Washington, DC 1989

The $50 million micro-enterprise earmark established by the US Congress came with a requirement that the agency for international development (USAID) was to report annually to Congress on their progress in expanding the availability of micro-finance.

In their first report, the agency stated that $58 million had been allocated for micro-credit development with programs in place in dozens of countries. We were skeptical. The agency had been very reluctant to accept a congressional mandate for what we believed to be a new program; that they would have overspent in the first year did not seem credible. We needed to find out exactly what was included in that fifty eight million, and so we hired a specialist, with central American experience, to go and look at the programs on the ground, and report back on what exactly the agency was calling micro-credit.

It was essential that we obtain the list of projects that the agency had included in their calculations.

Danielle was able to discover the identity of the person tasked with assembling that list. When this person was let go by the agency, he took with him a copy of the database – which had been assembled on an already obsolete Amstrad computer, presumably to hinder our access to the data in the event of a successful FOI petition. FOI can easily take two years – we had weeks, not months, to get that project list.

Danielle Y is a very skilled and dedicated individual. She has remarkable courage, and a razor sharp intelligence. In addition, she was also traffic stopping beautiful. I hired her before I met her. We did telephone interviews, and so I can honestly say I was astonished when this ravishing beauty walked into my office, ready to undertake a mission that would involve investigative reporting, writing and traveling, by herself, through some pretty dangerous country.

Well Mr. X, formerly of USAID was also very taken with Ms. Y, and knew she needed what was on that disk in his possession. He showed up in my office one morning about eleven o clock. I think he’d already had a drink.

He handed me a five and quarter inch floppy disk, and said, “It’s an Amstrad disk. If you can read it, you can have the data on Africa, as a good faith gesture.” I took the disk from him as I sat down at one of the office PC’s. I knew already that I wouldn’t be able to read the disk, so my feigned exasperation was a theater to distract, while under his nose I made a replica, an exact copy. Bit by bit by Byte the dos diskcopy command meticulously duplicates exactly the 10110 etc., ad infinitum. If the original is unreadable by that dos computer program, then the copy is equally so. But when returned to a computer that can read the program on the original disk, the replica will work just the same. Some tidbit of knowledge I had gathered one day when flicking through a text on computing. After a few minutes of recreating my high-school acting career, I handed back the disk saying I couldn't read it.

Thus an hour later, when Danielle came into my office, having escorted Mr. X to the door after their private meeting, she said, almost in tears “We had it in our hands!” I produced the copy with a little flourish. “Yes, and now we have a copy of it in our hands. Take this to Debbie P’s house. She has an Amstrad computer. Get your self a printout and start planning your trip.”

Danielle’s report was sufficient to stir the Congress into mandating an advisory committee, and our credibility was such that we were able to have a great deal of influence in who was on that committee, and thus further our goal of microfinance for the very poorest women, and not that other stuff the agency was into in central America under President Reagan.

Birthdays

A surprising number of my friends share my birth-date of April second, although I have yet to meet my time-twin.

My brother, Raymond, was born on my birthday in 1960.

Best birthday present ever.

Another birthday

Alas. I am parted from my golden wonder child.

At nine years old her tiny energetic frame was crowned by tumbling golden locks that brought elderly ladies gushing to watch and touch.

Even her stunningly beautiful smart and sensible older sister, was cast in shadow by that brilliant light.

From since she was three years old we have been together on her birthday just once.

It was 1997. We were in Tenby, on the south-western tip of Welsh Wales, and it was Tenby Day (August 17, the day before my little girl's ninth birthday). The festivities included marching bands, and choirs, and jugglers, and wing-walkers and colorful costumes and people on stilts and parades and we all told C. that this had been laid on just for her birthday.

She almost believed it.

That night there were fireworks on the pier, and right outside our fifth floor apartment there was an eleven piece soul combo that started rockin' the place about 10:00 PM.

The four kids (7, 9, 11 & 12 yrs old) watched from the window while I served gin and tonic to elderly relatives who were recovering from five fights of stairs).

Shortly before midnight elderly relatives tottered down the stairs, and I stood on the steps in front of the house, until the rear lights of the taxi disappeared up the winding lane.

In front of me was a crowd of several hundred people. Lots of them were dancing.

I bounded up the stairs. “RIGHT KIDS LET'S PARTY!!!!” I bellowed.

“Daddy, It's Midnight!” said 12, sensible and smart. 11 Looked thoughtful, going out at midnight was kind of cool. 7 remained asleep. C jumped up ready to go.

Three of us went all the way down to the steps, at which point 11, seeing the huge crowd, and the noise, decided that she had made it outside, and that was triumph enough to share with _ when she got back to London.

