Monthly Archives: October 2013

Barking Mad

After watching A Different Breed on ABC2 on Friday night, I felt reassured that – contrary to what some of my friends may think – I don’t spoil or pamper my dog. He eats dog food, he sleeps in his own bed, doesn’t wear clothes or bejewelled accessories, and I’m not training him to dance, ghost-hunt or skateboard.

Other dog owners think and do things quite differently as I discovered from this hugely entertaining British documentary. It really made me laugh. Talk about projecting human qualities, emotions and needs onto dogs!

One woman left her micro-managed and ultra-pampered dachshund in the care of a male couple, who had two dogs of their own. She left strict instructions that the dog was to have chicken for breakfast, scrambled eggs for lunch and bread and butter for dinner, and that meals were to be served up at specific times. Oh, the rumpus when she discovered that her dog had eaten a few grains of dog biscuit from one of the other dog’s bowls. His palate would be forever tainted.

Then there was Vinnie Jones, a clairvoyant dachsie with a sparkling diamante collar, who, his owners claimed, could sniff out ghosts. His owners took him out with seasoned spectre sleuth and dog communicator John Pope-de-Locksley. “He says he saw a disembodied head floating around,” said Locksley translating for Vinnie. And, get this, they went looking for a ghost called Scratching Fanny who is believed to reside in Cock Lane in London’s East End.

Airedale Ted belongs to a single woman called Lucy, who confessed she considers him as an ersatz boyfriend. So much so that Ted notices when she puts on a sexy nightdress and licks her legs. Oh dear… Lucy goes the extra mile and has tasted all Ted’s food (dog chocolate, she says, tastes like sugary congealed fat) and gives him acupuncture from a home kit to ease his bad leg. His health care routine also involves regular faecal analysis. Surely it’s only a matter of time before she carts him off for canine colonics?

Narrated by Sue MacGregor, a former BBC Radio 4 presenter, all these truth-is-stranger-than-fiction stories were delivered in a marvellously deadpan voice with just the right measure of irony. What made it even funnier is that some of the dogs ‘spoke’ their thoughts in gruff Welsh-sounding accents. Lucy’s Ted was heard to grumble as he was dragged upstairs for his acupuncture.

Over at BBC London, radio presenters Joanne and Anna present a weekly show, Barking at the Moon with the help of their dogs Matilda, an English bulldog and Molly, a miniature Bull Terrier. Theirs are the only dogs allowed in the BBC. With a mix of doggy tunes, snoring and barking from Molly and Matilda and interviews with dog enthusiasts and chat about ‘dogabilia’, the show is a runaway success and attracts over half a million listeners every week. The documentary caught up with Joanne and Anna as they tried to teach their ‘furkids’ how to skateboard. Thanks to the peanut butter smeared on the board, Matilda did seem to be getting the hang of it.

Also featured were a mother and daughter team who run an upmarket pet boutique in Chelmsford. Here you can find bespoke leads and collars, tailored clothes and more! They cater for all kinds of pets and were recently asked to create a bandana for a giant snail.

The programme ended with footage from the ‘Heelwork to Music’ competition finals at Crufts held at the Kennel Club in Coventry. The winner was dressed as a country farmer, and he and his dog danced to the Wurzels’ 1976 rendition of The Combine Harvester. If you’ve never heard of the Wurzels or their catchy ditty click on the link below. And if you do know it, happy reminiscing!

A Different Breed was just 45 minutes long and I enjoyed every minute of it with my dog Bertie snoring gently – almost purring – beside me on my sofa. As I said, I don’t spoil my dog. Apart from sometimes letting him up on the sofa…

Toodles, Poodles!

I just heard a dog bark on that big screen thing with moving images...

