The Displaced Nation

A home for international creatives

RANDOM NOMAD: Simon Wheeler, Steel Automotives Project Leader & Former Cricketer

12 Comments Posted by on July 6, 2011

Born in: Aylesbury, Bucks, England
Passport: English (never ever say British!)
Countries lived in: Australia (Adelaide): 1996-98; California (Newport Beach): 2006-09; Slovakia (Plavé Vozokany): 2006-present
Cyberspace coordinates: Rambling Thoughts of Moon | Englishman’s travelling thoughts from England, California and now Slovakia, Plavé Vozokany… Ahoj !! (blog)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
My initial travels to Australia came through boredom of work. Having worked in a large pharmaceutical company from 17, at 24 I realized that I needed to have some new adventures. I am a firm believer that if you don’t like your current situation, change it. When I was asked to go play cricket at Grade A level for the Fulham Cricket Club in Adelaide, I packed my bags and left. Actually, I got cold feet about two weeks before I was due to leave. But then a close friend was suddenly struck ill on a Friday, and sadly died two days later. That was the kick I needed.

Is anyone else in your immediate family displaced?
My sister is now a Canadian citizen living in Vancouver. She has been away from England for over 15 years.

Describe the moment when you felt most displaced over the course of your many displacements.
Can I have two? The first occurred just after I’d gotten married to my gorgeous wife on top of Grouse Mountain in Vancouver. After the wedding, she had to go back to her job in California, while I continued waiting in Vancouver for my visa to be approved. In those three months of waiting, the uncertainty of not knowing if I would be allowed to join her made for very stressful times. We could simply have flown back to England, where a job was being held for me in the City. That would have been so easy, but that said, we have never chosen the easy option.

The other time occurred much earlier: May 24th, 1997. A very precise date, but I remember it so well. I was on the road from Melbourne to Sydney, all on my own, on my birthday, and not one person said “Happy Birthday” or even knew it was my special day.

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
I’d have to say right now. We moved to my wife’s homeland two years ago. The culture shock, combined my lack of language skills, was daunting at first. The people, especially her family, have been incredible, but finding a life was very tough. Since we moved here, we have both found jobs in the same company; had our first child, the adorable Matej; and are about two months away from moving into the cottage we are renovating in the village next door to Plavé Vozokany (we’ve been living here with my wife’s parents since our arrival). So, right now, I am on the verge of having all I have ever wanted. To settle into a new country takes time, a lot of time, especially one that is so different to your homeland. I still have some time to go, but with the growing family, a supportive wife, a good job, and soon my dream house, I am ticking all the right boxes.

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from each of the countries where you’ve lived into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
From England: My St George’s flag — not because I wish to be associated with rowdy football supporters but because it’s a symbol of my country that I’m very proud of.
From Australia: My Ugg boots from the open-air market in Port Adelaide. I have them on right now!
From California: My photographs from the incredible national and state parks in the Western United States: Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Zion, Bryce, Joshua Tree, Big Sur… I could go on…
From Slovakia: A bottle of homemade Slivovica, a plum brandy strong enough to blow your socks off!

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on the menu?
Whoa, that’s tough… But let me try. To start, we’d have fresh prawns and seafood from Australia. As my main, I’d offer my Mum’s Christmas dinner: turkey, sausages and bacon, Brussels sprouts, veggies galore, roast potatoes, cranberries, stuffing… And if there’s still room, I’d throw in some sushi from Masa Sushi, a tiny, simple, dirty-looking place off 19th Street and Habour in Costa Mesa, California — the host/chef really knows what he’s doing. For dessert, we’d have fresh, homemade cream cakes from my mother-in-law here in Slovakia. It would all be washed down with an Australian white, a pint of Coopers (Southern Australian beer), and a couple of shots of Slivovica.

You may add one word or expression from each of the countries you’ve lived in to The Displaced Nation argot. What words do you loan us?
From Australia: Beauty (said in a heavy Aussie accent). It’s used all the time — but most especially on the cricket fields, after a player hits a good shot or the bowler gets a wicket.
From England – “In England’s green and pleasant land…” We sang “Jerusulem” at my wedding and on many drunken occasions. It always takes me home…
From California: Awesome — but I’d advise that you restrict the usage to things that are truly awesome; otherwise, it loses its meaning. That pair of shoes is AWESOME; that TV show is AWESOME; You are AWESOME — no! The Grand Canyon is awesome — yes!

It’s Pocahontas month at The Displaced Nation, and we’re focusing on cross-cultural communications (or the lack). By living in your wife’s country, do you find that you’re relying on her to serve as your “interpreter” for Slovakian language and culture? Does this place a special stress on the marriage, and if so, how do the two of you cope with it?
Yes, it definitely does. When you go away on holiday and do, say, exploratory grocery shopping, it’s all a bit of fun trying to cope, but when you actually move to the country it’s totally different. So many things to sort out: banks, mortgages, identity cards, driving license — the list is endless. And she has to do all of this. Even if I have to make a trip to the doctor’s, she has to come. When you are sitting there having two people discuss your health, and you cannot understand what they’re saying, it’s very stressful. As I mentioned earlier, we are renovating an old Slovak cottage. But to communicate with all the different workers and tradesmen, again, she has to do it all… You can imagine what a workload she carries for this project, and the uselessness I feel in not being able to help her.

Our relationship, like so many others, works because one of us takes the lead, and in our case, that happens to be her. Imagine Monica Geller from Friends — well, that is my wife. She likes to be in control. Even when we were living in America, she was in charge. So for us, with some blips, it does work. But whenever I want to do things — relieve her of some of her workload and stress — it’s a struggle. My Slovak is improving, but it is not good enough to cope with these kinds of demands. It’s a very tough language, and at 40, I am a poor student.

QUESTION: Readers — yay or nay for letting Simon Wheeler into The Displaced Nation? Tell us your reasons. (Note: It’s fine to vote “nay” as long as you couch your reasoning in terms we all — including Simon — find amusing.)

img: Simon participating in the traditional slaughter of pigs that occurs in his Slovakian village every year. His comment: “Most village families rear a couple of pigs every year for this purpose. The custom was new to me, and I didn’t like the idea — never ever thought I’d be doing this kind of thing! But it does mean you can fill your freezer with good quality, home-bred meat and sausages, and I’ve gotten used to it.”

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment from our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who encounters her very first 4th of July celebrations.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related posts:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , , ,

5 proverbs on cross-cultural relations, by Pocahontas

4 Comments Posted by on July 5, 2011

June was Alice-in-Wonderland month at The Displaced Nation, when we discovered that Alice’s “curiouser and curiouser” adventures have something akin to the situations expats and travelers often find themselves in.

But how do local people feel when global nomads land — kerplunk! — on their soil? During July, we’ll be looking at cross-cultural communications (or the lack) with the help of the legendary Pocahontas, one of the world’s foremost experts on fostering intercultural understanding.

