Deniable

I am sure we had this conversation, you and I, about art, politics, society, and responsibility. Shhh. It made sense at the time. But guess what? I think someone listened. Because a guerrilla artist just put all that talk into action.

I think the working desk of the artist probably looks something like this...


Maybe it involved crayons, paint, ribbon, and not a small amount of glue...


With an agitprop message on reverse...


Then these fish appeared, fluttering all around town! Particularly, I note, outside the seafood restaurants.


I have NO IDEA who the secret artist might be.

Only five more to go!

We take the Travelling Aunty to show her a good time with the mudskippers down at the Hong Kong Wetlands Park.

It is not a very exciting story. We've been here before. But this time there were no mudskippers. Or Fiddler crabs.

And I forgot the camera.

Then the generally calming atmos and rippling brooks brought out the violent side of one of my children, so I had better leave the tale there, and not narrate the indignities.

Howabout I could do my incredibly interesting Grit facts instead?

Here it is then. Number Two. (I already did Number One! Did you forget? Tsk.) I thought I should make this incredibly interesting fact banana-related as well.

Peek into the Grit soul, number 2.

I can sometimes be very childish.

No! Really! I know I come across as all cultural politics, social science and educational theory in a Jil Sander suit and wire-framed spectacles, but it is TRUE. I have a 12-year old streak in me. It has never quite progressed to age 13.

This results in a very fine picture of me with a banana in my face and a surprised expression.


Courtesy of a family member who should know better, but who eggs me on.

I would just like to say I am not proud of this childish streak.

On balance, I think I would like you not to tell anyone. It might ruin any career prospects I have.

Someone could take a lesson here

As a person who is apparently libertarian leaning (I took a quiz), it isn't surprising that the politics, culture and society of Kowloon Walled City fascinates me.


This city of 30,000 people - encased in a vertical area roughly the size of your local park - came about thanks to a British-Chinese diplomatic failing.

Originally the land was a Chinese military fort. The British never took possession of it, as they did with the surrounding land in the nineteenth century.

After the Japanese occupation and surrender, the Chinese reasserted their rights over this space.

For what point, I'm not sure. The place had lost its walls (pulled down by the Japanese to make the airport), and the politicians in Peking were far too busy brutalising the population with the Cultural Revolution to bother with what must have been a minor problem of local politics, far away down south, on colonised soil.

But, thanks to this Chinese reassertion of rights, the Brits could implement nothing of control in this growing city. No taxes, no business legislation, no building regulations, no registrations, no licensing, no insurances, no police, no services, no bleedin'health'n'safety, no legal requirements, no administration, no inspections, no sanitation, no monitoring of civilians, no clipboards, no bin collections, no formalities, and don't complain to the council.

Maybe it was the perfect libertarian state.

The drug pushers, pimps, criminals and ne'er-do-wells probably thought so too. The stories go how Kowloon Walled City was a sanctuary for the Triads, a centre for gang culture, a place of general lawlessness, and a street of dentists who didn't need professional certificates but you could guarantee they were cheap.

Not surprisingly, the churches and charitable groups moved in.

In the exhibition we visit today, in Kowloon Walled City Park - the city was demolished in 1993 and landscaped into Qing Dynasty gardens - personal narratives come through loud and clear.

Stories of communities helping each other. Neighbours sharing food, belongings, miseries and triumph. Successful businesses flourishing. Employment, family successes, mutual support. People making lives for themselves; setting up resident groups, internal patrols and community associations to govern their own affairs.

Some residents were so reluctant indeed to give up this autonomous, self-regulating status that they clung on, defying all eviction orders, waiting to be carried out by the demolition team.

I'm sorry that I only know it by the diplomatic anomaly, and that I never got to see it as a working, heaving city.

But the park is pretty.


So that is Kowloon Walled City (Park). I thought home educators would like to know about it.

Especially the very loud and awkward ones who are further gone than me, and who keep Rottweilers to sniff out any form of control or regulation in any guise.

Secretly, they sometimes make me feel a tiny pang of sympathy for local council staff - particularly the thin, sad, weedy types, called Maureen and Denis, who would rather work in accounts than extract a bit of educational information over the head of a butcher's dog.

But let's think positive. I'm sure there is a ring road in Hemel Hempstead that could be up for a land grab.

Life goes on regardless

We leave our visitor Aunty Dee at the Hong Kong tax office, then I take Shark, Squirrel and Tiger to a science workshop.

