BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS

Not sure if I ever told you, but just after I was born, my family emigrated to America, the land of opportunity where the streets were ‘paved with gold’. Although I’ve been back many times since, earlier this month my sister and I decided to retrace our childhood steps and set off for Brooklyn, Noo Yawk to see if we could find the ancestral tenement.

The year was 1946. Dad had gone on ahead - Mum to follow with Marilyn aged 4 and I, aged 5 months. Decked out in her newly-purchased post-war undergarments: brassiere, liberty bodice, panty girdle, seamed stockings and suspenders, hand-made wool dress with matching coat, high-heeled shoes, hat and gloves all specially designed for her grand arrival into the New World, she didn’t reckon on the flight taking almost four days...

We set off from our home in Tottenham where all the neighbours had turned out to wave us goodbye and wish us luck. We reached the Croydon Aerodrome for the first leg of the journey to Shannon only to be told that the aircraft would not be air-worthy until the following day. Trooped back home again. Our grandmother, with whom we’d lived, had already let the rooms.

Off again the following morning with slightly less pomp and ceremony, we eventually reached Shannon only to be told (in great confidence) that the aeroplane on which we were due to fly the Atlantic was deemed ‘unsafe’. Women and children were advised not to board. Everyone else was!

They put us up that night in a boarding house on the west coast of Ireland in a single room with another mother and her two babies, one of whom had whooping cough. Mum sat up all night shielding our delicate rosebud mouths and button noses with pieces of muslin to distract the ambient germs.

By morning, she’d run out of nappies and was obliged, according to family legend, to use scrunched up toilet paper (of the rough Izal kind) plus sheets of cardboard for my delicate little tush. Her elegant costume, as well as her mood, was by now somewhat frayed around the edges. Our Dad meanwhile, in the absence of adequate lines of communication, cast a worried eye across the empty skies.

We finally took off in a tin box held together with spit and sealing wax and rattled across the Atlantic for 21 hours finally coming down with a flop of relief in Newfoundland. They put me in a drawer for landing. The pilot thought it would be safer than wobbling about on my mother’s knee when she already had a fractious 4-year old to contend with.

Onwards to Manhattan, and from there to Los Angeles. Mummy didn’t take to the sun-drenched, sprawling, unstructured city with no public transport whose only redeeming feature was a pubescent film industry in a suburb called Hollywood. We settled nearby and stayed for 8 months. There I spoke my first words and took my first steps.

Back to New York where my mother reckoned she was halfway home. We moved in with Aunt Miriam (who weighed 24 stone) and her Polish immigrant husband, Uncle Mike, who hardly spoke a word of English. Our address was 3085 Brighton 13th Street , Brooklyn, an address imprinted on my mind ever since from the airmail letters with a $5 bill inside that Aunt Miriam used to send us for our birthdays after we’d returned to the UK in 1950.

And so, in October 2010, my sister and I arrived in NYC after an effortless 7 hour flight and set off to find 3085 Brighton 13th Street. It was a Sunday. We took the subway from Times Square but were turfed off halfway due to ‘works on the line’. Shame shit. Different continent. We boarded a shuttle bus (slightly less traumatic than our mother’s journey 60 years before) and watched the street names rumble by until one said Brighton 10th Street where we leapt off.

As we walked towards 13th Street, my sister, who generally has little memory for distant detail, suddenly began to have flashbacks. “OMG! That’s where Daddy used to go to phone home!” she said excitedly, pointing to a small news and candy store. At the back of the shop had been 2 telephone booths where you’d book a call through an operator and go back 6 hours later to see if it had come through!

We walked on wondering whether our building would still be standing. The other side of the road was seafront – the famous Boardwalk (...under the Boardwalk, out of the sun, under the Boardwalk, we’ll be having some fun...) that leads all the way to Coney Island.

3085 was indeed still standing - a 5-storey, brick-built Victorian block much grander than I expected for our then humble circumstances. It’s now mostly occupied by middle-class Russians. We followed a couple inside, found the janitor and told him our story. He listened fascinated then showed us around. My sister again began to remember stuff: the rubbish chutes hidden in a small cupboard on each floor, the laundry room in the basement that housed the washing-machines into which our Dad would place his dime – the dime he’d drilled a hole in and tied a piece of string around so he could retrieve it to use again!

The building’s manageress had joined us by this time and asked if we remembered which number we’d lived at. We didn’t but by description she said it must be 2C and when she knocked on the door and asked the lady if we could look around, my sister freaked out.

