zom's 12 days of Christmas

Day 5: The Christmas list.

How about a Christmas list? I drafted this one when I was 8 years old. Location: Orlando, Florida. The date: Saturday February 14th, 1970. The list you are about to read is not a Christmas list. That detail is unimportant, really. It is just seasonally appropriate, and I am entering this into evidence as an example of my formative efforts at diplomacy and sweet talk: dubious skills that have that have been the measure of my fortunes in later years. "Granny" retrieved the list from an obscure repository yesterday, almost thirty eight years after the fact, and gave it to my two eager daughters with an assassin's aptitude for their profuse titillation.

February 1970. Florida farmers fretted about remote eventualities like frost damage to their orange and grapefruit groves. In April 1970 I would follow Apollo 13's launch from the comfort of my back lawn in Spring Valley, as if Florida had anything that remotely resembled hills or valleys. Nevertheless Orlando was a good place to have a back lawn: I remarkably witnessed all of the earlier Apollo "moon shots" with my own eyes. Trajectories occasionally lanced an unwitting cloud, and Spanish moss the likes of which proliferates in the tree canopies of Florida's humid interior might obscure my view, but never for long. Florida skies are kind to space enthusiasts. From my vantage point, the very space vehicle that was to explode following an electrical fault in a service module oxygen tank about 200,000 miles and 56 hours later on April 13th looked like any other launch as Houston gave command module pilot Jack Sweigert the order to "throttle up" under my concentrated gaze. Those guys were booking.

NASA's third manned lunar-landing mission was two months away though, and I would see the drama unfold in black and white, related by men in crisp white short sleeved shirts, short back and sides, and sometimes bespectacled with thick set glasses. I had more pressing matters on my mind.

I think I wrote this in English class, because my handwriting records my address as Spring Lake Elementary [School], Orlando. I am not sure why I would have been in school on Saturday. Maybe it was not Saturday the 14th at all. Maybe I just wrote "14th" because I could, and the date only mattered to grown ups. 1970 would be my last year in the US until 1979, too. In keeping with habit Umar, who was to become Rhode Island's greatest ever export, was denying me her company at the other end of the Eastern Seaboard, and Disney World was opening later that year about 7 miles down the road.

So, then, that is the background in a nutshell. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to untangle the diplomatic fog and identify what the mysterious purpose of my list was:

Dear Mommy and Daddy,

I want to have a job. Can I have one?
I want to cut the lawn. Can I?
I want to wash the cars.
I want to clean the rugs.
I want to take the garbage out.
I want to clean the windows.
I want to clean the fireplace.
I want to clean the roof.
When are we going to get a colour TV?
I want to buy some noodles.
I am going to get a carpet for my bedroom.
I want another cat.
I want an English sheep dog.

Your friend,

Steve

An English sheep dog? In central Florida? In my defence, I believe the English teacher put me up to some of those ideas, and the charm offensive worked insofar as we did get a colour TV set - about 5 years later on the other side of the Atlantic. I am not at all sure what Samantha the cat did to cause me to ask for a trade in, and by then the Apollo project was no more.

A jealous moment

Neo: ...I thought you were above jealousy.
Zom: I am.
Neo: Shoving him in a closet sounds like a bit more than that.
Zom: She puts her hair up in a bun for him.
Neo: You don't know that.
Zom: Think about it.
Neo: So, only because its practical.
Zom: The thought. Her neckline, it just makes me so mad that...
Neo: Have you told her you like it when she puts her hair up?
Zom: .....
Neo: And anyhow, it is not like he's easily hidden.
Zom: Try me.
Neo: She would find him. And anyhow, when would you do it?
Zom: When she's getting ready.
Neo: You have a naughty streak.
Zom: It started when I was a kid.
Neo: There would be a scene.
Zom: I can be persuasive.
Neo: Don't delude yourself, we're talking..
Zom: I don't want to hear his name. Somehow... I mean, how could she?
Neo: Let it go, Steve, its no biggy.
Zom: What? No biggy? Do you know what this is doing to me?
Neo: He makes her happy. Can't you live with that?
Zom: I'll say. Do you know how many times she's told me about...
Neo: You have to put this in perspective, Steve. He's only..
Zom: Only what? She LOVES him, Neo. How can I compete with that?
Neo: ....
Zom: How do I compete with that?
Neo: She gets dirty with him, you know.
Zom: Don't push it. I suppose she gets on her knees and..
Neo: Stop torturing yourself.
Zom: The cupboard's too good for him. How about the back of the car?
Neo: Then what?
Zom: I'd go upstairs while she's finishing her hair and kiss her neck and..
Neo: Look. Its only Oreck. That's all.
Zom: Don't bank on it. She told me he's dandy.
Neo: Just confront her and give her the choice.
Zom: Do I stand a chance against Oreck?
Neo: OK. OK. Tonight, tell her about this week. Maybe it will make a difference.
Zom: Don't hold your breath. Tonight, then.
Neo: 'atta boy. Oreck might be good, but he'll only ever be a carpet cleaner.
Zom: All those attachments, though..
Neo: Stop it....

