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London Neighbourhoods 2: Great Suffolk Street
Posted on December 30, 2014 by jonathangalton
Borough is justly renowned across the world for its market, where a super-abundance of delights drain even the most assiduously-guarded wallets. Pigeon, partridge, camel and kangaroo – all there for the carnivorously-inclined, with over forty types of mustard to put on them, not to mention a multitude of spices, chillis, salts and chutneys. More varieties of cheeses than you can imagine fill up the stalls, and if you've got a sweet tooth you'll find endless possibilities for satisfying it.
I lived in the area for four years and had a mixed relationship with the market, loving its produce but frequently a little daunted by the crowds it drew and happy to escape into the relative obscurity of non-market Borough. In the final year I lived ten minutes south, just off the grimy High Street in the middle of a community that I had never suspected of existing here: Great Suffolk Street. Although transient toe-dippers, we lived right in the thick of it, with our bedroom directly above a good old-fashioned butchers and the living room above a good old-fashioned café.
The latter, Terry's, is the kind of place that cries out for the label "Institution" and its cheery awning beckons you in to a cosy space lined with old framed photos. The eponymous founder is no longer with us, but his son upholds the traditions of solid British food and a takes friendly interest in his customers. Breakfast ingredients are sourced from Smithfield and Borough Markets and are graded on the eye-stomach scale with names like "The Standard", "The Blow-Out" and (replete with Cumberland sausage, egg, bacon, bubble and squeak, black pudding, beans, tomatoes and mushrooms) "The Works". Outside, a coffee machine serving another Borough Market classic, Monmouth coffee, used to be operated by a prickly but gold-hearted Lithuanian until she left to work in a pub. Her lattes remain the best I've had in London.
Just opposite is Ollie's, a chippie with the same enlightened attitude to portion size as Terry's. Its hyperactive Turkish Cypriot owner shovels mountains of chips onto white paper and wraps them up with a mesmerising series of flicks and jerks. Two doors down is the marvellously-named Giggling Sausage café which loyalty to Terry's prevented me from entering, and in an unintentional allegory, sandwiched between them, is a funeral parlour. I joked that Great Suffolk Street catered for our every need, even death. Shiny hearses were sometimes in evidence, although the best was saved until the day we moved out – a full-blown funeral procession for some local legend that paused outside Terry's, which stood up en masse to the strains of Dixie on clarinet and guitar.
Next door to Terry's on the other side of the butcher's is a Turkish barber, Jeff's, whose owner deftly flicks a lighted ball of cotton wool into his patrons' ears, singeing any stray hairs. On my most recent visit he told me he was actually Kurdish and is proud of the fact that he has Turkish staff working for him! His father owns a greasy spoon, also Jeff's, on nearby Webber Street. Another local business empire is the newsagent OL, run by friendly and unflappable Sri Lankan Tamils. I was surprised, recently, but happy to run into some of them in a corner shop they also own near Clapham Common.
Round the corner is a Homelessness Shelter specifically for people with mental health problems. Its residents are a familiar sight on the street, for the most part benign and a little eccentric although for a period the street's calm would be shattered by a clearly troubled man who railed at the world at length, mostly in words of four letters. Other familiar street characters include a rueful old lady with dazzlingly colourful shoes, who once told me to enjoy my life because she no longer could. "I had friends once" she said with a sad smile. On Sundays, a number of Nigerian families head out for church, a glorious sight in their boubou and kaftan.
The street packs an extraordinary amount into this short stretch (it's worth pointing out that north-west from here it extends up nearly as far as the river) and there are plenty more shops on the parade – a bakery-cum-deli called Mustard, an organic fruit shop, a betting shop, a tanning salon, a master locksmith and a florist. There is a pub called The Libertine which serves excellent pizzas but is too brightly lit, and I much prefer The Goldsmith round the corner. Just off the dense stretch of shops is a Chilean Café, El Vergel, which is pleasant and airy although it lacks the uniqueness that marks out Terry's.
Having lived there for only a year I am under no illusions that we really joined the Great Suffolk Street community. Sure, I struck up some friendly acquaintanceships along the way, and had some excellent food and much-needed haircuts and peppered my banter with the odd word of Turkish or Tamil, but other than the "Where are you living now?" I've been greeted with on a few return visits, there is no indication our departure has left any dent in the street's psyche. And why should it? My upstairs neighbour, in his own words, has lived on the street "for a very, very long time" although clearly not as long as Alfred Smith, the Funeral Director, which was established in 1881. And, as www.greatsuffolkstreet.co.uk points out, the "parade of independent, family-run shops has been serving the local community since the 1950s". Long may it prosper.
Posted in Great Suffolk Street	| Tagged Borough Market, Great Suffolk Street, London neighbourhoods, South London, Terry's	| Leave a reply
London Neighbourhoods 1: Thornton Heath
This following is adapted from a piece I penned purely for my own amusement in early 2009. A recent return visit to the place in question suggests that it is still a reasonable reflection and I hope it will be the first in a sporadic series of odes to the less celebrated corners of London.
Thornton Heath, on the northern fringes of the London Borough of Croydon is a land that seems little touched by recent decades. Out of the station you step onto a busy road that on first glance is devoid of charm. There are no nice restaurants or shops in sight, the architecture is forgettable and the street-life is seedy without the mitigating vibrancy of Brixton, Peckham or Dalston. Across the road is an infinitely drab Wetherspoons, the Flora Sandes, named after the only British woman who officially served as a solider in World War I. Peer inside and the likelihood is a row will be breaking out between a couple of Caribbean men, ignored by the old Indian crosspatches who drink in silence, enervated by the demands of South London life. In the mornings, belligerent English alcoholics sit joylessly with their pints outside so they can smoke.
But resist the urge to turn back into the station: give the place a chance. With years of intimate acquaintance you might even come to love it. The classic South London hallmarks are all here – tiny jerk chicken emporia presided over by affable mommas; insalubrious kebab joints whose Turkish and Afghan staff produce minor miracles out of all proportion to their bargain prices; halal butchers which have Pakistani names and play Indian music; greasy spoons such as the Brigstock Café where a charming family of Copts serve (arguably) the best bacon in London. And everywhere you will find outlets for the beautification of Afro-Caribbean womanhood – nail parlours, wig shops, make-up salons, the works.
This is a corner of London untroubled by Starbucks, although it boasts a large Tesco, and Subway made it in in mid-2007. I can't imagine anybody campaigned against either of these in a bid to keep Thornton Heath local. The poshest joint in town is generic Mediterranean and serves meze at passable prices. Perhaps the most famous local amenity, other than the charming 1900 clock-tower, is the Leisure Centure, whose much-loved swimming pool appears to act as a focal point for the community. All are welcome here, from doggy-paddling Punjabi matriarchs to voluminous Jamaicans who bob and sway in the name of exercise to some anodyne derivative of reggae, their efforts magnified in waves across the pool.
Any timelessness you sense is probably an illusion. The leisure centre, for example, only dates from 2004, and required the demolition of an earlier public bathhouse built in the suburb's Victorian heyday. Indeed, in the late 19th century Thornton Heath was quite something, jolted out of rural anonymity by the arrival of the railway. There was a cinema, plenty of pubs and a bustling parade of shops serving the area's respectably middle-class residents. But a combination of time and urban development has not been kind. The cinema has long since gone, the pubs are down-at-heel and today's shops are of a kind that, as a friend once described it "could only survive in South London." The once-famous Thornton Heath Pond was drained in the 1950's to make way for a roundabout.
The respectable middle-classes, meanwhile, have by and large upped sticks and made way for a motley snapshot of London's human tapestry: impeccably upright Caribbean grandmothers and their hooded adolescent grandsons; rambunctious Nigerian taxi drivers; shy Tamils hurrying to the "Ghanapati Temple"; Pakistanis and Kashmiris selling meat, fish and veg; East African Indians such as sweet-natured Surinder from the sandwich shop who calls himself "David"; and, judging by their garb, even the odd Wahhabi hanging about outside the Islamic Centre.
On deeper acquaintance you discover gems, of course. There is a peaceful wooded park on top of a hill, while the Jam Rock café serves an excellent goat curry and the beer garden of the Railway Pub is a fine enough spot for a summer evening. Even the godawful Wetherspoons which, being on the ground floor of the block that used to house my office, claimed more than its fair share of my Friday evenings, turned out in retrospect to be a rich den of humanity compared to the dismal blandness of the successor we appointed when we relocated to East Croydon. A recent reunion there with ex-colleagues reacquainted us with the advantages of good, cheap beer and a spacious saloon bar.
In all, though, not much seems to happen here. Granted you see the occasional police drug search and on some days an Evangelist comes to harangue her fellow sinners while the legless man effs and blinds in his wheelchair over a can of Old Speckled Hen, but mostly you have the sense of a neglected, but oddly content little community lost between London and Croydon. There is no real sign of gentrification – it's not going the way of Brixton any time soon, let alone Shoreditch – too much effort, and who'd come anyway? For now, I like it like it is.
Posted in Thornton Heath	| Tagged Croydon, London neighbourhoods, South London, Thornton Heath	| Leave a reply
On the bus: three London vignettes
These all occurred over six years ago, but they could have happened yesterday.
Route 250: Between Norbury and Thornton Heath (August 2008)
A Jamaican woman is screaming down her phone, slamming her fist. "I'm goin' home to pray for my sister, because she's a wicked woman! She's a wicked woman. Dem church people doin' shit. She's a wicked woman!" Her anger seems to be welling up from a bottomless pit connected to an ocean of every conceivable evil: racism, slavery, oppression, depression, poverty, depravity, disease… Yet suddenly she peers out of the window and spots a little boy she knows. "Hello darlin'!" she coos, radiant, it seems, with happiness for two seconds. And then it's back to rage and hatred. "She's a wicked, wicked woman…"
Route 59: Somewhere around Oval (October 2008)
The last leg on a trip back from Paris. Somewhere around Oval a handsome young black man gets on and sits next to me at the front. I casually glance at a billboard outside the window, which uses the metaphor of slavery to advertise a Card Protection Plan. My companion bursts out laughing.
