Tag Archives: Kate Ferguson

“Top of the Morning to you, 2013!”

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My mother once told me I had an innate reluctance to move. She’s right. I am happiest when frozen to the spot, staring at some unfortunate stranger and trying not to blink.

You’d think this would make me a reluctant traveller but the opposite is true. I adore sitting on trains and buses, pretending to read my book while listening to Bríd and Deirdre discuss Máire’s nose job. Air travel is okay too. I like to watch the hostesses trying to extinguish grins as they catch each other’s eye before performing those bizarre safety demonstrations.

My sedentary travelling lifestyle has lately brought me to Edinburgh, where I’m writing from LSB’s bed, with a cup of tea and a packet of Tesco’s finest shortbread beside me.

The trip is being treated as a surveying mission. “I hope the city charms you,” LSB said before we left. After all, he does live here and there’s a chance he’ll even find gainful employment in the city after he finishes his Masters.

But my mission has had an alarming effect. In just five days, I have been transformed from a lethargic voyeur to an improbably eager hill-walker.

View of firework display from Calton Hill

View of firework display from Calton Hill

The city, built on seven hills, has left me with little choice. Getting to the nearest coffee shop is itself a minor exercise in mountaineering.

LSB’s plan for Hogmanay, which he revealed late on New Year’s Eve, when there was no getting out of it without sullying all of 2013 with a domestic argument, involved climbing Calton Hill, a relatively modest heap in the context of Edinburgh’s lumpy terrain.

Any disgruntlement I might have felt was dispelled when he provided me with a hot water bottle for the journey up. Just before 11 we reached a stone tower where hundreds of people were gathered. The man next to us had set up a tripod and the group of girls behind were drinking gin. The view over the city was magnificent.

I don’t know whether it was the spectacular display of fireworks over the castle or the electric atmosphere up the hill that changed me. Either way, I spent the early hours of 2013 trying to convince LSB to climb up Arthur’s Seat, the peak of Edinburgh’s hills, on New Year’s Day.

He was reluctant at first. “It’s not recommended this time of year,” he said. ” It’ll be muddy and slippy.”

I told him to get new shoes.

I set my alarm for 9 o’ clock the following morning. When I do this I can usually expect to leave bed by 11.

But when the piercing, relentless beep first sounded, I was more than ready for it. I hopped out of bed in a way that I have only ever done when suspecting an emergency or oversleeping on a work day.

I left LSB asleep, clutching the hot water bottle and conducted my ablutions full of steely, brave resolve.

When I came back, LSB was still asleep, looking angelic.

I woke him up with sensitivity, crying “Time to go hillwalking!” into his ear.

He opened one eye heavily and murmured something that sounded like dismay. I ripped the covers from him and tried to ignore the whimpers, which tore at my heartstrings and reminded me of myself every other morning of the year.

As he was showering I prepared a hearty breakfast of oatcakes with hummus. I arranged them into the shape of a flower, which I hoped would remind LSB of the great natural beauty to behold up Arthur’s Seat.

LSB reminded me that we’d gone to bed at 3.30 am the previous night but I insisted that on this day the focus should be on the future, not the past.

The day was bright and crisp. I felt like Heidi, frolicking in the hills with my goat. The view was breath-taking, as was the ascent.

If only we knew what was to come...

If only we knew what was to come…

We were on the way down a damp grassy slope, marvelling at the tremendous start we had made to the New Year, when LSB began to slide away. At first I thought he was trying to perform some stunt to impress me. But as he wobbled, stretching out his arms, crying “help!” I began to suspect his performance was involuntary.

I clutched him heroically but to no avail. Soon I too was sliding down the hill. I made a desperate attempt to grab hold of a tuft of grass but it was all in vain. Before I had a chance to contemplate my last words or decide how best to distribute my possessions, we had landed, entangled in a muddy heap.

When LSB had caught his breath, he said “Katzi, what were you thinking?”

“What?” I asked still in shock.

“You pushed me!”

“What?” I cried indignantly.

“When you grabbed hold of me,” he said. “You pushed me down the hill!”

“I did not!” I retorted in disbelief. “I was trying to save you!”