The Jade Emperor

Cats do not like rats. The reason is simple, but we have to look back in time to uncover the truth.

In Greek mythology, Zeus ruled the Pantheon of Gods, and in Chinese folklore and Taoist tradition The Jade Emperor served an equivalent role among his deities. As the standard bearer for Taoism's fundamental principle of "wu wei", or "non doing", the Jade Emperor did very well for himself, and employed an immense civil service to make sure that nothing ever got done - in the Taoist sense, that is. Some like to believe that he lived in the Jade Castle of Abstraction, high above the earth and the thirty-three heavens. Others like to believe he lived on the Mountain of Jade in the K'un Lun mountains. Here, on the shore of the Jade Lake grew a monumental jade tree, which measured three hundred arm lengths across and whose red jade fruit conferred the blessing of eternal life.

Wherever the Jade Emperor lived, at some point he realized that he was unfamiliar with Earth's creatures. What did they look like? What did they do? How did they move? Were they clever? The Emperor had questions, and he needed answers. He summoned his chief civil servant. They talked candidly and concluded that there were too many animals for the Emperor to realistically view. The Emperor asked his envoy to select 12 creatures for him to inspect. The servant thought hard and made a list. He invited a rat, and told him to give an invitation to his friend the cat. Invitations were sent to an ox, a tiger, a rabbit, a dragon, a snake, a horse, a ram, a monkey, a rooster, and a dog, asking each to present himself before the Emperor at six o'clock the following morning.

The cat was mightily pleased to learn of his eligibility. Concerned that he might be caught napping as cats are wont to do, he asked the rat to be sure to wake him in good time. The rat agreed. Then the rat had second thoughts. The rat worried that the Emperor might be disappointed with the rat's appearance compared to the cat's sleek and gracefully manicured demeanour. The rat slyly changed his mind.

The day came, and the animals appeared before the Emperor. The Emperor was unreservedly pleased. He realized, too, that only 11 animals were on parade. The cat was not there. Twelve is divisible by two, and is therefore a balanced proposition. 11 is not, and presents significant difficulties in a binary world where the laws of harmony require balance. He queried his envoy. "Why might this might be?" "I do not know", was the usually reliable bureaucrat's predictable civil service response. The Emperor dispatched his servant to find another animal to address this awkward situation, whereupon the servant materialized on a dusty rural Chinese lane facing a startled and unambitiously tasked farmer who was en route to market with his pig. A pig would do.

The opulently dressed civil servant explained the day's predicament, and the farmer was privileged to offer the pig to the Emperor's servant. The servant duly returned to the Emperor with a pig in tow, and so it was that the Chinese zodiac was established. The pig took the cat's place, and cats are to this day rather at odds with rats.

If there is a moral to the story, it is that this could only ever happen in China, because in Wales the farmers around here do not trust anyone, let alone an officer from the Ministry of Agriculture.

There is a purpose to this story. The "dark arts", a rarified and mysterious Taijiquan skill otherwise known as Taoist Internal Alchemy, looms on my learning horizon. It is a contentious discipline. I have no aspirations to become a Taoist. Yet, Taijiquan is an extension of Taoist philosophy. It makes little sense to ignore the philosophy behind the application. For instance, we may joke about the Taoist concept of "wu wei" as a concept of doing nothing. It is nothing of the sort. It is a complex Taoist core belief, not easily explained, which underpins the Wudang martial arts systems among other things, and Taijiquan generally. In those rather odd hours before dawn, when I am now horrified to find myself wide awake and fully charged, no thanks to my Taiji, I browse the web in search of authority on Taoist tradition.

