It's Only Fair

Yesterday was a wild day, compounded by a freak sickness which thankfully seems abated today. Though weak, I had to go out to my local high-end grocery store, because they sell the best homemade Jewish-style chicken I know, "Chicken on the pot".

Not only was I sickly, but so were my parents. As they age, it is I who has to assume the responsibilities of the house, which I do with alacrity. It gives me a chance to pay them back just a little, for everything they have done for me in my life.

My parents had allowed me, as a child, to lose myself for hours reading inside my room, under trees along the park, in various hiding places in our home. In turn, I was one of those children who miraculously never gave them trouble and who, equally miraculously, was never punished just to be punished by overly strict parents.

Of course, my father was very strict, all the same.

I was given just one full-hour from the ages of 7 to 16, to watch television. But being essentially fair-minded, he said I could choose whatever programmes I wanted, and could break them up in blocs of 10-15-20 minutes if I so desired.

(In the UK, as you know, we don't always start our programmes on the half-hour, or full hour as in America. Thus I could watch, say, from 9:20 AM to 9:45 and so forth)

To that end, he gave me a little booklet which I needed to fill out -- which I confess, as I grew older, I did so less and less. And as he grew older, he too checked it every night, less and less. Yet, our pact never stopped being in effect. No matter how speedily the teenage years started flying past, I still obeyed him.

He was still My Father, the unquestioned head of our household, the man who, after having worked 16 hour days, came home to kiss his wife, hug his daughter, stick his nose in an enormous medical book for a few hours, then fall asleep to do it all again the next day. Year after year, country after country, this was our home life.

This was almost everything I knew, until I in turn was sent off to boarding school, another well-regimented, absolutely fair-minded institution with quaint little rules, the likes of which I'm convinced, only the British can do truly well.

The key to being strict is being fair, you see.

Consistency. Reasonableness. Duty. And most importantly, the ability to laugh at the pompousness of the whole thing, if only for a moment.

This is our heritage, my birthright, and what my father inculcated in me by example.

For a people who live entirely by ego, but are at pains to make sure everyone knows they don't like it, the British are notable for their fair spirit in rule-making, which only really makes sense to themselves.

When I tear my hair at seeing my old country turning a strange cultural corner, by allowing Shar'ia Courts to exist side-by-side with our venerable legal system (which, really, is our greatest gift to the world), I have to pause and remind myself that they do so, at heart, because they believe the practise to be fair.

The idea is to instill that spirit of fair-play, and hope it'll somehow rub off on the next person -- that's the basis of an entire culture, you see: leading by example.

Of course, the British make a fetish of extinguishing themselves on the altar of fairness.

That's what allows chavs, neds, and each generation's latest group of reprobrates to run around practically unchallenged by ordinary people, and shockingly, even less challenged by authority figures.

Think of this when you see a gang of hooligans inside a train in the Tube, rapping old people on the head, going up and down the aisles, screaming and hollering abuse whilst grown men stare down intently into their newspapers and allow this fracas to happen. This despite that back in the day, at least, absolutely no guns would be involved, and one grown man could easily have dispatched these reedy punks in short order.

Other nationals would see this spectacle and think, "Ah, the British are so weak". Yet others would try to psychoanalyse the situation and say, "Ah, they feel guilty about the working classes [or insert group du jour here]".

It's possible, but I think it unlikely.

We're just a nation of people who hope things sort themselves out.

After all, give people a skeleton of strict rules, add a bit of common sense, plus the ability to shame people with sarcastic panache, and bob's your mother's brother, you have a nation called Britain.

Or indeed, you have a family like mine.

A daughter who, if she doesn't work 16 hours taking care of her family, certainly would be ready to do so in case it were needed. As her father lies in bed, his nose now firmly ensconced in ESPN, he hopes that his increasingly frail body won't be a burden to his family, particularly to his only child. She shouldn't have to take care of him.

Perhaps he has forgotten the most important thing he taught me in life, the thing which others debase for their own ends, raising its spectre when they want to change the world, that poor manipulated word which lies dormant until Man awakens it.

"It's only fair."

Fairness is more than a doctrine to some of us. Within its energetic little letters, lies a promise given by a father to its child.

It's indecent and wrong to use the word to manipulate anything. Our children would never forgive us.

