When I started this blog some time at least a year ago, my first idea was to find a space for my travel writing which would enable my friends and family to keep in touch if they so chose, rather than me bombarding them with impersonal emails they didn't really want to get, particularly if written from far away shores and sunny places. I know what it feels like on a drioch and windy day to get emails from trips around Burma, and I do keep them for reading when I feel less pished off with the weather (Sorry V, I know I asked for them, and very keen to read them some time very soon!).

I also meant to find a space for making my academic writing available for a handful of people who may be interested in reading them. Not assuming anyone would be mind you. No illusions there, but better than not sharing them.

Then I came across other pieces of writing in cupboards (read: hard disks) and I added them on. Only then did I get into reading blogs, and realising the beauty of chit chat, the joy of reading a alternative journalism and political blogs, as well as expat blogs. So I started to post regularly about whatever took my fancy.

I knew very well from the start that the greatest thing about blogs is that it's your own personal space for better or worse. I knew about the dangers of exposing yourself and treaded lightly on that side, keeping it sort of, but not entirely anonymous. You can in fact find out my name on this site. I also loved the initially small civiblog community and still read some of the blogs on it regularly. I was also aware that most blogs are either single issue based or very personal, and mine was a combination, which wouldn't attrack a massive readership nor lots of comments.

It never came easy to me to blog about personalish stuff on the same site which also blogs about asylum issues - but I also know that friends far away from me do sometimes read my blog, and I don't get the time to phone regularly or even email as much as I would like. And when it comes down to it, it's a fairer representation of who I am. So this space IS both personal and public, it is both for my friends and total strangers interested in the issues that catch my eye.

Now, a political comment I made on a political based blog was responded to not with anything to do with my comment, but a reference to my personal situation. While I greet the fact that someone went to the trouble of reading my blog, and it is well possible that no offence or badwill was intended, indeed, the intention may have been entirely friendly, yet I feel ridiculed. Ridiculed that my comment was not worthy of being responded to on a contents basis. Ridiculted because I share personal stuff that others writing political or issue based blogs may not. Ridiculed that my writing is insignificant, rubbish and cuold be done without.

Suddenly it dawns on me that even blogging on a site with hardly any readers at all, I am putting myself forward for a kind of attention which I have always dreaded and loathed. For a good few days I struggled to decide whether to ignore it or confront it. I've done neither, but it keeps nagging. I'm probably paranoid, but so be it.

And I simply don't have a decent ending for this post. 

Digging between yellow and blue,
the smell of soil, the itches of spring
Winter winds gusting one last time among
apple blossoms waiting to spring into bloom
And all the while songs whirl through the head,
of emotions unbottled by a beautiful soul.
Wishing I could hear my mother sing just once again.



Still, I'm running late, and don't really have time for sentimental poetry. Sorry. See ya

Writing on the dirt of a white van this morning: "the rest of the 50 million are in HERE!" (note to all non brits: police across the country are hunting for 53 million pounds stolen from somewhere, the biggest theft ever, they found only a few grand so far) 

An inarticulate pub acquaintenance, willing to buy anyone five drinks if they only spoke to him, unable to communicate verbally, while his gestures were ambiguous to say the least, suddenly proclaims crystal clear "One day I'm gonna get my daddy's croft back. One day. One day." I toasted to that. Saddest thing was he knew he was a sad character.

Snow sprinkled east cost hills, skating ducks on Queens Park pond, among half submerged traffic cones held by the ice. A slalom course for the almost grown cygnets.

That's my bit of poetry for the day. not. Enjoy the rest of the sunshine, the rain will be knocking on our roofs soon again.

The NTS does not have a building to call its own, and has turned this weakness into a major strength. It's a simple idea really, with far reaching implications. The company strives to be inclusive and not to have a centre, in order to best account for the diversity of Scotland, but also to reach the people where they are, rather than ask the people to come to where the NTS is. Unlike any other national institution, NTS attempts not to be based in the central belt of Scotland where about 80% of the population lives, but to include the very rural and remote parts, as well as the Highlands and Islands.

