Love in Partition

            Maybe it’s a childhood habit that’s embedded itself in my psyche but I always feel an urge to get up early on Christmas day even though there are no presents waiting for me. I got up at 4:00 and since my left ear felt a bit plugged I flushed it out. I got started with yoga a half an hour earlier than usual. For song practice I just worked on songs that I particularly enjoy and on a couple for which I needed to practice whistling.

            I worked out most of the chords for Sam Cooke’s “Bring it on Home to Me” but applied them to Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on a Wire” and it worked except on the bridge because the Cooke song has none but “Bird on a Wire" can keep its own. I like my version better than the original for either song.

            I spent a long time on my journal before having a late breakfast of bacon and eggs. I cooked my own bacon but for the eggs I used some of the little omelettes that I got from the food bank. During breakfast I watched an episode of Doctor Who that had a great title: “Arachnids in the UK”. Get it?

            The Doctor finally gets her friends back to 2018 Sheffield although none of them seem all that happy to be back. Despite all of their adventures they have only been gone for half an hour. We meet Yasmin’s father, in an apron is quite excited that Yasmin has brought friends home because it’s out of the ordinary. Yasmin’s sister is a bit of a princess and they don’t seem to get along. Her mother Najia is out working at a new job. We meet her boss who is a US hotel tycoon who wants to run for president in 2020. He seems to be modelled after Trump and the actor seems to be doing a less over the top impression of Alec Baldwin’s impression of Trump but Trump is mentioned as a rival to this character. Anyway, he’s a major asshole. Najia's supposed to be the general manager of the luxury hotel that they are standing in and that is about to open but as soon as she walks up to Jack Robertson to introduce herself and he immediately fires her.

            Meanwhile giant spiders big enough to trap humans for food in their webs are appearing all over Sheffield. The Doctor finds that the epicentre of all the reported sightings is Robertson's hotel. Robertson's company also does toxic waste removal and they removed the waste from a lab that’s been studying spiders. Some of the waste that the lab had sent out turned out to be dormant rather than dead spiders. They mutated in the other toxic waste. Spiders do not stop growing as long as they are alive but most do not live very long. These mutants lived longer and grew. Spiders are attracted to sound vibrations and the Doctor gets Ryan to lure them with amplified dub reggae into Robertson’s panic room.

Najia asks Yasmin if she and Ryan are a couple. She also asks her if she and the Doctor are a couple. The Doctor asks Yasmin, “I don’t think we are, are we?”

Najia is played by Shabna Gulati, who was a regular on Coronation Street for a few years.

Robertson was played by Chris Noth who was Mr Big on Sex in the City.

Around midday I watched another episode. This one begins with the Doctor and her friends looking for something on a junk planet when they come across a mine that goes off, not with an explosion but some kind of sonic disruption. They wake up on a medical ship headed for Resis 7. The problem is that the Tardis is back on the junk planet. The medical ship can’t turn around because it’s fully automated with only two staff and besides it’s not fair to the passengers that are on their way for treatment. When they get to Resis they can teleport back to the junk planet. The passengers include a pregnant man who is almost ready to pop. In his species the women have girls and the men have boys.

The ship is infiltrated by a cute and cuddly looking little creature called a Pting, which is one of the most dangerous species in the universe because they can survive in space and can eat anything that isn’t organic. This Pting is eating the spaceship they are all on, thereby inadvertently killing people as it goes. The only member of the crew that survives is a medic called Mabli.

When the pregnant man’s water breaks the tradition is that he must be attended by men and so Graham and Ryan are there for him.

The ship is rigged with a bomb that can be triggered from Resis if it is discerned that it is carrying a plague or something equally devastating. The bomb is set to go off. The Doctor discovers that the Pting are attracted to energy and as the bomb approaches detonation it is building in energy. She places the bomb in a jettison pod and when the Pting goes to eat it she closes the door and jettisons the pod.

Mabli was played by Lois Chimimba.

I did some translations of parts of a song by Serge Gainsbourg, a story by Boris Vian and a screenplay by Jacques Prevert.

