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Back in London for a month! Greeted at Heathrow by Grandma and an inflatable dinosaur #truelove
I've moved to Portland, Oregon from London and am keeping a diary. I am interested primarily in enjoying Portland, as well as politics, music, art and culture.
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Battle Ground Lake State Park #northwestisbest
We left our house at 3.30 in the afternoon and by 430 we’d parked up by this exquisite lake. We found it by chance - we’d been aiming for Yale Lake in Washington State but it was so hot driving that when we saw the sign for a lake we decided to have a look. The best thing about this lake was the acoustics, it was surrounded by high firs and it created a sort of serene echo chamber - splashing, quiet talking, and the occasional shrill barking of a chiuhuahua (of which, oddly, we noted, there were several). Fellow bathers weren’t at all ‘Portland’ it was mostly campers and they reminded me of the early days of Outkast, sort of southern rural hip hop style, the wee boy kids with number one hair cuts, ultra low slung baggies, and yes, lots of chihuahua’s, all around a lake that was reminiscent of a Carl Larsson painting.
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We celebrated my birthday in the Oregon Desert
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Portlandia Carrie Brownstein’s Top 23 Punk Tracks of all time →
…Featuring, coincidentally after my childhood reminiscing…The Au-Pairs.
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Challenging convention one small step at a time - Gabe looking chipper in his pink car seat 😻😎😻😘
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Convention vs Unconvention
Becoming a mother for the second time has inevitably led me to reflect on my own experiences of early childhood. And as I regularly find myself awake in the early hours at the moment I often lie there trying to recall my earliest memories, taking a psychic jaunt round my old childhood haunts. And I think I’m particularly interested in this exercise because as my oldest son hurtles towards his fourth year I know he will begin to have memories of this early experience of living in America. But whilst we are living a somewhat conventional existence over here, my formative years were spent in a rather more bohemian environment.
Ang and Mart were still students - 22 and 24 - when they got married and had me, (the summer spent on a commune in Denmark swiftly eradicated any titles as conventional as ‘mum and dad’). We lived in a two up, two down red bricked terrace in a scruffy part of Birmingham, Selly Oak. It was the early 1980’s Thatcher was, of course, in power, and as first generation students, they were extremely engaged politically and fairly angry, politically of course, not socially. The IRA were busy bombing, kids were rioting and the skin heads were out in force in Selly Oak and intimidating local families. In fact, we originally lived next door to a family of National Front skin heads who forced us to move out to another house round the corner. And on top of all this we were even getting our post intercepted by the police at one point. It was a very memorable time. Even for a four year old.
Our house was, as I picture it now, fairly unkempt. It was full of dust and books, bookshelves with metal brackets laden with old spindly spider plants and cactus, German newspapers, the NME and the Melody Maker and stacks of vinyl which made some shelves bow dangerously in the middle. And on the magnolia painted, wood-chip walls hung large, dog ear’ed black and white posters of stern looking bespectacled German intellectuals stuck on with dried out old blue tack and push pins. I remember being scared of these pictures at night - their eyes looming out at me with sinister intent.
Behind the noisy, (pongy) fridge was an ongoing ant infestation and the toilet at the back of the house - an incorporated lean to - was always cold - freezing! I remember finding a hole in the floorboards and pulling out really old copies of the tabloid paper the Daily Star. My room had the only proper bed in the house, but it was the biggest room and faced out onto the front street where I insisted on net curtains like my nana and papa in Scotland and where, when the sun shone through the windows, I was captivated by the millions of dust particles hanging in the air - just as my three year old is now.
Ang and Mart had a mattress on the floor (that makes our house sound squat-like but it wasn’t - I think mattresses on the floor were de ri·gueur at this time amongst the muso/student population) and our couches were always second hand with holes in them and an old blanket thrown over the top. In the long lazy summer afternoons when the teachers were on strike, as they often were back then, I would get home from school and the garden would often be occupied by cross legged, hairy arm-pitted, henna’ed women smoking roll-ups - the air often thick with a pungent, sweet aroma. They were generally very well dressed and stylish, (as photographs of the time confirm) although I’m sure a couple of them had rats tails, (maybe my memory is running away with me here) but small round rimmed steel framed glasses were definitely a look. Beyond the garden was a large field with skinny old mares in it, where me and my friend Rosie would go rummaging looking for signs of black magic - building up collections of old glass bottles - and drinking dandelion and burdock in the grasses and nettles until Tim, Rosie’s dad would come and pick her up and take her home for tea.
This was how I remember my earliest years in Brum, and alongside the frequent demonstrations we went on, I also spent a lot of time in the company of various local Birmingham bands, the Au Pairs being one of them. I regularly had to share my room with radicals, musicians and people escaping Pinochet’s fascist regime in Chile. None of this meant anything to me other than that there was another person I didn’t know snoring on the cushions in the corner of my room.
Maybe the picture I’ve described doesn’t sound much fun for a four year old but in many ways my childhood felt free and unpressured and maybe that’s a consquence of having very young parents. My dad brought me up in the early years as he was studying and he had an endless patience with me - playing shoe shops in the living room - and watching Top of The Pops and The Ark Game and walking very slowly to the DHSS office to collect his dole (a temporary condition) along the Bristol Road. If I was good we’d stop in a bakery and get an almond macaroon. For some reason I really remember this walk, he would try and make me go in my buggy but I’d always insist on pushing it very slowly, something that I am now all too familiar with.
I compare these formative years now with the memories I’m giving my two sons and I wonder if my life has swung too far the other way. As a result of my youthful parents alternative upbringing, I craved convention to more of a degree than I should have, (I now think). My Nana and Papa’s ultra conventional, conservative and Catholic life in the suburbs of Glasgow came to be more of an aspiration in my childhood years and one which I chided my mum for not giving me. I had my turbulent teenage years but once I emerged from them I really craved convention in contrast to the many people I encountered at university who seemed to be trying to escape it!
As I write from our detached mock tudor in the suburbs of Portland, I know that my life, looks, and is, pretty conventional. And although my current existence is a temporary fixture it is still one which I’m comfortable with for now. And anyway, living the suburban life in Portland is a bit of a cheat and unlike suburban life in most other places (in fact if I could think of an equivalent city in the UK I’d feel more enthusiastic about moving back!)
I’m told to make the most of our house and our garden as its unlikely we’ll be able to live in such a large place again for a while, or maybe ever. And in the meantime I’ll make sure and keep a steady eye on my conventional existence.
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The Specials - Ghost Town (TOTP) (by broukzitterd)
Possibly the most famous anti-Thatcher song.
I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain in the 80’s where for many people hating her and her ideology was a part of everyday life.
She died today and here’s a song to remind us of what she did to Britain and what her legacy continues to do.
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saturntherat asked: hi, i am not trying to be creepy or anything but i swear to god i just saw you walking your dog by gabriel park (me and my boyfriend were at the corner of texas and 36th and i smiled at you while you walked by), and then i came inside and was farting around on the "ikea" tag then the "ikea portland" tag and found your blog. if that was, in fact, you, that is the most bizarre coincidence i have ever personally encountered. if not, i apologize for the weird message. -- gemma
Hi Gemma, I love your sweet and funny message! I wish it had been me but alas, it was not. Was it today? Early evening? If so, definitely not as I was getting my toes painted on the east side. ps I really like the honesty of your blog - what an exciting move across America…
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