Wu Wei

I miss my cat, but perhaps she would miss me more

Die - you can't do that to a cat.

Since what can a cat do

In an empty apartment?

Climb the walls?

Rub up against the furniture?

Nothing seems different here

but nothing is the same.

Nothing's been moved

but there's more space.

And at night-time no lamps are lit.

 

Wislawa Szymborska

quoted from her  obituary in the Economist of 10 February 2012

 

 

Thoughts (and music) for the cold weather

The cold weather was quite a shock last week in Brussels, where rain and grey skies are the usual complaint about the weather.

But for me, a bigger shock was the number of homeless sleeping rough on Rue de la Loi, the main windy street whose buildings house the European Commission.  Of course, we callous Brits with our Anglo-Saxon economics and politics became used, under Thatcher and later, to people sleeping in sleeping bags on cardboard in doorways.  Even "cardboard cities" grew up under railway bridges.  And charities set up extra soup kitchens  in cold weather for them. 

True, I haven't been to Brussels for a long time, so the growth of the homeless sleeping rough near the Commission may have been gradual. But for me it was a shock that here in the heart of Europe, this is what we have already come to, with years of austerity still to come.  Perhaps the only thing to be thankful for, is that the main austerity economies are in the south, so sleeping rough is not exposed to such extremely cold temperatures.

And here is another chilling tale, full of sound and fury, signifying something at least.

I was listening with half an ear to Mezzo this morning, when some ghoulish singing stopped me in my tracks and locked me in front of the TV.  Afterwards I rushed off to google "Cold Song" by Purcell to find out more about this haunting music that sounded like the teeth chattering of the homeless. It was actually Andreas Scholl singing on Mezzo, but this alternative recording by Klaus Nomi in costume is far more shocking and moving.

 

It's from the opera King Arthur by Purcell.  Here are the words:

———- Purcell’s Cold Genius ———–

What power art thou, who from below
Hast made me rise unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow
See’st thou not ( how stiff )2) and wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
I ( can scarcely move or draw my breath )2)
Let me, let me freeze again to death.3)

from Roger Bourland's notes here.  Bourland makes it even more poignant by pointing out that Nomi died  afterwards from Aids related complications, and his gaunt appearance from illness only adds to the music.

Listen and weep.  I would say pray, but to whom?  Such heartless gods in Europe at the moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life's changing (1): Farewell to Oxford

Finally made it out yesterday, leaving Bee to sell the final furniture.  She's off on hols to Albania (don't ask, she has been there once already).  I'm in Georgia for a week, while my worldly goods get to Vilnius, then I finally move into my new apartment, finished or not.  Mostly not.  It's hard to concentrate on more than one home at a time.

So this is really the end of family  living in the same place. After Moscow, Sloph is in Edinburgh interning for as long as she can, and Bee's having a gap year before LSE (fingers crossed for exam results on August 20).  Not that we exactly spent a lot of time in the same home, since I wasn't home much in the last couple of years. 

But now we predict we might not meet again till Christmas (in my new home) so we really are dispersed.

Not sure I will really miss Oxford.  Despite what you might think, most of the people I met were rather narrowminded and not interested in very much life outside Oxford. Consequently I shall miss the Cowley Road with its cosmopolitan life, shops, cafes, restaurants and general eccentricity, more than anything else.

Flushing toilets

This is a surprisingly popular topic among expats. 

For several months I have been having a war with my landlady about the fact that the ballcock in the cistern does not switch off the water flow properly and so the toilet runs continuously.  Apart from the minor inconvenience of noise, this situation is often of no interest in most former Soviet countries.  These days, Eastern Europe is generally billed by meter for water, so they know not to waste it, but not in Georgia. 

I began the battle to get the office toilet fixed after being shamed by my Greek colleague.  We both agreed that it was necessary and so asked our office manager to organise that landlady to do it.  Now in Britain  this problem is usually caused by a faulty washer, a simple piece of rubber seal which needs replacing from time to time.  Of course you can often fix it by reflushing the toilet, since it is one of those irritating intermittent faults that disappear when the plumber appears, and you become even more unpopular for wasting people's time.  In Georgia, it seems more complicated, involving replacement of many more parts, which have to be bought in the bazaar, rather than a well-equipped DIY superstore, so the quality is not guaranteed. 

