W Diary4

Diary, 20 August 03

And another thing.

Gary said he didn't like, 'When the Chips are Down' last night.

'It doesn't flow.' he said. 'I didn't like the way the words repeated
themselves. I wouldn't have paid ?200 for it.'

That hurt. Not so much that he didn't like it but that he is not proud
of me at all. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of a lot of people; my mum,
my brother, my cat. And they haven't even done anything.

It's a good quality to be proud of someone. It means you have a big
heart. And not being proud, what does that mean? The opposite; I don't
know.

I wonder why I do all this. Why I let these words accrete on the page.
I wonder if I am like Amy Tan parachuting into Vietnam on a sunny
Thursday afternoon.

'Look,' the young peasant boy shouts. 'Look!'

'What?' the father says, stooped and aching.

'A parachute,' shouts the peasant boy. 'Someone is descending by
parachute!'

'Never mind that,' the father says, aching and stooped. 'Pick the
rice. Since those bastard American have twisted the arm of the bastard
IMF we need every grain we can get or we will starve to death. To
death, you know!'

'Yes papa,' says the peasant boy but he keeps one eye twizzled as Amy
Tan lands knee deep in the paddy field clutching the latest edition of
The Joy Luck Club. 'As seen in Hollywood' is emblazoned on the cover
and emblazoned across her face is a somewhat bewildered expression as
she tries desperately to call her agent.

'I said Kampuchea,' she screams into the empty phone. 'I said
Kampufuckingchea!'

She is big there apparently.

Now she has to wait until nightfall for the next helicopter ride out
and she sighs deeply as the waxy moon wanes.

In Eskimo mythology the moon is called Malina. Malina is a beautiful
girl who was raped by her brother Anningan. And now every night
Anningan chases Malina across the sky. Malina doesn't want to be raped
again. She runs and she runs and because she runs so much she doesn't
have time to eat. She gets thinner and thinner. Until almost there is
nothing left.

Every so often when Anningan catches Malina again he rapes her again.
For the Eskimos this is a terrible day. They say, 'This is a terrible
day' and they don't rub their noses one against the other and they
don't salt their fish.

In fact on this day the Eskimos don't do anything but sit in their
goddam igloos and say what a terrible day it is, this day when Malina
has been caught by Anningan.

'It's the Americans fault,' they say. 'It's those bastard Americans
fault and that bloody IMF.'

And uselessly they shake their fists across the ice. And they know
that this won't any difference but it makes them feel better all the
same.

We have a different take on the same situation altogether.

We say on this day when Anningan catches Malina that we are having an
eclipse. An eclipse! What a paucity of imagination we have.

Point of fact is that Eskimos don't like being called Eskimos. Eskimo
means raw meat eater in Eskimo language. I say they are wrong to think
like this. Very wrong indeed.

Sometimes you have to take on a word and make it your own:

'We're here! We're Eskimo! Get out of here!'

Today at work wasn't too bad. I was writing new templates for the
website. At 4 o'clock one of the evening shift came in. She was new on
the email team so I was showing her the ropes.

'What are all these ropes?' she said.

'Magic!' I said as I tied myself in first a half-hitch and then
released myself in a jiffy.

'Get out of the jiffy, Drew,' she said, 'and show me how to do the
emails.'

So I did. I showed her first how the email system worked and then I
showed her the new templates.

'You wrote all these?' she said.

'Well&;#8230;' I said. I drummed my fingers on the desk.
'Well&;#8230;'

You know, I am shy.

'You wrote these?' she said again, her eyes were wide now. Like Mickey
Mouse ears on the top of a tree on a bright night.

'Most of them,' I said, 'you know. Kate did a few&;#8230;'

'I'm proud of you,' she said. 'You know what Drew, I'm well proud of
you.' She laughed. 'I am.'

I had Word on scroll lock by now.

'Some of them aren't on the website yet,' I said. 'These are the new
ones. I've been working on these today.'

New templates flashed before our eyes.

Platform Information.

Motorail.

Groupsave Tickets.

Changing your Journey.

'Wow,' she said. 'You wrote all these. That's well good. And I bet you
don't get any of the credit. You should sign them. That's what you
should do. You should sign them.'

Compensation for late trains.

Sleeper services.

Senior Railcards.

Booking from overseas.

'You're talented Drew. You are. You're talented. There's no doubt
about it.'

I'm not. But sometimes you have to take pride where you can get
it.

It wasn't such a bad day after all.

Unfortunately this is all true.