Related

Nostalgia

Rosetta Stoned

Poor old Michael Phelps. Not only has he totally let himself go (noes!), but he was recently outed as a stoner by a South Carolinian snitch who sold the photo to that guttersnipe tabloid, News of the World.



When I was a wee girlie, about 12 or so, I got it into my head that I wanted a huqqah collection.

I even dragged one back from a trip to Turkey, where my mother had performed one of her magic haggling acts at the famous Istanbul souk, to buy me a beauty in blue glass for just a few dollars. You can imagine the sight of a pre-teen girl lugging a bong from an airplane, alongside her two glamourous parents. Try that in post-9/11 airports.

In time, I think I had about 8 of them, which I lined up in my very big girlhood bedroom, next to the princess four poster bed, decked out in Hello Kitty pillows and Pratesi sheets. I had a nightlight which I turned on before sleeping, and I loved to look at the sparkly reflections they cast all over the walls, reds, greens, blues, ambers -- a carousel of iridescence.

I loved those huqqahs, which sadly I lost sight of in my many moves.

The thing of it is, like many many people in this world (far more than popular society would have you believe), I have never actually done any drugs in my life -- including that charming gateway drug, Mary Jane.

Mind you, I probably qualify as a second-hand smoker, like that first snowboarding gold medalist sheepishly claimed once, so I'm leaving myself that out.

But no, in real terms, your humble Sundries blogger is a weed-toking virgin.

This is why Phelps' photo above leaves me completely untouched with either outrage, or approbium. I look at it like others would a vintage car rally. Potentially full of fun, just not my scene.

So I went in search of bong photos which raised more emotion in me, than a gentle shrug of the shoulders. I think I found some beauts!

Let me walk them through with you.



It's the second glance that kills, because the first has you mesmerised. The contrasting textures: that dark wood, the whiteness of the sweeping calf, the matching seafoam green everywhere else just makes this photo leap out at you.

Then you notice her footsie ring (sooo Goa 1996), the pseudo-hippie paint on her feet, not to mention those hip-hugging Pucci pants, just before you ugh loudly at the blue Bic resting on her boob. I mean, at least get a Ronson.



This is what I imagine Claud Rains would look like if the Invisible Man were a stoner.



You know what I hate most about bong photos? That most of the people in these photographs are surely no strangers to the activity -- but almost without exception, they and the people around them look like they're seeing one of the great wonders of all time, for the very first frikkin' time. That look of delight mixed with amazement and near reverence should really only be given when beholding the Sphinx, or a child's smile.

Sillies.

Also, that gal's bra strap is showing. THUNDEROUS DISAPPROVAL.



This is either that girl's father, dragging the embarrassed Chloë Sevigny wannabe for a hit of the bong alongside dear old dad, or one of those school counsellors we all had in high school, who wanted nothing more than to hang around with the kids to show how cool and with-it he was.

And yes, I did take note of the Dolphins hat. Go Fish...



Sorry. I got nothing. It's just a crazily hair-dyed Oregon girl inside a messy kitchen, toking on a bong. You've seen one, you've seen the entire Pacific Northwest.

Anyway, I'm much more interested in her espresso maker in the back. Paging Chickenlittle!



No, it's not Nana McCain. I checked.



I Dream of Jeannie with the long bong hit.

She looks like she's in some kind of trance [edit: oh yeah, it's called "getting high"], and I actually love this photo because it only shows you half of her face. If she were about 20 lbs chubbier, we could assign her Odalisque status, minus the hovering black Sudanese mammy, and the bleeding dove, obviously.

Also, me like the colour of her duvet, though I am saddened to see no hint of Hello Kitty anywhere.



Stop the presses!! This is THE BONG PIC to end all bong pics. There is just so much there.

Okay, I'll go first. Impressed that he has a photo on his wall of Al Capone, and not the requisite one of Che Guevara. But that's about it as far as thumbs uppage goes.

If it's not the boom box with the Jack In The Box antenna fob (don't let Jack die!), it's the Schlitz bottle shading the root beer next to it, not to mention the tawdry awfulness of his graffiti-laden couch. You gotta know they must practise their drawings on it first.

Poor guy, he must live in a studio apartment with at least two other guys who think taking another bong hit will make the rat nest sounds go away.

...there but for the grace of God goes Michael Phelps though. He looks bloody awful in that photo above.

Message to Mike: When you start looking like Ben Roethlisberger even without the bong, it's time to sort yourself out, mate.

