Hijab

In a month when Waltham Forest Libraries publishes its plan to interprete International Women’s Day as a month of lady-related topics and loosely related themes to women in society ( “Gone Girl”) and when I await an answer, any answer,  to my now-formalised complaint about a session for women and daughters making up together as wrong because IWD is not about the sexualisation of children then along comes National Potato Day next Monday followed by International Hijab Day on 1st Feb. In a month when the first prosecution  for FGM in the UK gets underway and controversy simmers around the “I Am Girl” women into sports advert then I am agog at all around me but not silent.

Waltham Forest Council back in the eighties was like a force getting its kicks on Route 66 forging ahead, embracing every idea and debating everything before deciding what was  workable. Women on and outwith the Council insisted that  street-lighting was raised so that dark streets became highways for women to feel safe. It worked. The Council listened to school office-workers (mainly women) and gave them three “Religious” days off and rightly so because teaching staff had them. In fact WF was “lighting up tomorrow with today”. Women congratulated themselves. Waltham Forest was a unique progressive borough.

Nowadays the Borough is coming across as muddled and unliked, neither bothered about women especially down St James’ area with the “Rooms Of Our Own” disappointment nor meeting the demands of older people compared to Islington and Hackney where there are regular activities for seniors. The school students of the nineties look from their adult hood into the Borough and wonder what happened to drag it backwards.

 

On the Waltham Forest mothership we are going backwards. The paternalism mounts as any newcomer to the borough with any idea is  accommodated. The replacements for the  shakers and movers of days of yore can sit back and rest on their velvet cushions in their art-deco town hall knowing that their community is taking care of itself, ticking all the impressing boxes. That’s how an enterprising entrepreneur can suggest that mothers and daughters in painting their faces together to please others is right on. It is so not any on. Those who questioned everything in the borough moved on in so many ways and became older. Those who remained, the long-time residents, volunteer in museums and galleries while new residents use public places to  infect the naïve with their own ignorance about achieving equality and self-esteem. It appears to their audiences that that we are all progressing when in fact the opposite is true.

I am assuming that soon the Borough will realise that Hijab day is a -coming.  Now where I live most of the women I pass and see wear an hijab. My friends wear hijabs. My ex-colleagues wear hijabs. On bad hair-days I wear hijabs. My mum and her friends all wore headscarves. My friends on Scottish islands still wear headscarves. The queen still ties on an headscarf. Well, she doesn’t: A maid does that, a domestic worker even. I collect vintage head scarves. I bought headscarves from the Salvation Army Shop for 20p each and sold them on to Beautiful Interiors for £1 each where they sold for £7 each. Ha ha! Gotcher. I see no reason for  a day devoted to the hijab. I don’t see why we need to acknowledge the potato, love them though I do. I do compliment a woman on her hijab style or colour which kinda takes away the vanity aspect of hijab-wearing. I compliment women all the time and found nothing silly about telling my date how fabulous he looked in his three-quarter leather coat and sparkling clean finger-nails. Credit where it’s due. I know that the Hijab day is probably supposed to be a catalyst for conversation. I’m pulsing.

An artist in East London has been commissioned to do vox-pops with the public about the status of the hijab. Here it’s assumed that only young Moslem women, gobby or not, will give some views. That’ll be interesting for all of us, their mums ‘n’ all. “Girl with a pearl earring” by RAGWORKS

Last year there was an art exhibition at Brady Arts in Whitechapel, a photographic exhibition about the hijab. I was stunned at the topic. I’m stunned that an art exhibiton can be a display of pressed flowers but there you go. I go along to my friends’ women-only tea club which is attended mostly by senior women in hijabs. I had so wanted to discuss life with the women. It began. I found out in a minute between the curry and the cake that they had all worked in local factories in the seventies. They had been out of their houses. That was it though. They had given away too much, For a blink they used “I” then quickly said a prayer and returned to the normal “we”. They were not going to share  their experiences. I wanted to know more. I persuaded them to come along to an heritage tea party in Ilford. Three woman came. Two kept quiet whereas one had stories all about the tea, the staff, the joy of being rich in India and then the struggle in England moving down to London from the Midlands. That was it. She had given enough and declined any more invitations to be the subject of vox-popping.

