Emma Appleton's Blog - Posts Tagged "children"
Babies, Travel and Hummus; the guide to having it, eating it and loving it.
As I have decided to book a last minute trip to Israel in a weeks time, it reminded me of my first visit last year.
Leaving for Israel –July 2012
I’ve been sat on this plane for half an hour and it’s still on the ground. The 10am flight to Tel Aviv on the first Monday of the summer holidays and so it’s packed with Jewish families all looking forward to getting on the beach. I catch the eye of the guy squeezed in next to me, he works in Israel, like I do and we share our joint frustration at being stuck in this plane for the next five hours. My frustration is extended due to giving up my precious window seat to an orthodox Jewish girl who couldn’t possibly sit next to a non-Jewish man. So I find myself squashed between a large Englishman and the Jewish girl. I’ve noticed a social phenomenon with Jewish families; they cannot sit still on a plane and insist on standing next to their friends in the isle. It’s a plane, sit and read a book, don’t clog the isle. The worst thing about this is that the younger generation are also following this, making it a tradition passed down to siblings and children. The air crew have no control over it and instead are running out of overhead locker space due to all the black hats taking up the space of an extra bag, despite the budget airlines strict one bag rule.
I prod the guy who’s stood next to us and tell him to “sit down!” I feel irritated by this cultural oddness. I’ve also only had three hours combined sleep due to an unfortunate and non-compatible combination of partying and children in the last two days. The prospect of my window seat to catch up on sleep was like heaven. In fact the only thing I really look forward to in life recently is sleep. Every parent’s fantasy. Hours of uninterrupted sleep in clean sheets, or even the window seat of a plane is just as inviting and I’ve given it all up in a charitable gesture. I glance to my right and the Jewish girl is silently praying, sat in my window seat with a blow up cushion and a nice cosy blanket. I suspect she’s a seat hustler actually. Well at least I hope she’s praying as she rocks forwards resembling a mental patient. It would appear she’s not very happy sitting next to me either even though I gave up my seat for her. That’s gratitude for you, well I hope Gods going to pay me a good turn for this.
So what did I do exactly, that took me to war torn countries? I worked in IT, not the comfy suit wearing project management or analysis type IT, but the dirty hands on type. The user so miserable and ragey about their computer which, of course, is entirely my fault, I am singlehandedly responsible for Microsoft. I also looked after the servers and networks, which I actually love, usually because there are no users involved. Well unless the network goes down but then it’s just possible to lock yourself in the server room. The inner sanctum that mere users are too scared to venture into, a peek through the door usually accompanies a face of horror when they see the mass of cabling and equipment. Statements such as “Oh I wouldn’t know where to start” are reassuring that they will close the door behind them. The more confident amongst them may say “I hope you know what you’re doing it there” which makes me smile on the outside and think dark thoughts on the inside. And a distant memory of the devilment that has gone on behind those doors in a previous life.
I think many IT professionals crave adventure and danger in their lives. I’m sure when the zombie aftermath occurs, the people on the frontline will all be wearing Microsoft t-shirts or Dilbert funnies. Attempting to weald swords which resemble their online personas. Weapons which are too heavy for their lanky frames, their eyes blinking in the sunlight, unaccustomed to being outside.
This brings me onto my next point. Let’s get it out of the way, I’m a woman. I’m 36 married to a farmer and have 2 children. A woman. That’s right. Who works in IT.? There’s not that many of us and it can often raise such delightful comments as “oh you’re quite technical for a woman”. Yes I am, deal with it, like a woman breastfeeding in public, take a good look and move on. I know more about active directory than most IT bods I’ve ever met, so get over it or I will send the schema master to come and tombstone you. Imagine a user telling a man “you’re quite technical… for a man” and see how you feel, or even “who’s looking after your children while you’re at work?” Who’s looking after yours fuckface? Anyway feminist rant over with, I’m sure you get the picture. I love my children with all my heart, but I also love the independence of having my own identity and money, a way of preventing the resentfulness kicking in when I get to 50.
Don’t get me wrong, its not always easy, and the feeling of sat at a desk in the windowless facility on a warm summers day, knowing your children are being looked after by others is, and can be, heart wrenching, but you learn to live with it, or you would go mad. Or stay at home and feel the claustrophobic pull of the endless days and nights with no expendable income. Ok so marry rich or suck it up. The perils of the working mum, still exclusively kept for women.
Going to Israel has been on my bucket list forever, so much so I’ve managed to brainwash my oldest child into believing that he too has a lifelong ambition to go there. To me, being a parent is about giving my child the experiences of the world from a young age. Working full time, I love to cram my impossible task for perfect parenting into windows of stupidity. For example, I AM going to take them both round the supermarket. I’m not going to be like those “other” mothers with their screaming babies, nope I’m going to be that person asking their perfect children if they want hummus in their pack up.
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite managed it, instead I’ve managed to create something which has slid sideward into a duel dimension. Consequently even my own mother refuses to be included when it’s gone wrong. Now, when I’m pushing the trolley round the supermarket I take my head somewhere else. I ignore my baby chewing on a raw spring onion, giggling like something deranged and ignore my oldest when wails that he wanted whole fish, not the salmon fillet. My mother said it’s not normal. I’ve created unadjusted children who wail about whole fish, or wanting to go to Israel while in the middle of Sainsbury. They should be wailing about cheese straws apparently.
Anyway as I was saying. Arriving in Israel is uneventful really. Nothing like the horror I’ve heard of; queuing for hours with no air-conditioning while chain smoking officials ponder your passport for hours. Asking strange and often random questions like have you ever been to Syria? (well yes I have actually) I did get the working visa and fast track service which involves being driven 100m in a black BMW only to get out again and see the faces of all the people travelling with you still queuing. But being an IT bod means I’m dressed inappropriately for some VIP treatment. Instead of a sharp black suite and briefcase, I’m in casual clothes and look like my rug sack contains actual drugs and I’m being hauled off. $150 of bribery money and a 3 month working visa makes me quite concerned that I’m never going get out of the country. I queue at the car hire point and hope they don’t notice I don’t possess a photo ID for my licence or that my name is different due to never getting round to updating it to my married name two years ago. I cling onto parts of my maiden name in a hope to keep that 20 something me alive somehow, and not the respectable Mrs with a husband and children.
Hiring a car and driving through the 60s skyscraper ring road of Tel Aviv traffic is just as any imagination can take you, like Leeds in the rush hour. Just bigger, dirtier and with ruder drivers chatting on their mobile phones, chain smoking and swerving amongst the queues of traffic without a care in the world. My kind of driving the sort that invokes road rage in the UK. The urban sprawl and industrial wasteland finally gives way to gentle desert hills and a spectacular coastline as I drive north on the coast road. A winding country road takes me to the top of Haifa town and eventually to my generic 4* hotel.
It’s too warm in my room and already feel deflated at ending up in such a standard place. I’m only here for a week and Syria is threatening chemical attack any minute, a quick calculation places me at less than 200 miles from the capital, Damascus. Hmm best sleep with the window closed then. Unfortunately the heat is unbearable; it’s a hot humid sticky heat. It scorches the ground brown, giving the eye a pallet of blue sky, grey concrete and brown grass all intervened with the bright green of irrigated crops and olive groves that have stood the test of searing heat and war. It’s too hot to smoke I’m told by a waitress when I ask to sit outside and she’s right, even at night the heat is so consuming that I have a constant bead of sweat running down my face, and I look like I’ve contracted a nasty virus with hours to live.
The generic American hotel chair that I’ve been booked into by the company travel agent is making me uneasy, its like being anywhere in the world, once you walk through the doors its uniform and standard. The loud mouthed Americans having a beer sat at the bar are unnerving me, especially given the current political situation. Seriously, don’t they realise it’s not correct to voice such opinions? Especially when they won’t even venture out of their cocoon of hotel safety. I am disappointed to note that the most unnerving issue about this particular hotel is that there is no garden. I’ve never been anywhere warm without wanting to find a beer garden, but Israel in summer is so stiflingly warm that the only thing you crave is the air conditioning inside. A contradiction for British people when we are brainwashed to go outside whenever the sun shines.
Being a woman travelling alone in a foreign country has its advantages and disadvantages. If you go with your family, your other half, or a work colleague it’s different. The whole dynamic changes. Add to that a combination of a drink and a cigarette it takes it to a new level. It says, look at me I’m confident, on my own and a little reckless. Of course it doesn’t actually mean this but I think it’s a man thing. I was alone, in Israel, on the hottest night of the year, sat outside drinking a pint of beer in the stifling heat when I see a man smoking inside. I ask him if it’s ok to smoke inside. ‘Yes, you want a cigarette?’ he offers me his packet, but I show him my own Marlboros, indicating silently that, no I’m fine. ‘You like Israel?’ he asks the question, but makes it sound like a statement.
