Don't trust widgets

Open Letter to David Cameron

2011-12-18T00:02:00.001Z

Dear David Cameron

The speech you gave at the 400 year anniversary celebration of the King James version of the Bible was mostly a fitting tribute to one of the greatest books in the English language. It gave a warm reminder of how this translation infused so many masterpieces from the works of Shakespeare and Tennyson to the words of Martin Luther King. What you said was also a timely focus of the value of that book, along with an appreciation of the long list of idioms and phrases composed within it that are still used today.

The speech was also a strong reminder of the values of Christianity that have shaped Britain and made it one of the safer places in Europe for people of other religions. I whole heartedly support that Britain is a Christian nation, as numbers attending regular organised service is no reflection on a person’s religiosity, which can only be self-defined and a private matter between themselves and their deity.

Surprisingly though, when you began to talk about these Christian values you opened by quoting Margret Thatcher and then listed a rather vague list of words staring with ‘Responsibility’. Odd, considering you’d spent the earlier part of your speech extolling the wisdom to be found in lines of the Bible. I was expecting a few quotes from the great book, hoping for a strong indictment of some of society’s deep, underlying problems; but the quotes were not forthcoming and the examples you used were oddly chosen and lacked truth.

Why did you focus on the ‘on-going terrorist threat from Islamist extremists’, when the number of these recorded attacks in Europe has dwindled to 1 in the last year? Why not focus on the far right and separatist groups that account for nearly 200 attacks over the same period? Or better yet, why not mention that if ALL terrorist attacks from all spectrums are accounted for over the last 15 years, it equates to some 10,000 lost lives, which is less than the amount of people killed in that time on Britain’s roads through drink driving alone, let alone the hundreds of thousands who perish from alcohol related illness. Why not challenge this and remind Christian Britain with one of Bible’s lesser known quotes: ‘Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise’ (Proverbs 20:1) or a dozen other references on the same issue. Alcohol abuse is bigger terror to British society than international terrorism could ever be.

I was disappointed also to see you talk of lack ‘responsibility’ leading to flawed ‘moral code’ which ultimately ‘allowed some bankers... to behave with scant regard for the rest of society.’ Why not be more forthcoming and hold the long held Christian position of usury and interest being inherently anti-Christian: “If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. (Exodus 22:25) A few rogue bankers may have blindly toppled the tower, but it was built on nothing but anti-Christian interest in the first place.

The points you mention distracted from real issues and needlessly brought this idea of ‘Islamic’ ‘terrorism’ back on to the agenda after a year when communities, police and other agencies managed to bring that designated groups attack count down to 1 and death count down to zero. Why pour such cold scornful water on all their hard work and show the ‘passive tolerance’ towards the underlying issues that plague society, like excessive alcohol consumption and the entirely flawed banking system to name but two? This is akin to complaining of a drafty window when your roof is shattered.

If you really want society’s ‘moral code’ to change with or without faith as a ‘prod in the right direction’ (and I well know how tied your hands may be) may I suggest taking ‘responsibility’ as Prime Minister and clearly prioritising what the countries problems are and then telling that to British public who are deserving of the truth. It is not the big bad banker, or the ghost of Bin Laden under the bed, but the needed overhaul of a system that’s surely losing its post-war socialist heartbeat to a capitalist pacemaker that can flat line at will.

Put the people’s real needs first, then you can tuck them in and tell them some of those exaggerated ghost stories.

Sincerely

Loay Leon Hady

First try at being funny

2011-12-15T00:13:00.000Z

Ironically this attempt to be funny came out of a serious place – by my own estimation, when I was younger I was pretty funny, but then, as I took on a more religious persona, my sense of humour really got pushed way back into the deep dark beyond. Even when I tried to make jokes from within this religious persona some people would whisper ‘oh god, laugh, or he’ll blow us up... wait, no he’s religious... don’t laugh or he’ll blow us up...’ And basically, a lot of the attempted funny things I said just kind of frittered out there, with people not really knowing how to react and to be honest, maybe I didn't have any conviction in my words. Ce la vie.

So, when I got to Australia, I decided I was gonna do some stuff that scared the crap out of me and figured it’d be a good time to see how people would react to my sense of humour in a place that knows NOTHING about me. I know some of you might laugh at the very idea of me doing stand-up (and not the jokes), but I tried to shift out of being Islamaboy for a bit to do some stand-up and this is the result:

It's a little Ozzie based, 'cos that's where I was but I'm just frickin’ glad I went up and did it.... please excuse the swearing... guess I went back to the old me a little TOO much.

Next up on the scary thing to do list: swimming!

Do you have any idea who (I think) I am?

2011-12-12T00:27:00.000Z

The amalgamation of a British Muslim's identity is something of word play opportunity: Is one a Muslim Brit, Brit-slim or even a Mus-tish?

Most come to their own conclusion and I’m no different; I feel my British passport will hopefully get me access to most of the world’s countries and my Muslim passport will hopefully get me into the better half of the after life.

I’ve never really struggled with my religion and citizenship in my personality as the only difference that occurs between then in the hum-drum of my day to day life is that if a typical British person gives me directions somewhere, they normally offer a few pubs along the way as markers, whereas if a Muslim were to outline the same route, they would use takeaways instead.

I’m sure, being of Egyptian heritage and bearded, I’d stereotypically look more Muslim, and in London at least, I feel I have a clear idea of myself and how other people will see / stereotype me.

Imagine then my shock with all that suddenly being thrown out of the window, like a rather lame henchman in a rather lame kung-fu movie; as after moving to Australia and speaking to Melbourne's lovely locals, they seem to have no idea of who I think I am.

Alhmdulilah, I have a one-year-old daughter and am keen for her to learn Arabic, so speak to her in that language. In Australian cafes and restaurants that foreign tongue is sometimes met with glazy stares and a little caution; I presume there is a little stereotyping going on, which I regard as their problem and not mine, but if any chance of conversation arises – and I get to open my mouth in English – the change in treatment, even in those tiny gestures, is lock stock and whole sale. Suddenly, to my audience, I’m British through and through to the extent where, they quickly smile and open conversation with me (something I’m still pleasantly surprised by) and in such chats I’ve been ‘insulted’ with: ‘your lot can’t even play cricket!’ referring to England’s cricket team. ‘You don’t want to be another whiny pom’ as in ‘don’t be a moaning Englishman’ and most bizarrely in a conversation with a guy in the street, whose dog my daughter stopped to stroke: ‘you’ve made the right choice in moving here. All the Brits I know here love it, it so peaceful. Of course there’s tensions with the Muslims, you know, but that’s them everywhere, so regardless, you’ll love it here.’

I mention these instances but could add 5 similar ones where it seems my colour and beard are completely washed away by accent. I dress no differently, act no differently (please don’t think I wore a ‘soldier of Allah’ t-shirt back home and exchanged it for Union Jack Bermuda shorts when I got here) but am completely regarded as British for all intents and purposes.

I’m far too new to understand why this is – Could it be the Australians have a natural preference for labeling the ‘other’ ,‘British’ as it’s the most popular immigrant group to these shores. Is it that anti-Muslim hysterical media isn’t played and re-run enough to make tanned, beardy people scary. Could it be that that since beards seem quite prevalent among the Aussies, another one in their midst isn’t that big a deal, or is it that my accent is so regal and defined, my Englishness and aristocratic links are at once fully recognizable and respected.

The answer of course is possibly all and none of the above, but to be taken out of one’s understanding of how others see you is a shock to the system, but then again so is any negative connotation of how one would see Muslims.

What we should be through the Prophet’s (PBUH) guidance and what we are will always have an imbalance; what we are and how we’re portrayed to the world has an even greater disparity, but here, in one of the furthest places you could get from Britain, the imbalance and disparity quickly disappeared and I felt I had a chance to make an impression on a stranger, away from any common Muslim stereotypes. I rarely if ever felt that in London – stereotypes there may be too strong, too overplayed or too discarded by those who know Muslims for any quick reappraisal to kick in.

For now though, while here, I seem to be re-cast, or should that be re-typecast and the weight of responsibility to be an example of Islam bubbles within me. My own ideas of identity slowly fade as I think of all the steps taken by Muslims to let ‘Britishness’ spring from their Islam and also wondering how I’ll get my Islam to spring from the ‘Britishness’ people here see in me.

In essence: how will I get them to see me as another ‘other’ from the one I’m used to - and for some reason, it feels like the best opportunity in ages and reminds me of the verse:

4:97 "The angels ask those they take while they are wronging themselves, 'What were your circumstances?' They reply, 'We were oppressed on earth.' They say, 'Was Allah's earth not wide enough for you to have made hijra elsewhere in it?'"

Subhan Allah - the mind boggles.

Crazy Car Purchase

2011-10-12T00:23:00.002+01:00

As you probably know, cars and I are not the most intimate of bedfellows – http://bit.ly/qIrkEr - like a stalker after a celebrity, I try to send them love letters; buy them fancy gifts like satin bumper polish and Chanel scented air fresheners but they choose to play up, give up and blow up, depending on their mood; little diva-esque contraptions that they are.

Now, to some extent I have always rooted this back to my own faults (any good relationship councillor will tell you that the spurned lover always seeks to blame themselves for a failed relationship) and I thought the real area where I was going wrong, was the fact that I always bought used cards and rarely ever from the dealer, unless it had huge ‘Sold As Seen’ stickers on it, and so, to some extent, believed maybe I was getting what I was paying for… cheap crap.

So in moving to Australia and knowing that the primary car user would be Wifey, I reckoned I best I go to a dealer and buy something with a warranty on it, because I wasn’t in the hoods of Hayes and Hendon any longer. They were places where I knew folk who, no matter what the damage on the car, wouldn’t charge me over £300 to rectify the issue (please note the word ‘rectify’ not ‘fix’.)

So I set myself a budget and donned a cork hat, put on some sandals, cracked open a beer (that I didn’t drink) and sat by the laptop to research. After hours of surfing (unfortunately the electronic kind) I nearly did turn to the alcohol because prices of cars here are ridiculous! Take the car I sold just before I left – got just under 3k for it but the equivalent car here, same year, same model, same brand, came in at the English equivalent of 17k – and so many other cars were similarly, ridiculously priced. Basically to work out how much your car is worth in Australia; multiply your English value by 3, give or take. Ultimately, after hours of being told that a 5 year old corsa would cost me 8k (a case of ‘strewth’ if ever there was one) – I figured I’d just run round car lots and see what was going on.

Now car places are BORING – even at their most exciting and as good as it gets; you’ve got a slightly overweight balding man reading a brochure to you; trying to impress you with the stuff you already know about the car ‘cos that’s why you’re there to buy it - and the first show room we were at was no exception.

He gave us all the old ‘we’ve got just the car for you’ nonsense and ‘oh, there’s one which is real steal, just come in’… blah blah… and we decided to get a big Mitsubishi Outlander – a monster of a car, X5 size, it was 10 grand, I was happy with that and then for some reason the guy asked – ‘so why don’t you get it on finance?’. I replied that I’d rather just pay the money and then all of sudden he said ‘well that’s the guy we gotta see about the warranty anyway.’ So we strolled on down and sat through this guy, who was a vulture in a suit if ever I saw one, giving us a 15 minute chat about the finance. ‘Still not interested, thank you. May I just buy the car please,’ I said and then he looked at the computer and winced – ‘ooh just gone 5, can’t get it today. Missed it by one minute.’ He proceeded to explain that the registration place was now closed and I replied by pointing out that the last 15 minutes of finance nonsense could have been better spent.

He didn’t really like that – I didn’t really like him and in what seemed something of a threat he said ‘ you know these things take time, you might wanna just calm down a little’. I left, and the Outlander deal was now dead in the water.

So onto the next day and cruising for an automobile I saw a Land Rover hugging the side of a garage for 10k, which was a car Wifey had always wanted, so I dashed to the window – saw a ‘We take American Express sign’ and then to make sure, greeted the balding, silver haired, overweight salesman with ‘Hi, first off – I don’t want to take out any finance - Do you take American Express?’ and he replied yes and all was well.

Wifey test drove the car, really liked it, I haggled the price a bit and we were all set to go; signed the contract, gave him my card and he started run it through the machine. Wifey and I looked back at the rugged Land Rover which seemed to whisper back at us, stoically ‘I’ll look after you’ and I was relieved ‘cos that beasty thing wasn’t gonna come off worse than most other cars in a crash.

Meanwhile the salesman was looking a little flummoxed at the machine time and time again - and then with an air of a retard’s ‘Eureka’ said: ‘actually I forgot, we don’t take American express’. I didn’t know what to say for a moment and then flabbergastedly appealed ‘but you said you did and it’s on the door’ and cool as you like he simply replied: ‘yeah, I shouldn’t have said that and I better take that sticker off the door’ and then a silence began to make its way into the room as I was incredulous, but he chirpily warded it off by saying as excited as a teenager getting the lead in the school play: ‘how about some finance?’. I, my serious self, when morons waste my time, reminded him I didn’t want that and asked him to rip up the contract – he was reluctant at first, but I… how shall I say… insisted, and then he suddenly got a little defensive, and again, almost threateningly turned to say to Wifey, of all people, as if I wasn’t there, and said: ‘you might want to tell him to take it easy otherwise people will start calling him a whiny pom’ and then he laughed an empty, gargantuan laugh that should be followed by a punch in the face, but I wasn’t up for a bit of ‘blue’ – which is slang for fighting here (yeah go figure – especially if you’re still trying to work out what the hell ‘strewth’ meant).

I left and by now was annoyed at the inefficiency and also annoyed I was taking the piss with my friends who’d leant me their car to go car hunting with (shout out to JD an’ SH, who 1 day be SD, innit- runnin’ big man tings in Windsor ‘blad – ya get me – skeeeeeeeene) so I went to another place, a Toyota franchise, and saw a Mazda family car and thought it was awesome value – please note I am a uptight as it comes, when buying cars, even while the salesman is talking; I whip out my phone and check a dozen other prices to make sure I’m not getting ripped off – and the salesman – you already know what he looked like – said it was 18k so I haggled him down to 15, and then coming to the crunch, I knew that was my limit so it meant the next month would be tight – then he offered my some interest free finance and said we could get it on the day – which was music to my ears. He asked about my visa I told him I was on a business one which would be sent soon, was 95% complete and had entered the country on a 3 month tourist visa. He said ‘we do those all the time – no dramas’ so I signed up for it and he made the calls.

He invited us to go chill for a bit and said he would call us to come back and pick up the car in the afternoon and I thought ‘Finally – things are gonna work out’. So I paid a grand deposit and left, glancing back at the Mazda and feeling quite good, cos in my snobbish classification system it was one or two steps up from a Honda or a Toyota and just a step to the side of a Lexus; so alls well that ends well.

Turns out though, there were ‘dramas’.

First off the finance guys called and said it can’t be done without an address in Oz – I asked him why the sales guy would tell me that wasn’t a problem to which he replied ‘I don’t know’ – so I called the sales guy who again said it wasn’t a problem and I made it clear this didn’t see to make sense and if it wasn’t sorted by the afternoon I’d come in to get my deposit back and look elsewhere – and again the mildest threat surfaced ‘I understand: you want the car and we want to sell you the car...’ and then he took a deep breath ‘...so just calm down – I’ll call you back’.

The call came and the finance person seemed really pleased with himself saying ‘I’ve sorted the address problem – don’t ask me how I did it – but your wife’s a doctor right? Well – you should call me doctor from now on too hahahaha’ which of course didn’t put me at ease at all and all I could muster in response was ‘hmmmm, quite’ and he quickly regained his composure and said he would get someone in the finance office to look at the application of our business visa, cos he knew folk who could get that info, but it’d mean waiting ‘til Saturday morning for an answer. Now at this I was impressed, he must have had a connection or two in the visa office to get that done – so I said tomorrow was fine, returned my friends’ car (JD Brrrap , braaap) and waited.

Saturday morning a call from the finance guy came through saying it all looked good, his people had spoken to the Head of Finance who’d spoken to the visa folk, but the only problem was that it couldn’t be finished on Saturday ‘cos it wasn’t a working day. Now, I’m a reasonable man and that made sense; so I said ‘fine we’ll complete on Monday, no dramas’ (even thought it sounded stupid coming out of my mouth) and I waited.

Monday morning I woke quite excited at getting the car only to receive a call from the finance guy to pooh-pooh my morning – ‘Right Mr. Hady – I spoke to the guys, who spoke to the visa guys and then back to our guys and turns out….’ I waited for something like: your passport's fake / you’re on a terrorist list / you’re actually registered as 70 year old transsexual with the credit company – but he said ‘… turns out… you’re on a tourist visa.’

My rage rose like a tsunami.

Through gritted teeth I managed: ‘I told YOU that on FRIDAY – you’ve spent two days running around to tell me what I told YOU!’ and he fumbled excuses and excused himself.

By now Wifey was fed up and I was dejected. The incompetence beggared belief and I drove back to the car room to get my money back.

On the forecourt, as friendly as you like I told the sales guy, who had been informed, that the finance wasn’t possible and that I was gonna look elsewhere and that I’d told him to write on the contract that the deposit was subject to finance – I didn’t want to break my budget and that was that – he suddenly looked like a mourning member of a funeral procession, but agreed that had been the terms.

