Stories from over there

The Mafia

Few years ago, probably 2006 I was driving yet another Contiki Coach around Europe. It was a dodgy bus with a dodgy battery. Buses my friends are like people, it may be the same make as the last one with the same engine made in the same factory but it is distinctly individual and it has feelings! Buses are quite often, a tad neurotic, perhaps it’s the way they are used relentlessly all day and then abandoned at night. They hold a grudge, they save it up until a really opportune moment then they unleash hell.

I had an incredibly annoying Tour Manager on that tour. She was uber girly. I am not. She would flirt with her male drivers in order to get them to do what she wanted. I am a strait female. Her temperament was a lethal cocktail of chirpy, tasteless, immature and bouncy yet depressingly dull due to her constant jolly inane drivel. There is only so much of the Venga boys back catalogue I can listen to before I want to shoot myself. We didn’t get on.

This day was a particularly bad day out of a distressingly awful tour.

It was a tight day for timings, even if everything goes to plan, its still a very tight day. The itinerary went something like: Leave Rome oh say 7am, drive to Pompeii, (aprox 4 hours drive) 2 hours for lunch and tour of ruins. Depart around 1pm, drive down to Brindisi (5 hours including stop) arriving no later than 6pm for check in for night boat to Corfu. Missing the boat is of course not an option because finding a hotel for 52 people in the middle of summer is a problem. Booking them on to a boat for the next day would be impossible. Plus you would have 50 very unimpressed tourists on your hands and you don’t want that. No you don’t

Grand. No problems. Tight but definitely ‘do able’.

So we leave Rome and hit the highway. About an hour on the road we meet a traffic jam, a really big one, a monster. We moved about 10 meters in an hour. The mafia had shut the road, the main road, the really big one that every one heading south drives down. Eventually we came to an exit. We are forced off by dudes in black shiny cars and sharp suits who are parked across the highway. I didn’t know where this side road went. I don’t do GPS. I know my way around, GPS’s are for wimps.

It was funny in a perverse way, we had an American lad on board whose sole reason for booking this trip was to see Pompeii. I feared he may only see a sign from the motorway If indeed we ever found the motorway again, and we would have a lawsuit on our hands. Just as we turned off the exit, the suits reopened the road. We had lost 2 hours. I did a highly illegal 3 point turn in my 12 meter bus in the midst of a mental Italian traffic chaos and we got back on the autostrada. Finally we were moving and we had no time to loose….

It was about then that my tour manager thought it a good point to check the ferry ticket. Most TMs check it the night before, you know, to see what time the boat leaves, this one was trusting it to luck. We were lucky. We didn’t have to be at the ferry port till 7pm, not the typical 6. We had gained an hour, the yank would see Pompeii after all, although it would be at a jog. 1 Hour for Pompeii visit, lunch on the bus, we were still going to make it, it was going to be ok…

I had parked up the coach in the small coach park run by the mafia. We had to park there, operations for Contiki in Italy were arranged by the mafia. Every other country in Europe we could do as we pleased. But here things were a little different. I mentioned I had a dodgy battery. Well it had been fine so far, I had been nursing it along now for about 12 days all along our journey from London through Paris, Lyon, Barcelona, Nice, Venice, Florence and Rome. So long as when you left it sitting, you remembered to switch everything off including (vitally) the Master Switch. The master of all switches that controls the power supply to everything, well as long as you did that, you remembered to switch off the Master Switch, it would start fine….

I return to the coach park after an hour’s lunch in Pompeii to find I’d left the master switch on, what can I say? it had been a stressful morning. So I turn the key and nothing happens just a pitiful pathetic whirl. “Ok” say I, “we are going to have to push start the bus”. There were many doubters on the coach. Can you really push start a bus? I didn’t know either, I’d never done it before. I’d never even push started a car, but I thought that, right now I’d give it a shot. Now Coaches are big and heavy but luckily I just so happened to have my rent a mob crowd to push me. So there I am in the drivers seat, the coach park is about 20 meters square and across the way from me is a large wall. I put my foot on the clutch I put it in gear, the large gang of kids behind me pushed. We rolled, I yanked my foot off the clutch and the beast spluttered into life. I braked suddenly before I hit the wall. We were away. But we had lost yet more time.

