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It’s so difficult to address the complexities of our times and our extraordinary island with children, even with a Week Junior in hand.
We watched this brilliant film by Ken Loach with the children and it showed so much more than can ever be told. I’d highly recommend for age 12 plus - along with so many of his others - Sorry We Missed You, Kes, Kathy Come Home, I, Daniel Blake. The cubs have been incredibly moved by them all - but you might need subtitles for Kes 😉
The Lion 🦁had a bit of a weep when he unveiled his birthday present from me and the cubs. I don’t know if you agree, but childhood is like a constantly moving, shifting thing - like a sky or a sea - the colours, the shapes, the expressions constantly evolving.
There are times when I study one of their newly-awoken faces and wonder if I’d set a film camera I could have charted the changes during the night. As I could swear they looked different when they went to bed.
Though not a cub as such, our faithful Debbie the dog has entwined herself in our little family trajectory in 6 years. She swam away our Covid cares with us in Oman, neatly switching to grubby Camden streets and green parks full of squirrels on our return, and loyally shares long hauls, trains and epic car journeys through mountains and deserts with a regulatory excited wag at the end of it. The pet trajectory is never long enough - and I can almost feel her whiskers and breath on my cheek as I look at this image.
I am in a constant state of wonder and admiration at anyone who can draw or paint anything, let alone something that looks exactly like the ones you love. Since I cheat and use a beautiful piece of technology to film - some people simply reach for a charcoal or oil with a bare hand and off they go…
These will be treasured til we end our days. And who knows where they’ll hang beyond that? The adventures continue.
Thank you dearest friend for your art and fun and your love.
Really honoured to work with this amazing organisation once again.
My inimitable Mum Lavinia Gordon will play a 4 hour piano-thon this Saturday March 9th starting at 9am to raise money for an artist’s shelter in Gaza. There is just one concert grand piano in Gaza, which has miraculously survived many an ordeal including this latest, heartbreaking assault on humanity. This is tragically not the case for thousands of Gazans. But the sleek black Yamaha plays on, and Pal Music www.palmusic.org.uk and the Music Fund are raising money for an artists’ shelter to house the piano, and provide an oasis of hope for local musicians and children alike, to come and share and play music, providing light and solace at the darkest of times. A few of us will be chiming in while she has her breaks. This is hosted on Zoom by our exceptional Jazz teacher Joe Thompson http://www.joethompson.london who is a maestro and a true friend. Joe Thompson is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: Pianoathon
Time: Mar 9, 2024 09:00 AM London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81554925556?pwd=MklCOEtwSkNGK1d3bnRBeHJ1bjFUUT09
Meeting ID: 815 5492 5556
Passcode: 617620
—
Proramme:
9am – Baroque and Roll while you nibble on your bacon roll
10am – Interlude of Scottish trad by Muriel Johnstone
10.15 – Then SHOW Me – songs from the shows
11am – Lucy Lyon playing Love Songs for Gaza
11.15 Make it or Fake it – Jazz and Things
12.00 Abdel Fater entertains (one of Mum’s asylum seeker English Language pupils)
12.15 Play it again Sam – A medley to include a duet version of chopsticks
Please give generously. Unfortunately, there is no payment link possible but payments can be made to their Charitable Trust Account:
Mr and Mrs A D Gordon
60-93-03
14052851
‘My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things,’ wrote Maya Angelou in Letter to my Daughter.
And never have I been more struck by livers of life than on trips to Gعza over the years. Dina Mattar - the artist who painted this lovely picture which now hangs in our house in London - once told me that since she lived in a place where there was often war, she wanted to draw attention in her paintings to the joys and every day details of life. The lady in the market buying green almonds. Here she is surrounded by piles of them and its blossom. The yellow gets me every time.
Our eldest cub was quite little when I brought the picture home. He scurried off into my office and spent an hour or so copying it. It got under his skin as well.
A month after I bought her picture I was lucky enough to visit Dina in her lovely apartment in Gعaza, filled with colour and light with her husband, an accomplished artist, and their two children - they were all drawing when I arrived. I filmed them as they spoke of making art and embracing life in a place continually in the firing line.
Now, to go to the market, if it’s even there at all, is a matter of life and death.
I don’t even know where Dina is. If you see this Dina, please know that I think of you and your family every day as I look at your beautiful work - and I explain all about you to our friends and family when they visit. How I wish I could open our doors to your family.
I read an extract from the Gعza notebook in the (I would recommend subscribing) a housewife wrote: ‘We miss the taste of life. We are living in an atmosphere of death.’
Frank Auerbach in a beautiful interview on This Cultural Life said that his muse Stella West’s father - a philosopher - laid down the distinction between ‘death avoiding behaviour’: everything we do to survive and pay the bills, and ‘life enhancing behaviour’. Most of us spend far too much time on the former.
Do we need death to be so close to remind us how to live?
‘In this short life that only lasts an hour
How much - how little - is within our power’.
Emily Dickinson
15 years ago today I was working in Niger with a wonderful team of radio producers. We had recently watched Obama’s inauguration on a big screen in a restaurant. The atmosphere was electric, and full of hope. I just re-found the blog I was writing at the time, and I’m busy reflecting: particularly this week as the Niger Prime Minister, Ali Lamine Zaine has arrived in Moscow for talks on defence, agriculture and energy 💭 (It makes you wonder…all French solders left Niger in December).
January 15th, 2009: ‘The Aeroport International Diori Hamani in Niamey was pretty quiet. There was nothing on the runway apart from a huge plane belonging to the Kuwait Airforce. I wondered what had brought them here. But perhaps they were thinking the same about me. The airport building itself is simply four brick walls with a roof perched on top, and a huge gap in between allowing the air to enter.
Miraculously my luggage arrived, my visa, passport and yellow fever form was given the okay and I found a little white van outside saying: ‘Le Grand Hotel du Niger’ – my accommodation for the next couple of weeks until I go to Chad. The driver was fast asleep with his legs dangling out of the window. West African tunes pumped from the stereo. He slowly woke up, rubbed his eyes and said Salaam Aleikum, then continued in French.
The earth here is a dark ochre colour. Considering that it’s only earth, it’s incredibly beautiful - perhaps because of the contrast to the huge blue sky. Weaving down the road we passed strings of camels and herds of goats in amongst the traffic. Vehicles sprayed orange dust, and there was endless scrubland and little round houses made of straw either side of the road.
We passed a huge sign saying: ‘Bienvenue dans un monde de simplicité et diversité’ and I thought that sounded quite a nice combination. The evidence already in the passers by, wearing either bold African prints, or a simple robe with blue, white or black scarves wound into a turban on the head with the ends allowed to flap loose or to cover the face against the dust, often with enormous gold framed aviators or Elvis shades perched on top.’
9 years ago today. I was pregnant with the smallest cub and we took the boys to Bethlehem. I remember the boys asking: ‘Is this big wall still called ‘a wall?’ It is the ugliest wall we have ever seen. And you can’t even see over it.’
Gábor Maté gives me the words I’ve been looking for these past devastating weeks. It’s easy to think there are no words - but really there are. And the words we use must be chosen carefully.
Last week we bid farewell to John, our wonderful neighbour and friend. He’d had a good whack at life and how he used every juicy drop of his almost- century on the planet. His and Ken’s Georgian dolls house next to ours, on our little canal side terrace stands empty, the garden already overgrown
We are an unlikely running pair in many ways…but it’s never too late to jump out of that rubber ring and into some jogging pants.
For the first time in 46 years, my brother Duncan and I will be running alongside each other in the Royal Parks half marathon in London on Sunday October 8th.
We’re raising money for the David Nott Foundation whose mission it is to deliver specialist training to surgeons saing lives in countries affected by conflict and catastrophe.