I started making the dressing for the turkey. I broke up some triangle buns, added a carton of chicken broth, sautéed onions and zucchini, salt, pepper and poultry spices. The bread was soggy so I had to add it to the onions and zucchini for a while to evaporate the water. Then I couldn’t stuff the turkey till the dressing cooled down. After stuffing the turkey I put it in the oven but didn’t turn it on until after I got up from my siesta.

I also made cranberry sauce.

I watched another episode of Doctor Who while the turkey was cooking. This story begins with a birthday party for Yasmin’s grandmother Umbreen, who gives everyone gifts. She tells Yasmin that she is her favourite granddaughter even though her other granddaughter is sitting right there. Umbreen’s daughter Najia chastises her and says, “We talked about this!” Umbreen gives Yasmin a broken men’s watch and tells her it is of great personal value to her but she won’t tell her why and says that it must never be fixed.

Yasmin asks the Doctor to help her find the origin of the watch and so after warning her that it’s dangerous to mess with family history, she has the Tardis scan the watch with its telepathic circuits. They arrive in India in 1947, one day before the partition that created Pakistan. Although Umbreen had said she was from Lahor, they are out in the country on what will soon become the border between India and Pakistan. A man named Prem gives the Doctor and her friends a ride in his oxcart when they say they are friends and family of Umbreen. It turns out that Umbreen is about to get married, but not to Yasmin’s grandfather. The groom turns out to be Prem and on top of that he’s a Hindu while Umbreen is a Muslim.

It is only at this point when the Doctor realizes that they are on the eve of partition which, after it occurs will bring about the slaughter of a million people, as Hindu and Muslims, who had lived in harmony as friends and neighbours for centuries, where suddenly killing each other over a border created by their colonists, the British. The Doctor wants to leave but suddenly a group of aliens called the Thijarians appear. The Doctor knows the Thijarians as the most feared assassins in the universe. They move very quickly and the Doctor at first tries to stop them until she learns that they are no longer assassins. They travel the universe now to be witnesses for those that die alone. They reveal that the one who is about to die is Prem.

The wedding takes place and in fact, the Doctor officiates over a ceremony that combines both Hindu and Muslim traditions. The next day Prem is a killed by a group of militant Hindus that resent Prem marrying a Muslim. It is Prem’s brother that plays the role of Judas in this story and arranges for Prem to be killed.

 I basted the turkey every half an hour. I deleted a bunch of bookmarked URLs that I’ve accumulated over the years. Most of them had just been bookmarked to come back to the next day or a few hours later but I forgot to delete them. I did some more translations.

I started writing a poem based on the first entry of the journal I’ve been keeping for the last five years and I got the first draft of a first verse:

I slogged out on my dumb bike ride

westbound along the boring road

pedaling tediously neath a sky

that showed a yield of diverse clouds

above the lake especially

but none that really impressed me.

            I watched one more episode of Doctor Who while having my Christmas dinner of a drumstick, dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce. In the beginning of the story the Tardis is being pursued by and trying to avoid an object but turns out to only be a teleporting delivery bot from a company called Kerblam. In the package is a red fez hat, which the Doctor happily dons. But on the packing slip are typed the word “Help”. They go to the planetary headquarters of Kerblam, which basically takes up the whole planet and employs thousands of people even though it is 90% automated. The Doctor decides that the best way to find who sent her the message of distress is for them all to become employees at Kerblam. They get various jobs but the most useful one is Graham’s because as janitor he gets access to everything. They make friends with some of the employees. Working with Graham is Charlie, who is in love with Kira, who works covering items in bubble wrap before packing them. Workers are disappearing and the Doctor suspects the two humans in charge but also the robots. When she analyzes the computer system though she discovers that it was what called for help and that Charlie is a robophobic revolutionary sabotaging the system. He manipulates the robots but things get out of control as Kira is led to a room and given a gift for being employee of the month. The door is locked and her package contains only bubble wrap. She does what no one can resist and pops one of the bubbles. Each bubble is a bomb and she is destroyed. Charlie’s plan is to send thousands of teleporting delivery boys with packages containing the explosive bubble wrap. Thousands will die but the result he hopes for is that people will hate robots and stop using them. The Doctor changes the program and makes the location of teleportation the place where the robots already are. She tries to save Charlie but he refuses help and ends up being destroyed in the blast.

            Kira was played by Claudia Jessie