It was exactly the same – the layout, the view from the bedroom window down to the yard where she used to play (remind me one day to tell you the story of my beloved panda...) the bathroom - in this apartment still unmodernised – where Marilyn reminded me I was sitting on the loo one day aged two and the ceiling fell down on my head! This may explain certain things...

The lady now occupying the flat had a china plate of Noah’s Ark on her wall. Later we walked along the Boardwalk and stopped for lunch at a Russian restaurant called Tatiana – 2 of my grandchildren are called Noah and Tatiana! Later I went to the loo in a branch of Wendy’s!

All in all, it was a wonderful re-affirming experience I was so glad to have been able to do with my sister. Ah ...Memory Lane ... take trip down there sometime.

(BTW HE arrived and we've met but out of respect, I'm not going to talk about it!!!!)

THE SILLY SEASON

I decided to take August off - off what I'm not certain - my life, perhaps?

I went to Spain as usual and then to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival which never fails to deliver an entertainment overload of mega proportions. Love it!!

Back to a very brutal reality concerning my dearest Aunty Betty, my last remaining aunt, who has been like a Mum to me. She's seriously ill now and my sister and I are trying to get her into a care home. This is NOT easy... Don't go there. Find some other route into that good night. It's not pretty, it's not sexy and it's not fun.

Apart from that, if you read my last blog, HE is still on the fringes of my social scene, but I HAVEN'T MET HIM YET! Had he told me at the outset that he was going to be 'away on business for an indefinitely period' I may not have bothered to get involved. Of course he could be emailing me from the back of a van on the Watford by-pass and forwarding his messages to 20 other women, whaddo I know??

When I got back from Spain, however, in a surge of generous attentiveness, the postman rang thrice: a bouquet of roses because I don't want you to come home to an empty flat , a gift box of luxury bath products something to work up a splash with and some naughty little scanties which, frankly, made me quite cross.

I thought it was presumptuous and rather tacky of him. He said it was meant in good humour but what offended me most was that the gear in question was from Ann Summers rather than Agent Provocateur, Myla or La Perla!

I did forgive him though putting it down to a cultural ignorance of our better lingerie emporia bearing in mind the gentleman in question is not from these shores.

I actually had to venture into the store later to change the basque for a larger size (the XS he sent me has me busting out all over) and so I had the dubious pleasure of queueing at the counter with a coterie of ladies buying work clothes for their chosen profession. This prompted me to ponder whether there was a sliding scale of charges based on the punters choice of Nadia the Naughty Nurse, Fifi the French Maid or Dagmar the Darstardly Dom.

And on the question of 'sliding', he'd better make an appearance soon or the chocolate body paint and Heat! massage oil he sent me is going to go off, or get used with someone else...

IS LESS REALLY MORE OR IS TOO MUCH MORE THAN ENOUGH?

A confusing question and one about which I’ll try not to brood... be amused or bemused might be more appropriate.

Let me explain. I’ve got a new 'thing' going on: one of those cautious (on my part) slow-builds that started as an absent-minded little hum and has fast developed into a full-blown heart ballad complete with gospel choir, a thousand strings and a brass and timpani section which is threatening to deafen me with the power of its persuasion.

I am being Right Royally Seduced.

I’ve played this game before, allowed myself to become 'involved' with a stranger - and yet...and yet...I can't help it if the songbirds are tweeting:

Maybe this time, I'll be lucky
Maybe this time, he'll stay
Maybe this time
For the first time
Love won't hurry away

He will hold me fast
I'll be home at last
Not a loser anymore
Like the last time
And the time before...

He’s foreign which accounts for him being so much more romantic. The best man in my life was foreign ... he didn’t think with his bowler hat or rolled umbrella but with the more earthy and visceral parts of himself.

He thought with his hands and his heart, his fingers, his toes and his tongue - not in the more obvious carnal way but in a subliminally intrusive yet much more subtle way – the way a bee approaches a flower and drinks its nectar without the flower even realising that it’s relinquished the most precious part of itself and given it willingly.

And so it is with us. Him: so full on and so eager, me: attempting to decline yet longing to submit.

Stendhal always comes to mind at times like these:

Love has nothing to do with the beloved person and everything to do with the lover’s imagination. The passion that transports us is our own.

