An uncharacteristic library (London)

The library I frequent gets used by a large group of mainly-old men from eastern Mediterranean countries.  This area has a large population of people from Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus, and is full of restaurants serving the cuisine of those countries, as well as a handful of 24-hour greengrocers, which makes it a vibrant and lively neighbourhood.

These men, often numbering ten or even 14, will converge on two or three of the big round tables, and chat loudly, as if they are in a café.  I personally don’t disapprove, because it is good that they have somewhere to go and meet friends and socialise, rather than sit at home feeling lonely and depressed.  (I wonder where the women go to?  Maybe they just stay at home and do the housework…)

The library also offers a social welfare advisory service at one end during the week, so it’s very noisy anyway, especially since a lot of people who use the service have children — often wailing loudly or throwing a wobbly.  

There is a quiet area at the back, upstairs.  It’s meant to be a quiet area, but being at the same end as the advisory service counters, I’m not sure how quiet it actually is.  

One of the advisors often comes over to my area to conduct his sessions there (in Greek or Turkish).  There’s an old lady who sits at one of the tables doing crossword puzzles, openly eating her sausages.  Homeless men (mostly eastern European) come in for a sit-down, even a nap (snoring loudly).  Other people have even come in with their takeaway food (grilled ribs, sausages) to eat there.  A lady (in her 60s?) gives Arabic lessons to a young lady, openly (at normal volume) taking her through the pronunciation drills.  Other tutors conduct their tuition there as well: Maths and English are two of the common subjects I’ve seen being taught, often on a one-to-one basis.

Occasionally, I have to go and sit at one of the old men’s tables when my regular table nearer the door is full.  A few of them now greet me like an old friend:  one in his 70s, who makes a point of raising his hand to acknowledge my presence and saying a hearty “hello!”; another one in his 50s who’s started to take it upon himself to look after my interests.

I'd arrived one day to find him and another man (in his 70s) sitting at the wall-socket end of the table, so I went for the farther end of the table.  The protective man in his 50s told the older one, in Turkish, to move to another spot so that I could sit near the wall socket.  So sweet!  If his own phone was already plugged in when I got there, he’d immediately unplug it so that I could use that socket (although there are two), even vacating his chair for my rucksack.  I’m so moved.

(London, 2018 and 2019)

Sloppy set-up

Viewers of the Game of Thrones recently spotting a Starbucks takeaway coffee cup on the table in one of the scenes brings to mind a couple of similar mistakes in Commodities, a six-part TV docudrama series on coffee, tea and sugar that I had worked on back in 1985.

My role was to translate the interviews done in China on the tea plantations, and help out with the editing in the cutting room.

At one point, we were going through the footage for me to check out the sync-ing up of the subtitles.  The scene started with a (reconstructed) historical snippet: a male tea-picker, some 200 years ago in south China, picking tea in the sun, wearing a conical straw hat and just a pair of short trousers.  I suddenly spotted that his tanned bare arms had a band of paler skin where the modern-day wrist-watch would’ve been.

When I pointed this out, the director said they’d found another one in the coffee footage.  They’d set up a scene of a revolt on a Brazilian coffee plantation, supposed to be back in the 18th century, with the coffee pickers wearing what looked like loin-cloths — presumably because of the heat — but some of the loin-cloths clearly showed a Y-front underneath!

A surprising reason for homelessness (London)

The homelessness issue has been getting worse over the years.

I don’t want to give them money because they might buy alcohol or drugs with the money, but when I offer them food, they more often than not say no.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be imposing my own standards on them — I was once offering a homeless person some chicken wings when another woman came along with a takeaway box of sushi, but the homeless person said, “No, I don’t eat that sort of thing.”  The same thing has happened with my offerings of sandwiches, fruit, chips (french fries), pizza, so I don't think it's because the homeless person is a vegetarian.

Some 30 or 35 years ago, I heard about a woman (let’s call her Mary) who’d met a homeless woman (let’s call her Jane) in a park, and started to chat to her, feeling sorry for her.  Mary went back every Tuesday to see Jane.  

One day, Jane was not there.  Mary went back the following Tuesday — still no Jane.  This went on for a number of weeks, until Mary gave up.  Maybe Jane had died, she thought.  

A bit later, Mary ran into Jane.  Mary said, “I’d been turning up every single Tuesday to see you.  Where have you been?”  Jane said, “The reason I became nomadic was I couldn’t stand all the rules governing how one should live.  I like my freedom.  Then you came along, and you set up a routine: seeing me in the same place on the same day of the week every single week.  I just couldn’t take it.”

(London, 1980s)

Give someone an inch and they’ll take a yard: 2 (London)

On my way from the South Ken(sington) Tube station to the V&A (the Victoria and Albert Museum), I decided to pop into this art-book shop en route for a quick browse.  

At the counter were two men: one behind the counter, one in front.  There was a huge stack of carpet auction catalogues on the counter, each one only about ten or 12 pages, with beautiful photos and a brief description.  

The man in front of the counter was counting them:  1, 2, 3, …

Assuming he was staff, I asked the counting man, “How much are they?”  He said, “75p,” and carried on counting.  Even for 1985, 75p was very cheap — I could treat each one as a mini-art book to look through on rainy days.

I asked, “Can I buy them?”  The counting man said, “OK, you can have one.”  I said, “I want the whole lot.”  He stopped counting, and said, “No, you cannot have the whole lot.  I’ve just bought them, so I’m already very generous by letting you have one.”  Oops.

(London, 1985)

What I say to customers: 04 (London)

I’ve been giving food to one of the doormen (Jamaican, in his 50s) at the pub where I work.  Let’s call him Terry.

Sometimes it’s milk at the end of the day (which would’ve been chucked down the drain otherwise) for his breakfast cereal.  Sometimes it’s uneaten food — our portions are very generous, so customers often fail to finish the whole lot, or they order too much and don’t want a doggy bag for the rest.  

(One regular customer, a Bulgarian doorman at a hotel in central London, once offered me some of his pizza, saying he couldn’t finish it all, so I said, “Thank you, but can I give it to homeless people at the church instead?”  Sure enough, he left half the pizza neatly sitting on the plate, and made sure I was the one to collect his plate.  So sweet.)

I also give Terry red shiny apples that I buy from the roadside stalls near the pub.

He, in turn, offered me some fresh dates one day last year.  I asked, “Are you married?  I cannot accept dates from you if you are,” which creased him up.

Last week, Terry brought another batch of fresh dates, saying it’s the start of the season now.  They are so scrumptious that I couldn’t wait until my shift was over, so I popped one into my mouth.  An African couple, also regulars, spotted my bulging cheek, and asked, “What are you eating?”  I said, “I’ve just accepted some dates from the doorman Terry, but it’s OK, he’s not married — I’ve checked.”

They fell about laughing.

(London, 2019)

What I say to customers: 03 (London)

My pub branch gets quite a wide range of customers.  

Apart from homegrown ones, we regularly get (alphabetically) Albanians, Brazilians, Bulgarians, Colombians, Cypriots, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Lithuanians, Polish, Portuguese, Romanians, Spaniards, Turks, plus lots of Africans and West Indians, with the occasional Belgian, Czech, Dutch, Finn, French, German, Norwegian, Slovak, and Swede thrown in.

I always ask them how to say “thank you” in their language, and use it on the next lot I come across, which invariably surprises them (especially given my Oriental looks) and pleases them no end as well.

One day last year, two men sitting at the wall looked fierce and even slightly grumpy.  When I found out they were from Bulgaria and said “Благодаря ти” (“thank you” in Bulgarian) to them, their faces absolutely melted into broad smiles.  For the rest of the evening, every time I walked past them, one of them would hail me heartily with “Благодаря ти!” and a big enthusiastic smile.  (I now think they looked forbidding because they couldn’t speak much English, so they were a bit nervous.)

Because I don’t always remember if I’d met a group before (yes, Westerners can all look the same to us Orientals as well), I sometimes end up asking the same lot where they’re from.  One group of Albanians has now taken to going straight into saying “faleminderit” (“thank you” in Albanian) to me to save me asking them where they’re from.

(London, 2018)

What I say to customers: 02 (London)

The friendliness of the customers (even the new ones) at my pub branch is demonstrated by their offering their food to them when I serve up their order:  “Do you want some?”

My response:  “No, I don’t want some, I want ALL of it!”  It always makes them laugh.

(London, 2016–2019)