After various failed appointments by the landlady's plumber, he turned up drunk, but eventually we had a working flush.

Then my home toilet malfunctioned.  My landlady is a very important lady doctor, who has no time to  deal with such mundane activities as the toilet, but does have time to be incredibly rude to my Georgian colleagues who are helping me, as well as time to rush round to collect a vast quantity of dollars every three months to pay for her trips abroad.   So this saga has dragged on and on, (punctuated by the toilet working perfectly every now and then) for about six months, finally with a plumber suggesting she buy a new toilet (at vast expense for his labour). Naturally she didn't want to do that and in any case was too busy to find time.  I gave her an ultimatum to repair it during my last trip abroad.  I came back to find nothing changed, though my office manager said it worked perfectly when he tested it.  Sigh. 

This saga was having no satisfactory outcome until I had a shouting match with her on my mobile phone, while I was in the middle of the street.  This was so undignified, I told her I was not willing to continue discussing it.  This actually had some effect, and I thought it was a good line for use on other occasions in the future.

 I was so pissed off, I spent  most of the rent she was due on some carpets for my new flat.  I realised my contract was coming up for renewal, so we had a showdown when I paid her about half what she was expecting and told her I was moving out.

Suddenly a cake appeared, she spent Saturday morning with the expensive plumber buying me a completely new Finnish toilet (instructions in Lithuanian, very conveniently) and we have all been happy ever since.

I can't believe I have really spent half an hour writing about the toilet flush.

And now there is only the phone to fix.  Working today, who knows tomorrow.

Housing terraces in the UK (Part II)

My second building project was (you saw this coming) another massive housing scheme in the form of three terraces. Built in the innovative London Borough of Camden, it has had a different fate.

Known as Alexandra Road when we built it, it now goes by the name of Rowley Way.







More photos here.

You can see that the white concrete has weathered to grey (oh the tantrums from the architect when the concrete came out slightly pink).

The long, crescent-shaped site is bounded on the south by existing housing, major streets on the east and west and has continuous frontage along the railroad to the north. The desire to control the sound and vibration from the trains was a major consideration in the organization of three parallel rows of dwellings.* Two rows of terraced apartments are aligned along the tracks with the higher 8 story stepped building designed to block the noise of the trains from reaching the interior portion of the site. A lower, 4-story block runs along the other side of a continuous public walkway that serves both terraced rows of buildings. These buildings are designed to open to the south. The third row of building, along the southern edge of the site, parallels another public walkway between this row and the existing earlier buildings of the Ainsworth Estate and defines an open public park between the second and third row of dwellings.

A community center that includes a school, reception center, maintenance facilities and the heating plant*** mark the entrance to the site from London Road to the west and open to the park areas. The lower buildings contain maisonettes with shared access, terraces, and gardens. Maisonettes also occupy the top two levels of the large slab with entrance from a continuous gallery at the 7th floor. The dwellings in the lower floors in this block are flats that are entered from open stairs serving two dwellings per floor. Parking is located beneath the building along the tracks. Poured-in-place concrete is used throughout. Alexandra road received much criticism during and after construction because of enormous cost overruns caused by the complicated construction, unforeseen foundation problems and inflation**. Notes taken from here.

* You can see this housing block as you come into London's Euston Station as it leans back towards the railway. The block nearest the railway is built on rubber pads to remove the vibration. The blocks had something like a 50 year life so I wonder what will happen then, when they fail.
** I am especially proud of the heating plant, designed in the
socialist style to feed the whole site of 500 homes. This must make it
one of the smallest such schemes in the world, and hence not very
economic.

***and a famous exploding sewer. The contractor had to build over the sewer which was in danger of collapsing. It was my job to make an annual walk-through inspection to see whether it was getting worse. Victorian brick sewers are rather interesting to visit. One day there was a freak thunderstorm. It just happened to be the day the contractor had excavated round the sewer. The pressure of the water coming down from Hampstead blew off the top of the sewer and flooded the site. That took quite a time to fix as well.


The building is much admired by (mostly foreign) architects and students make pilgrimages to look at it. I think it is already a protected architectural monument. Articles like "Alexandra Road: the last great social housing project", (Freear, Andrew, AA files, Sept, 1993, pp. 35-46) are written about it.

I haven't been back for a long time and have always been faintly embarrassed by my association with another of these big concrete blocks.