I just heard a dog bark on that big screen thing with moving images…

Mad About the Boy

Many of us – men and women alike – enjoyed the humour and frivolity of Bridget Jones Diary when it came out in 1996. So I was disappointed to read a thumbs-down review of Fielding’s follow-up title, Mad About the Boy. Especially as we’ve waited 14 years for it! UK Telegraph reviewer Sarah Crompton reports that she didn’t laugh until she reached page 34 and had this to say about the book: “Reading the first two thirds of Mad About the Boy is like listening to someone who once had perfect pitch, but now can’t sing a note. It lies as flat on the page as its heroine’s overcooked spaghetti. Every line feels full of effort.”

Like Sarah Crompton, I regarded the love-seeking BJ as a soul sister and adopted – more by osmosis than by design – some of her vocabulary. In fact, I had forgotten that we have Fielding to thank for ‘smug marrieds’ and ‘singletons’. She did all of us single women such a favour by finding a replacement word for spinster with its dreaded on-the-shelf connotations.

But my relationship with Bridget goes even deeper. Two of my friends actually call me Bridget. That’s because there’s something about me that reminds them of BJ. Although I consider myself far more savvy and self-aware than BJ and don’t have to worry about counting calories, I’m British-born, middle class, know men who wear jumpers with cringeworthy motifs and did once use a pair of old tights instead of a muslin bag to infuse herbs in a stew. Who could forget Bridget’s blue string soup? And then, the big knickers; well yes, I do have some in my possession, but I don’t actually wear them. Well, not anymore…

So what a shame that Fielding appears to have lost the essence and voice of the original Bridget. According to Crompton some passages in the book waiver between sub-Mills and Boon style and a frolicsome Fifty Shades of Grey sort of voice. That’s enough to tell me that the now 51-year-old Bridget and I have gone our separate ways. Mark Darcy, her dream husband, has died five years before the book starts and Bridget is now a Born Again Virgin obsessing about her weight, appearance and new toy boy Roxster – all this in between managing nits and the school run (she’s also the mother of two small children).

I may share a similar vintage to Bridget but that’s where the comparison ends. I’m a smug singleton (we can be smug too) and mother of one very adorable canine child, Bertie. What’s more I’m absolutely mad about the boy. And I’ve already got him into reading. He loves a good page-turner.

Puppy dog reading My First Puppy

Puppy dog reading My First Puppy

Singing Away the Blues

A couple of weeks ago a literary agent based in the States expressed interest in my book, Slowing Down in the Fast Lane: from Adventure to Zen and Everything in Between, and asked me to send the full manuscript. She seemed to love the concept and I had high hopes that she might want to represent me. On Monday morning, however, my hopes were dashed. Ouch! She emailed to let me know that she didn’t feel that the A-Z format worked “for the necessary emotional journey a reader must take with the author in a work of memoir.” A publisher in Queensland who loved my writing and humour said pretty much the same thing. It wasn’t so much the rejection that left me a bit flat but the thought, that after so much writing, re-writing, perfecting and polishing, I might have to embark on a total re-write.

But, of course, attempting to write a book and get it published is rarely a straightforward process. And it requires a great deal of patience and perseverance. On Monday I was lacking in both and ended up humming that Boomtown Rats song I don’t like Mondays ! That’s the thing about being self-employed, there’s no one to whinge to; you have to jolly yourself along. I’m mostly very good at motivating myself but nothing seemed to be flowing at the start of the week. It didn’t help that work was a bit thin on the ground in typical feast and famine freelance fashion.

Thankfully, however, Monday night is choir night. I decided to leave my hangdog day (and my beloved puppy dog) at home and throw myself into the singing. Our usual repertoire ranges from African harmonies, negro spiritual and chain gang songs to Russian ballads, Celtic folk tunes and sea shanties with a bit of contemporary stuff thrown in. But before we start signing, we loosen up with a workout for mind, body, voice and spirit which involves a series of meditative, breathing and vocal exercises followed by a bit of stretching and dancing around. How good it was this week to do the tongue sticking out routine – blahhhhhh, bluuuhhhh– and let go of the day’s frustration.