“Ch,” he said, regarding his mud-encased canvas shoes and jeans.

We reconciled shortly after over a hot chocolate and orange cake in a charming café called Clarinda.

But this morning, when my alarm sounded, I hit the snooze button. I told myself it was a precautionary measure. After all, our early start the day before could have resulted in our untimely deaths.

A little while later, I woke to find LSB looming over me, triumphantly.

“Time to get up, Katzi!” he said, beaming. “We wouldn’t want to miss the best part of the day!” From the corner of the blind, daylight flicked at me, menacingly.

LSB and Kate Katharina Fail to Elope

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LSB’s arrival scene had been playing on loop in my head for several weeks. I would stand at the dingy arrivals hall at Schonefeld looking radiant. LSB would get off the plane and fly into my arms. We would embrace. He would vow to abandon his studies in Edinburgh with immediate effect. We would elope. Publishers would flock to our door offering him a job. If that didn’t happen, I would pick up enough freelance shifts to hire him as my domestic servant.

But my dreams were thwarted by wintry showers. The trains on the way to the airport were cancelled. LSB’s flight was due in at 12.40. I was shivering at a train station at the time. The plane had the audacity to land punctually. At 12.45 LSB called me.

“Katzi! I can’t believe you’re trying to dodge me. After all this time!”

“Did you not get my text?” I cried. “I’ll be there soon, promise.”

“Four months!” he said, sighing.

The S45 condescended to arrive. When it pulled in at Schoenefeld, I dashed like there was no tomorrow. I arrived panting and with a pile of snowy slush heaped on each of my boots. LSB was standing there, looking maddeningly nonchalant. “Oh you turned up then?” he said.

LSB and Lego snowman

LSB and Lego snowman

I welcomed him with a punch.

LSB has aged gracefully since I last saw him in August. The highland air has been kind to his complexion and he even trimmed his beard in anticipation of our reunion. He still insists on wearing unsuitable canvas shoes in all weather and lists meeting Joe Duffy as the most momentous occasion of his life.

The highlight of LSB's life to date

The highlight of LSB’s life to date

The last few days have been idyllic. We have been streaming Seventh Heaven online and pressing pause at opportune times. Reverend Eric Camden’s expression of brave resilience has been etched, again and again in our memories. Last night we listened to the Adrian Kennedy phone-show.

Sometimes we interrupt our analysis of the Camdens with weighty conversations about our future. When we get tired of that we go to the Christmas market and buy a bag of five Quark balls, which we share in an equitable ratio of 4 to me and 1 to LSB.

Sometimes we use our infinite wisdom and experience of travel to cast wistful judgement on the country we’ve left behind. Ireland has become homogeneous and backward since we left.

We wonder how the Catholic Church can still have such a hold. And we wonder if the recession will ever end.

Then we smile when we think about cosy nights in the pub with friends, Tayto crisps and the way Grafton Street twinkles at Christmas time.2012-12-15 17.03.59 - Copy

We may have been temporarily evicted but it’s home, glorious home and the craic at Christmas will be almighty.

The Model Railway and The Emergency Haircut

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“These wispy bits at the back of your head are borderline catastrophe,” she said, kindly.

I’d chosen her salon because there was a winter-themed model train set in the window. Tiny carriages chugged around and around a snowscape and up above, as if by magic, a hot air balloon carrying a family of dolls battled through the blizzard.

The night before the appointment I received counselling from LSB over Skype. “All things considered, Katzi, it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

For the last few months I have been sporting what can only be described as a mullet. Those of you unfamiliar with the term (Dad?) might find it helpful to do a Google Image search. I had been carrying my mullet stoically, concealing the rat-like tufts in a heap at the back of my head or using hair slides to pin them to obscurity.

I had done all this in the belief that good things come to those who wait.

But when the thin, spindly tufts began to take over my subconscious I decided it was time to act. Having dreamt that I was given an impromptu haircut by a concerned friend, I, like all those suffering in silence, turned to the Internet.

There I found forums, videos and entire blogs dedicated to my predicament.