As everyone knows — even kids, thanks to Disney — Pocahontas was the human bridge between foreign and local cultures. She helped to connect two groups that were about as different, and as opposed in their aims, as could be imagined: the Algonquin Indians of the Tidewater region of what is now Virginia, led by her father, Chief Powhatan; and the English settlers who’d been sent by the Virginia Company of London to found Jamestown, led by John Smith.

Earlier today, The Displaced Nation performed a special ceremony to invoke the spirit of Pocahontas. She has paid us a short visit, during which she had the following to say:

Chama Wingapo. That’s “Welcome, friends” in the language of my tribe, the Powhatan. “Powhatan” by the way means waterfall.

As you may know from your studies of history, ours was an Algonquian Indian tribe that lived in the Tidewater region of what I understand is now known as Virginia. My father was their king.

Chama Wingapo. I must say, it’s a little strange to speak these words of welcome aloud. Did you know that no one has spoken our language for more than two centuries? It became extinct as we Indians declined in number, dispersed and lost our cultural identity.

Still, I know you’re not interested in the topic of our displacement. It’s just that it was on my mind when I saw you’d just been discussing what some of our descendants irreverently call White Independence Day.

But to return to my mission for The Displaced Nation: I’ve come back to give you some ideas on what building bridges between so-called “local” people and their foreign visitors entails.

Allow me to offer these five proverbs, which represent the distillation of my own experiences:

1. Not everyone you meet in a foreign land will be over the umpsquoth (moon) about your presence in their territory.

I understand you’ve all chosen to travel overseas for your own self-edification, not on behalf of your government’s colonization campaign. And I applaud you for that.

But some of the people you’ll encounter on your travels don’t give two feathers what brought you there. They will always see you as an outsider — not so much displaced but out of place. Nothing would make them happier than if you returned to your own tribe and ceased taking up space in theirs.

Still others will tolerate your presence — but only as long as they can profit from you in some way.

My people, for instance, offered John Smith land for his colonists to live on, in addition to providing the settlers with food — bread, corn and fish — all for an opportunity to trade with them.

Ideally, you will also at some point find someone like me who is interested in forging a genuine friendship across cultures and (where applicable) races. Someone willing to take the time to serve as the intermediary, go-between, guide, translator — I’ve been told that our brethren on the Japan Islands have their own unique term, iki jibiki (walking dictionary) — between you and local residents, with enough skill to ward off the impact of any poison arrows sent your way.

(While on this topic, I have a slight confession to make. I didn’t really save Captain John Smith’s life. Goodness, I was only ten years old at the time we met. What’s more, we were welcoming him into our tribe during the ceremony when I allegedly performed this feat. Talk about cross-cultural communications gone badly wrong! His life was never endangered…)

2. In adapting to another tribe’s ways, you will constantly struggle between respect and disrespect.

Our esteemed descendant Chief Roy Crazy Horse of the Powhatan Renape Nation said the Disney movie of my early life “distorts history beyond recognition.”

While I largely agree with him, there’s one thing that this film got exactly right. I can’t tell you how many times I had the following exchange, not just with Captain Smith but with many of the other palefaces:

JOHN SMITH: We’ve improved the lives of savages all over the world.
POCAHONTAS: Savages?
JOHN SMITH: Uh, not that you’re a savage.
POCAHONTAS: Just my people!

Of course he (and the others) saw me as a savage, too — I was a heathen, after all!

But just like the wind that can blow hot or cold, this strong aversion to our people would sometimes change into something approaching deep love. In particular, the English respected us for respecting nature.

On this point, the Disney movie went a little too far, portraying me as the original — Aboriginal — tree hugger:

JOHN: Pocahontas, that tree is talking to me!
POCAHONTAS: Then you should talk back!
JOHN: What do you say to a tree?
POCAHONTAS: Anything you want!

Still, there is a grain of truth in that exchange. Our animism was something our foreign friends envied, and hoped they could pick up by association.

3. Romantic love for a person of another culture often has tangled roots.

I should know as I was married twice — once to a fellow Algonquian, and the second time to an English settler by the name of John Rolfe. (No, I was not in love with John Smith — another Disney distortion. I loved him as a father, though.)

Did you know that John Rolfe fretted for several weeks over whether to marry me because I wasn’t a Christian? In the end, I converted and gave myself a Christian name, Rebecca.

At the same time, though, John worshiped the ground I walked on. I was his exotic Indian princess. But sometimes I thought he was more in love with the idea of me as a Noble Savage (rather literally!) than with who I was as a person.

4. When a man or woman moves away from his tribe, opportunities await.

I offer up this proverb for any locals who are considering marriages to foreign visitors.

Thanks to my marriage to John Rolfe, I was able to expand my world far beyond its original boundaries. In the spring of 1616, I, Rebecca Rolfe, took a sea voyage to London as a guest of the Virginia Company. They presented me in all my finery to King James I and the best of London society.

But what is life? The flash of a firefly in the night. I fell ill and died just as we set out on the voyage home. In my memory, the English erected a life-size bronze statue of me at St George’s Church — which you can visit to this day.

Not bad for someone who trod upon this earth a mere 22 years… As I understand it, most people must wait many many umpsquoth before being appointed as the ambassador for their nation.

5. Be ever-watchful of the child whom others may judge harshly because of a mixed heritage.

I had just one child, Thomas Rolfe, who was born to me and John just before we left for England. It’s to my regret that I didn’t live long enough to shield him from the inevitable prejudices shown against Indian-white “mixed-bloods.”

That said, he appears to have thrived, even without my help. Among those who claim descent from Thomas today are several of Virginia’s First Families and the wife of one of your presidents, Nancy Reagan — a strong woman if there ever was one.

The limb doesn’t fall far from the tree!

+ + +

Cheskchamay (all friends), I wish you well on your travels, and I bid you, go in e-wee-ne-tu (peace).

There is one Native American precept that lies beneath all five of these proverbs:

“Do not judge your neighbor until you walk two moons in his moccasins.”

If you remember only this from our encounter, your journey will be a fruitful one.

* * *

Thank you, Pocahontas!

Question: Readers, do you have any responses to Pocahontas’s proverbs — anything to add from your own experiences?

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s RANDOM NOMAD interview, in which our special guest will answer a Pocahontas-related question.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Just for Laughs , , , , ,

The Displaced Nation celebrates American — and its own — independence

8 Comments Posted by on July 4, 2011

Today being the Fourth of July, the whole of America is celebrating its independence from Great Britain.

The Displaced Nation is celebrating, too, but in our usual idiosyncratic style. According to the mini-introduction on our site:

Here at The Displaced Nation, we are passionate about the experience of becoming a global resident.

Celebrating one country’s detachment from another, 235 years ago, doesn’t seem quite in keeping with this Declaration of Independence from nationhood of the conventional kind.

So instead of looking back to 1776, two of us are looking back only to this time last year — to a time when The Displaced Nation didn’t even have a name.