"It's like slavery but changed" he observes. "That's what art is all about – taking something and changing it. Metaphor. English people don't understand metaphor."
A pause. He introduces himself as Chief Kingsley, from Cameroon.
"Who can understand metaphor, then?" I ask, slightly puzzled.
"Africans can understand it. And most Europeans too."
Another pause.
"Oh, and the Irish. The Irish are very good at understanding metaphor."
He proceeds to tell me about a recent visit to the Writers' Museum in Dublin.
"Have you read any Irish literature?" I ask.
"No, I didn't stay there long enough – only a few days."
I point out in my puzzlement that it would surely be possible to read Irish literature here in London.
"I don't trust English bookshops. They change things, you know, they change things. I only like originals. I don't like fakes."
A night bus: Somewhere between Soho and South Woodford (June 2007)
It is well after midnight. We are going back to a friend's house from a club and the same is probably true of many others on the bus. Behind me is a noisy bunch of English lads, and somewhere towards the back a mixed group speaking in Polish. At some point the English boys pick up on this fact and decide that it would be hilarious to shout the only Polish word they know at the top of their voices: kurwa (literally whore, but often used as a more general expletive).
I mentally roll my eyes and turn round to them.
"If you want to be a bit more original you could say 'Ładna dupeczka' – means nice arse."
"Awesome! How do you say it again?"
"Wad-na du-pech-ka" I enunciate as carefully as my tired, drunk state will allow.
"OK. Wad… Wadna du… Dupiska."
I laugh and let them get on with it. Their enthusiasm outstrips their accuracy:
"Wadna dupiska!"
"Wapna dupashka!"
"Wazna Dubrovnik!"
I smile to myself as I imagine what this must sound like to the Poles (assuming they are anything other than oblivious to the cross-cultural badinage going on in their honour):
"Nice arze!"
"Niece urse!"
"Norse ears!"
Posted in On the bus	| Tagged London, London bus, Metaphor, Night bus, Polish London	| Leave a reply
Green Living in the Desert: Masdar City and its Place in the World
In the Desert Kingdom of Abu Dhabi a world-famous eco-city is springing up. But does Madīnat Maṣdar point the way forward or is it just a gimmick?
This post first appeared as an article in the SOAS Spirit in December 2014 (print only).
What makes a city sustainable? Something to do with the energy efficiency of its buildings and industry, perhaps? Or maybe an effective public transport system running on clean fuels? What about the materials used to build the city – are they sourced locally or shipped from across the globe following a questionable mining process? Same goes for the food, of course – where does it come from? What does it cost in energy, water and land? And we haven't even begun to think about the people – surely a truly sustainable city would offer a wide range of fulfilling jobs and lifestyles to a healthy populace free to participate meaningfully in civic life?
Maybe we're asking the wrong question. Maybe we should step back and ask whether the city as a concept is sustainable. Cities certainly have their apologists. Economist Edward Glaeser, for example, whose Triumph of the City reads like a love song to urban life, argues that city living is inherently sustainable. Densely-packed buildings are usually more energy efficient to run than sprawling rural ones, and the proximity of housing to offices, shops and entertainment tends to mean low reliance on personal vehicles. Moreover, cities provide favourable conditions for initiatives like public transport and low energy community heating. But cities also offer ample scope for hedonistic, polluting lifestyles, and even the most frugal citizens are highly unlikely to be self-sufficient in terms of food production.
The whole question becomes ever more relevant as the world's urban population skyrockets, most estimates agreeing that it has now outstripped the global rural population. What's more, this urban population is projected to nearly double by 2050. Small wonder, perhaps, that self-consciously "sustainable cities" are being planned and developed all over the globe, from the International Business District in Songdo, South Korea to Auroville, India's spiritually-inspired township with a sideline in renewable energy. Perhaps the most famous eco-city of all is Madīnat Maṣdar ("Source City") in the United Arab Emirates.
Masdar City, as it is usually referred to in English, was conceived in the mid 2000's on a wave of ambition. The UAE's Sheikh Khalifa, recognising the finite nature of the Emirates' oil supply decided the economy should diversify by embracing renewable energy. The result was Masdar, or the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, whose mission is to invest in renewable energy and clean technology in Abu Dhabi and worldwide through a business model that encompasses higher education and research and development. At its epicentre would be a carbon neutral, waste-free city of 40,000 sitting amidst a new Silicon Valley for sustainable technology, luring businesses, scientists and students from all over the world. With architect Norman Foster in charge of the design, and the goodwill of global entities from Greenpeace to the US Government, Masdar as an idea shone like a beacon of hope for the future.
Masdar as a real city presents a more complicated picture. Take transport, for example. Initial plans were for a city free of private cars where citizens could move around through a series of shaded walkways or using driverless pods powered by renewable electricity. While the pods are in operation and play well with tourists, their scope has been scaled down and a public transport system including electric buses is proposed alongside an extension of Abu Dhabi's existing rail networks. Meanwhile, much of the city's workforce commutes from outside, rather denting Masdar City's credibility as a sustainable transport hub.
Where energy is concerned, the city boasts impressive credentials – building designs optimise natural light and come with high levels of insulation, efficient lighting and a range of smart systems and appliances. Visitors compliment the pleasant daytime temperatures in the streets achieved, in part, by an entirely passive "wind tower" which sucks up hot air to make way for a cooling breeze and should reduce the need for air conditioning. Masdar City's electricity is currently provided by a vast array of solar photovoltaic panels but again, this rings a little hollow when we consider the UAE's carbon footprint as a whole, which ranks 5th or 6th globally in CO2 emissions per capita. More directly, there have been rumours of embarrassing design flaws such as solar panels located on shaded roofs and lights that were difficult to control, but it is to be hoped that these flaws have been rectified with lessons duly learned.
Technicalities aside, how well does Masdar City function as a living, breathing city? Here opinions are divided. Detractors gleefully point out the limited extent to which the original dream has (yet) been realised. A city of 40,000 it certainly isn't – current projections suggest that it will host 10% of that population by the end of the year – and most current residents are students at the prestigious Masdar Institute for Science and Technology, the Gulf's answer to MIT. Success in attracting international green technology companies has so far been restricted to Siemens, whose award-winning regional office is open for business and will house 800 employees.
Others argue that its very existence is a testament to a government putting its money where its mouth is, especially when compared to similar projects elsewhere such as Dongtan in China, whose construction is firmly on hold at the moment. By all accounts, visitors come away impressed by the hi-tech, but often lacking any genuine sense of place in what feels more like a project than a city.
Whether a gimmick or a blueprint for the future, Masdar City is clearly a work in progress and a learning experience and it is only fair to judge it as such. Ultimately, I can't help wondering whether the Masdars and Dongtans are a bit of a distraction when cities like Dhaka, Lagos and Jakarta are still mushrooming and face mounting problems of energy supply, water abstraction and pollution. Whether or not we can build sustainable new cities, surely the most urgent question is how to make our existing cities sustainable and that, I fear, would take more than a newspaper article to answer…
Posted in Masdar City	| Tagged Abu Dhabi, Eco-city, Masdar City, Sustainable Urban Development, UAE	| Leave a reply
Salt Beef and Synagogues: London through a Jewish Lens
A slightly altered version of this post first appeared as an article in the SOAS Spirit in December 2014 (print only).
Some time ago my uncle opened the door to a flustered neighbour who asked, somewhat sheepishly, if there was any chance he could come round and turn on her dishwasher. It was a Friday night in the heart of Barnet, North London, and the neighbour was observing the Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath). This meant that a range of activities, or melakhot (loosely translatable as "work"), were forbidden.
I will not attempt to unpick the complex Rabbinical Law that enabled the neighbour to ring a doorbell but not switch on her dishwasher. Nor will I speculate on the legitimacy of getting the goy next door to do it for her. I do know, however, that her being able to carry her house keys around came courtesy of a phenomenon called the eruv, a ritual enclosure within which certain Shabbat prohibitions are relaxed.
Of the handful of eruvim in the UK, the North-West London one is by far the most famous. It is also the most controversial, with criticisms that include visual intrusiveness, de-secularisation of public space and risk of promoting religious segregation as more and more Jewish families move to be within in an eruv. Whether or not this last point has any factual basis, the location of the eruv is hardly surprising given the high concentration of Jews in this part of London, sometimes referred to as the "Bagel Belt".
Golders Green in particular is renowned for its Kosher Restaurants (try Grodzinski's bakery for braided challah bread), as well as numerous synagogues and a late Victorian Jewish Cemetery in which the cellist Jacqueline du Pré is buried. Nearby Finchley Road was previously dubbed "Finchleystrasse" when it became a magnet for German and Austrian Jews – amongst them Freud – fleeing Hitler's regime. Now it is home to a new Jewish cultural hub, JW3, which offers talks, films, music and comedy as well as "Zest" café, run by Tel-Aviv born disciple of Ottolenghi, Eran Tibi.
As well as hosting refugees from Nazi Germany, this area has traditionally been a staging post for upwardly mobile Jewish families from the East End. Now synonymous with hipsters and Bangladeshi curry, Whitechapel and Stepney formed the epicentre of London Jewry in the early 20th Century. Hard as it is to imagine today, the aroma of brisket would have wafted up Brick Lane while Shoreditch echoed with the sound of Yiddish.
While the East End Jewish community has dwindled, a fascinating legacy remains. Some of London's most beautiful synagogues can be found in this part of town, such as the Congregation of Jacob Synagogue on Commercial Road and nearby Bevis Marks, the oldest synagogue in Britain. In fact, the Jamme Masjid (Friday Mosque) on Brick Lane is said to be one of the only buildings outside the Holy Land to have served all three Abrahamic faiths. It started out life as a Huguenot and subsequently Methodist Chapel before becoming the Spitalfields Great Synagogue, which it remained until the 1970's.