We have not yet met but how dangerous is this divulging of thoughts and feelings across the waves of cyberspace? Every man I've had to do with has taken a little part of me as he's travelled through, but I've usually managed to grow it back with nobs on. A plant is pruned in order for it to flower again the following spring bigger and better than before.

Anyway, you know me – I always keep a little in reserve and never fully lose my head. My legs may be flung high up in the air but my feet are always planted firmly on the ground. And we're both aware that the pedestal we've placed each other on will crumble if the chemistry fails to connect.

So for now, I’ll dream, and if the dream becomes reality, then I shall be all the richer. And if it doesn’t, no harm done. He’s made me smile and made me write so thank you, S, at least for that.

The rest remains to be seen, felt and tasted. . .but with all this travelling to do, the question is: WHEN??

DON'T MENTION THE 'F' WORD!

Hurrah! It's over! Now all those tossers with two-inch penises can take their silly flags off their cars, vans and bikes and get on with doing a decent day's work.

Goodbye permanently green TV screen. Goodbye irritating vuvuzelas. Goodbye boring commentators with their pre-and post-mortems. Goodbye In-ger-land. You're coming home - but not in a good way.

I know this will alienate 7/8th of the population but frankly, my dears, I don't give a damn. Not everybody loves football.

I know the fans will continue watching till the bitter end and I agree that our final score should have been 4-2, but really, that's academic now, isn't it?

I've had far too many dates postponed in the past few weeks because: "There's a really important game on... do you mind if we re-arrange?"

Well, yes, actually - I do, so go away little boy and come back when you've grown a pair.

The unappealing Mr. L who's been on the prowl these past few weeks has something in his favour: he doesn't follow 'the beautiful game' which gives him more time to spend with me.

Trouble is: I'd actually rather watch a football match than see him and that tells you everything you need to know!

Meanwhile, my long silence has been due to a gruelling work and social schedule which has left me little time for blogging. Apologies. I'll be back as soon as I've finished this second book edit.

Hope you're all well. Till soon...

GIVE THE EAR ITS OWN SHOW!

In case you thought I’d dropped through a deep, dark hole in the planet, I have in fact been travelling around Spain on a promotional tour for my first novel ‘LA INGLESA Y EL TORERO’.

To say I’ve enjoyed every minute of it would be an understatement. I've lapped it up and swallowed it whole and embraced it with every fibre of my being!

That may sound incredibly self-obsessed but when an author of two volumes of nefarious memoirs find herself being hailed as a serious writer, one has to take the praise and run with it.

The premise of the novel is based on my experiences in the Spain of the 1960s with the world’s most famous bullfighter, Manuel Benitez 'El Cordobes'. I met him when I was working as the interpreter for two journalists writing his life story. I allowed him my virginity but to go on live TV and radio in Spain and speak about it in a foreign language to a goggle-eared public was daunting to say the least!

The ear of the title of this blog was thrown to me 45 years ago after an historic fight one brazen afternoon in 1965. For those who don’t know the finer points (and many of you will be too squeamish to care) when a matador has honoured his adversary with a noble death, they give him a trophy of the ears, tail or hooves of his bull. These he dispenses to the crowd.

As I stood there clapping till my palms burned, my Manolo winked at me broadly and swung the ear in my direction.

Here is an excerpt from my book - the character is Cassi Samuels, the matador is Rafael Romero 'El Macho' - both loosely based on himself and I.

“As if in slow motion, the severed appendage came flying through the air. People nearby jostled to reach it, but Cassi reacted quickly and caught it smartly in both hands like a clap. An explosion of fresh blood splattered across the front of her organdie top causing her to gasp as if she’d been stabbed.

Cassi looked down at first with horror, then with a creeping sense of pride. The irony was not lost on her: he’d spilt her maiden blood, but he’d replaced it with that of his nemesis. There was poetic justice in this, and in some indefinable way, it touched her as deeply as a blood brothers pact.

Her pretty blouse, like its occupant, had been branded as one of his possessions now, and she knew in that instant she would never wash it but would wear it with honour and if anyone wanted to know what the stains were, she’d bloody well tell them.

Cassi turned the amputated trophy over in her hand and stroked it affectionately. The black hair on the outside was long and coarse but on the inside the ear it was soft, fleshy and disturbingly, still warm. She said a silent thank-you to the brave beast who’d died so valiantly in her name and who’d sacrificed his life with such dignity and grace. . .”I know that bullfighting is seriously frowned upon in the UK, despite their love of fox-hunting... I happen to be a serious aficionada and I make no excuse for that. You either understand and approve of this element of the Iberian culture or you don’t.

