A large, sinister bat the colour of despair just flew past my kitchen window in the direction of Westminster. The bat, obviously, was Theresa May.
It’s Friday evening, 6pm in April, and therefore still light, and I know there was no actual bat, so it seems I have started to hallucinate again. It tends to happen when I am very tired in a deeply worn out sort of way. During my final chronically under-slept year of school, I spent my afternoons playing badminton and my evenings practising music for hours and hours, and only after bedtime would I sit down to do my homework, which took twice as long as it should have, because I was so tired. As I sat at my desk in a pool of yellow light, when everyone else was asleep and the witching hour had come and gone, a small black cat would walk past my window into the night. My room was on the second floor, and the cat would stalk elegantly upon the night air, exactly once per evening, and then vanish. I used to look forward to its visits, and kept my window open. Only once was I slightly alarmed, and that was because instead of my little cat, a strange man walked past me quite suddenly. But he didn’t stop or look into my window, and I didn’t see him again.
I’m not sure why Theresa May has decided to visit me tonight, outside my kitchen window on the fourth floor, as I was doing the washing up. The window faces north-west, and we are south. I can see poor Big Ben wrapped in his scaffolding cast, Victoria Tower at the end of the Palace of Westminster, the twin turrets of the Abbey just beyond, and the London Eye on the river and the BT tower northwards, which disappear when the morning fog rolls in. I’m surprised that the prime minister hasn’t anything better to do, although it’s questionable as to whether hypocritically asking the same questions over and over again and receiving the same answers, while denying we the people any further say in the matter, is more worthwhile than her being a bat.
I can smell the chaos and confusion drifting over the river towards our kitchen, like a unwholesome farty stench. The window casement doesn’t shut properly, and the south-westerly wind sometimes blows the frame open so that when I come home in the evenings the flat is cold and full of Westminsterial pandemonium.
I feel worn out. I’m not under-slept; I’m much better at time management than I was at school. Bedtime is generally 10pm these days. But I’ve been working hard, and I haven’t been away properly for months. I can see the stress of Brexit and the effects of a feculent government on people’s faces, and feel it in my own. I have been dreaming of travelling, of the comforting ritual of packing my bags, of 4am departures, of long-haul flights with enforced relaxation.
I remember flying from Palmerston North to Auckland when I travelled to New Zealand in 2014. I didn’t have to put any of my luggage through the scanner. When I flew into Christchurch from Singapore I was asked not if I was a communist or a terrorist, but if I had been camping within the last two weeks. They wanted to inspect my boots. I turned them over, and there was a small cake of red Cambodian earth clinging to the tread. The friendly immigration man became very stern with me and told me to clean them. I suppose that will all change now, after the Christchurch mosque attack - the relatively innocent Kiwi way of travel that has already been lost to the rest of the world. What sort of person attacks a city which literally built itself up again after the 2011 earthquake, with a shopping mall made of shipping containers and a cathedral of cardboard?
In early 2018 on my last afternoon in Hanoi I passed a woman on the street selling quails’ eggs. I decided to take some with me to eat at the gate, and asked for some in Vietnamese. The woman looked very surprised but I presumed that was because I was a faranji speaking her language. She selected twelve beautifully speckled eggs, but instead of handing them over, disappeared with them down a narrow alleyway. I waited for some time, wondering if she was going to return. Her neighbouring sellers took a great interest in the proceedings, and laughed at me. I told them I was waiting for eggs, and they seemed as surprised as the egg woman. At last she came back, with the warm eggs in a bag and a little baggie full of fish sauce tied with an elastic band. I set off happily for the airport.
Once I was through security and at the gate, I settled down for my snack. Carefully untying the baggie of fish sauce, I reached for an egg, and squeezed the end to break the shell. To my surprise, a red and yellow spurt gushed out onto my trouser leg. That was unlucky, I thought - that egg must have been a bit undercooked. I tried another. It, too, spurted with some violence. I looked closer. The goo was a mixture of blood and something unmentionable. Panicked now, I tried one egg after another. They were all the same: bloody little foetuses all exploding in a gooey mess. I was horrified. I gathered it all up, flung it in the bin, and rushed to the loo to wash my hands and trousers of foetal matter. I suppose my Vietnamese hadn’t been good enough to distinguish between a tasty snack and a foetal egg (but in my defence, this is how much I did learn).
