Welcome to this 6th Edition of "FROM THE WINDOW", a worldwide magazine inviting contributions in the fields of journalism, poetry, travelogues and experiential writing from people in all walks of life and all parts of the globe.

We are a non-commercial internet magazine following a quiet path away from the soundbites and manic zing of mainstream net, promoting understanding of the breadth of common human experience, celebrating a joy in language and run by a pretentious and pompous crip child...

The format of this magazine is to present all of the current edition in one hit so that although it may take some time to download to your screen it can then be read in its entirety or printed out for sharing. The Editor therefore suggests that when you click on "mag" (below), you then zip off to make a cup of coffee, a shopping list, cut your nails or what have you.

The contents are divided into: firstly, a Guest Column (where we publish contributions from eminent writers and other prominent people), Collected Writings (arranged in alphabetical order by author's name), The Editor's View (that's stuff I write), Pilfered & Filched (stuff I've enjoyed from the net), Coming Soon (next issue) and Poster & Bumph (acknowledgements etc).

Since returning from my journey around the world earlier this year, I have been much preoccupied in digesting my experiences, which I recount briefly in my Editor's View. Despite quite considerable media interest in me, or perhaps because of it, I have been totally unable to hook any eminent person as Guest Columnist for this edition, despite sending out nearly 70 letters, each personalised and not just looking like a circular. This edition has been delayed time and time again by hopes raised, but now I can delay no further and am going ahead with mag 6. All the contributors appear in a annotated list below with hyperlinks. I would like to be able to assure you that future editions will return to the previous format but this obviously depends upon the goodwill of famous and busy people.

Past editions are still available:

Our 5th Edition has Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut, as Guest Columnist and other articles waxing lyrical on sailing in the Whitsundays; describing the work of a House of Commons clerk; a pilgrimage made by a British Buddhist in her 60s into the Thai jungle; a sperm donor's wonderings; quite a lot of poetry; and a retired gent recalling how he paid compensation to all the individuals on each and every one of the Gilbert & Ellice Islands for coconut trees destroyed by the Japanese during the 2nd World War on behalf of H.M. Government; inter alia.

Our 4th Edition has George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as Guest Columnist and articles include an account of a cycling trip to the Gambia, an article from a 14 year old about her memories of life in Berlin when the wall came down, memories of bad things done as a child, twisting and turning imagery in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, bothersome thoughts a coroner can't ask, thoughts from a Baha'i, photography as art, and a comical account of shipwreck in the Western Isles of Scotland.

Our 3rd Edition has Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, as Guest Columnist and articles were also provided by Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Atwood and James Macmillan. In addition I published stuff by a physiotherapist working with kids in refugee camps in Jordan; a wee motor from Cairns to Darwin; a young London actor contemplating his kettle; a year in the life of an opera administrator; being on the receiving end of an armed robbery.

Our 2nd Edition has as Guest Columnist the contemporary composer John Tavener, who had recently reached a wider audience with the playing of a piece of his at the funeral service for Princess Diana. It also carries articles on, inter alia, being a crew member in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race; pieces on identity: being "Irish"; being a member of two different minority groups ie Gay and Disabled; the death of one's parents; a woman's account of childbirth; an adopted child's first encounter with her biological mother; a day in the life of a violinist. There is a motley selection as usual of "No Can Do" correspondence.

The 1st Edition's Guest Columnist was the poet Ruth Padel and articles therein are on a variety of topics such as fear of boats; a newcomer's response to Zimbabwe; the emotional impact of surgical versus congenital amputation; imagination and the prehistoric cave paintings of Peche Merle; the death of a cat; and a day in the life of a family therapist.

I am as ever desirous of this magazine becoming less lamentably ethnocentric and reflecting a broader range of lifestyles, backgrounds and experiences. Therefore I am currently seeking contributions for the next edition from sources across the globe and very much hope that surfers reading this now as a result of my letter-writing or as a result of fortuitous roaming will wish to add their own voices to "FROM THE WINDOW".

I must start with what I actually achieved. I achieved nearly all of my targets. This quite quite flabbergasts me still. I am so used to disappointment, I am so used to the constraints of disability, I am so used to frustration, I am so used to being thought over-ambitious. Yet hundreds of people helped to make my dreams turn into achievement. Something really huge happened to me and that in itself is inspirational. I can make things happen. I can set myself a target and pursue it and reach my objective. I did.

I also had to rely on total strangers and their goodwill for 5 � weeks. It wasn't hard to trust people as it sometimes is at home. It felt as if people were reaching out eagerly to help, as if it was a pleasure to meet me, which was a very comfortable feeling. Of course, I had to contend with curiosity and I had to repeat myself a great deal, explaining several times a day how I communicate, why I jerk, how I can't help making involuntary noises or falling asleep, how I'd like to eat and drink but am finding it difficult, why I've come to wherever I am, what I like about it, and how very kind everyone is. It was quite tedious but it is sometimes the only way I can give. I cannot join in activities. I cannot build or heal or teach. What right did I have to nose my way into people's lives? Of course they were curious. They were as curious as I was about them. It made the playing field level. It made it not white child swans in to view crippled/sick/poor/homeless/abandoned/otherwise disadvantaged persons. It made it different.

There was only one person who made me feel uncomfortable and that unfortunately was the known other I was travelling with. I took 2 companions to act as my carers, my dear mother, and my dear friend Tom. I am sure there are plenty of tales from other travellers of team-manship and tension. It would be rather surprising if such a motley crew as we three globetrotted without incident, but it is a matter of regret that Tom got so fed up and it raises issues for me of how I will ever find people who can cope with me other than my dear besotted mother. I wish Tom and I were sitting happily reminiscing now not giving each other space.

4 continents for my first trip beyond Europe. 4 continents separated by horrid air flights. Neither me nor my mother were good at this. I found I could not sleep on planes and when I get tired I am sick, and when I am sick I get in a smelly horrible mess. Always I feel either cold or hot. I am very definitely bored. There is too much noise to think straight. My mother keeps falling asleep because she's taken a travel pill. I get thirsty and I get hungry. I flail around restlessly and irritate Tom. Mum finds it hard to help me when she's feeling lousy herself. On one journey she injected herself in the leg because she got a migraine, on another she was sick when the plane landed, on another she was sick after the plane had landed and we'd got off and then she injected herself. What a pair we were. They were just days to be got through, days made better by occasional upgrading to business class where I felt less hemmed in.

Awkward is what I felt too much of the time. Too unconfident, too stressed physically, too scared. I have to do more of this travelling and find out how to relax into it faster, how to put others too at their ease. Because travelling broadens the mind faster than anything else. Yanks it so taut one never regains the original shape.

I stepped out (well not literally) into the Kenyan heat at 7am on a Saturday in January and said goodbye to an old young self. The experience of the drive from the airport to Moshi in northern Tanzania thumped me, hurt me, pummeled me, wreaked such havoc on my emotions, I was immersed in an unstable sort of feeling I didn't recognise and didn't like for a week or more. I expected to feel inspired by a grand landscape, a wilder place. I think I expected poverty to look like something basically comfortable but lacking the trimmings, ie simple not desperate, austere not luxurious. I certainly expected the road to the honey-pot world-class game reserves to be well made up and peppered with tourists and signs of tourism, eg hotels, restaurants, the sort of shops mum detests, as in multinational chain stores. My expectation was based on travelling in Europe and glossy travel progs on tv. I wanted to escape the tourist bit and find out what life was like behind that. Behind what? I never even found a facade, a veneer, a pretence. I found a different sort of place entirely and have had to re-jig a great deal of my assumptions about my knowledge, about what's real and what's not in the world. Since my starting point was in error, of course it took a long time to get my bearings.

Here's just an outline of what I did.

Mum drove us down from Nairobi in a journey that took 15 instead of 5 hours because of car probs.

I went into classes as a visiting resource on disability (in many cases being the first disabled person they'd ever met), visited the local shops and market, a local "Asian" family (settled in Tanzania since 1911), and a centre for 70 homeless street boys, besides staying at Tarangire Tented Game Lodge for 2 nights in order that I might venture amongst elephants - a task successfully accomplished without either a guide or binoculars (which I cannot use).

the staff member Kim Krekel who had taken charge of organising my stay in a truly efficient and empowering manner took my wishes very seriously and in consequence I visited the Centre for Diarrhoeal Research (otherwise known as the Cholera Hospital) and its associated Malnutrition Rehabilitation Centre; had a superb evening of classical Bengali music and dance put on just for me by eminent professional artists (highlight the sarod player, internationally renowned and an instrument I have longed to hear for a long time because of its sympathetic strings); attended classes at AIS to take questions on disability and also the English School in Dhaka where they staged a concert for me; went an all day boat trip on the Tongi river through rural Bangladesh in the company of off duty UNICEF workers; visited someone who works for the World Food Program; a British diplomat in charge of emigration who is embroiled often in cases where girls are imprisoned following a failed attempt at forced marriage; an agricultural scientist and missionary who works for Ernest Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prizewinner; the British, Canadian and American Clubs; a top photographic gallery; an inspirational centre for the rehabilitation of those unfortunate persons who break their necks or backs which warrants a book or a lengthy documentary on just it and its founder, the dear dear Valerie, possibly the person I admire the most in all the world.

It was here that I met Sheik Golan Mustapha who broke his neck on 21st January falling from a coconut tree and Abdull Gafal who broke his in a baby-taxi accident (most are the result of carrying too heavy a load on the head and stumbling, and they used to die of their pressure sores before Val came along and changed things, getting them up and learning new skills and back to their villages and into employment), and Sultana aged 12 whose TB had destroyed her spinal cord and whose parents had recently both died, and Lovely aged 13 who earns enough painting by mouth to pay for the carer she needs since breaking her neck 4 years ago falling out a 3rd floor window in the course of her employment as a child laundry labourer, and Selim who had broken his back in a traffic accident 4 years ago but who now works as publications officer etc etc etc.

And I went to visit Mollie in her slum and meet 5 teenagers who had been rescued from toil and poverty 5 years ago by being given cameras to record their lives and the means to market their results by a remarkable politically conscious professional photographer who told tales of his own teenage years during the civil war/war of independence. And I went shopping and wandering the streets too which is where I met the only begger I encountered and of course I gave him something. How could I be wheeled by a man who rolls through the dust because he has legs even more buckled than mine? I am told the local shopkeepers look out for him (in a kindly way). Someone must see he's OK.

Actually after zooming the first morning to a closed rehearsal of the about-to-be-premiered-in-Australia Britten opera Billy Budd in the o-so-famous opera house (arranged by my friends at Glyndebourne Opera), I took ill with a fever and was hospitalised in Sydney Children's Hospital for 3 days on a drip, thereby missing my awards ceremony at the National Maritime Museum and all the social events for winners who had flown in from Ireland, Egypt, Missouri, Hawaii, South Africa, Wales, Australia, France and Japan.

My website took first prize in the Individual category, ie �1,500 cash. I didn't care on the night. I was peculiarly unconscious and unresponsive in hospital. I had blood taken, shit taken, I was catheterised, sounded out, poked in the ears, mouth prised wide. I had a thing attached to my foot to monitor my oxygen levels, I had a canula in my hand and was on a drip with extra potassium in it, I was in isolation.

Nellie and John had migrated (from factory work in Lancashire) with their young children in the 1960s and had mony a tale to tell of their life and times. We met their grown-up daughters and their daughters, all Australian of course, just as I am English but my mother is Scottish.... we caught a river cat down to the opera house to take photos not got earlier because of being ill, and fell into long conversations of which there is no time to tell here with complete strangers now friends, and spent a day at Bondi having fun, picnicing, paddling and watching surfers (well specks on the ocean wave), o and I met Oli who is a full time surfie who is really quite hunky if rather old with a lop-sided grin and bedraggled hair like my own

Kath had been down in Sydney for the awards ceremony but now welcomed me to her home with Gill on a 10 acre small holding. I met some other feminists and an aborigine woman and her daughter with Down's syndrome who were involved in the arts. We went a walk in the rain forest (leeches!) and drove the dirt roads and fords (mum at the wheel of course to avoid car sickness) before going to the coast for 2 nights to a resort for wheel-chair users that sported ramped swimming pool, clamp down taxi service, electric beds, hoists etc at a very remarkably low cost, discounted for us as friends of Kath.

But in consequence of my illness, Oz was not a cheerful interlude between Third World and serious discussions in NY but a real downer in down-underland, my mood tumbling unnervingly and erratically down each insect-biting interminable damp grey torrential hour. Bondi was the day of interlude, one sunny day at the beach. Otherwise I was a miserable unrelaxed child awash in diarrhoea for a fortnight, stumbling out of dynamism into a horrid reality, into uncomfortableness and stress that started to dismantle and unravel my achievements. I was glad to leave Australia behind, even though all Australians are nice, there were no bad experiences at all. But I think it was here that I parted company emotionally with Tom.

I visited the school and talked to quite a lot of staff members and a few students; shopped for gloves, hats, scarves etc; visited our hostess at work on the 18th floor of the Flat Iron building where she was a senior person in a publishing firm with responsibility for jacket design; attended a rehearsal (arranged by my friend Sarah Playfair, formerly at Glyndebourne) at the Metropolitan Opera House of Verdi's Rigoletto skipping the 2nd Act to meet one of James Levine's assistants who had been a child prodigy on the piano and Barenboim's only pupil. He asked to see me and gave me a tape of personal significance of Du Pre (who he had of course known); I visited the New York Police Department having a contact through a colleague of my dad's who is a beat sergent in the Bronx. He took me to meet a mounted policeman and the horses (I've been riding for nearly 11 years and love horses) and to meet a detective (on duty) in an office that could have been a 70s stage set. I visited the Guggenheim Museum and caught an exhibition of Picasso (my favourite artist); rode in a bus, a truly accessible bus (they all are); attended a church service in Harlem; spent a day on Staten Island as a guest of a truck driver.