We had to make the boat. It should take 5 hours with a wee stop, we needed to be there in 4. I drove like the wind. The roads around Solerno near the Amalfi Coast are windy and narrow. When you pass a lorry there are inches in it. We didn’t stop for a break. Yes there were dissenters but what could I do. The last part of the journey we are in total Mafia territory. There is a stretch of road that leads along the coast after Bari that is patrolled, not by police, but dudes in green trucks. It’s a fast road, like any other Autostrada but coaches are restricted to 80 km. If we were going to get to the ferry port on time I was going to have to do the max of 100 km. It was a risk because if we got stopped we could waste more time bribing some mafia fella, but if we didn’t speed we would be late and miss the ferry. My heart was in my mouth but we were lucky. We swept into the ferry port a little after 7pm. We made it, just.

Beer was going to taste sweet tonight….

The boat wasn’t there, it was late, we waited another 2 hours on the dock.

But that’s life right?

Ash Cloud Permitting

I want to get away. I want to do something extraordinary, but I don’t seek attention. I do it for myself, besides most folk don’t care anyway. I do want to be appreciated. I do want people to respect me.

I don’t think that they do. I don’t know why.

I often wonder why people ignore me. It’s not depressing, it’s just puzzling. Why if I’m sitting on my own do other people sit elsewhere? Perhaps its because I’m not a member of a gang, I despise national identity, I feel it, but think of it a weakness. Taking life on solo is so hard, but admirable. I respect those that tackle loneliness and fight it head on. I have no choice.

A friend said recently, people think you’re strange for doing things on your own, yet they won’t come with you. So what choice do you have?

Sit at home feeling sorry for your self? No not for me. Changing and trying to be more like them? No, that wouldn’t do either.

I’m doing a long bike ride, far far longer than I have ever been before in a single direction on my own. It will be a huge mental challenge, If I can make it, it will be determination and stubbornness that drives me. I will fight loneliness, there will be no routine, ill have to adapt and ill have to talk to strangers. All of which scares me, but I crave it.

I want to win.

Women!

The tricky thing about being female is how other people treat you.

When I was a little girl I didn’t realise there was a difference between boys and girls.

I’m not sure my opinions have changed all that much. I think its society that pressurises each of us (boys and girls) into behaving in a certain way, subtly influencing us by pushing images and fake ideals at us. It’s all been going on a long time; the myth perpetuates itself, it’s so deeply imbedded in our psyche. It’s almost totalitarianism in nature.

For example if you’re a boy and at school one day you cry, because someone has stolen your books or has stood on your favourite toy all the other boys will laugh at you and ridicule you. Will you cry again? No. You shape your opinions of yourself by how other people react to you. But what if we had no heavy-handed influences? How would you see yourself then? Or what if the influences were different. 13 years ago I was in Thailand. I met two friendly Thai guys who gave me a guided tour of the surrounding areas of Chang Mai on the back of their bike. We went to a temple on top of a very steep hill in the rainforest, we boiled eggs in a hot spring, then we ate at a small restaurant consisting of a bit of lean to corrugated iron and some small plastic garden chairs, shunted up against the side of a dirt track road. We were in the middle of nowhere. The waiter sashayed over to take our order. He was a ladyboy, the two men I was with spoke to him and he sashayed away again. They explained to me what he was, but were completely inoffensive in their description. They were ordinary guys and so was the waiter.

Gender, in my opinion is a sliding scale, female one end, male at the other and a great deal of people wondering around in the middle. It’s where I would place myself.

Of course there are differences between men and women (its all about hormones). Men have more self confidence. This is probably because it is generally assumed within society that men are more able than women. Men receive more respect, as standard from people, both men and women. Assertive women are seen to be bitches or bolshie and unfeminine. Assertive men tend to gain respect and authority.

