Losing one's heritage

Many years ago I laughed with a friend over the comic genius of Shakespeare, because it was not. To have a semblance of understanding of rhyming couplet comic genius was to stand up as both old and wrong. We pupils knew Shakespeare did not cut edges. Shakespeare was a punishment that was akin to to writing lines - a "legal academic low", if you like. It was read as a chore whose rhyming couplet was bore. A Shakesperean play that was so full of so-called humour it required an explanation that doubled the book by half with a series of footnotes. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, Need I say more.

Shakespeare was read as a requirement borne from necessity of an O-level English literature grade, it was a price to pay. Shakespeare was ultimately a joined-up handwritten end-of-term lie that we wrote on examination papers because we wrote the words the English teacher said as if it was an history paper- we said it was funny because that got marks. And an English teacher were categorised as not going down the pub material, if you wanted a laugh.


A phone call home, a long-distance connection, a connection to the past, an affirmation of the present, that we are still friends. Our humour, our joint shared link that certain things are funny, hilarious to us. My friend makes a recommendation - "You will love it"....."Youtube, just write...."

Later I am taken up by the internet challenge to laugh as much as my mate has laughed at. A brief tapping of digits as dextrous as an old-school typing-pool typist - the computer awakes.

I am connected to a wider world, from my foreign home, that shares my mother tongue too. "Youtube" brings all stars-for-fifteen-minutes into my life and I am shown the bright new crop of top, on-the-edge, left-of-centre stand-up comics that barely registers a who? Whilst Great Britain has rocked in mirth over recent years, I have politely smiled at the jokes of my foreign friends that I do not understand but I may or may not have been the butt of. Now these new Brit generation of comedians famous to my friend, but I am not tuned into the character, the subtlety of the irony, the metaphor of comic revelation that makes something topical and comical. References are made, apparently genuinely laughed at and I am only bemused in a state of should I be laughing. I am not understanding a world that I once knew and took for granted. It is a world away. My friend's world. A lost World. A recommended world. A world I do not understand. And I am losing it. A smiling politely straw to break the camel's back.

These modern Youtube clips are not funny, not rubbing the Pryce funny bone. I have crossed the line and I am adrift, not just lost in translation of a common language. I am losing the slang, the cross references to local heroes that have not crossed the Channel, the oceans; just like Shakespeare was lost on me so many years ago - a joke is not funny if it needs an explanation.

And I did not notice that with each passing year the distance was not only physical but human. Skype can only meet the sense of sight and sound, smell and touch has gone and even sight and sound is pixelled and sound bytes. The Modern world globalised and the umbilical cord to home was strained - not localised.

I am out of sync with the homeland, becoming detached, knowledgeable of a different locality. Its the pryce one pays. Now I am the english teacher lost in the comic genius of the past, that no-one would go down the pub with.

I play piano of sorts on the laptop keyboard to a different beat and age. Forgotten characters, vintage comedy is revisited on Youtube.

A skype connection is made. Another phone-call, a shared recollection, a remembered character and how we laughed, a common point, a moment in the past, a time when our lines not only crossed they inter-twined and I wish now a simple wish. A simple wish for lives to cross once more.

Knowing for now, conversations with home-based friends are trapped in a time warp of shared recollected laugh at former times. But it is a laugh, a common honest laugh. A side-splitting thread to hold onto.

I know to break the chains of salaried wealth, mortgaged debt, medical insurance poverty and a family to feed will not be broken yet. Time to dream upon a fifteen minute star.

Wherever I lay my hat

Tom Jones once sang about his hat and having a lay, but it may have been just gossip.

My hat has been laid for the moment in this foreign land that feels like a No-man's land, I am neither foe nor friend here. I am an ex-pat who does not know how many Allied bombs lay unexploded in this city. I do know three have been discovered since I sat at the office desk and the office was told to go home. Some countries may throw sickies, here somebody digs in his back garden. So it is with trepidation I sit amongst the regulars of the downtown pub and ask why the man with a sinister-looking eye in the corner is giving me eyeball. Is he wondering why his granny's 'brotchen' shop was suddenly a tad smaller in 1944. It is stange in a matter of sixty or so years later things change, we are allies. I only stay for one, but not out of fear of reprisals, but from economy.

Today I am not counting Danger UXB's, I am counting my pounds shilling and pence and if the UK mortgage is surviving the machinations of the exchange rate.

I am trying to balance supply and demand - the supply of the Sterling dollar exchanged to Euros determines a family lifestyle, against a demand by means-tested children, thinking a Playstation is an essential to life because the rest of the class can wipe out an alien army at level four or something like that. Means tested in the sense that my children think I am mean for not agreeing the latest Nintendo DS GTR Turbo limited edition should be added to their magnificent collection because Jean-Claude Heinz has got one and they are testing my patience.

Action man is no longer cutting the mustard.

My hat laying skills have not exactly gone to plan. Redundancies, job offers, re-locations to the highest-ish bidder and, a hey presto, I am here counting the pennies in Euro-cents in the hope I can later not only count the costs in Euros, but internet-password the payment.


Medicines may be "sans Frontiers", but Medical Insurance fully recognises borders with a multipier factor index designed to make ex-pat poverty a companion to health. Family health costs money that will have the Pryce family cherishing days when the bread came with dripping, "what, no dripping Pa".