From the showroom, all of a sudden the manager popped out and said ‘everything all right?’, and fearing he would try to pop in with some technicality, before the salesman could say a word, I put a hand on his shoulder, pulled him into me a little and explained what had happened; waiting for him to look away. It took a good 2 minutes of straight mono-tone detailed explanation ‘bout what the finance guy said and what I’d agreed with the salesman and finally at a few points he started looking away and I knew then I would get my money back. and at that point... they both looked like they’d been to funeral.

The sales assistant glanced at the manager, who seemed to be resigned. And then I added off the cuff ‘I said, when I first walked in, my budget's 10k’. Unexpectedly, the manager said ‘ and you’ve got that?’ which I confirmed and reiterated that’s why I’d come in looking for a 10k car and it took a lot for me to avoid saying 'DUH!"

He nodded and then seemed sure of himself and popped out with– ‘alright, pay the ten and give me the rest when you’ve got it’.

???? I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, so broke it back down for him - ‘so you’re gonna give me the car and credit me 5 k, no interest, for a few months, without a credit check or anything’.

Again he nodded – ‘yep, you like good people.’ And at that point he left leaving me and the salesman kind of in awe and headed to his office – I handed the sales guy my card and we walked back into the PDQ machine in near silence, which was only broken by the shocked sales assistant’s mutter off ‘it’s bloody Christmas – bloody... CHRISTMAS’ and I couldn’t tell whether he was annoyed that this wasn’t offered earlier or because he was in shock, so I asked ‘is that something he does often?’ to which he replied ‘never…’ and he looked genuine enough, and then added, for some God-damn, unknown reason, ‘and put it this way… he wouldn’t have done it if you’d come in with a turban.’ (??????) And I spluttered in disbelief at the casual racism and stared around wondering if I had heard what I’d heard and sensing my confusion he tried to make it better by saying… ‘it’s true, just saying it cos it’s true’ and then he shook his head and got back to his paperwork.

A minute later, I kid you not, I was asked to sign an I O U – which read, and I quote: ‘we Deena Shirbiny, we pay to Toyota Motors 3000 (three thousands) dollars in 3 to 6 weeks.’

I looked at the assistant manger and got all whiney, pommy, English Teachery – ‘umm, just to cover your back…’ I picked up a pen, ‘…and to make this make sense...’ I started to edit the grammar ‘…this I how it should be written.’ And he initialled all my changes and within 10 minutes I was waking out with the car and a copy of a partially hand written I O U for the 5k.

Moral of the story – Australia makes little sense, in the best way possible!

G’day

Travels in Tokyo

2011-09-20T11:34:00.000+01:00

Ok guys, I know it’s been a while but basically I haven’t travelled anywhere new since New York – Been back to a few places but didn’t want to bore you- I have got my skates on and got out and about though, this time Japan, and of all the places one could go to get a culture shock – Tokyo has to be up there with the most shocking.

First off there’s the jet lag, which hit me like a overweight boxer trying to make a comeback – basically I laughed at the fact that there was even this thing called ‘jet lag’ until I found myself in a daily cycle of not sleeping until 7.30am and waking at 2pm – I was grateful for the sleep but Tokyo is not the most 24 hour of cities, so to stop it eating into my daytime - I tried intoxicating myself into staying awake. Thankfully Tokyo is splendid for this because there are vending machines for energy drinks and coffee on every corner waiting to perk you up.

These generally had the desired effect, but as I’m normally as caffeine free as a ponce’s drink in a vegan store they did start to make me feel like I was living something of a twilight world; not that some pale moron was trying to bit my neck, but more like every day I had to work out whether stuff was actually happening or not. Seems the jet lag was causing some kind of time delay between my thoughts and reactions to things in real time. For instance I’d suddenly be aware and think: ‘that is a car coming at you’ ‘move out the road’ ‘am in the road?’, ‘will the car stop anyway?’, ‘other people are in the road’, ‘then will we all get hit?’, ‘what’s that beeping noise?’ ‘whose that small green man?’ and suddenly all that would process and I’d find myself crossing the road at traffic lights, like I normally do every day in my life.

Wifey didn’t help in these instances at all – in fact she added to the confusion, see the Japanese are an extremely polite and respectful folk, I never heard a voice raised in a week in Tokyo, never saw any one jump a queue, never saw people cross before the green man flashed ‘em – They even demark where the doors to the trains will stop on the platform so people can queue up. On top of that are the little interaction things like walking into a newsagent;, no one just stares at you gormlessly waiting for you to speak, they all say ‘Konichewa’ and do a little bow – take your money respectful with one hand under the other – it’s unreal – but as much as lack of sleep was effecting me, this super politeness was effecting wifey.

Suddenly everything I did was chastised with ‘you can’t do that here’, ‘stop that’, or my favourite: ‘that’s culturally insensitive’ and this applied to everything: my attempts at jaywalking, haggling and once even an innocent sneeze drew looks of disapproval from wifey because I didn’t put a mask over my nose, or have packets of tissue ready. Needless to say, she didn’t approve of the old ‘sneeze-into-the-hand-then-wipe-on-jeans’ tactic that’s served me well for nigh on 30 years and she let me know it, but the irony is that any Japanese person would have been too polite to comment.

For want of a better phrase wifey was ‘on dat bruv!’ – in fact one night I asked ‘baby, do you mind if I go get a gun and shoot some people in the face for absolutely no reason other than they whistle’ – ‘Sure’ she said ‘no worries’. So I followed that with ‘darling, mind if I got to a whore house and get some ludicrously flexible and imaginative hookers to tie me down and flail my body with sushi ‘til it’s red raw and then get them to bathe me in green tea. ‘Of course you can’ came the reply – so sensing I was on a roll I asked ‘Cool, so dya mind if I eat a chocolate, in the street as we walk together to...’. ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!!!! THIS IS FUCKING JAPAN – YOU CHAVVY FUCK – NO ONE EATS IN THE FUCKING STREET!!’ Needless to say I was surprised by her reaction as you probably are reading it.

I’d never in my life seen wifey bothered by what anyone thought of her, indeed if you’re married to me, the word ‘nuance’ and ‘subtle’ have to come right out of your vocabulary anyway– and though normally D’s outlook was that the Joneses could screw themselves for all she cared, in Tokyo, it was certainly a case of keeping up with the Japs. (Looks around to see if anyone got that, and then counts the tumbleweeds as they roll past)

None of their manners feel fake either. You know how when you go into a shop in England and you barely get an ‘alright’ or ‘welcome to the GAP’, ‘cos you know they have to do it – well in Japan you get the feeling everyone knows that there is a way you greet people, no matter who you are or what you do. I saw a Japanese person stop another Japanese person and ask for directions and it was like: exchange of bows, exchange of smiles, pleasantries exchanged, question asked, answer given, exchange of smiles, exchange of bows and off you go. Wonderfully quick, polite and classy and I couldn’t help but contrast that with Egypt where 95% of the shops you go into you actually you interrupt sales assistants conversation to get them to do what they’re supposed to be doing. Or better still, to a taxi driver who’ll roll up on someone, beep them, and then shout ‘where’s the bank?’ wait for an equally abrupt two-word response and then drive off with any chance of a ‘please’ or ‘thank-you’ evaporating like his exhaust fumes.

Maybe I’m hung up on this because I love manners and propriety and I guess as a teacher I’m totally aware of how lacking in basic manners a lot of kids I teach in England are. From my little interaction with them, the youth of Japan don’t strike me as the kind of students who you’d have to say ‘you’re supposed to hold the door open for your elders, not the other way around’ or ‘don’t leave your half-eaten chicken wings in the corridor’. In fact, schools in Japan actually have an end of day session where they tidy their school. No joke. In afternoon registration they ‘reset’ (sweep and tidy) the rooms with the notion of ‘as we take from the school, so we give back to it’ – and that’s not some special academy for the gifted led by Captain intriguing hippy, or the X-Men’s professor Xavier, that’s a country wide practice.

One thing I didn’t get about their school children though was when exactly their weekends were. Every single day I saw scores of children in school uniform running around - and they were the ones I was sure WERE students. See, there were, at times, other ladies walking around in school(ish) uniform but they weren’t students – unless they went to some school led by Captain sexy time, because their skirts were hip high, tailored with lace and their school socks looked a lot like French suspenders to me. Granted I only saw this on late night walks, on my own, in certain red districts of the town, but still every time I saw them, my first thought was ‘shouldn’t you be in school?’, but realised that the sentence for that scenario, that was phonetically closer to being accurate was ‘shouldn’t you be being screwed?’

That cohort aside, the majority of Japanese women did offer another insight into wifey’s state of mind - she thought they were so beautiful and I’m inclined to agree (notice, if you will, how I had to word that sentence) and there is a lot to be said for dignity in attraction. As a race they were a lot a taller than I expected, I would be surprised if the average height for Tokyonians was less that 5’9”. Granted, I was the tallest person that I came across, but it wasn’t the mismatch of Godzilla-esque proportions that I was expecting.

I went to some temples rode the amazingly efficient subway ate more sushi and noodles than you could shake a big (chop)stick at. Watched a few sumo matches which were insanely boring to be fair – each bout took about 15 minutes to prepare and lasted for 15 seconds, but maybe there is an unspoken correlation between Sumo and nation’s foreplay and sex timings which is why everyone likes the sport as I cannot for the life of me see any other reason or link to the culture – I mean excuse me if I deal in stereotypes for a minute but take England and football – typical English lad, likes a drink, shaves his head, football is his hobby – Voila: Wayne Rooney – Typical Ozzie lad, likes the sea, dons some shorts, runs off surfing – Voila: some famous surfer dude. But nothing culturally in Japan says: typical lad, overeats, likes to make a big deal when putting each leg on the floor, throwing some powder on his hands and then running into another fat bloke – I just don’t see it – but I guess I’d need more time here to really get it.

What else – umm, met a friend from uni who was ultra kind in showing us round, went to Disney which Amira loved – she took in her first 4D show, which I’m hoping is a great precursor to buying a 3D TV. In my head the plan is to walk into the Ozzie equivalent of Dixons, stand her in-front of a 3D TV with the glasses on, then go hide, ‘til wifey comes along and tries to pull her away from it at which point Amira will scream her head off and I’ll come back onto the scene, in full Samaritan mode, offering to buy the 3D TV just to keep Meemee happy – should work.

Also tried a trillion mental snack combinations – see, the Japanese don’t do things like ‘plain chocolate’ or things you’re used to like ‘chocolate and hazelnut’- far from it. It’s all ‘jelly coffee’ and ‘chocolate and salt puree with added tree bark’ and loads of other things which you just couldn’t imagine, but taste wicked. Never found out the Japanese word for halal and had to hide in doorways to look at my map sometimes because the people are just so helpful they constantly come up to offer directions when my man pride was kicking in and I just wanted to work it out for myself.

Had an instance where we walked past a completely wrecked guy who was being escorted home by 4 friends, all propping him up, holding his arms, like some kind of medical team – he we was as close as we came to someone being abusive to us – as we walked passed, talking English, he slurred out ‘Hawow’, his version of ‘hello’ and he cracked up, and his friends cracked up and we cracked up – even Amira seemed to get it and started to wave her arms like a pill-head in an Ibizian club with imaginary glow sticks, which is what she’s into at the moment.

In fact the more I type this, the more I realise that Tokyo was probably the best place, in terms of a society, I’ve ever seen. I mean the place was so clean I actually had to go looking for rubbish (didn’t find any, so I started to drop mine around just so I could feel at home) But seriously what’s swimming in my head at the moment - and it’s only come on as I’ve typed the last few paragraphs - is that I didn’t see anything pertaining to religion, apart from the temples. No crosses, no mosques, no kosher signs, no pictures of gurus –nothing, and the society was, for the week I was there, far in a way the most structured and efficient I’d ever seen.

And this is confusing me as for the last 15 years where I’ve been aware of religion’s influence and for the last 6 where I’ve actively engaged in a religion and researched and partaken in others - I’ve always been sold the idea that religion is what’ll save and shape society – Tokyo seems to have totally killed that notion. Unless there is a super secret religion they don’t let foreigners in on as I see no orthodox signs of it and capitalism can’t be the problem because these people shop like the idea shopping itself was on sale. Proper confused.

I’ve never been to a country that has left me so desperate to see more of it and learn more about it and left me so utterly, utterly awestruck – from the toilets to the temples and the Sushi to the scenery. God willing, I’ll definitely go back - and that’s only the second time in all my life I’ve really wanted to do that for a place I’ve visited.

Anyway, don’t tell wifey I ended the email with such a change of tone and so abruptly – It’ll just give her more ‘that’s not culturally sensitive’ ammunition. And D, if you are reading this then know I wasn’t in Japan when I wrote it – so stick that up your arigato and smoke it!

Sayanora suckas!

Schizophrenic justice?

2011-08-18T12:46:00.000+01:00

2 years ago I drove back from a wedding at 2 in the morning on the unassuming M42. Sunday had just become Monday and the streets were as empty as Muslim’s stomach 5 minutes before breaking their fast. Law abider that I am, I stuck to around the 70 mark and was home soon enough. I thought nothing of that drive until a few months later when I got a court summons for driving at 70 through a 30. I indeed remembered a short road-works section where 3 lanes had become 2, but alas didn’t see/ take heed of the reduced speed limit. My fault. I sent off my license, and expected the £60 fine and the 3 points. However, some time later my license came back with 6 points added and a £425 fine to be paid. I was shocked and asked some police chums what the deal was and they all, in various ways said, ‘these days, they’re looking to make examples of people.’

Now, insurance premium rise aside the punishment wasn’t going to effect the rest of my life greatly, but the words of those policing friends come to mind now that the punishments are being meted out to those involved in the UK ‘riots’ (which are probably better referred to as ‘steal-a-thons’). Through sentencing, examples are indeed being made, but more caution should be paid to what they’re making of our idea of ‘justice’ too.

If I return to my example and take out the context, it equates to doing 70 in a 30, very dangerous, high punishment deserved. If you take away the context of some of the crimes in the riots; like stealing a 6 pack of water, for example, such a crime wouldn’t even make it anywhere near a court, let alone a 5-month prison sentence which that person received. If we add certain context it becomes even more strange: no previous convictions, university student, but of course the overriding factor here is that it happened in the midst of the riots and he was adjudged, by his prosecutor, to have ‘contributed through his action to criminal activities and to the atmosphere of chaos and sheer lawlessness’. Even if stealing water can be referred to as that, remember, a court conviction will last with a person for the rest of their life – does stealing water deserve to leave such a mark? Especially in the age of online application forms where computers weed out job seekers based on such information.

As for the crime, was he stupid, yes, criminal, of course, but worthy of 5 months in prison, which is akin to a sentence for GBH? The courts currently think so, but it’s the courts where we need consistency most. Many would argue he deserves to be made an example of, to show zero- tolerance and if that’s the current mood of the country, so be it, but why then were the police given a hard time for showing restraint?

Look at how they dealt with the riots; the first day they were overwhelmed and then flooded the streets -within 2 days the streets were back in order. No water cannons, no rubber bullets, they stood firm to their practice and it won out (with a little help from the rain) No excessive force was used even though there were calls for it; the thinking being that if such tactics were used, it would somehow damage Britain’s reputation on the world stage.

As soon as the situation on the streets calmed, quick justice was needed: courts opened 24 hours and procedures streamlined to get as many in as possible. These steps showed justice to be efficient and beautifully nimble in dealing with cases, but it soon showed more of its beastial side when it came to punishments. The oddity: where the police were frowned on because of their restraint, the courts are now raising eyebrows for being too harsh. Again context is king; the police are making on the spot decisions and are in the face of force, the judges have the measured space and time to deliberate and should be the ones providing consistency.

With this is mind, those who carried out the murders and broke into shops will no doubt be getting the same punishments they would had this happened in normal circumstances, but should punishments for lesser crimes really be ‘upgraded’ in such a way, where the menial can have such lingering over a person’s life.

Worse still what if this new barometer of ‘justice’ remains or becomes more widespread? Will the youngster given 10 weeks in prison, for using ‘threatening, abusive language or behavior’, be the benchmark for all such cases towards police? If so, many kids who routinely swear at their school liaison officer will be surprised that it no longer only earns them a detention. Or perhaps we’ll extend this to those who abuse any public servants, meaning 1/5th of all students in school will find themselves with prison sentences for abusing their teachers.

No doubt the country needs to ask itself this and many other serious questions as the debate moves on to emergency policing powers, mobile communication surveillance and curfews, but while agendas and mandates from the politicians and media will to and fro depending on votes and sales, the courts should remain immune to such reflex responses. They should be the rock on which people can always rely, servants to nothing other than the laws of the land, as the ramifications of a ‘mood’ based judiciary could prove costly in many ways and that's where Britain's democracy could be truly threatened.