I remember flying home from Bologna after going to Italian language school in the summer of 2015. I studied so hard and spoke to so many people that in a fortnight I leaped from elementary to being able to spontaneously converse (I don’t use the term ‘fluent’ because it makes less sense the more you learn; because the more you learn the more you realise you have yet to learn; therefore fluency is an ungraspable mirage). I worry that I’ve failed myself; that I’ve forgotten all my Italian and Vietnamese and French and music. I don’t have as much energy as I did at school so that I could stay up into the night to get everything done. In Bologna, I had arrived at the airport too early, and found my flight was delayed, so I checked in my bag and walked out of the terminal to the river. It was July, and baking hot, so I took off my clothes and went for a swim and a sunbathe. Afterwards I found a bar and had a few aperitivi. I didn’t want to leave Bologna and so wasn’t exactly trying to rush back, but I didn’t end up missing my flight after all that. I had a basin-wash in a cubicle back at the terminal, because the river water had been a bit cloudy, and I boarded the plane with Italian in my head and sunlight on my skin.
Since I’ve been writing, Theresa May hasn’t returned. I hope she doesn’t plan to make regular appearances like my small cat once did. If that happens I really shall leave the country on a long-haul flight.
 |
| Not a culinary inspiration. Get thee out of my kitchen. |
I’m not sure why Theresa May has decided to visit me tonight, outside my kitchen window on the fourth floor, as I was doing the washing up. The window faces north-west, and we are south. I can see poor Big Ben wrapped in his scaffolding cast, Victoria Tower at the end of the Palace of Westminster, the twin turrets of the Abbey just beyond, and the London Eye on the river and the BT tower northwards, which disappear when the morning fog rolls in. I’m surprised that the prime minister hasn’t anything better to do, although it’s questionable as to whether hypocritically asking the same questions over and over again and receiving the same answers, while denying we the people any further say in the matter, is more worthwhile than her being a bat.
I can smell the chaos and confusion drifting over the river towards our kitchen, like a unwholesome farty stench. The window casement doesn’t shut properly, and the south-westerly wind sometimes blows the frame open so that when I come home in the evenings the flat is cold and full of Westminsterial pandemonium.
I feel worn out. I’m not under-slept; I’m much better at time management than I was at school. Bedtime is generally 10pm these days. But I’ve been working hard, and I haven’t been away properly for months. I can see the stress of Brexit and the effects of a feculent government on people’s faces, and feel it in my own. I have been dreaming of travelling, of the comforting ritual of packing my bags, of 4am departures, of long-haul flights with enforced relaxation.
 |
| The cardboard cathedral, Christchurch 2014 |
In early 2018 on my last afternoon in Hanoi I passed a woman on the street selling quails’ eggs. I decided to take some with me to eat at the gate, and asked for some in Vietnamese. The woman looked very surprised but I presumed that was because I was a faranji speaking her language. She selected twelve beautifully speckled eggs, but instead of handing them over, disappeared with them down a narrow alleyway. I waited for some time, wondering if she was going to return. Her neighbouring sellers took a great interest in the proceedings, and laughed at me. I told them I was waiting for eggs, and they seemed as surprised as the egg woman. At last she came back, with the warm eggs in a bag and a little baggie full of fish sauce tied with an elastic band. I set off happily for the airport.
Once I was through security and at the gate, I settled down for my snack. Carefully untying the baggie of fish sauce, I reached for an egg, and squeezed the end to break the shell. To my surprise, a red and yellow spurt gushed out onto my trouser leg. That was unlucky, I thought - that egg must have been a bit undercooked. I tried another. It, too, spurted with some violence. I looked closer. The goo was a mixture of blood and something unmentionable. Panicked now, I tried one egg after another. They were all the same: bloody little foetuses all exploding in a gooey mess. I was horrified. I gathered it all up, flung it in the bin, and rushed to the loo to wash my hands and trousers of foetal matter. I suppose my Vietnamese hadn’t been good enough to distinguish between a tasty snack and a foetal egg (but in my defence, this is how much I did learn).
I remember flying home from Bologna after going to Italian language school in the summer of 2015. I studied so hard and spoke to so many people that in a fortnight I leaped from elementary to being able to spontaneously converse (I don’t use the term ‘fluent’ because it makes less sense the more you learn; because the more you learn the more you realise you have yet to learn; therefore fluency is an ungraspable mirage). I worry that I’ve failed myself; that I’ve forgotten all my Italian and Vietnamese and French and music. I don’t have as much energy as I did at school so that I could stay up into the night to get everything done. In Bologna, I had arrived at the airport too early, and found my flight was delayed, so I checked in my bag and walked out of the terminal to the river. It was July, and baking hot, so I took off my clothes and went for a swim and a sunbathe. Afterwards I found a bar and had a few aperitivi. I didn’t want to leave Bologna and so wasn’t exactly trying to rush back, but I didn’t end up missing my flight after all that. I had a basin-wash in a cubicle back at the terminal, because the river water had been a bit cloudy, and I boarded the plane with Italian in my head and sunlight on my skin.
Since I’ve been writing, Theresa May hasn’t returned. I hope she doesn’t plan to make regular appearances like my small cat once did. If that happens I really shall leave the country on a long-haul flight.
______
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