Women are more emotional and require affection, all the time!. It’s not a needy thing it’s just normal. Men tend not to require as much and get a little nervous when encountering ‘emotional’ women.

My parents used to make hay each year and as the youngest and weakest I was given the job of driver. So at about 12, when I was tall enough to reach the peddles, I was driving a Land Rover with a 40 ft trailer, stacked high with hay as my parents threw the bails onto the back. I became a good driver because it was always my job and nobody told me that I couldn’t do it.

I have driven buses and coaches for 13 years and I have countless examples of how people treat me differently, because of my gender.

I am a confident driver with a lot of experience. At the age of 19 I became a London bus driver. I moved to Scotland and drove tours there, I was forced to take unsuitable single-track roads, squeeze the coach onto ferries, drive up drives to country houses completely unprepared for a 12 metre coach and negotiate small humpback bridges. I then drove and guided for a small backpacker company for a short while before training to drive tours throughout Europe. I drove in most of the major towns of Europe and not just once or twice, I did it continuously for 3 years. I drove most frequently in Paris, Rome, Florence, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Barcelona and Amsterdam. But I have also driven through Poland Belarus, Greece, (including Athens) Albania, Croatia, Slovakia, Montenegro, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. I even drove through and navigated my way around Russia, driving around St Petersburg and Moscow. One of the worst, or should I say challenging places I have ever driven. Now there are people I know who have done a great deal more. I have a female friend who drove a coach through Iran. I want to explain all this not because I’m showing off. I need to tell you all this so I have you on side when I tell you my next story.

When you are a female bus/coach driver people treat you like you’re 5. They lower their voice, sink their head into their shoulders and look you in the eye and say. “Well aren’t you clever”

“Wow can you really drive this?” (Always seemed a ridicules question to me.)

Then when you get going and you have driven them around a bit…. “Wow you are actually really good”

Actually.

There is no reason that a person who has 13 years bus driving experience shouldn’t actually be able to do her job. Yet that’s what people assume. They assume you haven’t been doing it for long, you are going to be shit and you will get into an emotional fragile flap any time soon. It’s these assumptions that you have to fight against. Sometimes people aren’t so nice, sometimes people are intimidated or affronted by you and it comes out as anger or spite. This reaction is self-perpetuating. Self-confidence comes, not just from your own abilities, but other people’s confidence in you. Imagine standing on stage and trying to be funny when the audience shouting and jeering at you. It’s not impossible but certainly it would require a great deal of front.

A few months ago an old man got on my bus in Edinburgh. He gave me a knowing look as he got on and a cheeky smile. As he alighted a dozen bus stops later he said “wow you drive just like a man” This was supposed to be some kind of compliment. I said “oh no did I hit someone” But he didn’t get it. It was an equally sexist reply but he started it!

I have managed to do what I have done because I had a great upbringing and I am very stubborn and determined. I’ve done it because enough people have believed in me.

Now want to be a Sculptor.

The 3 Thirds. A beginners Guide to Understanding People.

Here is a wee theory I concocted. Its basic and probably wrong but I like it and it helps me understand the world.

So everyone sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Humans are divided into three parts, not equal thirds, as the emphasis in any one area is changeable from person to person.

The three parts are…

1, Culture, or just where you’re from and if you move around a lot then this transitional lifestyle.

We all like to imagine we are free spirits and that the decisions we make from day to day are based around what we choose to do. But we are just pawns in a game, or worse still soldiers in a regiment. You are whether you like it or not a slave to your country!! This becomes obvious when you go abroad and start to see other social norms, other people behaving in a totally different way, on mass. Their social norms are completely different. Its like dropping yourself into a different landscape wearing all the wrong clothes. Then you meet people from your country whilst you are away and are drawn to them, not just because of a common language but because of a common sense of a social norm. You have the same presets in a sense.

2, Type of person you are.