At at a time when the cost of rescuing the world's banking system at the taxpayer's expense will go down in legend, too, and on the day that Downing Street demonstrated "wu wei" in its more fully defined context by effectively nationalising the UK's banking system with a $350 billion recapitalization plan, it is reassuring to know that even the Jade Emperor had difficult moments with numbers, too.

Man Auction

An auction. Buy a man.

Winner takes all.

Simple. Pure capitalism at its evolutionary and savage best. No time wasting. Inspect the goods, see what you like, touch what you like, and if you still like, stake your claim. If your stake is big enough, you get your man. The gavel's report signs the deal. Your cash seals the deal. Done deal. Your deal. No big deal about courtship or strings. Just a big deal. A real deal. Money talks when it is time to do the deal.

Sounds like a deal? Empty your piggy banks ladies. Single? Perfect. Married? What's the problem, it is all for charity, right? Kate needs to raise £2,500 to buy her place on a 385km bicycle ride around Jordan. She has to raise the cash. She is going to do it with a man auction. Take your pick. Pick a man. There will be choice. Sporty types. Thoughtful types. Musical types. Must have types. What's your type?

I will be there. I will be listed in the buyer's catalogue. I will be going under the hammer. What will be bid for me? Will I meet my reserve? Will I be a deal? Will I be a steal? The bidding happens in early 2009. I suppose an interested party could pre-empt the auction. Everything has its price. Avoid disappointment. Book your seat now. Enquiries welcome, but no time wasters, please.

For charity.

Of course.

Made in Greece? You "feta" believe it!

The headline was Lou Duro's idea. His ideas were all over the rest of the article, too. My article. I wrote it. Lou, editor of the Crete Gazette, edited it. Charming. I could live with the headline. It resembled one of those classless strap lines the National Enquirer preys on, or indeed any British "red top". It was the story that bothered me now. The flow was all wrong. Crete's English speaking population would be critiquing the story online. For all I knew, Umar might even see it. He told me he liked the story earlier. That was in Chania. Three and a half hours later, and a couple of hours in a car between airports, and the online edition in Britain had someone else's DNA all over it. Why must editors meddle?

It was November 2005. I had just returned from Crete. Kate and I had rented a house overlooking Georgioupolis (pr: Yuri-aw-polie) a few months earlier. I liked the coastal town, and I liked the region's capital, Chania (pr: Hania), even more. Although Crete's interior has an unmistakable frontier feeling about it, Chania is really rather chic. Nestled against a 10,000 ft backdrop called the White Mountains, Chania and western Crete do not lack for much at all.

Kate liked the sun, and she wanted a permanent move away from the UK. A business opportunity seemed ripe to me, too. The plan was to spend a year building a business model in the eastern Mediterranean while cementing my UK business, so that in 12 to 24 months there would be self sustaining operations in the UK and Crete. It was a plan. The plan had to be this way, too. For one thing, there were my daughters. Even if Andrea would ever have agreed to letting the girls out of the UK, Crete did not make sense for them for anything other than school breaks. Also, Crete, or should I say Greece, was in the Euro zone: the drachma was dead, and with it cheap holidays. Greece traded with a new currency: the euro. This was good for Greece in the longer term, but it was double edged medicine. Average pay in Greece was much lower than in Europe's industrialised north. Greek land and property cost a fraction of the going rate in Britain. On the other hand, as goods and services began flowing southwards from the north to improve living standards, Greeks were feeling the pinch as the higher cost of those goods ate into static local salaries. If I was to enjoy Crete, I needed the spending power of a northerner. If I moved to Crete and burned my bridge in northern Europe, I might never have the purchasing power to buy my way back into a G7 economy.

Lou Duro, my editor, was a case in hand. Lou was a tall, dark haired, gregarious 60 year old American. He carried a few pounds more than he needed, but he had one of those builds that coped with excess weight. He tended to slick his unkempt hair back, and wore the kind of dishevelled and fashionless clothes that always leave me wondering what kind of shop they come from. He looked like a newspaper editor. Lou was blunt, but friendly with it, and he liked a story. Lou had moved to Crete some years ago from New Jersey, where he had built and run an advertising/marketing company. He was good in a kitchen, too. He had made a name for himself with a restaurant south east of Iraklion. Life was good for Lou, for a while. His good fortune ended abruptly with a motorcycle accident. It left him with a permanent and awkward limp, the legacy of a messy leg fracture and a year in an Athens hospital. Without medical insurance, Lou lost his fortune. He had to start again. He knew how advertising worked, so he launched a newspaper. It easily became Crete's largest English language paper, published once monthly in print and online. He and his business partner Yannis had plans for the newspaper. The plans were good news for both Kate and me. Lou would be around for a while, too. He would never be able to buy his way back into America. His bridge had burned. He was locked into a small corner of the Euro trade zone, and I really did not want to follow suit.

