Boris Johnson’s image has formed a key part of the London race for mayor – from the blue, floppy-haired profile on Back Boris 2012 merchandise to the hairy cartoon character depicted as a thief in Ken Livingstone’s campaign literature.
But is it wise to reduce the election to caricatures, what are the messages behind some of the most distinctive designs and how well are the parties reaching their audience?
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Editing the weather forecast for Ceefax in London for one of the last times
The analogue television signal is to be switched off in London on Wednesday.
That means an end to Ceefax, the BBC’s teletext service, transmitted via analogue.
The BBC Red Button service will become the alternative.
When you take a job in China, you don’t think about the day you’ll find your feet in Chinese stirrups. Guest expat blogger, Violet Tame, shares her trip to the gynaecologist in China.
This week I had to go for a follow-up appointment at the OBGYN. I had a couple of pap smears come back irregular so it was time to go under the scope. I arrived a little nervous with the word biopsy ringing in my head. I checked in and sat down next to a middle-aged man coming from work. I wished in a way that I was sitting next to him to chew the fat to at least take my mind off the looming exam. I did not make a move as figured I would definitely put my foot in my mouth and rather than discussing the up and coming US election, I would discuss blood clots and the risk we women take with every birth control pill we take.
I waited and waited and finally was called by the nurse after waiting over 40 minutes. She took my blood pressure and then asked me to sit in another waiting room where I could gaze for 20 minutes at a wall of baby photographs. I sometimes think that the OBGYN offices should have pictures of females with their great accomplishments and inspirational quotes including the strange species of the single independent woman, or just any random person from the non-procreating race. Is it not enough that I do not have anyone besides my OBGYN doing anything down there, I have to be reminded every six months “No, you do not have kids, and you are doing maintenance on an organ that only bleeds”.
As I am sitting there staring at the baby pictures with happy couples, thinking about my inactive vagina and fallopian tubes that are still in training I remind myself of past OBGYN appointments where one gynaecologist told me that I had a beautiful womb. This in a strange way is comforting. Then a line swoops in like a stork from the play For Whom the Southern Bell Tolls, “I have a womb, a womb for went, as Elmer Fudd would say”. What do I do with this beautiful womb? Will I ever be able to rent it out for nine months, or will I continue to carry the vacancy sign on my forehead to each dinner, Christmas or OBGYN appointment?
A dear friend rang me to check in and I immediately lost it making a puddle of tears on my baby yellow skirt. The nurse called me into the office before the conversation even started. Walking into the appointment I messaged two friends saying that I was having a meltdown and would like someone there when I was done.
The doctor had diagrams of women with see through legs so I could see where the microscope would be put. I was warned that it might hurt and given a packet that outlined what I needed to be aware of and activities that I needed to stay away from for the next 24 hours…. A girl could be so lucky to have the option to stay away from one of the three letter words.
Through the whole process massive drops were catapulting from my eyes. I was taken through an office to a room with a massive chair with stir-ups. I put on a backless blue gown that brought out my swollen eyes and lay on the table. The doctor was Chinese and so was her assistant. There were four lights above me, which meant I could see the reflection of the different tools she was putting into me. After that the doctor said “I tell you about this later, I have to clean off your cervix first”. Seriously, there has to be a technical term for that, though now I know why they name cars after women: a tune-up is just a different dipstick away from a colposcopy.
The exam continued and I was still unsure if I was passing or failing. The doctor and the assistant were speaking to each other in Chinese and all I could pick up was “Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, biopsy. Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, biopsy”…. Now for China claiming to be one of the oldest cultures and Mandarin being a difficult language with an extensive vocabulary, they honestly could not come up with their own word for biopsy? That was the one word that I could have waited to hear until the tune-up was finished and I was sitting respectably in a chair fully clothed on all sides.
After who knows how many swabs, metal dipsticks and hearing “Chinese, Chinese Chinese, biopsy. Chinese, Chinese, Chinese, biopsy,” they left me to change and closed a steel sliding door, which I later would not be able to open, and resorted to banging on like a captive mental patient. The doctor explained everything shortly after telling me that she was retiring… Upon leaving the office I found my friends that responded to my distress signal to enjoy a cold four-letter word that thankfully was not on the list of things I could not enjoy post tune-up.
| “Really like your blog and your adjustment to life back in the UK. Reverse culture shock can really be a tough one to deal with.” |
Its dome is internationally recognisable. It has hosted some of the most important moments in British history, from the state funeral of Sir Winston Churchill to the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer.
But despite its 1,400 years of history, it is the four-month period when protesters pitched tents outside in the name of subverting corporate greed that most recently shoved St Paul’s Cathedral into the public glare.
