
the links so brittle,

too little, too late.
Not one can save us
or bear our weight.

© Simon Armitage

I was coming home from Greece the day it happened. The taxi driver from the airport was babbling about the end of the world but I thought he was a bit mad or something. I went to a supermarket to get bread and milk and noticed a crowd in the electronics section. I saw the image and thought it must be some new disaster movie. It takes a while to sink in.

Where were you?

Excerpt from '13'

what false alarm can be trusted again?
What case or bag can be left unclaimed?
What flight can be sure to steer its course?
What building can claim to own its form?
...
What future can promise to keep the faith?

Everything changed. Nothing is safe.

© Simon Armitage

Tweets from the ex

I was very disappointed to learn that my ex-husband has stood down from being an independent councillor in his current home town (not Wirral).

I was looking forward to the possibilities, as he rose in politics, to cause him some future embarrassment after he (perhaps foolishly) started following me on Twitter a while ago - as discussed in my 'Look Who's Stalking' post. I followed him back - without ever directly communicating - and watched... and waited.

I can't explain how I came to marry someone who couldn't spell and had really dodgy syntax, but I've been enjoying his tweets. Here are some of my favourites:

@___MP Hope this is the petition at M__, my wife works in W___ Rd in a sandwich shop and it puts people off their food and worse.

(Has she tried a paper bag?)

Pleased to see the move to have dead animal carcasses moved in sealed containers. Would certainly help people of M___.

Can't believe what I am seeing two old chaps standing on the A50 smoking just prior to Stanley Mathews Way. Unbelievable

(What will these people do next?)

We had another meeting meeting this afternoon at the (cont)

(Those 'meeting' meetings are the worst... wonder if they had a pre-meeting meeting meeting?_

More ASB issues in O____ last night fruit thrown at residents windows some names have been given.

(apple... orange... kumquat)

Not yet set in stone but a proposal to save 30 million may include loosing 700 jobs within the council from across directorates.

(release the jobs!!)

Had tea now going to spend some time with little man and have a game of SWAT on PS2. Prior to reading full Council papers again for tomorrow

(this probably isn't funny to anyone else, but when I was growing up 'little man' was what my mum called by brother's willy)

Anyway, following his tweets, I did learn something - maybe. Either he is still the consummate self-publicist, instinctively using new social media to appear to be a pillar of the community, a champion of the rights of young people and local residents, indeed a low-level superhero to the people... or he actually is all of those things. I'd like to believe the latter. It's possible.

See also: Another Anniversary

20 years later - a Desert Storm diary

Diary excerpt:

Thursday 17 January 1991, Israel

At 3.30 a van drew up outside, the lights shining into my room. There was a hammering at Rachel’s door first. It took a few minutes to wake her and I lay there collecting my thoughts. I clutched Mosheleh’s hand very tightly: “I think something’s happened.”

“What?”

“Did you hear all those airplanes?” For hours I'd lain awake listening to waves and waves of them flying overhead. I thought he'd been asleep.

“Yes. I heard them.” He said heard like 'hear' with a 'd' on the end.

Outside was Danny with a gun and a gas mask. Rachel stood behind him in green elephant pajamas, with a large grin: “America started bombing Iraq at 1.30. It’s started.”
Danny said: “Here’s your gas mask, open it, keep it with you." And was gone.

We all went back to Moshe's with our ominous cardboard boxes and instructions in four languages on how to save our own lives - which mainly involves stabbing yourself in the leg with a syringe. They'd said weeks ago that they'd only give them to volunteers if things got really serious. We saw no-one else as we crossed the kibbutz - it was strangely calm.

Mosheleh made us tea, translated the news anchorman’s jokes, helped us check the contents of our boxes, and stroked my hair when I snuggled up to him. He went off to work at 6.30 but was back soon - a Saturday had been declared. We watched TV for hours, until we knew Bush’s speech word for word, had seen dozens of repeats of footage of the first plane to return, interviews with Kuwaiti refugees, civil defense reminders of emergency procedures, and CNN bulletins which frustratingly started in English and drowned out by the Hebrew interpreter.