Here we learn about Leeuwenhoek, cell theory, the power of ten, and cap it all by looking down a microscope.


I invited Aunty Dee to this celebration of the cell, but she said she preferred the sights, sounds and cultural experience of the tax office instead.

I cannot understand her values. What could be more fun than to be locked in a room with a dozen home ed kids and some slices of flea.

A slice of home

Gosh! Visitors are exhausting, aren't they?

What with taking them out-and-about; visiting, transporting, amusing; then providing with cooking, feeding and another cup of coffee. And in the evening it's all singing and dancing, thanks to how we can't shove her in front of a TV, due to the fact we don't possess one.

I think Britain at the time of the Empire felt exactly as I do.

They'd be all 'What? We have to go out again? Do we have to colonise some godforsaken country just because we can? Can't we please stay at home for five minutes and have a cup of tea?'

And this explains museum curators too. The collators of the world's art treasures had clearly had enough.

There they were, traipsing about everyone else's foreign country, simply to goggle at their treasures. Why do that? Far easier to make a few quick strikes into their most prized territory, nick their stuff, dash home with the loot, and stack it up in the parlour, aka the British Museum.

Then we Brits don't have to go a-wandering about the world! We can have the world come to us. We can look at it, go nice treasure, then sit down and have a proper cup of tea in agreeable surroundings, without all those flies and mosquitoes.

Coincidentally, that's what we do today!

The British Museum has brought a slice of Blighty here to us, miserable exiled people in Hong Kong.


Here in their travelling exhibition at the Museum of Art we can see creatures carved of stone, wood, bone; created in sculpture; decorated with gold; portrayed in paint; and mixed with modern day art from around the world (i.e. treasures lifted from Asia, the Americas, anywhere previously colonised).


It is a fantastic display. Just as well, because it's called Fantastic Creatures!

You should go and see it, if you're passing through Hong Kong. You can pretend you're back at home in Blighty.

And then you can sit down to have a nice cup of tea and some Victoria sponge cake.

English education, Hong Kong style

Be warned, people of England. Nick Gibb, your Minister for Schools, will soon visit Hong Kong.

Somehow, I suspect Gibb isn't coming here to sniff out models of creative play for the under-11s. Hmm. Maybe rote learning, brain drilling, and rigor? (Possibly just falling short of the mortis kind.)

I bet, following Gove's tour, he's sent here on a mission to snaffle Hong Kong education formula, then apply it like a panacea to your school system.

It could be a matter of celebration or dread; it's up to you.

But it seems logical, does it not, that if Hong Kong education style tops world league tables, then you should be able to lift it up and apply it somewhere else?

I recognise the pattern of thinking that gets you there. It's the same as when I drink a bottle of red wine. I can combine supreme confidence based on complete ignorance. The more I drink, the more confident I become! After the second bottle, everything makes sense.

Well, you'd be right to say I wouldn't know; I'm in no place to talk, since we've avoided HK schools. I'm only forming my opinions about the schooling regime on what I've read, the people I've spoken to, the comments of educationalists who work here, and the friends of my kids who are schooled (the kids who are usually dying on their feet by Fridays, 4pm).

If the news of a Hong Kong schooling regime is fearful to you, you can always hope.

Like, when I'm minister of schools. I'll make a law! Every week, rain or shine, the kids go outdoors, where they'll meet lots and lots of people, and find poetry, biology, geography, art, science, philosophy, politics, and all the thinkings of all the world.

I should let Nick Gibb know the alternative you could have.

Thank you, Kadoorie Farm

I'm told the differential between rich and poor in Hong Kong is much wider than it seems.

A visitor might tour the shopping malls and pass by Baby Dior, but never know the extreme inequalities of wealth that exist here. I'm told that Hong Kong data - richest to poorest - can place this sparkling international city alongside Sudan.

It's easy to see the sparkle and glitz. The super-rich drive this place, and the wealthy families of Hong Kong clearly hold a concentration of power. They stitch the deals, throw up the buildings, and provide our entertainment in the South China Morning Post.

It's all the drama you'd expect. Mistresses (number 1 and number 2) top the character list alongside spurned wives (number 1 and number 2). Then come the righteous offspring (from both sides of the blanket), and controlling figures on executive boards. Together, they set about fighting (literally) for dynastic control, power, and inheritance rights. It's ugly, and not made any prettier when the battles are conducted over the living heads of the elderly men who sired and acquired this noisy lot.