For some context, visit 19 Princelet Street just round the corner, an old Huguenot weavers' house, briefly a synagogue and now hosting occasional exhibitions on the area's rich past. If that's not enough, why not check out Stephen Burstin's Sunday morning Jewish walking tours?
Staying on Brick Lane, a more tangible relic can be found in that quintessentially Jewish institution, the bagel shop. Of the two establishments at the top of the road make sure to go to Beigel Bake (the queues are longer for a reason) and opt for salt beef if your diet permits.
Meanwhile, at another institution over on Charing Cross Road, Gaby's Deli, named after its Iraqi-born proprietor, the bagels are best passed over in favour of the delicious range of salads and hummus. As famous for its surly staff as for its food, the place looked set to be ousted by a chain restaurant until a Who's Who of West End stars descended for a weekend of protest, cabaret-style, in 2011. Saved from encroaching neoliberal blandness, at least for now, you would still be wise to visit sooner rather than later.
Due to its long-standing history, amongst other factors, the city's Jewish community is less obviously visible than some of its other religious minorities. One can forget the Jewish provenance of household names such as Marks and Spencer, Fish and Chips (look it up!) and Lord Sugar. Dig deeper and you will find plenty of Jewish Societies. These include SOAS' own J-Soc which holds Shabbat events and is committed to combatting anti-Semitism on campus, a London Jewish Male Choir and even a Gay Jews in London network. And for a blast of high-vis why not check out Chanukah in the (Trafalgar) Square on December 16th? It promises free doughnuts, live music and an appearance from Boris Johnson to light London's Brightest Menorah. Mazel Tov!
Posted in London, Salt Beef and Synagogues	| Tagged Bagel, Brick Lane, Eruv, Finchleystrasse, Golders Green, Jewish, London, Princelet Street, Synagogue	| Leave a reply
From Portobello to Peckham Rye: A Guide to London's Markets
Posted on December 2, 2014 by jonathangalton
This post first appeared as an article in the SOAS Spirit in November 2014 http://issuu.com/soasspirit/docs/november_final_edit (p20)
Vibrant local markets are a stock-in-trade of guidebook writing and no trip to Bangkok or Brindisi would be complete without sampling street food and attempting to engage a surly stallholder (who we readily interpret as a "character") in lively repartee. London is no exception, and punches above its weight in world-famous names – Covent Garden for tourist trinkets, Spitalfields for dubious art and, of course, Camden Lock for international food and the evergreen pastime of Goth-watching. Venturing outside this narrow orbit you hit neighbourhoods such as Brixton and Brick Lane, now firmly hauled out of the economic doldrums by young creatives and bankers, but if this scene starts to pall it's probably time to cast your net wider.
For a slice of echt South London life, for example, head to East Street (nearest tube Elephant and Castle) where the staunchly un-gentrified daily market (closed Mondays) does a roaring trade in cheap veg, bric-a-brac and household goods. Lining the street you'll find Afro-Caribbean grocers and halal butchers and for a dazzling range of spices, pick any of the shops at the Walworth Road end. Otherwise expected the unexpected – bargain deals on a mattress announced through a microphone, perhaps, or you may catch the Serbian Roma singing duo ("Like someone strangling a cat" as I heard a disgruntled stallholder describe them).
Staying south, why not check out Peckham (nearest station Peckham Rye) once a byword for gang crime but now yielding to an unstoppable tide of soda bread and soya lattes. Stick to Rye Lane, however, and you can enjoy a scene as absorbing as any London has to offer. Frequently cited as one of the most ethnically diverse neighbourhoods in the UK, the West African presence is easy to spot here – Sierra Leonean restaurants, Nigerian churches and stalls piled with cassava, plantain and all those other vegetables you wanted to know about but were afraid to ask. Chicken feet go for a reasonable £1.99 and, if that's not enough, a fiver can get you a "Big Hard Chicken".
If strange fruit and crossing the Thames aren't your thing, Clerkenwell's frightfully hip Exmouth Market may appeal. It's the kind of place where people sit outside pubs in hand-knitted jumpers drinking craft beers while tapping film reviews into their Macs. If that's not blatant enough, the presence of Gail's Artisan Bakery should convince you you're a far cry from Dalston Junction (for the uninitiated, Gail's is a wayside shrine to sourdough and German rye bread, whose libations of organic milk can be sampled in all the capital's chi-chiest neighbourhoods – Hampstead, Dulwich, Notting Hill…).
Indeed, the street is mostly about food, be it the excellent English fare at Medcalf restaurant, razor clams at Bonnie Gull Seafood Café or Moorish classics at Moro, where ladies like to lunch on pumpkin salads and slow cooked rabbit. On weekdays there are food stalls at the Farringdon Road end (a brisk 15 minute walk from campus), some run by the street's restaurants, others including burritos, pulled pork and an incongruous-sounding "German BBQ". Meanwhile, if you do want to branch out into the non-edible you could always get a tattoo at "The Family Business" or pick up a present at Bookends childrens' book store before popping round the corner to The Old China Hand to sample their fabulous range of real ales.
Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you've been to all the above and time hangs heavy then consider heading south to Deptford High Street, a gem of a traditional shopping street with markets stalls on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, or west to Goldborne Road (market every day except Sunday) a quirky extension to the more famous Portobello Road and informal hub to London's Moroccan community. (S)he who is tired of London, as they say…
Posted in From Portobello to Peckham Rye, London	| Tagged East Street, Exmouth Market, Gentrification, London, Markets, Peckham	| Leave a reply


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elephant and donky
Thread starter skabanger13
skabanger13
Slightly Conservative
OK republicans have the elephant to represent their party, a strong intelligent animal. democrats on the other hand have a jack-ass, and I'm not talking about dean, Kerry are Kennedy. hhmmmm makes you wonder. :monkey
Schweddy
Benevolent Dictator
Libertarian - Right
Hahaha - it does indeed.
Pacridge
Pacific Northwest US
skabanger13 said:
Man that's funny! But...
Republicans have a strong intelligent animal representing their party, true. Now if they could just do something to get strong intelligent people in the party.
So you are saying the dems have thier end covered?
Blue Hobgoblin
I think the donkey stands for humbleness, work ethic, and honesty.
vauge said:
Oh, I hardly think the Democrats "have their end covered." I was really just jabbing back at the humorous barb. So, in a way the jackass might well be a good mascot for the Democrats. But, if the animal's going to match the parties tendencies, maybe the GOP should replace that Elephant with a blind Lemming.
Blue Hobgoblin said:
OK, that's what the Donkey stands for, but does the Jackass stand for?
Pacridge said:
I think a good dem mascot would be a Ferret.
Cute and cudly.
They run and hide when there are loud noises.
Sleep all day and they get nothing done.
The smallest little things can keep thier attention for hours.
Instead of blowing out a candle, they will put thier nose in it and get burned.
(bear in mind I used to own several)
I like it! Two rodents representing our political parties. Though it sounds like you have some knowledge of Ferrets. Whereas most people wrongly believe Lemmings have some suicidal tendency where they're willing to follow a leader to their own demise. So, they wouldn't really work as an accurate representative for the GOP.
shuamort
Pundit-licious
Re: elephant and donkey
Adlai Stevenson said, "The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor."
Fortunately for Republican supporters it is easier to say " I would rather be an elephant than an ass!"
The history of the GOP and the Democrats parties did seem to have a switch over time where they almost square danced to the others' position:
GOP said:
Abolishing slavery. Free speech. Women's suffrage. In today's stereotypes, none of these sounds like a typical Republican issue, yet they are stances the Republican Party, in opposition to the Democratic Party, adopted early on.
Some people have argued that Republicans fought to give blacks equal rights and then the vote as a way of wresting control of the South away from the Democrats. While it is true that almost all blacks voted Republican, these were very dangerous and controversial issues at the time
In the 1850s, following the disintegration of the Whig Party, the Southern wing of the Democratic Party became increasingly associated with the expansion of slavery, in opposition to the newly revamped United States Republican Party. Democrats in the Northern states opposed this new trend, and at the 1860 nominating convention the Party split and nominated two candidates (see U.S. presidential election, 1860). As a result, the Democrats went down in defeat – part of the chain of events leading up to the United States Civil War. During the war, Northern Democrats fractured into two factions, War Democrats, who supported the military policies of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, and Copperheads, who strongly opposed them..

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Ver Total Dhamaal
(5175) IMDb 4.3 130 min 2019 Subtitles and Closed Captions
Total Dhamaal is a movie starring Ajay Devgn, Anil Kapoor, and Madhuri Dixit. A group of people learn about a hidden treasure and then they race to find it and claim it.
Action, Comedy, Adventure
Indra Kumar
Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh
Paritosh Painter, Bunty Rathore, Ved Prakash
Total Dhamaal is the third instalment in the Dhamaal franchise. A hidden booty of 50 crore leads to a mad chase amongst a bunch of greedy and eccentric characters. In them, are a bickering couple on the verge of a divorce, greedy siblings, local goons, a police commissioner and the mastermind of the loot. Will they finally discover the hidden treasure?
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14 customer reviews about comedy «Total Dhamaal»
3 out of 5 stars 3 out of 5 stars
Saturday, 18 Jul 2020 06:38
What a movie, I've never seen a movie like this before. The movie is unique and well thought out. I haven't seen a movie like this in a long time. The best part of the movie was the acting. The characters are realistic and their reactions are believable. I was very impressed with the music. I've never seen a movie that has that much music in it. It's full of references to other movies and they are all well placed and fit the scene. The movie was just great. The story was good, the direction was great and the editing was just fantastic. The story is very important to the movie, so I won't go into details about it. The direction was amazing, the editing was perfect, and the music was just awesome. If you haven't seen this movie, do it. It's very well made and will entertain you and give you a good time. Overall, this movie was amazing, the acting was amazing, the story was great, the direction was great, the music was great, and the editing was just great. I highly recommend this movie.