I, dear readers, was growing out a Pixie Cut. I like pixie cuts. I’ve had many in my day. Like the ideal babysitting charge, they are short and sweet and require no looking after. But like the model child, their development can take a nasty turn. In the case of the Pixie, everything you loved about the short front and slightly longer back turns into a straggly mess, leaving you looking like a 1980’s popstar.2012-12-09 15.04.48

After extensive research, which included perusing forums offering nuggets of wisdom like “trust me, you need a stylist to get you through this” I decided it was time to limit the damage so that I can grow my hair out with dignity.

“You know, not everybody can do this,” the hairdresser said, shampooing my hair. “They say it’s easy but it requires skill.”

“Oh, trust me I know!” I said. “I don’t have any skill at all. Whenever I try anything with my hair it’s a disaster.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” she said brightly.

She brought over some wonderfully old-fashioned books, featuring pictures of ladies with different hairstyles grinning manically. They beat Google-image search hands-down.

We looked at what could be done and she showed me some pictures of what my hair grown out could eventually look like as long as I remembered to come back for a “maintenance” cut every six to eight weeks.

She got chopping. I was startled by the sudden noise of an engine. The train had set off. I watched it go around and around and smiled because outside, in the real world, it was snowing too.

I now have a “bob,” which LSB calls “Robert.” When I told my hairdresser that I was in a long-distance relationship, she sighed and said “From the bottom of my heart I really wish you all the best with that.”

I told her it was really quite a serious thing. “Look,” she said. “At least you’ll have lovely hair when he comes to see you.”

Which is Thursday. It can’t come soon enough.

The Republican

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We met on the platform of Berlin’s main train station early Sunday morning. He looked confused. I glanced in his direction and appeared pleasant and approachable. It worked. He came to me, pointed at the complicated travel itinerary he had printed out and asked if he was in the right place for Magdeburg.

He was. And I was going his way.

We sat in separate parts of the train. I looked out the window. Little patches of snow glistened on orange and golden bushes. Once I saw an animal I couldn’t identify squatting in a field. I guessed it might be a weasel, and then wondered if I knew what a weasel looked like.

We were scheduled to arrive in Magdeburg at 10.53. At 10.51 the display screen changed to “MAGDEBURG” and the train ground to a halt.

I disembarked. I looked around me and my heart sank. This looked nothing like the main train station to which I was headed. Then I saw the young man from before. He looked confused again. The station was otherwise deserted. “We’re wrong,” I said and suddenly sprung to action, trying to re-open the door that had closed behind me. It was too late. The train slid away.

I looked frantically at my own itinerary, which I had scribbled down on a scrap of paper.

“We need to get a taxi really quick,” I told him, as we made our way through the tiny, empty station. Our connecting train left in 7 minutes. We had landed in a station slightly outside of town. We had a choice of three taxis.

“Got off too early?” the driver asked. “Happens a lot.”
“We’ve got 7 minutes to get the next train.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said.

And so I sat in the back seat with the stranger. “Sorry I look so dishevelled,” he said. “I was out very late last night.” Four and a half minutes later we pulled up at the main train station. The driver opened the car boot and 30 seconds later I was running wildly with my suitcase and bag flying behind me and my new friend in tow.

We made it. My head was spinning with lack of sleep and the sudden exertion. That particular sensation was to become a feature of my day.

My new friend was in his early twenties. He had short brown hair and a nice face. He was polite, measured and American. He was spending some time studying in Germany while he completed his dual studies of international politics and officer training in the US army.

Over the next ten hours, we got to know each other intimately.
In Leipzig, over a steak sandwich (his) and a vegetarian kebab (mine) we talked about the responsibilities we had to our parents. He told me about his rural upbringing and how excited he was to get his first army salute. I talked about my German background and he told me about his Lithuanian one. I told him about Ireland and he told me about New Jersey.

Near Lutherstadt he said “I think I saw a fox earlier.”
“A fox?” I asked. “Where?”
“On the way to Magdeburg.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yeah, just sitting in a massive field.”
“I saw him too!” I said. “But I thought it was a weasel.”
He smiled. “I’m pretty sure it was a very small fox.”

Later still he said, “I’m not really into partying. But my friends were in town last night, and they made me stay out. That’s why I’m such a mess.” Then he paused and said “Did you say Let’s dash, earlier?”
“Yes, do yanks not say “dash?””
“No we don’t” he replied. “It’s cute though. Dash is a neat word.”

When we got to Hof he said “I hate talking about politics, especially in Europe.”

I bit my lip. This sounded interesting.

“I was talking to some French Canadians last night,” he continued, in spite of himself. “They just started attacking me. It’s so annoying. People here don’t know how American politics works.”

Ha, I thought. So I have finally met a Republican.

I was disappointed by how nice he was.

“I’m not a Republican,” he said. “I’m a libertarian. But Obama’s economics just doesn’t add up. I’ve studied it. And nationwide health insurance doesn’t make sense. This stuff has to come from individual states.”

I said the system seemed to work in Germany. “The US is a lot bigger,” he said.

We stopped there but politics hung in the air. He was right though. Along with most Europeans, I don’t really know how American politics works. I write snappy headlines about it, and I cut pictures and match them with entertaining soundbites. But do I know the numbers? Do I understand local government and the make-up of each state’s senate? No Sir, I do not.

I thought about this pleasant mild-mannered young man, with a life in the military in front of him. I thought about his girlfriend, also in the army. I thought about what he said about college boys having to be at least as fit if not fitter than the squad they lead. I thought about his mother, who has been sick. And I thought that there’s something very human that politics misses.

I hugged him when I got off the train in Regensburg and warned him that he might end up on my blog. As I was walking away, he turned in his seat and waved goodbye to me.

How Ireland looks on Al Jazeera

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I was gazing around the room during a quiet spell at work yesterday when I was startled to see Jesus Christ pop up on O’Connell Street. He’d appeared on one of the display screens featuring rival TV stations. The channel was Al Jazeera.

The Qatar-based news channel was reporting on how the economic crisis in Ireland is affecting women seeking to travel abroad to have an abortion. The piece is 2 minutes and 57 seconds long. It begins with some black and white shots of Jesus in his plastic display case on O’Connell Street, then cuts to a church and a lady with a pram. Finally it turns colour to reveal the reporter, Laurence Lee, formerly of the BBC, standing in a park.

It is an embarrassing watch. Ireland is painted as backward and its society described as “conformist.” We’re mentioned in the same breath as Iran and Afghanistan.

Travelling for an abortion from Ireland works on the same principle of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” which used to apply to gay members of the American military.

Nobody I know has told me they’ve had an abortion. Conversely, I’ve never asked if they’ve had one. But according to Lee’s report, the number of requests to a UK-based charity offering financial aid to women travelling to get an abortion has tripled in the last three years.

While I strongly support a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, the report left me feeling slightly defensive. Do we really live in a culture of silence? Is abortion really taboo?

Sadly, yes. But things are changing. The Irish Times ran a series on abortion a few months ago which invited women to tell their own stories. It got a huge response. Scores of women who had never before shared their experience finally elected to, spurred on by the sudden knowledge that they were not alone.

I do have one concrete objection to the report. Lee says that in Ireland a woman cannot have an abortion even if the fact of her pregnancy is putting her life at risk. Following the X case ruling, that isn’t quite accurate. However, so far there has been no legislation to support that judgement. The European Court of Human Rights is on our back about that too and it’s deeply embarrassing.

On the same day that the Al Jazeera report ran, at least 2000 people turned up in Castlebar in Mayo to demand Fine Gael live up to their pre-election “pro-life” promise.

Mostly the report left me dissatisfied because I thought, “What an unfortunate and reductionist view of Ireland to beam throughout the world, one which ignores the enlightened existences of my liberal-minded friends and me.”

Then I remembered that simplification and exaggeration are the hallmarks of a 3-minute news report. And that in a way, a piece like this might actually give me more of an insight into my country than my restricted and evidently unrepresentative social circle does.

I got back to writing my own three-minute international report, a little wiser about how little I know about everything.