Images of Occupy London campers outside the vast white Portland stone Baroque frontage were beamed around the world.
“People think it is just a nice big white building”, says Graham Way, 52, a volunteer.
“It is, but there’s a lot more going on. It’s not a great white elephant by any manner of means.”
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The other day I was wearing my winter coat buttoned up to my neck when I walked past a girl in orange fake tan, a vest and flip-flops. We gave each other a look which said, “Seriously?”.
Indeed, the thing that has most publicly betrayed my recent expat status in the last few weeks has been my attachment to my coat while other Brits strip off, desperately keen to use their summer clothes for whatever limited period of availability there may be.
So while newspapers have screamed about heat waves, I’ve been the one walking around in at least two extra layers.
I know it's unBritish to ooze enthusiasm for your surroundings but I can't help it
I didn’t find the recent spell of warmth hot. Hot to me is now 40 degree heat and 80 percent humidity.
Hot is having to have rugby training drills explained indoors in the air conditioning before going outdoors to complete them to save people from standing in the heat and running the risk of hyperthermia.
Hot is having to wait inside in the air conditioning while you sacrifice someone to man the barbecue outside.
Hot is leaving your office at 10pm at night and being hit by a mist of delicious warm, clammy air as you hear the cicadas clattering and start working out how soon you can locate a glass of gin and tonic to enjoy outside.
A friend who moved to England after spending his early childhood in Hong Kong told me that he needed a hot water bottle every night for his first year.
I moved back in November and a lot of people said, “What a shame you’re arriving back in the winter”. It may have seemed a bad time, but if you are moving back from China I can’t recommend it enough.
For a start, it didn’t feel like Britain really had a winter now that I’m used to what Shanghai gets thrown at it- temperatures around 0 degrees and humidity which makes it feel much colder. It doesn’t really feel like we get weather here at all to be honest now, just middling clement temperatures with the odd bit of extra drizzle or extra sun here and there.
It doesn’t even rain properly. I asked a friend of mine to send me a poncho from Shanghai for riding my bike in the rain but I haven’t yet had cause to break it out. We are technically in a drought- a world away from the plum season in Shanghai when it can rain torrentially every day for weeks and you don’t leave the house without wellies and a poncho.
I spent the winter wearing my thick Shanghai duvet coat on the days it was closest to 0 degrees while Brits wore thin coats and jackets and complained of being cold. I revelled in the fact that my office and home had central heating- most Shanghai buildings do not. And I felt the warmest I have in the winter for years, recalling days when I went to bed in Shanghai in a woolly hat and gloves and with heat patches imported from Korea stuck to my pyjamas.
I am enjoying the spring with a renewed appreciation. I don’t think I ever truly took on board how beautiful London looks with its blossoms. In Shanghai, people take day trips out of town to line up and look at the spring flowers alongside thousands of others, posing Romantically next to blooms. Here, they are on every street and every corner and people just walk past them. I have taken pictures of them as a tourist would.
I can’t help it. I know it’s weird to appreciate your home town. I also know it will be weird if I don’t lose my winter coat at some stage this summer. After all, nothing says “outsider” in Britain more than being positive and keeping your clothes on when the sun comes out.
“How are you adjusting?” is something I am being asked a lot at the moment. I’m four months into my re-entry in England and approaching the psychologically critical six-month point expats talk of. Tales of repatriation meltdowns always tend to begin, “Well, she was fine for the first six months and then she…”
a) Realised she had changed too much to ever be able to live in England again,
b) Realised England hadn’t changed at all
or
c) Remembered she had left the gas on.
I tell people that I was lucky I started a new job two days after I came back. I tell them I am loving the job and that I am enjoying the simple pleasure of not having to miss my oldest friends and my family.
Is there a re-pat time bomb set for six months?
Oddly, I have felt the most vindicated in my decision to return home when moments come around that are now everyday.
When I was in Shanghai last summer on a warm evening sitting on my balcony 25 storeys up chatting to my friends about my reasons for leaving, I never could have pinpointed the moments that would truly reward my decision.
I knew that Shanghai and I had reached the type of juncture that you come to with a man when you have to decide to either get married or break up. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with Shanghai, but I still love it.
I knew that I wanted to put down roots for a while in England, be near my loved ones and move on to better career prospects.
But since I have been home, I have been made acutely aware of what I was missing. When you have a one-hour Skype call home each week, you miss spending a few post-dinner hours chatting about what your grandparents did during the war or your mother’s first boyfriend. You miss teaching your sister how to perform a London emergency three-point turn ahead of her driving test. You miss the afternoon you spend trying on hats for a wedding you will actually be able to attend. And you weren’t even aware these moments were there to be missed.