I’m lucky enough to have travelled with them on many of their trainings - including Somaliland and Palestine, to make short films documenting their work, and the heroic contributions of the local surgeons they train. I can vouch their work is truly impressive, humanitarian above all else, and never more vital for our world. Duncan and I would be so grateful if you could make a contribution on our behalf. It will make the 13 miles around London’s majestic streets and beautiful autumnal parks seem all the more worthwhile.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/lucy-lyon-duncan-gordon-1696055745554?newPage=true
Now I’m in Ashdod. The change of cultural scene from Hebron could not be more extreme - though I am only 33 miles away. (Think London to Stevenage.) I put the journey into Google Maps out of interest. ‘Cannot find a way there’ it tells me. From the colourful chaos of Hebron I find myself in an industrial port-cum-beach resort with a huge public art sculpture outside the hotel which looks like a crashed UFO. I look to the sea and think of Palestinian friends in Gaza, just 26 miles away. I won’t try Google Maps this time as I know what the answer will be. Though I could feasibly swim there. And many of my West Bank interviewees from last week will have never even seen this sea. My filming has been cancelled for the next two days which is disappointing for me, but devastating for the Palestinian cancer patients who were supposedly coming over the Gaza border which is now closed due to the latest clashes and 13 more deaths. No one knows what the retaliation from Gaza will look like. But the uncertainty is completely disruptive and disabling. Everyone becomes more terrified. And nothing gets planned or done. In the meantime I am culturally stranded and intellectually and emotionally challenged in the lobby of the Leonardo Plaza with ‘Besame Mucho’ piping out of the speakers.
Guns, combat gear and watch towers everywhere. It’s no wonder that boys from toddler age and up are cruising about Hebron with ‘Glock’ written 🔫on their t shirts and their sweatshirts and their trainers. When does defence become attack? It’s also interesting that I can’t find a gun emoji other than this little green water pistol. Which in my view is a good thing. Let’s keep guns and their image, out of our civilian lives at every opportunity.
Just a little shout out to say that this amazing group of Afghan Women writers I am lucky enough to be working with are now being published in many languages. The book is now in Japanese 🤩🥳And many more to come. If you haven’t yet bought a copy in the UK/English speaking world, I urge you to. It is a beautiful if heart breaking glimpse into the very heart of being an Afghan woman today. 💔
القدسJerusalem in Springtime.
It’s funny casting myself off on my own on a work trip for two weeks. People do it all the time - and without note. But I’ve found that since having children, even with all my heavy bags of camera equipment, the feeling of lightness pervades. The understanding that while interwoven with these precious souls who are my kin, fundamentally we are all alone. We all sat on the roof of our house last night having drinks and nibbles, playing games and laughing so hard. The children didn’t want me to go and I knew the transition,
the ripping off is the hardest bit and while I was loving these moments, I was also longing to jump the goodbye and the explanations and be on my way. And now I’m heading back to Palestine/Israel and the place we all called home for 4 years. And the place in which our youngest cub was born. Like a carrier pigeon I return, with nothing but the memories of that slice of life gone by, and the hope that by recording some more realities in these delicate fragments of shattered land, that somehow we can all understand a little more. ‘What you have seen will pass. But that you have seen will not.’
Somebody wants to come with me on my filming trip. Only room for the three legged companion this time.
But you left us with your music 🎵❤️
E1 Fire 🔥 Station
New home. New life. Debbie dog the eternal glue who helps us explore and feel more at home.
Vinnie. The Legend. A role model in a million. Mum we adore you. 💖
I’m very excited to be taking on a new project working with Afghan women writers who collectively wrote the beautiful stories in this book, pictured here. ‘My Pen is the Wing of a Bird.’ Isn’t this the most lovely title? It’s a line from one of their stories. I urge you to buy it, read it, read it again, send it to friends. There is nothing that can connect us like a human story - in this case fictional short stories. It is a landmark collection: the first anthology of short fiction by Afghan women. These writers tell stories that are both unique and universal - stories of family, work, childhood, friendship, war, gender identity and cultural traditions. The introduction was written by and an afterward by Lucy Hannah, the director of who I will be working alongside. Watch the space for more work from these writers, who can help us understand a little about what it is to be an Afghan woman right now in the world.
It was a real honour to interview Dr Esti Galili-Weisstub today - and this week in particular, as we see yet more tragedy unfold in Palestine. Dr Esti is the director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Hadassah and a renowned expert in conflict related trauma in children. She explained how her father came from Germany in the 1920s, always considered himself lucky to have got to the safety of Israel at that time. But that never did he allow his family to forget that it was land that belonged to the Palestinian people and this should be respected. Esti carries this legacy on as she specialises in designing bespoke culturally specific therapy for every child in the Holy Land - Arab, Israeli Arab, Israeli, or immigrant from anywhere. She also trains psychiatry students across the board. While she admitted that children surrounded by conflict and suffering trauma as a result can often risk losing their ability to empathise, she also said to work with children was wonderful as they have the most enormous powers of self recovery. Thank you Esti and your teams and your students for your amazing work. If only there could be more of us as useful as you in our times.