The first production, "Home" is conceptually spot on as far as these ambitions are concerned. It consists of 10 different pieces of innovative theatre, all presented in a location which is not a theatre, in 10 different locations from Shetland and Stornoway to Glasgow. Thematically, they all explore the theme of home, but linked to the locality of performance, thus ensuring that a diverse exploration of what home means is achieved. A very fitting theme for the launch it appears. It has received a lot of attention, even before the staging of the shows.

Unfortunately though, I can only be at the Glasgow performance, and so everything I say is necessarily limited to this tenth of the project. I was excited by the idea that the performance would take place in one of the landmark tower blocks of Glasgow, 25 Soutra Place in Cranhill, Easterhouse. This is an area which suffers multiple deprivation, and the tower blocks have been home to mainly asylum seekers since 2000. It's a place I would not visit at dusk, so putting on a show outdoors in front of the tower block, with the action inside being filmed and presented to the audience on a screen, was daring in itself. A fabulous idea, and a massive spectacle of using seven flats, abseiling cameramen, massive lightening and sound systems, as well as a cast ranging from Billy Boyd of Hobbit fame to local youth theatre groups.

So, did it meet the expectations? The spectacle was amazing, it had to be said. And wee Tom (aged 5) didn't take his eyes off. The wind and cold were almost unbearable though, and the late start and longer duration of the play made the audience truly suffer. It was probably one of the coldest nights of the year, and the strong winds are always worse at the high rise buildings. It was hard to concentrate on the play, hard to understand what was said as the wind blew the voices about, in spite of amplification. The performance was visually stunning, the use of music gave it speed and linkage. What didn't work so well was the acting. Maybe it was due to a crossover between theatre and film - while the actors were in theatre like spaces, their acting was brought to us on screen, resembling more TV or film. The acting style was more theatrical though and as a consequence, slightly overdone. The scenes were all very short and didn't allow for character development, but I don't think that was something the play attempted to focus on anyway.

Thematically, "home" was explored through the relationship of two brothers and the relationship of the younger brother to his dead father. Mum, granny and ex girlfriends played parts as well, as did daddy's urn of ashes. Personal issues of identity and conflict were framed by surveillance state actions, half linking in with the current terrorism bill, cctv and the loss of civil liberties in the name of national security. Iraq featured heavily too, but in a slightly generalised way, as did nuclear power and its potential of being used as a deadly weapon. The surveillance theme worked well to an extent, as the tower block was in fact surveilled by the cameramen and us for the duration of the performance. However, it was too weak and too general a context to reach the realm of social criticism, and both the themes of Iraq and uranium lost any relevance to our times and place by being transformed into generic issues of leaving home and fictitious ideas respectively. The only moment of transcendence was the turning of tables against the MI5 kidnappers by the children of the tower block, in an act of defiance and reclaiming of their home, which was a hopeful and empowering end to the show.

I had expected that the location would also have an effect on the people portrayed in the play, but although one of the characters was suposedly from Iraq, there was no mention of asylum seekers. Similarly, the use of a general Scottish accent clashed with the location. It would have been more suitable to use Glaswegian dialect, anchoring the play both by language and character selection in 25 Soutra Place, Cranhill. The  most interesting conversation, which brought up contaminated soil on which the audience now stood, and the transformation of the old canal into the M8 motorway just next to us hinted at the possibilities of the play, had it had more length, depth and not been limited by the sheer spectacle of the performance. There's great potential, truely innovative ideas, and I look forward to future productions.

I still don't have a Christmas tree. Sometimes these things matter.

I'm hunting for one that's alive and potted, even though I haven't got the faintest what to do with it after Christmas. All the ones I find are dead. So dead that their needles almost come in a separate bag, if the netting didn't hold them in place until they are transferred into the boot.  I remember my old car, a boot full of old pine needles because they liked it so much there, nothing could convince them to move. How did they get there? Well, traditionally, in the early days of December, Germans in Scotland head for the Scottish pine forests to cut a few twigs of pine, in an effort to transform them into decorated bunches and candle displays. Like giant hamsters, they make their burrows cosy for winter. Sometimes these Gamsters get greedy and steal too many twigs, which then sometimes live in the car boot without a suitable sale, and simply become part of the furniture.