Walter Ray
Wednesday, 15 Jul 2020 15:53
I've seen this movie on TV recently and I must say that it is a rare treat for me to watch a movie that I'm a fan of and it's a movie that I enjoyed. This movie is very similar to the movie I saw as a kid in my school called Shaadi, a movie that's an instant classic and a movie that I loved. In the movie Shaadi, there is a scene where the heroine is running in a field and she runs right into the field and the villain steals the village. When I saw the movie as a kid, I was like, "Wow, this is a bad movie!" But after seeing it again, I was amazed that it's a movie that I like and I recommend it to everyone. I love that they are not showing everything that the villain is doing. When I watch a movie, I watch it for a reason and I never know what the movie will be about. In this movie, the villain was not the villain, but the villain was the hero. He was trying to save his village, but the villain's goal was to take the village and make it bigger. The movie had an excellent script and it was very well-written. I especially liked the ending because it showed the hero, the villain, and the village all together. It's a very good movie.
Mildred Webb
Tuesday, 14 Jul 2020 08:26
This is a wonderful movie! The music is excellent. The story is very good and the way the characters are depicted is very good. I was very impressed with the screenplay and the way the story is presented. A must watch movie!
Anthony E.
Monday, 06 Jul 2020 06:04
The Tamil movie industry has definitely learnt a lot from this movie. So much that the first 3 titles of this movie are ones to watch. And they are all great. I would have loved to see this movie made into a full-length film. Its got the tone of the music and the cast of the characters. The characters are great and their acting is perfect. But I would have loved to see more of those character's as the characters are not over-used. The music is really catchy and very interesting. It is very much a Tamil movie. The script is great. The story is great. The story is very simple and easy to follow. The storyline is simple but well written. There is no song that I don't like or that I have to pause it to listen to. There is not a single dull moment in this movie. The movie is 100% worth watching. The movie has many songs that are excellent. The songs are also great and the music is good. The fight scenes are very well done. The script is also very good. The whole cast is really great and their acting is very good. The cast of this movie is not over-used. The movie has an important message and it is very well written. This movie is worth watching.
Monday, 29 Jun 2020 11:09
I love these movies. They have a good story and the actors do a good job. What makes this movie so good is that it has a great story. A guy from the wrong side of the tracks (the hero of the movie) wakes up to find himself in a place where he can't see anything. In the same way, a guy from the right side of the tracks wakes up in a place where he can't see anything. So, what he can see is that he has a house and a car. It's the house that he's always wanted to buy, the car that he always wanted to get and the house that he has been trying to buy. But he has to go back to where he came from and this is where the fun begins. A guy from the wrong side of the tracks is making it his mission to get his dream house and to get his dream car and to get his dream house. Now, the movie has a good story, good acting, good direction, good music and good effects. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story and a good story with good acting. The ending is really sad and I would love to see that again.
Friday, 26 Jun 2020 20:24
First, the movie is a full-on action packed comedy. Second, it is not an overblown comedy like many in the past were. Third, this movie has great casting. Rajat Kapoor is Raj, the human punch-bag. It is awesome how he has managed to portray such a character with his acting. Deepika Padukone is still one of the most beautiful young actresses in Bollywood. She is very good at playing roles that are not that great. She has an amazing ability to make the audience feel as if she is one of the characters. The rest of the cast is great. Rishi Kapoor has made a great debut in a big way. He has done a good job in portraying a weak, boring and arrogant person. Aamir Khan has played his role well. However, I have to say that it is Ashutosh Rana. He has done a great job in portraying Raj, the human punch-bag. I can't help but feel sorry for him as he was making such a bad mistake. The first half of the movie is very entertaining. The movie then starts to go downhill as Raj and his friend have to battle over the key to the kingdom. The movie is about a man who is doing things for the kingdom. The king wants him to become king of the kingdom. Raj is the only one who has the strength and the brains to become the king. The second half is the most interesting part. The movie becomes very funny. The whole movie becomes more and more absurd and absurd. The movie ends with a great climax. The music by Saurabh Shukla is very good. The movie is full of humor. The movie is one of the best Bollywood movies ever made. The movie is full of action, comedy and romance. I rate this movie 9/10. I would rate it as a 9 out of 10.
Shirley C.
I have not seen the movie as I was in the mood for something a bit different from the usual romantic comedies and bollywood is not my cup of tea.But I must say I was thoroughly entertained by this movie.I have not seen the trailer and had no idea about what to expect but the movie made me smile.This movie is definitely one to watch.It is different from the usual romantic comedies and the movie is funny and entertaining.The movie is about a spoiled rich girl who is trying to get a boyfriend.There are many funny parts in the movie.Some of the characters are quite funny and the storyline is not bad at all.The movie also has a good message about independence of the woman and being independent of the man.The movie has good singing and dancing and the acting of all the characters is great.The movie also has an Indian feeling about it.This movie is definitely a must watch for the people who like different movies.I am very happy that a movie like this was made.
Thursday, 25 Jun 2020 12:57
Dhamaal is one of those rare gems of Bollywood cinema that was actually enjoyable to watch. I never thought that it was possible to watch an entire movie in one go. Dhamaal has a lot of great scenes, a lot of strong performances, and a lot of fun to be had. There are a lot of political messages in this movie, but that's part of the fun. The most memorable scene in the movie is definitely the fight between the Badruddin-Arun and the Kancha-Balu fights. I love how it's shown, and it's not really necessary to watch it to get the meaning. It's really the best fight I've ever seen in a Bollywood movie. Overall, Dhamaal is one of those movies that I'd love to watch over and over again. Definitely worth the watch.
I found this film very entertaining, even if it wasn't what I expected. I have seen the previous two movies, but this one is different. It's more of a dark comedy, with the comedy being in the beginning and middle of the film. This film is a masterpiece. A film with great songs, excellent dialogues and great action. This movie is the one to watch if you want to see a really good movie. In conclusion, I think this is a must watch movie.
Wednesday, 10 Jun 2020 15:40
The movie is an above average Punjabi entertainment. It has a very original story line and direction. But the movie fails to be funny. It is the same old story line again and again. It lacks comedy. The script is very lame. The plot is very unoriginal. But the movie fails to be entertaining. The movie is worth watching. But only for people who have a large taste for comedy.
This movie was not like any other Hindi movie i have seen till now. The action was spectacular and the story was unique. The ending was more interesting than the first one. Overall, a great movie. A must watch. I rate this movie 9 out of 10.
I have seen this movie about 3 times. I'm a big fan of comedies, action and a story line. This movie has all those elements. All the actors and actresses are superb, especially Salman Khan, who is a great actor. The story is also very good. The first half is more action and the second half is more comedy. There are many great laugh out loud moments. It's a must watch for all comedy lovers. It's the only movie which I have ever seen where all the characters are completely forgettable. The dialogues are also great. The music is also amazing. I can't say enough about this movie. Go watch it!
Emily O.
I have to say that this movie is not for the brain-dead. Even if you are in your twenties and you don't know a lot about what is happening in the world, you are still going to enjoy this movie. The first few scenes were so funny and that's exactly why I recommend this movie. The movie is full of laughter and we never get bored even when we watch it. The only thing that bothered me was the background music, it was very loud and the background music for the scenes where the gangsters were in jail was so loud that it was hard to concentrate. But I guess that's just a matter of taste. My favorite part of the movie is when they are walking and they are looking at the train station and the train is coming and when they are on the train the music was so loud that I could hear the train through the speakers. If you have never seen any movie, then this is the movie for you.
If you're not into the violence genre, this movie is not for you. This is a movie that showcases the amazing talent of Boman Irani, one of the best actors in Bollywood. For those of you who have seen this movie and have not seen it, you must go and watch it. I'm pretty sure you will be blown away by this movie. From the opening scene, to the ending credits, the music is awesome. It's a very different music from what you hear in the music video industry. All the songs are great, and they fit perfectly into the movie. The movie is well-acted. Shahid Kapoor is at his best, and his character is great. All the characters in the movie are great, and they play their roles very well. I was very happy with the ending, and I was very surprised when I saw it. It's a good movie, and it's worth a watch. 9/10


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The 2022 Graduate Recognition Ceremony
Tue, May 24, 2022 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Cox Stadium
Add To Calendar 2022-05-24 17:00 2022-05-24 19:00 UTC The 2022 Graduate Recognition Ceremony May 24th, 2022 Cox Stadium @ 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, California, 94132 San Francisco State University lcabox@sfsu.edu
Graduate Recognition Ceremony will take place on May 24th, @ 10am - 12pm
Location: Cox Stadium at San Francisco State University
The Graduate Recognition Ceremony honors and celebrates the recipients of the Graduate Award for Distinguished Achievement. The award recipients are selected by their departments and colleges for their academic achievements and service to the discipline, departments, and community.
San Francisco State University welcomes persons with disabilities and will provide reasonable accommodations upon request. If you would like reasonable accommodations for this event, please contact lcabox@sfsu.edu as soon as possible so your request may be reviewed. Please contact us at least one week in advance for priority accommodation.
Home to the nation's first College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University has a longstanding commitment to inclusiveness and social justice as expressed every day through University programs, initiatives and services.
San Francisco State University is a major public urban university, situated in one of the world's great cities. Building on a century-long history of commitment to quality teaching and broad access to undergraduate and graduate education, the University offers comprehensive, rigorous, and integrated academic programs that require students to engage in open-minded inquiry and reflection. SF State encourages its students, faculty, and staff to engage fully with the community and develop and share knowledge.
Find more San Francisco State University Events


Influencers are a dime a dozen in Miami these days, but a few stand out among the crowd. Martha Graeff is one such influencer. With a heavy background in the world of fashion—Martha was a model-turned-stylist-turned-womenswear buyer for Harvey Nichols—Graeff can walk the walk and talk the talk.
Ocean Drive chatted with the Brazilian style guru about fashion, her favorite Miami hot spots, and how she wears Giuseppe Zanotti shoes from day to night.
Giuseppe Zanotti shoes embody a timeless style, with distinct touches of modernity. How does that fit in with your overall approach to fashion and style?
MARTHA GRAEFF: The mix between classic and modern matches my style perfectly. I live in heels and Giuseppe Zanotti shoes bring any of my outfits to life.
