Shopping Trip

"Can you buy some salad, we've got Trish Deseine and her children *coming over tonight?"
Audible sigh. Barely intelligible mumbling along the lines of 'I'm sure her kids don't want salad.'
"What kind of salad?" heaves The Teen.
"Cos or Romain?" I suggest.
"Is that in a bag or in a big ball?" She questions.
Enjoying the mini insight into The Teen's worldview, I laugh:"It's in a long 'ball'"
"I don't understand." says The Teen.
I try to explain that it's the leaves that tend to be used for Cesar salad, her favourite.
"Wait! I've seen that. It's got a long stick on it" she exclaims.
"Er not really."
"I have to get conditioner too but nobody conditions their hair on Kilburn High Road. I've tried so many shops and they don't have it anywhere." She grumbles.
"Maybe cos you won't ask in shops if they have something?"
"They laugh at me."She says.
"What do you mean, they laugh at you?" I ask, trying to imagine shop assistants laughing at a request for conditioner.
"When I go to Way2Save they laugh at me when I don't know what 'coriander' and (said with an eye roll) 'flat leaf parsley' is?"
"They literally laugh at you"
"Yes. It's obvious I've been sent out on a shopping trip by my mum, so they laugh."
"Do you now know what 'coriander' and 'flat leaf parsley' looks like?"
She snorts: "No. And I'm not interested. When I'm older, I'm NEVER HAVING PARSLEY EVER"
She takes my card and goes off to Kilburn High Rd.

*cancelled. They probably heard about the salad.

Results Day

This morning:
"Tomorrow you will never see me again if I get a bad result" says the teen.
I say nothing.
"I mean it".
Later:
"What kind of results are you expecting?" she queries. I tread carefully, knowing the wrong answer could spark florid accusations of 'insensitivity'.
"Erm, passes?"
Even later:
"If I fail them all will you be disappointed?"
"Of course not" I lie.
Tonight, by the Aga:
"I've got to decide what to wear tomorrow" The teen declares with an air of great import.
I laugh.
"Don't laugh, everybody is discussing it. The main thing is, not to do what Sarah did last year and come fully made up, in heels, really dressed up."
"Why does anyone get dressed up?"
"You haven't seen anybody for weeks, since the end of term." She rolls her eyes. The eye equivalent of 'Der'. The teen is a specialist at eye work. 
She continues: "Anyway five minutes later Sarah got really bad results for her GCSE's and was crying her eyes out. All her make up ran down her cheeks. I don't want to make that same mistake, look wise."
"Hmm. So you are aiming for a sober but glamorous look ideally?"
"Yes. Black jeans I think. A tailored jacket. NOT heels."She draws breath, fiddles with her hair, looks serious."Glasses perhaps?"
I join in: "Quite preppy? A bit, I've already got into university?"
"Yes" she says thoughtfully.
"Will you be upset if I don't get all As?" she asks again, after a pause.
"School doesn't matter" I say. "Everybody knows you are clever. You did my accounts last year. You learnt Excel at 16". 

Update: She got 4 A's and a B.

Amy Winehouse 14 September 1983 – 23 July 2011

Amy in concert at Glastonbury 2008. Pic: Kerstin Rodgers

Infiltrators

The news about the undercover cop living for seven years as an activist was first sent out in an email by Indymedia last summer. I don't particularly remember seeing Mark Kennedy or Mark Stone as he was called on the scene, around at anti G8 camps or protests. When I first joined Rhythms of Resistance, an activist samba band, in 2003, I discounted the endless rumours of certain members being, in fact, policemen. One guy, unfortunate perhaps in having the surname 'Blue', was particularly targeted with this slur. Every week, in the pub afterwards, people would whisper about each other. I just thought it was paranoia. I also thought it was a kind of activist ego trip. As if we were so important, dangerous and destabilising that the authorities would make the effort to join the band, come to rehearsal every week, wear glittery pink clothes, go to freezing demonstrations, just to keep an eye on us. We were a public band anyway, anyone could join, we were actively recruiting members.
I got in trouble for starting up a Facebook group and Twitter account for the band, despite the fact that we already had a Myspace page and a website. 'Facebook is run by the CIA' I was told, by members that had personal Facebook accounts. "So what!" I'd counter "if they want to know about us ('they' being a nebulous undefined 'the government, MI5, the police, the army, the forces of evil') then they just have to attend rehearsal. "
I guess I was wrong. It seems incredible that Mark Kennedy was paid by the government to live as a hippy, to smoke dope (gotta be aufentic yeah?) and hang out in squats. The police suspected he'd gone native, Serpico-style, he was enjoying it all a bit too much.
Mark Stone found out that 'anarchist' activists are actually rather nice, trusting people who want to make the world a better place, who don't eat meat and worry about animals. The fact that he ate meat was one of the giveaways. In the UK, most political activists are vegan unlike the activists I met in France, who remain carnivore, whatever their politics.
And Mark was shagging around, his poor wife in the real world has discovered. Perks of the job? Lots of lovely activist totty. That's another thing, sexist behaviour is common in activist circles because 'there's no war but the class war' and feminism as an exciting cause has all but disappeared into a poorly attended separatist enclave. You won't find many women over the age of 30 in this world nor mothers.

Dances

"I'm thinking of internet dating" announced The Teen this morning.
I'm still asleep but suddenly I'm wide awake.
"NO" I yell. "You are only 16!  Why don't you go out and meet someone?"
"I don't want to meet someone who goes out.  I want to meet someone like me, who doesn't concern themselves solely with drinking and laughing. I want someone who stays in and reads books and watches TV."

I recall all the dodgy internet dates that I've had. I really don't want her to be in that position. Not a 16 year old.

"Don't you have 'dances' anymore?" I splutter, knowing as it comes out of my mouth I sound archaic.
Cue derisive, loud laughter.
"DANCES? DANCES?"
"Yes, we used to have school dances at your age"
"We are not living in the Victorian age" she says.

Actually the school dances weren't exactly a picnic either. Lots of arrogant lads from University College School. I was 14 when  my mum took me out shopping for my first school dance between my school, South Hampstead and UCS. My mum convinced me that I looked good in a lime green nylon shirt from Marks and Spencer's.  In this shirt and my mum's borrowed velvet jacket, which didn't quite fit, I spent the evening shifting nervously in the dark, seemingly attached to the wall. To escape the ongoing humiliation of never being asked to dance, I escaped outside.
Some of the boys were standing there, smoking a cigarette. Trying to sound cool while talking to them, I swore. One of the boys haughtily spat he couldn't stand girls that swear and they left, leaving me alone and crushed outside.
The teen blithely continues: "I've seen this guy online. He's 38. Fit."
"What about boys of your own age?"
"No thanks. They are all clean shaven and boring."
"Watch out for stubble" I warn, "I remember having terrible red rashes from the tip of my nose to my chin from snogging unshaven men."
"Anyway I've met someone" she says "He hands out The Evening Standard outside the tube station"
"A high flyer then?" I say, unfairly.

"Look" I say "You will meet someone, I guarantee it. But no internet dating. Christ, all those perverts will be round you like white sharks drawn to raw bait."