Here I was then, in North Wales with a cucumber, some tomatoes, some feta cheese, some olive oil, and assorted herbs. A greek salad. It did not taste anything like it does in Crete. The North Atlantic was venting the tail end of an American east coast hurricane across the British Isles. Kate was expatriated, and my vandalised newsflash about feta cheese was working its way around the world like a virus. Who would read it? Hopefully not Umar. Umar. What about her anyway? I asked her to marry me once. She said no. Boy, had I read that one all wrong. She was disarmingly polite about my faux pas: social skills came easily to Umar. It hardly ruined the rest of that trip about twenty years earlier on a square rigged tall ship in the Caribbean leeward isles. Maybe that in itself meant something. I wondered if she ever thought about me, or if maybe I really had got it all wrong. At three and a half hour's flying time from Manchester, that meant Crete was about 1,500 miles further away from Umar than I already was.

A free school lunch

"I am writing to advise that you continue to be eligible for free school meals and that they have been awarded for the 2008/09 school year in respect of the following....."

The letter rambled on with catch-all ambiguity, forged with mundane jobsworth mediocrity. Ken Jones, Denbighshire County Council's "Head of Revenues and Benefits", had written to me to let me know that my 16 and 11 year old daughters were welcome to free lunches for a year provided they went to school. Ken seemed to be very pleased about this because he had written to me a week earlier to tell me the very same thing. Perhaps Ken would even write to me next week after my girls had had the chance to sample their school's canteen food just to ask how it was for them. Perhaps. Ken is not a penny pincher. The letter had been laser printed in at least 600 dpi resolution. Ken's printer was fully duplexed, too, because side two of the A4 sheet of paper bilingually regurgitated a dump of contacts and appeal options. Life as a laser printer in Town Hall must be about as dull as it gets.

No matter. The girls have each been awarded £4.00 a day (about $8.00) to spend at their canteen this year, and the point of sale technology even protects their privileged status.

I say "privileged". There would have been a time when the girls would take their lunch trays to a segregated queue which would have made their newly awarded assisted status plain to caterers, students and teachers. Britain in the 21st century is more socialist than ever, though. It looks after its own. Just as well.

Ironically, the girls will be better off than most of their counterparts. Many of my friends are encumbered with bitter credit problems, and the looming ordeal of finding their kids' weekly lunch money is going to be a stark proposition as they go to bed on Sunday nights. I spoke to Sally a day or two ago. She and her husband never imagined that their household, worth £100k a year in income, could be sifting piggy banks for two "tenners" worth of assorted coins to keep 2 children fed at school for a week. Yet that is the quality of their life in 2008, and yet... yet, even if means did permit how many parents fork out £4.00 daily for their own lunch, let alone their childrens'? Having spent a few dark years trawling my pockets and drawers in hope more than expectation, I understand too well the heartbreaking exigencies of downsizing that so many of my friends are reeling from. In this economic downturn, no household is safe. Or should I say, few households are safe. Poverty has no respect for social order in 2008.

In case there is doubt about the entrenchment of social policy in Britain, here is a parting shot. My 16 year old daughter is to be rewarded for spending her next two years at school. She will be paid a State benefit of £35.00 (about $70) weekly for agreeing to continue at school. This benefit is called "EMA", or Education Maintenance Allowance. It is payable in addition to other grants like school lunches. Presumably EMA is a ploy devised by grey suited ones to discourage students leaving school at 16 to pick and choose from the wide range of attractive unemployment and social benefits available to school leavers. I am tempted to go back to school for two years myself.

The temptation is only whimsical, though. Instead, I will focus on my experiment in Palaeolithic nutrition. There will be celery and cream cheese for breakfast, shrimp salad for lunch, and grilled pork loin chops with a spicy home made guacamole for dinner. Palaeolithic? Why not? There is no carbohydrate. It is not costing me anything, and I doubt many hunter/gatherers needed plastic for their killings either: I can afford my day's nutrition from the money I would otherwise be spending on school lunches. The three day sugar withdrawal is gone, and one week into my project, I am three pounds down. The search for Umar continues.