What do you love most about the Giuseppe Zanotti style?
MG: I love the way Giuseppe Zanotti shoes empower women. They give power to any look and boost a girl's confidence!
Where do you enjoy wearing your Giuseppe Zanotti shoes?
MG: I wear them for photoshoots and also when I want to make a statement with an outfit. It's always the perfect final touch.
What kind of looks do you pair with your Giuseppe Zanotti shoes to create the perfect Miami fashion statement?
MG: I like to wear Giuseppe Zanotti shoes with denim for the day and with a dress for a night out or for a special event.
Can you share with us your Miami style tips?
MG: I like to dare, to add unexpected touches to my outfits. From a headpiece to sparkly shoes, something needs to catch the eye.
What makes Bal Harbour Shops such a great shopping destination?
MG: The atmosphere and the mix of brands and restaurants.
What are you favorite Miami hot spots?
MG: Soho House, Mandolin, Planta, and Purdy Avenue right next to where I live.


We have soon quiet a few different coffee tables here on Geeky Gadgets, from the geeky NES Controller Coffee Table, to the cool RGB LED Coffee Table, here is another cool one that would look great in your geeky apartment, the Foosball Coffee Table.
This fun Foosball Coffee Table measures 47 1/2 inches long, by 28 inches wide and 20 inches high, I would love one of these, not sure the Mrs would let me have one though.
This is the coffee table with a built-in foosball game. Made from solid poplar, the table stands 20″ high, allowing you to sit comfortably or kneel while grasping your team's three hand-carved, solid wood control rod handles. You can maneuver your forwards, mid-fielders, and defenders with precision–their stout polypropylene construction enables them to withstand the hardest of shots as you move to protect your goal.
If you want one, the Foosball Coffee Table is available for $600 from Hammacher.


North County, San Diego Area, Ice Cream Shop - Turn Key For Sale On BizBen.
For Best Results & Response, Email & Phone This Contact: Mark Flores at 760-809-1540 and 858-578-4111.
Located in an affluent neighborhood shopping center, this business is anchored by a major super market, popular restaurants, and retail shops. A true turnkey business that boasts a well developed staff with managers and leads in place! No experience necessary, the franchise provides complete training and ongoing support! Current owner is working part-time at this location. A full-time owner operator with a focus on marketing and community outreach can potentially develop this business into a much more profitable operation.
This is a leased location of 1,300 square feet with a Total Rent of $7,300. Lease ends 02/2020 with one 5 year lease option. Seller is active in the business with 8 PT employee. Hours of operation are M-Th 2-9pm/F 1-10pm/S-Su 12-9 . $2,000 in Inventory and $40,000 in FF&E included in Asking Price.
To get more information about this Popular Ice Cream Franchise business for sale in North County, San Diego Area please phone Mark Flores (Broker - BRE License #:01980017) at 760-809-1540 and 858-578-4111 - if you get voicemail please leave a detailed message - make sure you mention you saw this posting/ad #249530 on BizBen.com. In addition to phoning Mark Flores, make sure you email Mark Flores above to get more info about this Popular Ice Cream Franchise, to ask any questions or request an appointment to see this business for sale, franchise, or opportunity. Thank you.


text:
A Hollywood Story of Star-crossed Philanderers
Mr. and Mrs. P Are Married" by Elizabeth Crane, recommended by Lindsay Hunter
AN INTRODUCTION BY LINDSAY HUNTER
Written by Elizabeth Crane
Recommended by Lindsay Hunter
Every time I read Elizabeth Crane I have the same reaction, which is hard to put into words, but here, I'll try:
This lady has her shit together.
But imagine those words embroidered in stardust and imagine me whispering them as one would a most precious secret to one's sister. Elizabeth Crane's shit and its togetherness never ceases to leave me awed and grateful and wondering how she does it.
"Mr. and Mrs. P" is a chapter in a book about old Hollywood gossip; it's the long, unsettling tale your tipsy aunt tells you about her parents, sparing no gory detail; it's the tell-all by the long-suffering maid. Who is telling this story? That's another thing I love about Crane's writing: it always feels like there's a who, hovering just overhead, a Pan sprinkling in the glittery chaos. Her stories are fun and bizarre and wonderful and so, so sneaky.
The details in "Mr. and Mrs. P Are Married" are precise, every word and sentence and image in perfect placement. You're lol'ing maybe twenty words in, and you're also gleefully realizing that, Hey, this writer is a smidge deranged! Does she in fact have her shit together? The story begins to unfurl, faster and faster, you're nearly breathless trying to keep up, and meanwhile all this time is passing but you don't feel cheated. The answer is yes, she does.
Elizabeth Crane's shit and its togetherness never ceases to leave me awed and grateful and wondering how she does it.
Let's stop here and say a "hallelujah" for short story writers like Crane, who hand us entire lives that pass in a matter of thirty or so pages yet are realer than the life you're in fact living right now.
The world is a bewildering, ridiculous place. It's easy to forget that while you're tying your shoes, selecting a croissant, driving the same stretch of pale gray highway for the eleven-hundredth time. Elizabeth Crane mines the everyday and reveals what we're missing. It's unsettling. It's hilarious. It's…beyond. And you just know she's having a great time, because suddenly you are, too.
– Lindsay Hunter
Author of Eat Only When You're Hungry
Elizabeth Crane
"Mr. and Mrs. P Are Married" By Elizabeth Crane
Mrs. P is born on a cold day in West Virginia in 1947, eyes open, to a homemaker and a general practitioner. Worrying everyone terribly, she does not speak until her third birthday, when she says, I have to go. No one knows what this means. When directed toward the bathroom, she looks in and shakes her head. The child is immediately signed up for Catholic school.
Mr. P is born in Los Angeles, California, in 1941 with a slap to the bottom that literally knocks the shit out of him, and it's not so much a sign of what's to come, it's the opposite if anything, as it is the first in a long series of unfortunate incidents.
His parents had once been in vaudeville, if that has anything to do with anything. We doubt it, but just putting it out there.
Upon turning thirteen, Mrs. P's mother cuts her daughter's long blond hair into a Jackie-style bob, which does not suit her. It's the latest thing, her mother says, but Mrs. P will have short hair only one more time in her life, which will also be a mistake. Mrs. P loves her mother (if not as much this day as others), but she is now and will always be a daddy's girl. (I'm hideous!/Baby girl, you couldn't be hideous if you grew a camel's hump on your back. Hair grows, sweet thing, you just hold on./She hates me, why else would she do this?/Sweet pea, your mama doesn't hate you, I reckon she's just a speck jealous because the bloom is off her rose and yours is just opening up.) Mrs. P wonders for a moment what will happen when the bloom falls off her own rose, but as soon as that thought passes, she tears off for the dime store, where she pockets a mascara and a "Fatal Apple" red lipstick. In addition to bloom-loss prevention, young Mrs. P hopes this will bring some edge to her style, and this look isn't really her either, but she gives it a good go for the better part of seventh grade. However, this move does not bring her great popularity, and she quickly remodels herself one more time with a ponytail and a smile. This will carry her a long way.
Mr. P, tall, skinny, and Irishly handsome, gets into some trouble the summer before his freshman year of high school, the usual 1956 fare: smoking behind the bleachers, fistfight on Sunset Boulevard having something to do with a girl, drinking/ throwing up whiskey into Echo Park Lake. His punishments escalate accordingly from grounding for a day to a yardstick-whipping, and these whippings will continue throughout his high school career. From this Mr. P will learn two things. Thing one: that yardstick-whippings modify his behavior only for the length of time it takes for the physical pain to go away (a lesson Mr. P the elder will not ever learn). Thing two: just because yardstick-whippings as a method of parenting may not be effective does not mean he won't keep it in mind. (In fact, when he has his own children of yardstick-whipping age, he will not resort to this, but he will consider it, often.) Mr. P is not the dumbest guy on the planet, but he's not super quick.
Mrs. P joins the pep squad in high school and is nominated for captain before the end of the year. She has become quite a natural beauty, although in the brains department she's pretty much on the level of her future husband, maybe a half notch up. Mrs. P does spend a lot of time thinking, about life mostly, she just doesn't get very far with it. She looks at the world around her, and it sort of looks nice, post-football bon res, pie-baking contests, Main Street parades, church potlucks, but even from the center, she feels removed from it somehow. It looks to her like a class photo they took without her. She thinks she's supposed to want it, but imagines everyone walking around with nothing but clouds in their skulls because it's easier than coming up with any idea of what they really think. At times she wishes she had clouds in her own skull in place of thoughts like these, but even the effort to assimilate only results in further thoughts about why no one sees what she sees. She tries to enter the picture by dating the quarterback, Ned Crawford, for most of her junior and senior years of high school, leaving him devastated when she decides to break up with him right before prom. Ned had been planning a prom night proposal, but Mrs. P had been secretly fucking her mechanic since he fixed her Ford Falcon. The mechanic had seduced her, quite easily, with talk of life's small beauties: the Baptist church on South Elm just after it lets out, the Potters' old blue barn that leans like a parallelogram, a pink Band-Aid on a boy's skinned knee, the percussion of a car engine. He talks at length about the details that give meaning to the mundane. (It's not about looking, it's about seeing, you dig?) Mrs. P has never heard talk like this before, certainly not at home, and Ned speaks mostly of football and taking over the family shoe store, neither of which interest her. The mechanic sparks more in her than her sexual nature (which is no small portion of her overall nature); it's almost as though he activated a hidden mechanism or replaced a missing part she'd hardly known was gone, and suddenly she feels as though her whole self has finally been assembled. When she tells him she needs to go, he nods and sends her off with a farewell fuck. After reading a tiny ad for an art school in the back of Photoplay, Mrs. P takes off for Los Angeles, just before graduation. Disheartened to discover that the art school is actually just a suburban post office box, she redirects and answers a casting call for all-American types for a game show hostess in the same magazine. She does not get that job, but lands a mayonnaise commercial right after putting in an application at the Chicken A-Go-Go.