C dances pretty good. (And I'm a goddam legend). So we worked our way right in front of the stage.

It was like a scene out Bollywood. The three guys on saxophones were copying her dance.  
The band was gigging on my kid, and the whole crowd around us was gigging on my kid.

I was dancing and laughing and crying all at the same time.

And right at that moment, my little brother, Raymond, was sitting in his car in a desolate parking lot, with a hose pipe running from the exhaust in through to the cab. The window was sealed with duct tape.

We didn't share any more birthdays.

My Grandmother

Annie Webster was the first live child born into a poor working family in St. Helens, Lancashire in 1914.  Her father was conscripted and spent the war years in the trenches.

In 1928, the death of her mother brought Annie’s education to an abrupt end, as she became the primary caretaker for her father’s household – a two-up two down with a coal fire,  gas lighting and no indoor plumbing, shared by Annie, her two sisters and her baby brother. 

The Second World War (to end all wars) opened up factory jobs for women -- as well as requiring the participation of the family breadwinner in the hostilities -- and so Annie was put to work.   Working, Annie met a boy, they became close; she became pregnant.  She did not explain her condition to the young man, but she explored the possibility of his being willing to give up his heathen Methodism and return to the true Catholic faith, but he was not willing to consider it.  So they separated.

Annie hid the pregnancy.  She wore tight bindings under loose clothes.  She was petrified of her father (who was a gambler and a drinker, and sometimes violent) so she told no-one what was going on.

She gave birth to her only child, my mother, alone, in the tiny back bedroom she shared with her three siblings.  When Catherine came into the room, and saw Annie with my mother at the breast, she became the second person alive to know that Annie was ever pregnant.  That my mother survived to later give birth to five healthy  sons, after such a pregnancy, is astounding.

When grandfather came back from the second world war, he was not an easy person to live with.  Margaret, and Catherine and Sam all married and moved out.  Annie stayed to look after father, and her daughter, Marie, whom her grandfather would frequently refer to as ‘the bastard”.  Annie went to early mass every day, as she did for her whole life, and she and her only child became very close.  There was never another man in her life.

Annie went back to work in the factory.  For thirty years she slaved away, doing the same job as the men, and getting paid half as much.  At the end of thirty years, an imitation gold watch, no pension, thank-you, goodbye.

She was still living in that two up two-down.  Electricity had been installed in the sixties, and there was hot water in the tiny little kitchen that had been added at the back.  The toilet remained outside, at the end of the yard, for as long as my grandmother lived, there was no bath, or shower.

I remember my Grandmother and her sister Margaret (Auntie Meg) coming to babysit for the ever growing tribe of little Rigby boys, every Monday night.  Mom and Dad were both keen on singing, they had choir practice (which eventually included all five of us) and amateur performance of musicals and light opera which usually included me.

Mother taught me how to make a pot of tea, and I remember competing with my brothers to see who could provide the most correctly brewed beverage.  Annie was a lovely person.  I remember her as being very kind, and how anybody I met in her company was always very nice to me. 

She was an excellent cook, and could produce the most delicious pies and pastries in her tiny ill-equipped kitchen.

After she retired, she would spend all day at our house on Mondays – helping mother with the laundry.  She taught us how to iron our shirts, and press our pants.  She let us know when things were different from what she was used to, and she supported all kinds of traditions that were disappearing from the world.

The last time I saw her was in 1980, and she looked absolutely radiant.  She was all dressed up for my younger brother’s wedding.  She had rented a fine white hat, and gloves.  She was clearly very happy to be on her way to a huge wedding with 400 guests.  She was immensely proud of her grandsons. I kissed her, and said, “see you in church”.

On the way to the ceremony, she became so ill, my dad had the limo go by the hospital emergency room.  She was clearly in great distress, but what do you do, you can’t miss your son’s wedding.

In the church, the ceremony was underway, after a delayed start, and the groom’s parents were not present.  Father was due to give a reading.  He went straight from the door of the church to the altar, didn’t even stop at the pew.  Mother sat down in front of me, and Grandma was nowhere to be seen.

We found out later that Grandma died during the service.  Her only daughter Marie, knowing this, but not allowed to speak of it, sat at the high table, in front of 400 jovial wedding guests.  We were told she was not feeling well, and she was being taken care of at the hospital.  When the guests were leaving, father told us what had really happened.

I was living in Texas at the time.  I stayed in England an extra week to help with the funeral, and one of the things I did was to call a house clearance company.  They agree to completely empty the house, and they will pay cash for anything of value.  My grandmother’s assets, after a lifetime of work, amounted to 30 pounds sterling.  In 1980 that would have paid for a halfway decent meal and a cheap bottle of wine.