No More 'Amy VS Oslo' Please

2011-07-24T22:12:00.000+01:00

Tragedy – forget the ABBA cheese for a moment and reflect instead on the deaths over the last few days: Nearly a hundred in Oslo, the majority of which were teenagers lured to their deaths by a man dressed in police uniform; calling them to him for an announcement before unleashing indiscriminate, murderous rounds and then picking off those who tried to run; and, less than 24 hours later, the death of a young musician, heralded as one of the finest of her generation, who was known to have a tumultuous, on-going battle with various addictive substances, but whose death is as yet ‘unexplained’.

One is ‘senselessly tragic’ and the other ‘terribly sad’. Or one is ‘inhumane’ and ‘unbelievable’, while the other is a ‘shame’ but ‘expected’.

The above quotations are picked off of the Twitter/Facebook-sphere, but regardless of such opinions, what loomed large over them was the sometimes vitriolic outrage shown when a post or updates, were deemed, to hoist the latter over the prior.

The world didn’t go ‘mad’, as some noted – it just lost perspective.

How can we judge someone for posting a comment on one tragedy or the other when the limited updates and tweet space sometimes allow the mention of only one at a time? Why did so many presume that the one mentioned somehow excluded or took precedent over the other? Indeed a quick twitter-stalk on some people’s last few tweets demonstrated that those who commented on Amy’s death (Saturday evening) had, the day before, commented on the killings in Norway.

Then comes the issue of personal connection; to some, Amy was well known, well loved, touched people’s lives and to some they have lost that – in the most callous terms, why could a person not express their sadness at that loss, over a terrible heartless atrocity that is far less personal?

Where is the rule that one, in the immediate aftermath of hearing it, has to hit home harder than the other and supersede it? It’s a time of emotional upheaval in many ways - and the crux of this may be… we don’t know how to be emotional over the internet, yet.

Imagine if you were hearing both sets of news on a weekend away with friends, you’d never consider comparing them in such a way – you’d both be shocked at one piece of news then continue the discussion on sadness over the second. In such a scenario, if I were to reflect the majority of opinions I read, such a conversation would be one of unprecedented horror and then of another sad loss that echoes so many others who end in such away. Both can exist at the same time. Just maybe not in 140 characters.

To put this another way – would you ever compare Heath Ledger’s death to the Tsunami to ‘Maddie’s’ disappearance to the Rwandan genocide? - Of course not. They are all bad news to various degrees to various people – yesterday a lot of people seemed to forget that perspective and we don’t communicate that way in the non-virtual world.

Moreover, once something is said, it can be said and done – but once typed, it can live on.

We forget that too.

What you thought on something yesterday doesn’t have to be your main concern today – but a post un-replaced or status not updated can look that way. The most interesting thing in this point though is that we’re the first generation that gets to leave ourselves around for others to see in such a way- we’re the ones who’ll shape the etiquette of such discussion in the future and that’s worth remembering ‘cos it will happen again.

For me, the strangest development was the way people brought in other items that they felt should be getting attention – deaths of others, humanitarian situations and the financial talks in America that fell apart. All massively serious, and some did involve the common thread of death – but they were presented most times as: ‘this is what YOU SHOULD be tweeting about!’

Do we walk around telling each other what to think? Do we not ask people for their opinions on a range of topics before offering our opinion on them? In the trillions of conversations we have with people, are we that quick to judge? No, of course not – we just aren’t use to discussing such things in cyberspace yet.

Take for instance tweets and posts on the famine: ‘can’t believe (this) is getting more coverage than the famine’. I’ve added the word ‘this’ in place of what was in some instances derogatory - Surely though, if you want to bring something to people’s attention you mention it, not in light of something else, but of its own sake. Thankfully many did with daily posts such as ‘remember the famine’ and again in terms of perspective – the famine has been present a lot longer, gotten coverage, and work is being done short and long term to try and alleviate / help by many - I know several families who have asked me outright if I have donated yet, that’s a snapshot of how much it is on some people’s minds - why can a reaction to one thing that is sudden and shocking (the nature of both deaths) not be aired while another longer issue is being championed in other ways.

Again, we don’t do that normally and I know some could argue that online discourse is different and thus it’d be the 'new' normal, but surely development of online morals and etiquette has to have some mirrors to that of the offline ones – or do those parts of us go offline when we go online?

I guess if I had to tweet my thoughts, rather than this ramble - I would have simply put ‘remember – out of sight don’t mean out of mind.’

Many still pray for Kurt Cobain, for Elvis, for Chernobyl victims, Swine flu victims etc and not one of us has the right to tell the other who to grieve for and WE KNOW THIS – we just forgot on-line…. This time.

Fearing Fear - the few hours after the Oslo attacks.

2011-07-23T10:21:00.004+01:00

7.37 PM - I prayed for those who'd been killed the moment I had digested the first trending topic that offered me the news and then prayed in the ritual way that Muslims do as soon as I got to a house where I could do so. I didn’t even want to go to dinner any more but wifey pulled me out of depressive state reminding me I was heading to see dear friends. I drove like a zombie – thoughts erratic and a heaving pain grabbing my neck, I knew it was rage, but I tried to control it.

And on the whole drive to that house, I worried. Heavy hearted, ‘not again’ – ‘not in my name’ – ‘you mindless F***-wits’ worried. I got to my friends and Sky news mentioned news of attacks on the bottom banner of the screen : ‘7 presumed dead in terrorist attack’ but the dialogue between the reporter and the person being interviewed was several coaxed attempts to link the attacks to ‘international terrorism’. I waited for the M word but it never came and credit the Norwegian official being interviewed, he said it was ‘too early to draw any conclusions’ and credit to him again as he stuck to his guns as the Sky reporter revisited the question again and again. I’d watched 3 mins of news and 3 mins had been dedicated to ‘whodunit’. I prayed for the dead and waited to hear more about them than the simple number statistic.

Sky invited another interviewee into a phone discussion and now the talk moved towards Norway’s problem with ‘immigrants’ and how there had been an ‘immigration explosion’ over the last 5 years that induced rising tensions. Another 3 minutes passed – make your own connection as to why immigration was discussed. Hmmmm. I still waited for info on the dead – presumed I must have just missed it.

Wife tapped me, tries to pull me out of mild stupor. She was right. I had not come to friends to watch the news (I do not own a TV, so news is a rarity for me, especially Sky’s sophisticated output.) I tried to get into conversation and quash the worry, prayed in my head and tried to catch bites of news on twitter. On there some guy said, that BBC News said, that the NY Times said, that the ‘Helpers of Global Jihad’ claimed responsibility (In case you're a Twitter virgin, that's basically what it it is - Chinese whispers til the truth comes out)– My first thought was that that was a shit name from shit people – tried to follow the link to the New York times article, but it didn't exist. Can’t check internet properly because of etiquette. I take a photo of my phone screen so I can check it later.

My worry grew, and I start remembering as I thought it was all gonna happen again:

Remembering when I was Islamic Society President in 2005-2006 after the London Bombings that year – remembered people telling me they’d been spat on, remember sisters telling me they had headscarves pulled off by abusers. Remembered being called a terrorist by really brave people driving past, fast in cars, remember being stopped by police ‘randomly’. Remember some guy telling me to tell ‘Allah to go F*** himself’ when I prayed in a secluded place. Remember a brother telling me that some people invited him to go on Jihad in Eastern Europe. Remember cartoon incident and the banners on the march ‘Europe your 9/11 is coming’ and all the other hundreds of banners, which were seemingly written by the same marker pen. Remember the guy who dressed as a suicide bomber.

And now remember thinking – here we go again: Islamaphobia 2.0 and then thinking how can it be a phobia, which is an ‘irrational fear’ when some ‘attack’ has been ‘claimed’ by some ‘Muslim’ group every year in the last decade – 2001:New York – 2002: Bali – 2003: Casablanca – 2004: Madrid – 2005: London – 2006: Mumbai – 2007: Khataniya – 2008: Delhi – 2009: Peshawar – 2010: Sweden…

Start to think of the word ‘attack’ and consider how many Muslims were killed by Muslims in the name of Islam in all of the above. Head starts to hurt. Food is good. Hosts head to main kitchen, I dash onto the net and read on the Guardian site that the ‘terrorist’ is an ‘ethnic Norwegian’. Still very little news on the dead apart from that someone has seen ‘many bodies in the water’. Read that man is arrested. Don’t pay that fact any attention until wifey points out ‘that doesn’t sound very Muslim’ – I look over the term used to describe him: ‘ethnic Norwegian’ and think that must mean guy is actually from Norway – Wifey says it means a Norwegian from an ethnic background. I argue a grammar point and say if that were the case it would read ‘an ethnic Norwegian’. She nods and I argue ‘but a second ago you said it doesn’t sound very Muslim’. She says ‘It doesn’t, he was captured; normally Muslims blow themselves up.’

Surprised on two counts – Wifey is totally right, they do blow themselves up. And secondly surprised she’s calling them ‘Muslims’ – when we’re ‘Muslims’ too, but we don’t blow ourselves up neither does any Muslim we know – but that’s how it is with Muslims, cos you can’t say a Muslim is not a Muslim, so we are all Muslims (depending on which fatwa you follow) and then wonder how non-muslims are supposed to tell the blowy-uppy Muslims from the non-combustible ones. Apart from via the obvious.

Head hurts again. Dinner is served. Etiquette and delicious grub leave me with a brief chance to check twitter again and someone reports that a tweet has come out from a ‘child’ on the island where the gunman was killing people asking ‘where are the police?’. Word ‘child’ makes me depressed again. Try to hide it over dinner – get really excited talking about other things, a little too zestful, trying to fight the fear of tomorrow’s headlines based on the phrase ‘ethnic Norwegian’.

Savor every morsel and have seconds then thirds. Notice I'm wide-awake while everyone else starts to drift off. Now 1.20 AM. I try to keep the conversation going even though everyone else is waiting for us to excuse ourselves. Wifey has actually fallen asleep, I wanna just keep talking ‘cos my friend is hilarious and he’s making me laugh and that’s way better than what’s going on in my head, but he starts to wane and now I am just being rude and lingering like a curry fart.

Walk wifey to the car – check twitter again and tweeting vibe has changed: so many people pouring out love and prayers for those affected – 1 person blaming Muslims and a dozen Muslims blaming the media for blaming the Muslims as well as a couple of human rights organizations who are also blaming the media - one of which is using social media to label the non-social media with the term ‘Epic Media Fail’ – I don’t understand – a few clicks bring up rumors that the suspect/ murder / deranged individual is 32, a white supremacist, who hates muslims – there are links to his facebook page and twitter – he is blonde haired and blue eyed from this facebook pic and has one of his favourite people down as Winston Churchill – not the Prophet Muhammad. I wonder how people have got this info this fast.

Relief starts to drip into me – ‘it might not be a Muslim’ and then narrow minded selfishness kicks in and I remember my trip to Norway and how friendly it was and am so relived the Egyptian guy in the little coffee shop I met there last year won’t have his windows kicked in, like shops here did after 2005 and pray that his children won’t be bullied in school like kids here were and alienated as a result and perhaps won’t turn out like a kid I used to teach who I used to have to try talking out of going on jihad. He didn't listen.

On the 20 mile drive to pick up my baby daughter, I put the radio on expecting to hear some news – Radio 4 is talking about the Euro crisis, I try to switch channels for news but there is some guy in a song inviting a girl to ‘grind on me’ then ‘ride on me’ and her name seems to be ‘shorty’. And I have no idea what is going on as a drunk steps in front of the car in the middle of the road and I ask wifey to play me a Cat Stevens song, I don’t know why – and she plays ‘Wild World’ and I can’t think of a more apt song title – and then I wonder if Norway has the death penalty and hanging and I hope they do, and that there is a provision for such criminals to be hung by their balls and then I wonder what the hell happened to him to make him wanna do that.

Then I get to grandma's house and wake her, and wifey takes the baby and I stare at baby and wonder how I’ll explain what the hell just happened, if she could understand, and how the night unfolded and how will I explain to her what the world is like and then keep glancing at sleeping baby the whole way home and think of the ‘7’ people that won’t be able to be with their families anymore and I wanna hug the baby 'til she becomes a part of me and never wanna let her go.

2.25 AM I get home, wifey and baby head to bed and I want to, but figure I’ll go check the latest news - and the New York Times has nothing on the Helpers of Global Jihad and a Google search shows that they apparently claimed it, then unclaimed it and the organisation that broke that news story was Jihadi-watch (social blogger – with pretty obvious vested interest) and note that the news feed timing for the story is 8 hours old – and then I see that CBS (real news channel) posted that story 6 hours ago even though it was posted after Jihadi-watch has retracted it!!! Then wonder where BBC got it from – can’t find NY Times link at all.

Type this to structure thoughts that are unstructured but they remain so. Check twitter – reports now that 80 people have died – read article about girl who hid in toilet and text her mum while others were shot outside the toilet door – heart goes out to the mother in a way I’ve never felt. Feel overwhelmed, then drained, feel shit... pull away to see if the suspects name is trending in the hope of finding more info but ‘Phil Collins’ is trending – click the link and several hits say Phil Collins has died in a car accident – check the link and it’s a fake as fake can be – then find info on suspect, who is now thought to be ‘Right Wing’ according to twitter and the police have named him. I'd already named him: Fucking Monster.

Reports come through that the 80 people killed were all between 15 and 19 on the island – some tried to talk to him and he shot them stone cold dead and others played dead to fool him and he walked past. I go upstairs and pray for the people in Oslo. So gutted.

Come back. Feel sick. Feel selfish. Think of the film Elephant. Go and pray again. 5.12 – read over more news stories word ‘terrorism’ no longer being used as much, now word ‘violence’ is.

Words of the survivors start coming through. Utterly devastating – I imagine their faces as those of people I met in Norway - start remembering the faces of people in the papers from the London bombings.

Have no idea how the world is supposed to stop something like this.

May God help the families, may God ease thier pain, may God grant them patience, may God help us appercaite our families.

Remember 15-19... 80 of them.... how do you replace the irreplacable?

Going to go wake daughter.

Need to.

I never knew I’d want to be a Googleoid© when I grew up.

2011-07-02T14:24:00.004+01:00

I imagine now, the thousand times some young version of me was asked: “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Depending on the fascination of the time, who was asking or which TV channel I was watching, I would answer “lawyer”, “businessman” or “WWF wrestler”.

Looking back, hindsight makes me wonder how I didn’t see that the latter would become ‘WWE’ thanks to a copyright dispute (courts were always going to side with the company sporting a cute panda as its logo) but not even a Hawkings-esque hindsight would have allowed me to see that one day I would change my answer to the entire question so radically. If I knew then what I know now, I’d surely reply: ‘when I grow up, I want to be a Googleoid©: An evolved variety of the human species whose life is perfectly aligned to, and simplified by, Google.’

Now before you dismiss this as fan-boy nonsense, rest assured this isn’t Mac vs. PC playground style handbags at dawn – “ooh people like them just because they’re pretty” / “yeah but you lot get viruses” blah blah – this is serious! Computer operating system? Pah! – how about an e-life operating system:

Wanna check the meaning of a word? Google.

Wanna house hunt and check the area without leaving your home? Google Earth.

Wanna get to a friend’s house and not get lost? Google Maps.

Wanna sort all your email, avoid spam and get all your attachments previewed? Goole Mail.

Wanna... you know what... feel free to extend this with whatever digitised medium you chose and you’ll find... be it library, shopping, video, pictures or, most recently, social networking, Google’s version will just be BETTER. In fact, recent discussion in the music industry has found that the singer, Carly Simon, was actually an electronic prophet and her 1977 hit ‘nobody does it better’, was actually a prophetic reference to Google.

And they’re not resting on their laurels either: Google+ is on its way and although I haven’t been one of those invited to try it (I’m still an ‘apprentice’ Googloid, nowhere near the ‘3rd degree’ level yet), I can’t wait to join. Why? Go google all the reason’s it’ll be better than (invade-your-)Facebook, or (who’s-ever-been-to-)Myspace; I have complete faith it will JUST BE BETTER! Blind faith, you ask? Not in the slightest – just think of its track record.

Actually, I’m so sure of its superiority let’s just move argument on. Let’s just take Google+ as the defacto fact-finding, video-viewing, social-cycle-syncing device of the future and take the next logical step: get Google in charge.

That’s right: Google Government!

See, if Google made hospitals, no one would get sick.

If Google made schools, illiteracy would disappear.

If Google made Carlsberg... well...the mind simply boggles.

So, feel free to leave whatever archaic electronisizing you currently do, Google with us – that’s right come and Get On Our Great Little Endeavour.

Here’s to waiting for the Google+ invite with a big mulit-coloured, heavily pixilated smile.

Bit 'Bout the Baby

2011-06-11T12:04:00.000+01:00

Dear Creator of babies

I have had Amira for nearly a year now and am very grateful. I have learned a few things but there are many thinks which are still a total mystery to me:

Firstly, why when a baby finds a roll of toilet tissue does it pick at it and throw bits around like cheap messy confetti – why can’t the baby just roll it around so it can be easily rolled up again; kinda like the Andrex puppy does, which You also created?

Secondly, why are her toys not toys to her? Why does she ignore them all to play with things like wires, toothbrushes, old shoes and hair?

