Caitlin through the Looking Glass
The late Charles Willeford (Miami Blues) on the secret to writing:
“Never allow yourself to take a leak in the morning until you’ve written a page. That way you’re guaranteed a page a day, and at the end of a year you have a novel.”
(Thanks to the Maud Newton writing blog).
Today is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade in the British Empire. It was designated as a Day of Resistance and Remembrance with events all over the country, including one at the British Museum.
I am volunteering at the museum this year – currently I am in training to lead tours in the Japan Gallery, which I will be doing once a week or fortnight starting from about May. So I was asked to come along and help with today’s event, which ran from 2pm to 5.30pm this afternoon. I spent the first hour helping with the kids’ art workshop, making African masks, and then the next couple of hours as a photographer’s assistant, which mainly involved getting people to sign consent forms. The advantage with the latter job was that I got to see lots of different things, from a one woman play called Moj of the Antarctic to historian Simon Schama reading from his book Rough Crossings. The day ended with a ceremony from 5.30pm to 6.30pm, with short speeches, beautiful gospel singing, caporeira, and a video message from Nelson Mandela. The highlight for me was an amazing poem written especially for the event, which I think was by Jean Binta Breeze (but I’ll have to double check).
I thought the day went really well. There were loads of people there and it was very racially mixed (though not equally in all events, interestingly enough). Everyone, young and old, seemed to be having a lot of fun. And I think it’s an important to remember and recognise, not only the inhumanity of slavery but also the great struggle against it, by the slaves themselves and by abolitionists back in Europe.
The slave trade was abolished by an act of parliament in 1807, ending an unholy trade that had persisted since 1562, during the reign of Elizabeth I, and condemned many thousands of people to misery. Britain then pressured other countries to follow suit (either out of conviction or to maintain economic competitiveness) and they soon did so. The law was pushed through parliament by an alliance of evangelical Protestants and Quakers. There were also many women abolitionists – the intellectual forebears of the Suffragettes.
Of course, slavery itself didn’t end with the end of the slave trade. It took until 1833 until it was abolished in the British Empire, and of course the United States had to fight a civil war before it ended there. The legacy of slavery is all around us, persisting in deeply engrained racism, ‘shade-ism’ among blacks, economic dependency, and the collapse of once proud nations and kingdoms in Africa. Slavery itself also persists; it’s not legal but human trafficking and forced labour, including sexual servitude, goes on more than we care to admit. The theme for many of the speakers was how the abolition of slavery should remind us of our shared humanity and the importance of kindness.
My ancestors were taken to a foreign land in chains and forced to work in chain gangs at another man’s bidding. They were convicts, taken from the prisons of Britain and Ireland to Australia. Yet, the parallels to slavery end there. Convicts were free after a certain period of time and were often granted a complete pardon from the governor; many went on to become prosperous and upstanding members of the community. The children of convicts were born free. The biggest difference is that my ancestors were white and racism was not a problem for them or their descendants.
Since Australia never had slavery, the black population is quite small. There are indigenous Australians (both Australian Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders) but they are racially different to Africans and in any case, their numbers are relatively small, around 1 per cent of the population. The parallel is closer to the native Americans in the US and Canada. This doesn’t mean that blacks are unwelcome or that Australia is racist, it’s just for historical reasons. Australia is a very diverse country but mostly through post-war immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe (Melbourne is the world’s second biggest Greek city after Athens!) and Asia (particularly east Asian countries such as Vietnam).
Britain, like the US, has a much larger black population than Australia. It is quite different to the US because almost all of the black Britons have arrived or been born here since the Second World War. There were never any official policies of segregation here, but there is no doubt that there was, and is, racism. There is still a long way to go.
I have just finished reading Small Island by Andrea Levy, which is about Jamaican immigrants. It’s a really good read with compelling characters and an interesting story. I found the part about the black Jamaican airman during the war and his experience, both with the RAF and the British public, and with the American GIs (who practised segregation) also camped in the same northern English town.
The NSW State Election is tomorrow (Saturday 24 March) and it’s truly a choice between Dumb and Dumber.
The Labor Government is incompetent and arrogant. The Premier, Morris Iemma, inherited the mantle from the popular and competent Bob Carr pretty much because there was no one else. The government benches seem to be filled with uninspiring time-servers and party apparatchiks, and under his rein, the state has lurched from one crisis to another. (Such as the Cross-City Tunnel – or Ghost Tunnel – which has caused traffic chaos elsewhere around the city and is so expensive that no one uses it).
The problem is that the other mob is even worse. The Liberal leader Peter Debnam’s policies include trying 10-year-old children as adults. Sixteen-year-olds is one thing, but 10-year-olds? C’mon! It’s truly lowest common denominator, shock-jock inspired politics.
I like the Green party in Australian federal politics – Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown is a favourite of mine – but I’ve never been very impressed with the state party. They have plenty of conviction but very little intelligence or practical answers, as far as I can tell. There is a worrying lack of professionalism as well – to pick a minor example, I noticed their campaign posters on my recent trip to Sydney and they were pretty much rubbish. The photographs were black and white and the candidates looked scruffy, especially when the posters were invariably next to their competitors. If they want to appeal to a wider electorate they really need to lift their game.
One thing that I found particularly appalling about this election was the cavalier attitude to our precious natural resources. Australia is in a serious drought and the long-term prospects are that water shortages will worsen over the next century. Water management is a big issue and it’s become an important, mainstream issue as well.
Yet when, I visited my Dad’s farm in Kangaloon, near Bowral in the Southern Highlands, there were protest posters on every other house and at the entrance to the Robertson Show. It turns out there is a giant aquifer – a natural water reservoir – underneath Kangaloon. The Iemma Government, without any proper environmental studies into the impact of this, has started pumping the water into the Nepean River, to fill up Warragamba Dam, which is where Sydney’s water supply comes from. And for what? It represents about seven days’ worth of water for Sydney and means no more than that they can delay Level 5 water restrictions until after the election. The restrictions are coming anyway (unless it starts to rain) but the problem is deferred.
I don’t know what the environmental impact will be on Kangaloon – but the point is, neither does the Iemma Government. What I do know, is that it’s farming country (mainly beef and dairy) and most farms rely on spring-fed dams. I also know that water is scarce – Kangaloon Primary School has actually had its water stolen TWICE by someone with a pump and a truck, who is presumably reselling the water elsewhere. And I do know that Sydneysiders are beginning to appreciate the water shortage and moving from Level 4 to Level 5 restrictions is unlikely to be a vote clincher, given that it’s a result of natural causes. Playing politics with water is just not on!
I arrived back in London this morning – unfortunately slightly too late to see my boy before he headed off to work this morning so I need to be patient for another few hours. It’s a beautiful sunny day outside but it’s bloody freezing!!! About zero degrees, I believe. So much for the early spring I’d been promised.
Today was the 75th birthday of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. As my little sister said, every time she caught a glimpse of our second most famous landmark*, “happy birthday Bridgey!”. Since my parents live close to the harbour and we were walking to one of the parks down on the water, this was a fairly regular occurence.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is apparently nicknamed the ‘Coathanger’. I say ‘apparently’ because I grew up in Sydney and I have NEVER heard anyone refer to it as the Coathanger. The term is used frequently in the media but hardly ever in real life. Although Sydney has dozens of bridges, large and small, it’s usually just referred to as ‘the Bridge’.
Before the Bridge was completed in 1932, the only way to cross the harbour was by ferry or private boat and it was a chaotic and dangerous affair. The opening ceremony was a big party, bringing some much-needed fun to Sydney in the middle of the Great Depression. After the ribbon was cut – unofficially by a militant monarchist Irishman on a horse and then officially by the Premier of New South Wales – the Bridge was declared open and 100,000 school children walked across, followed by everyone else. My grandmother – my mother’s mother – was two years old at the time and her parents took her along.
For the 75th anniversary of all this, there was a series of celebrations throughout the day. The bridge was closed to cars for the entire day so that Sydneysiders (and visitors) could walk across. You needed to register in advance and sign up to a specific time slot so that the numbers wouldn’t become overwhelming. Apparently, 200,000 people walked across today.
I wasn’t among them, partly because I didn’t get around to registering (in fact, since I’m only in town for a week it might have been too late by the time I heard) and partly because I didn’t feel the need. I think it’s a cool event but I have walked across the Bridge dozens of times (on the footpath). It’s a kilometre from pylon to pylon and about four kilometres from approach to approach and a nice way to get from the City to North Sydney. You can climb the south-east pylon for only a couple of dollars and the views are spectacular (the views from the top of the arch are even better but that will cost you $169 upwards with Bridge Climb).
It wasn’t quite a return to the bad old days before the Bridge was opened, since there were regular ferry and train services, the Harbour Tunnel was still open for cars, and other bridges such as the Iron Cove and Gladesville Bridges were still open. I was going to my great uncle’s place in North Sydney for lunch and it was a very smooth journey by public transport – a bus into the City with hardly any traffic and a remarkably uncrowded train. I had a good view of all the walkers from the train window.
Today was also the wedding day of my siblings’ nanny, Amy. She had been stressing for weeks because the wedding service was south of the harbour, in Darlinghurst, and the reception was north of the harbour, at Milson’s Point, and she wasn’t sure how they were going to get from one side to the other. In the end though, it was the perfect day. Obviously everyone got there okay and not only that but, from what I hear, the reception location was right under the Bridge and they had a perfect view of the light show. It sounded amazing!
I wasn’t a reception guest but I went to the church for the service to see Amy walk down the aisle and watch my sister, Emma, be a flower girl. (Emma is the tall one with the very blonde hair and her cousin Liza is another of the flower girls, also at the back. Aren’t they gorgeous?). Amy looked beautiful too but I won’t publish the pics without asking her first.
* It’s a close call but I reckon the Sydney Opera House is more internationally famous.
I got this meme from the Naked without Books blog. I’m not sure who came up with the list to begin with but I’ve read a fair few.
Look at the list of books below. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you want to read, cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole, put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf, and asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of. “
[I still haven't grasped how to do strikeovers, so if I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole, I'll just turn it red]
1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
+ 2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
+ 5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (J. R. R. Tolkien)
+ 6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
+ 7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
+ 8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
+ 10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J. K. Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
+ 17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
+ 21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
+ 22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
+ 25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
+ 28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
+ 29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
* 30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
+ 35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
* 36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
* 38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
* 39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
+ 40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
+ 48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
* 56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
* 65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
* 69. Les Miserables (Hugo). (I didn’t know this was based on a book).
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Helen Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
* 73. Shogun (James Clavell)
+ 74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje) (currently reading)
+ 75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
* 76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
* 79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
* 81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier)
* 84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
* 89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
+ 91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
My travel and food blogBad Behavior has blocked 80 access attempts in the last 7 days.