So I think that within every culture on earth there are types of people. This is how societies function, if we were all hairdressers society would fall apart, but hairdressers are a ‘type of person’ and a necessary piece of the jigsaw puzzle. So you may be an Artist or a Scientist or a Mechanic, but I don’t mean just jobs, maybe you’re a philosopher, or a villain or murderer or an animal lover. You could well be several of the above. Its what you are, and if you went abroad and met someone with a different set of social norms BUT was also a hairdresser you would still get on. It would be a common trait. You could sit and chat about scissors and stuff. Language would be the only barrier but not insurmountable.

3, Age.

Perhaps I should say time, as age sounds terribly elitist or patronising.

It struck me once that It didn’t matter how much you travel, even if you went to every corner of the globe it would take you a lifetime and once you had completed your ultimate adventure the first country you visited would have changed beyond all recognition. Imagine if you had visited Britain in 1950, then you spent the next 60 years going everywhere else, would you really know what Britain is like now? No, its virtually a different place. So your journey abroad to understand the world would be endless and also impossible.

What I mean to say is that generations change. Each generation are like a mini culture’s in themselves. They use different ‘trendy’ words, sport different haircuts and have different social values. Its more obvious in some people than others and more pronounced in our modern rapidly changing world.

I think that you grow up and reach your late teens, early twenties and then that’s you for life! Of course you change and adapt as you get older but when you are young you’re a sponge and information about the world pours into you. You are a product of that moment in time, the most up to date version. Then unwittingly and very slowly like a panther creeping up on you through the long grass you turn into a saturated swamp! It becomes harder to change and take on new stuff, besides its only a little bit different than the stuff you did when you were 20, so why change? Weren’t those times so much better anyway? Sometimes change isn’t for the better.

What I’m saying is that your going to be able to relate better to people of your own age, because you’re a microcosm of history set at a certain period in time. No matter how much you struggle against it and believe me I do. Of course you do change as you get older, I understand myself much better (if not completely) I have learnt through trial and error and that takes time. You gain a kind of short hand, you meet the same types of people. You take things less seriously. These common attitudes also can bind you to people of your own age.

This is a massive simplification. Its loads more complicated, I know, but its my theory and I call it home. I would also like to say that none of the rules or theories are the same for everyone and all of them can be broken.

The End.

Emotional Moderation.

I want love. I do. But I want happiness too....

Happiness is not a normal standard state to be in. Its not neutral on the gear stick. Its probably somewhere about 3^rd. I’m happy sometimes but sometimes I’m not and when I’m not I feel like this is a problem. That not being sublimely happy means I’m depressed and not normal. But this isn’t true, perhaps neutral is ‘a little bit bored’ or lethargic or just not feeling anything. Reverse is sad, but because I feel that I should be constantly happy, that I have a basic human rite to be constantly chirpy reverse’s status is upped to depressed. I’m not depressed at all. If anything I’m normal and experiencing normal sweeps of human emotions.

Ironically this is the most depressing (sorry saddening) thing, being normal, being standard. Not being Einstein or Van Gogh, just being kind of, well, average. I was diagnosed with ‘mild’ Dyslexia the other day and I couldn’t help being disappointed. I wasn’t even properly crazy, just mildly, kind of average. Average is rotten. It means I’m the same. I want to be different. Don’t we all. Very few of us actually are.

Difference means your special, famous, complex, interesting, volatile. It allows you to dream, to imagine that one day soon the world will wake up and recognise your supreme brilliance. I sense that in fact it won’t, and instead of being average and feeling nothing and being fine with it, the expectation of constant happiness and radical difference renders me depressed.

But In mot depressed. I’m average and I have a problem with that.

Stories from over there

Stories from over there.

One afternoon in June I was bowling down Leith Walk for the 8^th time that day. I was driving the number 22, the busiest bus route in Edinburgh. The sky was blue and the bus was semi full of commuters and tourists trying to wrestle themselves to another more favourable position in the city. The next person to join us in our disgruntled sweaty party was a man who had clearly just emerged from a pleasant afternoon in the pub . Swaying a little he was very much in the mood for singing.

