Brexit, Trump and the disappearing chocolate bar

As we wake up to the realization that the United States has completely taken leave of its senses, I thought I’d weigh in with a view from abroad. As an American citizen who last lived in the continental US after George Bush Sr was elected but before he took office, I’m well versed at answering all sorts of questions from foreigners about our crazy country. One of my personal favorites is “Why do Americans measure butter in cups?” But mostly the questions over the years have been of a political nature – “Will America elect a black president?” Probably. “How on earth did George Bush Jr get elected for a second term?” Haven’t a clue.

And while I’m disgusted by the outcome of what’s been a grotesque spectacle of an election, I’m not in shock. On June 23 this year I went to sleep in the little village in the North of England where I live, pretty certain that the country would rally together and vote to stay in Europe. That’s what the polls showed and that’s what the pundits were saying – a small lead, but a lead. Psych! Waking up very early the next morning was like waking up to the news that a close friend had died. I cried and felt sick. I denied. I looked into buying a house in Scotland and whether the fact that my grandmother was born in the Netherlands gave me a right to a Dutch passport (unfortunately, no). I grieved along with my fellow remainers. But then my denial turned to anger as is the natural way of grief. However, I’m not going to let the natural transition from anger to acceptance happen. I’m going to hold onto my anger because the vitriol and lies that were used to get people to vote leave and the resulting chaotic outcome will never be acceptable. No way. Not as long as I’ve got breath in my body.

Fast forward to this morning. This time I was going to be strong and not peek at the election outcome until a reasonable time – at least until the sun was coming up. But my phone was on vibrate and in the darkness I heard a quiet buzz. My Minnesota friend promised that she’d only send me a message in the night if there was going to be a clear Hillary win. I lay in bed trying to go back to sleep to no avail. In the dark I fumbled around for my phone. A short message from my daughter at university “I’m so sorry”.

And then the messages started pouring in. From my oldest friend in California was a bewildered apology and a question – “what must the world think of us?”. Well, yesterday morning the most read news report on the BBC website was an item on the changing shape of the Toblerone bar. In a post-Brexit vote world, imported goods have got more expensive. Rather than increase the price of this beloved confectionary, they have made the troughs between the triangular peaks bigger, resulting in less chocolate. This was an outrage in a chocolate-addicted country. The US election story had run is course. There was no way the American people were going to vote in that uncouth bozo when the opposition was so experienced. It wasn’t even worth thinking about.

But seriously, these are just a few of the things that the rest of the world are thinking:

• That Americans have it so good but are too arrogant to know it, which is why we're throwing it all away.
• That China and Russia are laughing their heads off and taking over the world as America heads for a train wreck of their own making.
• That the end of the Western world is being played out on the American stage.
• That for every intelligent liberal-minded American person that they’ve met in person there must be ten gun-toting nut jobs.

I’ve just finished listening to the episodes spanning George Washington to Barack Obama on the Washington Post's Presidential podcast, which is brilliant (except the bizarrely sycophantic episode on Reagan). Binging on this over several weeks, I have been reminded of what a tumultuous history our country has endured. We have had some truly great presidents who have seen us through some troubling times. Others have been mediocre or ineffective. However, we’ve not had one as dangerous as Trump.

The number of hate crimes has increased in Britain post-Brexit vote, and there’s no reason to expect that the same won’t happen in the US now that Trump has been given a mandate based on hate. We must keep our nerves steady, our integrity unswerving and be willing to put ourselves in harm’s way so that we can protect the vulnerable and all the rights that we hold dear. We cannot expect anyone else to do it for us.

Magpies and grey wolves

My husband sat down, leaned across the table and said “I couldn’t get the grey wolf in with the handcart”. I looked around the cafe conspiratorially. “Is that code?” He looked confused. I told him what I heard, which obviously wasn’t what he’d said. Once we stopped laughing, I asked what he’d actually said. He couldn’t remember. Welcome to old age.