Kate Allison:
This time in 2010, I blogged about the Queen’s visit to New York, which tactfully had been scheduled to start just after the Fourth. In my post I described the awkwardness of representing the very country from which America was celebrating its independence:

Imagine gatecrashing a silver wedding anniversary bash, given in honor of your ex-husband and his subsequent wife, and that’s pretty much what it’s like to be a Brit in America on the 4th of July.

And yet last year was better than others had been in the past. The reason?  I’d discovered an online world full of other people who had lived away from their home country for some time, who weren’t sure any more where the heart was, and therefore didn’t know where to call Home.

Two of those people, of course, are my fellow writers, Anthony Windram and ML Awanohara, at The Displaced Nation. When ML first emailed to ask if I would be interested in this joint venture, being a fan of her own site I naturally said yes. But I had no idea what a lifesaver this intense project would turn out to be, during a difficult time for me.

It’s been an exhilarating three months since the site went live. So although I can never quite get to grips with the spirit of Fourth of July, I’m going to celebrate anyway.

Fire up the barbecue, cue the fireworks, and pass a Corona. Cheers!

ML Awanohara:
I was feeling very misplaced, out of place, out of sorts last Fourth of July. I wrote a rather caviling post maintaining that celebrations of American Independence Day haven’t seemed the same since I repatriated to the U.S., after so many years in the UK and Japan.

I had three main gripes:
1) The latest poll showing that most Americans didn’t know from which nation we’d declared our independence. In the version being circulated in 2010, some had actually speculated it was from Japan or China.
2) Inferiority of American fireworks to those I’d seen over the Sumida River in Tokyo. Why hadn’t we bothered to update them?
3) Boring barbecues. At the very least, I thought it was time for Americans to consider expanding their grilling repertoires to include British bangers.

Two Brits who’ve displaced themselves to the United States, Kate Allison and Anthony Windram, read my post — and stepped up to offer their cyber-friendship.

One year later, I’m thinking about how delighted I am to have have joined forces with them in founding a nation for displaced types like ourselves.

What’s more, The Displaced Nation has just turned three months old, as of July 1. That’s nothing, of course, compared to the American nation (whose 235 years is nothing compared to China’s 5,000 years of history, let alone the histories of most European countries).

But surely it’s something in cyberspace?

We hope that you, too, by now are beginning to put down roots in The Displaced Nation, and we thank you for your contributions to our nation-building efforts.

QUESTION: Which kinds of posts would make you feel even more at home on The Displaced Nation site? We’d love to get your suggestions and input.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, proposing a new theme (woo hoo!) for The Displaced Nation to explore for the remainder of the month.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related post:

Pot Luck , , , ,

Another Friday, another royal wedding of international fame

4 Comments Posted by on July 1, 2011

Who’s the happy Royal couple today?

Ah yes. Kate Moss and Jamie Hince, in a three-day bling-fest entailing two top chefs, six marquees, and performances by Snoop Dogg and Kanye West. I bet the residents of  Little Faringdon are loving that one. There probably haven’t been as many twitching net curtains since Kate entertained a pipedream of opening a London pub in the middle of the peaceful English Cotswolds.

But I’m joking, of course. While Kate Moss’s wedding is taking place today, the real Royal wedding is that of Prince Albert of Monaco and his 20-years-junior, South African fiancée Charlene Wittstock, in a two-day bling-fest entailing super-chef Alain Ducasse, a Royal courtyard, and performances by Jean-Michel Jarre and The Eagles.

Money no object – money the object

With an estimated price tag of $65 million, Prince Albert’s wedding makes William and Catherine’s April nuptials look like five minutes in a Las Vegas chapel. Sadly, this extravagance seems to be the main point of the exercise: an attempt to revive both Monaco’s struggling economy and its reputation of classy glamour, the latter which, to a large extent, died with Princess Grace in 1982.

With Monaco awash in heads of state, fashion designers, and A-list celebrities, who could fail to notice the wealth and pizzazz of this little principality?

Prince Albert himself said:

“Even if it’s not the main purpose [of the wedding], it will be a chance to shine a light on the principality and to contribute to ending stubborn clichés [about Monaco].”

A runaway bride?

Recent rumors, however, seem to be shining lights in other, unwanted directions.

Already the father of two illegitimate children, the Prince must have been perturbed when a new whisper surfaced that a third offspring was toddling out of the woodwork.

Further rumors that, in response to this revelation, Ms. Wittstock tried to back out of the wedding and fly back to South Africa, and claims by Monaco police that her passport was confiscated to stop her doing so, have surely cast a shadow on the proceedings.

Prince Albert (and his lawyers) have vigorously denied the claims – but then, as Mandy Rice-Davies once said, “Well, he would, wouldn’t he?”

You can’t have a Royal wedding where the bride is perceived as being frog-marched down the aisle.

Lambs to the altar

Actually, you can. It used to happen all the time, and not too long ago either, but we like to think we’ve moved on.

We haven’t. Not really. Royal dynasties need heirs. Prince Rainier needed heirs because if there were none, Monaco would revert to France under a 1918 treaty. Grace Kelly duly produced heirs.

Not surprisingly, parallels have been drawn between Grace Kelly and Charlene Wittstock: both tall and blonde, both ‘commoners’, one an American film star, the other a South African Olympic swimmer who bears more than a passing resemblance to Grace Kelly.

Thirty years ago, similar parallels were drawn between Princess Grace and Lady Diana Spencer, before she became Diana, Princess of Wales. Another tall blonde, capable of producing heirs for a royal family; another dazzling wedding to shine a light upon a country in recession.

One can only hope that, despite this week’s rumors, Her Serene Highness, Princess Charlene of Monaco will have a better fate than the other two. If the marriage is less than perfect, let’s hope it hasn’t all been in vain and that the flagging economy in Monaco recovers as a result.

Plan B

If not, perhaps they could approach Kate Moss and offer her a venue in Monte Carlo to open the London pub she was thinking about. That would soon revive the economy.

Whether it would do the same for Monaco’s classy glamour, however, would remain to be seen.

Related posts:

Jerry Seinfeld – the Royal Wedding’s answer to Ricky Gervais

A displaced American writer, awash in a sea of Royal Wedding apathy

A toast to two displaced writers with passionate views of royal passion

Pot Luck , , ,

In search of 007th heaven: A travel yarn in three parts (Part 3)

Leave a comment Posted by on June 29, 2011

We welcome back Sebastian Doggart for the final installment of his story about the pilgrimage he made to Goldeneye, the Jamaican coastal retreat where Ian Fleming wrote all the James Bond novels. In Part 1, Sebastian reports on his clever ploy to gain admission to the birthplace of James Bond. In Part 2, he registers disappointment at the conversion of Goldeneye into GoldenEye, a soulless bolt-hole for the rich and famous. In this final part, he tracks down the original locations where some famous scenes in two early Bond films were shot.