So I was quite pleased to find that people actually like living there, or at least one or two as this extract from the website shows:

A Peaceful Life

In the early 1970's I used to use Alexander Road as a short cut from Kilburn to Swiss Cottage and remember wondering how the unfortunate people living in those imposing but decrepit Victorian mansions survived the winters. They weren't wealthy enough to seal up the windows, how did they manage to heat their huge homes?

Ten years later, my council lottery number came up and Rowley Way was one of the offers. I was amazed to see what the council had done with Alexander Road. By now I had two toddlers and another baby on the way, so my choice was heavily influenced by this fact.I had turned down two other apparently much more desirable flats on the grounds that they did not meet my most basic requirements: safety for the children, personal comfort, freedom and adequate privacy.

I was looking for a home that didn't imprison; where we could sit outside without leaving home; I needed to feel my children were safe being outdoors, walking to the shops unaccompanied for instance. I was also keen not to be isolated, as so often happens to young mothers, and yearned to be part of a vibrant mixed community. Being a "foreigner", I was not constrained by classic English snobberies and preconceptions about public housing and viewed the estate with an open mind.

My first impression of Rowley Way remains vivid. The earthy red brick walk way and the dazzling white concrete structures had such a jolly Mediteranean feel. It was immediately possible to visualize it's potential as London's equivalent of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. As soon as you turn off the busy Abbey Road into the estate, it is calm and quiet.This seems a rare luxury so close to central London.

My 3 bed-roomed maisonette is flooded with light from every available source. Huge picture windows look out over a peaceful oasis of greenery and mature trees. Many a time I have sat and been simply uplifted by this lush view of nature or been stunned by the beauty of the sun burnishing the windows opposite with a copper glow. My utilitarian kitchen looks directly onto the brick walkway, which is particularly child friendly, and being pedestrian only (officially that is!) the children play safely there, within watching and shouting distance.

Older children have the playgrounds, which are overlooked by everywhere, thus allowing one to join a community of women with children who effortlessly watch over each others offspring from the comfort of their own homes.

I particularly love the simple clean lines of the flats; the sense of airy space despite their small size and low ceilings. I've seen interiors as diverse as Laura Ashley busy to Bauhaus austere, working equally well in these flats — they are well suited to transformation to personal taste. The walls are so thick that neighbors' noise rarely penetrates. One of the very best features, in my opinion, is the ingenious heating system, which, in the winter, is complete. No icy corners and draughty hallways, and no ugly radiators in sight.

I think, ultimately, the genius of the design lies in the subtle way it supports family life, and a community spirit without forcing it down our throats. It's as easy to be part of the community as it is to stay aloof.

For example, family units are constructed in such a way that only two families are forced, as it were, to be in extremely close proximity (sharing a basement stairwell, in our case). This makes it easier to deal with spatial conflicts.

I've heard people comment on "how inhuman" Rowley Way appears to them. I can only say that my experiences in over 20 years of living in Rowley Way have mostly been positive and very human. Whether you've lived here for 20 years or 20 minutes, people are invariably friendly, polite and sensitive. I believe the space somehow magically engenders this. My closest neighbors and I enjoy mutual respect, naturally, perhaps because we're neither below nor above each other, but side by side, living in peace and harmony. For this I have always been grateful.

But other people comment on the lack of maintenance and the heating failure, so not much to be proud about there.

Interesting how two similar designs can have such different fates.

Growing up and leaving home

 It seems I am getting advance warning of leaving my own home.  After Bee leaves home she assumes I will have left it too. As she says, how sad can you get for a teenager if you have to link to your mother's blog.  So I should return the complement by linking to hers.  There is also more on Cowley Road.

I sure hope I will have moved to sunny climes than Georgia where the weather forecast is now another 10 days of snow and ice. 

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In my new apartment

Despite the frustration of moving somewhere new and not quite getting the hang of things, not having everything I need, and not feeling like going out shopping in the cold and dark after work, I'm enjoying my new flat.  Living somewhere new means getting used to another set of arrangements, the same but still not same as where you lived before. 

Having to spend two evenings in waiting for the internet man to not come, I have had to find other ways to amuse myself than the internet.  Each time I come in, I don't unlock the door and turn off the signalisation quickly enough (within 10 secs), so I get a "welcome home" call immediately I get in from the security firm.  I think I have managed it once so far.

