Year: 2007

In other completely trivial news, I figured I probably went sliding down the riverbank because I’ve walked the tread right off my shoes. And then straight through the rubber base – I’ve been wandering around mostly on insoles for awhile now and ignoring the fact that my feet get wet.

So I cautiously ventured to the shoe store (yes, there is in fact only one… at least in terms of anything I can wear) to grimly poke through the available options.

Wonder of wonders, there was a sale on! This means I saved a whole twenty quid when purchasing The Most Ugly Shoes in the Universe. Hurray!

How much did said ugly shoes cost? Eighty pounds, which seemed a bargain. Until I let my internal calculator point out that is one hundred and sixty dollars. I don’t even spend that much on airfare!

The only consolation is that I maintained my stubborn resistance to sandals. Never! I wrote to tell Mark about my excellent purchase and he replied I’m going to have to wear really fancy shoes today, to restore the pretty that your shoes are sucking out of the universe!

Today I was cycling down Trinity Street when I heard some music and noticed a crowd had gathered to stare up at a crenelated, gargoyle-bedecked roof at St. John’s.

I stopped to listen as an invisible orchestra of horns played out The Star Spangled Banner. A dozen of us, strangers to each other but obviously North American, started to sing along.

Some English children next to me exclaimed Why are they singing, Mummy??and I felt an absurd longing to be back in some random stateside street or field with incendiary devices flaming all around.

When the music stopped a tourist fell into conversation with me and a man I’d never met, who revealed himself to be a Midwestern chemistry professor here on sabbatical. Of course – who else would stand around conversing at great length about abattoirs, NASA, and the nature of scientific inquiry with anonymous strangers?

I have more to say on the subject of Independence Day but I just cleverly managed to slide down a muddy riverbank on my knees, narrowly avoiding ending up in the river. At least nobody was there to witness this folly!

One of the most brilliant parts of socialized medicine is the fact that they cut off your supply of medication if you skip the routine check-ups. Otherwise, I would never go!

For those of you who have never lived here, the NHS is kind of like a vast HMO, except dirtier. In theory you have a GP in your neighborhood (and they make house calls, apparently, not that I would ever think to call for one even if I needed it) and that person tends to all standard medical complaints, and many you would expect to see a specialist for.

If you have something the GP can’t treat, you can sometimes get a referral – but that generally entails long waiting periods. If the wait is too long and you have private insurance you can ask to skip the queue and go to outside hospitals.

These are slightly cleaner though entirely carpeted, and you can order alcohol in your room. Other than that, the quality of care is the same, as the facilities are staffed by NHS doctors.

Medical care is by no means efficient, but it is extremely brisk. The three (yes, only three) times I’ve begrudgingly gone to see my GP the visits have followed the same pattern – walk in, sit down, state problem, get referral or prescription, leave. It never takes more than 5 minutes to accomplish this, because the doctors simply do not ask any questions.

Particularly since I arrive with an agenda and know more than they do about my disease, we have less interaction than I do with the clerk at the grocery store.

This morning I was forced by necessity to go to an appointment – I need enough medication to last while away all summer, and I’m about two years overdue on the blood tests they take the persnickety perspective should be performed every three months.

I’ve been taking the same dose of the stuff since 1983, it hardly seems necessary to undergo the scrutiny!

I went in with three requests. When I rattled off the list the doctor was bemused, then picked up a pen. Wait a minute, repeat that again?

She asked if I’ve had some standard genetic tests and I replied No, only the rare ones! 

Then I was, horror of horrors, subjected to a hands-on exam. Thump!

But even with that and two conspicuous hand-washing rituals, the whole appointment was over within approximately twelve minutes.

Since I’m one of the only people in the whole country who takes a certain drug there was a risk the chemist wouldn’t have enough in stock, but lucky me, they did!

In the states the appointments, tests and procedures ordered on my behalf today would cost something like seven thousand dollars. Here? Absolutely free.

I’m not even allowed to pay for meds! Apparently socialized medicine brings out my sincere love of the exclamation point!

I haven’t been following the news closely since, hmm, reviewing mental files – oh yes! Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Oklahoma City bombing.

This means that when I decided not to fly to Berlin last night I didn’t know about the second London car bomb (and yeah, I spent a large part of the day in Piccadilly ignoring swarms of police).

Or that there had been a terror attack on Glasgow airport.

Let alone that Scotland’s Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill described those behind the airport attack as “not born and bred here” (quoted in both NYT and BBC).

Hmm. Seems like a premature comment, unless all the participants have been apprehended. Commitment to particular ideologies would appear to be the source of the attacks, and that isn’t something that is predicated on passports.

Last night I was on the top level of a double decker bus winding through Angel when I spied the flower shop owned by my old friend David (yeah, if you know London, the florist under the statue) and realized we haven’t talked in awhile.

I texted to ask what he is up to and the reply was Darling, I’m in Madrid – would love to see you when I get back!

My answer read in part I’m jetting off to Berlin and then to the states for the summer…

Then I was startled, once again, to find myself in this country writing sentences like that. The oddity was of course underscored by the fact that David and I are from the same faraway heinous hometown.

Who knew we’d even make it out alive, let alone be friends twenty-four years after first meeting? Life is strange. Anyway, more about the wedding reception later – it was of course fantastically fun! Lots of friends old and new, including a chance to gossip with Iain:

What I sound like on the radio:

Interviewer, in somber tone – So Bee, you suffered domestic violence?

Me, laughing – No, I practiced it!

Interviewer, shocked – What, you mean you dished it out??

Me, still laughing – No, I defended myself. I’ve never been a victim of anything!