Back on the cactus-studded road, fortified with a cup of 007’s favorite Blue Mountain coffee, I — along with my two Bond girls: my lovely girlfriend, Emily, and our cheeky six-month-old daughter, Alma — renewed the quest to find some legitimate traces of Britain’s greatest spy.

The movie that pays greatest tribute to Fleming’s love for Jamaica is Dr. No (1962). Filmed just outside the island’s capital city, Kingston, on the south coast, Dr. No features the first Bond car chase, as glimpsed in the film’s original trailer. (Notably, I did not encourage our red-eyed Jamaican driver to hit the accelerator and, for Alma’s sake, was relieved to see a large blue traffic safety sign saying: “SPEED KILLS. Don’t be in a hurry to eternity”.)

Also as glimpsed in this trailer, Dr. No also introduced the world to the first Bond Girl: Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder — emerging from the waves, cuddling a conch shell.

No matter that her voice was dubbed in the final film, Ms. Andress in a bikini was a vision that launched a million erotic fantasies, including my own. The beach where this iconic scene was filmed is as hard to reach today as it was for Bond in the movie. Located four miles west of Ocho Ríos, behind the Roaring River generating station, on a privately owned, rentable estate, it is approached by an unmarked track that ends at a security gate. The Laughing Waters stream — in which Bond and Honey concealed themselves — still pours into the sea.

But Bond and Honey’s actual hiding place is now a very unromantic drainage ditch.

In both the movie and the book, Honey’s beach lies on the island of Crab Key, which is Dr. No’s well-appointed hide-out. Bond and Honey make their way from the beach, through a lush forest, where they find a stunning waterfall in which to wash off.

I would do the same thing…

The cascade used for the movie is now one of Jamaica’s top tourist attractions, Dunn’s River Falls. As we reached this reputedly picturesque spot, the first thing we noticed were grotesque conga lines of cruise-ship passengers — mainly American, but with a large smattering of Chinese — clambering over the rocks. How I wished I’d had a Walther PPK pistol to silence the tour-guides as they orchestrated raucous football chants.

(Afterwards, Alma exacted her own ruthless revenge on the commercialized desecration of the waterfall. As we were waiting for our driver to pull up, a septuagenarian American couple, all sunhats and positive energy, approached us. Alma served up her gummiest, sweetest grin to the lady, whose tired face melted. “Awww,” she cooed, “you are the cuutest ba–“, at which moment she stumbled sharply and fell face first on to the asphalt. A blackish red liquid oozed from her mouth. Emily shielded Alma’s gaze from the horror. The husband yelled for help. A call went out to out to an ambulance, which — do they have one permanently stationed at the Falls to handle tourists tumbling down the rocks? — arrived within minutes. The lady was carried into the back of the ambulance, as her husband asked a fellow cruise passenger to tell the captain not to leave until she had been patched up and discharged.)

Dr. Julius No’s lair was where he entertained Bond and Honey for dinner…and concealed the laser that could disable American missiles. It also contained the nuclear reactor where he would meet his death, sinking into the boiling liquid from which he was unable to escape because of his metal hands.

The building used for the reactor’s exterior is a bauxite plant that sits beside the main road on the crescent harbor of Discovery Bay. It’s owned and operated by the American company Kaiser. Beneath its russet-stained dome is where the “red gold” that is Jamaica’s second-leading money earner after tourism is transformed into aluminium for export to U.S. refineries.

The other movie where Jamaica plays a major role is Live and Let Die (1974), the first film to star Roger Moore as James Bond.

Jamaica stands in as the Louisiana bayou for the classic scene in the crocodile farm owned by the evil Mr. Big. In the film, Mr. Big’s real name is Kananga, which was taken from real-life crocodile wrangler Ross Kananga, who was the double for Moore in the scene where Bond escapes by running over a phalanx of crocodiles.

In this clip you can see all five takes of Kananga performing this perilous stunt for Moore. The location was an actual crocodile farm called Swamp Safari, near the town of Falmouth. (It was being refurbished when we visited and is due to re-open next year.)

In Live and Let Die, Jamaica is also the fictional Caribbean island of San Monique. In the original novel, Bond comes here to track down what his MI6 boss, M, believes to be a stash of gold that was originally amassed by the notorious pirate Henry Morgan, himself an early foreign resident of Jamaica. That gold was being used by the criminal network SMERSH to fund nefarious activities in America.

In the movie, Kananga’s base was conceived of as a cathedral-like cave beneath a cemetery. It was here where the infamous drug lord kept his submarine. And it was here, in a shark-infested lagoon, that Moore kills Kananga by stuffing a bullet of compressed air down his throat, causing him to explode.

The Kananga scenes were shot in the real-life Green Grotto and Runaway Caves near Discovery Bay. They comprise a network of limestone caves and a limpid lake, 120 feet below sea level. Originally a Taíno place of worship, the caves had a recent incarnation as a nightclub — but after revelers damaged the stalactites, it was closed down. Today, tour guides are scrupulously protective of the green algae on the walls.

As my Bond girls and I wound up our 007 tour and headed back to New York, I was re-energized to write my own Bond novel. It will begin with our hero discovering that his mother, whom he has not seen since he was very young, is alive but has been kidnapped by a mysterious criminal gang.

With Bond’s fascination for women clearly linked to an Oedipal complex and an impossible love for his mother, this will set up the highest stakes of any 007 story ever. In an extraordinary final twist, his mother will be revealed as none other than…M herself!

M for Mummy! Genius!

What do you think? Will this effectively reboot the Bond franchise?

img: The intrepid Sebastian Doggart with his equally intrepid “Bond girls,” girlfriend Emily and their daughter Alma, snapped in front of Dunn’s River Falls, Jamaica, with conga lines of cruise-ship passengers in the background.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment from our displaced fictional heroine, Libby, who, having just said good-bye to her London home, is about to embark on her long-anticipated relocation adventure.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related posts:

See also:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , ,

DISPLACED Q: Wimbledon — is it an anachronism in today’s international sporting world?

4 Comments Posted by on June 28, 2011

Given that Fred Perry was the last British man to win a Wimbledon singles event (1936) and Virginia Wade the last British woman (1977), the British public’s enthusiasm for this rather quaint championship is surprising. Then again, nothing fuels their enthusiasm as much as cheering on the underdog, and goodness knows, there are underdogs aplenty for them at Wimbledon.

Every now and then, a British competitor with a sniffing chance at victory will come along and be vigorously rooted for. Alas, no amount of national pride will change the inevitable outcome of (Andy Murray excepted) the Brit’s hangdog expression as he packs away his racquet and towel after losing 6-0 6-0 6-0 on an outside court to an American or Rumanian.

As Clive James, the Australian writer and broadcaster, pointed out:

“A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.”

Perhaps different countries are wired for different sports? Czech-born Martina Navratilova, nine times winner of Wimbledon Ladies’ Singles, thinks not:

“I’m an American. You can’t go on where you were born. If you do, then John McEnroe would be a German.”