By contrast, the super-poor sink into invisibility; they survive on a meagre few dollars, daily or weekly, maybe none at all. Their stories pop out at Christmas in feel-good captions about gratitude. See them here, lining up with the Salvation Army, where they need only join in a little prayer to secure dinner and bed for the night.

I watch it all. It seems true to me - as shoeless Farmer Chang trundles away with his lettuces, and a passer by casually swings their new Versace coat - that a system which encourages such extremes of wealth is morally wrong. But a wealth distribution constructed by an economy of communism, of the controlling kind that exists just over the dotted line? Downright scary.

Well, I don't have any answers; I'm no statistician, nor economist. I only observe while I pass through. So I'm sure I'll sound naive when I wish that people of wealth and resources would simply feel it is their human duty to be philanthropic. It's not as if Hong Kong has no precedents.









Thank you, Kadoorie Farm.

Doesn't make sense to me either

Some moments, my eyes spill tears.

Not because my children carelessly wish me to be gone from their lives; neither because we have made messes of the last twelve years; nor because the future momentarily opens out, hopeless desolation and despair.

Nothing like that, although in living those states, I think I have earned myself some quiet weeping in a dark corner.

Today's tears (which really I should collect in an exquisite glass jar to place on the mantelpiece for my further emotional conjugation) is in response to a spectacle. An experience of light, sound, colour, and all forms of upended-downended-mind-mish-mashinins.

Maybe they were tears of relief. Because here is a place, as bizarre as the contents of my head, captured for me on stage.

That place in my head is a miserable, solitary place to be. Inside here, trees get up to walk off in an undignified huff, roses spit cruel blasphemies, and the sky sorrowfully collects its blue folds and sulks in a cave, refusing to come out.

Then maybe they were tears of recognition. I can't be the only freak who thinks that a giant claw can grow from a human body, how shells might blow and suck air as they run, how crisp, cut paper edges sway on dancing paper dolls, how an electric stick man can disassemble and reassemble its limbs, or how a human can walk, with fish head and fins.

Seeing my inside chaos come outside, taking external form more beautifully than I could ever muster, is all a little emotionally overwhelming. Worth a few tears.

But here's an educational point (there always is one, trust me). We educate for freedom of thinking. For art, I need to keep the early creativities of the children away from proscription and prescription.

I want to see Tiger draw, model, and stitch her own way through the days, follow her unique creative forms of autonomies, find her own mind, and explore her wilder impulses and streaks of bloody mindedness, so that she can make her own inside thoughts come outside.

I want her to have the wide and dangerous freedom that I hope grows her own recognition and enjoyment of her creative mind; not be placed, as I was, in a position where she must stop her line of exploration and deny her thoughts. I want her not to be set on a course where she can't have the confidence to change; I want her to have the strength and will to make and do, regardless of how wrong or bonkers everyone else might say she is. She needs to explore, until she is ready for structure and instruction, then you can bet I'm choosing that artist to help her with care.

Well, didn't make much sense to me either. Try WOW.

Geography

A few kids in our local home ed group are following (in our case very loosely) the IGCSE curriculum for Geography.

I'm enjoying it. I have a special love for matters geographical: especially the physical bits requiring tramping through landscape.

It seems obvious to say it, but love didn't come from sitting in a classroom, studying black and white photographs in a prescribed curriculum text book.

It started when my mother pushed me outside and locked the door. Then, I thought it was a terrible injustice. Now, I know it was for my own protection.

But soon I was out and off, roaming willingly. Outside offered all kinds of new perils and opportunities. I expanded my unsupervised exploring range. From the back garden to the bank of earth that rose to cultivated fields and the crumbling outcrop of bunter sandstone. I took the skin off my hands, busted my knee, and acquired a whip graze on my cheek.

Then the long, tiny track, running alongside the fields to the iron gate that locked the private estate. Sunk to a ditch by a wall and hooded with brambles, I would hope, by creeping there, that I was breaking the law.

More than once, I came home muddied and bloodied. I can't recall my mother asking how. But I wouldn't have told her. Escape from a hideout where criminals with treasure defended themselves by bows and arrows was my triumph. She might spoil it all by assuming I was telling the truth then calling the police.

I never let on about slipping off to the quarry either. If she told me not to go back, for fear I would fall off the sandstone ridge, then I would never find Stig.