There are only 4 keys I need: "turn this one 4 times and this one 2 and you can use this one if you only go out for the rubbish".  I was completely fooled trying to get in the front door of the block.  Press 35 and call, said the landlady.  I thought this was to contact the security men on the door of the block, but it seems it was for the entryphone.  But I wasn't in my flat to let myself in.  Eventually it dawned on me that this was what the 4th key was for.  It's quite hard holding the little LED light on my key ring and getting right key in the right lock in the right sequence.  Finally I got in and then had a call from one of my colleagues who is having similar problems but has a bad key.  Eventually after enlisting the help of neighbours she managed it.  Not the best way to come home after a long day. 

Somehow although the flat is warm, the hot water isn't.  At 7.30 am this is a real pain.  I ventured out this evening onto the balcony, putting my coat and boots on, to inspect the boiler and turning everything to max, but still not much better, though it does improve during the evening.  Eventually I worked this out as well.  The water flow controls the water temperature, so you have to run off the cold water first, then turn the flow down till it heats up, then turn it down again to a reasonable temperature.  It's the same problem in Britain if you have one of those new-fangled condensing boilers without hot water storage.  Either you fill the bath with cold water quickly or you throttle the water flow down so it has a chance to get heated.  That means it takes so long to run a bath that the water has gone cold.  Foreigners are so clever not even bothering with baths.

This weekend I went out to the hypermarket call Good Wil (l) near the fortress which is the American Embassy.  It's a big shed* just expanded to twice the capacity without getting filled up yet.  It had most things, except fresh chicken, but I got everything I needed (bottles of wine, glasses and bottle opener).

I have what is called a 2 and a half room flat: a living room, a bedroom and a half room which actually is rather big, giving room for a sort of bunk bed and a study desk on the other wall.  It's really big enough to count as a proper bedroom, but is divided off by a sliding glass door so when that is open it makes a rather big living room.  When I get the internet fixed it will be perfect.

Searching the TV channels to see what the TV package has, I found Mezzo.  Since Beate is not here to organise me to go to concerts, I am enjoying myself staying in.  Last night I watched Carmen for the first time, which I really enjoyed.  The TV has really good sound.  This evening I am watching and listening to early music - it's mostly English dance tunes played by a small group with a large number of old instruments which they are playing to an open air audience somewhere with a great deal of enjoyment showing on their faces. And since it is all dance music, it's great to see them hopping about too, as I hop round the floor to the music.  It seems to be an ancient music festival in Brittany, with some people dressed in costume, though I'm not clear where the morris dancers fit in. For some reason it seems to be a festival of English music even with some college choir from Oxford.  They even managed to find some Brits to speak passable French and be interviewed.

I haven't listened much to live music on TV before, but I'm really enjoying spending cold winter evenings this way.  The only problem is getting the timing right, since we are so far ahead: 3 hours from France.

The adverts are strange.  I think I saw one where people stood on each other's shoulders eventually to form what looked like a rather tall viaduct in a valley, but I missed what it was an advert for. 

For bedtime reading I have Tove Jansson's  Fair Play, but more on that when I have finished.

* For Lithuanian readers it is Acropolis size but not nearly so well stocked.  The only competition is lots of supermarkets smaller than Minimas called Populi.  Otherwise there are minimarkets on every corner just like Pristina.   Incidentally today I saw a van going round saying "Lithuanian bakery".  Seems a curious thing to export.

Technorati tags: Tbilisi, Georgia, home

Growing up and leaving home

Sloph left home again this summer, though she actually only moved down the road.  This seems to work much better for all of us.  Bee is enjoying having a house to herself and almost resents me coming home and interfering, apart from paying for extra food saving her housekeeping money. 

As a result I feel that in some way I also have grown up and left home, striking  out again on my own, in moving to Georgia for 18 months.  You aren't suppose to leave home at 60, you are supposed to be settling down to your retirement home.  But there's a curious sense of freedom, that I don't have to bother about them anymore and I can do what I like in my home now.  It's such a relief that I don't have to do all that travelling and no more living out of a suitcase in a hotel. 

Technorati tags: leaving home

Changes in the Wu household

My moving situation seems to be causing confusion.  Let me reassure you, it is confusing to us as well. 

Sloph has moved out, to be grown-up in her final year at university. Follow this part of the story carefully.