Amina took her thirty tea-club women  to a beautiful grill restaurant in Green Lanes. The Sahara in Leyton is too dear. The night before she phoned to comfirm that I were coming and that she had to still dye her hair. At the restaurant I remained silent as thirty women joined in the pre-meal prayer.  I sat opposite Amina and she pointed to her covered head and gave me the information that she hadn’t had time to dye her hair. I thought nothing of it and carried on sharing the Nan bread and dipping my chicken pieces into the curry gravy. After the meal there was commotion as Amina tried desperately to get the right money out of some women for the communal bill. I offered her twenty pounds if she were short and could see a tear in her eye. Her clan disappeared outside and into the discount shops as soon as the ice-cream spoons had been licked clean. Amina  exited to the cloakroom and I waited with my latte.

When she returned she was radiant; Her hair was newly-dyed and ginger at the tips which suited her reddened lips. She was a vision in red away from the black hijab and black sleeved tunic. She pursed her lips and adjusted the glittery clasp which was supporting a mane of seventy-year old pony-tail. “Wow, Amina.What happened? You look lovely”

“Oh these women! If I don’t wear hijab, they insult me. Have they gone? “And she looked through the vast shop front.

Building workers in Goa.2012.

I related the story to my daughter as we  repeated our  illuminating stories about cleavage and women in society and the ways we’re being dragged back by newcomers with backward ideas and ways. Good to talk. Je suis Charlie. Her take on the Amina story? She categorically said, “The women bully her. It’s a case of bullying. After all, Amina’s been in this country fifty years. She’s educated. She mixes with everyone.. She is being bullied otherwise she has the intelligence to decide her way in life in UK in 2014.”

So I wondered why the status of the hijab couldn’t be a conversation on March 8th, International Womens’s Day because it might affect all women and if not, a large percentage of women. The problem there is that many many women and men , those who insist plumbing and blue is for boys and agree that the important room for women in any house is the she– kitchen,  see IWD as a disease pushed on by lesbians in DMs, something to be ignored except if it provides free Zumba and a free £23 worth of a pedometer.

PS Just finished “Gone Girl” and bit off my nail varnish reading “The Blackwater Lightship”.

Argall Industrial Estate

It’s ten days now since I’ve waited and rung the environmental lot in Waltham Forest four times for a single now single soaking wet mattress to be removed from my front yard. The last I was told by the office supervisor was that she would send an email, send an email! ( Garlic bread?) to escalate the job. That meant there was a note allegedly and not in pencil saying that the job should be done within 24 hours. Oh do me a favour! Should? The word “would” is juggling for position.

That’s why Waltham Forest is a mattress borough. It isn’t a mattress borough  entirely because there’s a transient society here: There’s actually an huge stagnant society doing the right thing.

On the corner of my road is a built corner protector, a piece of ‘street furniture’ (I know!) which is used daily as a prop for people’s bags of rubbish, broken umbrellas, old cots and mattresses, strewn and ripped clothes previously left out for AgeUK collectors and whoever trades in rags. One day the council truck came a-collecting and I asked why fly-tippers were being excused and money spent sending out trucks and men to gather and dispose of people’s domestic rubbish. Answer “Oh, it’s the foreigners, see. They don’t know about how to dispose of rubbish.”  Well, not on my and their back yards then! By that logic only white British-born, you know the new ethnic minority, know how to get rid of rubbish.

Behind what was the Burwell Residential Estate off Lea Bridge Road on the border of Waltham Forest and Hackney is the disgusting mess that is Argall Industrial Village. Its name changes like the weather but I like “industrial village” because it is so not that.

                 There are Argall Estate patrol cars checking out that all is well on the land, so I was told. The single decker bus W19 actually travels into it but ignores its own timetable so that’s not much use to residents. The place is nasty. Litter swirls around in any whiff of wind. Abandoned stinking mattresses provide hiding places for feral cats and the Black Path is known as Rats’ Alley by locals who know too well the stench of yeast and bread from Kingsmill. Hoo Hing Supermarket is a neon-lit beacon for those who lose their way or who fear being accosted by underage vagabonds. Only the mini-industry workers aka Eastern Europeans and nervous dog-walkers walk the walk.

          In 1986 Argall Industrial Village was dire and on the brink of going under. It went under and post Olympics it is doubly dire. Like Hackney Wick it provides recyclable buildings for weekend churches where the white-robed congregations are not fussed about what they step in. Unlike in Hackney Wick, where established artists mix oils with Forman fish whiffs, other creative types safe in E17’s Tokarska  Gallery and The Mill would only evaporate    remotely in Argall.         