I also had a 15 minute meeting with the Secretary General of the UN (just because I asked for it and he said he'd be delighted) at which I discussed my concern about clean safe water and how my journey had changed me from just a budding young artist of sorts to anxious to act.... I now must have not merely a busy and productive and useful working life producing original work in ballet, music, installation art, poetry, writing and film, but must somehow balance this with my need to feel that I am doing as much as I can possibly do to ensure that some of the basic inequities of the world are eradicated.

My self-imposed agenda is to agitate for adequate water supplies and drainage facilities in the poorest nations. It horrifies me that hard-working honest nice people can be living with electricity in their homes and access to free health services for the treatment of cholera and dysentery and without access to safe clean water. It upsets me that they want it and can't have it. It upsets me that we wind-surf, shop till we drop etc etc while this situation goes on. If there is not the will, the infrastructure, the taxation system, the wealth in wages to tackle this from inside the country, logic and humanity dictates that aid must be given so that it is achieved. It was a target for the UN through the 70s and 80s. It should be the target for the new millennium. It is far from being achieved. Victorians sorted it in the UK and we take it for granted. Australia was but recently settled and they take it for granted. It is absurd that so much depends upon luck, the luck of where one is born. I was not born more deserving than a kid in Moshi, but I take for granted a quite different standard of living and life expectancy.

It seems to me that I am just plain lucky to be living in a comfortable safe and affluent place like southern England. People who are poor are not bad and deserving of their poverty, are not oblivious of the possibilities, unaware of what they are lacking, and o boy worst of all of course it is very basic stuffs that they lack, it is necessities and not luxuries. It is quite simply unbearably not fair, not fair for me to squander my life away on trivial pursuits rather than work for the greater good. It seems often to be the case that a service exists merely because a dedicated person from a foreign country made it their life's work to provide it, and that is very much better than nothing at all and it is very inspirational to see services in the hands of committed and caring people. The development of such services is as much an act of creativity as a theatrical production or a sculpture. It's just that the product is not art but something else. I want to be part of that creativity. Mr Annan is egging me on to campaign and agitate vigorously, raise awareness of the problem etc..... I have a sense of responsibility, a sense that I must make myself useful, a sense that others must understand their responsibility too.

Let me tell you about 3 little episodes from my own experience.

Firstly, Florianna:

Next, Kate's place:

And Mollie in Dhaka:

• the generosity of ECIS

• the international schools in Moshi, Dhaka and New York

• all my most generous and hospitable hosts

• my sponsors

• the help of Andrew at Brockman's Travel, Ashford who sorted all the flights and insurance

• and my friend Tom who came along as second indispensable carer having got time off his Masters so to do.

expenses for internal travel and food.................................................. �1,750 pp

(say �1750 per person for 5 weeks, ie �50 per day)

total per person....................................................................................�4,500 per person

Ansett Australia................................................free return flights Sydney to Ballina x 3

Avis..................................................................................week's free car hire in Sydney

Bretts........................................................................................................................�150

Cable & Wireless/Childnet International..............................................................�2,400

Colette Desaint.........................................................................................................�500

DS................................................................................................................underwriting

The Duveen Trust.....................................................................................................�500

GKN.........................................................................................................................�750

Marley......................................................................................................................�200

ML.........................................................................................................................�2,500

New College, Oxford...............................................................................................�250

Lord Northbourne.......................................................................................................�75

Research Machines...................................................................................................�100

Robertsons................................................................................................................�250

Sarah Playfair...........................................................................................................�100

Schroders..................................................................................................................�500

Singapore Airlines..........................................................half-price Dhaka to Sydney x 3

Sir John Swire..........................................................................................................�700

Sky TV..................................................................................................................�2,850

The Tory Family Foundation...................................................................................�200

United Airlines..............................................free excess baggage Sydney to New York

Virgin Atlantic.......................................................free flights New York to London x 3

stationery, photocopying, postage and telephone..................................approx �250

flights

Kenya Airlines, London to Nairobi, 3@�294.........................................�882

Emirates Airlines, Nairobi to Dhaka via Dubai, 3@�496.30...............�1,488.90

Singapore Airlines, Dhaka to Sydney via Singapore, 3@half-price...�1,308.60

United Airlines, Sydney to New York via LA, 3@�770.30.................�2,310.90

8 days car hire in Kenya (Budget), 4 wheel drive, large enough

boot for 2 wheelchairs...........................................................................�1131

surcharge for taking car to Tanzania.......................................................�101.30

inc entry to game park, 2 nights in tented lodge, and diesel...................�790

minor purchases - milk, juice, pens, postcards, souvenir water pot,

plus "tip" to houseworkers and driver.......................................................�50

inc meals out, medical/pharmaceutical for mum, 2 nights in a hotel, diesel.......................................................................................................�946

inc taxis, meals, gifts, coat for Tom, toiletries and drinks......................�659

winter clothes, continence pads etc..........................................................approx �120

There was therefore an underspend of �1,252.54 which is being spent on the follow-up/follow-on expenses such as software for grabbing video stills, stationery and printer ink and rainy days. I hope noone think this bad of me.

HERO JOY NIGHTINGALE 

I am a thirteen year old girl with a locked-in syndrome caused by a profound apraxia of all my muscles and the retention of dominant babyish reflexes. I am a wheelchair user and need complete care. I cannot make voluntary sounds and therefore cannot speak. Spelling is my greatest delight as it affords me the freedom to direct the course of my life. I crave acceptance as a really quite ordinary person, with an artistic temperament and a nice enough personality. On the whole I prefer adult company to kids', and my own company to 'most any other. I am bloody-mindedly independent and rarely acknowledge the wisdom of my mother's grey years.

I live in England, in the same town as I was born in but I love my mother's native land of Scotland even more. I also find Venice hard to eradicate from my mind, it swims like a tantalising mirage on my horizon informing my tastes and swelling my longing need to be truly me. I used to say that "I yearn to visit with people beyond Europe but have not a lot of dosh available for such sojourns". This year I have raised the money for my first big journey and changed my life immensely.

I need quiet. I hear music in my head a great deal of the time in a way I have come to accept is unusual. I was a composition student on a part-time Intermediate place at the Royal Academy of Music in London, participating alongside the undergraduate and graduate students when I was 9 years old, but they abruptly terminated my place and thrust me into a terrible depression.

Since then, I have veered more towards writing and journalism, by inventing FTW and becoming a BBC Video Nation correspondent and some other initiatives, but I also have leanings towards the visual arts. I am currently building an ambitious installation, am continuing to develop my photography, and if I could find more time, would out the visual aspects of the two autobiographical ballet scores I have completed and organise some performances of my poetry.

Dear Hojoy,

First, I must congratulate you on

your rising stature in the publishing

world. As you rise, hopefully, so too will

this modest poet, along with you!

Any way... note that I'm inclosing a

new poem for you to look over,

accompanied by a brief new bio:

**************************************

MEMORIAL DAY

Not at early mass

not at the small café

with the blue window

drapes & empty birdcage.

You were not

in the clouds

nor on the ground;

I tried to remember

how you used to

say "Oui"-- inhaling

the sound like a

whisper in reverse.

In the passenger

lounge I endured

time taking its time;

my memories gone

into hiding.

I dozed at a

higher altitude

as the plane hung

still in the sky

aimed for my

own horizon--

nearest you I was

farthest way.

****************************

Bio:

I was always a late bloomer. I went

through about half my life, not

realising that what I'd always thought

were dangerous imaginings, were

really poems trying to get free.

My first published poem happened

when I was in my mid-forties. Since

then, I've published three books, and

have another one in the process of

being published as I write this.

I've made my living for over thirty

years as a scientific illustrator for

James Van Allen, discoverer of the

radiation belts around the Earth that

have been named for him. Sometimes,

during a lull at work, or at lunch hour,

I'd dash off a poem or two.

I've had poems in numerous small-

press magazines in the U.S., Canada,

the UK, and France. My true ambition is

to write (and publish) short stories,

and my dream is that if I ever become

famous as a poet, this might be easier

to do!

**************************************

Thanks or your forbearance, dear

Hojoy!

Estiminably,

John

Catching Swans

I thought you might be interested in my experience as a volunteer working

for Swan Lifeline.

One day I received a call from the Swan Lifeline headquarters in Eton

asking me and my husband Andrew, to go and investigate a report that a swan

was in trouble at Culham lock which is close to my home in Oxfordshire. We

got together all our swan catching gear, towels, swan harness, gloves,

bread, nets, bandages, tools for removing hooks etc. and loaded up the car.

It was a very cold day and on arrival we trawled up and down the towpath

looking for the person who had reported the sick bird.

Eventually we found the lock keeper who showed us where the swan was.

The poor little swan was sitting in the middle of the path along the bank

looking forlorn, its head drooping, refusing all offers of food and clean

water. I prepared the harness on the bank and Andrew set off with towels

and bread but of course as soon as he got near it the poor little thing

just flapped off a few more feet. This 'game' lasted about ten minutes and

then the bird, by now having acquired the name of Carly, seemed to

understand that we wanted to help her.

She allowed herself to be caught and I wrapped her up safely in the harness

and took her back to the car. After a quick examination we couldn't find

anything wrong with her so decided to take her back to Swan Lifeline for a

look by the vet.

It's quite a way in the car and it always amuses us to see the expressions

on the faces of the drivers of cars going past when the swans decide to

lift up their heads and look out of the windows!

Eventually we arrived and it was realised that Carly wasn't very well at

all so she had some injections to help her fight any infections and to help

guard her against shock. She was then put into a nice comfortable indoor

pen. specially heated and with food and drink right at hand.

She was seen the next day by the vet who diagnosed lead poisoning and

general malnutrition. After treatment she stayed at the rescue centre for

a while and was then released back where we lost track of her progress. I

hope she is out there somewhere with loads of cygnets, enjoying her life.

Sometimes we can't help the swans and they die at the sanctuary or even

before we get to them but at least we do our best to give them a chance.

Next time we get a particularly plucky young female I shall christen her

Hero and think of you!

GILL COOPER

Hello Hero,

Nice to hear from you.

Well, I am middle aged, work as a Business Systems Analyst for the Unipart Group in Oxford and in my spare time, apart from rescuing sick swans I am learning to play the electronic keyboard (how I wish I had started a few years ago and how I wish I had a natrual talent instead of having to slog for hours at a time to practise!) I also make stained glass items (like sun catchers and plaques). I live in Didcot in Oxfordshire and I have one grown up son who's greatest aim in life is buy every piece of electronic equipment on the planet!

Anything else you want to know just mail me. Keep up the brilliant work.

Regards,

Gill...........

I�ve always considered myself to be a pretty average sort of bloke. Brought up in a south London suburb with a housewife mother and father that worked in the city, you couldn�t be much more middle class. I seemed to do pretty well at school, both academically and in sporting endeavours but if I think back I guess there were signs of my sexuality beginning to appear, even at an early age. While I never thought of myself as camp I always seemed to be chosen for female roles in the school play and I enjoyed the company of girls as well as boys. Prior to puberty this did not seem to be an issue but as everyone started to grow and I was left painfully small I found that a new role was required in order to survive the classroom. One tactic I employed involved building up my fitness and becoming one of the best cross-country runners in the school. A suitably tough sport, it gave me the opportunity to prove myself without having to adopt the aggression of team sports. Likewise I developed an interest in cycling which has remained with me to this day and led to many adventures around the globe. In my mind I realised that I was gay but I wasn�t a puff � this seemed important to me at the time.

By the age of sixteen I was quite aware of my attraction to men, but, although I was fairly independent and confident, I was still unwilling to commit myself sexually. Luckily, living a train journey away from school, I had a ready-made excuse to avoid going out with my fellow mates on the �pull�. In this way I side stepped the issue of women and it was not until university that things got more difficult. Having women friends was one thing; it was the stage beyond that I found terrifying. Maybe it was because I didn�t have a sexual agenda that I found myself with many women friends. This became a very convenient cover since all my male friends, in their naivety, assumed that there was more to my girlfriends than met the eye. I had no inclination to put them straight (so to speak). Occasionally the situation would get out of control and advances from women would have to be escaped. From my point of view that was not on the agenda.

Over the years I developed a busy, but celibate, lifestyle. I buried myself in my work and became academically successful. Life was satisfactory and challenging, if unfulfilling. On a couple of occasions I made advances to male friends. Maybe I should have known better but both were obviously straight and turned me down. Thankfully neither of them outed me and indeed, both are still good friends, almost fifteen years later. Following one unsuccessful approach to a friend I chose to tell my brother my hidden secret. I still feel bitter that he reacted so badly, being convinced that I could change for the better. I guess the pain of his reaction put pay to my first attempt at coming out and as a result I continued with life as I had done before.

The years went by, I completed a PhD and started a lecturing job at Plymouth Polytechnic. All of a sudden I had to start again and without a ready-made pool of friends I was miserable. Perhaps in retrospect it would have been a good time to start my new lifestyle but instead I did the utmost to get back to Bath where my life was under control. After a couple of years I was home, first working in industry and then back at the university as a lecturer. I realise that I�m lucky to have the ability to pick and choose jobs but on this occasion it was a lifesaver.

Once again life became comfortable but gradually my friends started to get partners or left the area and I found myself spending more time on my own. Although my life was straightforward and uncomplicated it was grey and unfulfilling and there was no sign of improvement on the horizon. Something had to be done.

