Gemma Mccluskie

(Update 10th March 2012: Yesterday the Met Police confirmed everyone's worst fears. If you or anyone you know has any information about Gemma's Mccluskie's final hours please contact the incident room on 020 8345 3985 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.)

By now most of us have read about the shocking news of Gemma Mccluskie's disappearance. No one I know has even begun to process any of  the news. The Mccluskies are like family to locals here in Bethnal Green. It shows the level of decorum that indigenous E2-ers possess in that no one boasted or even mentioned Gemma's very impressive stint on television to me. I only found out about it when she was first reported missing. Gemma is considered just a local and beloved gal here; good as gold as they say. Tony is a close friend to many of us as well. I cannot conceive of Tony being behind this and I pray with all my might it is not so. I think of those who have been universally damned in the court of public opinion before any facts were known only to later be fully exonerated despite facing a fully ruined life even in innocence.

Music seem to be the only way to express what is happening right now.  

The words to the songs below do not refer to anyone specific but to whomever has taken Gemma's life and the after effects it has now left on the East End. My own sibling was violently murdered and I know that you never recover or "get closure" despite time passing and thus some distance easing things. Right now what has happened is inexplicable and all I can do is pray for the best possible resolution.


"My Brother Esau"
Words by John Perry Barlow; music by Bob Weir
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission

My brother Esau killed a hunter
Back in 1969
And before the killing was done,
His inheritance was mine.
But his birthright was a wand to wave
Before a weary band.
Esau gave me sleeplessness
And a piece of moral land.

My father favored Esau,
Who was eager to obey
All the bloody wild commandments
The Old Man shot his way.
But all this favour ended
When my brother failed at war.
He staggered home
And found me in the door.

[Chorus:]
Esau skates on mirrors anymore...
He meets his pale reflection at the door.
Yet sometimes at night I dream
He's still that hairy man,
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse
And wandering the land.
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse
And wandering the land.

Esau holds a blessing;
Brother Esau bears a curse.
I would say that the blame is mine
But I suspect it's something worse.
The more my brother looks like me,
The less I understand
The silent war that bloodied both our hands.
Sometimes at night, I think I understand.

It's brother to brother and it's man to man
And it's face to face and it's hand to hand...
We shadowdance the silent war within.
The shadowdance, it never ends...
Never ends, never ends.
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse, yet again...
Yet again.
Shadowboxing the Apocalypse,
And wandering the land.

Dangerous 
Words and Music by John Entwistle
Can you feel it? watching you in the darkness
Touching you like a sickness
Fear is taking control,
The beach head is the street.
In the gutter lies defeat.
Fear is the key to your soul
That makes you dangerous
So dangerous to yourself

Can you feel it in the shadows?
Watching you, touching you,
Can you feel it in the shadows?
Watching you, touching you
Changing you into a mad dog.
Howling at the moon.
And you're so far out of tune
Better learn how to sing.
Fences, we put up our defences.
Then we come to our senses.
It may keep them out
But it keeps us in
And that makes us dangerous
We're all dangerous to ourselves

This is a jungle, not illusion,
Jungle city, in confusion,
We are the next step in evolution,
The new stone age, revolution.
Back to the stone age, constitution
No solution

Can you feel it in the shadows?
Watching you, touching you,
Can you feel it in the shadows?
Follow you, swallow you.
Can you feel it?
Fear is the key.
Can you feel it?
Fear is the key.
Can you feel it? Can you feel it?
Fear is the key to your soul.

Judith Kerr Tribute at V&A Museum of Childhood

Judith Kerr is a treasure to the world of writing and art. Not just children's books but all works of fiction. We have been through the tribute/installation to Judith at the V&A Museum of Childhood (From The Tiger Who Came to Tea to Mog and Pink Rabbit) at least half a dozen times now and can't wait to go back! Yes, I grumble as my fellow parents jostle for pics on their Iphones and 500quid digital cameras as "no photography allowed" signs hang nearby. We try to arrive early but school is out and we now have to share our magical museum, sand pit, cafe, Punch and Judy theatres, sensory pod etc with others who have the very same idea. ;) We slept in the giant cat bed but our son still won't pose with the giant Tiger at the dinner table.

The Tiger Who Came to Tea and the MOG books (17 volumes!) are veritable Valentines to children's literature and why they are not as popular in the US as they are here in the UK is a mystery. More and more, artists of Judith Kerr's calibre are simply not emerging these days and we need them more than ever. When I read of her childhood literally hopping from one country to another Germany, France, Switzerland, England it also hits home that her generation has the stories and the experiences unlike any other. That may sound rote but I truly feel that way. kerr's father, noted drama critic, journalist and screenwriter Alfred Kerr, had openly criticised the Nazi Regime. His books then were burned by the Nazis shortly after her family fled Germany. They travelled first to Switzerland and then on into France, before finally settling in Britain. V@A opens her tribute with a room full of four identical antique wooden desks representing each country her family fled to and filled with accoutrements and ephemera from each year. This leads onto a visual feast/tribute to her first picture book (complete with cozy beds), of The Tiger Who Came to Tea (published in 1968). Tiger was written as a bedtime story for her own children and soon became a classic being translated into 11 languages and selling over five million copies. A GIANT stuffed toy Tiger presides over a dinner table. He must be seen in person to be believed! (see below picture from the wonderful east London Advertiser to get an idea)


But numbers, fame and mammoth stuffies are not the essential components to Kerr's oeuvre. Like Beatrix Potter her artistry is outlandishly underrated even as she flickers subliminally in the minds of most Brits and Anglophiles. I still have to take more pics of the exhibit, perhaps the most charming being a display of all her books in chronology order.

Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood: An anti-racist postcard

Greetings from the UK and the East End which is a veritable heaven for anti-racist parenting. Books like ”I am a Sikh” and Arabic alphabet boards are the norm here. White people here usually talk to someone African or Asian if they need social services, legal aid and citizens advice; an interesting concept. I’m glad we are raising our son England as it is less racist and backwards than the US as a whole. It is the centre of the world afterall. He’s gone from having one African-American friend to Somalian children next door neighbours, Turkish cafe workers who adore him, a Bengali man who gave him a blessing when he passed us on the street last week, Georgian meals and our local laundrette staffed by lovely cockney women who love him to bits.

CBeebies, state run and which we pay for each year as part of the BBC (about 225 USD) offers so many amazing multi-cultural kids shows and is 100% inclusive with not one but THREE black male TV presenters who present concurrently, children and adults in head scarves and one Cerrie Burnell, who was born without a left forearm. DO check out the website if it is new to you and your children.


BEST OF ALL (apart from the NHS- I LOVE the NHS) though is the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood where my son is learning to crawl and walk around in the huge baby section/play areas (flats and homes in London don't have the large spaces to crawl unless you have SERIOUS money for a stately home.) Nearly the entire museum is created from an inclusive and pro-diversity perspective and houses the largest collection of toys in the world. I thought this display called “Families: Three Generations” about local residents of E2 and the toys that various generations of family members have used would appeal to those interested in tolerance. Please check this out and ask why we don’t have more exhibits like this available over in the US for children.



Of course there are problems here like the BNP’s resurgence prior to the May 6th election up the road in Barking/Dagenham, areas which have seen a decline in white industrial employment and a rise in immigration. The BNP has now let in POC which is sad that some are actually joining. My husband is a white indigenous Brit (his own label) and I listen to his feelings of how in one generation where he grew up is no longer majority white and now nearly all Asian. He enjoys diversity but wants immigration radically scaled back because of the size of the island. He also want to see more white British people included in diversity education and centres. My hero Billy Bragg got in there on St George's day and gave the BNP what for pointing out that the patron saint of England had been Lebanese!


Romani children out of school harassing people for money, their parents oblivious to any societal code of conduct including touching my baby without permission to the point where I had to physically take one adult Romani woman’s hand off of him at the checkout line at Tescos and threaten violence is another big problem here. Women in full Burqas their eyes obscured which I don’t feel good about and which SHOULD be banned to protect innocent girls from such destructive subjugation. Head scarves, half burquas, or the burqas where the eyes are unobstructed are fine and lovely if that is the WOMAN’s choice but seeing a woman with her eyes covered is frighting to me as a feminist as well as an anti-racist. GOOD ON YA BELGIUM! Honour killings are still a big problem in the UK among immigrants and asylum seekers.

Finally white welfare culture with anti- social teens and adults flaunting dangerous dogs, drugs, drunkenness and having no respect for society at large is apparent, scary and heartbreaking because it feeds into racial hatred and class warfare.

(the Golliwog dolls and above puppet are not explained properly-actually at all-at the museum, my only complaint)

All in all though this is an amazing country and London is an incredibly diverse city. Paul Robeson could not study Africa in the US during the 30’s and 40’s (no US university had an African studies dept.) so he came here and said in England he “discovered he was African.” And fittingly our trans Atlantic move was blessed with a wonderful inflight movie (our son was amazingly asleep!) which is required viewing for all anti-racist parents and which was unfairly ignored at the box office last year (most likely because the leads comprised a Bi-racial couple) : Away We Go directed by Sam Mendez. A MUST SEE!

Hope all of you are well and wish you were here.