So far, we've got a sunny September and based on the dress code still on display, some natives are convinced it's still hot.   And there's other stuff sizzling as we head into fall.  Barely four days in and we've already got the makings of a crippling cricket scandal, a senior Tory sex scandal, the uproar over the Blair memoirs (which incidentally are literally zooming off bookshelves and onto Kindles) and Stephen Hawking's refuting his earlier granting of a window of opportunity for the existence of God.  All that going on and the Pope still hasn't called in to cancel his mid-month visit to England.

Meanwhile, I am getting ready to send six people back to school and as this includes myself for another year, that familiar melange of doubt and terror is reforming in the pit of the mature student's stomach.  With three of the five off to uni, this calls for some serious, orchestrated shopping because anyway you slice it, that's a lot of school shoes.

And while staring into this vortex, it occurred to me that I needed to concentrate on something I might have some modicum of control over. 

I have concluded that I don't want to know anymore about any living, breathing, functioning people in authorized or unauthorized biography form.  Tony Blair's opus, claimed by early readers to be astonishingly "self-relevatory", threw me over the edge.

These reputation and wallet restoring or depleting exercises are a drain on the collective energy.  They are a temporary distraction, much like the slow reveal on that mosque at Ground Zero or Glenn Beck's end of summer "Honor Restoration"  bid.   Speaking of honorable, what must "honest Abe" (Lincoln) have pondered as he looked out from his Memorial perch last weekend?  Of course, he himself would have been caricatured and lampooned by the press of the time but where he went on holiday, what he wore and his inside story remained his in all its un-download-able or photo-shoppable glory.

That song tells us that "We don't need another hero...".  Maybe that's a good thing, now  that all the layers of our modern day leader cum heroes have been peeled back in cringe inducing detail.  We want to hold our hero's to the highest standards as they suffer laser beam scrutiny.  But all that transparency isn't all it's cracked up to be.  We are so keen to know everything about who we elect, while we manage to suspend disbelief.  Our desire for their flawlessness is impaired by our imperfect, perilous hold on our own spinning plates. 

We get annoyed with knowing all too well, that keeping those balls in the air without staff, fawning publicists, continuous ego stroking and other affectations is hard work.  But when all that adulation hits the intended mark and our hero is convinced of his or her obvious superiority, they simultaneously become deeply aware of how that translates into power.  After all the preening and the preciousness, it's all about the power. 

But who has time to read all the rubbish out there anyway?  Time to turn attention to things that truly matter.

Prime example, if I don't get moving, two of my kids will be going back to school in flip-flops....

-- Deborah Gale

Expatrriate Living

An island wide miasma has this damp rock in its redoubtable grip. 

This is hard core, media-perpetrated despair and it surrounds the "A level" results for 6th formers (aka High School Seniors).

Exam results come out on Thursday.

Unlike the situation in the states, where seniors planning on higher education know where they'll be starting, months before they actually graduate; here on the island they keep everyone in a state of controlled suspense. Because this entire nation's crop of 18 year old's will get the news of their fate simultaneously, the impact (and the potential "brownout")  is expected to be seismic. Oh, and you should add their number to the 160,000 disappointed kids who didn't get the grades they needed to take up their provisional offers last August.  

So, if the broadsheets, Imogen Stubbs and her hubby Trevor Nunn are even half right, the ranks of the thwarted is predicted to skyrocket - with apocalyptic repercussions.

How did they get it so wrong?  When the 2002 Blair manifesto to get 50% of all school leavers into higher education was announced, why wasn't there a little back-of-the-envelope reckoning and a quick check on how many uni-ready 18 year old's would be coming in the years ahead?  The baby bulge was clearly there, these kids had already been born.  So barring the announcement of regular mass evacuations of 18 year old's, where were they planning to put those they couldn't politely encourage to leave the island? 

Unintentionally, this might actually be underway.  Especially if the newly disappointed decide to exit these shores in number and take up places in greener, foreign, educational pastures.  Perhaps this will pave the way for a new media scrum and extensive coverage of the second brain drain of this new millennium and all the bright, young things can follow in the "hedgie's" footsteps.

But the real tragedy is that these kids have been imbued with an illusion wrapped around a delusion. Many have spent their entire education in training for this Thursday's results and actually believe that the rest of their lives weighs in the balance. The sword of Damacles hangs by a horsehair and metaphorically rests between abject failure and the unspecified, unconfirmed, untold riches (and debt) that university doth magically bestow. 

