Listless in London

The shadow across the unruly lawn long neglected enticed my gaze up the evergreen which is now towering above all at the foot of the garden. It stands testament to how long we have been in this present place, a cornerstone of my memory set in a faraway land that is England.

This is our fourth place that we call home. I remember the surge of excitement when I saw the size of the garden. What do we do with an 80 ft garden? We know nought about gardening so, it certainly helped that the house came with a garden savvy neighbour, who instantly took charge. An apple tree was immediately put in place and several border perennials became our pride and joy, with tomatoes, potatoes and even sweetcorn. The perennials in my hands, eventually died. Even the apple tree wilted and went, now replaced with a Japanese acer that gives a lovely colour in summer. But it is the evergreen standing stoic and proud that still holds a special place in my heart.

Hardly a foot tall, we brought it back from a friend’s place in Weybridge and Mick dutifully plonked it in. That was twenty three years ago, when child number two must have been about one and she sat on the swing among the tall trees in Rachel’s backyard that summer afternoon as we selected our plants to bring home. Today as I looked up that tree, she is somewhere in Hampshire attending an office meeting. Child number three was still a baby in my kangaroo pouch when we visited Weybridge to bring this tree home and as I write this, she is on her way to India.

It didn’t seem too long ago that they were out there riding their three wheelers, playing catch and jumping on bouncy castle in the garden, neatly trimmed by Mick. And when they were brave enough, joined by friends from the neighbourhood, they camped out in the night but we found them sprawled in the lounge the next morning. The foxes must have paid them a visit during the night!

A basketball net used to be the centre of activities for family and friends and saw one of the most hilarious matches between sons and mothers. Now it is replaced by a punchbag, cutting quite a lonely and useless figure from where I am sitting now.

The garden in summer had witnessed many a barbeque party with the wind bringing the sweet smell of grilled satay over to the other side of the A40. Farewells and reunions or just plain get-together were held in the garden and we would stay out enjoying the summer nights and what’s left of the barbeque.

Today, as son of Mick laid out a plastic sheet across the front lawn to control the weeds and try to save some so called perennials wilting in the borders, I wonder where did all those years go.

And today, I ventured out and looked up the evergreen and felt a kind of melancholic feeling sweeping over me. It has grown so tall, lording over the neighbour’s pear tree. And more importantly, it now provides a permanent shade for Jasper in his final resting place. The garden was Jasper's playground - his and his alone, chasing other cats away across the fence.

And today, with Jasper out of the way resting at the foot of the evergreen, Tabby, Snowbell and Kissinger were free to laze about in the summer sun.

Courting stories

These last few days, sitting outside the courtroom waiting for the jury to deliver the verdict, chatting to police officers and interpreters transported me back to that café under the tree in Penang, just outside the courthouse. The temperature outside soared to a scorching 30, not unlike the temperature all year round on the island. Camera crews and photographers waiting outside the court building for the Jill Dando murder case, were wilting in the heat, but they couldn’t move until they got their pix of the day.

Watching the hustle bustle of men and women bewigged and in black robes carrying huge files and huger books for reference, I remembered similar activities along corridors of the impressive Penang courthouse. They were the likes of Karpal Singh, the late P Annamalai and their entourage, or Rajasingam and many more whose names escaped me now. I was young and naïve, wondering around the courthouse, looking for stories that would give me an impressive headline in the next day’s paper. I used to be in awe of hardcore journalists who wouldn’t be contented with just a life sentence.

“What? Only life, ah?” A death sentence would ensure a front page story and certainly a byline that’s a few katis in weight!

While waiting for verdicts, sentencing, or just whiling away our time for a more ‘interesting’ case, we’d sit and have chats with prosecutors, lawyers and police officers about all sorts of things. There was such a bond, and that was how we’d get tips about new cases; murder, drug traffickings, or small non headline grabbing cases like being caught redhanded watching blue films or stealing a bicycle. Once in a long while, we’d get sensational stories of illegal topless and scantily clad dancers who hid things where things shouldn’t be hidden. That would create quite a sensation, and would even solicit a smile and a chuckle from the usually stern magistrate.

The Penang courtrooms had witnessed a lot of stories of drugs in false bottom suitcases, or ridiculously high platform shoes hiding contraband goods. Even more ridiculous were the mitigation.

Lunch can be a long drawn out affair of nasi kandar at one of the restaurants dotting the streets of Penang, or at a more fanciful place with air condition depending on what time of the month it was. Or sometimes, none at all as we chased after lawyers, court clerks and police officers for documents to copy, especially after a verdict or a sentencing. Then a dash back to the office to bang on the old Remington which would then be typed out again by the teleprinter to the HQ in KL, while you stood in a queue; all depending on the urgency of the stories. How time has changed. Now, a quick call on the mobile, or sitting by the roadside with a laptop and a mobile internet connection, the story goes within a few minutes.

Court reporting was a training ground for all cub journalists. That was where we learned to listen attentively and take notes accurately. It used to be easy because in most cases, questions and answers were translated back, and very slowly too for the judge to note down everything.

But what I found difficult was to remove myself emotionally from the case. One that got me real bad was a case where both husband and wife were in the dock for drug trafficking and we all know that a guilty verdict would mean death. The wife was about to deliver – so there was a plea bargain. The husband would plead guilty and get life and the wife, was either given a lesser sentence or acquitted to look after the baby.

Another one was the Jelutong murder where the father massacred all his children as he thought life was not worth living when his wife flaunted her infidelities before his very eyes. Even the prosecution officer cried when he read out the son’s plea for the father not to kill him.

The last time I was at the Old Bailey, I heard an old Malay gentleman pleading his case. He stood there, a Quran in his hand and looked up at me at the public gallery and smiled in recognition at a familiar face. He spent 7 years inside and I visited him only twice. He wrote to me from Brixton and sent me visiting orders.

It is all very well to have hefty bylines but it is certainly a very draining experience - emotionally. Everyone is a victim of circumstances. Until today, I have forgotten, how emotionally draining it can be.

Come walk down Memory Lane with me

Yesterday, feeling a little bit better and not wanting to miss the summer sun, we went to Kensington Gardens to join a group of youngsters having a picnic. It was such a beautiful day and it seemed that London and her grandparents were out with their sunglasses, balls and rollerblades.

There were groups sharing their sishas under the trees, youngters playing football and many just enjoying the sun, cuddling their loved ones without a care in the world.

There was hardly space to sit down but we made our way, dodging frisbees and dogs running after sticks, following the sound of the strumming of the guitar with familiar voices singing Sweet Charity’s “Kamelia”.

Yes, we found the group of young Malaysian students, taking time off from their revision, to enjoy the sun. The reason we went there too was because Taufiq wanted to meet someone who could teach him the steps to seni silat. So, there we were in the Her Majesty the Queen’s park, watching Taufiq and his friend, practising the silat.

Watching the group of young friends, strumming their guitars, singing songs I never knew existed and just larking about playing catch with empty apple juice cartons, their laughter carried by the wind, I felt a tinge of envy. How wonderful it is to be young and without a back ache.

This reminded me too of the challenge I found on JT’s blog – a challenge that was to take me down memory lane, even at the risk of revealing my age. This challenge, if you are up to it, will take you to popculturemadness.com where you will find all sorts of things – like lists of songs during the year you turned 18. And from the list of songs, write about the memories they bring flooding back. And horrors of horror – the year I turned 18 was 1972!!!!!

This was the year, sorry Mak, no more birthday parties with musical chairs and passing the parcel. This was the year, after five years in the strict Convent school environment, we were leashed out into a co-ed school that was the SAHC to join the world of seniors, carrying files instead of school bags, eating at snack bars in semi darkness instead of canteens in the full glare of teachers and prefects. This was the year a pimple spelt disaster, especially if it appeared the day before the sixth form party.

Kitted out in our flares that could easily break any fall from a high building, we strutted out in groups of psychedelic riots of colours, with conversations punctuated with ‘Groovy, man!” and fingers perpetually showing the peace sign.

It was, I suppose, a year when we foolishly assumed to be our honeymoon year, with exams a year away. Like the students in the park, come concert time, we’d sit on tables and benches and strum the guitar singing our all time favourites. We were grown-ups who could handle and juggle social life and studies, or so we thought, forgetting that hormones tend to make things very difficult even for the sanest amongst us.

It was the year I fell in love with a dream, a vision that was to last for a very long time. This was the year I danced to “Walk Away” by Matt Monroe but the vision and dream lingered for a very long time. Thus important events that hit the headlines during the year, such as the Munich Massacre at the Olympics when Malaysia first competed, passed without as much as a glance to the newspaper coverage. Our own state was celebrating our Sultan becoming the Agong, a young dashing Agong that we were so proud of and yet, it made little impact on me. But hard to ignore was the 1972 spelling reform which took away apostrophes and hyphens from words like tabi’at and di-buat. No more makan2 or rumah2, and the year that brought about the standardisation of spelling – with the ch giving way to c and sh becoming sy and so on and so forth. A word – skuasy till this day baffles me.

And so, what were the songs that used to echo in the small cubicle that was our bathroom, that would make me stop in my tracks and stare dreamily into the horizon, that played endlessly into the nights, almost wearing out the 45 rpm vinyls, which were either on loan or bought with scholarship money meant for purchase of reference books? In 1972, I was not quite over Carole King and The Osmond Brothers, but a few still bring a smile to my face.


Roberta Flack’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
This has got to be the most eagerly awaited song as the lights dimmed and you hoped and prayed that the one who asked you to do the slow dance didn’t have clammy, trembling hands. This is also a song, you think you can sing at karaoke sessions, a song others prayed and hoped you’d never sing!

For Roberta Flack, romance was so far away from her mind when she sang this song.
"A lot of people ask me what I was thinking about while I was recording that song. Actually I was thinking about a little black cat that someone had given me, named Sancho Panza. I had just gotten back from being on the road for the first time, and I discovered that he had been killed. I only had one pet, and when I went into the studio, two days later, he was still on my mind. “

That brings me to my next song

Ben by Michael Jackson
Ignorance is bliss. Little did I know that Ben was a rat – cousin to the one that caused my back pain. But Ben evoked such sentiments and feelings that you can only share with a close friend. I had and still have some very close friends from this era and Ben, the song, is still one song we sing during our gettogethers, reunions and when we are racing down the motorway to nowhere in particular.

Baby, Don't Get Hooked On Me - Mac Davis
Being young and only had eyes on the opposite sex ten years older then me , I used to think this song and others like Young Girl by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap were written for me and me alone. Why was it no one ever took notice of me???

Without getting as much as a glance from those ten years older, I sought solace in women’s liberation and Helen Reddy’s I am Woman became a favourite. “I can face anything" and "I can do anything" almost became a mantra. I persuaded myself to believe that I am strong, I am invincible cos I am Womannnnnnnn!!!!!