Also why does she think she is an alarm clock? I do not just mean vocally in the morning but by the fact that she will sometimes, silently, crawl beside my head and wait for me wake up gagging because of the stink in her nappy.

Which bring me to why her poos smell like mouldy vinegar? I didn’t even know vinegar could go off.

Why does she like kissing her mummy but not her daddy, but like being carried by daddy over mummy – I must admit I get insanely jealous of this because while it could be argued that she simply likes being carried by daddy more, it could also be well argued that she doesn’t want to burden her dear mother and so yells for donkey-esque papa to do the heavy work.

Which obviously leads me to ask – why do they gang up on me with a nag, yell, nag, yell, yell, yell, nag, hands on hips, throw her dummy, double long stare combination?

Also if all common wisdom is that it’s best to demonstrate behaviour to baby so they can mimic it, why when I show her that food is to be put in her mouth does she think that the best thing to do would be smear it on her cheeks, clothes, hair and for good measure her father?

On that point – why does she attack me with her spoon?

Why does she attack me with her dummy?

Why does she attack me with DVD cases? Are all babies film critics?

In fact why does she attack me with almost anything that comes in to her hands?

Why does she attack me with her bare hands?

Where did she learn the subtle art of gauging – be it my eyes, mouth or nose – I have never watched any kind of UFC or gypsy fighting championships.

Nor have I ever taken her to a recycling centre where she watches people endlessly take one thing from one bag and then throw it somewhere else – why then does she love emptying stuff all the live long day?

And lastly – I know my list has gone on and I apologise – but why does she get so much more adventurous and brave in just a nappy? I do not buy her nappies with a big ‘S’ on the front.

Anyway, thank You for giving her to me and for all the mysteries, I wouldn’t wanna change a thing.

Sour Season

2011-05-26T09:32:00.002+01:00

10/11 season
Preseason got us up running,
We saw good goals galore
but also dodgy defending
In the game against Warsaw

But before we went up to Sunderland
We were scoring goals for fun
‘Til we drew in the 95th minute
followed by defeated to West Brom

And I hope we'd shake it off
Get back up and running nice and fast
But in our next Premier League game
Chelsea, as ever, kicked our ass

Then we bittily won 3 games
Seemed to hit a bit of form
‘til Newcastle’s ‘one-shot-one-goal™’ win
(Which for, our opponents, seems the norm)

Concerns were being voiced
As we seemed, to scheme to lose
The boys promised a response,
Got on Twitter, aired their views

And to be fair, while we were dodgy
We were from the only ones -
There was a lot of other misfiring
From the Premiership's big guns

So we were still in the thick of it,
Though it wasn't much deserved
The distinction amongst the top teams
Had become a bizarrely blurred

‘Cos Chelsea went all HarkiKari -
Losing like a old dodgy pub team
People would tell me their results, and I was all:
'bollocks, it couldn't be!’

But it was true and we had a chance
Though as we were all about to see,
Just ‘cos someone else started looking rough,
Didn't mean we'd suddenly become pretty.

We lost to that shite up the road
In a second half blood bath,
Then had decent run
Til Man U crossed our path

Back then we were somehow top
(but I don't remember it that way)
Could've won and started to build a lead
But of course, threw that chance away

We lost to ‘first-shot-and-score’™
From that (ahem) prolific marksman Ji-Sung-Park
But to be honest, we would not have scored
If we'd of played on ‘til I got dark

And there were two weeks of waiting
‘Til Chelsea came to town
And it was kinda now or never
A gauntlet had to be thrown down

I had tickets to the game
And made a Drogba-esque voodoo doll:
It was stocky and frowning
And looked like a little troll

I stuck a dozen pins in it
Whenever he had a touch
And it seemed to work a charm
‘Cos for once he didn't do much

And the boys did us proud
We were all in full song
Hoped to bask forever
In the glory of 3-1

It brought in the feel good factor
The boys had played like they could
Made those world class Chelsea players
Look like old drifting bits of wood

The League was in our grasp
And we had reason to hope
We were still in four competitions
But did we have the squad to cope?

Arsene started to hypnotise us
Almost made us believe
But then we got to Newcastle
And it all fell apart at the seams

As in the 2nd half of that match
We did all we could
To make the hitler-esque-moustached Joey Barton

Actually look good.

And though it's true, we point at Diaby
And hand him all blame
We gotta credit Szczesny
For keeping us in that game

‘Bout him- I thought he'd be just another non-talent
Of whom everyone over-raves
But turns out, we finally had a keeper
who could actually make saves.

He was a bright spot this season
Along with the emerging you Jack
The boy who could do it all:
Pass, shoot, tackle and track back

Our League form got better
And a Cup final on the cards
Had to deal with a few replays
Then we hosted Barca at ours

The first half was nervy
But it's a game of 2 halves
And by the ref’s final whistle
We had the last laugh

And the banners were waving
We'd truly beaten the best -
Took our few chances
and nullified their threats

We were on top of the world
- I wished it were a Groundhog day -
But it seems we flipped the script, and got the rainbow
BEFORE we got the rain

See, Szczesny’s true Arsenal
So he had to soon mess something up
And conspired with Koscielny to do so
In the last minute of the League cup

And we thought we'd bounce back;
Grab the League by the horns,
But we started to play, in a way
That was more self-destruct porn.

Arsene again tried hypnotise us
But the words no longer made sense,
Cos even a blind man could see
We had NO mental strength.

From then I hid under metaphors
As heads started to sink
I spouted stuff like ' well, you can take the horse to water
But can't make him drink'

Others asked: 'What the fuck are you on about'

And I wondered ‘what’ too,
I was just talking without meaning –

Doing what I’d seen Arsene Wenger do

See I was well-versed in Wengerisms
Saying vague things that didn't apply;
Cos the team wasn't ‘going forward’ -
By now it was barely getting by

Then we had no shots at Barca,
And say what you want about the referee,

But that fact will enshrine us
Deep, forever, in crap-pub-quiz history

And we hoped we could move on
Forget it all, banish the past
But for us it was more the case
That our reach had outstripped our grasp.

We missed Sczesney and Djorouhou,
Said good bye to the F.A cup
We won only 2 games of the next 10
So out title hopes were fucked.

And for each one of those games
I tried to be positive and support
But our form was so poor
By the end we dived from second into fourth

It was like living in limbo
We needed putting out of my misery
Wished the hangman would just head over
And throw our noose over the tree

And some claimed we progressed
But that left my mouth with a bitter taste
Last year we managed 75 points
And this year 68.

This was meant to be the season of fruition
Where it all went to plan
But I can’t see what's so special, about this team

That Arsene Wegner can

And now we run a risk,
Of our best waving good bye
(and others too, whose departures
Won't bring tears to my eyes)

Maybe we should camp by the Grove

Give Cesc a rendition of ‘please don’t go’

But based on some other player’s attitude

He’d show us a middle finger... and tell us all where to go

The Boss has again promised spending
But I've heard it all before...
and like one who takes back a cheating-ex
I'll give Wenger one chance more

And I'll make a song and dance about it
Demand that things have got to change
And repeat it all next season
When we go and do it all again.

That’s not being pessimistic
That' just saying what I see
And I while I can't Un-love this club
I've little love for out ‘youth-only/lower-tier journeymen’ philosophy.

Totally Twitter

2011-05-24T10:01:00.006+01:00

I used to be at the forefront of technology. By this I mean I read a magazine on mobile phones every few weeks, but in a world where everyone I knew was ‘what-ever-ing’ what was coming out, or making up things that had no chance of coming out, I liked to think of myself as a voice of reason and knowledge in the pre-tweet world.

Unfortunately though, Twitter has had me reaching for my piece of stone with which to etch a picture of a rather thin gazelle on my cave wall. I’ve been using it for 3 days and I still have no idea what the ‘hashtag’, ‘at’ or ‘respond’ commands are likely to lead to: Will I be posting / responding to one person, a trend or am I just spouting my mouth to nowhere (I’m good at that though, so no worries there) Moreover it moves so fast, it gives me an idea of what a commuter train, in Tokyo during the rush hour, at Christmas might be like (cultural insensitivity noted)

I do like it though, everyone is trying to deliver one liners at a rate so incalculable that the last ‘1 sec’ of postings can be as long as a newspaper article, or in the case of a popular item, a H.G. Wells novel, and be just as varied, imaginative and downright humorous.

In short: so far so good. It’s been a while since something changed everything (or changed it, ‘again’), ignoring of course, Apple, Facebook, Linked-In etc, but if these are all on a level playing field, Twitter gets the panache award for its seamless alliteration opportunities: Twitter-tweets, Twitter-trends, Twitter-twats and more recently, with our super injunction business ruffling a few blue feathers, we welcome the age of ‘Twitter-Truths’.

It’s all so, oh so, easy on the ear and the uses demonstrated against governments in the Middle-east and celebrities looking to keep their dirty laundry safely stashed could mean we’re seeing more than just another passing social networking fad – After the heat it poured on illegitimate governments and the way it made temperatures rise in the house of commons after the Ryan Giggs incident, we could well be witnessing in Twitter, a communication version of fire 2.0, so great is the way this has already changed things.

All that remains to be seen then is what kind of cage will this little blue bird put around itself or more importantly what cage governments will thrust upon it. Perhaps it’d do well to jump before pushed, lest it learnt the same lessons that felled the metaphoric other ‘bird’: Icarus.

Right or wrong as any of that may seem, the communicative landscape has change and there is far more content in this pixelated creature’s birdsong.

Laying down the Law

2011-05-21T22:38:00.001+01:00

Suprised to get a lot of questions on my Youtube page - had to post the hell out of the comment section to get the following across:

UPDATES

Hello,

Thanks for the comments and new points made, great to see such interesting additions. With regards to several questions that keep coming up I’ll answer them over a series of posts.

A) - I only make videos for stuff I have taught and have had students achieve A*s in – If I haven’t taught it, I can’t help. These are your GCSEs and super important, so I wouldn’t tell learners something, knowingly, that I wasn’t 100% sure of. In light of this there will be nothing on ‘Heroes’, ‘Kestrel..’ or ‘Catcher…’. Apologies but I’m sure you don’t want me pissing around with your GCSEs. (I do however send commiserations to anyone reading ‘Catcher…’ – it is the only book I never finished reading, those of you who suffered it, will know why.)

B) - I will try to do ‘To Kill…’ as soon as I find my notes on it, God willing it’ll be up before Monday (Late I know, but it is the weekend and I have to go out now and at least PRETEND I have a life.)

C) - I am happy to put up A* examples to the above titles as they may be easy to find, HOWEVER, that would be by my reckoning and the only ones that I’ve used so far are AQA marked ones; as mine is just opinion, whereas AQA are the up-on-high, gate-keeper types who will be giving out the certificates. If such essays will be of use, please comment to that effect and I will TRY to source them, via my notes, other teachers and all of those cheat-note / essay writing sites we asked you not to use for coursework.

D) - The Head of English at my school has kindly offered to help with some of the videos and he should have the Clarke poems completed by tomorrow, God willing. The astute amongst you will recognize him as the one with the different voice.

E) - As for those asking for help with other subjects, I know bm124 has some for Science and Math as well as English. I have no idea how good the ones for the other subjects are but their English stuff is very good so you could try there. Furthermore, I have been messaged by a channel called WildernRevision offering Science and Math video tutorials, again the quality is unknown but they are offering it so feel free to take a look. (I do warn though not to be misled by the title; I doubt there is anything ‘wild’ or ‘wilder’ about the videos. They are in fact based at a school called Wildern as best I understand it.)

F) - I hope to do a last minute revision for Lit. tomorrow night so you have Monday to absorb it in preparation for regurgitation on Tuesday.

G) - I CANNOT mark anything for you, please don’t request me to do so (dozens have) I apologise but it would be a never-ending cycle if I started and the only things that are never-ending cycles are Harry Potter re-runs, the fact your parents will always nag and the Arsenal’s quest for silverware.

- Phew – apologies for the headache inducing length of this note, but I do hope that has answered some questions. Good luck with the revision, peace be with you and please keep adding original insightful comments to which I am sure will be of great help to other students.

Leon

Suffer From Simple Spelling

2011-05-20T18:25:00.003+01:00

Annoyed at self. Videos have become more popular than I thought, but today someone brought me up on the spelling of ‘you’re’ being wrong – 50 videos... there are probably a million mistakes and someone brings me up on a spelling error?!?... Can I blame them? Well, I can plead humanity, but at the end of the day, if you say you’re (got it right that time) teaching the lingo via English videos, you'd better avoid the Wronglishness of it all.

Loads of requests coming up for stuff I’ve never even heard of, let alone read. Think I’ll go take me a little-slink-back into obscurity and the double figure views the poems get.

Heaven forbid they look for the errors all over this blog – they’d have a field day.

The Good Life

2011-05-05T22:06:00.004+01:00

The Good Life

(As told to me, by a 40 year stranger, while wating for bags in an airport)

I earn, consume then go on holiday

And subconsciously try to build a little debt to get my earn-face back on,

Then slave away for 200 odd days,

To tip the balance of my bank balance back to nearly enough for Holiday 2: the re-run.

And in the mean time

I spend my two non-slave days

Slaving away at preparing for poses on holiday by engaging in Holiday Minor;

See Holiday Minor comes on weekends

Where I celebrate the end of my earning means

In a toxic state

As far away as possible from the state of mind

That gets me my hourly rate.

No serious me am I then, no siree, SIR!

Weekends come, suit is gone,

And I would prefer to ignore all the sentient/morality crap that’s supposed to my privilege as a human.

No! I want to get shitfaced, bare-backed bestial with some bitch in an alley or ditch,

then boast (though I never take them back to my place ‘cos in truth, I still live with folks)

When paid,

I smash grab my way through stores to buy things, to show you,

And gloat ‘til you go

And do the same with your slightly better wage and out do me

As we senselessly ignore the fact

We may have been meant for more than this,

'Cos there’s no financial sense in being a human being,

It's human buyings we should be breeding

(And believing in)

So as for my purpose in life

I know it and have one:

I live on a shelf,

In a supermarket,

Orbiting the sun.

As for goals,

Well I’d buy happiness

If I could only find the right store,

I asked at Hamleys and the assistant said it was all over the sales floor,

But I looked high and low

couldn't find it, figured my search skills were poor

So went back and asked her 'where exactly'

And she said, confused,

'Sir... it was a metaphor.'

But I didn't wanna know who it she was met at four

Cos it's Friday afternoon, and I'm frantic, antsy-pants hankering

To get my best lines and groove on in good time, lest I go home tonight alone

And end up ‘stranger’ style wankering-

It's the perfect pattern:

50 weeks of repeat

Then treat myself to two weeks full on.

So save your next-life,

Afterlife out-of-fashion delusion,

Anything ends up going wrong in my life,

I'm fine!!!:

I've been raised to believe I can buy me a new one.

Bin Laden the Bani Adam.

2011-05-03T13:00:00.002+01:00

I only just heard the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death and was pretty gob smacked, not from any care, mourning or celebration of the man himself but more so for what the Bin Laden image has meant for 10 years and what it’ll mean for the future.

Now, with regards to his past, his whereabouts, what he did, what he didn’t do, what he wanted etc, you can search a trillion sites and come to pretty much whichever conclusion you want, but what really strikes me is how his presence, through his mediated image, changed my life and surely the lives of hundreds of thousands, and I’d go as far as to say hundreds of millions, of others.

Now what follows is not a watering down of the atrocities committed by the group he was affiliated with: those that are known, presumed and unclassified, it’s simply a summary of how a guy I never knew, never met and never actually heard a word from, changed my life, my surroundings and even how people treated me.

Normally people who effect you from a global position like writers, actors, musicians, activists etc inspire you for a while, then the effects wear off, or in the case of a politician, pass a law which may make you pay a higher tax, or not travel to a certain country etc, but it always effects one part of your life. Bin Laden changed everything in mine.

See, pre-September the 11th 2001, I had no religious identity and was never treated like I had one. I got on fine with almost everyone, had never been stopped by the police, had never been treated differently at airports, had always done well in applications and meeting people, but after 9/11 that all changed.
I got stopped by the police while driving for ‘random checks’ again and again, I never got a single response let alone interview for a job for the next 2 years, no matter where I’d applied whereas previously I had always gotten interviews. My passport was often held at airport security while someone went to check something. People I met for the first time were more weary (someone even confided to me once that his trepidation towards me was because I looked a bit like the deceased.) People I knew who were dear to me, suddenly became ‘radicalised’ and a hundred and one jokes and innuendos flew my way and I knew that in terms of grouping, regardless of my lack of religiosity during that time, I was forever labelled ‘other’. Maybe the last part always was that way, but I only felt it in the post 9/11 world.

Moving away from my own experiences, he (or at least the idea of him) was responsible for the invasion of countries, the deaths of untold numbers, the birth of untold wannabes, the reason we have to declare the amount of fluids we take onto a plane, trillions of words of print, the set of cartoons that charged the ‘freedom of speech’ debate for years and more than anything, changing the perception of the word ‘Muslim’; for an entire generation and casting a shadow over all who bore that title through the preceding ages.