Redneck Memories

From the fine folks who brought you the "redneck timeout"...



...comes the "redneck windshield wipers".



Once I had a boyfriend who was from Louisville, Kentucky. He was as smart as a whip, made me laugh, and had an old-fashioned Southern sensibility that melted my heart.

But he had a horrible secret: he was ashamed of his background. No amount of tut-tutting made him feel like he could share certain parts of his life with me.

After much pulling of the arm, however, I convinced me to let me visit the family homestead. Family to me is everything, and I cannot judge or perhaps even love a man fully until I meet his kin.

I arrived in Louisville just a fortnight before the Kentucky Derby (one of my lifelong dreams is to attend the races at Churchill Downs one day), and prepared to meet his 5 older brothers and sister, and most importantly, his parents.

His father was one of those Army drill sergeants who are deadly on parade, but big fluffy marshmallows outside of it. His mother was a sweetheart, who absolutely adored me. I'll never forget how, though my boyfriend was in his 20s, everyone called his mother, "mommy". Meanwhile, his father was "daddy", but said in that unforgettable twang, it was rendered as "deddy".

I was treated like a cross between Priscilla Presley, Mrs. Adolph Rupp and the Queen.

I was very very humbled by their warmth.

Now you may wonder why I am recounting all of this. It's because I was not allowed to go anywhere near their modest home located some miles outside of the "big city". Yep, you guessed it, it was a trailer home.

Try as I might, my silent, upstanding chap would not allow me to go anywhere near his home.

Inside his dad's old car, I was though. It was anything but new, and looked like it was held up by a fair amount of skill on his dad's part, which included homemade repairs.

It was when reading an Instapundit link to the 1969 Dodge Polara (apparently, a great favourite of American coppers) that I was immediately jolted back to this moment in time, when I got to ride inside a vehicle very similar to this car. I never did ask what it was, because honestly, until recently I hadn't a clue about anything car-related. I want to say it was a Dodge Challenger, like my own father had when he first set foot in this country, but I cannot be sure. It was manual, though, and I was impressed by that in the land of the automatic.

But when I read this:

With 375-horsepower, 440-cubic-inch muscle car big block engines and taut heavy-duty suspensions, Polaras inspired awe, fear, and respect.

I did remember the cocooned feeling of raw power, combined with a rather transparent sincerity which seems to be so effortless in this country. It inspires respect.

Not just in your cars, but in your people.

If fossil fuels are a limited commodity, and one day the muscle cars we enjoyed, not just in the 1960s, but now during our very own Golden Age of Escalades and Chrysler 300s, the memories we will have of those cars will be like the Gold Rush oldtimers remembering the smallest nuggets of gold.

No matter how humble a double-wide home, or a rustbucket old car, just remember, they're beyond precious when they only exist in our memories.

Rather like my boyfriend, really.

P.S.: We're not in touch, but as with my other boyfriends, we parted as friends.

Don't You Know There's No Such Thing As Werewooooolves

I remembered a skit from a "Best of Carol Burnett" show -- Tim Conway's own inimitable take on the Paul Henreid cigarette gesture I mentioned in a post below.

Minute 5:00 to 5:15.



I had to watch about four of these eight minute clips to find it, and in doing so, I remembered just how much Carol and her Friends were outstandingly funny. The comic timing, Tim cutting up Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner the toy boy, Vicki Lawrence's younger sis routines (I imagine commenter Ruth Anne Adams in that role to Peggy's Carol), as well as those priceless, and I do mean priceless, take-offs on Norma Desmond.

God, what happened to television like this?

It's not just that Rosie O'Donnell's weird Christmas skit show didn't take off, it's that comic ensemble performances are not even attempted anymore, anywhere on US television. In Living Colour (two snaps up) was the last one that I recall, though that was more Saturday Night Live, than Sid Caesar.

Is it because the talent is all gone?

A Christmas Past

The iconic House & Garden photograph, December 1948, with caption below.



"Prelude to the Christmas party, reserved for sentimental moments"

(Via WIJW? who has, shall we say, a rather modern updated version)

Bolivian Eyes

Scroll down a few posts below, and you'll notice I just mentioned my memories of living in South America.

By the time I was 16, I had packed a memoir-full of stories that would raise your hair on end about my time there. Feeling nostalgic, and reminding myself it's been a while that I haven't blogged like my Reims post, I'll try to amuse you with a shorter memory.

