The Lost Tree Trunk

My grandfather was the solid trunk of our family's tree, and the shock of losing him several years ago left us all emotionally stranded, like pollarded sycamore branches, scattered around on the ground, foundationless, and incapable of sustaining ourselves.

You see, he was the one who first sunk roots into the unfamiliar and often unfriendly ground in this country. The one who supplied all our needs, and the one who stood firm and sheltered us when strong winds and tragedy tried to blow us down. He created a tough, loving shell around us all, and tried to protect us from the world. A fortress into which we frequently fled when danger threatened.

When my younger sister was killed by a car at the age of 11, and my mother was left paralysed with grief, it was my grandfather who dragged her back and forced her to carry on. It was my grandfather's constant presence in our lives that prevented my father's worst excesses, and which saved us from financial crisis when he died of cancer, at a relatively young age, leaving my mother with his debts.

Although not always able to change our lives, it was his strength of character and ability to cope with even the worst of situations which taught us to shut out the things we could not deal with or found too distressing.

But without realising it, his fierce desire to protect us and keep us safe also made us weak and incapable of surviving without him. Like a hedgehog, once our protective prickles were gone, we were left vulnerable to attack, and without the means or experience to defend ourselves. Because we were always sure of his guidance or intervention, we never developed the tools to face the difficult side of life or to stand up for ourselves.

My grandfather was a strong, gentle, loving man devoted to his family, and together with my grandmother, created a family environment free from any form of danger. When something or someone threatened us from outside 'the family', rather than confront it, we retreated inside our protective walls. Standing up for ourselves was never something we considered. Instead, we learned to slam the door and wait for our attackers to get bored and leave.

We learned many valuable lessons from my grandfather. The ability to love and accept love, the value of family and friendship, and being able to ignore the difficulties in life and focus on the positive aspects have all been huge advantages. But there is one lesson learned from my grandfather which , in hindsight, has proved disastrous.

Defence is not always the best form of attack.

Writing a blog

I'm just about to start a new blog about things we did as kids. I'm never entirely sure where each one is going, they seem to take on an energy all their own. Sometimes I write what I initially intended to write, and sometimes it goes off in a completely different direction.

The ones about my family and childhood were quite unexpected, but ended up being some of my favourites. I originally began with the intention of simply writing something light-hearted and funny about growing up in Essex. It's seemed an easy subject to take on, because there is no shortage of material. My Essex childhood on the estuary is absolutely jam-packed full of wonderfully horrific characters with big hearts, tatoos, white high heels, and determination of steel.

But the problem with scratching the surface is that you just never know what you're going to find.

Writing about my past just seemed to lead automatically, and also quite naturally, back to my parent's and grandparent's past. Although my mum's over-loving parents seemed to be the more interesting, my father's under-loving, Victorian parents also deserve their own blog at some point.

I didn't realise how much the possibility, or maybe I should say certainty, of losing my grandmother and her link to that area of our past was affecting me. The Long Journey Home probably isn't the best thing I've written, but it was the one which was most difficult to write because I suddenly realised that the loss of my grandmother meant the loss of that whole part of our family history.

Losing things which are impossible to replace is something that only ever seems to become apparent when it's too late. The fact that my grandparents chose not to speak very much about their past was always perfectly normal, and where the rest of my family were genuinely not interested, I didn't ask because I thought they had every right not to talk about it. But I'm suddenly faced with the possibility that it's too late, the horse has bolted, and I wish I had stood up and said 'I want to know, it's important to know'. With my grandparent's passing, that means that two more family histories will have vanished, no more Sztajnbergs (grandad), no more Voightlanders (nanny). What didn't go up in smoke, will just have fizzled out because nobody talked about it.

It's funny how certain things make us realise the importance (or at least relevance) of others.

But I suppose that's what writing a blog is about, the opportunity to write about what is important or relevant to me, without worrying about whether it's of any interest to anybody else.

Assimilation, as easy as falling off a branch!

My Polish-born, Jewish grandparents worked tirelessly when they first arrived, to become what they thought was 'as British as roast beef' (or roost beefs, as my nanny called it). A simple change of name, and Yehuda and Rivka Sztajnberg became Andrew and Elizabeth (Betty) Flowers. My grandfather's brother Moishele, their only relative in Britain, became George Flowers at the same time.

Who knows why they chose those names, the logic of immigrants is unfathomable. George and Elizabeth were the names of the much-loved King and Queen at the time, and Andrew was the name of the patron saint of Scotland, where my grandparents first started their new life. But the important thing was that they were names that they hoped 'British people' could look at without frowning at their foreign-ness and total unpronouncability. Strange combinations of Z's, K's, and I's, and multi-consonant pile-ups were like a public announcement telling people 'We're not from here'. And at that time in Britain, if you weren't 'from here', then you fell into the single other category of 'FOREIGN'. Regardless of whether you were black or white, Christian or Jew, a king or a peasant, when people spoke about you, they would inevitably incorporate one of the following suffixes:

1) He's a very nice man, although he is foreign.

2) You'd never know from looking at them that they were foreign, would you.

3) I expect they do that where they come from.

4) He's not English, but he's still a very nice man.

So, my grandparents set out on their mission. Objective: Total Anglicisation!

Despite living (rather illogically) in a predominantly Jewish area, surrounded by numerous 'landsmen', they worked hard to change languages and master English. My grandfather did quite a good job, but for my grandmother, it wasn't quite as easy. Even after seventy years in Britain, she never did learn the art of 'crisp consonants', and words beginning with the letter 'D' always sounded as if she had lost the end of her tongue.