          I’ve yet to see what’s good about it. I try.

“Where there’s muck, there’s brass”, I mutter.

             My lovely neighbour over the back fence who is long dead told me how in the thirties on a Thursday morning you could hear each door shut on the Burwell Estate as each housewife in her scarf and carrying her shopping basket or wheeling her wicker trolley made her way across the factories ( now the Argall Industrial  Estate) and through the rat-ridden pathway (now The Black Path) up into St James’ Park and onto Coppermill Lane for the market day. Love that story.  Her brother’s still at the back of me. He served in the army up in the Orkneys during WW2. Great geezer.

Free thoughts about Waltham Forest : “Anythin’ Can Happen”.

Big hooha in E17.  There was a plan by Waltham Forest Council to allow a big camp site over Olympics time down Low Hall Lane, E17.  Course the world objected and last night the deal fell through. W F.Council was relying on the money, the revenue from all of this , to pay Alexandra Burke on March 19th at “Party On The Pitch” allegedly. I said previously that anything can happen. The only positive thing was that businesses, you know the ones that collapse overnight in their own mire, would benefit from campers. Wrong, the campsite, like all holiday ones, would have had its own toilet- roll shop and Westfield (remember not E15 but E20) was a Dagenham Brook bus ride away! Actually I never heard any business say they were positive. Too busy keeping thieves at bay. That was another thing. I was offended that objectors said there would be more crime because of a camp- site being erected. Jeez.  Welcoming or what?!

Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” playing on BBC Radio 3 in the background as I type. Neat.

Now where will the Olympics lot go to put a massive campsite where maybe some of their out -of- town GamesMakers were supposed to lodge? Blow that for a lark! I am so over the Olympics now esp. as McDonalds has brought out its healthy eating nonsense and giving away pedometers instead of toys to kiddies. I agree we should all embark on and sustain  healthiness but Maccas! Where is our govt now? Swamped by Maccas and Cadburys.

Cadburys cleverly promoting itself by doing loads of offers in shops. Check the Co-op.

The nasty thing about the campsite was that the council signed a deal in secret allegedly to the camp organisers! The revenue was to pay for The Big 6, the series of events put on by Waltham Forest Council. We all wondered how WF suddenly woke up and began advertising major celebrity-led events.

WF only woke up last November. Before that they didn’t do anything for the people re: Olympics . Their Greeters programme fell flat. Their “It’s Happening Here in Waltham Forest” stickers faded two years ago.They are currently advertising for street cleaners to  sweep and at the same time become street guides. Bogoff.

Since Day 1 Newham was streets ahead…art music etc etc , and Hackney! Yes, Newham had the money. But didn’t Waltham Forest have its hand out? On the BBC London 2012 website dj SilverJay representing some of the youth of Waltham Forest was succinct in saying that the London Borough of Waltham Forest looks a disgrace with the London 2012 on the horizon. Since last November it looks as though every pavement has been dug up and every shop fascia done over. There are red and white barricades everywhere and abysmal traffic queues. Well, go into the side streets and see what’s what. Like any ticket-holders will come this way anyway. I’m sure their own what’s -on  websites will have fed them reports of knives and guns.

I have been in the know myself since Day 1 what with Up Your Street and my fervent interest in the coming of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.  Fooled I was greatly.

 

“You can’t please all o’ the people all o’ the time”

Waltham Forest Council is putting on a free Christmas party in Chingford but just for older people.. The Eid and Diwali parties were for all generations and of course the invitation went out to all residents.

Older people inhabit the age group from sometimes 50 but definitely 60 years and onwards. In that span there are such differences that it becomes a challenge to pitch any entertainment appropriately. It’s worth a revision and a bit of market research. I, as a senior, would like to reiterate that the 60 year olds in any London borough come from many ethnic backgrounds and that we were the Hippy generation, the rebels, the Mods and the Rockers, the Profumo affair generation, the Pill pioneers and the topless dressed ones. We are the Reggae stompers, the Dylan troubadours, the first time immigrants who wore ties to breakfast, the ones who formed women’s groups and multi-cultural settings. We run local radio shows (Streetlifefm) and volunteer in the community at local theatres (TRSE) and community action groups. So move over Dean and Frank for a while. Connie, get you to the tea dances where the 60 year olds are invisible. We aren’t all the same eggs in the same basket. What the 76 year old allegedly wants is not what we rising elders want at all. Get me?