The fear of what others might think, the fear of rejection, the fear of the new, make coming out a very emotional and personal act. It can only really be done once and there is no going back � not that I had any intention. I resolved to tell my friends one night at the pub and all I can say is that in contrast to the reaction of my brother ten years earlier they were just fantastic. Perhaps surprised, they were supportive and interested, insisting that I spend time explaining my feelings and reasons. No one was negative, they were just pleased for me � it was such a relief and I was so happy. In retrospect, it was so easy that I should have done this much sooner, but everyone has the right to choose their time and I had made the biggest decision of my life.

Very quickly things changed for the better. One of my girlfriends put me in touch with her gay friend Michael and within two weeks of coming out we were lovers � within a month he had moved in as a partner. This was a time of great discovery both sexually and in terms of being gay. I had a lot of catching up to do and Michael was my guide. I was in a relationship for the first time and in love.

I love my father lots and through a fear of hurting him had chosen not to tell him my secret. I knew that he yearned for grandchildren and this would put pay to his chances. Eventually it became obvious that I would have to reveal all, as there was danger of him ringing home to discover Michael. I was not willing to lie about Michael�s status in my house so I went to my dad�s house and revealed the truth. It was certainly emotional but there was no anger just concern for my well being. I was still his son and he would love me unconditionally. He asked to meet Michael and was keen to learn about the new world in which I lived. Time has passed and he is now �out� about me when talking to his friends. My dad is such as sweaty. I love him dearly.

The lack of problems that I encountered still surprises me. I suspect that anyone straight would never have guessed that I was gay. It often takes one to know one. It surprised me that gossip did not run wild and I went through a lengthy period of telling my colleagues and students. There was the odd sticky moment but all ended with laughter rather than pain.

My relationship continued for about a year and I remained very much in love. Unfortunately Michael thought differently and although we never fought or argued our partnership came to an end. I was devastated. I had not expected this misery, which was far worse than I had experienced before I had come out. Call me a fool, but I hung on hoping that things would change. Michael continued to live in my house, all be it in a different bed. The pain of loosing him from my life seemed worse than the pain I felt when he brought men home for sex. It hurt terribly but we were still friends even if he was beyond my reach.

We continued living in the same house for six months and I tried to make a life of my own in the gay world. It was a bit like starting again as I had no experience of being a lone gay man. Michael provided a great deal of support during this period for which I am grateful and we remain the best of friends and each others confident in times of need. He�s moved out now and that�s probably for the best but as my first love he will always be special to me.

So what are my impressions of the world in which I now live? Maybe amazement is an exaggeration but what surprises me is the extent of the gay population that goes unseen by the straight world. A glance that is held for slightly longer than normal gives away so much information. Whether it�s in the supermarket or the park a glance can lead to anything from a quick chat to casual sex. Some might think this lifestyle shallow or hedonistic but, for a single unattached man, the scene has developed to a stage where as long as both parties have the same agenda the physical pleasure of sex can be enjoyed by all. Sometimes sex will mean more than the norm and then a relationship will develop.

Although there is an emphasis on youth and beauty the gay scene is pretty unjudgemental. Brought together through a common cause the scene includes all spectrums of society, including the more complex sexual mixes. It still amuses me that on a Saturday night I could be dancing with a 6ft 2 inch transvestite and on a Monday lecturing to 100 male engineering students who have no inkling of the world outside their straight environment.

So what now? I�ve spent some time playing the field and am now in a stable relationship with my new partner. Any regrets? None. My life before coming out was stable but grey. My life now has many highs and some lows but it�s all colours of the rainbow and I�m true to myself.

JOS DARLING

Jos Darling is a lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Bath. Born into a middle class suburban London family he has worked in the oil and automotive industries both in the UK and overseas but now lives with his boyfriend in central Bath. He has received a couple of prizes for academic papers and was elected �University of Bath Best Lecturer� in 1995. He used to be shy, but with a name like Jocelyn Darling it�s difficult to fade into the background.

ARCHBISHOP'S HOUSE

WESTMINSTER, LONDON SW1P 1QJ

24th April, 1998

Dear Hero Joy,

Thank you for your letter and for the enclosures you sent. I was both interested to read what you had to say and impressed by the way you have written it.

I have given thought to your invitation but I am afraid I must decline. I simply cannot take on any more writing engagements for the present. I am finding it difficult to honour those I am already committed to. I trust you will understand.

With kindest regards.

Yours sincerely

Basil Hume

Archbishop of Westminster

CARDINAL BASIL HUME

Two Weeks in Baia Mare

Last summer I spent two weeks in Baia Mare, an industrial city in Northern Romania, under the auspices of the Baia Mare Project, which has links with the local orphanages and runs educational projects in the city. I was part of a group of ten girls from Oxford and London; all fairly middle-class, sheltered people. Romania was to open our eyes a little.

We arrived at the airport in Bucharest in the late afternoon. It was late July and extremely hot. To those of you familiar with the geography of Romania it will be clear that, since Bucharest is in the south of the country, some logistical expertise will be needed to get us up to Baia Mare in the north. Having narrowly escaped leaving behind half the party at the airport through being miscounted by the guide from 'Fantastic' Tours (the word now has an entirely ironic ring to Romania veterans), a minibus whisked us to the station.

Our journey north was accomplished on one of the most ancient, cramped trains in the whole of Europe. Despite the horrors of the station loos, where you must pay for toilet paper, and the further depths of grime and discomfort reached by those on the train (which I took care to avoid), the lack of floorspace in the compartment caused by six teenagers' two-week luggage (hefty suitcases and huge hand baggage), there being no luggage rack, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which can match waking up to a mid-Romanian dawn on a train, on the brink of a new experience. I wish I could show you the beautiful photograph I have on my wall. We were travelling through the countryside, through hilly farmland; it was about five o'clock in the morning, and just light. Mist hid the further hills from us. We opened the carriage window and absorbed the view. In the fields were 'coconuts' - the hemispherical brown haystacks which could be seen everywhere. By the track ran wires, a whole stave of them, scoring across the blurred slopes. Every so often we would clatter past a small station, where a uniformed attendant would run out with a flag to signal the train's passing. We kept a look out for the names of these stations, and tried to plot our whereabouts on the map of Romania we had been given. Most of the places were too small to be pinpointed, but eventually we worked out our location. The experience was magical.

Less magical was the experience of breakfasting on last night's left-over chocolate and sandwiches - we had omitted to bring breakfast. When we finally arrived in Baia Mare, at about seven, a beaming Anne-Marie, our organiser, was there to welcome us. Swiftly allocated to families, we were taken off to what were to be our homes for the fortnight.

Local families hosted us; their children were among those attending the English Summer School at which we taught on our second week there. Sharing bedrooms, even beds, we got used to life in small flats, eating unfamiliar food and coping with the language barrier. One person at least in each family spoke English, but that was often one of the children, making normal conversation difficult. In my case, my hostess Monica spoke French, her daughters Oana and Ruxandra spoke a little English, and her husband Dan only Romanian. Having taught myself a little of the language before I arrived, I could say a very few words, so that our conversations were carried out in French, English and Romanian, all at once. Some of our party found the children of their families difficult to deal with; expecting constant companionship and conversation, when all we really wanted to do was lie down and sleep. It proved difficult to reconcile the need to demonstrate gratitude for hospitality with the very real need for a little time to oneself, to adjust to being somewhere so unfamiliar. Accustomed to a moist English summer, the heat was also getting to us.

For the first week of our stay we were based at a special needs orphanage in the Meda district of the town. Meda Orphanage has about 84 children from 3 to 8 years old. Lots of them don't actually have what we would call 'special needs' but are there because of a squint, a limp, or something similar. Our mornings were spent with the children, doing activities or taking the different groups out. On our first day we spent time with particular children in the playroom, offering the individual attention they rarely get otherwise. They formed bonds very quickly - needless to say, so did we. There was building work going on down the hallway; one of my enduring memories is seeing Braita, with a toy dustpan and brush, do as she had been taught and clean up after her painting session, sweeping the corridor, not realising that as she got round the corner the plaster dust was simply being renewed.

After that first morning we spent our time taking different classes out, to places as varied as the local cafe, a small playground, the zoo, and 'Maramures', the local equivalent of Harrods. Taking the children out was a real undertaking. There were 10 English helpers, and about 10 in each class. The trouble was, the children wore grubby vests and shorts in the orphanage, which meant they had to change into best clothes for an outing. The room in which we changed them was effectively the orphanage playroom, containing toys, art materials, facepaints, and so on. Therefore any child you attempted to hold in order to help dress them would instantly try to wriggle away to seize some interesting object - and it could take ages to recapture them. In fact, some of my funniest memories involve tiny children lolloping round the room half-clothed, waving toy fire-engines or facepaints, chased by frustrated foreigners waving jumpers and skirts. I have a brilliantly blurred picture of one such child being dressed by two hardworking English girls, Marina and Miranda, one to hold the head end while the other put on the clean shorts... the child's legs waving wildly all along.

Of the trips out, the expeditions to Maramures and the zoo are probably the most memorable. Thirteen children and twelve leaders set off in a fleet of taxis (big excitement) to the centre of town. The children stared wide-eyed at the merchandise on offer - to our eyes, rather shabby and dull. The biggest attraction was the escalator system. The trouble with Maramures is that there are five floors and five escalators, all in the up direction - you have to take the stairs or the lift down. I had charge of a solemn little boy whose mouth stayed firmly turned down all afternoon. When we arrived on the moving staircase, however, he beamed, and when we got to the top of the first one, dragged me round to the next, and the next, and the next. That was the highlight of his week.

The zoo wasn't quite such good fun. It was small, smelly and dirty; we visited it three times in two weeks. Two groups of orphans went round it in high glee - we trailed after them in the hot sun. In the park afterwards we threw balls and hugged children - once one had been picked up, all the rest clamoured for the same treat.

Afternoons, during that first week, were spent on two projects at the orphanage: a) building a sandpit, and b) painting a playground with interesting and stimulating designs. Wielding picks and spades, we heigh-ho'd our way to a corner of the bumpy field which constituted the orphanage grounds, and, mocked by the yellow bulldozers of an adjacent building project, began to dig. Fortunately that afternoon was relatively cool. An irregular ellipse, a spade's depth, appeared in the earth. Then the real work began. On the second, much hotter, afternoon, we carted sand from one side of a field to another for the cement, passed bricks from hand to hand for the walls, and collapsed every so often on a convenient bench to drink large quantities of fizzy fruit juice. I myself was on the 'sand gang' and got the unenviable job of pulling the cart, which attacked one's legs at every opportunity. The bruises have only just faded. The 'brick gang' apparently got so bored that they actually named the bricks (you've guessed it - a prerequisite of selection for the trip is insanity) so that you'd get a large brick handed to you with the cheery words 'This is Elvis.' 'This is God.' 'This is the Virgin Mary.' I think we all had sunstroke...

Later work on the sandpit involved helping with cement-spreading, tile-cutting, and finally sticking decorative bits of tile on the top layer of cement. Of course, these jobs needed fewer people, so I was transferred to help with the playground-painting.

Have you ever had a really good look at a primary school playground? Most of them now seem to have innumerable designs painted on them - clowns, spirals, hopscotch, puzzle trails - all in different colours and impeccably even lines. Let me tell you, it's harder than it looks... Our raw materials were: four pots of white, two pots of red and one pot of blue paint, of which the last two colours were very old, the tops hardened and the colour separated out from the oil; four smallish decorators' paintbrushes; a metal bar to use as a ruler; one very dusty, very uneven playground about 1/3 the size of a netball court; four very overheated, but very enthusiastic, teenage girls.

We had talked earlier about exactly what we would paint, and had decided on the following:

- a house, with numbers on door, windows, roof and chimney.

- a snake with numbers from 1 to 20 on its back.

- a decorative spiral pattern for the kids to be imaginative with.

- a hopscotch pattern.

We also had to paint 10 dinner-queue places to help keep the rabble in order while they're waiting for their meals.

We chalked out our designs first, then painted them. However, before actually slopping on the paint we had to try and remove some of the ever-present dust from the ground. Easier said than done, especially when the grumpy Romanian orphanage cleaner won't let you take the broom outside in case you damage it, and you have to use the tiny toy dustpan-and-brushes loaned to you from the playroom... Of course, being the idiot I am, I managed to spill paint everywhere, mostly on myself. It was red, and I was covered half-way to the elbows. I cannot now shake off the nickname 'Lady Macbeth'. Since the paint was oil-based, water only made it worse, and a kindly builder had to help me out, with a combination of raw alcohol (on sunburnt skin), soap, grease, and much hard rubbing. Yes, before you ask, it was very painful. Very.

By the end of the week we were heart-broken to say goodbye to the children - many tears were shed on our last day, as balloons and hugs were handed out to all 83 children. We looked forward, however, to a second week of teaching.

During the second week of our stay we taught English on a summer camp for 9-13 year olds. Most of the children spoke quite good English anyway, and since we had a Romanian student of English helping each class we had no problems. Lessons included Animals, Food and Descriptions, and we spent afternoons doing various activities. We had some funny moments - for example, the singing competition, which my class won with a fabulous rendition of the Scouting classic 'Ging-Gang-Gooly', or Claire running a party games session one afternoon, and getting landed with all the kids who wanted to play football but couldn't because it was too hot...the waterfight I managed to stay out of... and some really nice memories - the flowers and small gifts I got on my last day - Lumi, my Romanian assistant, showing me her wedding photos... During this we visited the zoo for the third time. One funny memory is the fact that We Got On TV! Baia Mare has its own TV channel, and they are really pressed for news - so our arrival to teach English was a godsend! They filmed Kaori and her class, filmed our organiser Anne-Marie, filmed us playing games and singing, filmed the singing competition with which we finished the week. I don't know how much of it actually got onto the box, but it was nice being the centre of attention for a bit!

