Seeing red

All this talk of the devil is rather appropriate because I've being seeing red over the past week. A discussion about prejudice in the press lead me to the National Union of Journalists Code of Conduct. I see journalists must not encourage discrimination on the basis of 'age, race, colour, creed, illegitimacy, marital status, gender or sexual orientation'.

This statement woke the mini-Lenin bit of my brain which bellowed 'What about class?' Here we are with one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world and yet we don't want to mention the c word. Almost deafened by the sound of doors slamming in my head I recalled my demo days of waving red flags in Trafalgar Square and riding the Circle Line with a coffin we intended to pull apart on the threshold of some council office or other.

Now I must admit I've spent rather more of my life dreaming of the red soles of Christian Louboutins than of red flags but it seems to me UK plc could do with a touch more militancy on this issue. Perhaps us aging Trots should shake out our faded red flags and get them on the road again.

Incidentally the coffin we trashed all those years was ago was empty which seemed a bit anti-climatic to me. May be I should make another one and drop in a pair of Louboutins? There's a metaphor for the credit crunch era - a coffin filled with designer shoes. Move over Carrie Bradshaw it's Tussle on the tube touting designer revolution.

The Devil ..... inspired by a treasured ring from Brazil, worn last night whilst trick or treating and drinking with friends......

The Devil came down from the mountain and took off his horns. He wanted to rest and they were too tiresome to wear whilst reclining on the chaise-longue. Cradled in the valley the Devil beleived himself invoilate and unseen but while he dozed and planned his next house party creatures of clay and water stole his horns.

When he woke the Devil roared with anger, his rage split the mountain and the stolen horns into thousands of tiny pieces, each one shaped like a horn.

Beat the crunch

Visited my mother this weekend- given that I'm a woman of a certain age I think we could say my mother is a woman of vast and varied experience. There was only one slightly touchy moment when mother failed to thread a needle at first attempt and I dared to suggest she might have to consider getting glasses. She reacted like Truman Capote's rattlesnakes on amphetamines, hissed "You want to put me in glasses? Isn't it enough that my neck has gone?" and retired to the kitchen where she threw daggers at the wall for half an hour. Well, not exactly but that's what it sounded like.

Later on when calm was restored we sat on the balcony, propped our feet on the window ledge and watched the sea sparkle and shift between our toes. As the papers are full of tips on how to beat the credit crunch and mother has survived a few economic nose-dives in her time I asked for her thoughts on the subject. This cheered her up no end - "Die" she roared, "that's a sure way to beat the crunch."

If death seems a bit radical may I suggest another tactic to make you feel less crunched? Learn some poetry, track down and memorise your favourite poems and recite them as you search for a pair of socks or run for a train. This recommendation is also courtesy of mother because as we watched the waves she reeled off James Elroy Flecker's The Old Ships, 'I have seen old ships like swans asleep, Beyond the village which men call Tyre'

I realised my mother has endless vistas of poetry stored in her head, a personal, mobile library she can call on any time without benefit of batteries or mains electricity. In comparison my head seems very bare and boring, stocked only with a limited selection of cliches. So I've decided stock up on poetry then if the lights do go out in this credit crunch winter I can light a couple of candles and declaim until dawn.

Memories of Hydrangea bushes .......

Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike .........

Uma on Memory

I've spent a bit of time recently lying on the sofa, contemplating my old sideboard of surprises and thinking about the nature of memory.

How does your memory work or fail? It's worth chewing over this question a little because memory is one of life's free indulgences with no interest to be paid on outstanding items and no obligation to follow up a sample by taking on a full set which you just know will prove to be overpowering.

Being a visual person who has spent time in the rag trade, my memories tend to start with shapes and patterns and textures. Here I am standing in my aunt's garden by the hydrangea bushes. The large, papery flower blooms are just brushing the top of my head and the bushes are massed together by the low garden wall like camouflage, a chintzy defence against the outside world.

Now, next to these pretty, puffball patterns made by the flowers and the little girl's curly hair I see another shape, a different presence - my aunt, my Slightly Dodgy Unreliable aunt. The Unreliable One had a different shape from the other women in my little girl's life, she was sharper, glossier, more defined, very much not a pretty puffball. Her trousers were always skin-tight her nails lacquered to a mirror-sheen and she wore high, high shoes which gave a sway to her hips as she walked Unreliable smelt more perfumed than my mother yet somehow also dirtier, more reckless.

I loved to play with my aunt's shoes, arranging them in a circle so it looked as though a collection of glamorous women were sitting around a huge dining table, enjoying a delicious meal and discussing their latest adventures. The shoes covered all over in striped, rainbow coloured silk, right down to the ends of their narrow, tapering heels travelled regularly to India and danced across the marble floors of a Maharajah's palace. Sandals trimmed with bead tassels spent every winter in a hotel by the river Nile, watching sailing boats and crocodiles. My favourite pair of giant, stomping wedges with patent straps could have had a future as a support for my trusty sideboard if it ever lost its legs, had they survived being thrown at a boyfriend's head and on into the middle of the A1. That was particularly sad shoe death; the mourning only intensified when my mother pointed out that the loss was entirely due to Unreliable's 'rackety' behaviour.

What I like about these early memories of my aunt's house is that they bring together two worlds - the pretty, safe garden with its flowers like coloured clouds, a world I now realise my mother fought to make for me and guard against all threats and the unpredictable world of my aunt, full of vivid patterns and sudden, surprising events. Sometimes I stand a vase of hydrangeas on the sideboard, next to a photo of my mother and aunt sitting on a motorbike. Perhaps my aunt was thinking of a road trip whilst my mother planned the grocery run but it's one of those moments where the worlds they created came together, even if only in passing on the back of a Harley Davidson.

Losing - and Gaining - Time

Why do I like this clock so much? Why has it travelled with me from boarding house to penthouse and back again?

Well, the buttery yellow sheen of the brass makes the clock look like a rising sun. And I admire the delicate engraving of the word 'Wisbech', a small town in Cambridgeshire. Paris, New York, London, Wisbech...from Fifth Avenue to the Fens.

But, most importantly, the clock has lost its hands and therefore its ability to order our lives. All that moves on its face are shadows and memories. I like to think of its hands, destroyed in a fire, spinning round in a plume of smoke and ash. Now they're specks on the face of planets that live for a trillion years, not teatime. And I'm free from the methodical tick of measured minutes - a perfect excuse to put the kettle on and dream of sunrises.

Lost in Time ........

One of dear Mr Lun's finds ... recovered from the burning embers of a shop fire.