John McEnroe (born to American parents in West Germany) caused controversy at Wimbledon in 1981, when he loudly criticized a line call and called umpire Ted James “the pits of the world.”

Despite being named by Sports Illustrated as one of the Top 10 Men’s Tennis Players of All Time, McEnroe fears the reputation of his temperament will outlast that of his talent:

“I want to be remembered as a great player, but I guess it will be as a player who got angry on a tennis court.”

For those who say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, McEnroe disagrees:

“Princess Diana, she used to come watch the tennis [at Wimbledon]. And even though she had it 1,000 times worse than I ever did, she pulled me aside a few times and said, ‘I really feel for you.'”

Meeting the Royal Family is something that doesn’t happen too often at, say, the U.S. Open. Perhaps it would be better if it did. Serena Williams, who has her own reputation for putting her verbal equipment in gear ahead of time, describes a Wimbledon meeting with Queen Elizabeth:

“I was supposed to say, ‘Your Majesty.’ I totally choked. I was like, ‘Hey, nice to meet you’, total American style. And then she started talking. Then I was like ‘Your Majesty’ while she was talking… Maybe she’ll remember me.”

Undoubtedly. Serena should have heeded Jimmy Connors’ rueful comment nearly 30 years ago:

“New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.”

Some international tennis players remain unimpressed by the oldest, and to some the most prestigious, tennis tournament in the world. Russian player Nikolay Davydenko says:

“Wimbledon is the world’s most boring tournament. There’s hardly anything to do apart from tennis. You constantly find yourself yawning – there’s no entertainment here.”

Is he referring to the arduous 30-minute train ride into the bright lights of central London, or is it simply a severe case of sour grapes at never progressing beyond the fourth round at Wimbledon? Whatever the reason, he isn’t alone.

“A lot of people think that everything revolves around Wimbledon but it is just one week of the year for us. If nothing happens at Wimbledon, it’s not the end of the world.”

— this from Elena Baltacha, the Ukraine-born British player, after losing at Wimbledon 2009 and sadly proving Martina right in her earlier statement about birthplace versus nationality. Oh, and Elena — Wimbledon is a two-week tournament. Perhaps that’s where you’re going wrong.

But maybe she’s right not to take it so seriously. My all-time favorite saying by a tennis player is that of Boris Becker, youngest ever winner of Wimbledon’s Men’s Singles, when he lost in the 1987 final to Pete Doohan:

“Nobody died. I only lost a tennis match, nothing more.”

So, let us have your views! Do you see Wimbledon as an anachronism in today’s sporting world, or are its slightly eccentric traditions to be cherished? The strict dress code of white for competitors; the strawberries and champagne; and above all, the venue of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. (How Alice is that!)

And on the subject of Alice, our last words come from Venus Williams, on her tennis outfit at this year’s Australian Open:

“The outfit is inspired by Alice in Wonderland. It’s kind of about a surprise, because when Alice goes down the rabbit hole, she finds all these things that are so surprising. This outfit is about having a surprise in a tennis dress, and showing some skin and then just having a print. Prints don’t happen that often in tennis. So it’s called the Wonderland dress.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I’m with the Wimbledon dress code on this one.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post, Part 3 of Sebastian Doggart’s thrilling chase after James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s Jamaican haunts.

Related posts:

Pot Luck , , , ,

“Zuzu in Prahaland”: A departing expat takes inventory of strange, Lovecraftian Prague

17 Comments Posted by on June 27, 2011

For much of June, The Displaced Nation has been looking at what the story of Alice in Wonderland can tell us about displacement of the curious, unreal kind — as anchored by Kate Allison’s 5 Lessons Wonderland taught me about the expat life, by Lewis Carroll’s Alice. Today we welcome guest blogger Sezin Koehler, who received one of our Alice Awards for writing about her current home, Prague, in this vein. Koehler and her husband plan to leave the Czech Republic on August 2. Here, she credits their four-year stay in its capital city for bringing out the Alice in Wonderland, or Zuzu*, in her character.

When I first moved to Prague I had no idea I’d be entering a living snow globe rather than going down the proverbial rabbit hole. Not just any old snow globe, but one incessantly shaken by a petulant child, refusing to let but a glimmer of sunlight through the gray haze. I also had no idea that Prague was not so much a city, but rather some kind of unpronounceable Lovecraftian entity with a mind of its own.

The old mother with claws

Kafka called Prague “the old mother with claws,” and he struggled his whole life to escape from her clutches. He never managed.

After four years in her grasp, I myself feared I would never get out from her cruel and cold embrace. My suspicion is that if you die in Prague, your soul is trapped here forever, unable to move on or away, locked in a limbo that the entity within feeds upon, like a relentless vampire queen.

Since the Velvet Revolution that ended the reign of Communism in 1989, Prague has welcomed fresh blood in the form of expats with open arms. There is an entire community of American, Australian, British, Canadian and other expats who have lived here since the 1990s, and they make up their own insulated subculture within greater Prague. The mother claws have them, and good.

These long-term expats joke that Prague is a city that draws you in, makes you comfortable — and then, in the snap of a bony hand, chews you up and spits you out.

In my brief tenure I have witnessed this phenomenon several times: expats, happy as pie, loving the beer and the high life Prague affords — only to find themselves unceremoniously booted out of the country with no friends, no money and only a drinking problem to show for their life here.

Many of those who remain in the clutches for too long have, in the process, become a mutant strain of Czech: wary of outsiders, unwelcoming and generally cold people unless surrounded by their own.

The mother claws are a fickle bunch, taking what they need and discarding of you when there is nothing left.

Prague isn’t just a city, but an entity of some kind. My creativity in Its abode has come with often hefty prices. Two years into my stint here, I developed tendinitis in both wrists simultaneously from a combination of overwork and the extreme cold. I spent three months with both wrists in braces, unable to wash or clothe myself; it took steroid shots and brutal physiotherapy to finally get my hands back in working order.

Now I have the uncanny knack of predicting rain and cold snaps.

Looking back at this strange, sometimes nightmarish interlude, I offer up 20 stream-of-consciousness memories:

1. The place where my husband and I went from being just a couple to being a team.

2. A fairytale land on this side of the rainbow where my dreams started to come true — published in print for the first time, wrote my first screenplay, published my first novel and began work on its three sequels, started building my own platform as a writer. I can call myself what I wanted to be ever since I can remember.

3. Neo-Nazis and being screamed at by a racist Czech granny on the 18 tram.

4. Getting caught in the blizzard of 2010 and finally understanding that it’s not only people that can threaten you — the very elements themselves are forces of their own will and we live at their whim.

5. The phenomenal view of the University Botanical Garden from our living room window, as well as the original 6th century settlement of Prague, right smack in the middle of the city.

6. Chapeau Rouge, the friendliest bar in Prague — but only if you are there with me. I’ll make sure you pay homage to what I call Our Lady of the Music: an art installation featuring a Mary with a disco ball above her head and a record between her praying hands.

7. Discovering Afghan cuisine and vegetarian restaurants; also remembering South Indian cuisine and ordering Indian delivery online — useful especially when the streets were knee-deep in snow.

8. Bara, the world’s most talented tattoo artist: she gave me wings, stars, Falcor and Edward Scissorhands.

9. Cold that sinks right into your bones, feet aching and joints swelling from trudging through it across treacherous cobblestones and hidden patches of ice.

10. Bonsai and carnivorous plant exhibits at the Botanical Garden.

11. Sitting in our apartment, feeling my ears pop like I’m on an airplane from the rising and falling air pressure.

12. Lady Gaga’s monster brawl at the O2 arena: the Czechs marked the 21-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution by punching people who wanted to dance; MGMT at Divadlo Archa; free passes to the Irish-American funk band Flogging Molly at Retro Music Hall — and hanging out with them afterwards.

13. Dancing in what was then Klub Kostel (literally, Church Club) on Hallowe’en, dressed as a witch.

14. Yearly fireworks and light shows over Vyšehrad (castle on a hill over the Vitava River), with a stage front view right from our window.

15. Mourning the deaths of, from a distance, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Corey Haim, Ryan Dunn … and close up, Curtis Jones, an American expat performance artist who’d been living in Prague since 1989 — a dear friend to many dear friends of mine in this city.

16. Cleaning up my first ever poop-drenched child, at an international pre-school where I worked. (I don’t and never will have kids.)

17. The vista of Prague from the tram on the way up to the castle, skyline scraped with spires and a cloud of fog overhead, feeling like I had somehow escaped the evil snow globeness if only for a moment.

18. Working for a newspaper, a mentally unbalanced artist, a shady off-shore investment banking firm, an international relocation company, a British school, and the largest university in central and eastern Europe.

19. The stench of Prague’s walking dead — homeless people with rotting parts of their bodies or insides, including one fellow with a black foot, the gangrene working its way up his leg. The worst thing I have ever smelled in my life, and I’ve lived in India and Africa; impossible to describe how awful and sad it is.

20. Seeing open graves for the first time ever, in Olšanské hřbitovy (Prague’s largest cemetery) — and imagining an imminent zombie invasion.

Na shledanou, Prahaland

I have made a tenuous peace with Prague.

This has been a place of great pain and great inspiration. The Entity is letting me go without a struggle: It knows that I will be telling stories about It for years to come.

It doesn’t even care if I paint Its portrait with darkness and horror — It wants to be seen, It wants to scare, It wants to fascinate so it can feed.

It knows the things I write, good and bad, will help bring many more people into Its icy embrace.

Prague is always hungry for fresh blood. Will yours be next?

*Sezin Koehler owes her nickname “Zuzu” to Rebi and Tereza, two Czech girls she took care of in an after-school program she organized. “Good afternoon, Miss Zuzu,” they would say. “Zuzu” is a common Czech nickname, short for “Zuzana.” This tickled Koehler’s fancy as one of her favorite films of all time — It’s a Wonderful Life — features a character named Zuzu Bailey. She has even named her blog Zuzu’s Petals — which, she says, “signify the most beautiful turning point in the film.”

Sezin Koehler is a half-American, half-Sri Lankan global nomad, horror novelist, writer and editor. Her first novel, American Monsters, was released last year. It has since been picked up by Ghostwoods Books, and an illustrated 2nd edition will be released by Fall 2011. Koehler’s Twitter moniker is @SezinKoehler.

img: “NO REST FOR THE WINGÉD — Zuzu Kahlo,” by Steven Koehler.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s post consisting of quotes attesting to the curious, unreal nature of Wimbledon tennis — which, to the more discerning observer, can seem disturbingly akin to the Queen of Hearts’ game of croquet.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related posts:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , ,

CLASSIC DISPLACED WRITING: Ian Fleming

7 Comments Posted by on June 24, 2011

As The Displaced Nation has been serializing Sebastian Doggart’s article (part 1 and part 2) about visiting Ian Feming’s Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, it seemed like a good time to take a brief look at Fleming’s writing with a Classic Displaced Writing Post.

Sebastian’s posts have been concerned with Fleming and his love of Jamaica, and while Jamaica and the Caribbean is used numerous times as a backdrop in the Bond novels, through the course of the novels Bond visits dozens of  different countries that Fleming has to conjure up for the reader.

What is clear on reading Fleming is just how important food and drink is to Fleming in order to allow him to describes new and exotic (at least for the vast majority of readers in austerity Britain of that time) locations. I don’t think it’s unfair of me to say that Fleming fetishes food and drink. At times, reading a Bond novel is like reading food porn. While the Bond films now do an expert and cynical job of name dropping as many brands as they can in 2 hours, the Bond novels don’t shy away with the name dropping of food or of alcoholic brand names. The Bond of the novels isn’t solely a Martini drinker. He’s aways one to try anything local that’s on offer. In Jamaica he’ll drink a glass of Red Stripe, in the US he’ll have a Millers Highlife beer. Throughout the novels Fleming uses food and drink to convey an alien culture, demonstrate social status, show Bond’s mood and his sophistication and ease with the world.

For ten minutes Bond stood and gazed out across the sparkling water barrier between Europe and Asia, then he turned back into the room, now bright with sunshine, and telephoned for his breakfast. His English was not understood, but his French at last got through. He turned on a cold bath and shaved patiently with cold water and hoped that the exotic breakfast he had ordered would not be a fiasco.

He was not disappointed. The yoghourt, in a blue china bowl, was a deep yellow and with the consistency of thick cream. The green figs, ready peeled, were bursting with ripeness, and the Turkish coffee was jet black and with the burned taste that showed it had been freshly ground. Bond ate the delicious meal on a table drawn up beside the open-window.

From Russia with Love (1957)

Video of some more examples –

STAY TUNED for Monday’s post, when guest blogger Sezin Koehler riffs off Alice in Wonderland to capture the curious, unreal aspects of her life in Prague.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related posts:

, , , , , , , ,

RANDOM NOMAD: Vicki Jeffels, blogger, freelance writer & social media consultant

17 Comments Posted by on June 22, 2011

Vicki JeffelsBorn in: Auckland, New Zealand
Passport: New Zealand (only, and proud of it!)
Countries lived in: Fiji Islands (Vatukoula): 1973-77; Australia (Brisbane): 1996-98; England (Tadley, Hampshire): 2008-present
Cyberspace coordinates: Vegemite Vix | A Kiwi expat in the UK licking the Vegemite off life’s fingers (blog); Digital Discussions (start-up consultancy)

What made you leave your homeland in the first place?
I first became an expat at the tender age of 3.5, when my family moved to the Fijian Islands for my father’s work: he had a contract with the Emperor Gold Mines in Vatukoula. I have wonderful memories of expat life as a child. The days were honeyed with heat, we munched sugar cane off the back of the cane truck, and we swam with the tropical fish through the intricate coral reef. Of course, a child’s experience is so very different from an adult’s, and now I’m a parent, I’m more aware of the challenges my parents faced — which included being robbed, almost being airlifted out in civil unrest, and sheltering under the house during the monstrous Hurricane Bebe in 1972.