Although our classes were friendly and well-behaved (in general), we didn't get quite the same buzz out of the second week as the first - there was less sense of actually helping others in a practical way. Our English groups were all obviously reasonably well-off, though in Romania that doesn't mean quite what it does here. Still, It was all enjoyable, and addresses were exchanged with pupils and helpers.

We didn't spend all our time working (thank goodness!). At the weekend and in the evenings we did things with the group or with our families. It was at the weekend that I got sunburnt. My family took me to Ocna Sugatag, a bathing-place with a salt water pool outside the town, in the hills. It was very hot. Very, very hot. And, in another demonstration of my quite terrifying stupidity, I had no sunblock with me. I also had bleeding sores on my feet, so I couldn't spend long in the salt water. That meant I was sitting in the midday sun, unprotected, for three hours. The only good point about this experience was the fact that I was wearing a very modest one-piece bathing suit, so not too much of me got frizzled. However, what was exposed - shoulders, upper back, top of legs, arms, front - was horrifically burnt. I left a lot of skin in Romania - probably enough for scientists to clone an army of replicas to take my exams for me. At first I went red. Then I went scarlet. Then the peeling started. I had no skin on my back. I tried, a few days later, to buy a cream or spray for sunburn. What I got sold - I had to conduct the transaction in French - was a spray for burns. As in - burns. It was yellow, smelt foul, and had no noticeable effect except to a) stain my clothes, and b) dry in little crispy nodules onto the peeling skin. I looked like nothing on earth. The outline of the swimsuit can still be faintly traced on my back.

Also during the weekend I visited the Happy Cemetery, which has cheerful wooden painted grave crosses, a river called Tirgu Lapus, and various bits of woodland. I experienced a Romanian picnic (everything is fried - like a barbecue, but with oil) and picked raspberries.

Some of the weirder aspects of a Romanian social life were sampled as a group. We attended the Big-Time Disco where we danced wildly to a very wide variety of music, and drank rather a lot of rather cheap alcohol. Not me personally, you understand... We celebrated Marina's 19th birthday at Restaurant Salamandra with a real Romanian birthday cake, and lots of vodka (of course). Our last evening was also spent there, and I read a 27-verse epic poem which I had composed at 3am a few nights before. It had a verse for each person and aspect of the trip, and I managed not to tremble noticeably while reading it. We spent most of our lunch hours in the local posers' paradise, 'Oaza Italiana' - 'Italian Oasis', chosen because, well, we understand pizza and beer! We also went to the Hotel Mara disco, called the 'Blue Gin' - pronounced 'jean' and accompanied by a picture of a denim-clad rear. This was less good than the Big-Time because the music was mainly Romanian, as opposed to 80's classics mingled with current hits. However, a good time was had by all, especially by Kit, one of our party, who seemed to collect odd Romanian men - we met one whose name sounded like 'Rubbish Tissue.' We were all half-asleep by that time, so I could be wrong.

One afternoon we spent at the local children's detention centre, for which we had raised money. This was far smaller and nastier than the orphanage, with one floor of bedrooms and just one 'big' (read quite small) room downstairs. The children (from 9 to 17) were crop-headed and grubby. They spent most of their time indoors, because if they were allowed outside they simply ran away. They were young offenders, street children, or orphans without papers, waiting to be transferred to orphanages. We spent time with the kids colouring and drawing. We were quite upset by the conditions there, but pleased to see the project to which our money had gone - an outside terrace has been built adjoining the building, with high wooden gates, so that the children can play outside without trouble.

And so we came home. Sunburnt, exhausted, piled high with gifts and souvenirs - in my case including 2 watermelons - we caught the train to Bucharest. This was another overnight trip. Needless to say, we hardly slept. Instead, we gave Lizzi a haircut, ate watermelon (cut with a craft knife) and invented a cocktail (named by me, after the train carriage) "Claustrophobia" - orange vodka, pineapple juice and 7up. For the full flavour, mix in an empty wine bottle... Next morning, we got the plane. And a few hours later, we were home! The first e-mail I received after the trip was, unsurprisingly, entitled 'Tapwater!!!'

LUCY KENNEDY

The Autobiography Bit...

I've just had to write my entry for the school yearbook and could I find anything to say about myself? Not a thing! Don't, therefore, expect anything different here. A bit of a let-down after Helen Sharman, George Carey, Kofi Annan and other truly interesting people, I am Lucy Kennedy. No, you've never heard of me. I'm 18, I'm completing A-levels at a girls' school in Saaf Lundon, I'm hoping to make it to Oxford next year to do Theology, and my big things in life are music of all sorts, art and craft, books and friends. The things I hate most are feeling cold, deadlines and being made to work hard. I'm teaching myself to play the zither and to speak Romanian. That's a very poor summary of the essence of me but it'll have to do. Wait for the autobiography proper!

I've realised I haven't quite explained in the article why I ended up in Romania in the first place. I went with my school. One of the teachers has links with the founder of the project with which we worked, so a group of us go out each summer. Last July it was my turn!

HJN: She's got straight As in her exams and starts this month at New College, Oxford!

Dear Hero,

Hristos Anesti!

....

A few words about my poet-mother. I am lucky enough to have two mothers. The real one and the poet one - an ironical description as my poet-mother is more real than my real mother. ....

Now about my poet mother: she is the daughter of a friend of my Koromila grandmother, born on the island of Tinos, famous for its sculptors and its miraculous church of the Virgin Mary. Her mother, Giagia Vaso, a widow with a 4 children, a boy and 3 girls, was staying with my grandmother and my grandfather when I was born and Niki, that's how my poet-mother is called, Niki Kolarou, took me in her arms from the very beginning and brought me up when my real mother left the house in 1948 to stay with some cousins of hers after a series of disagreements with my father and my grandparents. Niki would write. My grandfather was a journalist, play writer and historian but Niki was a poet. She used to write things that seemed obscure at the beginning but actually opened up the world for me. Her poems made me start thinking at the age of 7 or 8. She is now nearing 90 and is completing her 14th poetry collection, writing mostly on Sundays. In her late 80s, she is still young, warm, giving and my first link to reason, the second one being my wood-print artist wife Rania, whom I know since we were 5 years old and with whom we shall celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary on April 22. Now I always wanted to translate some of her work in English and actually started doing so a number of times but never did any serious and systematic work on the project. So I thought that you could be the inspiration and I wrote to you about the poems....

Giorgos

HJN: I hope to add the original Greek text shortly.

Sorrow

------

You grew up, my son,

and my hands, you don't need them any more.

And in my arms your hug doesn't blossom.

The flower stopped filling my room, perfuming my thought.

A man now...

I cannot take you to pick wild lilies,

nor to fill our hands with sea shells,

and our lips with the salt of the waves.

We cannot play with the sun, or play with the snow,

and misspell our names on the tree of Loneliness.

You grew up, my son, and left.

Now I build a house of snow,

and light inside the fire of your second anniversary.

I sit on the doorstep and wait for the postman.

Where could you be, my son?

Then I build a snowman in your size,

and tell myself you are back.

I hug him and he becomes a river of tears.

Then I go in and warm myself

at the fire of your second anniversary.

Out again, I dig the snow

to find your letter that must have come.

It can't be, I say, it must be here.

And I scrape the snow, and my heart aches.

What could have happened, my son?

I try to warm my sorrow that freezes more and more,

and becomes stress, and becomes stone, and becomes ice,

and freezes more.

I am building again a snowman,

the size of your second anniversary,

and I fill his palms with Spring.

I lift him high up and I tell him,

how I miss you as a man, how I miss you as a boy.

And I warm my hands with simple stories that shed tears.

And remember our days, and remember our years,

and line up crosses in the snow,

for the days that froze, for the days that died,

in my cold home.

And the snowman weeps.

Lameness

--------

A great battle rages

for the take.

Not that your need is great,

-ideals are worn-

but you get down to the streets to fight

for a penny's worth of security,

to find both the security and the penny fake.

Explorations in the caves of consciousness.

Is there really any gold?

It is dark and moist

and the scorpions keep their stings sharp.

Archaeology bypasses the excavations

of the smiles.

The scene is too hot for sensitivities.

And besides, truth, if considered naked,

does not stand high temperatures.

Its skin gets scorched.

The mind is lame and the sentiment too.

How do they manage to go about the daily agony?

In tomorrow's roll call

who will declare Free?

Remember.....

-------------

Remember Lord, of man

when he opens the window of Remembrance.

The heartbeats,

become thunder,

and scare the songs

that were caught by night's darkness

in the embrace of time.

The mournful cries

of the desperate days

with their weakness,

their strength,

hold tight on the bosom,

-the fuzzy picture-

of summers past,

that froze,

waiting for the "wonderland",

as indelibly written in Memory.

Remember Lord....

Night in Armor

Mother and father were hard-whispering in the kitchen. Through the window, above the deep dish-sink, shone a pale orange light: it described the dust in the air. Every so often, father walked through the pale beam to get some ice, and his walking agitated the dust: it went a frenzy. The dust would still be frantic when the ice clinked down into father�s glass; the sound was like notes beginning an odd song. The dust was still flying too when the ice went snap! from a shower of gin.

Mother and father always hard-whispered in the kitchen at six o�clock. If you turned down the television enough you could tell what was the degree of hardness for that day and then you could tell what way dinner would be. If it wasn�t a very hard whisper, then during dinner prayers mother�s face would be soft and accepting, as if she said her thanks from the middle of her pink heart: these times she asked for grace. But if it was a very hard whisper, then during dinner prayers mother�s face would be stern, like a stone, and father only would say the blessing. Mother would look at him with a little sneer, disgust -- mother liked to say she was disgusted --- and then father�s voice during the prayers would have a kind of longing in it. It was the same way as his voice sounded when he sang Danny Boy.

Father had a poor singing voice but a fine praying voice: his voice had faith in it but it had a little tremble too, and it needed that because of the size of the thing he was believing in.

You had to be careful not to turn down the television volume too much because it was only six stairs up to the kitchen. If you turned it too low and tried to hear, then Mother noticed and would look at you during prayers the same way she looked at father after very hard whispering and she wouldn't pray out loud. She'd just stare at you and then squeeze her eyes shut and rub her temples with her fingers. Then she wouldn't be praying right; you were supposed to pray with folded hands.

I think maybe she was ashamed if you heard her hard-whispering. That's the way it seemed. I think when she rubbed her temples she was hoping she would never have to hard-whisper anymore ever. I would say she was praying for that, but I know there is a difference beween praying and hoping: hope is what you pray for. The six o�clock hard-whispering in the kitchen was different one day. There must have been just as much dust but the windowlight was bleak, a mean blue mixed of day sky and night; and so the dust was less visible. It was October or maybe it was September: it was fall.

When I heard the footsteps moving toward the refrigerator, coming into the part of the kitchen that I could see into, I knew they were mother's and not father's steps coming toward the refrigerator to get the ice and start the song and make the ice go snap! Her steps were light like she was just a toy mom. I had never seen her touch the gin bottle before; it surprised me when she used only one hand to pour from it. A big, heavy bottle it was. I knew: I once lifted it during a party. But she filled the glass with one hand until the ice went snap! But then she held the glass with the name of father's company printed on it up toward the ceiling light and jiggled it till the ice went snap! again with the ice faintly singing from jiggling. Mother played more of the odd gin song on the glass than father played. The second part, the part mother played by jiggling, with the ice twice-snapping and more notes singing, I never heard before. It was prettier and made the gin song not so odd, in a way.

Songs we sang at school were never odd; every one was perfect as a song and all the people knew them or had to learn them in order to be able to sing along and be part of the perfect songs. But the songs that you heard outside of school, or church, they weren't always real songs. For instance, with the ice, if I told Billy or somebody about it or asked him if he heard it, he'd say no. What's more, he'd say I was making it up, that it wasn't even a song. And the last thing I'd want to be called is a liar. Mother called a priest a liar once, right after church, right in front of everybody. She was sticking up for me when she said it, telling Father Craven that he liked some of the boys more than others and that he should be fair. She told Father Craven: you play favorites. Then she said, "everyday, everyday this continues, you are lying in your heart -- and God shall not countenance a liar."

I knew from the way father pulled her hand to move her away, tender but forceful, that it was an awful thing to say, even if it was true. I knew it was doubly awful because of the way father seemed to treat her like something happened to her too, like it must have pained her just as bad to say it as it did Father Craven -- maybe more. That midday the sun was burning hot; sweat drops formed in the pocked pores of the priest's nose; when a drop grew too large and broke loose from its crevice, the priest would wipe it away with the back of his fat, bear-paw hand and fling it. His tight collar with the plastic underneath was soaking. When father pulled her away, mother gave a little snort, like a frightened horse in a field.

It's curious how beautiful things like horses in fields and even mothers in their Sunday dresses get frightened. Once we went to the museum as a class and all the pictures that Miss Jenkins said were masterpieces had people in them who looked scared. Even the ones with only trees and flowers had trees and flowers that looked scared, like they were afraid of being captured. Maybe mother wasn't frightened when she snorted and that when people feel some other way that's not frightened, they make a sound like a horse does when it's scared. Things are so different when you really try to compare them that it's hard. I was actually pretty happy not to be one of Father Craven's favorites. Mark Miller and Tom Hoffman were his favorites; Father Craven took them places even on Saturdays. Only one time I wanted to go on a Saturday with Mark Miller and Tom Hoffman and the priest because one Saturday they went shooting - to an armory. Father Craven had his own gun and that was strange, I thought, that a priest should have a gun. But it would be great fun to shoot a rifle and hit the target in the middle all the time. After that, people would look at me and say whatever they said. But if Mark Miller or Tom Hoffman were there when somebody looked at me, one of them would say, "you know, he's a fine shot," or a good shot or however they would say it. People would know that about me then.

I only wanted to go that one Saturday because of what the plan was. Besides to go shooting, I didn't ever want to go because I liked Saturdays around my neighborhood, especially for basketball, and because I knew that Mark Miller and Tom Hoffman never had much fun. They kept to themselves pretty much and had a lot of secrets. Billy and I had a lot of secrets too, but usually if Billy and I had a secret it was funny. Mark Miller and Tom Hoffman never laughed. Anyway the Hoffman's and the Miller's went to the race track together on Saturdays, so they appreciated Father Craven and the way he looked after the boys. At Christmas time, the Hoffman's and Miller's always gave Father Craven the biggest presents, and Mrs. Hoffman tied the prettiest ribbon. Or at least it was the biggest, silliest ribbon; I always thought my mother tied the prettiest ribbons. Her ribbons always looked like they could be in a little girl's hair in a picture book.

So you would never tell Billy about the songs you hear that aren't real songs, like the way if a truck drives by at the same time the wind blows through the high tree leaves, that when they rustle with the truck going it makes a sound like a giant tambourine. Billy would probably say bullshit or you're full of it if you told him that. So you wouldn't tell him. You learned that different people you can tell different things.

------------

Mother made the ice go snap! six times, but that was only three drinks whereas, for father, it would have been six. Father played the gin song differently.

The other different thing that day besides how mother walked softly and how the gin song was prettier was the way they whispered. It wasn't hard whispering. The hard whispering was kind of like fishing. If you've ever gone fishing in a big boat, which I did once with father, you could know about it.

I was catching a fish almost as soon as we were allowed to start fishing. When you're on a big boat you have to ride far out before you can cast. During the long ride out, men try to think like fish; the man who thinks most like a fish tells the other men where the fish are swimming or what they are hungry for. Fish are apparently funny because the man who thinks most like the fish tells jokes and the other men laugh generously. A lot of times on the boat when you get far out one man turns to another and says: "Feels good, damn it. Something to be out here." And the answer is usually: "You said it." But the answer is always spoken to the sea, not to the man.

Anyway I was the first one to be catching a fish in the big boat and I got tired. Father had to help me. My arms felt filled with heavy sand. Father helped me pull the big tunafish out of the water but he said: it's all yours, buddy. The fish spasmed on the deck, whacked its body against the wood floor; it looked straight up out of a black eye like a marble. Father hit the fish in the head with a metal pipe; I cut off its head with a knife. I wasn't at all mad at the fish when I cut off its head. It is exactly the opposite of singing a song to cut off the head of a fish.

The hard whispering was like fishing because when I hooked my fish it resisted, like mother in the kitchen. I felt like father.

He said: Give it the line, let it take what it needs. Patience. And he said again: patience. He sighed and meant by sighing the word resignation.

It was the same sound he made often in the kitchen: you heard it sometimes if the television quieted on its own. I knew the sigh said resignation because of how a poem I read said the elephant was resigned. The poem said about the elephant: he resisted, but is the child of reason now.

In the kitchen mother was like the fish and father was like a fishing elephant. Mother would go as far away as she could, so that father could hardly see her. You could tell how far away she got by her voice; sometimes it seemed the voice you heard was just an echo that had traveled through the canyon of herself, that the voice it repeated was nearly buried. Father tried to pull her back; she fought. The hard whispering was always about whether the line would break. She said to him once: I'll put a dagger through you. My motherfish was overwhelmed.

But the day mother poured the gin, I knew from the gentleness of the whispering that even though they talked much longer than usual and I was hungry dinner would be good. Mother walked with angel steps.

At dinner she said "Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive" and when she finished that prayer with father hardly praying, she said: "And all the people in the world shall meet in heaven."

This last part I never heard her say before and after she said it, she took our plates and piled them high with mashed potatoes -- each helping with a pond of butter -- and burnt london broil and carrots, and we ate quietly in the way where a clinking fork sounds like a struck cymbal until after two minutes when I had almost eaten everything, and father began to cry.

JOSEPH L. MACKIN

Joseph L. Mackin lives in New York City, where he is working on a novel entitlled "A Man Lies Enormous". He is trying to get it right.

3 July 1999

Dear Hero Joy Nightingale

Thank you so much for your wonderful letter. I am amazed at your industry and all the brilliant things you do. I don't know what I can send you for your webzine - but if you write to me again I'll have a think of what I've got.

All the very best of luck.

With admiration

John Mortimer

SIR JOHN MORTIMER

is a writer, barrister and playwright, but he's not found me anything yet. HJN. 

Twitching--only an Obsession?

In our time everything one might thoroughly enjoy such as train spotting or bird watching has been degraded to the status of an �obsession�, something vaguely �sick�. How sad. As a psychologist, I have worked with persons with obsessive-compulsive disorder. They are not happy persons. In no sense can their obsession be seen as �a hobby gone haywire�. I once tried to help an attractive 14 year old girl who was completely house bound by her obsessions with washing. After years� of therapy, she recalled a doctor, now in prison, who had interfered with her sexually as a child. She could not go to school, make friends or have a hobby. She was trapped by her problem.

Of course the hobby of birding does involve a somewhat obsessive component known in the game as �ticking�. Human memory being a highly fallible thing, one needs to keep some record of what one has seen, as well as where and when. Some technical birds like Lesser Short-toed Lark would be quickly forgotten given their more conspicuous cousins, the Short-toed Lark. My fate on a recent trip to Spain was not to see these �little brown jobbies�. What one remembers is the frustration of missing it when the bird watchers in the front of the Land Rover claimed to have a tickable look!

So what is twitching beyond list making component?

Most importantly, it is not the same for everyone. I write as a man, and one woman bird watcher I used to know well seemed to value different things about it than I did. She cared about the �cuteness value� of each species. Fairy terns and Quail and Gull chicks did very well, but Griffon vultures were not much admired. Ticking was a waste of time. What mattered was the sweetness of each species and its song in its habitat. As much time was spent on flowers and sites as on the identifications. Least I be accused of stereotyping, let me also recall another female bird watcher, who could outdo me any day for endurance, and persistence in the joy of pure ticking. It was on a tenting trip with her that we both added California Condor to our lists, before the time they were all trapped for breeding programmes.

Like my first female example, we men care deeply about the aesthetics of bird watching too. In the Spain trip just completed, I added 34 new ticks to my European list. Right at top of my favorites was the Black Stork sitting on its nest at Parque Natural de Monfrague (near Madrid). Finding the Stork was easy if one knew a few words in Spanish and could look at the cliff face to which the park official pointed. There was no challenge in the chase. What mattered was its unexpected beauty. Iridescent blues and purples and greens filled my eye in the 40-power telescope. None of the field guides had done it justice. It�s beauty was a hummingbird writ large.

Next I love bird watching because birds can fly. There is something about the silent, powerful flight of the Black Vulture, nesting near the Stork, that cannot be matched by primitive man-flight in cumbersome noisy fix-winged jets. Bird flight connotes both freedom and courage to our land locked species. The swallows leave the nest in my car port each September and flying to South Africa and back every year. Do we humans often embrace life�s possibilities so fully? OK, I�m being anthropomorphic. The Swallows just follow some instinct, but then evolution itself is a gutsy process, not afraid of extremely dramatic solutions to life�s problems.

But we humans are no less subject to evolutionary forces than the swallows, and my particular genes tell me to hunt. Birding is ecologically sane way of hunting. While we consume some of the earth�s precious petrol, at least no life is taken. This is the true twitch, when one finds a bird so rare and hard to get to that the satisfaction of chase lasts for years. Take the Five-striped Sparrow. It is a Mexican species that enters the United States only in two obscure, boulder strewn canyons in Southern most Arizona. There is no track or trail down these canyons. To reach the right habitat one scrambles ones way over the rocks in the dry river valleys in temperatures well over 100 degree Fahrenheit. Should rain come, a flash flood is a real possibility even though no rain actually may fall where one is. No breezes reach the canyon floor. Water must be rationed carefully if one camps in the canyon as we did. Then finally with Mexico but a few yards away, courage failing in the heat, having looked at every little brown jobbie all the way down, there it is�the five-striped sparrow in full breeding plumage, singing its sweet finch like song in a thorny bush high above you on the canyon sides. An ultimate twitch! The bird is yours as surely as if you had bagged it on the most gruelling safari. Overcome by heat exhaustion twice on the return journey, I made it back to the car, and have the pictures to prove it!

Besides its collecting, aesthetic and hunting satisfactions, the ultimate meaning of birding has to do with my identity. Hobbies are things we do for ourselves and by which we understand ourselves. They don�t continue our species nor bring home the bacon. They exist to let us who we are.

I think one of the silliest ideas that our times have foisted upon us is the belief in a single, coherent self. All my work in trying to help people suggests that we are all a bit of jumble of different part-selves struggling each other for dominance or simple expression. Birding is the way I become �not-me� or better, an �another me�. And that me is not just a cog in modern industrial West, with endless responsibilities to work and family. It is free to admire the beauty of the natural work, to challenge the most difficult twitch, to collect each tick with an unabashed sense of achievement. That me exists for the shear fun it, for leading me to the earth�s most beautiful places. The birds know where they are, and themselves are the diamonds in that beauty.

Can we humans ever learn to respect and preserve these sacred places not just for our children�s pleasure, but also because we value the birds themselves, for their vintage place in evolution�s ideas. They continue an idea that began as a dinosaur. In the long run, evolution seems toward diversity. There are over 7000 kinds of birds. It may not be too pleased with a form of ape currently hell-bent on reducing that diversity, and clinging to the absurd belief that they are in command, and can as they please with that earth, as if they owned it.

NED MUELLER

Ned Mueller grew up in suburban New Jersey, and graduated from Rutgers University, studying entomology. He started bird watching at age 15, and has never stopped since. He took an MA and PhD at Cornell University in social psychology and developmental psychology. For many years he taught child development at Boston University, where he conducted research on the origins of peer relations in young children.

In 1980 he began clinical psychology training at Judge Baker Guidance Centre, Boston. In 1990 he resettled in England, where he has worked as a clinical psychologist in London and Canterbury. He specialises in Narrative Therapy and in EMDR for post-traumatic stress. He has developed two tests for understanding children's concept of self and other, the Teddy Bear's Picnic and the MUG.

He is married to an Italian and has three children, two grown children in America, and a six-year-old born in the UK. He loves classical music and pasta.

Dear Hero Joy Nightingale,

I wrote the poem below, which I submit to "From the Window" for your consideration, after a trip to Cambodia earlier this year. It seems such a peaceful place that you inevitably ask yourself how genocide could have taken place there barely 20 years ago. No-one can provide a really convincing argument, so I looked at carvings at the archaeological sites around Angkor for some clues, and no doubt read into them what I'd already decided to find as an answer: the simple worship of power and the way power de-humanises those who have too much of it. Not surprisingly, since I'm a would-be poet, I see hope of breaking free as lying most clearly in the subversive artistic spirit. "Breaking the Shackles" is unpublished and not currently under consideration anywhere else, though I would like to know whether you accept simultaneous submissions.

Biographical information: After many years teaching English as a foreign language in Europe, Africa and the Far East, I'm now a translator in Turin, Italy. I've recently taken to writing and performing poetry. Poems of mine are currently on-line at "Aabye's Baby" and the "Intercultural Platform".

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Best wishes,

Bryan Murphy

-----------------------------

Breaking the Shackles

The question resonates

from the Pol Pot years:

"Why?"

The answer reverberates:

"I do not know."

The bas reliefs at Angkor

offer a clue. In that rock,

the finest human artistry

lays its skill

at the service of power.

Power, above all, to the king,

elephant-seated reviewer of troops

with faces identical,

clothing identical,

weapons identical:

expendable ciphers,

robbed of humanity.

How will they act

when power takes them?

Kill blindly,

as trained?

Wreak excess

upon each other?

Is there a fissure

that offers escape

from this cycle of hell?

Look closely at the Angkor carvings:

you may see it.

Whereas the sculptor's chisel

serves his lord,

the anarchic artist spirit

chips into the background

scenes of peace

evoking music, food, work, play.

Centuries later,

The nation's children murder

artists, musicians, dancers

as strategy, not caprice.

Hubris destroys that regime,

its foul task incomplete.

Cambodian arts revive,

thrive in a minor key.

Free thought survives.

(February 1999)

--------------------------

Bryan Murphy

5th Aug. '99

Dear Hero, Very many thanks for letting me see your work and CV - very moving and admirable. Unfortunately I have no time at present to contribute to your mag. but I'll keep it in mind at the end of my next book, before I start my next journey. Meanwhile I'm sending two remarkable books by young Irishmen who share with you a particular sort of courage and talent.

All good wishes,

Dervla Murphy

DERVLA MURPHY

A prolific travel writer, most memorably cycling to India in the early 1960s with a gun in her saddle bag for wolves and for her book on the Irish "troubles". HJN.

Dear Hero

Well here I am, less than 24 hours before your deadline, finally sitting down to write my promised article for From The Window.

It is not that I have not been giving the matter much thought. Every day for the past fortnight, I have racked my mind for inspiration. Pathetic, I know, for a so-called professional journalist. But the truth is that although I interview some fascinating people, my own life is rather mundane. In fact, if you had told me 20 years ago that by my late 30s, I would be leading the life of a middling executive, living in a middle market house in the heart of Middle England, I would have taken it as a grave insult. Back then I saw ahead of me only challenging assignments, international travel and a home life centred around a fashionable London postcode. Marriage and children would have their place, of course, but only in a thoroughly modern way. I would be a Bohemian, unconcerned by life�s minutiae. I would have an equal relationship with my offspring, enabling them to adopt, from the earliest age, a mature outlook, and enabling me to remain forever hip. I would always be well-read, know who was number 1 in the charts and which was the right skirt length of the season.

Yet here I am, at 37, with an outmoded wardrobe and a radio tuned to Radio 2. I live in kindergarten-style chaos with my non-working time consumed by the demands of my two sons - Oliver, six, and Felix, three. (My husband complains constantly that he is a victim of neglect).Where once my deadlines used to be determined by cutting edge news events - general elections, wars, major disasters - today, they are hinged to the school run and bath and bedtimes.For my first years of motherhood, I told myself this was simply a phase. One day soon the laundry mountain would subside, the Noddy video would be exchanged for the more tolerable Simpsons, shopping trips would no longer be confined to Sainsbury�s and B&Q and life would regain some of its equilibrium. Recently, I have realised that this is not going to happen. And the strangest thing is that this revelation does not bother me one iota. My work takes me outside myself, into the lives of people far more exciting and adventurous than I can ever hope to be. But at the end of each day, I am more than happy to return to the humdrum. A fulfilling family life, I now see, is a challenge in itself. Managing to maintain it may not make riveting copy, but it is far from mundane to me.

CATHERINE O'BRIEN

Catherine O�Brien is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for The Daily Telegraph

Dear Hero Joy Nightingdale:

I hope you enjoy the essay "For Now."

I have been published in numerous magazines and teach special education students near the Mexico border.

With appreciation,

Diane Payne

----------------------------------------------------------

HJN writes, November 99:

Subject: Greetings From Colombo

Hero,

All that rubbish you read about the Aussies just isn't true is it. I've

always thought they're quite nice people really.

Please find attached an article relating to the construction of a bridge on

the Indus Highway Project in the North West Frontier. It was written last

year when I lived in D.I.Khan originally for publication in my company magazine.

Nigel.

The Pawunda are traditional people; they are travelling people, living in the mountains during the long hot summers and coming down to the plains in the cooler months. They keep animals, which they sell at market just before the sacrifice festival. They walk, they wear coloured clothes, do not cover their heads, they sleep in rough tents. They speak a dialect which few people understand. This life has carried on for thousands of years, following the natural cycles, obeying only the seasons. The land is mostly open desert and so they are free to wander as they please.

Like everybody else the pawunda want to make money and this year they have seen a business opportunity. A few of the guys returned from the mountains and bought tractors to work on the construction sites all around this area. There is a lot of work in this area, especially on the new irrigation project.

At Vehoa there is a dry river bed: a nullah. For most of the year the traffic on the Indus Highway crosses the sandy river bed without problem. During the rainy season the rain falls in the Kandakar Mountains along the Afghan border and floods down the nullahs to the Indus River. The highway authority has twice attempted to construct bridges across the nullah at Vehoa but in both cases it was washed away in the first couple of years. In this season the nullah is impassable every couple of days. In past years local farmers have all but abandoned their fields and made some extra money pulling trucks across the river with their tractors. $2 was the going rate for a small vehicle and anything upto $5 for the heavy trucks. The camel owners also ply a regular trade ferrying the bus passengers for a small fee. It�s quite well organised; a bus on each bank and the passengers merely swop buses. You can wade across if you don�t mind getting your shalwar qimmiz wet; the river is wide and the water not actually deep; I can see the knees of the camels.

This year the pawunda are in business, they have the tractors. They charge $10 to pull one truck across the river. In order to make sure they get their money they have dug a deep hole near the temporary slope at the south bank, so that no trucks can possibly cross without a tow.

Three days ago a shop owner from D.G.Khan sent two pick-up trucks up the road to D.I.Khan, one was filled with medicines for a chemist. It was late afternoon when they arrived at Vehoa, the drivers could see the floodwater but they decided to risk it. They didn't know the pawunda had dug the hole. Both vehicles got stuck. In the growing darkness they summoned the pawunda who tried to pull the pick-up trucks with first one, then two and finally three tractors. No success! They went away to sleep and when they returned the next morning they found the two Suzuki pick-ups buried to the top of the cab and an oil tanker stranded. Four tractors could not pull them out of the sand.

The new bridge will be open this year, but somehow I think the pawunda will not go back to their traditional way of life.

NIGEL ANTHONY PEARCE 

Hero,

It's great that you like my article. The first time I've ever been published in any form.

My name is Nigel Anthony Pearce; I am 46 years old, born just outside London, educated in Rochester, Kent and Birmingham University. I have become a peripatetic Bridge Engineer currently living and working in Colombo. I started working overseas in 1989 and my work has taken me to Turkey, China, South Korea, Pakistan and now Sri Lanka. I have been married twice and will shortly take the plunge for the third time. My children from my second marriage live in South Wales. I think that just about covers the first half of my life.

Nigel.

To Hero Nightingale, my extraordinary moment in a rather ordinary life, as promised.

It was March, 1993, when I finally convinced Neil to let me throw away

the pill. I remember it clearly, especially because we were in Vietnam,

and the trade embargo had just been lifted. The Vietnamese were very

occupied painting their Coca Cola and Pepsi signs, I was very occupied

with expanding my family.

The rattle of the packet as I tossed it in the bin punctuated the

importance of the moment. Now sex was more than sex, we were going to

make us a baby!!

Five years later, in March 1998, there was no baby, and no hope.

You see, every person assumes they are fertile. Every woman sits a

little straighter when her period is late, concentrating her energy

either into bringing it on, or praying it�s off. Every man assumes he

shoots a potent mixture of salty liquid and tadpoles on steroids.

But it isn�t true.

Our tragedy was we thought Neil was the problem. We took a sperm sample

into two separate labs, and both returned high counts, but with low

motility. For years Neil blamed himself. Then, we learned through

friends that you should abstain from sex at least two days before taking

in a sample. Well, we didn�t know that. A new sample eliminated Neil.

He was ecstatic. I felt rather the opposite.

So began months of extensive tests in a huge private women�s hospital in

Seoul, Korea. For someone not particularly rapt about pap smears, the

constant opening of one�s legs to be prodded, poked and photographed was

revolting. To survive, I withdrew emotionally from the surroundings,

and listened to music in my head. It helped all my doctors were women.

Eventually the testing was done. My body was a mess. Not only was my

uterus arcuate (upside down), but my mucus was hostile to Neil�s sperm.

In other words, I was killing them before they could swim the Channel.

The only hope was IVF.

Did I mention how much I hate injections? I despise them. This new

route, a procedure called GIFT, required I took oil injections daily in

my butt. I cannot tell you how much these hurt. Every day I reported

to the hospital early in the morning (before school) to receive my

hormones. Every few days my ovaries would be photographed, via wand

camera, to ascertain progress.

Eventually, 6 type A eggs were harvested and this little chicken went

under the knife to have a baby implanted inside her. Cautious elation

was shared by the parents.

Two weeks later, the pregnancy test revealed a terrific failure.

Having read lots of books about infertility, we were determined not to

go down the IVF path again. We already had a beautiful Korean boy,

adopted from Eastern Orphanage in Seoul at three weeks of age. Buggar

it, nothing wrong with one child families. We gave up. The Baby God

won.

Five months later I wrote this email to my best friend;

Thank you so much for the correspondence, Cels. I just wanted to get

back in touch and tell you some news. You see, Australia is so far away

from Tanzania...I thought it would be OK to tell you I am

pregnant...ahhhhhh!!!!!!! We are going to have babies nearly the same

time!!!!!!!!!! Actually, I am only 6 weeks pregnant, and I am very

nervous about telling you or anyone, Neil is dead against it because he

thinks it will jinx us. Remember all those problems I have...well, they

haven't gone away, getting through the first trimester will be the

hardest thing. We are already very anxious to know the sex, so we can

firm up the name, which is a matter of hot debate right now, although

Neil doesn't like taking part because he doesn't want to get all excited

and then lose it. But its impossible not to. I am due next May, late

May, or early June, so I will come home to have it. I don't want to keep

it to myself "in case it dies" I want to share it with the world, even

though it isn't 12

weeks yet - when are you due? How many weeks are you? I make it you are

10 weeks in front of me, so are you due in march? My breasts feel like

someone is sticking hot knives in them, I am constantly sick... I think

I do feel pregnant...and my belly is sticking out, or is it my

imagination???

Anyway, isn't that a miracle/exciting????

Love Sue

PS now we can exchange notes on sickness, I threw up all day yesterday,

I concur with your opinion it is all day sickness, not morning sickness!

Two weeks later, this email followed;

October 27, 1998

Well, I lost the baby.

I got back from the hospital an hour ago, and have been thinking about

the events of the past few days�of how ironic it is that my mother, and

Neil's mother, telephoned us on Sunday�the first time anyone ever

telephoned us�that fateful Sunday, so full of promises�yet later, so

full of sadness�

All along Neil and I knew it would be difficult. But it doesn't stop

you becoming exhilarated with excitement, doesn't stop you wanting to

tell the world, doesn't stop you dreaming of names, and a future�a

teacher? Doctor? Veterinarian? Perhaps a professional tennis player.

Warnings from our doctors in Seoul made us cautious in public, but

behind closed doors, behind shut eyes, we placed our hands on my abdomen

and we dreamed�

It's all over now. At least, for [genetic] Fletcher baby number one.

He is lying at the bottom of a jar, floating in formaldehyde, awaiting a

pathology report on why he chose to enter the world 32 weeks too early.

Perhaps a fortnight of tests will reveal the reason, chromosomal

deficiency? Malformation? Incorrectly formed placenta? The doctor

will tell us as soon as he knows.

Around 6.30 p.m. on Sunday I knew something was wrong. I was having

some cramping, and there was light bleeding. We looked up the symptoms

in "What to Expect when you are Expecting," a book we had been loaned.

The message was clear, "contact medical help at once". What help? I had

no doctor, bar my GP. I rang the school nurse, Neema. Alarmed, she

began a telephone tree of doctors, ending with the gynecologist Dr

Oneko, the father of two of my students. He was, remarkably, at the

hospital working late, and he agreed to see me at once.

Neil was in the bath with Conor when I found out. I told him I had to

go to the hospital at once, and within 5 minutes we had found Conor a

baby sitter, and we were on our way. At the hospital, Dr Oneko

performed a physical examination. He considered an ultrasound, but

given my sensitive state he rejected the u/sound "until the morning,

when you have rested." He said my uterus was large, obviously still

pregnant, and my cervix was closed. He told me I had nothing to worry

about, gave me medication for the cramping and a muscle relaxant. He

told me to get some sleep and come back in the morning.

I went straight to bed. Around midnight, I woke with bad cramping. I

went to the bathroom, and between midnight and 3 a.m. I "gave birth," 32

weeks too early, to a lot of blood and a tiny fetus. I kept everything

in a jar, which turned out to be exactly the right thing to do (as gory

as it sounds).

Later, I hoped we might be able to bury our baby. However, I think he

is now doomed to a pathologist's sink.

Early Monday morning, I went to the hospital for the scheduled u/sound.

I showed the doctor the contents of my jar, and he confirmed what Neil

and I suspected; I had spontaneously aborted. This was a sad moment.

He said, "this is an abortion." I said, simply, "yes." And then I

started to cry.

Later that morning, I was admitted to hospital for an overnight stay.

They wanted to be sure everything had gone, and there was no risk of

infection. I underwent a battery of tests, led from this room to that

room�was prodded and poked�x-rayed and ultrasounded�but never, all day,

was I asked, "How do you feel? Are you sad?" I was very, very sad�but

its just as well no-one asked me, because I am sure I would have lost

the last thread of control�which I was clinging to, in order to get

through the waiting and the tests.

Then, Dr Oneko's wife, (also Dr Oneko), saw me in the hall, awaiting my

last test before admission. And she broke me, by talking to me about my

lost baby, and how she almost lost Sella, but they had been able to

prevent the miscarriage, but her best friend hadn't been so lucky, and

had lost hers�and we both cried and cried, in that hospital hall,

surrounded by a sea of black faces, watching with disinterest.

Now I have been discharged. According to the hospital, the very real

chance of infection has been minimized by constant injections of

antibiotics, and as long as I keep my feet up for a couple of days I

should be fine. Neema will inject me three more times just to be sure.

Physically, I am going to be OK.

Emotionally, we are both a little down. But, the doctor has assured us

a miscarriage for a woman over thirty, in her first pregnancy, is not

unusual at all. In fact, it is a positive sign of two things, 1) I can

indeed be pregnant, and 2) now my body has rejected one, the odds of my

next one going full term have dramatically increased. We take comfort

in this, despite mourning for a little baby that never had much of a

chance.

And so endeth October 1998, month of hell. Two weeks of pneumonia, then

I found out I was pregnant, three days later I fell seriously ill with

dysentery, one week later, I get out of bed, only to get back in two

nights later and experience a miscarriage. Bring on November.

Love Sue

xxx

Infertility is soul destroying for those who crave the lifetime

challenge of children. You feel inadequate, broken, with invisible bits

missing. Apparently, infertility is becoming more and more common, and

the average sperm count of men has drastically reduced over the last

twenty years. And, after you have a miscarriage many women come out of

the closet with their tales. Nearly all my friends, my mother, and my

mother in law, had miscarriages. I wish we talked about it more,

because it is a devastating experience.