In the interim, an atmosphere of constant fear for kids and parents has been successfully created. Great.

We have two waiting. We banished them from the island this week to escape the steady drip of stomach churning negativity. But my kids have already planned to go up to London to celebrate, regardless. There is a core group of their buddies who plan to stay local but mine have decided that if their results turn out to be as bad as the media says, then facing the music locally would make them feel even worse. I heard one say "...If we don't go to town, it's like some weird acknowledgment that right here is as good as it's ever going to get".  

 More power to them and when they realize that their world will not stop spinning on its axis come midnight Wednesday, the healing can begin.

I am so calm. Stoic as a sage - but that is only because I have been through this wringer once already. I now know that a gap year, even an unplanned one, is not the end of the world - though I am first to admit that it didn't look that way back then. I have learned so much in the past year.

And on that happy note, I can also announce that this mature student has received notification that she passed her first year exams. I understand 18 year old angst from both sides now and am relieved beyond words, that I didn't have to wait until one Thursday in August.
-- Deborah Gale

Expatriate Living

© Smitea | Dreamstime.com

The temps here on this side may have dropped but summer is definitely heating up. The front page of the Times this week carried the first, most unflattering picture of Barack Obama to date.  Absent the sparkling eyes and Pepsodent smile, a still image of unprecedented, un-presidential exhaustion stared back.  No wonder. 

With nary an admission of guilt or suggestion of foul play, Goldman got their proverbials rapped, albeit lightly.  Settling civil court charges for misleading even the most sophisticated investors (including British taxpayer owned RBS), their $550M fine for errant ways surely does sound like a lot to normal ears.  But on the back of the $15B they scooped, this penalty of some 3% has all the sting of a rounding error.   Metaphorically however, it is supposed to draw an important line under this reality TV episode.   Meanwhile, Goldman stock actually rose on the penalty news, tidily dispensing with that pesky fine.  It's been a sweaty palm time on the Street but that's all over now that derivatives will be harnessed to the weariest extent possible.  Fundamental change in the US banking industry?  Well, we won't be having an identical crisis but it's unlikely we won't have a suitably cataclysmic, market rocking, game changing, life altering, fundamental throttling oopsie again anytime soon now darn it.

And BP thought about exhaling when the temporary cap to the spill seemed to fit the bill when it passed a 48 hour stress test until another sharp intake of breath was required.  Apparently, BP execs were called in to explain the part they played in the unpopular release of the supposedly near-death-from-prostate-cancer-Libyan-bomber-prisoner who was implicated in the 1988 Pan Am Lockerbie disaster. What?  Scotland denies any link but David Cameron is flying over to Washington anyway to see for himself what he might look like after 18 months sitting in the big chair.

And then Apple chimed in with an emergency news conference to announce that actually, "We're not perfect and neither are our phones".  There were apologies from Steve for the iPhone4's ADS (Antennae Deficit Syndrome) but any suggestion of what would have been an unprecedented recall were squelched with the promise of some free iPhone (rubber-baby-buggy) "bumpers".  That's three crises averted.  And while all that glitters is surely not gold, shifts in sediment and even silicon indicate cracks in cast iron perspectives. Summer doldrum's?  I think not.

Deborah Gale

Expatriate Living

I was wrong.

I used to get a little catch in my throat when this message would appear, whenever certain persons' emails dropped into my welcoming inbox: Sent from my iPhone.

So innocuous, so banal, so friendly, so benign while jealousy inspiring.  With every email received, it burrowed its way into the core of my being, resulting in a carefully masked wannabe frenzy.  So thrillingly, painlessly, flawlessly clever.

I watched as owners fingers flew and colours exploded from their tiny screens while everyone who flashed one, spun virtual gold from their personal data.  But they'd  be moaning about battery life and given my propensity to forget to charge, I decided to wait it out.  I let the early innovators have their way, let them flood the market with free and minimally priced downloads to spare me from venturing down all those exhausting blind alleys and failed trials until I could have all the killer apps, at my fingertips.

And I waited.

But before the next generation iPhone was even released, the iPad was born.  A tablet no one even knew what we were gonna do with?!   And yet, from the moment of its anxiously awaited launch and on both sides of the pond, sales soared and continue to soar, ever higher.

Which is the reason I was wrong.  Because what are the most coveted 4 1/2 words in the English dictionary today? 

Sent from my iPad. 

-- Deborah Gale

Expatriate Living

Happy 4th of July.  Through force of habit, I must have e-mail wished it dozens of times in the past week but I didn't even remember that it was today until after I had been up for several hours.  So incredibly strange.   How can something as normal as breathing, a permanent fixture on the psyche and annual calendar; something supposly hardwired into one's DNA, get virtually eliminated, then never replaced?  

To me, the 4th of July is a reservoir of childhood. Still early summer, carbide canons from dawn to dusk, then snakes and sparklers, M80's, whistling Jupiter's before the main event, replicated in every municipality across the breadth and width of the US of A - the local fireworks. All the secrecy, the safety, the cover of darkness and sheer recklessness of being out when one would normally be in. If I close my eyes and think hard, I am back there and can still smell it all.

I was never actually home on the 4th. I was a majorette for a VFD (Volunteer Fire Department) senior baton corps. Every weekend of my summers was spent in a bus, traveling to little parades for competitions across the width and breadth of my contiguous states and even Canada. We competed for local prestige against local and far flung competitors with every bit of determination seen at the Wimbledon finals or a World Cup match - long before I ever knew, what either of those things were. 

The bus would drop us off at the band shell and we would go and find our parents. No cells or mobiles or any idea what time we might be getting back but no one batted an eye when some thirty-strong overexcited, no-name VFD Champs, spilled out of a bus and hoarse from singing, scattered in search of families. We never missed the firework finale and we never lost a soul. 

Not even this year.

-- 

Deborah Gale

Expatriate Living

© Notebook | Dreamstime.com

My last blog seems to have caught the attention of Barack Obama, who had a comment on my Ascot recap. I am audaciously hopeful he might chime in on this one.

In advance of the emergency budget, images of belt tightening and corset lacing now occupy my dreams.  Setting the stage, George Osborne announced his plan to bust up the FSA (Financial Services Authority) and resurrect part of the Bank of England's original charter. Round of applause.  He's got Mervyn King and co prepped to "take on the work of tackling serious economic crime". Standing ovation. The banks are going to work for the people now, rather than the people working for the banks. You don't say?

If I put that statement through my Enigma machine, good fortune will henceforth be shared, banks can no longer expect to rely on the rest of the planet taking a hit while they remain sole heirs to every scrap of the booty and criminal indictments are forthcoming. That's the optimistic rendition of George's new tune but what are the chances we'll be singing, let alone "gettin' down" with those "homey" Fred Goodwin types? The Black Eyed Peas may very well have a feeling but I gather that Mervyn isn't exactly a party animal. He says ".. the role of a central bank in monetary policy is to take the punch bowl away just as the party gets going" because "its role in financial stability should be to turn down the music when the dancing gets a little too wild."

Not exactly looking at a rave then.

But paying attention to "serious economic crime" slips quite neatly into the other chorus stateside. We've had raised voices and wringing of hands, instead of necks and a here-we-go again sense of foreboding. It's like the English have felt about every World Cup since that '66 triumph; we're being entertained, in advance of being disappointed.

The latest episode of the 2010 series of seemingly lobotomized "masters of the universe" was the theatrical grilling of the British Petroleum geologist turned eco-villain. BP's CEO Hayward followed the identical ruts plowed by the Wall Street lineup a few weeks back but these recent episodes of reality TV have a maniacal twist. We've graduated from the garden variety of daytime voyeurism served up by Jerry Springer and Jeremy Kyle. Now, from our La-Z-Boy recliners, we listen as our planets economic and ecologic fragility gets laid bare in prime time. We watch the humans who are supposed to be in charge get put in Congress' metaphorical stocks. The world points fingers and laughs, except this is no laughing matter.

Obama's nemesis, BP agrees to his conditions and gets arm twisted into canceling its dividend payout and setting up a balance sheet crippling £20B compensation escrow fund. This will be managed by a yet to be determined unfettered independent body. Ghosts of Christmas past and the wild celebrations by those other independent regulators, shimmer in the murky shadows.

It now appears that three weeks before the Gulf of Mexico disaster, an engineer had identified a fault in the aptly named blow-out preventer, which was ignored. Transocean is claiming that it passed muster in an inspection three days before Deep Horizon blew, giving rise to failures like Top Kill and now to Kevin Costner's Waterworld credentials.  It all makes the recent allegations of BP's "gross negligence" by the menacing monikered Anadarko even more confusing.  No wonder Obama doesn't know which posterior to zero in on and more difficult when the public record of who filled both Republican and Democratic campaign coffers looks slimier than an oil slick.

BP is flush with cash and unearthly profits, due to its very earthly and oceanly property rights.  With over 3,800 platforms operating in the Gulf today, this might have been a Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Sunoco, Citgo but it was BP with it's over 760 safety violations last year, all cosy with their Transocean/Halliburton/ Anadarko chums, who got caught this time, pushing the limits.  They jointly held the too deep, over drilling straw that broke a questionable, sustainability models' back.

Procedures might be there but this is exciting, risky, exploratory stuff now exposed as lacking in due diligence, care and attention.  But doesn't that qualify as dereliction of duty and quite possibly rank right up there with the taxpayer bailout when other, less tangible limits got pushed?

Oil coated pelicans and empty beaches are visceral images.  No one can comprehend a trillion of anything; not dollars not gallons and not some very real crocodiles' tears.

-- Deborah Gale

Expatriate Living.com

© Jeffreyame... | Dreamstime.com

© Cheryl Casey | Dreamstime.com

It was in 1711 that Queen Anne galloped up this rise for the first time and pronounced it fit for a Queen...well for some horse racing anyway. She wouldn't recognize this marvelous meeting place in 2010, where the mighty mingle with the meek to enjoy a picnic and a tankard of mead or Veuve - 185,000 bottles of "fizz" will be quaffed.  Yes, it's Royal Ascot!!! -   but as a local inhabitant, I face this 1/52nd slice of the calendar with vague trepidation, playful resistance and reluctant acceptance. I tend to vacillate between these states but after ten years worth of being housebound for large chunks of the racing week, I'll admit to liking it, rather more than a lot. Dressing up with hats and champagne from morning 'til sundown (or fall down!) - Ascot means something special to everyone.

Ascot week is a grand spectacle when some 300,000 of the "hearty" and the "hatted" come together. They descend on this tiny village by train, Bentley, helicopter or limo but mostly by coaches. Coach is Britspeak for bus, and sounds much better. It is also perfectly in keeping with this official, royally sanctioned situation. It's the kick-off to British summertime and the must-be-seen at event on the social calendar. You definitely need to be "hearty" given the dual requirements of an ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol and "hatted" to vie for paparazzi worthiness. This merry dance is performed in summer frock's and hats which often lurch between the scant and the surreal.

One must endeavor to be tastefully, ever-ready to brave aberrant weather. It has been known to sleet or even hail, thus a dogged acceptance of regularly shifting winds and temperatures is recommended.  Adding to the excitement, one must also be equipped to consistently exude "glam" while navigating heel-swallowing-grass whilst propped up on vertiginous stilletto's.  Keeping ones hat or fascinator appropriately perched is crucial.

The men have fewer decisions to make.  They rent or drag their morning suits out of the closet and arrive exquisitely turned out in top hats and tails, looking positively historical. I saw a pink top hat on the first day.  They finish off this look with snazzy, flat, stabilizing footwear.  All the better for remaining upstanding throughout the long, thirsty racing day and especially true when the sun is blazing.  Still, by the last race on any given day, few will have managed to avoid "hat head" and many will carry a reminder of the racing home with them in the form of a sore head.  

Why horse races are called race meetings is still rather beyond my English translation skills. It does conjure up clear images of Gary Larson's Far Side characters. I envision nostril flared, supremely comported, masters of the equine universe jockeying (pun intended!) for position on the immaculate board room turf. For anyone wishing to glimpse a monarch or two, real fairytale coaches (not buses) and maybe even a few lesser royals, there is no better place. You can even forget the World Cup is on. All the pubs have banded together and are refusing to show any matches during the races. Here in the Queen's back yard, you'll find no unnecessary distractions and nary a vuvuzela stadium horn in sight! 

I have decided to avoid the hoi polloi this year. I'll be biking over to Dukes Lane where the Queen's entourage always preps before they process through the Gold gates and up to the grandstand. They are greeted by rapturous applause from well turned out subjects before taking their seats in the Royal Box. I heard Royal Enclosure tix were going for £88/day this year but they aren't widely distributed and you have to be in the know, to score one of those.

Just getting my picnic organized and I'm off, to the races!

-- Deborah Gale

Alleluia, the strife is over!  The song of triumph has begun!  Yes, I have finished my end of year exams.  

Feet up, NOT!  But one year down, one to go and a teeny, pesky dissertation to research, analyze and write, but hey ho - I made it.  This far. 

So, in sharp contrast to my previously, painfully and in excruciating detail relayed-exam-day-experience, I am proof that it must be possible to teach old dogs new tricks.  Mind you, this was no cakewalk but my out-of-body skill was not replicated and I was able to exit that cavernous examination venue, unassisted.  It's the little triumphs that mean so much.  Now, waiting on one more exam result but failure seems to be fading, from the realms of possibility.  I pray I have not spoken out of turn.

And speaking of spoken, the Queen has done just that.  In her infinite wIsdom, she delivered a speech to officially recognize the formation of the dynamic duo's new government.  She opened a new parliament and held forth from the throne, for her 56th time!  Gripping pomp and circumstance and a record breaker for Her Majesty.  Yes, her timing, as you would expect, is impeccable.  The heat wave just broke and not a minute too soon. She may not have been amused to view loads of loyal subjects near au naturel. 

I was in town yesterday and saw more exposed flesh than many might care to see in a life time.  Lots of pasty Brits losing layers, tills ringing up sales as tank tops flew off of shelves.  I saw harried women in business suits take business casual to previously unforeseen depths as the meek and the mighty mingled in parkland settings.  Every blade of grass and water feature in central London, saw action.  A random, quite, rare joy to behold.

The markets may be tanking but the sun is unbelievably - still shining.  Even if we have lost 10 centigrade degrees dear readers, I am led to believe that this mature student, might be half way home.  Cheers!

-- Deborah Gale

Expatriate Living.com

It's been interminable, this month long wait!   All the hand wringing and wrestling with indecision will soon be over.  The weather is good and while the postal vote is sounding decidedly questionable, the last vote will be cast at 10:00 and then we can wait - for THE result.

Given that the young vote was so decisive in Obama's surge to power it will be interesting to see if UK youth manages to lose the apathy and make it to the polling stations.  My money is actually on the gray vote with 13.4 million expected to turn up - that's 8 out of 10 over 55's.  They just might be the deciders in this unprecedented, three-horse-clutch. 

I will admit to loving the whiff of tantalizing uncertainty.

And so there I was; ready to put my X, right next to the name of the prime ministerial candidate I had decided on and was completely thrown for a loop - make that knocked for six.   And I suppose I should have realized this was how it worked but it was only in that instant, that I got it.  I stared at a list of names I barely knew and felt  disappointment, mixed with powerlessness.   A sheep being herded to a fait accompli, democrat-ish result. 

And so we wait and with thanks to Eric Clapton:

After midnight, were gonna let it all hang down.
After midnight, were gonna chug-a-lug and shout.
Were gonna stimulate some action;
Were gonna get some satisfaction.
Were gonna find out what it is all about...

Promises, promises.
Deborah Gale
Expatriate Living

© Mikle15 | Dreamstime.com

It's been quite the week for TV watching, radio listening and head scratching.  Technology played the behind the scenes part in three separate incidents with the undeniably same, bottom line.

First up, Birmingham city council is facing a £600M bill to settle the score for the chronic underpayment of female council employees over the past few, wait for it - decades.  What will come of IT?

             
Next up, it isn't just those CDO's that were unintelligible; it was those inaudible, naughty boys.  They all struggled with their mother tongue as if robbed of their silver ones.   But behind it was beaucoup bravado.   Why they wondered, in God's name naturally, did Fab and the boys even have to be there?  It felt like watching repeats out of the ever-expanding catalogue of LIVE- We-will-get-to-the-bottom-of-it-dammit-and-truth-will-prevail televised "inquiries".   Now, after smug, smirks and semi-squirming, surely nothing will come of IT.

Then yesterday, in an unguarded and potentially game-changing, while still wired-for-sound moment, Gordon let slip something everyone already knows.  So tonight we will get a preview, at the third and final prime ministerial debate, if anything comes of IT.

  IT's all about behaviour that's indefensible, about years of institutionalized discrimination and it's actually about how power thinks, talks - and now even emails- about the less powerful.

All that cold, heartless technology starts feeling like the closest thing contemporary society has to something resembling a "humbler", "equalizer" or dare I say, a "humanizer".

But come on now, get your popcorn sorted. It's debate night, date night and for the Prime ministerial hopefuls, "It's showtime".

-- Deborah Gale