Conversations With My Mother

It's the fortnightly transatlantic phone-call to Mother Dearest. I'm updated on the latest news from Little Village Primary School, England, where my mother has taught for the past twenty-two years. The updates are less compelling now that nearly all the teachers I remember from my time as a pupil there have either died, retired or inexplicably retrained as carpenters.

Mother Dearest is mainly concerned with Younger Sister's upcoming wedding. 'Upcoming' is relative; it's still seventeen months away.

A little bit of backdrop: the glorious nuptials of Dr Strangename and myself were not that traditional. We got married in our college chapel (variously built and rebuilt according to taste in the 1300s, 1500s and 1800s), but without bridesmaids, hymns, or sugared almonds. It was winter, and the bride wore a red Armani-knockoff dress; 'marry in red, you'll wish yourself dead', they say, although they probably don't look like a corpse bride in white.

I somehow always assumed Younger Sister would go the other way; veil copied from a magazine picture of Maria Shriver's wedding, that sort of thing.

But Younger Sister is going the other other way, making mine look like the average Republican-Senator's-Daughter-Crabcakes-Yachts-and-Lilies bash. She's having a non-legally-binding open-air Humanist ceremony at our family's farm, with a hog-roast and teepees and bunting. She's already started on the bunting. She plans to wear a floaty white dress and flipflops and carry sunflowers.

- What does the Mother-of-the-Bride wear to an open-air wedding ceremony?

wonders my mother, who wore a shift from Whistles and a large black hat to our day.

I'm greatly enjoying discussing the technicalities of wedding planning when a) it's not mine, b) I'm 6000 miles away and can't be asked to make bunting, and c) it's not mine.

Did I mention that the field chosen for the ceremony is also an ancient, pre-Druidic (possibly Neolithic) burial site? The barrows were opened in the 1700s, and the human remains moved to the British Museum. Wade and Wade (1929) describe it as:

a remarkably fine tumulus of masonry, said to have been one of the finest in Britain, in the chambers of which skeletons have been discovered. A few vestiges of it now only remain, the rest has been used as a lime-kiln.

Well, perhaps as my ancestors have been using it to make quicklime for several hundred years, a wedding in the vicinity won't be too disrespectful. Still. The date's set for July 2012, and anyone who's ever spent a summer in England knows that actual sun is a privilege, not a right. Younger Sister is hazy about what we'll do should it rain.

- Everyone can go into the teepees,

she says, sketching floral wreathes for her five bridesmaids. The teepees have no windows. Nearly 150 people have been invited. If I were pitching this wedding as a concept, I would say: Age of Aquarius meets Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the Battle of the Somme, with a touch of The Shining and just a hint of Dancing With Wolves.

I can't wait.

.

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Summer of '89, Great Britain

Rain is General All Over LA

It's been raining for five hours in Los Angeles. Our bedroom window is leaking. The building's carpeted corridors squelch. Our local intersection is a lake, and Escalades joyeously hypraplane over it like fat Canada geese.

This evening I spend thirty-five minutes standing in the dark, outside a gas station near Sony Studios, waiting for the 12. My umbrella is rusted and crippled from inactivity, and looks like an old bicycle that's collided with a derelict's tent. Due to the weather, I'm wearing an extremely laughable beret, purchased in Germany, and have tucked my jeans into my boots; I look like I've wandered in from a European pantomime. An elderly Korean lady waits under the garage's forecourt, periodically darting out to look up the long line of red and white lights that is Palms Boulevard.

- You waiting for this bus?

she asks me. I say yes.

- SEVEN BUSES GO: OTHER DIRECTION,

she tells me.

- I COUNTED. SEVEN.

I counted too, so I agree with her.

- It's crazy time god damn it,

she says, retreating to cover. My umbrella blows up into a tangle again, and a man my age, filling up a silver car, gives me what seems to be a sympathetic look. More of a pitying look. Or maybe he's a serial killer. Then someone backs their Camry into a bollard, and the Korean lady rolls her eyes at me in a way that clearly states: why does this fool have a car and we're still waiting for the god damn bus?

The rain doesn't stop. The bus comes. Unfortunately, the Big Blue Bus was not built for this weather, and it's leaking worse than our apartment; I sit on a boggy seat and fail to dodge drops.

Arriving at the supermarket near my house, I feel that some wine is in order. As I'm choosing, a man in a black tracksuit approaches me.

- Hello,

he says, and I tentatively remove an iPod headphone.

- Hello,

I say, noticing that 'Guard' is embroidered on his pocket; I fear that I'm about to be evicted from the alcohol aisle under suspicion of being underage or foreign or both.

- How arya?

- I'm sorry?

- Oh I'm sorry, see, I only just asked howrya doing?

- I'm fine, thank you. And you?

(This is truly how I speak with strangers -- somewhere between Princess Anne at a fete and the Japanese kids I've taught to chant 'Howuryoamfinethanyoseeyoladeralligader'.)

- It sure is raining,

he remarks. I smile and nod, edging closer to the imported wine. He is youngish and well-scrubbed, but there's an inauspicious air of missionary zeal.

- I'm Jerry, by the way.

- Oh. I'm Ped Xing,

I say -- I'm not really Ped Xing, of course -- and he suddenly becomes anxious, flustered and blushing, as if we're in a job interview.

- I'm sorry -- Zed Ping?

- Ped Xing.

He shakes my hand vigorously, eyes bright. I begin to realize he's not a security guard.

- I think you're pretty,

he says, which is generally a sure sign of derangement.

