End of a busy weekend
I've been working like the proverbial blue-arsed fly for nearly the whole weekend. Friday, I drove up to DC for the memorial service (gathering?) for my dear and recently departed old friends Jean and Richard Van Wagenen. It was really poignant. Richard had been my Dad's best friend during WW2 when they worked in Military Intelligence together liaising with each other on behalf of their respective national armies. When he died last month, it really felt to me like the end of an important link with my father's generation.
When I moved to DC as the single parent of two small kids, in 1982, Richard and Jean were like surrogate parents for me, and surrogate grandparents for the kids. Jean died the day after Thanksgiving.
Yesterday (Sat.), I started out with high hopes that it would be fun to take part in a once-a-week training program for the C'ville Women's 4-Miler, which is coming up at the end of August. I can already run four miles, however, and do it from time to time as a stretch on my usual 3-mile run. And the program seemed designed for total neophytes. Plus it was extremely rah-rah. I told my friend Beverly whom I was sitting next to on the bleachers as the rah-rahs were progressing, "I think I'm too English for this."
Anyway, I did find a bunch of my friends there as well, and may have found someone to run with from time to time. (Don't know how that will work. I rather like running on my own.)
In the p.m., yesterday, we went to see the movie "Bending like Beckham." It was huge amounts of fun! Mainly, for me, because it brought back so many memories of the 9 months I spent in 1981 living right there, not far from Hounslow, in a majority-Sikh neighborhood. Everything rang a bell! The Sikh-Brits all busily negotiating their way between their various cultural impulses; the West London accents; the constant drone of Heathrow's planes flying overhead; et., etc.
When we were there in '81, my son Tarek was the only non-Sikh boy in his pre-school. (Government-funded pre-schools for rising-three-year-olds! What a concept! And that was under Maggie Thatcher, too.)
All the other little boys had kercheifed topknots on their heads. Tar would come home and complain to me in a really BROAD West London accent about how I shouldn't speak Arabic with him: "Ow, Maam, don' tawk rubbish!" Those were the days...
The movie was fabulous: funny, touching, pointed, hilarious, all at once. A real 3-handkerchief production. I love movies that make me cry.
So apart from that, a nice meal out with our friends the Womacks last night, and Quaker meeting this a.m., I've just been plugging and plugging away at my current writing project. Shall I tell you what it is? Not now, I don't think...
Anyway, friends, you've read this far. Please, please click on the "Comments" links and send in some comments. It's a really good way to get discussions started.
I agree that the movie is great--lots of laughs, but without making fun of people, and deaaling sensitively with some real multicultural issues. Also, nice to see a good dad portrayed on father's day
The more I think about the movie the more I appreciate how cleverly the plot was constructed as well as how beautifully it was shot and edited. There were lots of cute riffs on cultural-difference issues. The best line to my mind was when two older Sikh-Brit ladies overheard the white woman accusing her daughter of being a lesbian and one turned to the other and said, "But I thought she was a Pisces!"
Readers should go see the movie. It's actually called Bend it like Beckham, not what I wrote in the main post.
And it should be noted that Tarek has not yet forgiven his mother for letting his Arabic lapse.
Parents: the moral of this story is that you should not listen to your children.
Like it's my fault now??