Mr. P is at this time on the amateur boxing circuit, mostly getting his ass kicked, but it doesn't matter, because a talent scout from one of the networks spots him and offers him a screen test for a new soap opera. Mr. P, like Mrs. P, had shown little interest in acting before jumping in (in spite of occasional suggestions from his parents to try bringing back vaudeville) and his talent hasn't quite been uncovered at this point (although he does have some), but on the basis of his resemblance to the actor hired to play his brother, he's given the part. The show becomes a hit and Mr. P makes the cover of Photoplay and Mrs. P sees it and thinks he's kind of cute in a bland sort of way, a guy who manages a grocery store kind of way, but she won't give him another thought for fifteen years. At this time, nineteen-year-old Mrs. P is involved with a much older television producer who gets her a few lines on some popular situation comedies and not much more. She's not with him for this reason, that's not her thing, and she's not with him just because he tells her she has a quality (because she has no idea what this means), nor is she with him because he talks to her as though she understands what he's talking about (even when she doesn't). She's with him because when they fuck, he does this thing with a scarf around her neck that makes her feel like Jesus himself is fucking her.
Mr. P at this time, has not gotten much further, sexually speaking, than pounding his costar missionary-style. This is good enough for making a baby, which they do, a red-headed girl they call Maggie, but not good enough to hold on to his costar, who briefly becomes his wife after they discover the pregnancy. They divorce quickly, because his drinking has sent him on one too many two-day benders, and his wife has heard one too many lame excuses (I had to shoot a night scene in Malibu/I had an important meeting in Malibu/Something happened in Malibu/I don't have to tell you everything). Also she doesn't much like being called a cunt. From his second wife, he will learn about cunnilingus, but he won't enjoy it, and they too will reproduce, a boy they name Seamus, and ten months later, a girl they name Erin (as in Go Bragh, which he thinks is hilarious one drunken night and briefly tries to convince his wife would make a great middle name, Right, she says, because I'm sure high school was a smashing success for Ima Hogg), but again, the drinking and cunt thing, so this marriage will also be short-lived. In 1972 he will land the role that will be the first line of his obituary, a wildly popular weepy drama (Love Lives on Forever) about a widower whose daughter dies of a rare disease but who finds love with her private nurse and learns to live again. For a while he pounds this costar as well, but she refuses his proposal. Mr. P, raised Catholic, has always believed in marriage, even though he doesn't know why and doesn't question why, even though the example set for him by his parents was not particularly inspiring (twin beds in his parents' bedroom, the door to which was almost always open/not much in the way of dinner conversation beyond Pass the green beans/not much in the way of motherly affection beyond a pat on the blanket after she'd tucked him in/Dad liked to drink and sleep with prostitutes). Still, he feels that there's something holy about it, marriage, or should be, at least; he believes this is the true and right thing for a man and a woman to do and is determined to find a wife he'll stick with one day.
After leaving the television producer, Mrs. P does a guest spot on an action series and quickly marries the star of the show, causing a sensation by hyphenating her last name. Her new husband doesn't much care for this, he's a bit of a traditionalist, but he's mad for her and takes it as part of the package. Frankly, he'd just as soon have her stay at home, which he lets her know on numerous occasions, to which she always says sweetly, some variation of, Oh . . . well . . . I don't think that's for me. In 1976 Mrs. P gets her big break on a new action series created with her in mind, this one featuring an all-female ensemble cast, for which her thick blond hair is cut to accentuate its natural wave, a hairstyle that will seemingly be copied by every woman in America for a time. It's around here that Mrs. P becomes acquainted with the tabloids, who declare that she is involved in everything from sex cults to sorcery. None of these things are ever true, and as much as she'd like her privacy back, a part of her wishes they'd go ahead and print the truth as she sees it, which is simply that she has the sex drive of an eighteen-year-old boy and likes to try new things (new things here including activity considered by some to be risky but which she sees as merely exciting and, perhaps most important, no one else's damn business). Because of the negative attention, Mrs. P cuts her hair into a pixie style (which looked good on Jean Seberg and, she realizes too late, only Jean Seberg, and which of course serves only to bring her more unwanted attention) and leaves the series that made her a star after just one season, and although her hair will be talked about for decades, she is not heard from again publicly until the '80s. Privately, between 1977 and 1983, several things happen, beginning with two miscarriages and three months in a private mental care facility — exhaustion is the reason made public, but in fact Mrs. P suffers a protracted and debilitating bout of depression brought on by the miscarriages, wonders if god thinks she'd be an unfit mother, wonders if she could love a child she didn't give birth to (she could, but will not find out), wonders if having a child would make her want to stay in one place (it won't), wonders if anything matters without children, which for a time leaves her profoundly hopeless about more or less everything else she'd previously cared about, even sex (What does it really mean, anyway, nothing). Intensive psychotherapy and brief affair with a yoga instructor help her to snap out of it, but all of it figures into, if not causes, the breakdown of her marriage.
Mrs. P's husband makes a serious miscalculation in introducing his wife to his best friend during this period, believing that his friend Mr. P will keep an eye on his unreliable wife while he's out of the country filming a made-for-TV movie about an Australian bounty hunter. (I know she'll fuck somebody else if I leave her alone. Never met a woman or a man as horny as her in my life. And I've met a lot of women. And I'm horny.) What happens instead is that though Mr. P initially does remarkably well with this task, dissuading the future Mrs. P from a dalliance she's interested in having with a tile man doing work on her patio, Mr. P is thoroughly unable to resist her advances when they are made, and because they have begun to confide in each other during this time of their relationship troubles (He just doesn't get me/Women always leave me/Who would leave you, baby?/Ah I guess I can be a jerk sometimes), their bond is not merely sexual (especially given the initial absence of the cunnilingus Mrs. P is quite fond of), but as it turns out, a genuine connection that neither is prepared to give up. Mr. and Mrs. P talk about god and life (I just think, this can't be all of it, right? Like, stars? at can't just be explained by astroscience, right?/No, no way, baby/I know, right?) and even art (I'm completely taken with Matisse's colors/I can't say I know who that is/Here look at this book, baby, see, doesn't it just make you want to lay some paint down on the floor and roll around in it?/You are so fucking sexy, baby, I am over the moon for you), which is something Mrs. P has secretly been thinking about trying again someday, painting, and Mr. P says, If you were my wife, I'd build you a studio, and Mrs. P smiles and brushes it off as just a hobby, anyway, tells him he's sweet and changes the subject. Mr. and Mrs. P think these conversations are deep, even though they aren't, although who's to decide that, really, because they are with each other one hundred percent by now, and because they do really connect here, because they both feel something they haven't felt before, something they both believe no one has felt before, and maybe that's as deep as it ever needs to be. Mrs. P acquires a quickie divorce before her husband even returns to the country, and immediately moves in with Mr. P at his Beverly Hills mansion. Mrs. P's husband deals with this betrayal by waiting for a respectable ninety days before telling his side of the story to Barbara Walters.
Unsurprisingly, Mrs. P, in her soft-spoken way, her voice like a pot-smoking kitten, will inform Mr. P that he'll need to learn a few new tricks if he's interested in keeping her around. Mr. P makes a few initial stumbles but learns to please. In fact he learns a few extra tricks thanks to Mrs. P's interest in bondage and knife play. Some tricks he will flat-out refuse, like the time Mrs. P hears there's a new trend in Japan where people are utilizing electrically charged squid as one might use a dildo. (I'm not sure where the pleasure in that would be for me/It just goes where the dildo goes, honey/I don't think I want an electric sea creature shocking me up the ass/How will you know unless you try it?) He's about to say, I just do, but the look on Mrs. P's face is so inviting that she might be able to convince him that an atomic missile up his ass would be even better. For a time, this behavior will remain in the bedroom and will also involve weird third-person dialogue (Yeah, she loves his big dick in her mouth!/He's cumming! Mr. P is cumming! Here it comes!/Cum on her face!) and role-playing (teacher/underage student, pimp/drug-addicted whore, mommy/little boy, daddy/little boy [Mrs. P is always the daddy in this scenario; Mr. P is initially taken aback by this not because it's incestuous but because it seems gay, but it's another chance for Mrs. P to use a strap-on], priest/altar boy [a variation on the previous, with a few Biblical verses], brother/sister, farmhand/sheep).
For nearly a year, things are good, and outside of the bedroom they do a lot of the typical things couples do, travel, go to the movies, the beach, throw dinner parties (although admittedly, someone at their dinner parties always gets drunk enough to either break a large piece of furniture or punch someone). Once, on a leisurely hunt for beach glass, Mr. P gets down on one knee with the narrow end of a nicely sanded green beer bottle and places the glass ring on her finger, the look on his face as he proposes that of a puppy who just chewed up your grandmother's needlepoint pillow but still hopes to sleep in your bed. Mrs. P says, You're sweet, and resists the mysterious urge to pat him on the head, and tells him if she were to marry again, it would only be him, but he knows that tiny little if is the major problem with the entire sentence. Around this time, Mrs. P rescues a skinny calico kitten that shows up behind the air-conditioning unit, realizes, as she treats it for worms, lovingly salves its wounds, feeds it with a bottle, that her maternal instincts haven't abandoned her, perhaps even grew while she wasn't looking, and perceives an almost spiritual connection with the animal, would go so far as to say she feels not just appreciated but understood by the kitten, and is so moved by the experience that she begins donating large sums of money to animal-rescue groups. She has been asked to appear on behalf of various causes over the years, always declining but donating anonymously (Well, I just don't see why anyone needs to know, she'll say with a coy smile) and making no exception now. Mr. P, to date, has never gotten much more involved in anything terribly munificent outside of buying a few boxes of thin Mints when the Girl Scouts come around, and has vocally disapproved of Mrs. P's inclinations in this area (You're going to go broke!/I have more than I need./You can't give to every pathetic person out there!/Yes, I can!), but has recently softened, partly in the hopes that it will make him seem more marriage-worthy (Will you marry me if I give a million dollars to sad dogs?/Maybe/Get me my checkbook).