Family outings to beaches, hillsides, lakes and forests, all helped. I was tipped out the car and told to be back for tea or there'd be trouble. Mud didn't count in the charge sheet. Neither did prickle wounds from gorse bushes, leg bruises from sliding on seaweedy rock pools, and a wet bum from slipping down river banks.

It wasn't all neglect. To guide me, I had the injunction be careful. And my mother did sometimes keep an adult eye on proceedings. She stopped me going over that cliff edge in Devon. But it was never fair. She let my brother do it.

It has led me to a belief. Geography isn't a cold photograph in a text book. It's wind in the face, sore legs, split fingernails, a cut knee, and a smack in the cheek with a bramble bush.












Ma Shi Chau. Sand bar, coastal features, and Permian rocks. Or standing at the edge of the sea, waiting for the mountains to fold and the dinosaurs to arrive.

I have what you're looking for

I have been round the Document of Accusation again, aka the Statcounter. This is an activity I engage in once a week to see how less popular I am than last week. (Plenty, so all is healthy.)

However, these features I note.

First, grit's day now enjoys a truly global audience. People flung apart - from USA, India, Brazil, Canada, Scotland, the UAE, Australia and Milton Keynes - join here daily, at this insignificant blog, in the hope of satisfaction.

Mostly for brains sucked out, text to write on a tombstone, hot aunties naked, bali men naked, hot bali men with sexy aunty naked, and outdoor survival in rural fenland.

Pigeon grit is no longer a search term. I think the 12 people who needed that information have now excluded me from their visits. Thank you.

For all the rest of you dear earth-wide readers who up my global count, I am pleased to accommodate you. You probably arrive in expectation and depart in disappointment.

The second feature I note is how grit's day remains a continuous source of inspiration, encouragement, discouragement and DO NOT DO IT advice, particularly for home education.

When someone is inquiring about home education from England, they mine this blog. Really, really explore it from all angles. They leave me blinking in the flashbulbs with my hands covering my doodah.

Quick guide to answer your three latest inquiries.

No, home educators do not have to mark a child's work.
Not unless you are high on worksheetery, or your child is enthused by red ink. If you choose to home educate, you do not have to show any inspector, LEA official, or any jobsworth that you mark work. No-one is required to ask you to keep a mark book of your child's work. They shouldn't be asking for test scores, grades, results, or evidence mark books, unless you are on some local provision or flexischool scheme where you have already agreed to supply this. In which case you'll know about it. For all normal home ed days, no marking of anything is required of you.

No, home educators do not have to be teachers, nor show any type of certification.
You do not have to have a degree in education, nor a PGCE, nor any certificate in child wrangling. Nor household management, food hygiene, or keeping yourself clean. It is sort of expected that if you choose to home ed you have thought about it, considered your own capabilities, tolerances, and interest levels. There are no grades you need to demonstrate of yourself to lead your children into life and the community. You do not need certificates to prove you can parent, either.

Yes, we socialise.
Home educators do not lock up their children in airless rooms. We do not avoid social contact with other people. We do not pump our kids foie gras style full of Evangelist Bible Studies. (Okay then, maybe one or two families do that, among 200,000, so probably below the indoctrination levels of your normal school-going population. Anyway, you can bet the situation will correct itself come aged 13 when the kids rebel and cross over the forbidden line into normality or Satan worship.)

I hope that is helpful. I should start a surgery, where I am open to home ed questions you have. (Only probably don't ask me anything that is actually useful to have answered.)

PS. Today, for the ongoing visitor delight of Hong Kong, was the dreaded Coastal Defences Museum. For myself, I managed to throw in the Law Uk Folk Museum and a tram trip. No marking was done, and no certificates required. Being out and about in society while Squirrel tries to extract a packet of biscuits from a Cantonese-speaking cafe owner you can count as social contact.

Frocking frenzy

An education in cloth compositing from Fashion Visionaries at Sha Tin Heritage Museum, Hong Kong.




I'm not wearing any of them.



Although the leather lace bodice was pretty smart.

The plastic bones, not so much.


Neither the hat.

But this one by Isaac Yuen is all MINE MINE MINE. Looks classy and together, then on close inspection is composed of complex stitchery, weaving and gathering. Me, me, me. Clearly I am made for this garment, so if it's going free at the end of the show, put my name down.



Yours?