At breakfast there was a curious atmosphere of camaraderie; jokes were cracked across the room, people who hadn’t spoken for years shared a word. Now I understood the blitz spirit they talk about - the shared fears breaking down the usual barriers.

And what a fine thing to do on this sunny pseudo-Saturday - while we waited to know if we were going to be spared - than to bake cookies? He didn’t need to look up the recipe and talked about his country, kneeding and rubbling as he spoke.

Mosheleh said: “You want to be with me, this is where I am. You want to know Israel. This is how we live.”

I watched and listened in rapture. I felt so much love for him, his philosophy, his gentle shrug at the enormity of the problem. I was still glad to be there, despite everything. My heart lurched when I thought about how much I would miss him if I went away. Was I already caught?

Lunch was crap – as though the cooks had not expected us to live to see it. Afterwards we locked the door and made love. On TV it said the worst of the danger was past, Iraq's airforce destroyed. Rachel confessed vague disappointment not to have seen just one bomb (at a reasonable distance and one that didn’t harm anyone). It was the best kind of adventure – one that felt dangerous but was really safe.

Friday 18th January 1991

The first air-raid...

Notes:
17 January 1991 was the date of the first air strikes of the Gulf War began - an operation called Desert Storm.

I was a kibbutz volunteer for the majority of the time between September 1990 - December 1993. A Ladybird book changed my life tells why I went there, and Kibbutz Volunteer gives a brief history of my time in both kibbutzim.

My 2010 Highlights

I always get a bit contemplative this time of year. I suddenly cease to be any fun at parties, preferring to dwell on the year past and

The ten best things that happened to me this year:

1. I got a job as a library assistant. It's the sort of job I'd have liked on leaving school. If that had happened I'd probably still be there and there's no counting the adventures I wouldn't have had. But it's kind of nice to be doing it now - far less stressful than some of my other recent incarnations!

2. You! I started writing this blog last winter, have had lots of unexpected fun and interaction with great fellow-bloggers through venturing into blogland and celebrating my 100th post!

3. Coming second in THREE poetry slams - Liverpool Most Romantic Poet, Liverpool Glam Slam, and the far less glamorous Morton Arms Poetry Competition

4. Learning to cope with the anxiety which has affected me badly over the last few years. From having a panic attack during a yoga relaxation session back in February to...

5. ...celebrating my 200th live poetry performance a few weeks ago (since my first open mic in 2003)

6. A very enjoyable fortnight in Madeira!

7. Lovely short breaks in The Lake District and Prague

8. Earning a total of £287 from writing/performing... *sigh*...must try harder.

9. Many visits to Scotland. Not for nice reasons, but it was good to get to know it a bit better.

10. Arriving at the turn of this year better equipped than at the turn of the last - materially (better gadgets etc) but also emotionally.

What have been the highlights of 2011 for YOU?

OK, Let it STOP Snowing Now!

Where I live, you can go for years without a dusting, a flurry, or even a frost!

But I've just been making a list of how many times - and where - I've been snowed on during the last few years.

March 2009 - My first proper snow (alright ice) sighting for years and was too much fun NOT to mention - heli-hiking on Fox Glacier, NZ (of which more in a supplemental post to come).

April 2009 - Unexpected blizzard whilst staying in the Mt Cook YHA - unseasonably early (equivalent of early October!). The 2nd picture is near neighbouring Lake Tekapo.

May 2009 - Patagonia. OK, winter in Patagonia we weren't expecting a heatwave. Torres del Paine, Perito Moreno Glacier (3rd pic), and Ushuaia were all quite chilly.

January 2010 - snowed in at home! (4th pic) This never happens.

January 2010 - snowed in in Scotland - twice!

February 2010 - snowed in in Bury. A walking weekend (note absence of the words 'exotic', 'luxury' or 'pampering') turned into a chilly knee-deep stumble in a desperate bid to escape.

March 2010 - Scotland (again). 2-storey mounds of snow outside Tesco in Keith (could have been worse - mounds of snow outside Keith in Tesco)

* there may have been a bit of summer here *

November 2010 - snowed in in Scotland. I mean really snowed in. Read this post.

