Obama and rosti

I texted Mike: “I feel an Obama blog coming on”. He replied: “Go for it Hon. The wire has been Obama-buzzing all day, Facebook slowed down, Twitter faltered but nothing could rain on the party.”

Tonight my middle child cooked a delectable meal of light, spicy, oven-baked sweet potato and potato-rosti (beating in eggs makes them airy) and grilled garlic mushrooms.

My sister filled me in on Obama’s inauguration speech. On my way home, I heard on the radio, voices of African-Americans active in the Civil Rights movement. They had helped end segregation little knowing their actions would bring about the election in their lifetime of a Black president.

A reminder that activism pays off.

Activism helped release detainees from Guantanamo Bay – a place also on my mind.

Last week I heard an ex-guard and two former detainees talk about their experiences in that place of unlawful incarceration. One was detained on the day his son was born. The evidence was dismissable but no trial took place.

I had dreaded hearing about brutal realities but I rejoiced they were out in the open – a healthy sign that we have got better at recognising injustice, and healing.

A member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, the ex-guard Chris Arendt came on this tour to meet former detainee and author, Moazzem Begg – to make reparation, to apologise.  The tour is their way of getting to know each other as well as educating us.  Chris is glad he made the trip. He said: “I feel 10,000 times lighter.”

Chris, was 19, “trailer trash” (his words) and in the National Guard when he was sent to Guantanamo Bay. “I knew it would be the most horrible experience of my life.”  His first day on the concrete block was terrifying, the vibe was “so intense, so crazy.”

The war of terror is, he said, “Islamophobic genocide.”

According to the Guardian, Obama wants no part in this. One of his first acts is to close Guantanamo Bay detention centre.

Obama, thank you. And don’t go letting me down.

Photo-shoot me

I am interrupting this food blog to talk about my photo shoot. Here I am (see pic) looking strangely sleek with straightened hair and make-up. Even my mother did not recognise me when she saw me.

The backstory: I gave my ‘how I recovered from a slipped disc with the help of the Alexander technique‘ to a journo-friend for a woman’s magazine.

Next thing, the magazine rung me. Would I take part in a photo shoot with the two other female interviewees who’d survived injury? “Yes,” I said eagerly. It sounded relaxing and glamorous to be passive and preened for a change.

Everyone was a darling and on one level it was fun to play dressing-up; highly seductive to be a nano-star for a few hours for a Condé Nast publication…

But once the excitement was over, and I watched my unfamiliar shadow on the lamplit winter streets of west London, I kept thinking: “They straightened my hair” in a disbelieving way.

Pre-1967, everyone had to have straight hair. Everyone. My elder sister used to iron hers.  Then along came the musical Hair and overnight it became acceptable – indeed groovy – to have springy, wiry, untamed, natural hair.

I have always been grateful that my formative years were spent in Swinging London. I could embrace my ethnic curls, unmade-up face, hairy legs etc. No one made me feel bad about them. In fact they made me feel good!

But the status-quo soon reasserted itself and woe betide a female star with hairy armpits. Because, the thing is, girls, there is a multi-billion industry at stake: the beauty industry.

At my photo-shoot, more time was spent on on make-up and hair than the actual photographs. That meant an awful lot of Products; I have never had so many applied in one go. I became a walking chemical factory, as I fell in with some unwritten plan to look like ‘a woman’. I looked more sophisticated but I felt like a man in drag. (My mum said I looked harder and – note – older.)

Like an apple in a supermarket, I had to be sprayed with hundreds of chemicals before anyone would buy me.

Oh dear. Do I sound ungracious and ungrateful? In other words, unwomanly?

March 2009 – and here is the article in this month’s Easy Living