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At the end of the evening our Choir Director Richard came up to me and – quite unprompted – said: “Hello Charlotte! Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Was he a mind reader? Did he know that I had spent the day battling book and impending big birthday blues? As in, I am halfway through my life – if not more – and, well, you know, dum de dum. What do I have to show for it? So ran my inner judge and critic on Monday. “Think about your triumphs and don’t listen to the negative chatter that comes up at three in the morning,” suggested Richard. I was about to come up with a great long list of all the non-triumphs (it’s so easy to default to that) but then realised that taking a huge leap of faith and moving to Australia nearly ten years ago has to be my biggest triumph to date.

I returned home with a deep sense of gratitude that I belong to such a wonderful choir full of like-minded, supportive and creative souls – it’s no coincidence we’re called Soul Song. And then I remembered two other huge triumphs. I took part in a solo singing workshop earlier this year and sang a Buena Vista Social Club song in Spanish to the rest of the group (amazing in itself as not so long ago I’d have almost preferred to strip naked than sing a solo), and then at our recent choir retreat, I learnt how to use a microphone and experimented with the same song – giving it my all. It really is never too late to change your life and find your voice.

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway...

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway…

As for the book, I’m going to see if I get any other bites before I change the format. I didn’t really set out to write a memoir, more a humorous anthology of life adventures… and misadventures. Perhaps I’ve been marketing it in the wrong way. I might take a straw poll and get some feedback in a future blog. Who knows, perhaps by the next zero birthday, I will be a published author.

I wannabe published...

I wannabe published…

Life Laundry and armchair travel 3 of 3

And now for the final instalment in my retrospective trip to Japan through the pages of my photo album:

I was disappointed by the shinkansen (bullet train)! I had imagined the landscape would rush by in an unrecognisable blur. Of course it is fast – trains travel at speeds of up to 320km/h, it’s just that I had imagined it would feel faster. Maybe it’s because I rush around so much anyway that I failed to notice the sensation of velocity. I certainly kept up a fairly hectic pace once in Tokyo. In fact, I did so much walking and sightseeing that my legs ached like mad and the balls of my feet felt bruised. I was battling an acute case of guidebookitis, a healthy dose of FOMO (fear of missing out; what if this was my one and only trip to Japan?) all topped off with a bout of homesickness having left friends and family back in England. In short, I didn’t stop from breakfast till dinner time.

It took me a few days to get used to the Tokyo Subway System; it’s a maze of different lines, seemingly endless underground shopping malls, confusing signage and ticket machines (well to a non-Japanese speaker) and a constant throng of passengers. According to one travel site, it’s the world’s busiest metro system handling approximately 8.7 million passengers daily.

On arrival in the up-market suburb of Ginza, I set off to find the Sony Store, famed for its Games and Interactive section, only to find it had moved to a different suburb. Later that day I walked for block upon block to find a restaurant in the Roppongi Hills area only to find it had never been in that suburb and probably never would be (I had misread the Guidebook). Another day I walked miles to find Hambachi-Dori, listed as a must-see in the Lonely Planet. It’s simply a street where they sell plates of wax look-alike food, the kind you find displayed outside restaurants. Frankly, once you’ve seen one waxen plate of noodles, you’ve seen the lot. See what I mean about Guidebookitis?

Waxen plates of food - once you've seen one, you've seen them all...

Waxen plates of food – once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all…

A few days later I covered at least five sides of a triangle (while my map reading is not the best, it didn’t help that many of the side streets were not marked) trying to locate an organic cafe in the heart of the old fabric district, Harajuku. It was 5pm when I finally arrived for a very late lunch.

I also ended up carrying Coals to Newcastle on a few occasions. For example, when I finally reach the 53rd floor of the Mori Arts Centre in Roppongi Hills, the exhibition, Kaleidoscope Eye, was full of Western modern art – including the likes of ‘Britartist’ Tracy Emin.