We were in Le Petit Choux before the Newcastle United-Cardiff match, having decided that we’d have coffee and cake rather than a pint in the pub (another sure sign that we’ve entered our dotage). We’d secured an extra season ticket from a friend who was out of town and went our separate ways to seats in the Gallowgate end of St James’ Park. Even if you’re not a football fan, if you want to experience the true energy and passion of Newcastle, this noisy end of the park is where it is demonstrated most keenly.

It doesn’t matter than I’m an American woman in a shocking pink parka – when the team come out onto the field I feel tribal to my very core. I’ve even been known to get teary after a particularly tragic loss or a stress headache after a tense match. Having said that, I don’t join in the chants that NUFC fans are famous for, mostly because I haven’t a clue what the words are but also because they really should be belted out in a Geordie accent.

For those of you unfamiliar with Geordie, it’s not just an accent but a regional dialect of Anglo-Saxon origin. With words like gan (go) and bairn (child) still in common use, it’s not just a heavily accented version of English. And though it is an attractive, it can be rather impenetrable.  When I first arrived in Newcastle my first job was as a temp at an architectural firm in Jesmond. One of my duties was to man reception. It wasn’t long before I was taken off intercom duty as I just buzzed everyone in off the street as couldn’t understand a word they were saying.

It’s not just Geordie. A couple of weeks after moving to the UK we were watching what I thought was a foreign football manager being interviewed on the television. It went on for a while and I asked my husband why there were no subtitles. It was Kenny Dalglish. Enough said.

If you want to hear proper Geordie, go to a NUFC match. Not only do you hear Geordie in the chants and songs (Blaydon Races gets sung every match), but you’re surrounded by people speaking it unapologetically. In a world that’s becoming increasingly homogenised, there’s no effort to soften the regional way of speaking in the stands. For me, it’s lyrical and absolutely magic.

The language in the stands isn’t all bairn-friendly. On Saturday, there was an empty seat (one of the few) between me and a white bearded gentleman who looked a bit like Santa in a Newcastle United woolly hat. He watched the match, resting his chin on his cane, seemingly unperturbed by the excitement of the first half. Then a Cardiff player came to our end of the field to take a corner. In a rare lull in the crowd noise, Santa stood up into a low stoop, still leaning on his cane and shouted at the top of his lungs “you f*cking pr*ck!”, before sitting back down and resuming his deceptive friendly-old-man demeanour. The meaning of that was pretty clear, despite the accent.

After the match (which we won), we thawed ourselves out in front of the fire with a bottle of red wine and a couple of episodes of Poldark (mostly for my benefit). I glance at my husband, wine glass in hand and cat on his lap and thought that life is pretty good, even if he does say some crazy stuff sometimes.

The Curiosity of Mysteries

I’ve always been fascinated by mysteries. I grew up on a diet of Nancy Drew and books that implied that the Bermuda Triangle and the Nazca Lines were most likely the result of alien visitors. When I was a little older the mysteries became more sophisticated but no less terrifying. The fear I had about being kidnapped by the shadowy Symbionese Liberation Army or murdered by the uncatchable Zodiac Killer were real, fed by older neighbourhood children and unfettered (and probably unwise) access to the San Francisco Chronicle from an early age.

As well as a love of mystery, I am a curious person. Not curious like strange. Curious like nosey. Actually, if I were to be perfectly honest, I am more nosey than curious. For example, I am much more interested in finding out who is doing what with whom than how my computer works, which strikes me as being very tedious.

I guess the two must be related – what’s the point of a mystery if you’re not interested in figuring it out? To do that you need to try to answer the questions that make up the mystery with the evidence available, like a mental multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. When complete, the resulting picture, or narrative, may be mundane or frustratingly missing some important pieces, but occasionally the results can be wondrous or just downright weird.