There are things I miss about Shanghai but they are not serious enough for me to feel that I will need to run away in two months’ time. Perhaps your first few months home are the most precious, when you have a unique new perspective on things you previously took for granted. Perhaps I’m just still blinkered by the range of lunch options I now have and the fact that shoes in England actually fit me. Who knows? But at the moment I may be the only person in London who can safely say they feel well-adjusted.
This is the trailer for the new film Shanghai Calling, about an American sent to Shanghai for work. Lots about this is familiar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKjBRWh5RdE
Standing in a room in a basement in Shepherd’s Bush this week stripping in front of a stranger, I thought “Hmm, I wouldn’t have done this before I went to China”.
It’s not that I have fallen down on my luck or chosen to supplement my income.
It was all in the name of finding a good massage.
I lamented with an NLE (Never Left England) friend recently that you cannot find a decent, good value massage parlour in London and he stared blankly at me, before his jaw sank and he wore the ‘You’ve changed’ expression that is becoming familiar.
“At one point I looked behind to see that my guy with his elbow in my shoulder blade had a mobile phone in his hand that he was straining to look at”
But the fact is that cushy expat lifestyles in China revolve around pampering and massage.
I’m not ashamed to say I went for a massage most weeks and once on a particularly stressful day went for a foot massage in my lunch break. I’ve been slathered in oil and cupped. I’ve been covered in seaweed, sanded down and massaged by a blind man. But generally, I was put in a pair of oriental pyjamas so I looked like something from The Mikado, and then pushed and prodded all over for an hour. A full body Chinese massage cost £8.
The 'Mute's Gate' to 'Wind Mansion' needs opening my Traditional Chinese Medicine instinct tells me
One of the few low points came when my friend and I found that our favourite place was full and we dashed to another, untested establishment looking for a hit. The smell of sandalwood and jasmine made us hopeful, the soothing pipe music even more so. But a short while after we lay down side by side and two young guys walked in, we heard them discussing our bodies to each other in Mandarin. At one point I looked behind to see that my guy with his elbow in my shoulder blade had a mobile phone in his hand that he was straining to look at.
But over time, I became hooked on massages.
And to cope with life back in London after four years in Shanghai I need to find somewhere I can go to re-up.
Ideally I’m looking for a Chinese lady who isn’t afraid to use her elbow on my spine and doesn’t shy away from cracking my neck – the one, two, three, jerk move that looks like it might be used to kill a turkey but releases a rush of endorphins.
I need someone who can dig her thumbs into the back of my head, will hit me on the head with the bottom of a clenched fist and forcibly separate my vertebrae. And hell, I’ll take an eyebrow stroke and earlobe tickle for good measure if it’s going. Is it really too much to ask?
Life at the age of 32 seems to revolve around who’s trying, who’s tried, who’s succeeded and who’s failed. It’s all pretty trying in itself for a single girl, even more so as such talk is often accompanied by martyr-like sobriety.
When a British girl refuses a drink there’s only one explanation, and it isn’t antibiotics or Weight Watchers.
So while three months ago I moved countries- from China to Britain- it feels at the moment as if I swapped planets.
When I used to meet up with girlfriends for dinner four years ago before I left, we would put the world to rights over a bottle or two talking about things that made our waiter blush. Talk was about who was doing what, how often and with whom, with a side serving of career ambition and holiday gossip.
Now, they nurse glasses of water, talk in weeks and speak of flexi-time and career breaks. It feels like a seismic shift.
But why? It isn’t as if I don’t have friends in Shanghai with children. But the difference is that in my expat life I had a range of friends of all ages- an assortment of people from 18-year-old students to high-powered executives in their 40s who I could have fun with. We all had in common the fact that we were living abroad and having the time of our lives.
“What do you miss most about China?” is something I am being asked quite often. And, if I’m honest it’s not so much the great standard of living or the satisfaction of living in a country that’s an international success story, it’s the unique group of friends I had of different ages and races who I got to see on a weekly basis.
In Shanghai it was much easier to meet with people. The same people tended to go the same places and enjoy being a big gang. It was also much more convenient to travel in the city and most people could afford to live centrally. On top of that, most of my friends were connected with the rugby club. In the early days we would throw barbecues that 40 people came to with one night’s notice. In London, the style is to meet small pockets of people separately and have meetings scheduled in weeks beforehand. People rarely stray out of their groups and a week’s notice for an event suddenly seems spontaneous.
It’s a big social adjustment that I’m encountering, swapping pints for pregnancy tests, nightclubs for nurseries and boat races for breast pumps.
Still, I’ve learnt more about the female anatomy in the last few weeks than I ever thought I could.