I don�t know how many people will read this, or who, or why. But if you

are also infertile I want you to know I really feel for you, and I wish

you all the best in your battle with the Baby Gods.

Subject: Re: writing not photographing

Date: Tuesday, 27 April 1999 2:07pm

Thanks for writing, I did get your last email however it's a terrifying prospect being asked to write so I chose to ignore it. I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner to this email but I have been in Albania photographing refugees and will be going back soon for the ground war. Probably. As I said, writing is terrifying, wouldn't you prefer some pictures?

Regards to you and your Mum.

Simon Townsley

SIMON TOWNSLEY

is a photographer for the Sunday Times newspaper. HJN.

Subject: Fw: a women's report from Belgrade

Date: Friday, 23 April 1999 3:26pm

Dear colleagues,

I thought that you might be interested how is it being a woman in Belgrade these days. I am Yugoslav, pure breed of mixed cultures (one granddad Bosnian Serb, another Slovene, one grandmother Bosnian Croat, the other one Serb from Hungary...) I did my MA in Paris, 15 years ago, my Ph.D. in Stockholm, 10 years ago, I am a professor of Belgrade university, author of 7 books, writer, poet, and what is most important, mother of 3 little children, aged 9, 8 and 3. I used to live in Sydney in my maiden days, and I wrote a novel about it, 15 years ago. Time has stopped here. Our normal lives stopped to function 4 weeks ago. No shools, no kindergartens, no universities, no future plans, no nothing. My latest book, about mothers and daughters within the complicated macho mentality of the Balkans, was supposed to be printed 4 weeks ago. It was of course, halted. The film, I was working on for 4 years, was just about to begin shooting in Monte Negro, (it was supposed to be a film about our most successful woman ever, the last queen of Italy, who was a Montenegrin princess, the queen Helen of Savoy) and of course, there will be no film...those are the banal trifles in comparison with the whole situation, but then, it is just an example how every one is affected with what is going on. We watch our collapse like a TV nightmare, a video game, and I still can not believe my own eyes. I moved from my home in the first week of bombing, after the NATO struck on the heating plant.( Needless to say there is no heating in Belgrade, and it is still quite cold outside...) , opposite the building I was living in. The detonations made me deaf for couple of hours, and I was playing a "LA VITA E BELLA" routine with my scared children, telling them "it was just an earthquake"..., so I am a refugee in my own town, living in my parents tiny flat in the center of the town, with my 3 kids, my mother in law and my husband...At least, we crossed the bridge. There is no cooking oil in town, and for milk one should get up very early and cue...but then, we have been cueing for years now, since those sanctions...(at that time I had babies and we had to go to the village once a week and fill up the coca cola bottles with milk, then freeze them and pray to God, there will be electricity...), and the cues for cigarettes are miles long...but we still sing and dance every day at noon in the center, on our bridges at night, defending them with our bodies. I do realize that the next step is to proclaim all of us as military targets, because we might hide soldiers at our homes...2 days ago, NATO struck a TV station which was owned by the president's daughter, but ironically, that station had no news, just the trashy American films and south American soap operas, so we were devastated because the transmission of CASSANDRA and ESMERALDA was delayed for one day...is that a military target? Parts of the cluster bombs went straight through the windows of the people living opposite that skyscraper...a 3 year old kid died in her own bathroom, killed through the window with the parts of the cluster bomb...this is not propaganda, this is merely a mother's voice from the real world...no, we do not go all to the shelters...I can not imagine myself with 3 kids in a dump cellar, sitting there all night.And beside, we believed that the civilians will not be targeted...I do not know what to do anymore...but one thing is certain. This is not a peaceful mission. 3 million children go to bed with the sounds of the sirens...this morning the TV Belgrade was hit, and in its basement was the only children's cinema in town, and the youth center. A friend of mine was devastated when the hospitals released all the patients home, because they can not guarantee them safety, so she is stuck with her mother who can not move nor talk nor live without constant assistance. And she has no money to hire a nurse. She is a film critic of that same blown television, her office was in flame this morning, with her salary check...the other friend of mine went 2 days ago to a funeral of her cousin, a Bosnian refugee who was an ingeneer in Panchevo Chemical factory. When the poor man saw his work in flames, he simply had a heart attack and died. My neighbor is a chemist, working in a laboratory for the Police, she is mother of 3 astmathic children, and she can not go to the shelter either, because the kids might have an attack...she got pale when she saw from her balcony that 2 kilometers wide black cloud from the Panchevo chemical plant ...but God is with us. The wind blew it away from Belgrade, and the clouds are over my city every night for these 4 weeks, since the bombing begun. This is not the typical weather here at this time of the year, believe me....You might and should ask me about the poor refugees running away from Kosovo. You don't know how Kosovo looks like in normal times...scattered villages, isolated houses, a civil war going on since the Turkish times...I saw a documentary last year about this teacher, who walks 20 miles every day, from her home in Djakovica to this remote village, just to teach 4 children in the last Serbian school there. Their parents say, "we would have sold our houses to the Albanians long time ago, if it weren't for her." She is 30 now, and is still walking...Albanians are good people, with lots of children, their natality rate is the highest in Europe, in average, they have 6 children....and now they are under the bombs, with no electricity, water nor food, in between 2 fires, with KLA behind them and Yugoslav Army in front of them...what would you do in their shoes? But that is another story...the story of mentalities, drug and wapons chain, the Balkan route of heroine, and so on.But I won't talk about the things I do not know. Nor I wish to even think about the radiation after thousands of bombs already thrown on my land, and how my grandchildren will look like if they are ever born...My brother is in Novi Sad, and I presume I should swim upstream Danube to see him again...there are foreigners in my sky every day and night, they are blowing down my country, telling me stories about peace and democracy...I know this: if the money spent so far on the bombs and humanitarian aid, was just invested in our country, it would have been a paradise for everyone....but the money keeps rolling on, the old weapons must be tested, and the new ones improved, the macho male pride must be satisfied on both sides. We are the lab rats, and we are still alive...no one expected that. Thank you for reading this. Yours truly, Maja Volk,. Ph.D., prof. etc....a mother, daughter, sister, wife and daughter in law. from Belgrade

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Subject: Re: a women's report from Belgrade

Date: Monday, 26 April 1999 8:36pm

Dear Hero,

Thanks for your letter, it means so much to me....I think that when they cut us from the Internet, that day will be the last day for me, it would be like cutting my right hand off...Am I religious? I am Serbian orthodox, but my strongest belief is in our patron saints...for Serbs, "slava", or a family saint's day is the most important day in our religion. My saint, St Michael (12.th October - the Indian summer), well , that is a long story, but he actually helped me quite vividly to return from Australia, and what can I say - my third child's name is Michael...but, I adore different cultures, I celebrate everything, from the Chinese New Year to Yom Kippur, I cook exotic food, from Thai to Tunisian, that is my way of escaping the reality, I guess, or travelling without spending the money...why do you ask? In this particular case, I must believe in God - 5 weeks of heavy clouds over us is quite a proof of his existence to me. I mean, when I hear desperate voice of Mr. Shea, saying:" Just give us 3 sunny days and you will see the impact of NATO..." and I look at the sky, then I know Someone is up there....By the way, today appeared in our papers the meteorological charts of all the Aprils in this century in Belgrade...and guess when did we have the heaviest clouds and rain? The Aprils of 1941, 45 and 99. 1941- in April, the bombing of Belgrade by Hitler, in 1945 - the bombing of Belgrade by Allies (because the Germans had occupied the town, so the British grounded the town more severely than Hitler in 41....) and in 1999 - by NATO...that is on religion....

Yes, I would like very much to have my voice heard on the Internet...

O.K. the description of today.

Monday, whatever. 7 a.m. The sirens announce the end of the air attack.No one gets up. 9.o.clock. My husband gets up and goes to listen to the radio... what was hit last night? Novi Sad again, Nish, Valjevo, the usual. As you know, there are 6 of us at the moment in a 2 rooms apartment of my parents. Yesterday, my father phoned from the village, pretty worried because he had some symptoms of internal bleeding, they didn't know what was it, he had stomach pains etc...today he phones even more worried, telling me that this is the consequence of inhaling that cloud which came with the wind after the explosion at the chemical plant in Panchevo. They have scented the stench, and he is not the only one...but thanks God, it will pass soon, hopefully without more damage...I open the papers this morning, and I see the mortuaries for those workers who died in the television building. I freeze - I knew the make up artist - she made me up when I had one of my interviews on TV about my film that now will never be made, last year...ten more are in the building, we do not know whether they are alive or not...10 o.clock, the kids wake up, they quarrel, I yell, my husband is out trying to buy some milk - he was lucky, he got 2 litters. But still, no luck with cooking oil. It is O.K., we purchased a lot last week, but then - one never knows how long this might last...we hear that 5 out of 7 electrical something are blown, and if those 2 go, we shall be out of electricity...for us that means a quick transfer to the village, there at least we have a cow and some hens, so we shall survive. After the severe bombing of Novi Sad (they have finally put down the last bridge over the Danube - I feel awful, killing the bridge is like killing a human being) I phone my brother. They spent the night in the shelter. ...We have breakfast and read the papers - what shall we do today? It is raining, so we are stuck in the house. Shall we cross the bridge and go to see some friends at New Belgrade? Yes. My husband goes briefly to work (he is working for some foreign trade company) he returns gloomy - he will probably lose his job soon...but we have discussed that before, so we know what to do when that happens...I go to my university, to check whether my salary arrived, and bingo! The second part of my DECEMBER salary has finally arrived...! I take it and immediately go to the hair dresser - the poor woman is hardly standing on her feet, because all the women in Belgrade are doing the permanent...and she tells me her story, which is too long to retell, now, with my new hair do, feeling much better, I go with my kids and mother in law to visit some relatives. The men discuss politics, the kids are wet of kicking and playing, and I listen to my neighbor (the one with 3 asthmatic blond daughters), she is packing, because they can not pay the flat any more, so they must move...the other neighbor we all fear to phone, because her son in law was on duty in television building, and he was not found yet...I don't know what to do, how to help her...5.p.m. Time to cross the bridge. We are all in my RENAULT 4, squeezed and yelling. My husband's car is parked in the garage, he is afraid to drive it, because it belongs to the company. On the way back, I stop at the basement of POLITIKA newspaper (very scared, because that might be the next target), and hand over my theater review for the play I saw the day before yesterday...The kids go out for a walk. I check the e mails. Lots of them as usual...I try to clean the apartment, answer the mail, cook the dinner. Inventing useful work...No one is watching the news anymore. Just cartoons. That is our tranquilizer. 8 p.m. My husband decided to watch CNN...they are not so severe, but still, the blood pressure is getting up. The children are playing. Michael is pretending to be a pilot, and Milena is screaming: "The air strike, the air strike!" They laugh. 10.p.m. No sirens...we are worried...they are late...did something happen to NATO? 10.30. The sirens finally howling.Michael, my 4 years old, smilingly announces: "Time to go to bed, you heard the sirens!". My mother in law is yelling at my daughters who giggle and won't sleep. I look at my husband, with an erotic smile, but he looks back as if saying:"Where? It is impossible..." We have this problem of space...how very socialist...insomnia attacks again. We watch TV, we can not make up our minds what film shall we look at, "The deer hunter" or "The Taxi driver"...I go for the TAXI driver....we laugh at Harvey Keitel...I forgot completely that he was also in that movie...Midnight. We listen. Some explosions in the distance. Where could it be? Batajnica airport again? Is there anything left there to blow? We call friends who are living on top floors of skyscrapers. Those with binoculars are on top of the roofes, with mobile phones, ready to answer all our questions...No, they say, nothing serious. 1. a.m. I start embroidering something, just to do anything. I still can not sleep. 2.am. I read second part of Ana Karenina...one good thing about being in this apartment, I can go through my old library again...2.30. I finally fall asleep. Another meaningless day has gone....and we survived.