Bee and I have downsized to a new house unfortunately not available till mid-October, due to its needing a new roof.  We did try to find something available now, but failed.  Very stringent requirements by Bee (as she would be the main occupant) made it difficult (had to be in the same area, without longer walk to school, near friend with reasonable parents in case of emergency and mother out of country, but not near friend with parents who would worry about mother out of country).  Combined with my requirements, this narrowed the choice down rather a lot.  However, the result, though late, is opposite a sensible friend and near the gym and swimming pool as well as just off the famous Cowley Road (which now has its own Group on Facebook here) with 2 minute access to all the ethnic restaurants plus the Zodiac (see her blog here for music reviews).  What more could you want?  Actually it's in the street where Sloph was living when we first came back to England, where I swore I would never live.  But she was living in a student slum and we are not.

Consequently we have to camp in the meantime.  This is fine for me, since I am travelling round the Balkans between now and mid-November in any case, see map here. 

Luckily, Sloph found an unfurnished house in the same road as before, which she is sharing with two guys who even more luckily are not moving in immediately.  So we schlepped all our essential living stuff down the road to her new house, and as she moved out, we moved in temporarily.  I can record that the youth of today is more exhausted by moving than old age. 

There I have been providing useful motherly services:  providing equipment and furniture for the kitchen, (no point in putting it in storage), general unpacking, cooking and shopping, probably the most motherly stuff I have done for years :).   Also staying at home waiting for flatmate's bed to be delivered, and washing machine to be installed.  So far the score, on the third day, is one mattress, delivered separately from the rest of the the bed (for reasons unknown) one day late due to incorrect postcode, and no washing machine.  As a result, I now know flatmate marginally better than Sloph, who finds herself wondering whether she has really moved out at all.  Sloph in the meantime is providing full time medical secretary duties to the health service to fund her trip to Singapore before term starts, coming home depressed after typing letters about people with incurable diseases wanting treatment that the NHS won't provide.

Nibbles the cat has explored her new garden and has moved on to the neighbours'.  We are hoping that she does not wander so far that she recognises her old territory and gets confused.  However she does come when called (eventually) and has already worked out how to winge for the door to be opened to come in.  Since she has been with us on all our travels round Europe plus a few extra staging posts on the way, she is pretty adaptable.  No need to put butter on her paws or whatever you are supposed to do. This could be famous last words.

Last night, to celebrate surviving part 1 of the move and a big cheque finally arriving,  we went to the Kazbar, (Cowley Rd again) where we had excellent tapas in the Moroccan/Spanish themed dining area at the back.  Give the conservatory area in the front a miss, unless you want to just drink or enjoy loud music, and eat in the shadowy back.  Forgot to take any photos, and can't find any on the web.  Such a shame. 

This weekend has a general exodus: Sloph is off to Brussels to meet friend from Vilnius before she moves to Warsaw with boyfriend; Bee is off for mud and  the joys of Reading Festival (looking like a packhorse/snail with a complete home on her back) to celebrate excellent GCSE exam results; and me off to Belgrade for work.  Only the cat left at home.

Technorati tags: Cowley Rd, Kazbar, moving house, cat moving house

Home again. Is anyone there?

Always a bit of a downer this. Not helped by wait in the rain for the bus at Gatwick, or having my "liquids" confiscated at Ljubljana airport. I packed an overnight bag to save rooting in my suitcase which only just closed. In Pristina I checked it in, so didn't need to think what was in it. But at Ljubljana they persuaded me it was too much overweight with the extra bag and said I had to carry it on the plane. As this meant I had 3 bags (computer, handbag and overnight) I thought that wouldn't be allowed, but I don't think they saw the computer bag. Although they asked about liquids I completely forgot about my sponge bag etc and said no.

So when it came to the X-ray, out came the shampoo and conditioner, the handcream and the contact lens fluid (which was nearly empty anyway). As far as I know you are allowed contact lens fluid, but they insisted not, and I was going home so no point to protest really.

Arrived past midnight. Everyone gone to bed or at least pretending. House was at least fairly clean, given teenagers, although we have a good cleaning lady. Evidently roast chicken for dinner.

In the morning, no news about hair appointment I ordered. At least fridge full and dishwasher full and clean. Rubbish baskets also full as they were when I left. Parcel left out in the rain where the delivery man left it a week ago. No cat food. No wonder the cat welcomes me!