That is just the bit that I can remember. Of course there was a whole lot of terribly inappropriate disease chit-chat, I was asked to describe the accident (something I can’t even talk to my closest friends about), and I had to suffer through countless compliments. Oh no!

Luckily my brain deletes all that stuff immediately.

I expounded on the link between poverty and violence at great length, but at least she didn’t ask why I am opposed to therapy. The Australians of my acquaintance are good like that.

One hour later, I still feel mildly queasy. I don’t even listen to the radio!

Ten years and three books into this whole thing, it is obvious that regardless of the topic – parenting, activism, reminiscing about having portions of my body hacked off – I just say whatever crazy thing crosses my mind. This may in fact be why I’m asked to appear on the airwaves so often, but still, not my favorite part of the job!

Australian friends: I’ll be chattering away live on ABC radio Thursday evening.

To be extremely simplistic, I left the states because I wanted to live in a place where everyone has access to basic health care.

I can report that the standard and quality of care in the UK is substantially superior to anything I had in the states, and I had access to the best insurance and hospitals in the country.

And you know what? The private insurance industry here is alive and well. It even has that nasty little pre-existing conditions clause going on, along with massive pre-approval paperwork and all the tedious stuff you experience back home.

But if you break a leg, or have an asthma attack in the middle of the night, you get a free ambulance ride to a hospital where they efficiently fix you without charge. In this town, they don’t even ask if you have the right to the services.

It isn’t necessary to believe that a single-payer system would work in the states (I don’t, at least not right now) to acknowledge that the health care system is fucked. Industry reform is on the horizon, and that is why there is so much frantic debate and propagandizing.

The question is, will the reform benefit you or the insurance industry? Someone is going to get something out of the quagmire.

Punk Planet has announced that the magazine will cease publication after the current issue.

The fiscal crisis in the independent publishing world is wide-spread, systemic, and mostly without a solution. Unless publications have patrons (meaning a rich individual sponsor or a lucrative and stable nonprofit) they will almost certainly succumb to the fallout of recent bankruptcies.

Every last one of us. Including all of your most beloved zines and some of your favorite stores.

The facts are simple: newsstand sales do not translate to enough money to print and distribute (and if your distro goes under without paying out, that fact is irrelevant anyway). Subscriptions are better, but not enough. Advertising, as always, is the main source of income, and that is an unreliable revenue stream. Particularly if you are defiantly independent and serve a niche audience.

This has always been true. It’s worse now than it was ten years ago, it will be better in the future and then bad again. The whole thing is cyclical and right now we’re in a dark part of the cycle.

If your favorite publication is still in print, this is what you can do to help:

Buy merchandise and books direct from the source, instead of via external web sites.

Subscribe, and subscribe again.

If you have something to advertise and money to pay for ads, run one.

I don’t play the Who is Next game but can assure you that Punk Planet is not the last. For me this is of course deeply personal, since the people making these announcements are my friends.

AEM was practically a member of my family when we lived in Seattle. Dan Sinker is a truly awesome individual, and the person who took a risk and offered to publish Lessons in Taxidermy after watching one of my performances. Nobody else in the states wanted the book – unless I changed the title and ending.

Punk Planet as an institution had a good run; thirteen years is a long time in publishing terms. But it is never fun to see a project end when the people involved want it to continue, and the readers are still there.

The current cover of NME features a naked photo of Beth Ditto. Last week a celebrity gossip magazine also put the same image on the cover, juxtaposed with a series of way-too-thin women with fake breasts in bikinis, and an exclusive titled Mel B’s Amazing Diet Secret.

The actual article about Beth is quite positive, and essentially has a you go girlattitude. This, however, is one page in a big glossy parade of articles that say exactly the opposite, including extremely harsh criticism of assorted Z list celebrities I’ve never even heard of, with photographs.

Beth is someone I know in real life so my reaction to this is stronger than it would be normally – toxic body image messages from mainstream culture normally have no traction in my brain. I simply do not care what anyone thinks of how I look – good, bad, or indifferent.

Beauty is a social construct, and the ideal is different depending on where and when you live. I grew up poor and mutilated in a western consumer culture at the end of a censorious century. This taught me many important lessons, not least of which is the fact that the only opinion that matters about my appearance is my own. I’m not healthy or beautiful by any objective standard, but my body is amazing, and I love it, no matter what.

The reaction to the NME cover is irritating in part because Beth is smoking hot. People want to know her, in all meanings of the word. It is not necessary to conform to mainstream standards to be sexy and desirable. In fact, the opposite is often true.

Thinking otherwise is just a sham, and people should get over it.

Nautical thought of the day: it is difficult to board a vessel when the shore has disappeared. That kind of sums up my life in general, but today the specific challenge is the fact that the river has flooded.

The Bumps are a completely typical Cambridge experience that sort of sums up life here.

It goes like this: Ride bike two or three miles into countryside. Chain bike to tree next to pub. Purchase pint of beer. Sit on the grass next to river. Wait. Talk to charming companion (on this occasion, blonde ten year old boy). Wait. Fidget. Buy crisps for child. Watch losing teams row past in desultory fashion. Observe elderly rowing enthusiasts talking about victories of previous century. Listen to teenage rowing enthusiasts chatting on mobile phones about victories earlier in the day. Notice that there is a youngster running a punt ferry service so racing fans on the other side of the river can get drunk too. Try to prevent Don’t Pay the Ferryman from playing in brain. Think about how this event is the culmination of all the activity I observe on the river, every day, all year long. Ponder why anyone would bother while also admiring the sheer physicality of it all. Remember which of your friends was a rower in youth, and snicker. Jump with fright when the PA system starts to shriek that the race has started. Stand and watch with crowd as several boats stream past the pub garden.

Feel incredibly thrilled at the spectacle – which lasts approximately two minutes: