*blushes crimson with shame*

I grew up in a household filled with criticism.

There were even two different kinds of criticism to be had.

Constructive criticism; destructive criticism.

My father, a university professor, provided the constructive kind of criticism. No matter what you'd done, whether passing a test, completing a paper, or what-have-you, there was always a slightly better and more interesting way to have finished the project.

"You know, if you had written about x, y and z this paper would have really been even more interesting..."

Though he meant well, the net effect was deflating: nothing was ever quite good enough. Even though I got almost all "A's," got into a top university, graduated with honors, and didn't get arrested or pregnant, somehow I mostly felt like a disappointment. He didn't mean to have that effect. It just happened.

My mother, on the other hand, was also a college instructor. She provided the destructive criticism.

"And how much do you weigh?"

or

"Nobody wants to hear your opinion on that!"

or

"What makes you think you're good enough to [fill in the blank]?"

One learned to tread lightly and skitter around the edges of the room when she was in a mood. If her eyes happened to light upon you when she was feeling out-of-sorts, you were guaranteed a sniping shot or two.

So, with all of that in the background, finishing my master's degree at age 51 was quite the accomplishment. When I sent off the dissertation a few months ago, I felt really pleased with the quality of my work, particularly in light of my fairly tumultuous life over the last couple of years -- moving house, moving country for that matter -- three different times. Blah blah blah. You know that drill; I've bored you with it all before.

On Friday night, I couldn't sleep, so I came downstairs and began opening the mail.

"Oooo! A letter from Leicester!"

I tore open the envelope, only to read the following first sentence:

"Overall this is a disappointing piece of work..."

I'll spare you the rest, and cut to the chase: I did pass. Not with distinction, as I'd hoped, but with ... disappointment. How ironic that just two days before, I'd been defending Mr. London Street against spurious charges of being quite disappointing. Now I was damned disappointing myself. Oh, the shame! The shame!

Damn, damn. And bloody hell. So much for a glittering career in Academe. A good thing, probably, that I didn't get all this quite critical feedback at age 24, because I'm sure I would have slit my own throat back then, and here you'd be now, with no blog to read. Still, there are a few positive take-aways from my critical bloodbath: the dissertation was apparently well-written and easy to read, and it provided some useful conclusions for management.

And it was a "Pass." I'll take it, thanks very much.

Back to my regular duties: dusting, playing tennis, and destroying the ozone layer through excessive consumption of international flights. At least I know my skill-set.

*yawns* ... *rubs eyes* ...

Good lord, where in the world have I been? Yes, yes, I can hear you asking. People are begging, simply begging for a new post. I should have named the last post "National Poetry Month" so as to get a bit more mileage out of it.

But mileage, my friends, is something I do know something about, seeing as how I logged in about a trillion airmiles over the last couple of weeks. I feel more at home in an airport than anywhere else these days. That in-transit feeling is so delicious, and the coffee shops and bookstores are so convenient and tantalizing. Not to mention the wine bars and the tasting of single-malt whiskeys in duty-free. And the trying on of perfumes. I usually smell like a French whore by the time I get to the boarding gate.

Mr D and I had planned an exciting synchronized swimming of the air, where he flew round the world westward, via Bangkok, Hong Kong, Malmö and Copenhagen, and I flew eastward through... well, a lot of places actually... and we met in Athens. How romantic!

And yet. My flights were done via frequent flyer miles, friends, so you know what THAT means.

Yep. More legs on this trip than on a centipede.

O'Hare to Toronto to London Heathrow.

London Gatwick to Split, Croatia.

[Water ferry to Supetar, Croatia.]

[Fast catamaran back, from Milna to Split.]

Split to Zagreb to Frankfurt to Leipzig by air.

Leipzig to Dusseldorf to Frankfurt to Athens.

Athens to Istanbul to O'Hare. It's kind of in a straight line, right?

Of course it was all very romantic after we'd slept off all the jet lag and had loads of ouzo and baklava (not at the same time, natch!) We saw the Parthenon and the squid and fish market and the oracle of Delphi and the mask of Agamemnon and you know, all those Greek things. I'll tell you about that another time.

Because you don't want to hear about that, do you? No, you want to hear about my brief stay in a TURKISH prison! Because what would travel with me be, without some frisson of excitement for you? So you can shiver and quake in your boots, and think, "Thank God it wasn't me! Thank my lucky stars it was expateek instead!"

So. I even have pictures.

If you're in the airport in Istanbul, after you have some baklava and try all the flavors of Turkish delight in the Olde Bazaar, you should take a little walk past Burberry, Chopard, Longchamps, Boss and Fendi. Go past the duty-free, testing perfume samples as you wander through, and making sure that you spray each perfume on a different part of your wrists or the backs of your hands. Concentrate deeply to remember which perfume you sprayed where, and stare intently at the bottle of the one you like the most. You will remember the name of this perfume for maybe 2 minutes. Maybe less.

Go through the food court, and take the escalator up. Turn left, and walk through the upstairs cafe, toward the far back left corner of the room. Up three steps, and voilà, you are in the very last smoking lounge remaining in a European airport!

The Turkish government just recently outlawed smoking in many public places, and of course, Turkish restauranteurs, with their hookahs and fiendishly enthusiastic smoking Turkish clientele, were up in arms. Apparently, sales of outdoor patio heaters and cafe umbrellas are now through the roof. And yet, strangely, the government have kindly provided Turkish airport visitors the option of smoking al fresco on airport property. It's like a trip back in time!

And see how appealing it is?



Very prison-like, yes? Reminded me a bit too much of the Woking jail, in terms of confined spaces. Yet I must admit that the Woking jail's air was much cleaner, a clear benefit resulting from the United Kingdom's forward-thinking health concerns for incarcerated criminals like myself.


I just thought you'd want to know, in case you have some time to kill next time you're in Istanbul. Not that anybody smokes anymore. For pete's sake. What kind of girl do you think I am?


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National Poetry Day

Mr D arrived home last night from a three-day jaunt out to Beantown. He found me in a bit of a blue mood. I lay on the bed while he unpacked his suitcase, and we talked about what had happened (or what had not happened, in my case, as I'd had a dull couple of days) since Monday.

He finished unpacking, and flopped down on the bed next to me. We discussed our individual successes/failures with our healthful diets, and Mr D noted that if my weight kept going up, and his kept going down, eventually we'd weigh the same. Gadfry! About the same as thirty-four years ago, when we first met: he was fresh off a 6-month starvation tour on a Pacific atoll, and I'd been busy eating all the ice cream on offer in the Wellesley College kitchens. Hmmm.

Mr D = Miss H. Again.

I made a little frowny face, and then Mr D said:

Fatty and Skinny
went to bed
Fatty rolled over
and Skinny was dead.

After I stopped giggling, I hit him over the head with a pillow.


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