It’s always an honour to document the work of the amazing .nott.foundation In this chaotic world the foundation offers an extraordinary combination of altruism, authenticity and the highest of standards, bringing purpose and skill to conflict zones and enabling surgeons to do their bit, a hundred times better. Interviewing a surgeon from Somaliland or Palestine, Ethiopia or Syria, and hearing them talk of the nature of their work; the burden they carry when they don’t have the expertise to carry out an operation successfully, is sobering. Humanity lies in so many places. But there is so much of it alive and well in medicine - it is a robust and resilient bridge in times of conflict.
..continued from the last post…John and Ken are still here living next door, and yesterday we rang to see if they wanted to come for a pre lunch drink. They were feeling terrible they said. Life is a struggle and they’d only just got up (at 12.45pm) but a glass of a Crémant de Loire might be just the thing for breakfast. I didn’t admit that while we’d been up for 6 hours longer than them, we were not feeling at our perkiest. We all had that last day of half term feeling. Anyway, they arrived at 1.15 looking a little unshaven: ‘I’m not well - I need soothing’ said John reaching for his glass and handing his stick to a bystanding cub. I’ve always found that in every community we’ve lived, the sense of belonging is helped by having friends from different generations. We all need each other as much as those of of our own age, and have much to offer both ways. I’d been feeling bad as we hadn’t been knocking on their door much to ask if they needed anything. But John reassured me: ‘We have a carer who comes and she has a device’ they said ‘that enables her to communicate with…others.’ We’d just been discussing the occult with our cubs that morning, so I said ‘Oh, a ouija board.’ No just something called a…pad?’ The children were in hysterics. ‘An iPad Mummy. Not a a ouija board.’ They decided that lunch would also be a very good idea, and I burned my hand on a baking tray, back of set, gesticulating to get the cubs scurrying about for ice and Acriflex. The cubs also helped J and me knock together some lamb patties and chargrill the flatbreads to match the charred hand. John and Ken ate all their food, fed Debbie dog their Turkish delight and left at 4pm.
Can you actually feel like you belong in a city where you weren’t born? 2 of our cubs were born in London but that doesn’t mean they feel they belong here at all. And it is struggle at times, as naturally as a parent, you always worry that you are screwing it up for them. But as a surprise ray of spring sun streamed in the window I knew that sharing a bit of a non-belonging day with nonagenarians was a definite tonic. And a kind of message that said: ‘if in doubt have lunch with the neighbours’.
What is community? And how do you feel part of one when you’re moving around all the time? It’s a question I ask myself every day - particularly pacing the streets of London where communities are not always evident.
I often feel that our fridge door is our proof of community: Stuck all over with friendly faces who formed part of communities past. In which we once belonged. I always smile to myself reaching for something in the fridge - looking at my beautiful Italian friend aka: Umm Sukr who took me under her elegant wing when J was working in Baghdad and I was in Jerusalem with the 3 cubs. Actually I burst into tears on her in Ottolenghi’s favourite pastry shop when she asked me about the plan for J to go to Baghdad. And then the following day she left a little pot of apricot jam she’d made on our gate saying: ‘Ana mish mish’’: in Arabic ‘I am Apricot’. I think you make deeper friendships when one of you is vulnerable. My aunt told me the reason why everyone in New York had a therapist was because everyone was too busy to be a friend.
The other community members who have travelled with us around the Arab Region and have been present on each and every one of our fridges are John and Ken our now nonagenarian neighbours here in Camden. Actually Ken is 87 ‘the toy boy’ as he’s known by John his 96 year old husband. They married the first day they could - on the same day as Elton and David Furnish. And they were the first on our terrace to meet our firstborn cub. I was walking gingerly along our terrace with the precious bundle in a lion cub suit when I saw John in his skinny jeans. ‘Oh!’ ‘It’s a BABY!!’ he shrieked - his palms theatrically placed on his own cheeks. And promptly inspected the tiny foot to see if our cub might have promise as a dancer. (Ken was a ballerina 🩰 and danced for the Shah of Iran in the 70s as they often remind us).
TBC…in the next post…
10 years ago this week our eldest cub started off his school days in Jordan in a class where he was the only non-Arabic speaker. We got a ride there in a taxi with Abu Mohammed pictured here squeezing the baby cub brother. It’s amazing how quickly our cub picked up many new words and made a friend called Nabil though they shared no language. After a couple of weeks at the school he was obviously so exhausted by the continuous foreign sounds, he said to his teacher with his little lisp he had back then: ‘Pleathe never thpeak to me in Awabic never ever never again.’ Even though we had to go a bit more mainstream for his education after this first experience, when he counts, he sounds pretty convincing. And I love how the seeds of some of that beautiful behemoth language are in there somewhere. 📚
When all the cubs are at home I truly feel like I belong in that moment. Whatever the physical place. I’m reading a book called Rooted, but I think mine would be called Uprooted or Unrooted. While I’m not sure any more where I’m really from, or the physical place in which I really belong, I wouldn’t swap this life for any other. Perhaps this life of exploring and adventures was my destiny (or written on my forehead) as they say in Farsi. I used to dream about packing a small bag and venturing out on my own, from as young as 7, from the safety and comfort of my pale blue bedroom in central Scotland. But for the cubs, maybe it’s different. And when it comes to our cubs, suddenly I wonder if working for the government should come with a government health warning. Although J and I chose this life, perhaps our children wouldn’t. And how do you reconcile this without feeling selfish? Cub two is really feeling it. ‘I hate it here. I don’t want to live in London.’
There’s not much you can say to put things right. Other than ‘Ok. We’ll move’. Again. When this is house number 7 in his 11 years.
‘It’s all right for you and Daddy because you came from one countryside place. That’s why you turned out alright.’
Cub 1 feels ‘confined’ and far from his friends. His dream has always been to live in one street with all friends walking distance around him. We’re in a new city and he doesn’t yet know many people.
Cub 3 is 7 and generally happy. She’s in a new school but, she says: ‘The boys are always talking about their nuts. The boys didn’t talk about their nuts in my class in Oman.’
‘I thought yours was a nut free school?’ say her brothers.
I saw this wonderful film ‘You Resemble Me’ and during the Q and A afterwards the director said she thought that identity and who we want to be in ourselves is the ultimate personal freedom. We should not be dictated to by cultures or traditions into which we have been born. We can choose who we want to be, based on who we feel we authentically are, and go from there.
It was what I needed to hear. I hope the cubs can work it out for themselves. 🦁🦁🦁
‘The deepest sense of home is one of belonging, a sometimes hard-to-pin down feeling that you are in exactly the right place for you, be it a building, a town or even a work environment. Often that feeling is provided by the people you share that idea of home with. There are those for whom it is better to be moving and rootless than static and route-less.’ This quote by the philosopher Julian Baggini has been my mantra since I met J. We have been on the road pretty much, since then. Sometimes, when we’re all aboard, it’s actually the car that feels most like home: the trusty Skoda we bought from my Dad which J can pack like a Jenga stack and can even squeeze Debbie the dog in a tiny chunk between a scooter and a bag of camera kit. Whenever we set out, the smallest cub asks: ‘Can we listen to On the Road Again?’ And Willie Nelson sings to us as together we drift between our private dream worlds and idle chat. With the turbulence of an itinerant life with growing Lion Cubs, the car can be the bubble of peace where we can be moving and static, alone but together, all at once.
London
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It’s always an honour to document the work of the amazing @david.nott.foundation In this chaotic world the foundation offers an extraordinary combination of altruism, authenticity and the highest of standards, bringing purpose and skill to conflict zones and enabling surgeons to do their bit, a hundred times better. Interviewing a surgeon from Somaliland or Palestine, Ethiopia or Syria, and hearing them talk of the nature of their work; the burden they carry when they don’t have the expertise to carry out an operation successfully, is sobering. Humanity lies in so many places. But there is so much of it alive and well in medicine - it is a robust and resilient bridge in times of conflict.
Dr Shukri Mohamed Dahir talks of one experience as a doctor in Somaliland. I am honoured to have opportunities to listen to and film professionals like Shukri, and to work for organisations like the #davidnottfoundation #somaliland
Ibrahim talks of his love for his little niece Lana. And also of the pain of losing his father. The wreckage of the latest conflict in Gaza sits on the scars of countless others. But Ibrahim still builds dreams. #freegaza