Louise Bourgeois' spider at the Mori Arts Centre

Louise Bourgeois’ spider at the Mori Arts Centre

Then in a lace shop in Harajuku, where I bought a few bits of Japanese lace, there was a decorative tea-towel featuring the story of Nottingham lace. And in an ultra-expensive cafe in Ginza as I sat down (at last) and heroically drank a cup of green tea (when in Rome…) that was strong enough to put hairs on my chest, the ultra-slim, Channel-clad lunching ladies sipped delicately on Earl Grey and ate tiny sandwiches and slices of apple pie.

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In truth, sitting down didn’t happen enough (sadly, I seemed to have left the rest-inducing heated loo seats behind in Kyoto) so I relied instead on a couple of reviving Suntory whiskies with dinner in the evenings and a few soothing-sounding Japanese baths that were, in reality, too hot to handle at 50-degrees! But I did sit down to watch a single act Kabuki play at the Kabukiza Theatre in Ginza. Kabuki is a highly stylised form of theatre (think highly painted faces, elaborate costumes, trapdoors and revolving sets) with plays usually based on historical events, moral conflicts or tales of love. Hiring earphones so I could listen to the plot in English was a great help and it was an enjoyable experience. I also had fun watching the theatre goers (this was after all posh Ginza) and noticed several women in kimonos.

Theatre-going women

Theatre-going women

On my penultimate day, restored by the freshest and most delicious sushi the night before, I went off to Yoyogi Park (where young people go to let off steam on a Sunday) and the nearby Meiji Shrine. It was a beautiful spring day and there were several Shinto weddings going on in the grounds of the Shrine. I saw one group being photographed, the women wearing white-hooded dresses and the men wide skirt-like trousers. Photographers ran around adjusting a tuck here and a fold there, nobody smiled and it all looked rather sombre.

Perfecting the shot...

Perfecting the shot…

By complete contrast, the Goths, the punks, Jane Austen and fairytale aficionados were all showing off their extravagant costumes in Yoyogi Park.

Sunday best outside Yoyogi Park

Sunday best outside Yoyogi Park

The Elvis impersonators (they are a fixture) were warming up, taping up their much-worn boots with masking tape, slicking back their hair and chewing gum before strutting their stuff to the muffled music of ghetto blasters that shared the same vintage as their shoes.

Elvis lookalikes

Elvis lookalikes

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I couldn’t leave Tokyo without seeing the lights in Shibuya so I stopped off on my last night to immerse myself in the flashing neon and videos adorning the skyscrapers. But my favourite thing – a bronze statue of Hachiko dog outside Shibuya Station – had much more permanence to it. Owned by a professor, Hachiko would come to meet his master from the train every day. When the professor died in 1925 the dog continued to show up at the station every day until his own death in 1935. Surely a Japanese version of the Greyfriars Bobby? That brings me neatly back to dogs. Watch out for my next post on people watching at the dog park.

Hachiko's statue

Hachiko’s statue

Life Laundry and Armchair Travel No. 2

Continuing on from my last post in which I returned to Japan courtesy of clearing out my cupboards and sticking in photos from a 2009 trip, I’m now up to my second day in Kyoto.

Before travelling to Japan, I had booked a day with a Goodwill Guide through the Japanese National Tourism Organization (JNTO). It was (sadly there is no longer any mention of it on the JNTO website) an excellent scheme that offered a much more personal insight into Japan than you would get from an official tourist guide. Like many of the Goodwill Guides, Kazuko, married with two grown-up sons, was to keen to share her city and surrounds as well as to practise her English. All I had to do was cover her travel costs, museum entry fees and any meals and refreshments we had together. And best of all I didn’t have to work anything out – no maps, guidebooks, directions, ticket machines, Japanese lettering or indecipherable menus. Bliss!

My Goodwill Guide Kazuko

My Goodwill Guide Kazuko

We started by taking the train to the nearby town of Uji, home of green tea and of the oldest tea shop in Japan. After whirling round the Byodoin Temple, a UNESCO site famous for its Phoenix Hall, so-called because the building resembles a phoenix with outstretched wings, we went to a tea ceremony at the Municipal Tea House. Kazuko explained that the tea ceremony (sado) combines the ideals of Zen Buddhism with the uniquely Japanese concept of wabi (simple beauty). It’s certainly a highly ritualised and choreographed performance, one that makes sticking a tea bag in a cup, boiling the kettle and wolfing down a biscuit seem very basic.

Byodo-in Temple

Byodo-in Temple

I watched how the hostess performed each task with great precision: the boiling of the water; the folding of the napkin; the whisking of the Matcha (a very strong powdered green tea); the clockwise rotating of the bowl; and the bowing before serving the tea. Performed with grace and elegance in a simply furnished room – the flower arrangement and painted scroll change according to the season – we drank cherry blossom drop tea out of cups painted with a blossom motif and ate a sweetmeat called cherry blossom cloud.

Blossom-themed decor in the Tea House

Blossom-themed decor in the Tea House

From Uji, it was a short train ride to Kyoto’s Fushimi district, where we switched our attention from tea to something a little more fortifying at the Gekkeikan Okura Sake Museum. Highlights included western-influenced poster adverts from around 1900, the miniature ceremonial vessels produced for the Coronation of Emperor Hirohito in November 1928, and my first experience of a Japanese toilet with a heated seat. Still feeling the effects of jet-lag (readers of my last post will remember that Mrs Uemura at the guesthouse hauled me out of a deep, time zone-challenged sleep for breakfast at 8am on the dot), I took the opportunity to indulge in a micro moment of mindfulness atop the heated loo seat. It was pleasantly soothing to sit down and rest in the warmth.

Lunch – excellent terikyaki chicken – afforded another rest and, suitably refreshed, we then walked through the Fushimi Passage, a bustling arcade selling everything from bicycles, tea, pickled vegetables and second-hand clothes to Yuinou, symbolic gifts exchanged between the families of betrothed couples.

Our last stop was the Fushimi-Inari shrine. Dedicated to the gods of rice in the eighth century, a mass of orange-red Torii, pillared gateways, each bearing the inscription of a donor, snake up the mountain and through the woods. Considered as messengers of inari, the god of rice and cereal crops, stone foxes with red votive bibs carrying the key to the granary are dotted throughout the shrine grounds. Even the votive tablets are fox-shaped.

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On my last day in Kyoto, I ran around seeing more temples and shrines: Kiyomizu-Dera (lots of tourist buses and giggling school girls buying lucky charms and trinkets; Chion-In (home to the largest bell in Japan – it needs 17 monks to ring it at New Year); and Nanzen-ji with its magnificent sliding door paintings in gold leaf.

By lunchtime it was a relief to sit down in a cafe. I ordered the speciality of boiled tofu, which arrived in a bain-marie style dish. The waiter was highly amused that I didn’t understand about waiting for it to come to the boil and, instead, tried to eat it cold.

Better when cooked...

Better when cooked…

Never mind, I got the hang of it in the end and concluded my visit with another heated loo seat sojourn. This loo was even more sophisticated with options including washing, deodorising and noise muffling – the latter excellent for anyone who has ever suffered shy bladder syndrome. Could I import one back to Australia I wondered?

An all-singing, all-dancing Japanese loo

An all-singing, all-dancing Japanese loo

Then it was time to get a taxi back to the ryokan, grab my luggage and squeeze on to a rush-hour bus to the train station. I just managed to get my big case on board before the doors hissed shut. Never have I been so squashed (and I travelled regularly on the London Underground for nine years) or so very unpopular. Where otherwise I had found the Japanese unfailing polite, here the passengers frowned, stuck their elbows out, tsked and tut-tutted their annoyance. People work crazily long hours in Japan – so much so there’s even a word, karoshi, for working yourself to death. So I can imagine how infuriating it must have been when a foreign traveller with lots of luggage clogged up the aisle of the bus…

On arrival at the station, I practically fell out of the crowded bus but, this time at least, avoided ending up in an electronics store. Armed with snacks for the journey (the boiled tofu really didn’t quite hit the spot, I collapsed on the Shinkansen, destination Tokyo, just after 5pm.