How is my lovely London these days? What is new in the theater? The last time I was there...it was even before Australia, 13 years ago...I thought today of my house in Croatia, where I delivered my first child...I haven't seen it for 8 years now...but, let the past rest...Funny thing is, when the television Belgrade went off the air, under the ex second program emerged TV Zagreb, the Croatian television, so we watched their news for a change...but we are back on air again... I will stop here. Best wishes, Maja Volk, Belgrade

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Subject: Re: acknowledgement of your latest e-mail

Date: Tuesday, 27 April 1999 11:37am

Dear Hero,

I would also like to hear more about you...an orthodox christian in London? Russian, Serbian, Greek, Roumanian or Egyptian? How old are you? What is your family situation? Back to me. A writer likes to write, so it will be my pleasure to update you with my life. My father is still sick, he is planning to come to the hospital in belgrade, the day after tomorrow, but he doesn't have petrol, so he will have to use the bus, and nowadays, taking a bus is quite an experience...it might take him 2 hours, and it is just 20 miles from Belgrade. He is by the way, a film and a theater critic, and wrote 36 books on yugoslav theater and film. When he was a boy, in Bosnia, during the second world war, he literraly crossed the street walking over 200 serbian dead bodies, in order to get home...so, he is very frustrated, his memories are coming back, so he started another book....my mother is an actress, and author herself, of 11 books, novels and theatrical memories...I am their only child, and with my 7 books so far....still a baby. All 3 of us are in the latest edition of WHO IS WHO in the Balkans...The bridge. Danube i> Belgrade is enormous, because it gets together with Sava river, the second largest river in Yugoslavia, and that is why building the bridges over Danube here are so complicated and expensive, so we only have 3 bridges. One of them is in between New and old Belgrade, right in the heart of the town. Or, in my case, in between my home and my parents, in between my husband's job and my home, etc, etc. It is crucial for life. Every night, hundreds of people gather there and have concerts and pray, protecting the bridges with their bodies, I wrote you about that. It is still going on. There was a brilliant story yesterday, about this young man, who was actually born on the bridge, in the car, 19 years ago, and he says: this is my first baby room, I was born here, this is my bridge, I will defend it"...crossing the bridge during the day is O.K., but now the sirens are howling even during the day, so, if you are stuck on the other side, you should stay there...besides, we have to save the petrol...yes, my kids draw, the usual children's stuff, I do not want them to think about the war and make them draw that. So, they are into Barbies, Peter Pan, cartoons, etc. The oldest one (9 years old) is quite good in drawing, but it is a bit hard to concentrate on anything in a tiny apartment with 3 of them in different age, wanting different stuff in the same time...so, today, we are going to the Zoo...that is another story, how the animals are responding in the Zoo...all the stray dogs for example, start barking 5 minutes before the bombing, so we know something is coming this way...and the wild beasts are terrified...our Zoo was quite famous of having so many babies, because the animals are taken good care of, but now, if anything happens, they will have to be killed...in the second world war, the allies hit the zoo, and it was terrible.. you could see that in an artistic vision in Kusturica's Cannes awarded film "THE UNDERGROUND". What was your next question? Oh, my mother in law...she is fine. Cooking all day on the nerve basis. I am a bit annoyed, but then, it is not the time for any quarell. This is a time when families stick together, so, I embroider and clean, she cooks, and we go on...I am more worried about my husband, I mean, men do not cope with life like women - they are not practical, they are too philosophic...I am a laughing person, good humored most of the time, so I keep them all out of being miserable and too serious. After all, it is healthier to laugh than to cry. When one organazes the time, then everything is working. And this is the main problem - what shall we do today...? We all say, it can not last long, and we all deep inside feel, it will take long...now, if you want more, go to the sites: www.yu and www.antiwar.com You still haven't answered me about London. I am out of coffee today, and that pisses me off.

Buy, Maja.

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Subject: Re: Hello there!

Date: Friday, 30 April 1999 2:25pm

My dear Joy,

This morning was the first time that I went to your website, and was I surprised! You certainly are so mature, that I thought all the time that first) you were a man (I guess because of that hero instead of heroine, and second) because you are so young...I have to apologize then for imposing on you my war frustration, I don't think you deserve our nightmares...so, just briefly to answer you - yes, you may use my name, there is no problem about that. About my childhood? A beautiful one, I was raised in this artistic family, in the theater, my mother used to perform at bed time, just for me, and play the entire Hamlet, or Syrano de Bergueraque, or Puskin's poems, and always made me cry...I was a very playful and naughty girl, with curly hair, innocent look of Sherley Temple, and a leader of a boy;s gang at the age of 4. I ran away from home, and went straight to the army barracks near my house, spent all day with soldiers, and at the end, I told them my false name and adress...I was less than 4 then...one day my mum took me by troleybus to the centre, and the conducter bent over and said: "Hello, Maja, how are you today?" She asked him, how come he knows her daughter, and he replied:" Everyone knows her, she is my main attraction in the troleybus, I drive her everyday to the centre and back.." I was 3 at the time...so, that is why I remained an only child....later on, I grew up and I was very bored at school, so they made an experiment and put me in a higher grade, to stimulate me...so I entered the university (Faculty of dramatic Arts) at the age of 17, and mastered at the age of 21...I had a sholarship for MA studies, a french governement one, so I studied in paris for a while...then I migrated as a pure adventurer to Australia, lived there for couple of years, and came back, did my PhD in Sweden, and finally settled down and began raising family...I am teaching at the university now. Writing for film and TV... My oldest daughter was born in our house at the seaside, in Pula, which once used to be inside Yugoslavia, but in 1991, became Croatia. So, I left my house on a last plane from Croatia, with a newborn baby Milena and Teodora, who was 2 years then. We managed to sell the house, but Croatian governement issues visas only for those who have relatives in Croatia, and one waits 6 months to get a visa...So, one day, when my children grow up, we shall go and visit our ex home as tourists. That is the consequence of the Balkan conflicts....My father is better, he came this morning to Belgrade, by bus, took my car to finish some work around town, and went back by bus, taking my car licence with him! So, I am in trouble...last night was terrible. Beyond imagination....they hit the centre, The detonations shook us, and then we heard - they blew 2 enormous and old buildings in the main street, with the embassies and hospitals around (the maternety and a psichiatric hospital were damaged)...and one granate went astride, and hit the restaurant at the corner, where my closest friend lives. Her house is severely damaged (she has 2 kids, aged 5 and 11), they were in the cellar at the time....there are 160 000 invalids in Belgrade who can not move and go to the shelters. First, the elevators are turned off during the airstrikes, and second) the entrance to the shelters is not made for invalids...so, they are in their homes, trapped, trembling, not being able to move or react. We at least can walk around and talk to each other...That was at 2 in the morning....We went back to bed at 3 30, and at 4, started the worst: the real earthquake. 5 degrees Richter scale. The house was like a ship, shaking all around, the glass was making noise, and I thought: This is the end. We only needed an earthquake! There was another milder earthquake, at 6 in the morning, and then a sun appeared, as if nothing happened....I am amazed that I am still in a good mood, after that night...I am sending you the begining of my children's novel, I started to translate it into English, couple of months ago, and I stopped, when the war started. But for you, I may continue...If you like it....it was published 2 years ago, and sold out. I wrote it mainly for my oldest daughter, who is hard of hearing, and I wanted to make her hear the music with her eyes, through reading...she turned well, I must say, thanbks to my efforts, and she speaks English as well as Serbian, she plays piano and even sings, and no one could detect that she can not hear. She is wearing hearing aids, and I only worry about having enough batteries for her...there are parents here of similar children, who can afford to give batteries to their children only during the weekends...so, those children have privilege to hear only on Saturdays and Sundays...that is another consequence of the sanctions against Yugoslavia and being a poor country...That would be all for now, take care, darling, you are a brave girl...Love, Maja Volk

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Subject: Re: me again

Date: Sunday, 16 May 1999 11:20pm

Dear hero,

Nice to hear from you...so, you live in Canterbury? Imagine, my first encounter with England was in Canterbury - I was enrolled in a summer school of English, and spent 5 weeks there, when I was 17....and I met there some incredible people, like, the nephew of James Watt, he was really old at the time, probably dead now, but quite an eccentric...his sister was the first white woman who climbed Kilimangiaro...I know Canterbury by heart...I send you my last reflections on war in the second letter. We are still fine, I have finally got my guitar after 53 days, and I am happy - singing all day long. Children as well, I found a nice creative center that is willing to look after them for 4 hours a day, in the mornings, so I can be free...I got to be a member of the Critics' jury on the Film festival in Troia, Portugal, in June - everything paid, plane ticket via Paris....and I still hope I could go...but It is just a dream , I mean travelling anywhere is an adventure now, with airheads during the day and so many mistakes - they practically hit now everything that moves, 12oo civilian dead so far, and they try to deny them, with pitiful excuses....so, I would have to go to Budapest first, in a van, and all the bridges and roads are bombed, so, it is an experience...and then leaving the children...I don't know...my husband is still nervous and worried, migraines killing him, but all in all, adapting slowly. Yes, I have experienced some earthquakes, and they always make me jumpy - helpless and dumb, and one minute lasts forever...but the earthquake lasts a minute and this bombing 53 days.... Being without electricity is the worst. You see, this is just a medieval kind of a war - a classical 13th century siege, you starve to death and bomb everyone inside the city walls, and then you walk in as a winner....it is amazing that the same mentality is at work just with more sophisticated killing machines...I will send you the photos of my children. I must go now, love, take care, why don't you send me that article of yours? I'd love to read it...

Yours, Maja Volk, belgrade

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Subject: C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\End of who knows which week of bombing.doc

Date: Sunday, 16 May 1999 11:09pm

End of which week of bombing? Seven, eight, no one knows for sure

If you seek for a definition of a happy person, well, that is I. But, being a happy person in Belgrade these days is not a blessed combination. So, one must hide his or her happiness, and constantly be reminded of the horrors one lives in. Like, my neighbor�s son in law was one of the four missing persons lost under the ruins of television, and when I aksed her was he found alive, being happy for not seeing his mortuary in the papers, the woman sighed and told me this: only one single human bone was found, and all the mothers had to give blood for a DNA test, for the right identification of that bone...so there was no funeral, because there was nothing to be burried...so, not only I am happy to be alive, I am also happy to be in one peace as well...

It is summer time outside, and Belgrade is so charming in summer...I feel guilty whenever these happy thoughts come to me, but I have always felt that Serbs are blessed with this enormous feeling of constant happiness...one is happy if one gets a pack of cigarette after 4 hours of cueing, one is happy when one gets the gas stove, and the last gas stove was sold weeks ago, one is happy if one gets a hot coffee after 2 days of no electricity, one is constantly happy here! What a joy when you find a seat on a bus, after you have finally managed to get into one, and with this lack of fuel, they do not appear so often...what a beautiful feeling when you find the cooking oil in your supermarket, 5 minutes before the news spread out.... And that amount of joy, when you receive your paycheck for the first part of January...well, in January, we were receiving salaries from August, and there was this poor retired old man who came to the bank dressed only in his bathing suit, and it was snow outside and freezing, 10 degrees below zero, in January...everyone looked at him in bewilderment, asked him why did he dress like that, and he replied in this Serbian way: well, I came to pick up my paycheck for August! This is how you dress in August!

Yes, we laugh and laugh. Sad thing is that big, powerful nations never cared much for the jokes - the worst and the most naive jokes I heard in my entire life, came from Britain, or USA. They have even developed these artists - joke tellers, stand up comedians, and each one of them knows less jokes than the average Serb. Why is it so? They certainly have other ways to create their self-confidence. They have the bombs. And what about us? I mean, this is one of our traditions, telling and inventing jokes is a national sport, the only way one can feel superior to his troubles... and the speed that a joke travels on...if you are not quick enough, 2 days later you will have no one to tell the joke, because everyone will know it already! So we laugh. And NATO can not do anything about it...The more they bomb us and kill us; the more we laugh...

When we disappear from the face of the Earth one-day, our jokes will remain. So, let us laugh.

We can get mean, like in this one: what do you get when you cross Clinton and a sheep? You get Blaaaaaaair...

And critical in a feminist way , like in this one: How does a Serbian woman feel in the morning? Like a twice-missed person....

We summon our history through jokes. When the carpets of cluster bombs plough our Kosovo, we say, well, the Americans do not have the history, but we don�t have geography....

Our relations to the other nations is expressed in this question, what will a Serb seek in future? "I change 2 Montenegrins with mobile phones, for a Macedonian with a plough"

The future again: which will be the top profession in the next decade? - A boatman...

NATO bombed our bridges. So, we say: which river flows OVER the bridge in Novi Sad...? (Usually the rivers flow UNDER the bridges...but not here anymore)

I could go on forever. I am a happy person. Or am I? If a happy person by definition wishes everyone else to be happy too, well, there are few of those out of my reach, that I do not wish to be happy. Like mr Shea, and those two mentioned in the "Blaaaair" joke. Because, they are happy when we cry. They rejoice over their good targeting, happy when the number of collateral deads is increasing. Their laughter makes me chill. Let me stop here. I desperetely need to remain happy.

P.S. You have probably noticed that I have skipped all the major events of this week - the bombing of the Chinese embassy, just around a corner of my former home, destruction of one of the most beautiful European streets (Knez Milos street, resembling some down hill street of San Francisco, with a marveleous view, no wander that all the foreign embassies are there), when they hit the Ministry of foreign affairs and the Army headquarters, and the hotel Yugoslavia, where every Belgrade high school grader had a pram night, including me...by the way, this generation wasn�t that lucky. They won�t have their pram night. They became mature much earlier than planned. I skipped all that, because I deliberately and stubbornly want to remain a happy person. And we say here, that the optimism is just a lack of information....

Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson went on a camping trip. As they lay down for the night Holmes said: "Watson, look up into the sky and what do you see?" Watson replied, "I see millions of stars". Holmes: "And what does that tell you?" Watson: "Astronomically it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Theologically it tells me that God is great and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically it tells me that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?" Holmes: "Somebody's stolen our tent".

Worst Analogies Ever Written

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. (Joseph Romm, Washington)

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again. (Rich Murphy, Fairfax Station)

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup. (Paul Sabourin, Silver Spring)

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and "Jeopardy" comes on at 7 p.m. instead of 7:30. (Roy Ashley, Washington)

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze. (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree. (Jack Bross, Chevy Chase)

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. (Gary F. Hevel, Silver Spring)

Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man." (Russell Beland, Springfield)

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can. (Wayne Goode, Madison, Ala.)

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth (Paul Kocak, Syracuse, N.Y.)

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met. (Russell Beland, Springfield)

The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. (Barbara Fetherolf, Alexandria)

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free (Chuck Smith, Woodbridge)

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

My six year old Marie-Anna sends this joke:

Your Scots poem is a marvel! Yours, Al Rae Winnipeg Manitoba

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It may help our circulation if you were to print a hard copy of this mag and make it available to colleagues, family and friends. Please publicise it any way you can. I am always looking for unsolicited contributions.

We are seeking contacts to act as correspondents in UK Oz USA SA or indeed any elsewheres: eager beaver students (eg on creative writing courses) may wish to submit suggestions as to how they could participate on the Editorial Committee (do some legwork for me). I am anxious to obtain more oral history and some stuffs from 1st class sports-people, for example, and as you may have noticed am desperate for eminent writers, having made myself a hard act to follow.