’Yes its fine’. I mumbled, but I actually wanted to say -It’s great actually. So many people from the Uk have the wrong opinion about this country, it’s like the media gives you this little window of information. All bad things about a place that’s swarming with suicide bombers on the brink of destruction. The truth is its just people getting on with, well, being people I guess. I tell him my husband is staying with me in the hotel but he’s poorly so I’ve come out on my own and carry on reading my book. I’m sure I can feel his eyes burning into my head, but when I look up he’s stirring his coffee and lighting another cigarette. Will he follow me back the 100m to the hotel and… and what exactly would he do in broad daylight? It’s that paranoia that keeps you safe. I tell him my husband is texting me and contemplate pretending to take a phone call saying where I am and I’m heading back shortly. There is no husband of course. I catch a glance of him again and he’s looking at me through a haze of smoke. So I light another cigarette, he’s not going to get the better of me, I decide.
The single international business traveller. I like to refer to myself as that, but my colleagues seem to find this amusing and laugh at my self opinionated title. These guys have more airmiles than the average pilot. When I first joined the Company I was bewildered. A strange organisation dedicated to things I have absolutely no idea about. I like to think I’m reasonably intelligent, but compared to the people I work with you would think I had special needs. They make jokes about faraday cages in their lunch hour. I have no idea, nor do I want to start thinking of faraday cages so I laugh along in an attempt to appear I know what the joke is, but the jokes on me. So I keep myself cocooned away in my windowless office next to the men’s toilets in a secret facility in a nondescript location.
I’ve rearranged my desk so if I look closely I can see a shaft of daylight but I really have no idea if it’s raining or sun shining outside. I just receive instructions from my boss who works thousands of miles away and who I have not and probably never will, meet. I’m their insurance policy, if the IT goes wrong I fix it. If it doesn’t well I don’t, and I get the feeling I’m doing an OK job. Occasionally I will get the instructions to go to some remote place in the arsehole of some country to perform tasks which take weeks to work out and hours to complete.
The service team, the ones with the millions of air miles they have a jaded aura about them. As though they have wandered aimlessly round the backstreets of Tokyo, drunk in strip bars in the USA, and most probably sat pondering life in the backstreets of most cities in the far east. They have a this same look about them, a haunted been there, seen it, want to forget it.
I asked one guy where he goes on holiday, he looked at me blankly; ‘I don’t go on fucking holiday’, he says in his drawling London accent, ‘I stay at home’ what about your family? ‘fuck em, I do enough travel’. I think this is what the Company do to people, by the time they hit 50 they are a shell. They don’t see me as a business traveller; I’m playing at it with my jolly to TelAviv and my aspirations to aim higher than the usual chain hotel. Really I tell them, I don’t see the point, most people take a job with foreign travel to broaden their horizons and see the world. Surely that’s the main thing about it. Life’s too short to spend time working and sitting in a generic hotel room with its cream walls and matching chairs. I hate it when people tell me all they saw was the inside of a hotel room and their office. Isn’t it much more of a life experience to find somewhere local where the towels don’t match and the man at the bar will tell you his life story, rather than having it all perfect.
Of course our cynical man in the service department doesn’t want to go on holiday, why would he just to go to the same hotels with his wife and children. It’s sad really and I do not intend to become that person, with their jaded expression and their apparent blasé approach. Its great travelling to new countries and experiencing their culture. In fact I have a great new business idea – an international website for business travellers, a kind of dating website- so you say; I’m going to Israel and someone else is too – that same person could be sat staring aimlessly out of the window at dinner, or they could be sat with someone they have already met online having a beer and a fag and talking shite. Ok so it wouldn’t always be successful and it might end up increasing the divorce ratio, but it would be much more fun than sitting at the bar on your own listening to Americans drawling on. Or worse, having some random man stare at you all night, while the waitress asks if you’re waiting for someone, and you shake your head, so they remove the other place setting highlighting the fact that yes, you’re on your own.
When you are not on your own, having social times with work colleagues can be equally strange. You might have emailed these names on your global address list and had chat and banter, but then you are face to face with them and they are nothing like you think. The people I work with in Israel are more politically incorrect than I thought they would be and I start arguing about the problem with pork and milk and the combination of both. Personally, my opinion is it seems a sensible option when the weather is 40 degrees and you have no fridge, avoid eating both.
When you have a fridge, it’s irrelevant, but someone in the bible, could have been God said that the kid shouldn’t be eaten with its mothers milk. As someone pointed out if you eat a chicken you’re never going to eat it with chicken milk. Chicken milk? Well he has a point. My point is that when out for lunch and for dinner you have to remember that there are cultural and social situations that differ from our own traditions.
I’m told at lunch that woman drinking beer in Israel is a point of ridicule, and I think back to my problem friend in the bar last night. Clearly he wasn’t thinking about stalking me back to the hotel, merely observing the white English woman consume a whole pint of local ale is something of a public spectacle.
Going out for dinner with colleagues is a different matter, especially when wine is involved. Or perhaps it’s just me. It can ultimately leave you with a feeling of shame the next day when you meet them back in the work scenario. I once went out for dinner with a lovely Italian in Venice. He treated me to a long meal, washed down with Prosecco. The goblin had only been born two months before, after nine months of clean living I had discovered my favourite drink to suddenly be Prosecco. Well anything really I was just happy to get my body back to abuse it in anyway I felt fit. I’d mentioned my love of food and Prosecco several times during the course of the working day, the poor guy had no choice but to wine and dine me. By the end of the meal we knew everything about each other and had decided to setup a food business together. In the cold light of day, when he collected me from the hotel to take me to the airport we were distant work colleagues again. Although he did insist on waiting until I walked into the terminal building in case I decided not to get back on the flight, something I vaguely remembered telling him the previous evening. Stood outside in the cold February air smoking a cigarette informing him I never wanted to return to England. Now when we meet up accidently, he’s very cool towards me and I do just wonder what he was thinking that evening of Prosecco and food. I doubt a married mother of 2 small children offers anything more significant that a tendency to talk shit after a bottle of Prosecco. Or maybe he’s fallen deeply in love with me and has taken the silent brooding approach. I like to think that.
While on my first trip to Israel I found a new friend. I really have a tendency to do this. He’s a walking encyclopaedia on Israeli history and very passionate about his country. Did I want a tour of churches and monasteries? he asked me. Hmm no not really, I’m a Pagan. He tells me I may get “religious feelings” which has the opposite reaction from the one he was expecting. I tell him; no really, I really don’t want any of those. He then tells me that we are about 5km from the original site of the ancient city of Armageddon. Now we are talking, yes please I would love to go there. He eyes me suspiciously; clearly most people want a tour of churches and monasteries.
We go to Armageddon and it’s predictably an old ruin on a hill, in the days of the bible all the fighting took place here so he tells me, and it was the worst place to be. I drive my car down to the entrance and am mildly concerned to see the electric gates just closing. Great, I think, stuck in Armageddon with nothing but Marlboro Lights in my bag. My friend has a word and the gates open. He tells me about an ancient civilisation up in the hills of the mountain, they are so secretive he tells me, that even they don’t know what their religion is about. The ‘Dreze’ are definable by their traditional black and white outfits. He tells me that the men can do whatever they like while the women suffer inequality and submission. He tells of a town with no modern amenities, of a strict code of conduct and a society very proud of their history.
We drive to a monastery which has a high viewpoint of Israel; it’s a very hot day the sun is so scorching that even a few minutes too long stood in its heat turns my pale skin red. We stand and look over towards Jordan and can see the old town of Nazareth, its sprawl of white houses visible on the hillside. There are little hills everywhere, like ‘ladies jobbies’ he laughs while pretending to have breasts. That made me laugh, his kind brown eyes are sparkling as he laughs with me. He tells me that Jesus spoke from every hill around here and it is very holy. I have to admit, there’s a wonderful sense of wellbeing standing here looking across the vast expanse of hazy land. It’s so clear in the winter months apparently, that you can see for miles but today we just see the heat haze bubbling in the distance.
The land is white and scorched but it’s contrasted by the green of ancient olives. We head to a local restaurant that isn’t ready to serve yet, but they bring out some local food and we tuck in. It really is a hundred and one ways to use spinach, bread and onions, a strange comparison can be made in the food and the landscape around us, green and white. It is delicious, the stuffed vine leaves are full of flavour, of lemons and herbs and that first pressing of Israeli olive oil. Plenty of flatbreads are brought out, covered in green paste and sesame seeds which if I’m honest after the first one reminded me ever so slightly of dogshit.
Leaving for Israel –July 2012
I’ve been sat on this plane for half an hour and it’s still on the ground. The 10am flight to Tel Aviv on the first Monday of the summer holidays and so it’s packed with Jewish families all looking forward to getting on the beach. I catch the eye of the guy squeezed in next to me, he works in Israel, like I do and we share our joint frustration at being stuck in this plane for the next five hours. My frustration is extended due to giving up my precious window seat to an orthodox Jewish girl who couldn’t possibly sit next to a non-Jewish man. So I find myself squashed between a large Englishman and the Jewish girl. I’ve noticed a social phenomenon with Jewish families; they cannot sit still on a plane and insist on standing next to their friends in the isle. It’s a plane, sit and read a book, don’t clog the isle. The worst thing about this is that the younger generation are also following this, making it a tradition passed down to siblings and children. The air crew have no control over it and instead are running out of overhead locker space due to all the black hats taking up the space of an extra bag, despite the budget airlines strict one bag rule.
I prod the guy who’s stood next to us and tell him to “sit down!” I feel irritated by this cultural oddness. I’ve also only had three hours combined sleep due to an unfortunate and non-compatible combination of partying and children in the last two days. The prospect of my window seat to catch up on sleep was like heaven. In fact the only thing I really look forward to in life recently is sleep. Every parent’s fantasy. Hours of uninterrupted sleep in clean sheets, or even the window seat of a plane is just as inviting and I’ve given it all up in a charitable gesture. I glance to my right and the Jewish girl is silently praying, sat in my window seat with a blow up cushion and a nice cosy blanket. I suspect she’s a seat hustler actually. Well at least I hope she’s praying as she rocks forwards resembling a mental patient. It would appear she’s not very happy sitting next to me either even though I gave up my seat for her. That’s gratitude for you, well I hope Gods going to pay me a good turn for this.
So what did I do exactly, that took me to war torn countries? I worked in IT, not the comfy suit wearing project management or analysis type IT, but the dirty hands on type. The user so miserable and ragey about their computer which, of course, is entirely my fault, I am singlehandedly responsible for Microsoft. I also looked after the servers and networks, which I actually love, usually because there are no users involved. Well unless the network goes down but then it’s just possible to lock yourself in the server room. The inner sanctum that mere users are too scared to venture into, a peek through the door usually accompanies a face of horror when they see the mass of cabling and equipment. Statements such as “Oh I wouldn’t know where to start” are reassuring that they will close the door behind them. The more confident amongst them may say “I hope you know what you’re doing it there” which makes me smile on the outside and think dark thoughts on the inside. And a distant memory of the devilment that has gone on behind those doors in a previous life.
I think many IT professionals crave adventure and danger in their lives. I’m sure when the zombie aftermath occurs, the people on the frontline will all be wearing Microsoft t-shirts or Dilbert funnies. Attempting to weald swords which resemble their online personas. Weapons which are too heavy for their lanky frames, their eyes blinking in the sunlight, unaccustomed to being outside.
This brings me onto my next point. Let’s get it out of the way, I’m a woman. I’m 36 married to a farmer and have 2 children. A woman. That’s right. Who works in IT.? There’s not that many of us and it can often raise such delightful comments as “oh you’re quite technical for a woman”. Yes I am, deal with it, like a woman breastfeeding in public, take a good look and move on. I know more about active directory than most IT bods I’ve ever met, so get over it or I will send the schema master to come and tombstone you. Imagine a user telling a man “you’re quite technical… for a man” and see how you feel, or even “who’s looking after your children while you’re at work?” Who’s looking after yours fuckface? Anyway feminist rant over with, I’m sure you get the picture. I love my children with all my heart, but I also love the independence of having my own identity and money, a way of preventing the resentfulness kicking in when I get to 50.
Don’t get me wrong, its not always easy, and the feeling of sat at a desk in the windowless facility on a warm summers day, knowing your children are being looked after by others is, and can be, heart wrenching, but you learn to live with it, or you would go mad. Or stay at home and feel the claustrophobic pull of the endless days and nights with no expendable income. Ok so marry rich or suck it up. The perils of the working mum, still exclusively kept for women.
Going to Israel has been on my bucket list forever, so much so I’ve managed to brainwash my oldest child into believing that he too has a lifelong ambition to go there. To me, being a parent is about giving my child the experiences of the world from a young age. Working full time, I love to cram my impossible task for perfect parenting into windows of stupidity. For example, I AM going to take them both round the supermarket. I’m not going to be like those “other” mothers with their screaming babies, nope I’m going to be that person asking their perfect children if they want hummus in their pack up.
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite managed it, instead I’ve managed to create something which has slid sideward into a duel dimension. Consequently even my own mother refuses to be included when it’s gone wrong. Now, when I’m pushing the trolley round the supermarket I take my head somewhere else. I ignore my baby chewing on a raw spring onion, giggling like something deranged and ignore my oldest when wails that he wanted whole fish, not the salmon fillet. My mother said it’s not normal. I’ve created unadjusted children who wail about whole fish, or wanting to go to Israel while in the middle of Sainsbury. They should be wailing about cheese straws apparently.
Anyway as I was saying. Arriving in Israel is uneventful really. Nothing like the horror I’ve heard of; queuing for hours with no air-conditioning while chain smoking officials ponder your passport for hours. Asking strange and often random questions like have you ever been to Syria? (well yes I have actually) I did get the working visa and fast track service which involves being driven 100m in a black BMW only to get out again and see the faces of all the people travelling with you still queuing. But being an IT bod means I’m dressed inappropriately for some VIP treatment. Instead of a sharp black suite and briefcase, I’m in casual clothes and look like my rug sack contains actual drugs and I’m being hauled off. $150 of bribery money and a 3 month working visa makes me quite concerned that I’m never going get out of the country. I queue at the car hire point and hope they don’t notice I don’t possess a photo ID for my licence or that my name is different due to never getting round to updating it to my married name two years ago. I cling onto parts of my maiden name in a hope to keep that 20 something me alive somehow, and not the respectable Mrs with a husband and children.
Hiring a car and driving through the 60s skyscraper ring road of Tel Aviv traffic is just as any imagination can take you, like Leeds in the rush hour. Just bigger, dirtier and with ruder drivers chatting on their mobile phones, chain smoking and swerving amongst the queues of traffic without a care in the world. My kind of driving the sort that invokes road rage in the UK. The urban sprawl and industrial wasteland finally gives way to gentle desert hills and a spectacular coastline as I drive north on the coast road. A winding country road takes me to the top of Haifa town and eventually to my generic 4* hotel.
It’s too warm in my room and already feel deflated at ending up in such a standard place. I’m only here for a week and Syria is threatening chemical attack any minute, a quick calculation places me at less than 200 miles from the capital, Damascus. Hmm best sleep with the window closed then. Unfortunately the heat is unbearable; it’s a hot humid sticky heat. It scorches the ground brown, giving the eye a pallet of blue sky, grey concrete and brown grass all intervened with the bright green of irrigated crops and olive groves that have stood the test of searing heat and war. It’s too hot to smoke I’m told by a waitress when I ask to sit outside and she’s right, even at night the heat is so consuming that I have a constant bead of sweat running down my face, and I look like I’ve contracted a nasty virus with hours to live.
The generic American hotel chair that I’ve been booked into by the company travel agent is making me uneasy, its like being anywhere in the world, once you walk through the doors its uniform and standard. The loud mouthed Americans having a beer sat at the bar are unnerving me, especially given the current political situation. Seriously, don’t they realise it’s not correct to voice such opinions? Especially when they won’t even venture out of their cocoon of hotel safety. I am disappointed to note that the most unnerving issue about this particular hotel is that there is no garden. I’ve never been anywhere warm without wanting to find a beer garden, but Israel in summer is so stiflingly warm that the only thing you crave is the air conditioning inside. A contradiction for British people when we are brainwashed to go outside whenever the sun shines.
Being a woman travelling alone in a foreign country has its advantages and disadvantages. If you go with your family, your other half, or a work colleague it’s different. The whole dynamic changes. Add to that a combination of a drink and a cigarette it takes it to a new level. It says, look at me I’m confident, on my own and a little reckless. Of course it doesn’t actually mean this but I think it’s a man thing. I was alone, in Israel, on the hottest night of the year, sat outside drinking a pint of beer in the stifling heat when I see a man smoking inside. I ask him if it’s ok to smoke inside. ‘Yes, you want a cigarette?’ he offers me his packet, but I show him my own Marlboros, indicating silently that, no I’m fine. ‘You like Israel?’ he asks the question, but makes it sound like a statement.
’Yes its fine’. I mumbled, but I actually wanted to say -It’s great actually. So many people from the Uk have the wrong opinion about this country, it’s like the media gives you this little window of information. All bad things about a place that’s swarming with suicide bombers on the brink of destruction. The truth is its just people getting on with, well, being people I guess. I tell him my husband is staying with me in the hotel but he’s poorly so I’ve come out on my own and carry on reading my book. I’m sure I can feel his eyes burning into my head, but when I look up he’s stirring his coffee and lighting another cigarette. Will he follow me back the 100m to the hotel and… and what exactly would he do in broad daylight? It’s that paranoia that keeps you safe. I tell him my husband is texting me and contemplate pretending to take a phone call saying where I am and I’m heading back shortly. There is no husband of course. I catch a glance of him again and he’s looking at me through a haze of smoke. So I light another cigarette, he’s not going to get the better of me, I decide.
The single international business traveller. I like to refer to myself as that, but my colleagues seem to find this amusing and laugh at my self opinionated title. These guys have more airmiles than the average pilot. When I first joined the Company I was bewildered. A strange organisation dedicated to things I have absolutely no idea about. I like to think I’m reasonably intelligent, but compared to the people I work with you would think I had special needs. They make jokes about faraday cages in their lunch hour. I have no idea, nor do I want to start thinking of faraday cages so I laugh along in an attempt to appear I know what the joke is, but the jokes on me. So I keep myself cocooned away in my windowless office next to the men’s toilets in a secret facility in a nondescript location.
I’ve rearranged my desk so if I look closely I can see a shaft of daylight but I really have no idea if it’s raining or sun shining outside. I just receive instructions from my boss who works thousands of miles away and who I have not and probably never will, meet. I’m their insurance policy, if the IT goes wrong I fix it. If it doesn’t well I don’t, and I get the feeling I’m doing an OK job. Occasionally I will get the instructions to go to some remote place in the arsehole of some country to perform tasks which take weeks to work out and hours to complete.
The service team, the ones with the millions of air miles they have a jaded aura about them. As though they have wandered aimlessly round the backstreets of Tokyo, drunk in strip bars in the USA, and most probably sat pondering life in the backstreets of most cities in the far east. They have a this same look about them, a haunted been there, seen it, want to forget it.
I asked one guy where he goes on holiday, he looked at me blankly; ‘I don’t go on fucking holiday’, he says in his drawling London accent, ‘I stay at home’ what about your family? ‘fuck em, I do enough travel’. I think this is what the Company do to people, by the time they hit 50 they are a shell. They don’t see me as a business traveller; I’m playing at it with my jolly to TelAviv and my aspirations to aim higher than the usual chain hotel. Really I tell them, I don’t see the point, most people take a job with foreign travel to broaden their horizons and see the world. Surely that’s the main thing about it. Life’s too short to spend time working and sitting in a generic hotel room with its cream walls and matching chairs. I hate it when people tell me all they saw was the inside of a hotel room and their office. Isn’t it much more of a life experience to find somewhere local where the towels don’t match and the man at the bar will tell you his life story, rather than having it all perfect.
Of course our cynical man in the service department doesn’t want to go on holiday, why would he just to go to the same hotels with his wife and children. It’s sad really and I do not intend to become that person, with their jaded expression and their apparent blasé approach. Its great travelling to new countries and experiencing their culture. In fact I have a great new business idea – an international website for business travellers, a kind of dating website- so you say; I’m going to Israel and someone else is too – that same person could be sat staring aimlessly out of the window at dinner, or they could be sat with someone they have already met online having a beer and a fag and talking shite. Ok so it wouldn’t always be successful and it might end up increasing the divorce ratio, but it would be much more fun than sitting at the bar on your own listening to Americans drawling on. Or worse, having some random man stare at you all night, while the waitress asks if you’re waiting for someone, and you shake your head, so they remove the other place setting highlighting the fact that yes, you’re on your own.
When you are not on your own, having social times with work colleagues can be equally strange. You might have emailed these names on your global address list and had chat and banter, but then you are face to face with them and they are nothing like you think. The people I work with in Israel are more politically incorrect than I thought they would be and I start arguing about the problem with pork and milk and the combination of both. Personally, my opinion is it seems a sensible option when the weather is 40 degrees and you have no fridge, avoid eating both.
When you have a fridge, it’s irrelevant, but someone in the bible, could have been God said that the kid shouldn’t be eaten with its mothers milk. As someone pointed out if you eat a chicken you’re never going to eat it with chicken milk. Chicken milk? Well he has a point. My point is that when out for lunch and for dinner you have to remember that there are cultural and social situations that differ from our own traditions.
I’m told at lunch that woman drinking beer in Israel is a point of ridicule, and I think back to my problem friend in the bar last night. Clearly he wasn’t thinking about stalking me back to the hotel, merely observing the white English woman consume a whole pint of local ale is something of a public spectacle.
Going out for dinner with colleagues is a different matter, especially when wine is involved. Or perhaps it’s just me. It can ultimately leave you with a feeling of shame the next day when you meet them back in the work scenario. I once went out for dinner with a lovely Italian in Venice. He treated me to a long meal, washed down with Prosecco. The goblin had only been born two months before, after nine months of clean living I had discovered my favourite drink to suddenly be Prosecco. Well anything really I was just happy to get my body back to abuse it in anyway I felt fit. I’d mentioned my love of food and Prosecco several times during the course of the working day, the poor guy had no choice but to wine and dine me. By the end of the meal we knew everything about each other and had decided to setup a food business together. In the cold light of day, when he collected me from the hotel to take me to the airport we were distant work colleagues again. Although he did insist on waiting until I walked into the terminal building in case I decided not to get back on the flight, something I vaguely remembered telling him the previous evening. Stood outside in the cold February air smoking a cigarette informing him I never wanted to return to England. Now when we meet up accidently, he’s very cool towards me and I do just wonder what he was thinking that evening of Prosecco and food. I doubt a married mother of 2 small children offers anything more significant that a tendency to talk shit after a bottle of Prosecco. Or maybe he’s fallen deeply in love with me and has taken the silent brooding approach. I like to think that.
While on my first trip to Israel I found a new friend. I really have a tendency to do this. He’s a walking encyclopaedia on Israeli history and very passionate about his country. Did I want a tour of churches and monasteries? he asked me. Hmm no not really, I’m a Pagan. He tells me I may get “religious feelings” which has the opposite reaction from the one he was expecting. I tell him; no really, I really don’t want any of those. He then tells me that we are about 5km from the original site of the ancient city of Armageddon. Now we are talking, yes please I would love to go there. He eyes me suspiciously; clearly most people want a tour of churches and monasteries.
We go to Armageddon and it’s predictably an old ruin on a hill, in the days of the bible all the fighting took place here so he tells me, and it was the worst place to be. I drive my car down to the entrance and am mildly concerned to see the electric gates just closing. Great, I think, stuck in Armageddon with nothing but Marlboro Lights in my bag. My friend has a word and the gates open. He tells me about an ancient civilisation up in the hills of the mountain, they are so secretive he tells me, that even they don’t know what their religion is about. The ‘Dreze’ are definable by their traditional black and white outfits. He tells me that the men can do whatever they like while the women suffer inequality and submission. He tells of a town with no modern amenities, of a strict code of conduct and a society very proud of their history.
We drive to a monastery which has a high viewpoint of Israel; it’s a very hot day the sun is so scorching that even a few minutes too long stood in its heat turns my pale skin red. We stand and look over towards Jordan and can see the old town of Nazareth, its sprawl of white houses visible on the hillside. There are little hills everywhere, like ‘ladies jobbies’ he laughs while pretending to have breasts. That made me laugh, his kind brown eyes are sparkling as he laughs with me. He tells me that Jesus spoke from every hill around here and it is very holy. I have to admit, there’s a wonderful sense of wellbeing standing here looking across the vast expanse of hazy land. It’s so clear in the winter months apparently, that you can see for miles but today we just see the heat haze bubbling in the distance.
The land is white and scorched but it’s contrasted by the green of ancient olives. We head to a local restaurant that isn’t ready to serve yet, but they bring out some local food and we tuck in. It really is a hundred and one ways to use spinach, bread and onions, a strange comparison can be made in the food and the landscape around us, green and white. It is delicious, the stuffed vine leaves are full of flavour, of lemons and herbs and that first pressing of Israeli olive oil. Plenty of flatbreads are brought out, covered in green paste and sesame seeds which if I’m honest after the first one reminded me ever so slightly of dogshit.