The questions every parent should ask of an education

People on earth! I may be a late-comer - and the following wisdoms already discovered and exploited by the world's economic rulers, political leaders, and tele-evangelists - but I feel I must do this job.

Consider the Words of Our Lord John Taylor Gatto; he who brings knowledge on humanity and education for our humble planet via this video link.

I take from his talk (okay, I am only 23 minutes in) that those children set to rule Planet Earth will attain the following 14 wisdoms; endowed with these knowledges, they can grow society, pervert us all, or kick some ass (I bet he says that).

Note! If you send your child to school, Lord Gatto's wisdoms are far better questions to ask of your child's institution than whether the teaching staff meet any government's poxy list of attainment targets. Targets are a smokescreen to keep you fretting. This is the real knowledge your kid should have if you want them to enjoy a life of ruling, perverting, or ass-kicking.

Wave these questions, and demand, Will the school do this?

If you are home educating, then we need only join together in prayer.

Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. These questions are for you.

1. Can you learn what makes people tick?

To my children, I advise, continue observing and experimenting with the buttons on your sister. Some, you already know. Stop pressing NUCLEAR and DESTROY.

Press the other ones. Buttons which are activated by KINDNESS and which provide your sister with consolation and support.

From this knowledge, you will learn better how to empathise. You will learn how to help, or inspire. Even better, you will learn how to reach that place where your sister willingly offers you the last slice of double choc-chip cake, even though she wanted it for herself.

But do not consider these experiments as manipulation. Consider them lessons in human nature.

And attend to five subjects in particular. Without them, we are uneducated, and lost. History, philosophy, literature, theology, and law.

(Leave Mama in charge of law. She controls access to the biscuit tin.)

2. Can you learn how to write and speak?

Not bad spelling and mumbling! No! My children, make it your ambition to possess effective writing skills and good spoke-stuffing.

Think! With these techniques you might persuade your reluctant sister to give up her best clothes/best friend/rights to chocolate cake forever.

Learn how to persuade her with spoken eloquence and proper punctuation! You will reach this goal by:

a) observing the impact of what you say and write,
b) reflecting on your successes and failures,
c) presenting her ideas kindly, maybe in ways that encourage her, or the calm and logical set of practical steps she can follow, especially in giving up the cake.

Essentially, learn how to give back to her what she already said to you, only better. (If you follow that.)

3. Can you develop insights into how institutions work?

Can we discuss what factors drive the justice system, commercial business, political clubs, and military?

(In our case, yes; we need to, because we might yet be up before the Old Bill.)

Please note: Mama would prefer you did not learn the justice system from the wrong side of the dock in the magistrate's court, neither by your active involvement in prison. But if you cannot avoid it, then so be it. You won't be the first family member I visit in the clink.

4. Can you learn some bleedin' manners?

Remember. Graciousness, politeness and civility are the basis of your relationships, even close ones (although thank goodness we can take a few liberties there).

As Our Lord Gatto explains, civility is the means by which you gain access to 'places you might want to go'.

(Let's assume he means places like the Oxbridge Club, and not places like behind the bins on a Friday night.)

5. Can you learn how to work independently?

Have you the self-reliance and ability to be resourceful? To proceed without instruction? Have you the perception to use the work of others? To nick their stuff, then credit yourself with the glory? I think so. Ironically, academic life might beckon.

6. Can you enjoy the grace in your body?

Children, I have noticed that people who endure physical endeavour or who suffer physical misery also develop a confident body. Sports, exercise, climbing trees; they all teach you how to handle yourself.

(Our Lord Gatto also remarks how a commanding physique can translate into power and money. Hmm. As you can see, Mama has the body of a goddess but remains piss poor.)

7. Can you develop 'a complete theory of access to any workplace or person'?

Remember, nothing prevents you from looking to wangle a meeting with a person who can assist you. Never be cowed by title or place.

It may take planning, time, and work, and you may suffer some prejudice. And the result might be less than satisfactory when you achieve it, but it will have taught you something.

8. Can you take responsibility?

Not only take it, but deliver more than is asked for, because by this method you learn leadership.

9. Can you arrive at a personal code of standards?

Okay, don't follow me on this one. I am still working on the dodgy ethics, suspect behaviour and doubtful morals. And don't press me for a result by next Tuesday.

10. Can you become familiar with the arts?

OH YES. Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. We are slowly cracking this one, what with the literature, painting, dance, drama, sculpture.