These two traits have served me well in my job as a health researcher with a special interest in mortality. I’m not going to lie - that can be a conversation stopper. But surely death is the greatest mystery and the narratives surrounding it the most compelling. The two most satisfying pieces of work I’ve been part of were tracing the fate of babies with congenital anomalies born in Northern England and searching through all available data sources to describe the real rate of maternal mortality in Fiji. Once we’d wrung all of the available evidence from electronic sources, we resorted to searching through archived medical notes and death certificates. There is something very profound and solemn being the first one in years, sometimes decades, to handle these dusty bits of paper detailing life’s hopes and tragedies.

Of course not all mysteries are profound. Like wondering where all the teaspoons have disappeared to and finding them a couple of years later when emptying out the compost bin. And many are not necessarily knowable – what would happen if the country votes for Brexit? (Damn, I guess that we’re going to find out.) And some things aren’t mysteries at all until you deliberately make them so.

Late last year, I picked up a 1951 copy of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Savoy Opera lyrics for 50p from Newcastle's Literary & Philosophical Society’s used book table. When I got it home I found that it had been signed by around twenty-five women, probably young given the neatness of their signatures. The book sat on counter in the dining room for a week or so, with me picking it up occasionally looking at the list of names which were, to me, far more interesting than the lyrics of The Pirates of Penzance. Who were these women and what occasion led to them signing the book?

Cue Google. Unlike my husband, who I sometimes think was born in the wrong century (he probably would be happiest navigating a schooner through the Straits of Malacca collecting zoological specimens and bombarding the occasional enemy ship), I know that I was born just at the right time – to witness the birth of the greatest resource for the curious ever – the internet. I searched for these women – women with good old-fashioned names like Audrey, Edith and Marjorie – with no interesting results, until I typed in the name Elsa Bolam. The top line of the search result was:

Elsa Bolam – Geordie Productions

Elsa Bolam is the founding Artistic Director of Geordie Productions. Elsa was born in Newcastle up Tyne, England, where she began her career…

Truly a “Bingo!” moment if there ever was one. Here was a school girl’s signature in a book from the 1950s and there was the accomplished woman – television director at the BBC, teacher at the Canadian National Theatre School, recipient of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal and the Order of Canada. I held a small piece of history in my hands and felt that sense of satisfaction tinged with humility that I get when I’ve found a piece of the metaphorical jigsaw that wasn’t in the box.

I emailed the manager of Geordie Productions and got an enthusiastic response straight back. That was definitely the same Elsa, the company was celebrating it’s 35th birthday shortly and they’d love to present it to her if I was willing to part with it. Of course, I was. A couple of months later I got the following email:

Dear Mary,

I can't solve the mystery completely, but can provide context. The names on the page are of all the girls in my high school class at Dame Allan's. The reason you could find me is because although, like the others, I got married, I retained my maiden name for professional purposes. I am a theatrical director, which of course you must know from the Geordie Web Site. I emigrated to Canada in 1967, and my husband and I started the Centaur Theatre in Montreal in 1969, and then in 1980 I founded Geordie Productions. I'm glad to say that both companies are thriving in the mainly francophone arts milieu of Montreal.

I think that my class must have bought the book as a present for a teacher at Dame Allan's. I have one class friend over here - her maiden name is Sheila Pescod, and neither of us can remember anything about it. But that's the most likely explanation. Dean, the present Artistic Director of Geordie, presented me with the book at my birthday party, and when I saw the page of names I couldn't believe my eyes for a moment. I guess the owner must have died, and the book was donated to the Lit & Phil. Glad to know that it's still going strong. My maternal grandfather was a prominent member, so was my dad. I remember how solemn it always seemed to be there, with those marble busts on high shelves.

I'm delighted to have the book itself. It is lovely and in great condition, and it brings back great memories of my mother taking me to performances of the D'Oyley Carte Light Opera company, which came every year to the Theatre Royal, when I was small.  Thank you so much for being curious enough to track me down, and nice enough to 'pop it in the post!' It's all been greatly appreciated.