And so the dried-out ear accompanied me on my book tour and has now appeared on a variety of TV chat shows all over Spain. Some people turned their noses up but others were fascinated.

I’m sure the ear enjoyed the attention. It has, after all, but stuck away in a box for some four decades waiting for its (second) moment in the sun.

And by the way, how many other women do you know who - as they say in Spain - 'opened their flower' to a bullfighter??

FAMILY AFFAIRS

A happy busy time just now as my 12-year old granddaughter Tatiana prepares her rite of passage from girlhood to womanhood. The ceremony followed by the inevitable Big Bash has been the sole topic of conversation for the past six months.

In the Jewish religion, a barmitzvah is when a boy turns 13, comes of age and becomes a man. The girls have jumped the gun, got on the bandwagon and are having theirs a year early at the age of 12.

Crumbling under the weight of filial pressure, my daughter and son-in-law have been mugged into having the most expensive party they can afford. I disapprove totally but cannot voice it. It's tradition, they say, like Christmas. It's commercial, I reply. Like Christmas.

Having already been invited to many other such parties, Tatiana returns home each time with fresh and ever more costly ideas:

"They had a tattoo artist! A belly dancing teacher! Goodie bags containing Gucci keyrings! A herd of performing elephants for each child to take home!"

And so the buzz words are: caterers, marquee, red carpet, dance floor, balloons, canapés, food stations, sushi chefs, mirror balls, microphones, cocktails, bouncers, dresses, shoes, hats, tights, hair and make-up.

And thousands and thousands of pounds being blown away on people who won't appreciate it nor even remember it the following day.

She's 12 for God's sake! When I was 12 I probably had 3 schoolfriends over for a peanut butter sandwich and a bowl of jelly. And then maybe we played a game of Ludo.

Do I sound like a grumpy old woman? Possibly, but my poor daughter would rather have spent the money on a fabulous holiday that at least she too could have enjoyed.

Now don't get me wrong. I am looking forward to it. And I've bought myself a whole wardrobe full of new outfits. And I'm sure we'll all have a fantastic time. But all that money...it makes me want to weep.

I just hope Tatiana appreciates it. She has 2 younger sisters so we have to go through this whole thing again. Twice.

And then if we're lucky, there'll be 3 weddings hopefully before my funeral!

I refuse to be 'one of the grandmas' next weekend. I'm determined to get up to mischief of some sort. What do you reckon? One of the neighbour's sons? They're 26 and 28. And both cute. I'll keep you posted.

ROAD TO REDEMPTION

I love make-up and I love sex but what I love most is make-up sex.

I don’t mean rouging my nipples and painting my partner’s genitalia with lipstick and mascara, I mean getting it together again when you’ve been apart for a while.

Let me explain: having so upset my latest flame to the extent that he nearly went out, I feel it only fair to give him credit where it’s due.

The gentleman in question, whose knee so jerked when he became the subject of my blog “Is ‘Good’ Good Enough?” has crept back into my affections and redeemed himself in a rather pleasing way.

Now I don’t want to swell his pretty little raven-haired head any more than it is already (I am conscious as I write this that he is going to read it) but we had a rather fine reunion which definitely deserved an A-. OK. An A then. Alright, alright. An A+.

The very thing I commented on, or rather complained about last time, was the fact that we felt so comfortable with each other. This caused him to deduce that I was dissatisfied because there were ‘no fireworks’. He immediately concluded that there were none on his side either which was, of course, missing the point.

Fireworks are all very well but they burn out far too quickly. Harmony on several levels doesn’t.

We do seem reasonably compatible. Whether we had genuinely missed each other is for me to know and him to find out. And as for the comfort factor, how many people would you feel sufficiently at ease with to break off a hot humping session to talk about fried fish?!

I hasten to add that the segue between passion and battered seafood was not a reflection on the ambient odours surrounding us at the time.

It was, rather typically, a close encounter of the Jewish kind in which food must be mentioned, if not eaten, at all times.

We’re now apart for a week or so while I work on a writing project in Spain.

We’re texting.

It’s getting a bit saucy.

I like this a lot.

Out of sight is not necessarily out of mind. And absence can, in some cases, make the heart grow fonder.

Having said that, I fully expect this pleasant interlude not to last.

In my world, le plus ça change, le plus c’est la même chose...