Although nobody in my family (particularly my grandmother) ever seemed to notice her constant 'linguistic free-styling', her errors were truly epic, especially when it came to colloquial phrases.

Something considered unimportant was 'like water off a pig's back', and things were often 'on the tip of her mouth'. As alike as chalk and cheese translated as 'they're the same as coal and roses', and greedy people were very likely to 'take the eyes from your head' or 'the tongue from a blind man's mouth'. And instead of being given a piece of her mind when we were bad, we were given (rather unpleasantly) a 'piece of her tongue'.

She created memorable, if slightly un-natural pairs, such as nuts & screws, night & dark, and cats & frogs. And almost everything which wasn't supposed to have a definite article seemed to acquire one. We would never think of talking about 'the cancer', and 'the swimming' was something good for the 'peace and mind'.

But somehow, despite my grandparents lifetime of linguistic struggles, to me they never seemed anything other than the most English of English.

Considered Good-looking

Casual sex is most definitely not everyone's cup of tea. It really depends on whether you can draw a line between kissy-kissy, catch-me, catch-me romance (romantic love) and plain old tooth-rattling, eye-popping shagging, and whether you can rationalise the need in your life for each, or both.

I'm a firm believer in the overall benefit of a good, healthy, nutritious diet with all the right food groups. But I also think that once in a while, eight pints of Heineken, a large chicken doner, and a bag of candy floss is good for your spirit. You may regret the after-effects the next day, but you never regret just 'how fucking good' it felt at the time.

Just to avoid any confusion over what I understand by the term 'casual' sex. For me, casual sex is any act where at least one of the participants are sucked or penetrated in any of their knob-sized holes by someone they met (in the flesh) less than a couple of hours ago. Online chatting doesn't count as 'meeting' unless you talk about something other than who is going to get what, how hard, in which hole, and how many times.

So, okay, let's cut to the chase. I've had plenty of casual sex. It's not sleazy (unless you want it to be), it's not cheap (unless you make it), it doesn't ruin you forever (unless you're a fifteen year-old Iranian girl), and it's not illegal (unless you're a fifteen year-old Iranian boy). So, unless you're one of these people who can't 'do it' unless it's on snowy-white, Egyptian-cotton sheets smelling of new-born lambs with the boy you've been seeing since you were twelve, then there really is no down-side to casual sex.

What is essential (in addition to almost no gag-reflex and a good supply of sexsersories..............you know, lube, condoms, ball-gags, a sling...........), is the ability to not be easily disappointed.

It doesn't matter how hard you try or how careful you are, at some point you're going to run into the guy who didn't have a picture to exchange. He's not at his own computer, he's in an Internet cafe, in the office, wife's around, or the most frightening one. ..................... 'I'm using my children's computer' .......................to trawl for casual gay sex! But he'll be the one who catches you when you're horny and gagging for a shag, or just catches your imagination. You have trust his description of himself, even if that description includes the dangerous phrase 'I'm considered good-looking'. Being a seasoned casual-sexer, this should immediately send alarm bells ringing and red lights flashing...................'Considered good-looking by who? Quasimodo The Fucking Bell-ringer?' Should be the reply. Because too many times, my Mister 'Considered Good-looking' has turned up at the front door looking distinctly like Mister 'Ageing Married Troll Who's Let Himself Go'. Or what about Mister 'Balding Clerk with Bad Knob Hygiene and a Paunch'?

Love may be blind, and so, apparently, are a good number of my fellow casual-sexers! So, a word of advice to save us all a whole lot of disappointment and embarrassment. If you're not 100% sure whether you actually are good-looking or not, check it out and ask someone for fuck's sake!

Somewhere In between

'Ay Channaleh, why so late? We're all waiting for you again!' my grandmother said tersely as my mother arrived that morning. But Channah is just one of the many long-lost ghosts from my grandmother's past who now light her journey home. Channaleh was my grandmother's dearly-loved, youngest sister who died shortly after the German invasion of my grandmother's hometown of Lvov in 1941, kicked to death by a gang of teen-aged Ukrainian militia let lose on the unprotected Jewish population.

'It's not Channaleh mum, it's Carole' my mother replied crossly. But although her voice may have been cross, I know that her heart breaks every time my grandmother fails to recognise her or my auntie Junie. Every time she slips back into the silent world that excludes the two daughters who lovingly and selflessly care for her. The daughters who arrive at the nursing home in which my grandmother lives, four days out of every seven, without complaint and loaded down with anything they think might make my grandmother's life just slightly more comfortable. They scrub and polish her small, self-contained flat over and over again, rearrange my grandmother's dishevelled and mismatched clothing, and change the incontinence pads that she needs in her newly child-like state. And for no other reason than the fact that my grandmother is their flesh and blood, and as essential to them as breathing. Despite the fact that they never receive a thank you, and are seldom recognised, they lavish their time and love on the frail old woman who did the same for them without question.

'Is that you Mags? Are we going to the shops Mags? Is it time for dinner Mags?'

'Mags, Mags, Mags, all we get now is bloody Mags! If I hear Mags one more time, I swear I'll throttle her' snaps my mother on the rare occasion when the only way to disguise her grief is through anger. But only my grandmother knows who Mags is, and she's oblivious to either my mother's anger or her grief.

To lose the people you love so dearly is hard; but to lose them and yet still have them so close is almost too much to bear.

But as my grandmother would say .............................. 'Di velt iz ful mit tsores' ......................... the world is full of sorrows.