Naked Gloria

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Right at this very moment, a man with grey floppy hair and a stripy woollen jumper is sitting in front of his laptop in a coffee shop in west Berlin, reading, what I suspect is his own story. It’s called “The Tutor” and begins: “Even with the fan beating her naked body, Gloria was dripping wet.”

I had to crane my neck to make that out.

I hope the person immediately behind me isn’t taking similar note of what I’m writing. That said, it would be rather nice to instigate a pretentious metafictional trail.

This coffee shop is a couple of stops away from where I live but it’s become my “local.” It’s where I went in my despair when the power failed. Since then I’ve spent hours here writing articles aimed at billionaire investors in the German real estate market, consoling myself by consuming the enormous chunks of floating ginger in my tea. It’s also where I teach English to a lovely young woman, who responded to one of the many poorly-designed posters I pasted around west Berlin.

The staff here are as attractive and cosmopolitan as the cocktails on the menu. One woman is raven-haired and French and speaks a charming nasal German. When she’s on shift with the men, they tease her about her love life. I suspect they’re looking for a way into it. Another one of the waitresses is Chinese. She wears a bemused smile. Another staff member is German but speaks fluent English with the many foreign customers. She’s got a delicate sensibility and is eager to please. One of the regulars told her today that he was homesick. She reported that to the Chinese waitress, her voice full of empathy.

Every so often when I breathe in I taste smoke. Boxed off in a glass house next to me is the Smoking Lounge. I like staring at the people inside. They always seem more anarchic. They slouch, stay longer than the people in my section and carry on as if governed by healthy resignation to their fate. I just glanced over, and as if it were scripted, a lady let out an almighty cough.

Anyway, the waiter whom I bewildered by tipping 50% on my day of need, has just placed a candle on my table. I think it’s time to go. The “fan”-fiction writer left a few paragraphs ago. If he ever Googles his opening sentence, he might find me. If that happens, just remember, I discovered you first, in your stripy jumper in west Berlin.

I can only hope that Gloria dries off in the end.

CrEDIBLE Sign Shocks West Berlin Authorities

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German mega-chain Schlecker went bankrupt and closed all its stores last summer. So someone stuck a sausage over the “Sch” at my local store and was left with the word “lecker,” meaning delicious. Authorities have since removed the sausage.

An Aggressive Defence of Nice People

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Someday my father and I are going to co-write a novel. We’ve been talking about it for years now. We are considering the epistolary form. The content will be largely autobiographical and we shall take a wry look at society and its conventions. Our own treatment as largely unsuccessful literary layabouts will be suitably ironic.

I have been collecting characters for our novel and I thought it was high time to write an aggressive defence of one of my most cherished prototypes: the nice person.

Since I’ve been in Berlin I’ve had the advantage of meeting lots of new people, many of whom vary substantially on a spectrum of pleasantness.

I have a “breaking news” example. I’m writing from my local library, where I am perched comfortably at a round table with my back to a radiator and a view to a study area.

Just now, my train of thought was interrupted by a booming voice. I looked up to see a large man approach a desk where two young girls, one in a floral headscarf and the other with a stripy jumper were studying.

“How DARE you talk in a library” he yelled. “This is supposed to be a QUIET area. The ImPERTINENCE. How DARE you?”

The girls’ faces were frozen with terror while his was red with vitriol.

Jumping in the air in defence of nice people in Philadelphia, almost a year ago.

“HAVE I MADE MYSELF UNDERSTOOD?”

They nodded.

I had not even been aware of so much as a whisper from the girls. But I was certainly interrupted by this foul-mouthed miscreant, who had taken library discipline into his own hands.

(By the way, I take respectful behaviour in libraries very seriously and absolutely believe in regulation. But in this case the offence was minor and the intervention disproportionate and without mandate.)

Nice people, thankfully, are not in short supply. They are the ones that instinctively apologise when you step on their toe and spend hours nodding sympathetically even when confronted by a dull narrative.

They are the cashiers that give you an extra nod when you’ve completed your purchase and the reporters that say “Oh don’t worry, I was useless at the start” when you display incompetence.

They are the people that do not recoil when a foul-smelling and batty woman sits next to them on the bus and the ones that engage in mini sprints to catch up with you when you’ve dropped a mitten.