Interestingly, our hamster Chomsky is very keen on the current advent wreath. I haven't quite figured out if he considers it to be potential food or bedding for his house.

I'm gonna be incredibly unethical now and head to Asda over the hill, I'm sure that they'll have all kinds of trees.

Sometimes I wonder if this world is losing its sanity altogether, for sweet nothing but tiny amounts of money.

I've been trying for the past week to juggle responsibilites at work, meeting up with friends and colleagues before Christmas, lobbying and initiating policy reviews, and at least appear to be unstressed and cheerie, while inwardly panicking about Christmas presents and sending cards and save the date announcements, as well as the way the world is going in general. I've managed to stay calm, even if my daily sleep dosage has dropped to unchartered territories. But these two incidents take the biscuit:

First, ...   more »

I think I'm going to panic.

I don't have all my Christmas presents yet, which doesn't sound too bad on 12 Dec but with spending Christmas between two countries, it's disaster.

I don't have a Christmas tree. Not essential? Well, I've never had my own, and this year, I do want one. Because it's the first year I spend Christmas away from my parents, and I feel guilty, bad, uneasy, a monster, a cruel and uncaring daughter who's letting down her dad and condemns him to utter loneliness on the day that should really be about being all together as a family etc. Somehow I think the tree would make everything all right, the pain of being split between two countries, two families, two circles of friends, the people I love. But every time I stand in front of a tree longing to buy it, it doesn't fit on my bike.  

I want to see all my friends before Christmas. Some are almost already away to other countries, other are having lovely meetings. Problem: no time for making and writing cards, making nice presents and even less time for all those hated household chores. No time for baking cookies. I love cookie dough.

There are too many demos to go to, one for the right of asylum seekers to work, one against dawn raids, two events in a week for Amnesty, plus the usual meetings, which are now competing with work Christmas dinners. All of this in 10 days.

I haven't been at my PHP class for two weeks. I didn't have a clue before and surely won't have one now. I really have so much to do, should I just skive?

I'm starting a training course on teaching Adult Literacies and Numeracy in January, plus a course on PC maintenance, and a language school has asked me to do another evening class. All is important to me, but I can't do it all.

Gangland violence and vandalism, the effects on communities of drugs, alcohol and despair in Glasgow, the ever more restrictive asylum legislation as well as the inhuman face of immigration are doing my head in. At work, I see myself forced to campaign for better funding to get relevant ESOL provision established. It's like knocking your  head in against the four walls of a box room, you try to get out on all four sides, but your head is more likely to get smashed to jelly than the four walls you're trying to get through.

Tom Harris MP has given up on me - sent me a leaflet to come to his surgery, while he's now having to face the Scottish Voluntary Sector for his remarks that the Scottish Executive should review its funding policy for Positive Action in Housing, a voluntary sector, Black and Minority Ethnic, housing organisation who also took the lead in the campaign against dawn raids. It's rightly caused an outcry because funders should not determine the policies and activities of a voluntary organisation, so the SCVO is on his back now - makes Dr Steffi look less important so no more annoying letters before Christmas. I wonder, shall I send him a card?

I'm also getting married. Strangely, I'm not really panicking about that, although I thought I would by now.

I feel like someone has taken my brain and put it into a tumble drier. I can't think straight, make mistakes, forget stuff. Am I losing it? Probably not. Just the usual story of trying to juggle work, commitments, family life and personal space. Nothing special, just another heart attack candidate.

... let me tell you of something beautiful for a change.