If he is now dead then maybe some of the above dies with him or at least regresses, this may well be wishful thinking, but if the ultimate bogeyman; the guy that has been on the lips of world leaders for as long as I remember, has faded away, then surely, as long as no one steps into his place, there will be a new generation who will grow without his shadow falling over them, and even if someone does try to take his place as the world’s poster boy for terror, it won’t have the same weight; we simply aren’t ready for it, as there is no one whose image has been as heavily saturated through our lives that could carry such presence and threat. We’ve had this relationship with Bin Laden for ten years and we’ve just dumped him, everyone knows that whoever comes next, is simply a rebound.

Now, a conclusion on what will come to pass will be needed from someone far wiser than me, but when he changed my life in 2001, I didn’t know it was coming; however with his death in 2011, I’m hoping that everyone of my ‘tomorrows’ will be different too.

Reading into Revision

2011-04-27T11:11:00.003+01:00

So I got some new programme that allows me to do tutorial videos quicker, that’ll be fun: stick more stuff up on line that no one will see, but feel quietly chuffed knowing that you did it in the first place.

I mean, if students don’t listen in class what chance of listening in their own time.

Ce le vie.

Fail. Then Fail better.

Viva La Revolution (?)

2011-04-25T22:10:00.000+01:00

Suffice to say a trip to Egypt was inevitable. Meemee had plenty of adoring fans there dying to see her in the flesh and I was sure that a certain travesty of justice would be done if she didn’t get to see either of her great grandmothers, especially as she was named after the son of one of them, who passed away before Meemee was born.

So a merry flight from Terminal 5 was taken, after a long delay thanks to the co-pilot being AWOL, and we arrived in Egypt to rather seasonable weather. I was on the lookout for changes and almost immediately one was evident: no one asked me for ‘something English’ at the airport, and no, that is not code for some kind of sexual favour (in prostitute circles having an ‘English’ is a byword for spanking) but was code for cold hard Sterling pounds. We were out of the airport remarkably quickly and soon back at the flat. Amira accustomed herself very well over the first few days, and was performing chameleon like manoeuvres: somehow managing to look like me, according to my family and like Deena to Deena’s family; which ultimately just goes to show that babies really, just look like babies. They do not however, in the case of Egyptians, act like babies. At one point in the holiday a cousin was giving me a lift somewhere at night and said he wanted to drop in on a birthday party, it was 11 PM, I wasn’t really in the mood but of course couldn’t say otherwise, I asked him whose party it was and he said ‘one of my cousins, she’s nearly 2.’ When I got the party I found at least 7 under 2s dancing (in some clapping, crawling combo) the night away to Egyptian pop that woke Amira, who stared on, shocked as if to say ‘WTF...’. I left the party at 12.20 with the babies and toddlers still doing their thang...

Now, everyone I met from grand old uncles to bleary eyed taxi drivers asked me what I thought of the revolution. I regaled them with my fence worthy position: ‘I don’t live in Egypt so couldn’t possibly comment’ which most people found a very agreeable stance, but everyone who I asked the same question said it was a good thing, a very good thing, in fact. Some people had reservations about the manner in which it happened originally, preferring Hosni to have stepped down just before the upcoming September elections, but time has shown that wouldn’t have been best as it would have given him and his ‘cronies’ (their words not mine) time to hide all their shady dealings. And my word were they a shady bunch! You’ve probably heard that Hozza had amassed a fortune, which by conservative estimates was about 30 billion ENGLISH pounds and by more calculator happy calculations stood at around 80 billion. Either way: dodgy. Come away from the main guy though and you find, probably inspired by the 1995 Micheal Jackson hit, 'he was not alone’; his inner circle kinda formed their own billionaire boys’ club, except that most of them were very old men, not boys and the money wasn’t theirs.

Up and down the country Egyptians were totally astounded by the amounts being revealed by the corruption investigation team and some odd practices in general. For example ministers’ wages, which had previously been undisclosed, were revealed to be 1 million a MONTH. That’s around £110,000 in our terms. When you consider that a minister in Britain’s cabinet gets around 80-100k a YEAR it beggars belief. On top of this there was a lot of personal involvement from folk who should’ve known better. For example, the Tourism Minister had forty companies set up for tourism business, taking a lion’s share of the tourism income coming into Egypt (on top of his wage). Did someone say healthy competition? Not to be outdone, the Transport Minister was involved in a car scrappage scheme where taxi drivers were due to get money for their old car and a thirty percent reduction in the total amount they would pay for a new car. But the 30% rebate for each vehicle, and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of them, all went into one man’s account. I leave you to guess who that was.

All over Egypt a million things like this were going on under the Hozz-Man’s watchful eye. No wonder then, when I commented to a taxi driver that I just felt that the Hozz-miester should be given a little more respect in the way he was being questioned, he took me on a little detour and gave me an ‘English’..., but seriously, he said he would have agreed with me if it were not for one thing and the detour was to a grave yard where we stopped. Sure enough, through the gaps in the walls, I could see, in the cemetery, people lying down on mats, cooking food and generally going about their daily business, because that was where they lived. I saw washing lines, little shops on the road side and dozens of children playing among the low headstones. It was one of the saddest sights I’d ever seen. Needlessly to say, the taxi driver didn’t think that Hozz-head deserved any respect for allowing the country to fall into such despair.

He did have a point: when you think about it, Egypt has metal, oil, tons of gas, plenty of arable land off the Nile which runs through the country, great tourism and a huge work force. Why then are 70% of the country illiterate and 86% below the poverty line? This is especially damming when you think of somewhere like Japan which has none of its own stuff yet is the world’s 3rd largest economy. The answer surely lies in the way the country is run and what the people believe is achievable as a result. Or if you prefer not to think about it, just remember the word: Corruption.

I was in a taxi a couple of times a day and heard a thousand different stories of varying madness, but one thread I was keen to pick up on was the lack of safety. See, the Egyptian police, for want of a better word, are pretty brutal. They were a no nonsense bunch as you probably saw from some of the clips doing the rounds on Youtube, and you probably also know that they gassed and beat my little brother when he was doing aid work from previous posts, so basically when the people were turning against the state police during the uprising, the police basically said ‘oh yeah, don’t wanna listen to us do you? Well then we’re going home.’ And they did, the plan being the country would descend into chaos and the people would have to go back to their homes and stop demonstrating. It didn’t work, people simply protested all day and then defended their homes and areas all night.

Credit to them.

The situation was now in the hands of the army, who of course couldn’t police the whole country. Driving at night became a very dangerous affair and moreover the type of crimes occurring, as you can imagine, ranged from carjacking, to rape, through murder, to what I perceive as the worst of the lot, which I’ll come to in a minute. I was actually privy to one of these car-jackings at close range. A white estate had parked across the road while I was driving along and some guys had grabbed hold of another guy and were beating him on the floor, 2 other cars stopped, a bus was on the scene too, one guy was carrying a machete and there was lots of shouting. I told the driver to step on it and we rounded the car and bombed away. On the same journey as we reached the little village where my family is originally from, we came across a group of guys on motorbikes and I was very edgy as I knew they were a vehicle of choice for car jackers, but we went past with no recourse. Another bridge and another set of motor cyclists brought a similar set of nerves, but again nothing happened. By the time we reached a third bridge manned by motor cyclists my cousin who was with me was perplexed enough to ask them what they were doing there, we were told that a girl had been missing and they were looking for her. Sad of course, but even sadder when you know that the kidnapping rate had shot through the roof since the police took their sabbatical. Some are simply mugged, some are ransomed and most sickeningly, some are 'harvested'.

If this is a new term for you then just stop reading now, its not nice. Basically, the kidnapped victims have their organs removed for sale. Bodies have been found across Egypt, especially in poorer parts with their entire vital components missing and then they are just thrown away as one would throw away any animal carcass after cutting it up for cooking. The saddest thing about this is it is not a moron’s operation, you have to have the right tools to do it and moreover have an education in surgery to perform it right and preserve the organs, so there must be some well educated people in on it.

Overall people comment that situation is getting better though and some normalcy has resumed over the last few weeks, at least in the big cities and the police are slowly filtering back into them and will now will have to learn how to work with communities rather than just brutalising them. It is worth mentioning too that the army offered the people a very unique defence opportunity and basically, if someone tries to mug you as a result of the lack of state security then it’s ok to kill them. Not a punishable crime anymore. The reasoning being that anyone who is part of the ongoing discord in the country is taking advantage of the situation and therefore deserves to die (I am not making this up).

To be honest I did little save from see people and pretty much, Read, Slept, Ate (which was a far better spend of time than watching that Julia Robert’s tripe: Eat, Pray, Love) I skipped a couple of chances to go to the beach through sheer laziness but had a great time catching up with family and eating meat freely; all hail halal. Meemee was a joy to watch, managing to make a series of noises that to the untrained ear could well be mistaken for Arabic and Deedee learnt that hepatitis can be bad for your (husband’s) wallet as well as your health (please ask her to tell you that story as I am sworn to secrecy on the details of it).

Hope you’re all well and please remember to vote for me when I run for the Egyptian Presidency in September. I already have my slogan: ‘Well, I can’t be as bad as the last guy’.

Peace, Love, Cliches.

The Secret Diary of Amira Averly the 1st

2011-03-05T08:15:00.004Z

(Inside the mind of my 10 month old daughter)

Phase one of my plan

Is coming together;

There lots I’ve done well

And some things I could do better:

I’ve made bumbling Papa

Into some kind of man-slave

And lovely Mama

Into a willing comrade.

Others think I’m ‘sweet’,

‘A good girl’, ‘so lovely’,

Bu they don’t know, what goes,

through my mind, when they hug me!

I think: ‘what mad sounds are you making?

Oh really! Grow up!

‘Gaggas and Googoos??

Has your tongue somehow got stuck?

Or did you leave your brain,

With your shoes, by the door -

Why are you Ga-Ga-Goo-ing again

Who asked for a bloody encore?!

You must be one of Papa’s friends;

Foolish like him,

All it takes is one smile

And for me he’d do anything.’

And oh how I abuse that fact

Each and every single day;

I twist him round my little finger

In every which way:

It starts in the mornings,

He’s asleep and I pick a place -

Then relentlessly smash

May hands all over his face!

He wakes startled, I smile,

He falls for it, and then,

Just for good measure

I throw a tantrum, again.

My bottom lip quivers

And he quickly hugs me

Then strokes and coos

As we go for a change of nappy

For now I grow silent

While chauffeured to the next room

(As one must not talk needlessly to one’s servant,

Lest they be talking back soon.)

He lays me on the ground

And I let out a few farts -

To give the menace of a fresh poo

When the nappy unfastening starts,

And when he’s relieved that I’m clean

I warn ‘Papa, know your place

Lest I really get vengeful,

And from here, piss in your face.’

He then tries to sleep

But it’s the perfect time for me

To sit on his bed

And regale him with my philosophies

I lecture long and warbled

And throw in a few screams

And poor helpless Papa

Is unwillingly captivated by me.

I turn then to Mama

And make sure she’s getting some rest

As unlike Papa – Mama’s not a part time parent –

Mama treats me BEST!

Mama cleans me up

When I wipe food on my bib.

Mama takes me swimming

So I can attempt drowning other kids.

Mama takes me baby singing

Where I change the words of the songs

And quietly heap insults

On all the other babbling morons.

Mama takes me shopping

And she buys me cuddly things:

Elephants and bears

And I beat them up when she’s not looking.

Mama lets me grab Papa’s stuff

And throw it all around

(and I know for a fact,

This actually - makes her proud)

Then Mamma lulls me to sleep

Sings me ‘twinkle twinkle

Little star’

As she know

I need

My sleep

To torture Papa.

When he walks in after work I scream

‘come here and carry me fool’

And once in his arms

I unleash the cruel:

Papa, carry me ‘til your arms hurt

Then put me on your neck

So I can tug at your hair

Cause you pain you won’t forget.

Let me sneeze in your face

And give you my fresh-crèche-caught cold

And in return, I promise,

I’ll put you in a home when you grow old.

Papa swirl me around

‘til your faint and dizzy

And know that whenever you stop

I plan on throwing a hissy.

Then hold me up to the mirror,

‘cos after all that, I like to see

Me watching you

Still stare at me, so lovingly.

Then give me back to Mama

My day’s work is at an end

I’m off to dream sweet things of tomorrow

Where I get to do it all again.

Nothing New for Arsenal in New York

2011-02-28T12:51:00.000Z

That was painful - but kind of expected. I watched it New York, in a little place with three Arsenal fans - it was all going well, til the guy next to me said 'I'm going to the toilet.' I didn't think anything of it - but his mate implored him to stay. to which he replied 'That only happens in England'. Didn't make any sense -

What interest did he have in the others bladder? I didn't know, so asked. towhich he replied that whenever his mate goes to the toilet someone scores. LessMystic than that Meg lady. The wanabe toilet attender decided he would go anyway and went downstairs. I turned back to the screen to watch a long ball be launched into the Arsenal area and then.... well... the rest (Screw you cliche) ISN'T history...

They looked gutted, glad they tried, but the wait goes on.

Go Go Magic Golf Ball

2011-01-21T22:32:00.000Z

Actual teacher student conversation:

'Sir, do you like golf?'
'No.'
'Then why do you have a golf ball on your desk, Sir?'
'Because I confiscated it off of you 5 minutes ago.'

*Penny drops*

'Oh yeah*

Cue long sigh.

Car Couldn't Care Less!

2011-01-13T22:19:00.000Z

My car blew up on Tuesday (not the first time it's happened) and I think I’m starting to get a little hint of the fact that, maybe, regardless of how much I love driving and feel that I AM man of the road, it seems cars and I are just not meant for each other. Hear me out:

Now I’ve had a car since 2001, I was 19, same year I passed my driving test, but 9 days after I bought my first car, an Escort, I took a road trip from Liverpool to Beverly with Jack, Christine and Shane in tow–for a party and then the next day drove home to London, had a tyre blow out, smashed into the central reservation, spun 720 degrees (at 80mph) the alloy on the front right wheel split, anchored into the ground and I flipped over, careening into the verge. I had to unclip myself and then dropped onto the ceiling of my car and crawled out of the smashed windscreen.

3 days later I bought a new car, another Escort and 6 months after that someone went into the back of me as I drove into Liverpool and the car was a write off.

A few weeks later and, another Escort was bought, which lasted nearly a year before it decided it was going on strike forever. For no discernable reason, it bit the dust and as the old nursery rhyme goes about the clock, it ‘stopped short, never to go again…’ The RAC guy paid me £100 for it and towed it away.

Soon after, on into 2003, with money tighter than ever, I went up north with John to some place, filled with a race of people I couldn’t understand and bought an Orion, which would cut out when the engine got too hot. Sometimes this meant I would break down in traffic and would have to wait for 20 minutes, with everyone beeping at me, patiently waiting for the engine to cool down. Then one day, in the car with Kwes, I made a U turn and suddenly the engine started to smoke. I got out, switched on the hazards and we stepped away from the car. A few minutes later in mid conversation, we heard a loud bang, looked to see tons of smoke coming out from under the bonnet - we looked at each other and then walked a little further away, waiting for the fire brigade. The RAC guy took it away, but this time didn’t pay me anything.

Moving on to a short period of saving money I bought another Escort, a purple one and this actually lasted for 6 months without fault, but the shame of purpleness got to me and I sold it –bringing me to summer 2004 and my first foray into the world of the Volkswagen and my semi obsession with convertibles.

I bought a Golf which ran sweet and sound and the only problem I had with it was that it was a police magnet – I was pulled over in it loads and once was literally swarmed by 5 police cars who pinned me in as pulled into Clifton campus and told me (only as they were leaving) that they thought I had fake number plates. A year on and that one was sold as I moved away for a bit and I came back to buy a Peugeot that looked wicked but broke down almost every week: the roof stopped working; it leaked whenever it rained; lights would turn off and on almost a will and strangest of all, the lacquer started to just flake off, as if it had been stuck on with pritt stick. It become as patchy as a pub team’s football pitch in winter and the only way I could get rid of it, was by selling it to someone at night.

Back onto my next Golf and things started well for 3 months it was fault free, but whenever I got out of it, I felt slightly stoned. I tried to ignore this as fatigue (or cos I was subconsciously stoned) but it turned out that it was something a little more serious when one day I was driving and a car was flying at me on the wrong side of the road – I knew I had to turn, but just couldn’t make my arms turn the wheel, at the last moment the other guy went back into his lane, probably thinking that was the deadliest game of ‘chicken’ he’d ever played.

When I met up with the friend I was going to see, I couldn’t see properly, was slurring my words and basically acting like I was mashed. Turns out, my car’s radiator thought it would do the exhaust’s job, and start pumping the exhaust gas… only problem being that this was being pumped into the car, like how people use hoses in suicides, and I had mild carbon monoxide poisoning.

After paying to get that fixed a couple of months passed before someone tried to steal it, tripped the alarm and it was for all intents and purposes screwed it completely– , fob, electrics, locks, battery, wires etc etc, and I spent 700 quid getting back on track and then lent it to Moote for a few months, at which point it died on her too. I went without a car for a month in some kind of protest at how cars had treated me and then thought, screw it, I’m going to by something so reliable – I will never have this trouble again!

And in my mind nothing says reliable like Mercedes!

I went out and bought a Mercedes CLK Cabriolet, got it converted to LPG to justify that 3.2 litre engine and honestly loved every minute of driving it. Then Tuesday morning I got in to go to work but found the entire motor was completely dead, I got it towed to a garage and got a new battery put in. As I got back in the car, all the warning lights in the world came on. I got a weird feeling and told them to run a load of diagnostics on the car, telling them I would be back for it after work.

Same day at four oclock, I got a phone call from the garage, which started with the words ‘there’s been a problem with your car…’ I thought ‘here we go, about to get screwed over by a garage,again’ but then he preceded to say ‘your engine and battery blew, scorched part of my garage, put one of the lads working on it in hospital and we had to get the fire brigade to put it out. Your car is a total write off and you have to call your insurance to come and pick it up.’

I obviously didn’t know what to say. But, next day, when I went to see them and the carcass of my car, the guy explained that as soon as he drove it in to the garage, he switched it off started to look through the electrics and 10 minutes later noticed smoke coming up from under the seat, he went to disconnect the battery, but it had melted shut due to the fire that was raging in there from the new battery and within a few minutes the fire had spread to the engine, blew the airbags, blew the windscreen and but thankfully the fire brigade got there before it blew the LPG gas tank.

Thank God I wasn’t driving it –

Anyway if anyone is out there tinkering with a voodoo doll of my in a car, pretty please stop and if any needs me, I’ll be on Autotrader.co.uk

Enjoyed it at the Emirates

2010-12-28T17:20:00.000Z

We finally beat Chelsea, I have very little to say other than ‘phew’ and that I will be creating other voodoo doll of the opposing teams star players for other matches.

Good times - Would still be better if we had any idea of how to defend but I'll take our Keegan inspired, 'as long as we score more than you' approach for now.

Yay!

A little bit of life in Lisbon

2010-11-28T17:17:00.002Z

Travel on, travel on, with hope in your heart and a baby in your hands.

No wise sage said this – because no wise sage would - as I found out on a trip to the country that is named after a fruit the Arabs used to get from there: ‘Portugal’ which means ‘orange’. Now please excuse the cultured beginning, it has been a while since I have written anything coherent – apart from complaint letters to stores who sell me terrible baby products, and letters to various councils trying to get off various parking, bus lane and congestion charge fines. The quality of writing has to drop because if you try to get coherent and logical with them, they act like red necks in a theology class – ‘this guys tryna be cleva!- damn smort ass – im gonna fine me him so more’! So I actually write to them forgetting all punctuation, grammar and etiquette that humans have with one another. This may sound like a strange tactic, but as someone who has contested about 30 fines in his driving career I can happily tell you that I have never once got off by writing politely and accurately; but by sending the equivalent of ‘what? Fine? You, what? Me? fine? What? Huh? Huh? What? Huh? Fanks yeah!’ I have been successful on several occasions – I would like to point out to that every single one of these fines was actually my fault, but my revised style of writing probably made the local council-fine-fiddling-folk think I was inbred too and this they give me dispensation. A word which they read as ‘this pen sat on’.

I’m sure I lost you there – I lost me too... but (tenuous link alert) I didn’t get LOST in Portugal... (Cue tumbleweeds and a distant crow)

It was baby Meemee’s first time on a plane and I was planning on making everything as easy as possible – we had one bag for the three of us, the push chair and of course as many portable Apple products as possible (this is sent from my iPad, while listening to my iPod, with one eye on the iBaby and dreaming of the iLife). iTried (sorry I’ll stop now) I tried to make everything seamless, valet parking came to take the car, I booked a lounge to relax in pre flight, and tried to reduce all the hustle and bustle baby would be subjected to.

Thankfully security didn’t frisk bearded me, or snoop around in baby’s masses of padding and layers, but took quite an interest in Deena, making her take off her shoes and her belt and get wand abuse all over. So I shouted ‘who’s the terrorist now?’ as if it was a joke with the guys chilling somewhere safe – not with 20 security staff an immigration officers around. I had to pretend the baby said it and quickly shuffled off.

On a side note, having a baby is great if you want to pretend you haven’t done something, or pretend they did something that you’ve done. ‘I was about to be she started crying’, ‘she must have knocked it over,’ and my most oft used: ‘no, no , the smell isn’t me – I think she’s pooed again.’

So on to the plane and I was dreading it. Deena, post ordeal, took the inner seat and propped her head on the window, which meant I was going to be with the baby for the flight. Now, I am not a nervous man. Thankfully, most situations I’m level-headed, calm and roll with things. Trying to chaperone baby through her first flight though, I felt like I was on a guilty paranoid crack-head comedown and was trying to smuggle anthrax on the board while wearing a T-shirt said ‘I love Osama’.

This was my train of thought:

She’s gonna cry, and hate you, and scream, and everyone will stare, and you’ll ruin their journey, and you’ll be a bad father, and all the tutting will ring around the cabin like the ticking of cockroaches and Deena will be disappointed and will ask for a divorce and baby will call you ‘that guy’ from now on and social services will take her away from you and... Amira Averly slept through the whole flight start to finish.

Seriously though, for the first 20 minutes of the journey, I was so nervous I was SWEATING! And each twitch she made would be like a laceration to my entire being as I prayed to God, the gods of BA, the gods of tin can travel – anything to keep her asleep (feel free to astaghfarallah me for that one)

The worst part of the journey came after we landed – customs was seamless and the Portuguese were friendly enough, but then we got to the car hire place, because of some double booking fiasco I ended with something that had a 1 litre engine. Please note how I refrained from using the word ‘car’. And no, don’t re-read it, you read right: 1 litre. An engine that is so economical you don’t need to put an ‘s’ after litre because there is nothing extra to be gained from it. Do I sound like a snobby road hog? Well, 1 litre would be fine, if I were say, umm... parking my car or using my car solely as a seating device, but since I was trying to negotiate Lisbon’s hilly terrain, I was forced, time after time to take the turn of shame over into the slow lane, drop the car into 2^nd or 3^rd and barely hold myself back from crying as I got overtaken endlessly by the stream of other drivers, whose glances across seemed to shout ‘one litre wanker!’

The only good thing I can say about this episode is that I am SO grateful Meemee will never remember this incident; I never EVER want her to see me in such a pathetic position again.

Now crap car aside, Lisbon and the surrounding areas are actually great to drive around, it’s hilly, green and has cool central reservations covered in mosaics on the motorways.

I never saw anyone use an indicator on the roads, but 98% of people drive so carefully it never mattered and this is not because they were also one litre wankers but more because they were just more chilled. In fact that was one of the beautiful things about the city centre, I headed in a couple of times and it still felt like abroad both in style, layout and pace – Lisbon was happy to be itself. The town centre is a mix of classic shops, dozens and dozens of cafe and a surprising amount of churches. No one really stares when you walk by and even the beggars and alcoholics carry themselves with dignity. I saw several doorway vagrants, but they sat and observed things with the contemplation of a seeker rather than the normal jiggle headed, glazy eyed desperados you see in London. Even as they walked through the streets, they were compact, had booze in paper bags, sat to swig on it when they did swig and were ALWAYS walking in straight lines. Now, that may seem like a strange set of things to highlight of a people, but it really got me thinking about something, which every dealing I had with a Portuguese person confirmed: they are a proud, prim and proper bunch. No one was dressed less that suitably, no one made a scene and above all they were very cordial, which is a slight step up on polite. There was one thing I found rather odd though and that was the seeming ban on vegetarian cuisine – take for example this conversation in one of the many cafes I stopped in.

Me: Hi, can I get a sandwich please?

Cafe guy: yeah, which meat do you want?

Me: umm, I’ll have tuna please.

Cafe guy: Tuna and bacon coming right up.

Me: wait, no, umm... just tuna please.

Cafe guy: no just tuna.

Me: ok, I’ll have a cheese sandwich.

Cafe guy: ok... cheese and bacon?

Me: umm... no just cheese?

Cafe guy: no just cheese.

Me: ok, I’ll ... get ... some... one of your... (Glances round at menu and food)... the...a... Sprite please.

And that was the truth of it, it’s big meat loving place. And that was the main similarity I got from Madrid and Lisbon, apart from that, the places feel very different; Madrid feels like it is trying to punch a little above its weight and never really delivers any heavy weight punches (sorry Sheila) whereas Lisbon is content to do its own thing and take pride in it.

Anyway, the food conundrums were soon settled by hotel room service and since the sojourns round town were quite quick as it was so tightly knit, we headed back into the car over the next few days and drove to places that were supposed to be worth seeing. First up I went to a place called Sintra – the guide books raved about it, it was on Dee’s to do list, the guy at the car rental place said we had to see it. So I went... and saw nothing. I figured I must have missed it so if drove round again, then again, then via 3 different routes and then got out and walked, then walked back and the only thing I kept seeing was a sign saying ‘welcome to Sintra’, followed by one that said ‘you are now leaving Sintra’. I mean the place was described as magical – but the most magical thing about it was a Harry Potter poster.

With my hopes lowered dramatically I headed to the other recommendation, Cascais, but that was awesome: lovely views over the beach, smooth hills to take in the sights while walking, plenty of quaint shops and designer places too, but the best of all was a Sushi buffet restaurant, with all you can eat Sushi for 11 Euros. My jaw nearly dropped! That’s less than a tenner for delicious, freshly prepared, delightful pieces of fresh seafood wonder. It was so good, I went back there every day of the trip and to be honest I would even get on a plane and go back there just to eat.

So overall, Lisbon was wonderful - the weather was a delightful change, the surrounding places are picturesque and it would be a pleasure to drive round if you were in something that resembled a car, rather than a battery powered trolley.

Screw you environment – gas guzzle for life!

Sent from my iMagination

Toy Joy

2010-11-17T00:23:00.002Z

None to be had.

Seriously, I ran around shops looking for presents I thought would be cool for a four month old and found nothing that I considered worthwhile, in fact I was quite let down, but maybe I should try shopping in slightly more interesting places than news agents.

Which brings me rather obviously on to prices - how on earth is everything becoming so expensive ? Worse still, I do most of my shopping on-line and on eBay, so i have an even more warped perception on cost than most people, need to step back into the real world and actually hand over those pounds and pennies.

Eek - real world - bad times.

Having Holiday.

2010-11-01T20:00:00.000Z

What does holiday mean? I think it means time to do what you want, not really to relax - maybe holiday and rest time would be better off permanently differentiated because you normally need the latter after the former. I know do. not to complain, especially when I hear about how much holiday workers in the united states get, but then again we work harder than those in Europe and so it goes, round and round.

I think that the days when there was nothing to do on Sunday were under appreciated, it forced you do things at a slower pace, obviously now you still have the choice to do that, but with a hundred and one things going on at any one time, it pays to be going at 101 mph - at least while we're young.

Does late 20's even count as young any more?

What Next?

2010-10-31T09:54:00.000Z

I always have something in mind or on the go, loads of little projects I want to do and normally it is a case of not finding the time, but now it is really a case of not having the clarity of mind - every time I wanna start something I find myself a little distracted by another of these projects and since the projects now are larger and grander in scope than the others, it is taking longer to complete anything.

I still haven't done a lot of what I wanted to do , but did a while load of things that I had not really accounted for, but for some reason I can only see what i haven't done rather than what I have, this is not a glass half empty mood - it is simply true that i will have to completely re-asses how i go about working on projects - promotion at work means that I have more money but less time, and what i really need is time.

Part time may well be the answer.

A little way around Europe

2010-10-29T21:24:00.004+01:00

Dreams – I’ve had many, and I don’t mean the things that come during night which you wake up after, relieved or mournful (or if you’re still a teenage boy, a little sticky) I mean dreams of things you could do with yourself, places to go, hobbies to try – well one of mine was to get a car and drive my way around Europe, take in a couple of cities and generally feel like the world was no longer an electronic place – it was somewhere tangible to explore to your heart’s content.

So realising this was still something I had not done, I upgraded my little wannabe bad-boy golf with its ‘tints’, ‘rims’ and ‘sounds’ for something a little more sophisticated – fo anyone interested this upgrade is part of an on-going trend over the last year to generally upgrade myself into early middle age, and I admit I was having teething troubles thanks to my car (the pride and joy of any 17 year old, but a rather shameful motor for anyone knocking on 30’s door) my hair, (locks which I still long to lock down in braids) and of course my clothing which through no fault of its own encourages people to say to me “hey, I remember when you used to wear that at uni.”

So, welcome, please, if you will, the winds of change.

So, with short back and sides, suits and new shoes that scream: ‘I WORK NOW!’ I headed off to find the car that would tweak me into the next decade of my life with a little aplomb – normally when doing such things, I spend months looking, saving, testing, considering, blah blah blah, so one weekend, figuring I was in for the penny I should be in for the pound, I gathered my camera kit, old phones and other stuff lying around that I no longer needed and threw it all on eBay – looked at the money I had in my account after it’d all be sold and said ‘fine’ that’s how much I have to get a new car’.

I then started to peruse cars in this price range and was about to begin the drawn out process called ‘research’ which I, like most men, like to embark on before making any purchase of note. As I was about to begin, Wifey Mc Wife, came down to my little den and with a casual glance over my shoulder, noticing the tabs were open to ‘Autotrader’ ‘Gum tree cars’ and ‘Parker’s used price guide’ she turned the base of my little swivel chair to face her and somewhere just after noticing that I had set my brow for 3 weeks of frown at the computer, and just before me being able to defend myself for what was to be hours and hours of relationship neglect, she sighed in a beautiful manner, as if the gentle exhalation was permission and understanding rolled into one, and said: ‘please just get something you want’, and with that little snippet of wisdom, she left.

I was a little more than stunned!

No lectures starting with ‘you’re down here again...’ or ‘when are we gonna...’ etc etc. Just her footsteps echoing up the stairs and into the front room and quickly blending with a cooing sound, which she uses to commuicate with Amira-Averly who, wifey is conviced, can understand every last gurgle.

So, back in the den, with an almost patriotic sense of duty, I headed the advice and turned back to the computer to type in the details of the EXACT car I wanted and the only additions made in search engines were full service history.

I quickly checked the stats on two cars and then the third said it took part exchange, so a call later I found myself in a little place called Fleet, with a salesman who seemed to have just read the ‘dummies guide to selling’, wincing at my offers with all the emotion of a cheap, fringe theatre actor, who thinks he’s a star because his local gazette labeled his performance ‘bare-able’. I took the car for a spin, loved it, tested everything worked, while he tried to ooze sales pitch in my ear, leaving me wishing I was still driving the golf’s buckety engine, so it would have drowned him out.

I was extrememly pleased and imagined myself floating through the winding streets of Nice, roof down, with a satisfied grin creaking on my face, because I had actually bought something I wanted, rather than looked for a ‘deal/bargain’ which normally meant I’d settled for something. Kicking out of my day dream I made my final offer which was the sales guy’s moment to gesculate as if his livelihood would be irreparably damaged if he made such a deal. Jerky moves and hand popping followed, which fell somewhere between a fit and a belly dance, so I increased my offer by £100 and suddenly he was a mild mannered Indian chief, a totem pole of consideration, and then, probably now using the ‘man-from-Delmonte’ as inspiration, he slowly nodded his head and tried to look at me like he was doing me a favour and offered me his hand. The deal was done.

After the paper work was signed and money was internet transferred (cash is sooooo 1985) I walked away and swear even though I didn’t see it, he walked up to the closest mirror and DeNiro-esqued to himself ‘you still got it!’ and perhaps did that make a gun out of your fingers and fire move.

So fast forward a few weeks, a gas conversion to the car and an awkward pack later I found myself on the way to France, to begin my little European sojourn, for a moment I really thought I had picked the wrong day to leave: it had been a manic week, I’d hardly slept and all of a sudden, I felt queasy, my head was swirling, I wanted to throw up, my balance seemed all over the place, I couldn’t stand properly, it was like being on a ship in really choppy water... and suddenly I realised, I actually was on a ship, in really choppy waters, and my melodrama departed as I sat down and all the afore symptoms disappeared.

Disembarking the ship I was in main land France driving on the other side of the road, and to be fair quite enjoying it, I whipped out Tomtom and put in Milan as a destination, I knew it was about 550 miles from London to Milan, so figured that since I’d already done 100 to get to France I had about 450 left to go, unfortunately Tomtom told me from the tip of France I had 700 miles left, and it slowly dawned on me that my earlier calculation was the route in a straight line, not by road. Eek.

I decided not to tell Deena.

Now that the 10 hour route was mapped out, I figured I step on it, flick on the cruise control, switch to the LPG and get comfy, the perfect plan, so sweet, so flawless, only interrupted by the constant tolls – 4 Euros here, 20 Euros there, etc etc, every time you switched motorways which meant I had to jump out, run around the car, run back around and then start bombing it again. The French roads were great: wide and empty, with the only other inconvenience being the fact that you always have to pay first at petrol stations, but still... by the time I had made it out to east France, some hours later, snacking on Revels and popcorn while Deedee and Meemee slept in the back, I was actually 40 minutes ahead of schedule, driving 20mph faster over a ten hour journey actually does make a huge difference, and before I knew it, I was at the border of Switzerland

And you know what: Screw Switzerland.

I will explain why soon, but I will admit now for fear of annoying an army-less country, it’s an envious ‘screw-you’, they really know what they are doing out there...

Apologies for not elaborating on the title, but I will, by God them and their love of Phil Collins and fines will get the elaboration they deserve...grrrr

Ciao for now (but that’s ‘ciao’ in the moody annoyed Euro-trash way, not the chummy, effortless Euro-chic style... grrr... stupid Switzerland... grrr...).

“I” vs i

2010-10-27T11:56:00.006+01:00

You pushed me and i fought,

both reality and reason,

feeling i had grounds to complain.

However temporal or incomplete,

everything fights for its existence,

and the hearts diseases fight harder still.

You pushed me and i fought;

a matchstick in the path

of reality’s typhoon.

“The truth has come

falsehood passes away”

Indeed, the falsehood washed away:

Inviting me to exchange

my arrogance with dignity

and earn humility from pride.

Hardest break up I ever had...

2010-09-13T23:15:00.007+01:00

Dear Nokia
This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write, and before we get into all the messy details that follow, I want you to know I have done all I can to avoid this moment: I installed every one of your software fixes, fought for you on phone forums with all my might and most importantly, I’ve bought a phone from each batch of your releases since 1997.

I remember those early days so fondly - when I first met you, you came to me in the form of a 5110. You were chunky, had a huge aerial and bewitched me with the ability to text! Do you remember how you used to keep me up all night? I played with your snake endlessly, attempting to thrash another high score out of you before passing out in delighted slumber.

A little while later, 1999, you continued to court me with interchangeable fascias, and on the 3210 you let me in closer; I got to remove both your covers and your macho aerial bit the dust and you were suddenly sleek and desirable and everyone wanted you - but you were mine.

I succumbed to your magical way with words: your predictive text ability, that had me hammering out measured messages in no time...

Even now, my thumb is remembering the graceful glide over your warm silver buttons and my feet remember trips to the market to buy you new clothes, new fascias, with which I could truly and finally express myself indeed.

Those were happy days that became such a blur because I was so in love with you; so deeply devoted and loyal, and you treated me right: you supplied handset after quality handset, so much so that by 2000 I had spent the largest some of money ever on your 'matrix phone', the 7110, with the huge screen and snake 2! I now had a rollerball to twiddle too, and twiddle I did. What a glorious way to start the new millennium, and I held on to it, like a proud father until I grew up a little and got myself a 6310, and it epitomised all you could be: how sleek and sure of yourself you were and how robust and determined... And you were oh so, oh so, cool when you came out in the silver version with light blue screen backlight and the masterful Bluetooth.

Jaws dropped, hearts fluttered, life was good.

Remembering this is so easy, but dealing with what's to come is anything but. God, Nokia - by then I had loved you so much I even got a job in a phone store! I just wanted to be around you, to know what you were up to, waiting with baited breath for your next release and those years we spent together were special, though they all paled in comparison to the delight off the 6600: that shell shaped futuristic do-it-all phone that really could do it all; I set mp3 ring tones, my own message alerts, took quality pictures and swore the phone and I would never be parted - wildly telling anyone who would listen that future proof technology had arrived.

Some paid attention but most spurned me, but of course with a 6600 in hand it didn't matter. I ploughed on like a possessed man on a mission who felt he had found the truth: relentless, unstoppable, and maniacally narrow minded! I preached your glory from the tops of the mountains to the depth of the student unions - From the furthest reaches of the wide world when travelling, to dingiest back alleys of Hayes in Middlesex.

I supported you through thick and thin.
And on those rare occasions when I dealt with some other smutty phone maker trying to seduce me, I knew it was just a fling (you know how men can be so easily turned by a sleek curve, fancy gimmick or catchy marketing). But you were always there as a second phone or resting in some cherished draw space, knowing full well I'd always come running back.

And run back I did.
You released the latest of your communicator series, the 9210, and we cemented our feelings for one another; you merged your awesomeness with your seriousness and I matured into the caring business user; synchronizing emails and calendar dates in between browsing PDFs. It was... So.... Right...

But a few communicators in, you started to change. You got a little arrogant and introduced your N series phones and I went to stores and tried them and, for the first time in history our DNA no longer matched. There was no longer a feeling of 'we' – ‘we’ were separated. You were suddenly from Venus, and I was from Mars.

We could no longer communicate (on a communicator – oh the irony) - you became seemingly drunk as your software crashed on the n73 and you became a harlott, masquerading as some kind of games machine with the N-gauge (I will never forgive or forget that one. EVER!) And then you tried to be a filming device by the time you became the n90.

Heart breaking move after heart breaking move and I just wanted you to be the Nokia I knew and loved so dearly for all those years. I know I might have seemed harsh then; picking you up from stores, using you for brief, bedroom-based rendezvous, before packing you up in bubble wrap and shipping you off to some mug on e-bay who didn't know any better... And before you DARE say anything of how tough those times were for you, let me remind you that you weren't the one who had to deal with the let downs pouring over him again and again: finding out that what you loved so dear was abusing itself in such a way and didn't give a second thought to how I felt.

Those days you hurt me Nokia, and with every shoddy release and trip to the Carphone Warehouse repair centre I tried to put on a brave face to all my friends and told them everything was ok, but then you even had the audacity to go all ‘ooh la laa’ on me and started being a flip phone?!? All that time you, knew how I felt, and then decide to show your true colours.... AS A FLIP PHONE! ?!?!!?

And even then I tried to stay true, rather than collude with the enemy I resisted their charms and went back to old versions of your phones knowing that one day all would be well and you'd treat me the way I deserved to be treated and I waited, playing the role of the love-sick puppy by the phone, for years, I waited.

Then, like the breaking of a new dawn, and carrying just as much hope, the rumors began.

You were sorting yourself out, you were going to get your act together, undergo some kind of cellular rehab and right the wrongs of the past in a new release. I kept reading the words 'ground breaking', 'flagship' and 'best ever' and my heart bubbled in excitement, but time had also taught me to be cautious and wise; so rather than pre-order you I stood and watched from the sidelines as my brother bought your best ever incarnation, the N900, over from the States before it was even released here.

And he used you… and he raved about you… and I sighed in relief and when alone that sigh became a cry of joy.

And I bought you and I was happy, (ignoring all the little niggles and the huge limitation that this was the least 'mobile' mobile phone the world had ever seen as you always needed to be near a power source).

But still it was a welcome return, and all would be well, or so I thought.

I need you to know I didn't mean for it to happen, I was satisfied and hadn't been looking for anyone new, but then a friend came round and, well, she... She... Please don't get mad... You'll get all worked and crash, for God's sake you know how unreliable your operating system is...

Ok, I'm just gonna say it..

She brought her iPhone4 round.
And I picked it up... And within moments I was surfing the web the way I wanted to, taking pictures with a camera that didn't blur, downloading apps that you could only dream of and touching a screen so smooth and responsive it... It reminded me of your first keypads.... Sniff... Sniff....

You lied to me! You promised the world but gave me Coventry. I’d stood by your side waiting but you never went back to who I knew you could be, your heart was elsewhere, some new market; chavs and kids and chavvy kids and a whole load of gullible, nostalgic, fools who'd clung on to your memory with suicidal affection…

Just like I did.

But no more. I've outgrown you. In fact, I've outgrown you so much I'm typing this on my own iPhone 4. That’s the truth and I hope the truth hurts... Hurts enough to give back the last 6 years of my life.

It's over; I never want to see you again.

Wide Eyed

2010-06-09T20:26:00.001+01:00

So the journey home becomes something that i look forward to with relish, a little space in the day which i can fill with reading from a chosen book, marking in abundance, or try to steal sleep back from working day and drift into a calm and relaxing meditation.

It is sooo much better than driving, though i wonder why, if it is that good; have I chosen to exemplify it by adding extra 'o's to 'so' rather than type something fitting and eloquent.

Another case of my double standards. What a shameful man am I.

New Nokia

2010-04-25T11:50:00.000+01:00

So it's a new piece of technology in the bag and to be honest it is rather good, the N900 has so far allowed me access to youtube, a decent enough keyboard to type message quite comfortably with (even though the spelling is going to go out the window) and it has a NES emulator running around on it too, which is by far the best reason to cheer... second to the fact that it' not an iphone... call me stupid but i doubt buying one of them would be wise considering number 4 is about to come out.

Still a thousand and one bits and pieces to fiddle with butso far so good, so very very good. Widget bashing here i come.

Eccentric Election

2010-04-24T22:49:00.002+01:00

I am not a voter.

I have not yet in my twenty odd years manage to make it donw to the polls,not have i intended to, but this campaign would be the one that would make me start voting... if I was in any way inclined (and before anyone says if you don't vote then you can't complain' please note: I LOVE LONDON, have not complained about a damn thing since I've lived here... and being a big believer in 'if you don't like it go some where else' I would nd take my whining with me.

However that aside, I am in very interested in the TV debates which have given 'the little guy' (who ironically is the tallest) a shout this time round and when i got back from my volcano fiasco the first piece of news i heard was that the BNP was having a row with the folk over at Marmite... nuts! viva Web 2.0. I think the real winner will be the polls, since the projected number of voters is set to rise for the first time in a while! awesome - our 'kinda'democratic system will at least represent 2/3rds of the country!

P.s. my vote could easily be bribed out of me.

Taqwa Tangent

2010-04-02T20:40:00.000+01:00

To most people the term ‘Punk Islam’ is an obvious oxymoron, however Michael Muhammad Knight certainly presents them as interchangeable synonyms in his debut novel filled with university aged Muslims who aren’t typical mosque attendees aiming to be accountants and lawyers; they are a passionate bunch who love their religion in very unorthodox ways: one wears a full bhurka, and deletes lines of the Qur’an she doesn’t like, while openly discussing masturbation; another is an avid fan of ska music and adorns himself with tattoos (albeit ones of religious significance) and the moral compass of the book, Janghair, is a womanising drunk who loves everybody.

Each one of them is vivid and in many ways reminds you of someone you know. They are brought together as the residents of a novel house that hosts prayers by day and parties by night. Most of the above mentioned characters seem comfortable in their skin, and the only resident flirting the thin line between ‘straight edged’ Islam and his roommates’ own take on it is..., who as our protagonist, recounts the daily actions of the others.

With this as a premise, not an excessive amount happens throughout the novel, it’s their daily lives on show and we get a repeat formula where one character seems to flaunt an Islamic principle through their behaviour, followed by the protagonist considering it himself or discussing it with someone, but this results in the book’s most enjoyable sections: authentic dialogue on the current state of the not-so-practicing muslims. Sometimes they champion their individuality, see themselves breaking free of Islam’s 6^th century laws and other times are swayed by simple doubt and questioning as to whether their renegade ways have any significance, or would they be better off in the classical mainframe.

On a subject like this the question of offence is sure to raise its head (even though the type to take offence and those who normally spread the message of something being offensive are hardly going to find, let alone read, this interesting social commentary) and I can imagine many not completing the tale through the perceived near blasphemy that skips through its pages. Indeed the American edition begins with a poem where the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is intoxicated in a dumpster seeing revelation – a metaphor for what happened at Hira. (The British publishers removed it). However, the book does cover a rich train of thought that surely exists in Islamic parts of the world and whether from experience or imagination, Knight has done well to bring some of it to light and to cram many varied outlooks in. Those who persevere to the end will ultimately see the dangers of a punk Islam and thus the value of the classical tenants while constantly being offered the stark reminder that everyone has free choice.

Overall a daring and thought provoking novel, that few will encompass the value of, many will be offended by and many more will love to hate.

Excellent Evolution

2010-03-29T22:36:00.001+01:00

Book review.

Any listener to debate amongst various religious groups or evolutionist and creationists, will note a common arguing characteristic of both sides - where they point fingers at the others’ view and mount mocking insults to knock the opposing view down. In effect they scream ‘your idea is ugly’ and then through variations of this line of argument, they generally end with the claim ‘because your idea is ugly, mine therefore, is pretty.’

Jerry Coyne, takes the rare and dignified step in rising above this by producing a book on the subject that is beautiful in its own right, delicately and systematically presenting current and accepted scientific research that presents a wholly readable, and extremely powerful case for Evolution. In the process he doesn’t take a single swipe, dig or veiled insult at religion, and he also, rare in such works, peppers his work with humility: explaining that ‘true’ means regularly, successfully tested and accepted currently in many scientific circles. (It is worth noting this is not the the same criteria of ‘true’ for the religious who deem it to mean ‘infallible’ – indeed understanding the different definitions of ‘true’ could be a valid way of fence building between the two sides) and he notes future data may well prove Evolution wrong, though he ‘thinks this is unlikely’.

The information unravels in a very concise and reasoned fashion that indeed supports the claim of truth: building his case through recently found fossils that are considered transitional forms; the fossil record of animals, mammals and humans and the varied intricacies of evolution through natural selection, gradualism, common ancestry etc and there is a lot to be learnt.

One aspect in particular that I was ignorant of, was that searching for transitional forms was a calculated and predicted measure, based on the sediment layer depth and geographical location in which scientists found previous fossils. Using that data they would predict where the next creature in the chain would be found and Coyne mentions several expeditions where searches found remains of the creatures predicted. I had previously thought they had been found, to some degree by chance (and Coyne mentions important discoveries found in this way too, perhaps to spare my blushes.)

I was also interested to understand that the conditions for a fossil to occur are quite rare and that it is estimated 99.9% of the creatures that have lived on earth since bacteria, have come and gone leaving no trace. There was relief too, when Coyne after making his case for evolution, dismisses psychologists attempts to ‘Darwinise every aspect of human behaviour.’

There are several areas I wanted to explore further after reading because the information offered left me with questions (as any good research text should, and Coyne offers a full reading list of writers/ researchers who cover other areas in depth, as each would need a fair read on their own to fully grasp) First off, why does the visual similarity of embryos of a shark and man mean that man is an evolution from a shark/ fish type ancestor, couldn’t that simply be the best opening production vessel for both creatures?

Also the argument of ‘bad design’ by a Creator (in reference to some animals who don’t fly too well, or are so colourful, they are easily seen and caught by predators) seems to pre-suppose that the animals only purpose was survival, but if this was the case then surely that would mean a more limited food supply for its predator. Couldn’t the ‘badly designed’ creature also be part of evolution’s delicately balanced nature as it provides that sustenance for the other creature?

I’m not quite sure either why ‘transitional’ forms have to be ‘transitional’. And this, I guess, is based on my limited understanding of the science of fossils and sediments, but consider if A B and C are three, seemingly, linked forms and C is the least evolved (physically as that’s what fossils mostly indicate) and found at 375 million years ago, while A, the most evolved (again physically) of the 3 is found 330 million years ago and B is found at 350 million years ago. - Does that necessarily mean that a) they all died out in favour of the following type - I guess number of fossils found would be relevant, or b) that physical change is the best marker of an evolution - so if we found an unknown creature akin to a dolphin’s fossils would we consider them lesser or greater than a whale’s fossils? Considering one is deemed far more powerful physically, but the other is deemed far more intelligent.

But anyway, for me, the fact that the book was so clearly and poignantly put and I felt I was able to understand the stages and nature of evolution, makes it an indispensable introductory text and has made me want to read further on the subject.

Indeed anyone who claims of evolutionists, and I have heard it many, MANY times, ‘how can they think we came from monkeys?’, really ought to read it and, agree or not, see that it is a beautiful and intricate idea, that scientifically based on this empirical evidence, presented in this way, can be deemed scientifically true (and amongst the evidence is a rather monkey-less beginning for humans).

Based on this, whatever other twists and turns will come up in the Creation / Evolution debate in the years, centuries, millennia to come, Coyne will surely be remembered as one of the wiser stately gentlemen of the debate, who knows treating the opposing side with respect will surely garner him far more adherents than some of his contemporary evolutionists’ slug fest attempts will.

Nowt Note Worthy

2010-03-23T18:45:00.000Z

What a hiatus: self imposed and limiting, with only this a quick outburst to make up from alack of creativity. See, it's exam run up, and in the exam run up i whore my wares out like Adebayor's agent does during the summer break.

Every year I swear never again, and then a little money floats under my nose and I find myself lured and lynched in to another merry go round of bursting into people's houses to kill my of Of Mice and Men, before dashing on, to teach an anthology of poems that should never have been published let alone taught.

That's in no way true or fair - half of them are awesome, some are quite good, but one or two don't even qualify for recycling.

Not that I could do better mind!

Man moves out to Maldives blad!

2010-02-23T13:19:00.001Z

Yes, I start with the ghetto chav talk, because while away I didn’t hear a single word of anything less than the Queen’s English from the folk I met in the hot land I swore I’d one day venture to.

Now I have to give a little background: when I was 21, and saving pennies from my not-so-legal sales, I happened to be going out with a girl who had a Kuoni brochure in her house, and that brochure dropped my jaw in utter amazement.

Never had I seen holiday destinations such as those staring back at me from the glossy pages… in a numb shaking fit I swore I would one day go to the most beautiful of destinations I saw in there… The Maldives.