November 2010 - snowed in in Prague (bottom pic)

December 2010 - snowed in at home again. It is starting to thaw... but the year ain't over yet!

It's just a good job I have a range of cold-weather head-gear you will not fully appreciate from these pictures alone.

I was a Magician's Assistant

Not knowing how to describe myself in just a few words -as Twitter requires -I leave my description as: 'I used to be a magician's assistant but, after years of therapy, rarely appear out of an empty box these days.

This may sound like something made up to amuse but it is, of course,  absolutely true.

I was twelve. He was a workmate of my father's - a member of the Magic Circle - and he started a small (very small) 'School of Magic' in his basement every Sunday morning. It was mainly pubescent girls, and his wife would make us costumes - we'd dress as mini showgirls or circus animals for his magic shows. 

Ahhh the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd... the vicious little teeth of Mr Wuffles, the dwarf white rabbit!

There was one trick where a dog 'magically' appeared out of an empty box - which was then shown to be empty again. Then me and another girl jumped out too with our special 'Ta daaaa!' faces on. 

It was quite a tight squeeze in the empty box with my friend and the dog.

I know what you're thinking. It does sound a bit pervy when I consider it now - but it was all in innocence and lots of fun. I was 'Young Magician of the Year' in 1977 - admittedly in a local competition they ran themselves which only had four entrants. I themed my act around outer space, wore deely-bopper antennae and a silver lame bodkin - 'sadly' there are no pictures - and did my tricks in rhyming couplets:

I'm a Magician, come from Mars I do magic on the stars.

(Oddly, I didn't win any poetry prizes.)

Perhaps, in retrospect, my parents were concerned - my dad came with me on Sundays and pretty soon he was learning the tricks of the trade and knocking up 'magic boxes' in the shed. So then I started being his 'glamorous' assistant at house parties for posh families and Christmas bashes for the kids of local factory workers. 

It was hard work and a bit scary - wondering if they would be well behaved and enjoy it.  By now I was a glowering, spotty, teenager - and when I had my hair cut off it took away my special powers. After all, it was all done with mirrors.

I suspect we were both very glad when he stopped. 

Update: I just found more pictures: The 'empty' box we used to appear out of and me in my lion costume.  Easily as dodgy!

Look who's stalking!

Anyway. Like I said at the end of this post, I know exactly where my ex-husband is. The only reason I know this is that, after no sightings for fifteen years, he just started following me on Twitter. 

If there's one thing the worldwide web is brilliant for - it allows a person to stalk their ex from the comfort of their own home. (I've always said I was too lazy to be a stalker - they'd have to come round here.)  They don't have to lurk around Liscard precinct and harangue people any more, or accost people's perfectly innocent colleagues in the toilets at parties. 

So I started following him back.

"A warm welcome to my new followers. Glad to know your [sic] following my work." He tweeted, not to me but in general - there have been no tweets between us. 

The only other contact in those intervening years is when he made this comment out of the blue on this video of me on YouTube : 'God, she'd put weight on since I was married to her, and she isn't any funnier.' I'll come back to this in a minute. (Oh, and when his sister emailed me to threaten legal action when I described him as a tosser on my website... although, in my defence, his hobby is bus-spotting.)

If you think about it, following me on Twitter was a rash move on his part. He is a public figure of sorts (hence the email from his sister, I suppose) and raising your head above the parapets of cyberspace gives your enemies a powerful weapon against you. An intelligent, creative person with experience in PR (for example) and an ax to grind could do a lot of damage to someone in his position.

We have a tendency to demonise the other party when relationships turn out badly and I hold up my hands here. But if your ex is a demon, then by default your original judgement was flawed - you chose a demon (or allowed them to choose you) - and hence you can no longer trust your own judgement. This doesn't help anyone - it exacerbates damage already sustained and tarnishes future relationships. Hate is an almost entirely terrible thing and it harms the hater more than the hatee.