I have paid handsome sums to people to find me a house and met them for fifteem minutes, I have paid large rental deposits and fought forlornly for their return, I have paid notaries to be notaries because they were apparently important in a legal system it would take several years to barely grasp its ass, I have paid people weekly to teach me a second language when they spoke my first nearly daily, I have paid people to connect me to the 'www ' that were re-employed to disconnect the same, I have paid in bordeom and frustration for ID cards in bureaucratic waiting queues rather worst cost than the actual cost, I have been scammed for not reading the small print when I could not read any of the print, I have paid for extra-large satellite dishes long abandoned on a roof, I have paid to move undamaged possessions of which ownership is 9 tenths of the law and realised that left 1 tenth to fall off the lorry, and I have learnt to be friends with long ago foes.

I have......complained, and hoped it was being human. I am still whinging and winging it and hoping I will survive this adventure of sorts.

I am still wondering the wisdom of a career choice of hat laying or brick laying, but like what the locals call beer is coloured water under the urinal bridge. Time to look forward, perhaps time to move on.

Chocolate

If you want to have a taxi arrive at the allotted hour, it is not the booking in advance, it is not the confirmation e-mails, it is not the whatever.... it is buying the secretary a present from outer Mong-vuelia-kust. Brownie points are to be earned. Bonus Points are given if there is substantive evidence that the Credit Card monthly expenses is not cross referenced to "Duty free". Chocolate is welcomed to substitute for true affection but... but it is not the gift of secretarial choice. The gift needs to be rarer, unique, to be so wondrous that it can be gently dropped into a secretarial gatherings that her boss is statistically better than their boss. And in due course the taxi arrives nearly on time.

The secretary would prefer ....wants a local gift from the end of the world where the big deal is going down. A present to be presented to her to reflect her true worth as a taxi organiser. These gifts are covered by real net of tax, real money -my money, I am the one putting the "i" in taxi - secretarial tithe, secretarial tax. A special gift that probably once was a King's treasure protected by a dragon half way up a mountain that unlocked a princess' kiss.

Nowadays the best one can do is a mad search by a delegated local secretary to buy something for the non-local head office secretary with a mad dash round three blocks and half of a local flea mart called C&Local, that at best will eventually unlock a secretary's half-smile.
And by some comic reflection and perhaps a hint of magic in the air, the secretarial dragon feels a little obliged to put up with one's foibles such as my taxi organising foible. Chocolate is not cutting it any more.

They got me on Caffeine and alcohol

The bid is due, we knew the bid was due, but the bid budget was not agreed, so a cast of thousands could not be mobilised, instead we twiddled thumbs on a general Sales market research budget, until the Managing Director picked a nose, wiped an astronomically large stain of spilt milk from his table, probably, and decided "Team to GO" or words to that effect. Thunderbirds we are not. So three weeks of what could have been planning, organisation and doing a good job, is disolved in a headless chicken dash to make it look good at all costs, that is all costs within the budget.

Then a small print requirement is read, is reported, eyes are cast upward in seeking divine guidance and seeking a restuctured management. God is not on our side this day, all documents are required in the local lingo, yes... the local lingo, hire a local lingo person, hire a local lingo person at ridiculous expense and damn the budget.


Families are abandoned, wives join dating agencies, children check out "Fathers'R'Us'. Late hours are worked and not booked. Booking hours would further break the budget and break your career. So caffeine is drunk with a note to get the intravenous supplies next time. For now industrial strength coffee is slurped as if was never meant to be held in a mug when there is stomach wall needing scalding.

A chicken careers past in hope his career will survive and prosper, but I stay put as I remember my head should be on my shoulders. Putting the bid in on time is a battle not a war, winning the bid is the war. I am in the same league as a duracell bunny in old money. Let us read the bid again. Let us quibble on numbers. Let us get drunk on coffee until my mind fuzzes and admits defeats, this battle may not win the war. The batteries fade and I am left with two lucky rabbit foots that is not so good for the unlucky amputee bunny. Time to ruffle the feathers.

And mine's a pint.

Never get between a Man and his E-mail

For some it may be a sense of manhood, but those executives switched on in the hotel lobby proud to prove theirs is smaller than mine. They show off their mini-micro-computer-to-hide-in-a-matchbox computer box of tricks.

Mine is larger than yours proves I am a lesser exec. This is a matter of far more bearing than exaggerations of the trouser snake to the hunted by Headhunters. Here the executives communicate with fingers to the Corporate world beyonf the lobby walls, that may be sleeping in readiness to respond tomorrow. In all of this world of the hotel lobby, we are important, we are seen to be important, but.....

I am in contrast virtually needing a trolley to cart my laptop, yes I am still not a notebook, palm book, fingerprint book or whatever.

But I am a man on a misssion to connect to the distant HQ with the essential E-mail with the attachment that is urgent. Blackberry is relegated to a pocket. Rights to use the internet is negotiated with hotel staff, we are wi-fi'd until the password fails, password works after the local hotel help ~ "help the stupid executive" person, that is ~ has been called, the hotel representative spells my password correctly from the same sheet that I apparently could not read. My face may look a picture of damned stupidity having changed from my holier-than-thou face of "do they not realise this is I urgent" and "I am an Executive". Oh to be humble.

Connected to the global rays, the subterranean cables, connected- yeah - connected in sloooo...owmo - minutes delayed... minutes. Re-boots unrewarded as patience is necessary, delivery is delayed. Chill....calm the trigger finger...time cannot wait ....time will wait because that's the way it is. Success...patience rewarded. Hoorah for internet.