There I was, arriving in La Paz airport with my parents, just a kid but a remarkably well-traveled one for her age.

It was the late 80s, which were not a good time for South America. It was the time of hyperinflation, of food shortages, of coup d'etats, of counter-coup d'etats, of Cindero Luminoso, of martial law, of the daily toll of living in a land where the majority of people were illiterate and worked to the bone for 1 dollar per day in US currency.

We arrive, and go down those steep steps from the plane, surrounded by very uniformed soldiers with bayoneted rifles, some not much bigger than I was and I was fairly small. Their skin tone is a deep dark nutty brown, and I have this unbearable desire welling up inside to run and put my arm on theirs to compare the shades.

It's one of those children things which instinctively I know I shouldn't want to do, so I don't. My parents would be mortified.

My father is carrying the bigger of the two carry on bags, since my mother always manages to sneak in enormous luggage with her on the plane. She's got everything inside, including her roller hair machine. Remember them?



I'm in charge of rolling her hair at night in hotels, and I love twirling her hair (which I babyishly call yellow) over one finger, over and over again.

But father is struggling, and a man kindly comes up to him and motions that he'll shoulder the bigger bag. Dad smiles. I smile. My mother frowns, as ever suspicious of any stranger's charity.

The Customs area is awash with people clamouring to get in. Money is changing hands freely with uniformed personnel, which I take to mean there are fines to be paid for excess baggage. My mother's hair rollers, I suddenly realise, will cost her plenty. My father is now frowning too, even though the kindly stranger is still behind him, still shouldering the bag.

We put our luggage on the long Customs table. My eyes catch sight of the wine-coloured bags all around us, and I notice we're the only ones with Louis Vuitton pieces. That is, except for my father, who is faithful to his sturdy black Samsonites.

The gentleman is now pushing my bags too, even though there is no need for his continued ministrations. I turn briefly to my mother, and I read a signal in her eyes which mothers and daughters can give to each other imperceptibly. "Achtung". Watch him.

Finally, it is our turn, and my father groans when he is told Customs will be charging him extra for the cameras, the watches, the jewelry and yes the hair rollers, which we failed to provide papers for. The stranger motions to the Customs official. After a whispered few seconds, he comes back. The price is U$150. Cash.

Yes, it's a shakedown. A racket. The Customs official and this guy are in cahoots.

They probably split it, with the Customs guy taking the largest share because he's got the uniform, and the other guy is just a spotter. He targets the richest-looking gringos and directs them to their guy or gal in Customs. Since you're treated like dirt if you are not dressed well in a South American airline, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that you will be targeted.

My father pays. What can you do. It's the "law".

But there is a fresh piece of hell in store for me. Little me. Observant little me.

The Customs official says that my vaccination papers are not in order. My father groans. He knows that they are. Another racket. An uniformed person (South Americans love uniformed people, and stamps, and ink pads, and papers, and pens, and all kinds of fluttering documents waved under people's noses with an air of supercilious life or death authority) directs us to a holding pen of a sort.

It looks like a hospital. This isn't good, my mother's eyes tell me.

A lady in a lab coat comes out. She's got two great dark circles under her eyes. I remember her years later with a start, when I'm watching a Jeanne Moreau film.



Her eyes are the darkest shade of brown, but stop well-short of being called black. They look like burnt chestnuts, and are the kindliest eyes I may have ever seen in my life.

(But then, I've often thought brown eyes are infinitely more expressive than light-coloured eyes. It's a fetish I have)

I turn. My mother, I can sense by her expression, is telling me with her eyes that she is a nice lady. She means us well. Somehow...

My father is informed by another doctor that I need to have rubella innoculation, and he argues and argues against it to no avail. It's Bolivian law. No foreigner may enter without his vaccination papers being in order.

Another U$200.

The doctor lady with the lab coat and kindly eyes motions me to enter one of the curtained cubicles. My mother follows me. The lady smiles at this. I smile now too, despite not realising I was to be given a shot. I hate shots. To this day, I hate bloodwork being done on me.

The lady closes the curtain. She rolls up my sleeve. My mother grabs my shoulder. The doctor lady and my mother exchange glances. They hold it. 1. 2. 3. I am between them, directly underneath them looking up as if to some azure sky above.

The doctor lady bends down. She strokes my cheek. And as long as I live, I will never forget what she does next.