'The arts transcend the animal materiality of our lives' indeed. (Until you get to Gilbert and George.)

11. Can you develop the power of accurate observation and recording?

Think of the instruction, 'draw what you see'. Drawing is a means of sharpening perception.

12. Can you deal with challenge?

As Our Lord Gatto explains, each person's challenge is different.

Shy, Tiger? Your challenge is public presentation! Loud and opinionated, Shark? Your challenge is to develop a razor-sharp, merciless edge, then use it only when necessary. On another planet, Squirrel? Enjoy it, because this earth-bound one is utterly over-rated.

13. Can you 'develop a habit of caution in reasoning to conclusions'?

I think Our Lord Gatto means, think out the debate from all sides and don't believe what anyone tells you.

(Ahem. Given our politicians in Britain, Lord Gatto, I think we might have reached this point some time ago.)

14. Can you continuously test your own judgement?

Were your intuitions well-founded? Were your assessments and predictions far off, or accurate? Shark, Squirrel, Tiger. You should reflect to better calibrate your ideas, fine-tune your judgements, and develop your capacity for good decision-making.

There. My work here is done. I must now study the remaining two hours of the Lord Gatto's video; and I must steel myself for any comments about how these are the very techniques by which we are better controlled from a ruling elite with their endless merciless mastery over our lives of miserable servile drudge.

After that, I can return to plotting how I might steal secret kisses from the perfectly tiny toy fox terrier that is not even mine, aka, The Dog of Loveliness.

Amen.

I fall in love (and there were fireworks)

I know what I said. DON'T REMIND ME.

BECAUSE.

If you were invited, as was I, to that lovely apartment where you could meet those dainty paws and delicate legs and beguiling face and expressive eyes and know that adorable and happy disposition, you would fall in love too.


I want a tiny toy fox terrier and I want to live with her forever.

I can only leave the last words to Squirrel. This is humiliating. Get up off the floor. And stop kissing that dog.


PS. There was a view and fireworks over Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. It is Chinese New Year or something.

Oh God Not the Parade Again

Frankly I dread this moment of obligation.

When all Hong Kong must fetch up at the Chanel end of Canton Road at exactly the same time BY LAW to attend the New Year's Parade.

Lonely Planet once stupidly suggested this event was great, an unnecessarily hyperbolic word which can only suggest the editor accepted a bung.

It is the most tedious horrible celebration of naked advertising that anyone could dream up. A plastics factory output of branded floats trundle by for what feels like decades. At the end of it your brain is saturated by Cathay Pacific and the Jockey Club.

In between the floats, trek the dance troupes, glamour girls and marching bands. To their credit, they endeavour to whip us into a frenzy of hoo-hah, I suppose to wrestle the whole charade into a carnival-type atmosphere, but it is a doomed attempt.

We know, and they know, that corporate sponsorship is far too important to mess with, so beneath the thin skim we can only see fake joy, organised celebration, oiled progress, and professional marketing.

But I enjoyed the event better this year. Mostly because half way through we escaped the crowd control police to find a rice burger and chips. I also amused the juvenile part of my brain by photographing a promotional chocolate milkshake and a pair of sex shoes.



Now, back to the parade with some dragons and a giant fish (the latter probably advertising a restaurant).

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

No, not Enjoy your black hairy algae dinner! But, Happy New Year! from Hong Kong China.

Unfortunately, on this most important Chinese calendar evening, Dig made away with my useful camera. Worse, he used it to record the ongoing achievements of his left foot.

His inability to distinguish between record ON and record OFF, means you, lovely reader, cannot enjoy any temple attending, lion dancing, fire crackering, or much joyous kungheifatchoying from grit's day at all.

However, you can have the contents of my clapped out phone camera if you wish.





The deities of the heavens and the earth granted me my first wish almost immediately: cue a big hug from a passing creative (marred only slightly by the fact that it was a she not a he and also worse the wear from six vodka martinis).

But the gods also delivered a compensatory gift in the form of a sister-in-law. She arrived this evening. They have permitted me to tease her mercilessly for the next three weeks to see if I can provoke her normally becalmed disposition to the point where she commits acts of public outrage on the metro.

I will keep you informed as to my progress.

***

Edited to add Important! News! Youtube now has video. Thanks to some one who can tell the difference between ON and OFF. And we were really there! It is true! Tiger's terrified face emerging half-way is evidence. (You won't see me. I was hanging about behind the incinerator.)