With Mr. P's encouragement, Mrs. P will endeavor to get back in the acting game after a couple years absent, takes acting classes for the first time, finally auditioning for and landing a part in a feature as a woman whose child has been abducted. Around the time that Mrs. P's career begins to take off again, Mr. P's begins to take a nose dive, not crashing completely but forever remaining in middling comedies and the occasional cameo in a drama that shows the potential he had but never fully proved. It is during this period that Mr. and Mrs. P begin hurting each other. It could be argued that the origin of this behavior began with some of the sex play, but that remains uncertain. There is an incident when Mrs. P drips hot candle wax on Mr. P's testicles, which turns them both on for about a minute until Mrs. P accidentally drips a little too much and gives him a second-degree burn, which he believes she has done on purpose because she'd been angry with him about his unwillingness to try the squid. (Cunt! You know you meant to do that!/Why would I do that on purpose?/I don't know, maybe you see me as a father figure!/I don't need a father figure, my father's nice!/I bet he is, fatherfucker!/Maybe you were really fucking your father!/That doesn't even make any sense!/Don't you even say one more word about my daddy!/Fatherfucker!/Well, maybe you were fucking your mother! Motherfucker!/ Bitch!/You're the little bitch!) This fight continues off and on for a good while, and will always be referred to in later fights. (You were supposed to pay the gardener/No you were supposed to pay the gardener/No my assistant was supposed to pay the gardener/Was the assistant supposed to read your fucking idiot mind?/Why are you so worried about the gardener anyway, do you want to fuck him?/Yeah, I'm a faggot now, I want to fuck the gardener/Hey, I don't know, maybe you do/Well maybe the gardener wouldn't burn me on the balls!/Let it fucking go, did you cum or not?) In any case, who throws the first punch is up for debate, but what is certain is that they're both throwing them. Mrs. P, being of a petite stature, does not inflict a lot of damage with her bare hands, but has great aim with pottery and is not afraid to throw it. After these incidents, there is always make-up fucking, and sometimes they're still bleeding, which makes them laugh. Sometimes they call each other Cunty and Motherfucker, affectionately. Several years later when Mrs. P leaves, it is not for this reason, but it may be the reason she comes back. In the summer of 1986 Mr. and Mrs. P conclude this period of their lives with the birth of their only child, Charlie, which as she'd long ago imagined, provides a meaning to her life that trumps everything else that matters to her, a meaning she tries unsuccessfully to explain to Mr. P, who feels something he doesn't care to call jealousy but looks a lot like it. (It's just . . . I feel . . . a knowing/A knowing./A knowing./ . . . /If you don't understand without me explaining, I don't think you're going to.) In spite of Mr. P's unknowing, the early years are magical, filled with trips to Disneyland and the redwoods and Maui, with playdates, Happy Meals, and bedtime stories. Mr. P sees Mrs. P bathing the infant boy in the kitchen sink, carefully soaping the baby's bald head, whisper-singing "Mockingbird," wrapping the baby in what looks to him like a velvet towel, and knows beyond doubt that he will never feel for another woman what he feels for this one. Mr. P, however, in spite of this example, will, on the occasion that he actually picks the baby up, continue to hold the boy as one might deliver the Thanksgiving turkey to the table, with about the same measure of pride, and as though the only purpose for lifting the boy is for the purpose of transporting him from one place to another. Mrs. P, the primary caregiver by a lot, will love the child as much as a child could be loved, but by the time he turns fourteen, he will have stolen and sold most of his mother's jewelry for drugs, wrecked a car he wasn't licensed to drive, and gone missing several times. An early excuse involving Malibu is not accepted, for obvious reasons. (I should have beat your ass with a yardstick like my father did/Yeah that worked out real good for you, Pops/ . . .)
Mr. P's relationships with his children have only rarely resembled anything falling on the positive side of the parenting scale. His relationship with his younger daughter, Erin, has never been good, considering that her mother moved her to the East Coast when she was six and he's visited her exactly four times in fifteen years, and has been strained even more ever since Erin decided that sex for any purpose other than procreation is a black sin and that her father will go to hell for it unless he accepts god, which Mr. P thinks is horseshit even though he considers himself to be a practicing Catholic, albeit one who sins and doesn't go to church. Mr. P tells his daughter that if he does go to hell, that'll be the least of the reasons. His son Seamus, now in his thirties, is a seventh-grade history teacher, the only P child to attend more than a semester at college, and who now has a family of his own, is by all accounts but his father's the well-adjusted one, perhaps due to the presence of a loving stepfather who entered his life early on, or perhaps just by luck of the draw, since this didn't seem to help his sister at all. No doubt Mr. P's hostility toward his son is exacerbated by Seamus's calm and easygoing demeanor. Seamus loves his father, but has learned from years of Al-Anon meetings to do so from a distance where there's no chance of being hit. Seamus sends his father and Mrs. P (whom all the P kids have always adored; You're too good for him/Why are you with him?/I love him/But why?/Why not?) birthday cards and holiday letters, calls a couple of times a month; Mr. P rarely offers any return communication, and rarely even returns Seamus's calls. When asked why by Mrs. P (or anyone for that matter), he says, I hate that guy, and that's all he ever says about it. Maggie, Mr. P's other neglected daughter, whose birthday he forgot every other year since she was five, endeavoring, unsuccessfully, to make up for it with cars and credit cards (She doesn't need a car, she's twelve/Well, did she like it?), is currently serving a three-year sentence at a women's prison for breaking and entering, a charge she pleaded no contest to on account of it being true; she had broken and entered her ex-husband's house and taken back her engagement ring, which she pawned for an ounce of black tar heroin. This causes Mr. P no small amount of anguish, which he deals with by smoking some black tar heroin. This, however, is not his drug of choice, so Mr. P adds to this some Percocet and Scotch, which leads to his third DUI arrest. Mr. P, who once had to pound milk shakes to keep his 150 pounds, still has his boyish looks, but has put on some weight and is puffy in the face from the drinking. He's thinking about an eye lift. Later he will get one, which will make his eyes look slightly inhuman, which he will attempt to remedy by adding eyeliner, which is one of those things some older men in Hollywood do that we shouldn't even try to understand. Mr. P is sentenced to ninety days of community service picking up trash on the 101 freeway, wearing dark sunglasses and the required pinny that in bold letters says LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, and during this time gives several autographs, which makes him happy and sad at the same time, which confuses him (as you might imagine, this inability to understand complexity of feeling has not aided him in his acting career either). Mrs. P leaves during this period, and even though there are plenty of obvious good reasons, it's not any of these. She just needs to go. She tries to explain this to Mr. P, that it's just a drive she has, that it doesn't have anything to do with him, and it doesn't, but he doesn't get it, and he's demolished, like when they fill up old buildings with dynamite and they're utterly flattened, like that, he tells her, flattened. He begs her not to leave, promises her anything she could possibly want, anything he could possibly do to make things work, couples therapy, liposuction, anything, but she just smiles, sadly, kisses his weird eyes and goes, takes troubled thirteen-year-old Charlie with her, and except for one horrendous incident with a prostitute, Mr. P will not get involved with anyone sexually or otherwise until they reunite. He will flirt a lot, in restaurants, in bars, in the grocery store, on the street, or his version of flirting (You ever see Love Lives on Forever? You want to?), mostly with women younger than his daughters, but none of this will result in sexual activity of any kind. Mr. P stalks Mrs. P a little bit periodically, moping in his car outside her house, showing up places he thinks she might be, leaving horrifically out-of-tune heartbreak songs on her answering machine (She's gone! Ain't no sunshine when she's gone! She's leaving! Leaving! On that midnight train to Georgia!) and sending sad, nonsensical letters (this period of my life, babe, is like smoke signals, and without you my mind goes to lunch), and she actually thinks it's kind of sweet, and she actually knows exactly what he means.
Mrs. P drops out of acting during this time, this time for good. She takes up painting and even though it's halfway decent, she doesn't get much in the way of critical acclaim, which she seems to understand (Yeah, it's a little they don't get it, a little "look at the girl with the hair having her fun"), but doesn't really care, because she sells a boatload of it. Also it fills her spirit, and in early 2002 she up and marries and quickly divorces a gallery owner. Needless to say, when Mr. P learns that she's married someone besides him, he calls her immediately and asks why she didn't just stab him in the stomach with a fireplace poker instead. Around here she watches a lot of Oprah, reads The Road Less Traveled, and starts listening to NPR, which she thinks is really interesting. She tells people, I just love learning, you know? even though she may not be fully comprehending the material being consumed. Often she learns things altogether wrong (Did you know that Kim Jong-il is responsible for the deaths of millions of babies in Taiwan?) or memorizes bits at the most basic level (the problems in our educational system can't be solved by throwing a bunch of money at it), nevertheless she's invigorated, and will tell anyone who will listen about the latest thing she learned.