I read that email five minutes after saying goodbye to my son, also an alumni of Dame Allan’s, as he headed off to the school’s annual Christmas service at St Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle.

The world is small and full of mystery. It’s also in a right mess. In this age when an eminent politician can say “I think that the people of this country have had enough of experts” (thank you Michael Gove), we, the curious lovers of mystery, need to keep looking down the back of the sofa for those puzzle pieces that the rest have missed in order to capture the truth in narrative. Then the story – the real story – can be revealed.

Going to market

Grainger Market is rapidly becoming hip. Seriously. Until recently I hadn’t set foot into Grainger Market for probably fifteen years – and even then it was only to get obscure sewing supplies. For those of you that think that it’s full of market traders selling limp lettuce and cheap tat, you are in for a lovely surprise. Not that you can’t get limp lettuce and cheap tat – those are still available for you fans of good old-fashioned British market disappointment. The fact that you still can just adds to the charm.

I probably go at least once a week these days. Usually without an agenda, but always with my floral backpack (courtesy of one of the accessory shops) stuffed full of shopping bags and my phone so that I can look up recipes if I see some interesting/particularly delicious looking ingredient.  glug… and mmm… (their punctuation, not mine) is the perfect place to be inspired. It’s full of hard-to-find ingredients, beer and wine and knowledgeable food talk. And I've just learned that they have fresh corn tortillas on Fridays. Now if I could find some proper donuts (Krisy Kreme doesn't count) and somewhere to get a plate of biscuits and gravy, all of my culinary requirements would be met without having to get on an airplane.

There are is a corner of the market where all of the fish is sold and as my New Year’s resolution is to eat less meat and more fish, it’s one of my more predictable stops. One of the long-established fishmongers, Lindsay Brothers, also has little restaurant and an oyster bar. However, I’m sort of wary of oysters since I once accidentally ordered a plate of twelve of them in France immediately after admonishing the then-small children that they had to eat whatever the waiter put down in front of them. I finished dinner feeling as though I’d survived a near-drowning.

The other day I bought a few locally caught sea bass fillets which I cooked with fresh ginger,chilies and spring onions. The veg was cheap. The fish was not. But what the hey – I saved all that money on the fruit and veg! Three punnets of raspberries for a pound! I feel healthier already and I’ve got a warm glow from doing my small part to keep North Shields a functioning fishing port.

It’s not all about ingredients – there are loads of places to eat – either to sit in or take out. My personal favourites are Fez, the little Turkish place that has five stars (five stars!) on Tripadvisor and Pet Lamb which has the most delicious cupcakes (and that’s coming from someone who makes delicious cupcakes). The Chinese dumpling place, Nan Bei, is also good. It’s hard to believe that you can make a business just off of a single foodstuff but it’s always busy. Pumphreys is the perfect place to meet someone before a mooch around the market. It also it keeps my coffee money local and out of the hands of the evil corporate coffee purveyors.

It’s great to see the market evolving – though it’s not quite as good as it could be. It needs something to create a bigger buzz, something to attract a bigger crowd. Maybe longer opening hours, with places to sit and have a drink while contemplating the vital decisions about what you’re going to cook when you get home would help. And while the choice of fruit and veg and meat is wide, there doesn’t seem to be anyone selling organic or free range options.

So if you find yourself in town thinking about going to Tesco/Sainsburys/Waitrose or wherever, head over to Grainger Market instead. I promise you that it will more interesting than your routine shop. And maybe I’ll run into you - I’ve got to go back this week and get more Red Storm, which is a grown up version of Red Leicester that the lady at the cheese stall recommended and is now one of my favourite hard cheeses. Also, I cannot possible walk past the pizza by the slice place one more time before trying it.  Or the sausage place. Okay, it might have to be a two-trip week, with a couple of visits to the gym slotted somewhere in between.