Nice people, contrary to the individualist-inspired meme, do not (necessarily) end up on welfare.

Nice people are mostly self-consciously so. They have weighed up the cost of an unpleasant smell and dull conversation against the happy after-glow of having been pleasant. It’s moral mathematics.

Nice people are not walk-overs either. Sometimes they will startle you with their outrage or righteous indignation.

Nice people are sometimes quiet but that does not mean they are taciturn or shy. They are watchful. If you adopt a scornful and derisive tone, they will greet you with a steely silence. The effect is something in between disregard and non-compliance.

In our novel, the nice people won’t end up on welfare. And if they do, it will be very generous.

“Reality” Television

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I’m a “freelancer” now.

I know, doesn’t it sound exotic?

Actually, it’s a euphemism for “poor” but let’s not allow that get in the way of recording the associated advantages: staying in your pyjamas until all hours of the afternoon, leaving for work at 6 pm, and filling your head and diary with eclectic projects, many of which are yet to come into fruition.

My main job, remarkably, is in television. Would you believe, I translate and write news items, apparently watched by millions. (Don’t worry, there are lots of checks by more experienced people before my words turn into broadcasts).

I’ve only done a few shifts but I am learning rapidly how “news” works.

When I arrive at the office, I sit down at a computer and open a software programme which contains a run-down of all the news items due to be broadcast on the upcoming show.

Reports tend not to last more than about 2 and a half minutes and shorter bulletins are over within 25 seconds. So brevity and clarity are essential.

Kate Katharina reporting from Washington, with foam microphone.

So is understanding exactly what a story is about. It takes an expert to break something down into its barest form.

You have to work quickly. If a story is breaking, you need to sift through the information coming through the wires, distil it, find appropriate pictures and videos to accompany it and finally send it on to somebody who will produce it and fix any technical glitches.

It’s a huge responsibility.

And it’s that responsibility which I have been thinking about.

It’s important to remember how lucky I – and I assume most of my readers – are to live in an area of the world with an independent media and in an era in which information can go global in seconds.

More people have more access to more information than ever before.

As a result of this mass circulation and sharing of information, we can get away with having fewer sources.

And because the media now works like a web, rather than through straight lines as it used to, things can get tangled up more easily.

Since newspapers and television rely in a huge part on “wires” (=news agencies like Reuters and Associated Press) the pressure and responsibility on those reporters to be 100% accurate is enormous.

News agencies are a business. They can’t afford to send their reporters absolutely everywhere in the world, particularly not to every war-torn country with poor infrastructure and hostility to foreigners. So, our news comes from the people who happen to be stationed in certain parts of the world.

The headlines we get are a political, social and economic reflection on western life and values.

And it’s important to remember that we probably miss as many stories as we run.

Having been surrounded by extraordinarily hard-working and intelligent journalists, I’m far from disillusioned by how the media works. But I am becoming more aware of how arbitrary the selection and presentation of news has always been and will remain.

Things are moving in the right direction. Tweets fly off from the obscurest of locations, bloggers are becoming more influential, and technology is advancing in the developing world.

However, manipulation is becoming easier and more sophisticated, and misrepresentations can spread like wildfire.

I’m only starting out in the field and I am young and stupid. My main concern though is a noble one. I want to tell a truthful story well. And if that means staying small-scale and telling you about a a spindly old man and his giant dog, or about the old man who couldn’t stop falling, at least you know that these are things that I have seen with my own eyes, not images which have landed on my screen after rushing through the wires. And no matter how timid a voice I am on the blogosphere, the fact that I have one screams volumes about the democracy which we should never, ever take for granted.

Call Me Definitely

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As if the “Present Box” wasn’t enough to make me smile on my way to do the grocery shopping, this mobile telephone box turned Bibliothek has just popped up a few yards away. You take a book, and if you have one spare, you leave one back. I’ve picked up a German copy of Sue Townsend’s Downing Street No. 10. I sent an over-zealous email of gratitude to the group that organises these things. Unfortunately it came back to me instantly with a notice that delivery had failed permanently. So if you’re reading, good people at Dorf Dienst, I love your telephone box-library.