In a blackout, Mr. P hears about the gallery guy on Access Hollywood, tracks him down, and kicks the shit out of him. Mr. P has never thought of his relationship with Mrs. P as abusive and neither has she. They always like to say passionate or tumultuous. They always like to say their love is one of a kind, even, or maybe especially, at times when they aren't technically together. We aren't really sure what to call it, love isn't the first word that comes to mind, but we haven't got another one. If you catch Mrs. P after she's heard this kind of scuttlebutt about her relationship, she'll say, Who are they to say what love is or isn't? You know what I think? I think love is easy. It doesn't mean you don't throw things at each other sometimes or take a few years off for yourself. Mrs. P gets word of what Mr. P's done (via the tabloids, which she of course doesn't read but is hard-pressed to overlook at the supermarket checkout) and dreamily tells her best friend how romantic she thinks this is. In truth, Mr. and Mrs. P have never really been out of touch since the split, Charlie being their excuse for multiple daily phone calls that go well beyond what time he should be picked up from his AA meeting, but there are things they don't discuss, or we should say she won't discuss, for obvious reasons. So but Mr. P gets word from her girlfriend that she was touched to hear he defended her honor so gallantly, and starts writing her love letters again, really sweet, if unsurprisingly odd and misspelled love letters (I love you like a bonfire loves a marshmallow), and Mrs. P finally answers him back and tells him that if he goes to rehab, she'll consider taking him back someday, even though rehab doesn't have much to do with it, she just wants a little more time. Mr. P goes to rehab, and it doesn't take the first time, or the second time, but it does take the third time, which coincides with him being around long enough to become ironically popular again, getting some interesting parts in independent films and finally a sitcom. Mr. P sends flowers and gifts to Mrs. P every week (picked out by her girlfriend because he's inclined to pick out antelope-sized arrangements and Elizabeth Taylor–type bling for her even though she prefers freesia and hardly wears jewelry at all), but it isn't until she hears from her friend that he has prostate cancer that she begins seeing him again. Mrs. P visits him every day in his room at Cedars-Sinai, even though they've been apart for some time. She won't have any of what the nursing staff is selling her in terms of visiting hours (but does so in her charming way — Oh, I'll be on my way in just a few, and then sleeps in his bed next to him for the length of his stay). Mrs. P also avails herself to Mr. P during his entire recovery, baking fresh berry scones every day, bringing flowers and reading Anna Karenina to him, mostly because Mrs. P has always loved the first line. (Usually, she just reads a page or two before he falls asleep.) Mr. P does everything he can to use his illness to get her to come back (I might croak tomorrow/ Nice try, baby, the doctor says you're all clear/Ah, I don't know, I'm not feeling that great unless you're around/I'm always with you, baby, you should know that). Mr. P soon recovers and promises never to hurt Mrs. P again, and he doesn't.
Mr. and Mrs. P's son, Charlie, takes his turn in prison, also on drug-related charges. It's a terrible time for the Ps, much worse than the cancer, for Mrs. P the hands-down worst time in her life. Charlie doesn't blame her (prison dialogue, all family members present: Charlie, I should have done better by you, my sweet baby boy/Please don't blame yourself, Mom, I just got some shitty genes from Dad/So it's my fault/Yeah, well, you could have at least tried to make up the difference somehow/Did I not give you everything you needed? You live in our goddamn guest house with freaking maid service/Not now I don't/You're just an ungrateful little bitch/Stop it! Stop it right now!), but she can't help herself. At home, Mrs. P cries and cries, mostly alone in a secluded corner of her garden, until Mr. P finally pulls his head out of his ass and admits to her that he's fucked everything up with their kid, and that he wants to try to do right by her (Don't do it for me, baby, do it for him/I will, baby). Mr. P goes back to the prison without Mrs. P (for the first time) to see Charlie and weeping, confesses his sins.
(I've fucked all you kids up, I know it/Nah, Dad, the odds were against me in the womb/I still could have tried harder/You did the best you could, I know you got fucked the same way I did./I'm so, so sorry, Son/Hey, I thought love meant never having to say you're sorry/Yeah, that's a big load of horseshit/ (actual laughter here)/I want to do better now, if you'll let me try/Okay, Dad.) This particular Okay, Dad has any number of layers to it, including but not limited to total skepticism, lingering resentment he's too tired to express, and hope, a little tiny bit of hope that he might someday have a dad that acts like a dad, even now. Mrs. P, whose bright light is dimming just a bit now, leans on Mr. P, lets him stay over most nights now, and they no longer fight or throw anything, they make healthy dinners, watch movies, and have some sex that's a somewhat less energetic version of times past, but that has a tenderness that had never been there; Mr. P often lies quietly next to her after, while she falls asleep. He likes to say that he loves to watch her dreaming, he imagines, of kittens in palaces, dining on lobster rolls and ice cream sundaes, romping under rainbows and sleeping in canopy beds.
Mrs. P comes down with cancer herself, of the colon, unfortunately it is discovered rather late for anything but a miracle, which is what they both hope for, and now Mr. P tends to her. Mr. P shifts into a brand-new gear for this exercise, goes to great lengths to find a cure for his wife, learns to use the internet (for a while he hadn't even believed it existed; he would say, Who uses that really?, this around 2004), reads articles and calls around the world, everyone from doctors to shamans to the pope (the latter of whom is not easily reached for miracle-making, he discovers). He prepares most of her meals as smoothies because she can't tolerate solid foods and hardly has the energy to chew anyway. Mrs. P doesn't love all of these smoothies (I'm not crazy about the split pea, honey/Come on, it's just like soup, you love soup!/This is not like soup/Okay, sweetness, I'll fix you something different, what do you want, you name it/Chocolate banana/Okay baby, chocolate banana coming up/With whipped cream/You got it baby) but when he delivers them to her bed with a loopy straw and an edible violet blossom on top, she gives him a grateful, loving smile, albeit a cancer-stricken, half-lit version of her famous smile, a smile that makes him know his time on the planet hasn't been altogether useless. Mr. P gets down on his knees every morning and evening now, something he hasn't done since third grade, praying to god to cure Mrs. P, trying to make any deal he can think of, even some unsavory ones (Take me, take Seamus), weeping and even admitting some of his flaws (I know I'm a shitty father, I know I'm a dick in sixteen different ways, Mother Mary, but she's an angel, you probably already know that, and she doesn't deserve this, please don't take this out on her, she is good and kind and I don't think I can live without her). It is during this time that Mr. P makes the first of a number of marriage proposals that Mrs. P turns down. (Oh, silly, when are you going to stop asking me that?/When you say yes./I want to grow old with you./Sometimes I think people like me aren't supposed to grow old./What does that mean? What kind of people are you? Don't say that.) Mr. P thinks they're the same kind of people, the kind of people who like a good cheese and an old movie and who think too hard about the wrong things (which he thinks to say just in the moment, but which may be as insightful a thing that ever comes to him), who got lucky in the most important way when they found each other, the kind of people who are meant to grow old together, forever, until they're old and feeble and take an overdose of pills so they can die at the same time, in an embrace. This has been Mr. P's plan ever since he met Mrs. P. He knows there's not much time left but he still wants to be able to call her his wife, once and for all. (Please, baby, make me the happiest man in the world, we can do it however you like, a big church wedding, at the courthouse, I could rent a yacht, we can go to Vegas, whatever you desire/Oh I don't know.) But Mrs. P does know, she thinks maybe she's just meant to sparkle brilliantly for a short while and when the shine starts to dull, she'll just fizzle out quickly, like a bottle rocket.
Several days before her death, in a bit of a morphine haze but not at all unclear about her decision, Mr. and Mrs. P are married. She has mere days left, so it's hardly as he always imagined, an all-white barefoot ceremony on the beach, close friends (and even some family), vows they wrote themselves, Mrs. P with a single gardenia behind her ear. The only thing that's white in reality is the harsh fluorescent lights above them, and the only people present besides them are the hospital chaplain, an uninvited nurse who randomly walks in with a handyman, insisting that one of the monitors needs to be checked at this exact moment, and Mrs. P's best girlfriend as a witness. Mrs. P has, with the doctor's permission, cut her morning dose of morphine in half, but is still drowsy and in pain and distracted by a fly buzzing around her head. At Mrs. P's request her friend has dabbed a tiny bit of rose lipstick on her lips and cheeks, and Mr. P has brought a gardenia for her hair, which she uses for a bouquet instead, because she loves the fragrance, says the fragrance is so heavenly that when she closes her eyes for a second it positively takes her away. The chaplain weds them with the traditional vows, although Mrs. P's not listening at the moment, Mr. P smiles and snuffs and makes a slashing motion across his neck when the chaplain says "obey," her friend gives a small inaudible chuckle, and although Mrs. P has been unable to prepare anything, Mr. P has with him the dog-eared, folded-up vow he's been hanging on to since he wrote it thirty years ago. Tears run down his puffy face as he reads it, the others in the room are welling up too, all but Mrs. P who's in and out, and returns only long enough to see Mr. P wiping away tears and telling her that he knows he's still not a very good man, but she's made him a better one, and that fourteen lifetimes from now when he's an armadillo and she's a gazelle, he will still love her as much as he does this day, as much as always.
At the funeral, Mrs. P's bereaved, ninety-two-year-old father is led down the aisle, held tightly by Mr. P on one side and Charlie on the other, because he can barely stand from the grief. He asks Mr. P, weeping, not expecting an answer, Why her, I'm an old man, why not me? Why my sweet angel girl? Mr. P says he's not sure his wife was really made for this world. Mr. P's father considers this for a moment before he speaks. What world do you suppose she was made for, then? I don't know, Mr. P says. A better one.
Excerpted from TURF by Elizabeth Crane by permission of Soft Skull Press. © Elizabeth Crane 2017. All Rights Reserved.
Elizabeth Crane is the author of the novels The History of Great Things and We Only Know So Much and three collections of short stories. Her stories have been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. She is a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, and her work has been adapted for the stage by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. She currently lives in Newburgh, New York.
Lindsay Hunter the co-founder and co-host of the groundbreaking Quickies! reading series, an event that focused on flash fiction. Her first book, Daddy's, a collection of flash fiction, was published in 2010 by featherproof books, a boutique press in Chicago. Her second collection, DON'T KISS ME, was published by FSG Originals in 2013 and was named one of Amazon's 10 Best Books of the Year: Short Stories. Her first novel, Ugly Girls, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2014. The Huffington Post called it "a story that hits a note that's been missing from the chorus of existing feminist literature." Her latest novel, Eat Only When You're Hungry, was a finalist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award and a 2017 NPR Great Read.
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"When Harry Met Sally" Makes Adult Weekends Aspirational
An iconic romantic comedy taught me what to do with newfound leisure time
Nov 24 - Bekah Waalkes
Here's Your First Look at 'The Wife'
Here's Your First Look at 'The Wife,' The Glenn Close Movie Based on Meg Wolitzer's Novel Close plays a woman whose literary ambitions have come second to her husband's for 40 years
Aug 10 - Electric Literature
'Jaws' is a Film Full of Queer Intimacy You Never Noticed
How three men on a boat helped me come to terms with my sexuality
Aug 9 - Jen Corrigan