I moved overseas again — to Brisbane, Australia — with my first husband in 1996, with a two year old and two-week-old baby in tow. On reflection, that wasn’t brilliant timing. We struggled to make a home for ourselves particularly as my (then) husband was working in Perth, an eight-hour flight away — leaving me to cope on my own in a new country with two babies. I did it, though. I made friends through the children’s networks and found work for myself — until two years later, when my husband was suddenly made redundant and we limped back to New Zealand with our tails between our legs.

My most recent expat adventure started on a holiday in Paris in 2007 when I met a rather scrumptious Englishman. We chatted, we flirted, we kept in touch long after we’d returned home — and our long-distance relationship soon blossomed. A year later, I packed up my three kids (two teens and a tweenie), dog, cat and 20 boxes of books and moved to Hampshire to live with my Englishman. After a romantic engagement atop Mt Hellvellyan (yes, he made me climb a mountain to get the engagement ring!), we married in his village church in North Yorkshire in 2009.  I’ve written about our story on my blog and am currently writing it up as a memoir — hopefully coming to a bookstore near you, shortly.

Is anyone else in your immediate family displaced?
All of my immediate family currently live outside of New Zealand. My mother, father and sister all live in Australia, but I wouldn’t say they are “displaced.” They are all happy living there and hold Australian passports, and my mother is an Australian by birth.

Describe the moment when you felt most displaced over the course of your many displacements.
When I found myself standing in front of the judge at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in London three weeks after our wedding, having swapped my wedding bouquet for brickbats from the UK Border Agency, as they probed and prodded and demanded to find fault with our story. Standing there pleading to stay in the UK with my husband and kids — when everything in my body was screaming “Get me out of here!” and “Get me home!” — was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was dissonant not only because we were newly married — and I longed to go home and celebrate with my friends and family but had been restricted from leaving the country — but also because I’m the archetypical “good girl” who has barely ever had a parking ticket. What was I doing standing in front of a judge being cross-examined by solicitors? It was scary stuff and deeply disturbing — as if the entire nation wanted me to just leave. It was the final straw after a year’s worth of feeling displaced — of saying the wrong thing and being laughed out of the room, and of breaking unwritten rules of conduct in the supermarket that resulted in an elderly woman throwing limes at me! Who knew there were rules about how and when you should put your shopping on the checkout counter?

Describe the moment when you felt least displaced.
This is a telling question, because although I’ve had some great times whilst living here in England, I can’t say that I’ve ever experienced feeling “at home.” My most recent trip Down Under highlighted for me how displaced I truly feel living in the UK, and how exhausting it can be spending one’s days trying to “fit in.” It was wonderful to have a break from explaining myself all day every day. It doesn’t help that I moved from an upmarket suburb of a large seaside multicultural city, to a parochial town in the English countryside. I wonder if I would feel more at home in London where there is a far more multicultural vibe? At times I wonder about moving again, perhaps to the US or Australia. (Is it itchy feet, or failure to fit in, that’s behind those feelings?)

You may bring one curiosity you’ve collected from each of the countries where you’ve lived into the Displaced Nation. What’s in your suitcase?
From Fiji: A frangipani flower. We used to make them into wreaths when I was a child. The smell reminds me of the South Pacific and makes me smile.
From New Zealand (which, though home, is now something of a foreign country): A pāua shell to remind me of the ocean and the beautiful Kiwi beaches.
From Australia: A boomerang because it will remind me that there is always a home behind me as well as in front of me.
From England: A St George’s cross to remind me that I too can fight and defeat the dragons.

You’re invited to prepare one meal based on your travels for other Displaced Nation members. What’s on the menu?
I hope you like seafood! For starters I’ve prepared a Fijian raw fish meal called kokoda, which is “cooked” in coconut milk and lime juice. It’s divine. On the side there’s a dozen Bluff oysters from New Zealand. For mains we’ll have barbequed prawns, Moreton Bay bugs (Australia), and good quality pork sausages (British). We’d probably toast the meal with a New Zealand champenoise and down the sausages with a Margaret River Shiraz.

You may add one word or expression from each of the countries you’ve lived in to The Displaced Nation argot. What words do you loan us?
From Fiji: Bula — one of those indispensable words. It means “hello” and “thank you” and “How are you?” and “See you later” and “Good luck.” In fact, it’s a phonetic smile.
From New Zealand: Wopwops, meaning out in the bush away from everyone and everything else, preferably where there is no mobile signal and Internet. We all need to lose ourselves in the wopwops from time to time.
From Australia: Barbie — colloquial for barbecue, or BBQ. Particularly when eaten outside in the glorious fresh air and sunshine, with sand between your toes and the sound of the surf crashing on the beach, a barbie is one of the finest meals you can have.
From England: Bless — because the English have a way of saying it that sounds nice but is really derogatory. It’s so English to hear someone recount the story about how they did something stupid, and have the listener respond with “Bless” — really meaning “You moron!” I offer it to The Displaced Nation as a reminder of the need to master some of the local lingo, without which you’ll have a tough time understanding the folkgeist of the country you’re in.

It’s Alice in Wonderland month at The Displaced Nation. In closing, can you tell us your worst “Pool of Tears” moment, when you wondered, how did I end up in such a predicament and will I ever escape?
It, too, occurred during my struggles with the UK immigration authorities. Having moved to the UK to be with my Englishman, I was awaiting a valid work visa so was restricted from working. At the same time, my ex stopped paying child support. As we were struggling financially, I was stuck at home feeling terribly isolated. One day I received the news that I had been served with a deportation order and had 28 days to leave the country and return to NZ with my three children. I collapsed in tears, wondering how on earth I was ever going to afford going back to NZ where I no longer had property or anywhere to go. My savings had been eaten away by legal fees, and I had no income. I felt utterly dispossessed. In the end, we won the appeal against the deportation — my most displaced moment — and I was granted a valid visa, after which I regained the self-confidence I feared had been lost in transit.

Like Alice, did you encounter a Mouse who helped you ashore?
My Mouse would have to be the first friend I made in my English town after living here for almost two years. All that time I would cheerily smile hello at strangers — and they’d run away as if I were brandishing a knife. I was bitterly lonely and would live for Facebook chats with the many friends I’d left in New Zealand. Finally, on the school sports day I met an Englishwoman who had relatively recently returned from expat adventures in Canada. We bonded over our shared status as outsiders in a town where the majority of local people have family connections back through several generations. I refer to her as Strawberry Munchkin in my blog and am so very grateful for her friendship. I think of her as an honorary Kiwi.

QUESTION: Readers — yay or nay for letting Vicki Jeffels into The Displaced Nation? Tell us your reasons. (Note: It’s fine to vote “nay” as long as you couch your reasoning in terms we all — including Vicki — find amusing.)

img: Vicki Jeffels, taken in the UK for use on her blog.

STAY TUNED for tomorrow’s installment from our displaced fictional heroine, Libby.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related posts:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , , ,

In search of 007th heaven: A travel yarn in three parts (Part 2)

3 Comments Posted by on June 21, 2011

GoldenEye collageWe welcome back Sebastian Doggart for the second in his three-part travel yarn about his attempt to infiltrate the Caribbean retreat called GoldenEye, where Ian Fleming composed all the Bond books. In Part 1, Sebastian reports on his arrival on Jamaica’s northern coast and admission at the gates of the compound that marks the birthplace of James Bond — newly remade into a resort for the super-rich. Stay tuned for Part 3, where Sebastian continues his Bond-worthy quest for traces of Fleming elsewhere in Jamaica.

Alighting from the car, I was greeted by Jenny Wood, GoldenEye’s English general manager, whose plummily cheerful efficiency had echoes of Miss Moneypenny. She welcomed us warmly and introduced us to a Jamaican employee called Henry, who would take us to our friends, the Usmanovs.

As Henry led us down a stone path, I asked him about visiting Fleming’s house. He said that, the week before, Bono had been staying there, but that it was now vacant.

Thrillingly, Henry promised he would get a key and take us to see inside.

He took us through a wooded area, where the trees had all been planted by a celebrity guest. Handwritten signs showed a tamarind planted by Princess Margaret, a royal palm by the Clintons, a lime by Harrison Ford, an ackee by River Phoenix, a cinnamon by Willie Nelson, and a guava by Johnny Depp.

Surely, this was the most eco-friendly example of name-dropping in the world.

Shaken, not stirred

We came to the luxuriously simple main restaurant, which also housed a bar in the very gazebo where Fleming would do some of his writing. Henry informed us that, when British Prime Minister Anthony Eden visited in 1956, he used this as a command post.

It was a perfect spot for a quick drink. I eschewed the obvious choice of a dry martini, shaken not stirred and ordered instead Bond’s own creation, a Vesper. Named after his Casino Royale lover Vesper Lynd, it’s made of three measures of Gordon’s gin, one of grain vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, all shaken until iced cold, and served with a slice of lemon peel in a champagne goblet.

Energized, we walked on to a wooden bridge, over an emerald waterway that drifted into the sea, through a maze of discreet wooden buildings, each bordering a lagoon, to our friends’ own villa.

They welcomed us with a rum punch, made from Blackwell’s own self-named brand. We sat on the back deck, listening to the resort’s own reggae-oriented radio station, and savoring the sweet scent of marijuana wafting from the neighboring cabana. I slipped into my bathing suit and leapt into the cool water.

On the other shore of the lagoon nestled the spa, described in the resort guidebook as a place where guests have “a license to chill,” and where Bond himself “would willingly put down his guns, girls and gadgets to lose himself — and find himself.”

I went back inside my friends’ cabana for a shower. The bedroom smelled of fresh cedar and was immaculately decorated. The bathroom, adorned with new Villeroy & Boch taps and a craw-feet tub, was outside — shielded by a bamboo fence and festooned with bougainvillea.

I hope you can swim, Goodnight.

Soon after, Henry returned to honor his promise to take us to Bond’s actual birthplace, and we said goodbye to our friends.

Henry led us to the private beach where Fleming used to don flippers and a diving mask (but no snorkel) to look at parrotfish and snapper, and to spear lobsters and octopi for his dinner. A glass-bottomed boat is now available for guests to peer for barracuda.

On the shore, hotel lounge-chairs broke the natural rhythms. A rock pool that Fleming built for his son, Casper, teemed with black crabs — the same beasts that Dr. No used to torture Honey Rider. I wondered whether Fleming and his “Jamaican wife,” Blanche Lindo, might have indulged in some related zoologically erotic games.

Overlooking the beach was a charming sunken garden which Fleming had hallowed out for dining al fresco. Shaded by a proscenium arch of almond trees, he and his illustrious chums would sit here feasting on ackee, curried goat, and grilled salt-fish.

Henry took out a key to show us inside the complex known as “The Fleming House.” The renovations have expanded Fleming’s own modest footprint to embrace four houses, all built around a new, sunken swimming pool. The main building is an enlarged version of Fleming’s original bungalow, and there are three neighboring villas, which contain guest rooms and a private cinema.

Time to face gravity!

To stay in the Fleming House is beyond most mortals’ spending power: it rents for between $7,000 and $21,000 a night, depending on the season.

To put that in context, Henry, whom Chris Blackwell was paying $60 a week, would have to work seven years — and incur no other expenditures — in order to take his family to the Fleming House for just one night.

My first impression on entering the main building was similar to that of Noël Coward,
who, in a teasing ode he wrote to Fleming, complained about the hard furniture and the airless rooms.

Totemic African statues stared threateningly down into the cavernous living room. Paintings of a conch shell and a sea-view looked as though they had been bought from the local market. The floor was made of cold, pale stone.

The master bedroom was where Fleming did most of his writing, but this too was disappointing. Below a framed black-and-white photograph of Fleming stood a bullet-wood corner desk, but Henry admitted that it was a replica.

There was no sign either of the Imperial typewriter that Fleming used to write most of the Bond novels, or of the gold-plated Royal Quiet DeLuxe portable that he later purchased from the Royal Typewriter Company in New York. (The Royal, I learned later, had been sold to Bond actor Pierce Brosnan for a reported $75,000.)

As Henry led me back to my car, past a lime tree planted by Yoko Ono, the whole place suddenly felt fake and exploitative. It seemed more a celebration of celebritocracy than a tribute to the creative spirit — more akin to Scaramanga’s island than to Fleming’s original Goldeneye.

And as the iron gates clanged behind us, I suspected that, if Fleming had a chance to see how his erstwhile 007th heaven has been transformed, he would feel that Chris Blackwell has leapt on an ugly Bondwagon — and, like Auric Goldfinger, may be suffering from a deadly Midas complex.

img: (top to bottom) Fleming’s private beach; Fleming’s sunken garden; GoldenEye villa outdoor bath; GoldenEye villa bedroom — all by Sebastian Doggart.

STAY TUNED for Part 3, in which Sebastian continues his search for 007 on the beach where Ursula Andress appeared, in evil Doctor Kananga’s limestone caves, and in Dr. No’s lair on Coral Key. And before that we have tomorrow’s post — an interview with Random Nomad Vicki Jeffels, who answers an Alice question.

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to subscribe for email delivery of The Displaced Nation. That way, you won’t miss a single issue. SPECIAL OFFER: New subscribers receive a FREE copy of “A Royally Displaced Tea.”

Related post:

Pot Luck , , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →