Hello - an internet connection has sprung up from somewhere, not sure how long it will last as it is definitely not "mine"! I am typing this standing in the kitchen, the flat is first floor (I think in the US that is 2nd) and usually we can see right across to the hills of Fife, but today they are all shrouded in mist. So all I can see are the rooftops and tenements of the New Town, which is in fact a great view in its own right.
I am sorry to say that the feeling about Australia being a land full of convicts still lives on in the older generation here - my mother has been very embarrassingly heard to say "well, Australians are all descended from convicts" - this when one of her very best friends is a lovely Australian lady from a much higher social strata than my mother. However, I don't think anyone younger than my mother would have these thoughts (she is in her 80s) - they wouldn't even occur to my generation or my children's. The same is true of Pakistanis - mother used to have a Pakistani neighbour about whom she would never have said a bad word, but "Pakistanis" in general is a different thing for many people - as everywhere, it is the uneducated who hang on to these ideas, convinced that any immigrant is taking their jobs/houses/women, and unfortunately inflamed by the rhetoric (if it can be graced with that word) of the BNP and their like. These things always get worse in difficult economic times. Having said that, my former boss, who was not uneducated, but had never left the city in which he was born, had very similar opinions, always preceded by the standard disclaimer "I'm not racist but...".
The irony of it all is that my mother has never moved more than 3 miles from where she was born in London, which in her opinion is perfect, but - as shown in the quote about Mortimer Teale - people living outside London usually have a very dim view of it. Up here in Scotland there is huge resentment about the way that so much power is centralised down there, and a strong feeling that David Cameron and his ilk have not the faintest idea about life outside the capital. Similarly, friends living in Cornwall think everyone from London is a "grockle" - someone who comes down to the West Country, buys a second home, walks around in a Barbour and Hunter wellies, and pretends to be a Country Person for 2 weeks. My beloved Wendy Webber books satirise the second home owners mercilessly, and show just what the real locals think of them.
Joan P - I think the only "person" whose mission in life was to make me laugh was my late lamented Golden Retriever! he was a complete clown and loved rolling around on his back with his legs in the air, or running round in circles chasing is tail. I am back living with my 2 Siamese again now, and whilst I love them devotedly, and they are often very funny, like all cats everything they do is for their own comfort or entertainment, I am just the facilitator
I can't think of a single family member whose only interest is to make me happy - can anyone? I can well understand Mrs Ali's attraction to the major on that basis alone - he wants to please her, he is interested in her, he makes few demands and doesn't expect her to change. Wonderful! Can I have his number?
That's a great point,
Sheila, about the similarities between Roger and Mrs Ali's nephew, - but I still don't think either of them is a bad person. They are just young, and the young have all these convictions that, in later years, we usually soften up about. There is a mug you an get here with the inscription "Better ask your teenagers' opinion now, while they still know everything"!
I also don't think Roger's girlfriend is a bad person - but I have read the whole book, so I will keep quiet, as I think my view of her changed later in the story.
Incidentally, going back to the Pakistani issue - we had a huge wave of immigration here in the 1970s (I think it was then), when the dictator Idi Amin expelled all of the British Asians from Uganda. I am not sure if they were Pakistanis or not, but that's when lots of them arrived here. i think prior to that our largest immigrant population was probably from the Carribean - lots of West Indians arrived here in the 1950s and 1960s, they were very badly treated indeed and refused entry to many places. Now of course they are several generations down the line, and even my mother's generation more or less accepts them. I think, however, that people from Jamaica, Barbados, etc integrated much more easily - maybe the religious differences were not so great or something, I'm not sure. However, we did see in Little Bee how badly unauthorised immigrants from anywhere but "successful" countries (ie the USA and Western Europe) can be treated - the girl from Jamaica suffered just as much as Little Bee.
Better stop now before my internet luck runs out,
Rosemary
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