“Oh flower o Scotlan….” he began, positioning himself at the front of the bus in the natural stage like area.

“Come on everybody” he optimistically encouraged us all. “when will we see….” Unfortunately nobody else was of a similarly spirited mood and his ambitions of a commuter choir were somewhat hampered.

“Who here is Scottish?” He asks trying to appeal to his countrymen. Either there is not a single Scot cruising down one of the main arteries of the Scottish capital on a bus on a busy summers day, or they are remaining anonymous.

He turns to me, the driver. “You must be Scottish?”

I feel bad for crushing his assumptions. I shake my head. He turns back to his audience and tries to make the best of the situation and embarks on a meet and greet, Working the crowd like pro.

“Where ya from?” he asks the three dark haired women on the first row.

“Spain” say they.

“Ah Spain” he repeats “olla! What you doing in Scotland? Much better weather in Spain” He asks without waiting for a reply. He smiles at his own masterful international panache.

He moves on like a games show host. “Where you from” he asks the next bunch of foreigners “Canada” say they.

“Oh Canada’s a great country” he says my brother lives there. Been there 25 years he tells them. They hadn’t heard of him.

Proud of himself, he can converse with folk from all corners of the earth. Such is his friendly demeanour. He moves around swiftly grilling those around him and reaches three uncomfortable looking young men. Standing in the wheelchair bay. “Where you from?” He asks

“Russia”

For the first time he falls silent. He has nothing in his bank of replies. I can imagine him riffling through mentally.

Up front I chuckle to myself. Not so international now.

Everything I despise and a story about racism.

Standing in line in Londis I wait patiently clutching a bottle of dry white wine. I’m at the back and my mind wonders. I drift off to a special place only I know, thinking about cabbages or things I can’t stand. I realise the que hasn’t moved for some time and this lack of movement has awoken me. I peer forward to see what the hold up is. There at the front is a lady standing at the counter. She is short, has long grey hair and a long black coat. She is not happy and also a little drunk. Not rolling drunk but consumed by alcohol a relationship which has numbed her. It is as if alcohol occupies every part of her. Every cell is saturated, she is the alcohol and as one vessel recognises another she stares longingly at the large bottles of Vodka on the shelves behind the cash till. A slim and composed shop assistant from the asian subcontinent is standing between her and her socially acceptable drug of choice. Her words are faint and distant but its easy to fill in the blanks as the grey haired woman starts her loud campaign for booze.

"Its no fe me" she says, the fe me is exaggerated for greater emphasis, as if the calm figure behind the counter is a little dim and having trouble understanding this complicated evaluation of the situation. "Its fe me daughter" she says, presumably to the shop assistant yet turning around with a sweeping glance across the que behind her. Its a knowing look she gives us. We are the audience now and she is the actor in this her play. We are supposed to be on her side of course, being local, but her faith in her acting ability betrays her and the audience is lost. Her boozy state is so familiar to her she no longer knows what normal is. The asian ladies part is that of an extra or an ornamental set piece. She stands there as the irate woman, face hagged and ravaged by drink and fags and a closed off life of bitterness, yells at her. Half turned and without making eye contact "fuck sake" she says, she knows the battle is lost.

"Malk" calls the girl from behind the counter, raising her head as she does and turning towards a sturdy looking Eastern European guy. He lurks eternally between the wine and the beer isles, his roll as beefcake security man at last called for. English not required a capacity for boredom helpful. Malk shuffles forward, he has stumpy legs no neck and a chunky knit jumper. Arms are crossed he is awoken, he the caricature ugly brute and she the flowerlike damsel.

A look just one look tells a thousand stories. He regards the drunk, its all thats needed, she spits venom back.

"Its no yer country, yer takin our jobs, yer tellin me I can nee ha any alcohol and no even fe here"

I stand in line good as gold embarrassed to be a member of this local elite. What do these migrant workers think of us? Yet they still come. How awful must the rest of the world be, or perhaps the extra money is worth the abuse for a time. Welcome to Scotland.