But you know what? He wasn't a demon. I take these little glimpses into his life now, and recognise certain things about him: he has found a place in the world where he is doing some good, harnessing that strong desire he always had (but did not always listen to) to be the hero and turning his energies towards actually help people. 

So if you're reading this, don't worry. I'm not going to name, shame, blame or play games. But can I just say that if I've put weight on I'd just like to point out...

Before (left)

...and after (right).

That's all I have to say on the subject.

Another Anniversary

Yesterday was (would have been) my Silver Wedding Anniversary.

I know, I know - I was a child bride.  I'd have put a better picture here, but this is all I have: he got custody of the wedding pics - which is particularly galling when it was my mum and dad who paid for them. Moral: if you're going to leave your house and husband, plan ahead, book a van, go when he's not around and take all your stuff with you. There's only so much you can fit into a carrier bag and you know he'll change the locks.

In my defence, I ought to mention that I left in a hurry. There was a broken down door involved, and a hammer raised (to 'fix' me, not the door). 

So anyway, here's my anniversary poem that I have been wheeling out about this time over the last few years,...

Anniversary

I was an end of season
bargain basement bride
and I thought you looked dashing
in your best suit – blue grey
(those were the days before
I knew I had the choice,
that some materials are sensual, soft
and others rough, always rubbing
you up the wrong way).

Who'd have thought it?
A quarter of a century
since you took this woman
to be your wife.
And where are you today
you bastard?

We tripped back to mum's 
for the hired-in buffet – too posh –
and everyone nervous of
the silverware and frills, none of us
knowing what things were:
I'd never had pavlova, never
even been to a wedding.
I'd do things differently 
with hindsight – a bigger party,
cheap and cheerful, everyone I knew –
oh, and I wouldn't 
have married you.

Wherever you are*, just be grateful
for the miserable years we were spared
and some things we think are 'forever'
turn out to be short-lived affairs.

*Actually, I know exactly where he is... to be continued

Kibbutz Volunteer

This is a year of anniversaries for me, so forgive me being nostalgic

It's 20 years ago this week that I first went to Israel.  As explained in an earlier post, the idea was planted in my head by this early Ladbybird book. I had been working in a bank for ten years, and it seemed that it would take drastic action to whisk me from that particular warm bosom of security. About to be transferred from a lucrative secondment back to my branch, I decided to withdraw myself from the bank and See The World.

I resigned in August 1990 and signed up at Kibbutz Representatives in Manchester to volunteer in a kibbutz for 3 months.

Also during August, a little-known despot called Saddam Hussein from a hitherto unremarked country called Iraq decided to invade Kuwait. Not the best time to be embarking on a visit to the Middle East, perhaps, but everyone agreed that it would 'all blow over quickly'.

So early in September myself and five strangers turned up at Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv in the middle of the night, climbed willingly into the van of two swarthy, gun-toting chaps and allowed them to drive us into the semi-desert between Jerusalem and Hebron.

Over the course of the next three years (it's a long story!) I had many amazing experiences and met extraordinary people: I lived on two different kibbutzim, working in a kitchen, glue factory, baby house. I slept in the open in the desert, climbed Masada, stayed in a convent in the City of David. I fell off a mountain. I fell in love. I got drunk, stoned (real stones), bombed (real bombs).  I might mention these from time to time, but all I'm doing here is marking the occasion. 

Shalom.

Pictures

Top is Kibbutz Beit Guvrin from a distance and me and Rachel with the gas masks we were issued.

Above is the kitchen in Kibbutz Alonim - we had the biggest pans of soup I've ever seen!

Left is the volunteers' compound at Beit Guvrin

Below left is the BG Bond glue factory - considerably different work to the orange picking that Ladybird book had lead me to expect!  And Below right is the pool at Alonim. 

What's my missionary position?

I have a missionary uncle. They're quite rare.

I had him for lunch yesterday. Not 'had him for lunch' in the sense that indigenous people had missionaries for lunch in the past. I mean we went to Wetherspoons for a Sunday roast.

When he was a small child he met an elderly missionary with a tremendous beard and decided that he wanted a beard just like it. He joined a seminary at 14 and when he became a priest he went to Africa - Uganda, Kenya and, for the last 20? 30? years the Congo (formerly Zaire, and before that the Belgian Congo). He has never, to my knowledge, had a beard, that must be just how they 'hook' you.

I was brought up as a Catholic but... well, let's just say I have 'issues' re the anomalies, intolerance and bigotry of that institution*. Big issues. I have, however, a certain respect for a man who has spent his entire adult life working in impoverished, ailing, war-torn African countries, as often in the capacity of social worker as spiritual guide. 

In the early years he had virtually no contact with his family for years on end. More recently he has seen local children return as boy-soldiers to steal food. He once rescued a bishop by flinging him into a river. He's also heavily involved in work to protect the rights of local people and the natural environment they depend on, liaising between interested parties in several different languages. In short, he's a good guy.

The local language is Lingala. Years ago he taught me a Lingala saying:

'Monoko mbele, makola ndunda.'  

Translation: Your tongue is a sword but your legs are vegetables. 

I think this is about people who talk the talk but do not walk the walk - people who go to church on Sundays and 'amen' to everything but wouldn't lift a finger to help someone in need.

My uncle has followed his faith. He's 70 now and wants to continue. He struggles to cover his 'parish' (the size of Wales) on a motorbike because of arthritis in his hands so now he has an appeal out to raise money for a four wheel drive. 

Moral dilemma: I despise a religious institution which flaunts its riches while its most devout believers starve in the developing world. You'd think they would at least furnish their own clerics with the means to do their work. In principle I don't agree with donating money to his appeal, but he's my uncle, he's family, he's a good guy - and he says things aren't as clear-cut as that. 

So...

* He is diplomatic enough not to ask about my own views on God - a sort of 'don't ask, don't tell' agreement between us.

That certainly taught me a lesson!

I read on the Keeping You Awake blog several months ago what the author had learned from different jobs over the years.

It got me thinking - every role we take on teaches us something about the world, ourselves - well, mine have certainly taught me a lesson or two! Then I forgot about it for a while. But when I wrote my recent post on what I learned from being a special constable, I returned to the question.

So I thought I'd share a list of what I've learned from where I've worked. 

• From the bank I learned my alphabet. I knew it already, of course, but years of filing cheques and statements into name order made it more instinctive, innate. 
• From my secondment to a help desk in another area, I learned never to assume anything – especially the level of intelligence of the average person. I also learned that a lone young woman living in a hotel is rarely in want of company.  
• From the kibbutz I learnt many things: In the baby house there I learned just how fierce and protective a mother's instinct is... I mean, I drop one baby* and they go crazy!  In the kitchen,  the art of cutting. In the communal dining room, that nothing ever stays clean. 
• From working on a local newspaper I learned that not everything is gospel, that being in print makes mad people's words assume a gravitas they don't deserve. 
• From self-employment?  That my mum was right about that ‘you are a hat in a shop window’ thing and that I am inclined to put too low a price on myself.  Also, that people take advantage of that – even nice people.  Maybe they don't even know they're doing it. 
• From the voluntary sector?  That one person can move mountains, but it's bloody hard work and there'll be lots of people standing around saying ‘Great idea to move mountains! They should be moved!’ but then don't help and are merely critical of how you're moving them and where to. Also, that some mountains just might as well stay where they are. 
• From running training courses for tenants groups, that people, even quite unpromising ones, sometimes have the capacity to go and move their own mountains when someone finally gives them a bit of encouragement and a few tools.
• From giving grants?  That, depending on who you're giving it to – the same sum of money is one person's peanuts and another's pool winnings. 
• From public sector?  That everyone's too busy covering their backs and following (or writing) the rules to ever, ever do something merely because it would make the world a better place.
• And from the library? Erm, that'd be the alphabet... again.
• What have I learned from writing?  That you don't always measure or understand what you've learned, what you know and how you feel about it all until you put it into words.

So what have YOU learned from what you have done?

* No babies were permanently hurt and there were mitigating circumstances.

 

I'm no Sherlock!