It's funny how sometimes a simple story can be so true to the human spirit and move you so much. I love literature and after ploughing my way through a book which eventually I gave up (a very rare thing to happen), I started to read Anne Donovan's Buddha Da. I'd come across it while working in a book shop. For four weeks I helped out as a sales assistant in a university book shop, after completing my PhD, while teaching in real life, and job hunting for something more meaningful than my previous job of teaching undergraduates German (which incidentally I liked a lot). Some fancy notion in my head told me I might want to run my own bookshop. Because I like literature so much. So the ad at the university library came like a sign, the ideal opportunity to try it out, work in a bookshop for four weeks, no strings attached, for minimum wage. To cut a long story short, it was boring, the job consisted of working at the till, or stacking books, or doing sweet nothing. In the lunch break though, the staff all read books. I liked that. And we got a discount on books, not the same as the permanent staff, but still. In the times of few customers I browsed the small literature section and got intrigued by two books, Buddha Da and Seahorse. I bought Buddha Da and it's been lying about until recently, when I realised that the author was going to read for our Amnesty Group. Great opportunity to read it at last.

It's a very private story, of a father, a mother and a 13 year old daughter, who take turns in telling the story. It's all in Scots, and usually that to me means hands off because as a non native English speaker, it's usually a recipe for taking all enjoyment out of reading. Not this time, I suffered with the three people, with the Dad's exploration of spirituality and his aspiration of becoming a better person, Mum's desperation at the resulting estrangement of her husband, the separation, the daughter in the middle of it, finding her own life, Mum finding another aspect to herself too, and everyone learning equally from one another to come out the stronger and more mature from crisis. Lots of humanity, lots of spirit, lots of laughter, tears, anger, hope. I was mesmerised with the story, but it wasn't really the story as such that mattered, but the journey undertaken by the three people at it's centre, how it made them grow. I wish every book could be like this.

In the bookshop, where I deposited my dream of my own second hand foreign language/travel literature bookshop behind the stacks of law volumes, I met people whom I would otherwise not have met. I worked as a student at the age of 33, going out with my colleagues for Friday night pints and clubbing. Looking much younger, the day I answered the question about my age a bombshell dropped on my temporary colleagues. I sometimes wonder what they thought I was up to, but I thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of underpaid, no responsibility work. I didn't enjoy the work, but the space it left to focus and enjoy the times you didn't work, the hour of reading at lunchtime, the pub and fun after 5pm. Now, I love my work but it takes over my life. I read so much less. I wouldn't want to change it though, working in a bookshop was good for a short while only. 

At the reading for our Amnesty Group, Anne Donovan selected a story for us told from the perspective of another teanager, who discovers glitter glue at a time when her father is dying of asbestosis. A dear friend, who spent his lifetime campaigning for justice, made the campaign to compensate those who died from asbestosis his last battle. He won it, but didn't win the battle his heart gave him. He passed away in April. I couldn't stop thinking of Ian when I heard the story, with his wife sitting right behind me. He too loved literature, and he was an indefatigable campaigner for those whose rights were taken by those in power. His learning and vigour was inspirational, and he didn't lose this mental vigour even as his physical strength packed in. Maybe I'll post one of his poems here to honour him, so far I felt it wasn't the right place, but maybe it is after all.

Yesterday, as I was carrying my bike up the railway stairs after cycling through the rain, close to home, I saw an elderly woman leaving her house all wrapped up against the rain. Like some significant coincidence, we smiled in the rain and started the ritualistic conversation about the weather. Just that, we both knew, yesterday was not a day to complain, even about floods, incessant rain, the misery of the mist: "Mustn't grumble," she said "with what's happening in the world right now,"  "we don't have a right to, do we?" I finished her sentence. She nodded gravely and I almost cried thinking of Pakistan/India/Afghanistan and Mexico/Guatemala. Then she gave me a spirited smile: "But we would love to moan anyway!" and we parted.

Today, as I was carrrying my bike up the railway stairs after cycling home through the glistening sunshine, close to home, I saw her leave her house again, all smiles: "and now we want to have more of it!" "And I'm sure we will!" I tuned in, a bright smile on both our faces, echoing the sunshine after the deluge.