- Oh. Thank you.

- I wanted to talk to you,

- I -- have to go. But it was nice to meet you,

I say, still nodding and smiling like a foreign grandmother, whilst grabbing a cheap bottle of Pinot off the shelf. I feel bad, but later on, in the cheese section -- nothing like pairing a discount wine with some violently orange Monterey Jack -- I see him shaking some other girl's hand. I give him a sympathetic look. More of a pitying one. Or maybe he's a serial killer.

.

.

No Ped Xing

No Ped Xing

No Ped Xing

say the signs along the Howard Hughes parkway, as Dr Strangename and I head to LAX this morning. We take a Culver CityBus, even though the Culver CityBus is green and therefore beyond the remit of this blog. Inching south, its passengers a Venn diagram of the aged, deranged and down-at-heel, the 6 passes through a dilapidated series of Americana. It's like being on an abandoned Disney ride, lacking only mechanical hookers waving from the windows of the pastel motels.

Over here, disheveled beauty parlors offer Fine Hair Imports and Symple Grooming. Restaurant names come in three grades: classic (Johnnie's French Dip and Pastrami; Tito's Tacos; Dinah's Diner), unappetizing (Grinders, Sizzlers, Shakers) and inexplicable (the Edelweis Chalet). After dinner you can choose between being robbed and beaten at the Tattle Tale Cocktail Lounge, or beaten and robbed at the Scarlet Lady Saloon. 

While I wonder why an EZ Lube and a Jiffy Lube would set up shop within a block of each other, and which sounds ruder, Dr Strangename vacillates over the talk he must give in San Francisco and makes ill-advisedly loud comments about the welfare of his wife being alone in the city for three days. The man in front of us wakes, coughs onto the window, and folds up again. The bus runs a giddying set of circlets at the Culver City Bus Terminal, where the driver kicks down the access ramp and helps on a patron in a wheelchair, remarking

- Ain't nothing change but the date, Kenny.  

Kenny laughs and laughs and laughs, and waves at the hard-luck Debbie Reynolds boarding behind him. Outside, a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty and holding a sandwich board advertising tax services walks by. You can tell we're near the airport when jumbo jets begin slaloming a hundred feet overhead.

- El Lay Eggs,

sings the driver, making Kenny laugh again, and drops us off in a dirty parking lot. The duller the city, the nicer the airport; hence, Düsseldorf airport is cold steel, white lines and has a Skytrain, and the LAX transit hub smells like piss and hobos. Blank-windowed Radisson, Sheraton and Marriots stand by it like well-dressed strangers ignoring a streetcrime. We take a shuttle to the terminal. LAX itself feels more edgy than a civilized Western airport should; perpetually lit by the slow amber tones of 1970s cop drama, its stained concrete and palm trees lend it the air of a South American dictatorship run to ruin.

Dr Strangename checks in. I go back to catch the bus home. This is the fifth time I've been to the airport since Christmas, without having once left LA; there was the Texan arrival and departure of my good friend Rodeo Girl, and then Dr Strangename had to go to France. The moment I realized that my husband's career had taken him to the Other Side -- the side where all the successful people are, networking and drinking freely from the minibar -- was when he said, with a straight face, that although it sounded like fun, it was work, and he wouldn't see much of Paris beyond hotel and conference rooms.

(His being right about this makes no real difference.)  

I catch exactly the same bus for the return trip. Same seat; same sleeping man; same driver, who asks

- Didn't I just see you?

and I nod.

- Ain't nothing change but the date,

he says. Quite.

Origins of the Blue Busrider

- GO BACK TO CHINA

said an old man on the bus today, his eyes glittering.

The only time I've been to China was changing planes: Osaka, Beijing, Beijing, London.

- Osaka? Okay, GO BACK TO JAPAN.

Although I lived in Japan, I'm not Japanese. Please don't feel you have to sit any closer, but I'm actually Caucasian, which is why I look so confused right now.

- We're on the bus in LA. Everyone's confused. Where do you come from?

Are you demanding zat I show you my papers? I did just move here from Germany. But I'm British.

- What are you, some kind of international hobo?

When I met my husband, a decade ago, he won my heart by declaring his ambition to be a bearded drifter. Mind you, at the time he was clean-shaven, I was very drunk, and we were in the university bar.

- So the pair of you wander the world with your life in a bindle?

We've pared it down to ten boxes, two large suitcases, and wearing all our clothes to the airport. Oh, and a couple of crates marked LIVE ANIMAL.

- How the hell did you get into the USA?

We had visas. My husband, Dr Strangename, is an academic.

- But you don't have a work permit?

Not yet. My current visa authorizes me to be here for ornamental purposes only.

- Are you a rich housewife of Beverly Hills?

Yes. I just enjoy taking the bus with lunatics.

- Really?

No. We don't have enough money for a car, and we don't live in Beverly Hills. We live close enough to the 405 Freeway that the back wall of our bedroom vibrates.

- So what do you do all day?

Ride the Blue Bus, ponder what to microwave for dinner, and pretend that I'm only pretending to be a housewife.

- And who is Ped Xing? Sure sounds Chinese to me.

Ped Xing is invisible to the populace of Los Angeles, judging by the number of times she's nearly been mown down by Escalades turning right on a red light. In her mission to traverse the City of Angels safely and at a reasonable cost, she becomes... the Blue Busrider.    

- I wish I'd never started this conversation now.

I'm sorry. Please go back to clipping your toenails and shouting about the albatross.