She mimics the motion to "shout" with her mouth. SHOUT LOUD. And without needing to be told in words, I know exactly what she means.

She goes through the motions. Her colleagues can hear her ripping the bandaid. Ripping the syringe. Tapping the needle. Again she looks at me, and with her mouth she transforms her visage into Munch's "Scream".



She goes close to my skin with the syringe. NOW! Her eyes say.

I scream with all my might. I scream so well and convincingly that my own mother thinks she's injected me, despite our unspoken pact.

I stop screaming bloody charnel. The doctor lady smiles. We all smile. It's over.

The pantomime is over.

Instinctively, right there and then, I realise this is an one-time thing.

The doctor lady is tired of playing the game with tourists, of fleecing them, of having others in uniform make her betray her Hippocratic oath. The three, no four people counting my waiting, paying father outside, have circumvented a corrupt, and disagreeable system by half-glances, and unspoken agreements.

We've made a mockery out of mockery.

The curtains part, and I rush outside rubbing my arm. No one suspects a thing. It feels wonderful, but at the same time, on the ride to the hotel inside the taxi (a taxi ride that will live just as long in my memory, for its death-defying scariness) I remember the Bolivian doctor lady's eyes, those deep brown pools of sadness and knowledge, and realise something very unsettling:

I became an adult at that exact moment.

For the first time in my life I had played the adult game of pretending that lies were reality, and instead of being upset, people expected you to play your role to the hilt.

I was 12.

Reims

Have you ever gotten a shock of surprise, when reading a particular passage in a book?

It so happens that the current book I am reading, the late Sir Steven Runciman's The Traveller's Alphabet (sadly out of print), was not the book which gave me this start of recognition.

But when he got to the bit about his trip to Roumania, I suddenly remembered this remarkable lady's book of later memoirs, and that very reaction which they produced about a location, at one point, which I had been meaning to tell you about for a long time.

First, let me transcribe the exact passage so you can get into the right mood.

During the famous Versailles Conference, where she played such a dazzling role for her adopted homeland, she was lionised socially, and literally invited everywhere.

One day, in the middle of the treaty-making, she just decided to play tourist, and did what many of us would do -- went to visit one of those enormously grand cathedrals, of which France has an embarrassment of riches.

Namely, Notre-Dame de Reims.

"A moving sight, indeed, that mighty cathedral rising like a ghost of unimaginable beauty from a grey mass of formless ruins.

Because of its many wounds, its lines and angels had become blurred, softened as seen through a veil; its glassless windows paint a tracery of lace against the sky, and, like so many decapitated martyrs, its statues seem frozen with pain.

Yet there the great building stands invincible, having defied the modern means of destruction and with them the spirit of hate. A vision of another age, of a stronger faith, ascending above the surrounding chaos, more sacred than ever because of its mutiliation, more supremely stately because all around it has been laid low, and today the sky is its only vault.

Such it appeared to me that early spring day, when we stood, mute, gazing up at its perfect majesty. Somehow one became speechless or spoke only in whispers."

Ladies and gentlemen, in my short lifetime, I have read hundreds, thousands of books, but never have I read a paragraph which so impressed me for its perfect descriptive powers.

This lady, vainglorious, slightly absurd, and magnificent, had the power to see something as it was, and yet to describe it flawlessly so that at the end, you felt as if you yourself had drunk of that imperial cup in Moscow, had viewed that ravine in Malta, and had quadrilled with Winston Churchill until your clingy dress brought down two partners on the dancefloor with you, by mere conjuring of her pen.

In short, that woman was one hell of a writer.

--

We arrived in Luxembourg's tiny airport, my father, mother and I, via the Bahamas on Icelandic Airways that December morning, ready to make a run to the car rental counter, but first had to pass through the custom's window.

Despite the three of us being "European", it was my newly American citizen mother's passport that the lady behind the guiché fawned over, practically falling over herself to welcome an US citizen to her little land -- an attitude which has forever stayed with me, because it was repeated a dozen times that following month on the continent.

When my dad and I presented our passports next (I was a dependent in his passport, as was the custom in those days), she took a look at that blue UK booklet of travel, and wordlessly, stamped it and bade us no farewell.

Arriving at the car rental office...no counter as thought, but actually a little wooden office located outside the airport...the lady there took one look at us three, and starting speaking in rapid-fire Letzebuergisch, though none of us were Luxembourgers.

Not sure what this baptism of linguistic fire was about, but her surly demeanour was not improved even when we tried German and French, as a courtesy, before my dad opened his mouth and finally said, "Do you speak English?".

The paperwork was still to be done, despite long-standing reservations Telexed from the States (remember Telexes?).

There were International Driver's Licences to produce, on old-fashioned paper with stamps and black-and-white photos, long since gone today.

And again, those passports, since you can't do anything in Europe without documentation up the wazoo, something Americans and British both should be happy their cultures are by nature, against.

Finally, we had our keys to the Opel Kadett in dad's hands, since of course, he drives.

He may have paid for my mother's medical education because as he said, "I don't want to live the next 50 years beside a stupid woman", he may have encouraged me to stay away from the kitchen, and paid for riding lessons when other girls were learning how to do laundry and sweeping up, but he was still macho enough to always insist on being the driver in any car he was in.

He drove.

It was December, and of course, there was snow all over the ground.

Being British, he is a trusting sort, who still never checks what a person behind a counter gives him, because he always assumes the bag will contain exactly what he paid for (to his chagrin, when he arrives with two Big Macs, instead of the Fish sandwich I requested).

He turned on the windshield wipers on the Kadett, and...nothing. He got out of the car, jiggled them, and...nothing.

We were on our way to Paris, with no windshield wipers working, and with snow threatening to bear down on our party of 3.

He turned on the headlights...nothing. This can't be happening!

(My mother immediately blamed the surly Luxembourger woman who obviously "had it in for us", which is a common assumption between most women about each other, by the way)

With no windshield wipers, and no headlights, and a starving child, we rushed from Luxembourg to Metz, then on our way to Nancy when it started to snow.

With mittened hand, my intrepid father cleared the snow from the windshield, as he tried to speed ever faster in the direction of Paris, convinced he could make it before it got really dark.

(Fortunately that American nightmare of coppers pollulating the highways just when you least need them, doesn't really apply on the continent. We were safe from tickets defended in awkward French, as long as we stayed on the highway)

Daylight now was a mass of dark greys, and menacing inky blues.

Whether by design or complete and utter misdirection, we turned into the nearest big town, since we obviously were not going to get to Paris by nightfall.

We three of us, cold, hungry, and lost, were in Reims.

With a child's concept of time and space, the ride might have taken 8 hours or 80 minutes, for all I knew.

And looking at a map today, I have no idea how dad took that exit that led us to Reims, since clearly Nancy is well below it.

Mother was asleep in the front seat, but I was very awake now, having decided that if she were sleeping, I would be on duty as co-pilot for my father, still doing the mitten jig every minute.

The thing with family car trips is that they are not tour guide jaunts, who get announcements in 5 languages like, "Turning your heads, you will now see Reims approaching to your left", whereupon docile tourists in coaches do as they are bid, and suitably enlightened, they open their green Michelin guides to the Reims section.

No.

Dad and I simply, and with expert economy of speech, looked at the passing signs and wondered where we were.

Théâtre this, Republique that, and Musée the other.

A million towns in France are exactly the same, but undaunted, dad kept driving, no doubt on the lookout for a nice, but not too costly hotel to kip down his tribe.

That's when it happened.

Imagine me, a child in warm earmuffs, and a little cute beige Christian Dior coat, leaning over my father's shoulders as he drives, suddenly turning in slow motion (why are unforgettable memories always in slow motion, as if in a dream?) and seeing a long foggy avenue to my right.

In that exact moment, in fact, as dreams tend to be, with perfect timing, the fog lifts slightly and to my right is an enormous edifice, in more shades of grey that I have ever seen in my whole life then, and even now.

Reims Cathedral loomed to the right of our car and thus stunned my father and I into submission, as it had for over 1600 years to families the world over, come to pay their respects.

I prod mother awake.

Years later, she said the sight that she beheld as she opened her eyes was like in a gothic nightmare, all jutting spires, and overly imposing saints staring at her, no, through her very being.





Wow, I am so happy my memory is one of shared awe, not fleeting, devilish terror as hers.

And now I must confess that I love Reims. And I'm very scared of it at the same time.

What was it that Queen Marie said?

"...that mighty cathedral rising like a ghost of unimaginable beauty from a grey mass of formless ruins".

I was seeing it a good 70 years after she had, and yet that description SIMPLY cannot be improved upon.

With fog spiralling around us in the massive square in front of the cathedral, my father held my little gloved hands, approaching to pause to look at the august doors, and their weirdly carvings.

I was a stoic little kid, and would never confess to fright or discomfort, but he must've sensed me quaver through our joined hands as I looked up and up and up to the reliefs of saints in Christian agony.

He hurried me along, and there before us, stood the most enormous cavity of a nave you have ever seen in your life.

When, years later, I read that armies had lodged themselves in that self-same cathedral, including possibly (disreputably) a German ancestor of mine, or two, I understood.

Yes, a child has a memory of bigness that is by its very nature, exaggerated. Anyone who has ever tried to visit their grade school as an adult, will know exactly that feeling, "...was my desk really that small?".

But Reims cathedral defies magnitude.

First, though I've since seen photographs of its interior which shocked me for its brightness, the Reims I knew was as dark as sin, and nearly as welcoming.

I cannot remember the layout exactly, but never will I forget the dazzling statue at the centre of Saint Joan, yes, that Saint Joan, who is not buried there having had her ashes thrown into the Seine, but who we British had selfishly put to death.

But Saint Joan HAD been inside Reims, as she witnessed the fruit of her battles in the coronation of that duplicitous king, Charles VII.

In fact, Reims cathedral for centuries fulfilled the same function Westminster Abbey did in England -- not only the last resting place of the august Elizabeth I, and a slew of other kings, but also the place of their crowning before God.

I have been to both, and I have to say, Reims is the place where even a king can feel humbled (or indeed, a queen), not the dear old spinsterish Abbey.

I am not sure if all parents do this, or it was just mine, or even, if it was the knowledge that we were "just" in a church, for all its jumped up grandiosity, but my parents let me wander all alone for a good 15 minutes.

Tombs passed me by, as I inched my way around the littered chairs in the middle of nave -- which then, as now, I found a little awkwardly-placed.





I saw him.

He must've been middle-aged, but to me he was old. A man wearing a black overcoat, holding a candle in his hand, praying with his lips moving, but in French, so that the sound was like a gushing stream in soft flow.

"Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.
Le Seigneur est avec vous...

(Je vous salue Marie, pleine de grâce...beautiful, just beautiful)

I stood there, transfixed, for seemingly hours.

But even so, I was careful not to be seen by him, conscious that I was intruding into a very private moment, one that fascinated me, because I had never seen my own father in such a position.

Children's ultimate yardstick being all things parental, of course.

And just like that, my parents reappeared. In their eyes I saw my marvel mirrored back at me, so I knew that, veterans of many cathedrals themselves, this was a special one nonetheless.

I turned back, as we left, having yet to learn the lesson of Lot's wife. One last look, one last frisson.

Reims...

Even its very name suffuses me with a chill of majesty that I believe we mortals were bade by God to know as the word "awe".

We went inside our car, and drove now in the darkness, carefully, with hand on the horn.

The streets were empty (and I've been told by many Frenchmen, that Reims at night, is nearly dead), so whatever blessing we had been given inside the cathedral, followed us on our way to our lodging.

Neither my parents nor I recall the name of the ENORMOUS hotel we ultimately found to lay our weary heads, but I do remember one thing about it.

My dad mentioned what a wonderful cathedral her city had, and the concierge lady, who sported a manly blond haircut -- a French Gertrude Stein -- took about 10 minutes to teach him the right pronunciation of said city, with such a gutteral accent, emphasising that nasally sound, that even a German would be proud of.

REIMS!

"Reims"

NON! REIMS!

"Reims?"

REIMS! REIMS!! REIMS!!!

As long as I live, I will never forget Reims' farewell impression on my childish eyes, my tall father towering over this tiny corpulent Frenchwoman, as she schooled him (tired, dishevelled, in need of bed not elocution lessons) as to the correct pronunciation of her town, Reims.

If only Audioblogger were still around. Wouldn't we have fun listening to me saying REIMS! over and over again, just like that lady concierge did over 20 years ago.

And no, I don't ever want to return to Reims again, despite my love for it. Some places do not need a repeat visit. Let them haunt your reveries until all your hairs be white, until you die.

Adieu, Reims.

I Had Me One Of Those

My first non-trike bicycle ever was a sweet pink Schwinn, with a white basket up front, remarkably similar to this South Beach bike.

But mine was infinitely better -- it had cowgirl white tassles on the handlebars!

Sigh. Nostalgia. You know you're getting old when...