I've just been watching the new BBC series of Sherlock Holmes, set in modern times. I do like the texting and the way he has a GPS in his head, although I deduced it was the cabbie in the first one ages before he did.

Crime's a massive genre for the fiction writer. They always tell you to 'write what you know' but unless you're planning on turning into a cat burglar or serial killer (you know who you are) the only way to experience a life of crime is on the right side of the law.

This was half of my thinking when I became a Special Constable (the other half being quite genuine altruism). It was the early eighties, Dixon of Dock Green hadn't long been off the air, and I'd try anything once.

Here's me in my uniform. I was, as you see, a mere child who knew no better.

Special Constables* are unpaid volunteers who have identical powers as regular police officers, despite minimal training. You're supposed to accompany a 'real' officer but all the local regulars hated the Specials (and they were a dodgy bunch - this is, after all, where I met my ex-husband) so we went out in pairs.

I did it for less than 3 years, but that time did include the Toxteth Riots - which I wasn't at but we had to provide cover for. (Some honeymoon that turned out to be!)

It was an insight into police work at its most basic level. I learned the following:

• people do actually hurl abuse at you just because of the uniform
• sometimes the emergency services put their sirens so the chips don't get cold on the way back to the station
• it isn't like on Dixon of Dock Green
• ladies have smaller truncheons than men
• I really wouldn't like to be a police officer (and not just because of the truncheons)
• I'm never really surprised any more by incidents like the Ian Tomlinson one.

I wasn't very successful in my role. The others were gagging for something to kick off but I was scared every time I went out. Some of my colleagues just wanted to arrest as many people as they could, but I always tried to defuse situations. I only ever arrested one person and they were unconscious. I stopped various youths causing annoyance, assisted with the flow of traffic and I may have prevented thousands of burglaries by my mere presence. But if all this makes me sound like I did ok, I probably ought to mention that I was also inadvertently responsible for a small fire in the bridewell. Which is frowned upon.

Deduction, I can do. But what I'm particularly bad at, and one of the many, many reasons I could never be Sherlock Holmes, is observation. Even if I was knocked down by a car I wouldn't notice the make. I could talk to you for hours and have no idea later what you had worn. Also - I'm appalling at giving directions. There is no GPS in my head. Not even an A-Z. All I have is a vague picture of the street I'm in and the next one, then it gets all fuzzy. It's all I need - I just about keep one step ahead of myself. But ask me to tell you the way to somewhere beyond this mini-radius and you're doomed!

So if I were to write a crime novel, and if it included a heroic police officer, fearless, eagle-eyed, not lost at all and with a very large truncheon, you'd have to deduce that I was making it all up - a work of fiction.

Melon Entree, my dear Watson.

* p.s. Charles Dickens was a special constable in Liverpool

A Ladybird Book Changed My Life

"Books can be dangerous.  The best ones should be labeled: 'This could change your life.'"  - Helen Exley

Did a book you read when you were young ever send you in an unlikely direction?

When I was about seven or eight I had amongst my Ladybird books a couple of slim volumes from their 'Travel Adventure' series. I think the central premise was a businessman father who took his children on some of his business trips. 

I don't know why it attracted me so much, but there was one picture in 'Flight Six - The Holy Land' that stuck in mind so strongly I can still see it. The travellers visited a kibbutz and the picture was of pretty young women wearing dirndl skirts and picking oranges. The sun shone and everybody was smiling. My imagination was seized.

So when, years later, I finally escaped from A High Street Bank, where else was I going to head? It probably would never have happened if I hadn't read the book. I wouldn't have known what a kibbutz was and it would have sounded much dodgier (this was 1990 - just before Saddam Hussein started lobbing missiles at Israel to retaliate for the first Desert Storm) if I hadn't had this mental image of sun, oranges and, yes, dirndl skirts.

I think this photo of me must have been taken at more or less the same spot as the illustration on the cover. It's the southern end of the Sea of Galilee with Jordan in the distance. No dirndl skirt or sheep, but you have to admit they're pretty whacky shorts. 

It certainly was an adventure - the rest of my which, I'll save for another time.

What books have changed your life?

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." - Harold Bloom