Lamentation

This was going to be a post about the London Mayoral elections. Shakespearean I thought. ‘For god’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings,’ I thought some more. The scene takes place, ‘on the coast of the Thames, City Hall in view.’
“Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow in the bosom of the Earth.
Let’s chose executors, and talk of wills:
And yet not so,- for what can we bequeath,
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our land, our lives, and all are Boris-bloke’s,…”
Thus laments King Ken of Livingstone, Thrice Lord of City Hall,
Who by the vile treachery of the Witney Laird
And his suburban hoards from Henley
With their London pads,
Is once again deposed
To plot anew…..
But who comes here?

(enter: unknown ragged hoards, urban foxes - not from Henley, tousled swans, assorted water foul and swarm of flies.)

Fox, grinning broadly:
Good my Liege, fear not,
The red-coat hunters will never breach the bounds of our fair city!

Much ruffling of feathers among water foul. Ducks muttering darkly to one another and keeping a distance from red-coated hunter already in their midst.
Swan steps forward, clears throat:

Earl Fox, your gracious forbearance has been noted in this matter, and is gratefully acknowledged by my ladies in waiting, however, (voice begins to tremble slightly), we cannot be certain of the intentions of the urban hunter, not all of whom wear red coats. The Eastern Allies of the Henley Hoards have already plucked (she gulps, tears in her eyes), have already plucked my own good cuz, her Grace the Baroneess Swan of Tottenham from her nesting place in the Lea Valley, and, they say, made of her a banquet. This Boris-Bloke will never put a stop to such foul-treachery, indeed his views on hunting are well known and talked of in the coffee houses of suburbia.
We must repair to the rebel lands of Haringey and there take refuge and prepare to restore Fair City Hall to all who love the Thames and tributaries of London.

Fox, bowing deeply and avoiding eye-contact with ducks:

And so to Haringey, Good Swan, lead on.

Exeunt.

So, it has turned into a post about the treachery of the Henley Hoards
I’ll save the rest for another time. Meanwhile Earl Fox of Tottenham is on my shed roof in the right hand column and a hopeful looking rainbow over The Angel of Tottenham Green, near the den of Seven Sisters in the rebel lands of Haringey.

Swan Song

The telling of the Swan story began, oh who knows, years ago probably. It began for me, as a migration story, about those ‘other’ Romanians. The ones who aren’t us. Who aren’t ‘real’ Romanians. We always argued about that, if we had the energy. Anyway, let’s go back to January. I’m feeling desolate because some kind soul just kicked me in the teeth over a funding application. My new Romanian friend, Vali,’s feeling the same because he’s been abandoned by his housemate and is now homeless. So he turns up at 1.00am, direct from Budapest, with a 2 litre lemonade bottle of plum brandy, and some truly gross-looking sausages. I supplied the bread and the spring onion, and somehow, the depths of self-pity and despair were transformed into a pretty good-natured swapping of scurrilous tales. The next day and at least 150 pictures of his girl-friend later, still in the first week of January, the sun shone warmly, no sign yet of the late snows or frosts that would soon annihilate my jasmine buds, we went for a walk in Finsbury Park. Vali was captivated: ‘We just don’t have places like this in Romania, we don’t have “parks”.’ ‘These birds, just look at all these birds,’ he repeated, endlessly, genuinely amazed. ‘What do you call those ones, those white one?’ ‘Swans’ I said, ‘with a double-u, suuaans.’ I didn’t know if Romanian had a ‘w’ sound. ‘Swans,’ he repeated, faultlessly, as though he’d been discussing them with the queen all his life.
‘You know when Romanians first started going to other countries, Austria was the first we went to, in large numbers. Well, some Romanians went to Vienna, and they have these big parks there, full of birds like here. Well, those Romanians, they started hunting the birds. One day, they hunted, and caught and ATE a Swan.’
‘No’ I shrieked, peels of laughter,
‘Yes, well, you can imagine how famous we were after that. Oh my GOD.’
‘But they taste disgusting,’ I say, still laughing, ‘they taste fishy.’
Vali looks at me, quizzically, frowning, ‘You’re laughing, Claudia. You think it’s funny?’
‘Well, yes,’ I say, feeling slightly guilty now, ‘ok, so it’s hard luck on the Swan, but… yes…’
Pause. ‘The Austrians they did not find it so.’
With utmost confidence I assured him that English people would find this story uproariously funny and would be impressed with the enterprising Romanians bringing their rural skills to the city.
I hadn’t, of course, reckoned with the Haringey Independent, The London Evening Standard, or the Daily Mail, all of whom suddenly developed not only a sense of humour by-pass but also, in the case of the latter, an unusual lapse of memory concerning the ‘right’ of people to hunt. A week or so ago, I found a copy of a Romanian free newspaper, its front page graced with a picture of a swan, and inside, the full story reprinted not only from the Haringey independent, complete with RSPCA phone number, but also the Austrian story. Whether there has ever been any verification that Romanian migrant workers really did eat the Viennese Swan, I have no idea, but the idea has certainly caught on to the extent that most Romanians believe it, but with one important caveat.
We were contemplating the reasons why the Austrians didn’t find the swan-eating saga funny, and I was cheerfully explaining that the English secretly admired a good hunter, when a teenage boyfriend-girlfriend couple with a dog walked past. ‘She’s gorgeous,’ I muttered, ‘But what the hell is she doing with HIM?’
‘That’s EXACTLY what I was thinking’ gasps Vali, ‘EXACTLY.’ We’re looking at the beautiful young woman, with her scrawny, seriously unappealing boyfriend. ‘He looks like a gypssssy,’ hisses Vali, ‘Bloody swan-eaters.’


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