So fast forward 8 years after making a little legal money and playing merry go round with various partners til I found the right wife and bingo: she offers to take me somewhere for my birthday! And before I continue, a word of warning for those planning to make a similar offer… Wifey simply said ‘where do you wanna go?’ She did not mention the words ‘up to this much…’, ‘the budget is…’ or ‘I’ll pay for … amount’.

It was some kind of holiday blank cheque. I think she figured I’d say New York... She didn’t know me that well.

I took my time elucidating possibilities and that glossy brochure worked its way out of the recesses of my memory banks and cried ‘Me you fool, remember me!’ Then I unashamedly asked Wifey to take me there (safe in the knowledge that for her birthday I’d bought her a second hand bike- fairs fair right?…hmmmnnnn)

A month later with everything booked, I found myself flying into Male (mal-ee), the Maldivian capital and couldn’t help but think as I gazed out of the plane window: ‘I’ve come to lego land’. Seriously, the city is a weird construction of different height coloured blocks that stand out of the emerald sea surrounding it like some kind of anomaly… it’s not ugly, in fact it looks quite kitsch and cute; as if it looks that way for a dare and will one day look like something else: Something like a real city.

Having landed I thought the transfer would be a bus taxi or some taxi boat that would soothe me out to begin my holiday but I was surprised to be given a voucher by the representative saying ‘air taxi’ and was invited to stroll on to the coolest little red plane I’d ever seen. It had twin propeller engines and the guy actually started the propeller by pushing it really hard… all I needed was for someone to say ‘contact’ and I would have been in my element. The seat arrangement inside was made for dwarves and the pilot warned me as I was going on ‘you’re gonna struggle’ I turned to make a witty comeback and found myself looking and this beautiful 6ft tall sun-kissed American, bare footed but in uniform and my light headed brain could only reply ‘yeah… I’m tall’. She polite -smile-left. When I found my voice again I told wifey ‘that pilot is soooo sexy’ she said ‘yeah I can really see that.’ So I said ‘she really reminds me of Sarah Conner’. Wifey stared blankly …’who?’ ‘the lady from the first Terminator films!!!’ I yelled. Her slow blinks answered before she formulated the following sacrilegious words: ‘is that the robot films?’

Anyway we got on the plane, and were treated to a noisy but sumptuous view of a load of the 1400 islands that make up the Maldives. Some of them seem no bigger than a bedroom while others stretch out for a good kilometre or two, but that’s the maximum. The whole country only has 350,000 inhabitants and you could well argue it is actually over run during the year as 650,000 tourists come by annually.

Those stats may give the idea that it was going to be cramped and that was my worry when we finally landed at the resort, but it was nothing of the sort. In fact through the whole holiday I never counted more than 6 people on the kilometre long beach (even thought the resort was full) at any one time. But I think the accommodation had something to do with it.

See, the place only had water bungalows, which are basically a little house, on stilts, in the water, where your back garden is the sea; the beautiful, pretty fish filled turquoise sea.

It was sweeeeeeet. The bungalow also had a little underwater viewing section where you could just stare at the little fishies going by. The next week was filled with snorkelling, diving and watching water wildlife by day and loads of movies at night. I spoke to quite a few people and it was really odd, cos most of the people there were all retired 60 year olds save for a few younger honey-mooners and there was a real air of well-to-do about the place. Like every time someone said ‘hi’ they were also saying ‘we’re all so great aren’t we?’ and I’d never seen such genuine self-satisfied smiling. Everyone was ear to ear beaming… kinda like being at an organic food convention.

Since the holiday wasn’t costing me I decided to be uber cool (for ‘cool’ read ‘sad’) and try to be James Bond (for ‘James Bond’ read ‘fat geek’) by buying a water scooter, it’s a little contraption that bombs you through the water and you can use it to dive and stuff… it was super fun, once I got the hang of it… in fact it took me quite a while to get used to the whole water equipment altogether; several times I went under water trying to snorkel having forgotten to actually put the mouth piece in my mouth resulting in me chocking like a beached whale and fits of laughter from wifey and Japanese tourists.

The dolphin watching was cool, we chased them out to the middle of the sea and they did the whole hopping ‘akakakak akka’ thing flipper used to do. I saw a reef shark while snorkelling and then quickly came up to tell Dee to take a look, forgetting, moronically, that these things not only move, but move bloody quick, so by the time she dunked here head in it was gone… leading to lots of ‘of cooouuuuurse your saw a shark baby… I believe you’, while I pleaded my honesty on the boat ride home.

The food was served through 5, yes 5, buffets a day – three of them had about 50 various meals to choose from and the other two were a 5 snack selection affair; just about right for me and others of my eating habit inclinations. Do be careful if you do ever go to on these all inclusive jobs because one of the couples was telling us that some resorts were all inclusive… except for water (?!?) so do your homework.!

The last thing of note was me bringing the water scooter on the way back through the airport. It’s a pretty big box and it’s just brown, no pictures or anything and on the way through at Heathrow they scanned it, checked it and asked me what it was etc (the battery alone is the size of a small bomb – how do I know the size of a small bomb you ask? Ummm… errr….. TV, I swear… nothing to do with being an ex ISOC president) now in Male airport, the lady looked at the box, and said ‘we have to check this.’ I didn’t want to open it as it was dressed in reams or brown tape, so I just said ‘ but it’s a water scooter’ as if that was some kind of get out clause but deep down knowing she was gonna check anyway. It worked though; She just shrugged her shoulders and stuck a (Security Checked) sticker on.

Phew, if only Heathrow security was as easy.

So until next time, Easter, when I’m planning, God willing, to drive to the south of France for a week –have a flat sorted there so if any one fancies coming to chill you’re more than welcome. Serious like!

I hope you’re all well and suitably insulated against the bitter London cold… I will never get used to this and have got all BNP against the snow, wishing it would piss off back to Nowray.

Super Sleep

2010-01-31T15:34:00.003Z

I am not in the habit of getting ill, in fact this is one of the first times I have found myself severely weakened by something other than disappointment; but over the last week I have probably spent a good 60 percent of my available time in the middle of attempted hibernation. As soon as my feet drag me in from work, I de-robe quicker than you can say 'hang that' and am soon under the double duvets, dreaming of the morning.

Now one side effect has been the laziness, which I suppose was expected, but another was the negativity that invaded my thoughts, : 'I can't be arsed' and 'Someone else do it', shockingly negative and hard to shake. It's passing now, but I'm a little freaked out by how powerful the feelings were, roll on the summer...

Crazy Cold

2010-01-20T15:47:00.000Z

Yes, destroy it like all those who got destroyed playing me at Street fighter anytime between 1993 and 1997 or mutilatidely destroyed like anyone who played me at Pre Evo.. between the time the game was merely a twinkling in the developers eye and: forever… I own that game. (cue growl and scary face)

Emotional outburst aside, I plan to destroy etiquette with the following line: ‘happy new year folks’. Apparently it’s only right to say this in the first two weeks of the year, normally I’d beg to differ… but since someone random and of no note has already coined the date on the first website I looked at, I figure it won’t be long until it’s law.

Loads happened since the meditation centre, but unfortunately none of it had anything to do with my memory coming back to me. It’s still as hazy and distant as those hazy distant days of the ‘penny game’ (definition 2… no pervert am I… your honour)

Another side effect is my ambivalence towards almost everything, seriously I can’t get worked up about anything, and even when I do it feels like some old habit… one that I am trying to force on myself. I feel much like the classic Simpsons episode where Bart tells his father: ‘Nothing you say can upset us. We're the MTV Generation.’ And Lisa adds: ‘We feel neither highs nor lows.’

I honestly feel like that, oddly numb and peculiar. But still life goes on even though rather than getting better it is actually getting worse. For some alleviation: I zipped up to Edinburgh for 3 days over new year, it was a surprise from la wife, which was a good surprise… unlike the surprise I had brought her from the Med. Centre which in effect was to swap myself for some kind of zombie.

We got to the place in the city centre and it was a beautiful 18th century affair with all the trimmings you’d expect from the 18th century: I.E. it was flowery and freezing. The place was rated as amazing by trip advisor and such, but to be honest, a room with a bed is the same as any other room with a bed (MTV generation stock response), and this one had an ensuite that would have reminded anyone who spent some of their uni time at Pevrell of exactly what a small bathroom was. In fact this was even smaller than the pods there… but that was about the worst of it for the city.

Now, far from being a recluse when I go away I like to get up to stuff and get into things, meet the locals and find a story to tell, however it was so frickin’ cold… my venturings were reduced, and the Scots folks venturings were non existent.

I got there new years eve night and headed straight for the Hogmanay party which is basically a big free for all in the middle of the city centre where most people got pleasantly drunk (didn’t see a fight, argument or street urination all night) and had a good time…

I found a stage with a trio performing music and cheap jokes… even had my self a little two step dance with the wife looking on rather bemused at my free form movements, which could have ran with the headline: ‘man seems to drown on dry land.’

Low and behold though, for all her sniggering several of the folk around me were more than encouraging of my little strut… even though they probably presumed I was on some kind of day release.

As the clock reached midnight, we were invited to join a countdown from 30… Bit annoying, especially since it takes a long time to say – 27, 26, etc.. etc… but no where around me did I find the errant, wide eyed, last minute snog-wanters that London normally throws up at me come NY midnight… instead a civil and merry crowd formed large circles and soaked up the new year with a big group hug and were then bedazzled by 10 minutes of fantastical fireworks. I wish more terrorists would put their efforts into those kinds of explosives that their current Tom-foolery.

On the way home, I watched dozens of people fall over… which if isn’t some kind of spectator sport already, really should be… as I was as engaged as with any football match at the near miss slips and trips of the homebound revellers.

The next day was DEAD. I went out into town 3 times waiting to see some life, but while the city clears up, the shops close and there was no one around. The next day I found some sales where I bought dolphin calendars (yes more than 1) then looked up at the castle, covered in snow and laughed aloud when wifey suggest we brave the journey up there. Caught the Awesome Avatar and since you all know my feelings on that film, I’ll only add that before the movie started a little ‘beer-lady’ wheeled her self into the front of the cinema and asked if anyone wanted sweets and beer. I threw anxious looks around thinking ‘folk back home get excited if popcorn is doing the rounds- beer’s gonna make them nuts!!!’ but lo and behold a quiet, orderly queue formed to quietly order their drinks, before quietly consuming them through the rest of the film: Seamless society.

It got me thinking about moving to Edinburgh; seriously… the place was beautiful, quiet, smiley, well mannered, fresh and it had all the conveniences of a big city (shopping centres, good transport and high speed internet) but had all the quirks of some small back water town (DODGY parking, free food and excessive amounts of wellies). However the cold, was unforgiving… kinda like how hell will be with its heat… inescapable. I felt every sinew in my body strain from cold… knees click, knuckles crackle, teeth chatter… if felt like the cold was some kind of cruel mistress toying with my worthless frail body. Never have I known cold like it… I aged years in those 3 days… so the search for a ew resting place goes on.

Anyway, thanks for your help with the situation with my brother… he was beaten and gassed by the Egyptian police along with these guys, but thankfully he made it home safe and sound, your calls to the Foreign Office were much appreciated…

He is now banned from EGYPT (apparently), which kinda sucks since we were kind of from there… but since we are both as about Egyptian Tetley’s tea so maybe not such a bad thing.

Poem Petit

2010-01-14T00:02:00.003Z

Let's share.

Give yours to me

and I'll divulge all I know -

Swap nothing both ways

and I'll sing like I'm winning:

Then drift a day with a frozen smile

then hound you for more.

Let's SHARE:

pretend we're listening,

pining for Silence.

Evil Edits

2010-01-10T00:46:00.003Z

Could anything be more annoying that editing? Not only is it time consuming, but there is the constant opportunity to improve on what you wrote, so really you end up writing most of what you wrote first time again. Now, fair enough there are the old adages of most of writing is in the re-writing and such cliches, which are of course true, but they care utterly painful.

To think today has seen eight hours of non stop computer time at the mercy of a Microsoft program... trying to tidy up a two year old piece of work.

What a way to spend a saturday.

Awesome Avatar

2010-01-01T10:53:00.003Z

There is little doubt that ‘ego’ is synonymous with monsieur Cameron and it seems some of the high brow critics are holding it against him (a situation akin to the pot calling the kettle black, but with an aga’s vocabulary) While word of mouth reviews for Avatar have caught on like boy bands did in the 90s, some of the defacto review sources seemed to have been more than a little cold to his latest efforts.

Avatar is the sumptuously rendered tale of paraplegic marine who is given a second life in the body of a half human/ half Nabi creature, the race indigenous to the aptly named Pandora, which he uses to befriend, betray and eventually bond with the locals into fighting the human invaders seeking to milk the planet’s natural resources.

There is no need to warn of plot spoilers as you are on very familiar ground: main character gains some power, enjoys power, power equals responsibility, through power meets girl, responsibility becomes treachery, character seeks redemption and, alakazam presto: redeems himself into a heady concoction of happily ever after.

Cameron goes with the safe-as-houses storyline because he is more interested in showing us the tale in a new way and his efforts to this end are nothing short of breath taking. The world of Pandora is richly vivid and original; from the gill breathing mammals to the luminously radiant forest, while the timing, editing and effects combine to hit every visual pleasure centre you’ve ever had as well as firing up some new ones.

Granted, a couple of lines of dialogue need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but this is occasional hiccup rather than a film long burp. However, it seems the broadsheet bashers have taken this and a few other niggles; and stuttered them into a symposium of flaws, mocking the well meaning message, the solid performances (the Colonel in particular eases intelligently into evil through his sinister stereotype) and seem to have merely yawned impatiently at the ground breaking world that Cameron delicately whisks us through.

I can see why some may reasonably restrain themselves from a 5 star rating, but to drop into the realm of 2 and in a peculiar case 1, is not only unfair, but grossly inconsistent. Let’s pull back a couple of years to the magical Apple advert Wall E, and remember it also pushed new visual boundaries, offered and earthy message, and while, yes, cuter and smoother than Avatar, it was more predictable and numbing.

How the Disney vehicle received full stars and some Michelin chef ones to boot, while Avatar gets treated with the finesse of a McDonalds buffet (heaven forbid they ever exist) demeans the pain staking labour of love that this film has obviously been; Cameron promised a spectacle, masterfully delivered one and threw in a new bench mark for film to boot. For this fact alone, more than a little respect and acknowledgement are due (especially since they mostly knock the film for what it is not rather than appreciating what it is) and one can only hope it’s not another decade before Cameron serves us such a visual treat once more.

Mental Meditation

2009-12-29T16:03:00.000Z

So it was not your normal Christmas, and I don’t mean simply there was no tree, or there was no Santa and it was nothing to do with the lack of presents.

My Christmas day was spent, as I had spent the previous five days, within a ‘meditation centre’, cross legged, in complete silence... no words, books, writing etc etc...

So I guess a short bit of background is needed:

I have a friend (yes, someone has taken pity and befriended me) who I’ve known for couple of years and when I saw him in the summer I noticed a great change in him. He was calmer than ever, ‘lighter’ (whatever that means; it’s one of those words like ‘nice’ or ‘cool’ that you understand but can’t explain) and he just seemed happier; so of course I asked him what drugs he was on and where I could get some but he replied that he’d been doing something called ‘meditation’ which I quickly googled and found out meant: ‘sitting still with your eyes closed’, (but I would call ‘day sleep’).

My friend then added that this was actually ‘Vipassana’ meditation and asked me if I’d wanted to give it a go... of course me, being a lover of all types of sleep, agreed in earnest and so we would meet weekly and have meditations sessions, which I must say were AWESOME: Calm, peaceful slices of sensory joy which really gave you focus, control and as the bloke from Blur’s Park Life said, ‘an enormous sense of well being.’

So without knowing much about it I figured I would go for one of the ten day retreats where he learnt the technique –he told me it was in silence (which wasn’t a problem as I’d done retreats in mosques like that before) and that there was about 12 hours of meditation a day – this was slightly ominous, considering my average per day over a ten day period was probably an hour and the most I’d ever sat in a day was 3 hours... but there’s nothing like a challenge right?

So I called up, registered, was chuffed they said it was free and waited for the 20^th of December.

Come the day, embarking on the journey to Norwich was made all the more awkward by the snow turning a 3 hour journey into a 5 and a half hour one, which at times saw my little car believe it was auditioning for an imaginary TV show called ‘vehicles on ice.’ I finally arrived, 7.30 pm, at an unassuming adventure centre which the course was being held at. The first thing I did was run around the car park to make snap judgments on the attendees based on their vehicles; half expecting to see a gluttony of camper vans, electric cars and bicycles made from recycled cigarette ends, but thankfully there was a suitably middle class feel to the four wheeled steeds resting in the falling snow.

Popping inside led me to an easy registration form, which asked the bizarre question: ‘how are relations with your family’ and also outlined the 5 rules for my stay: no killing, no lying, no sex, no other religious activity and no talking; and then when my name was countersigned someone asked to speak to me and instantly pulled me into a side room. The middle aged, partially haired and partially toothed Douglas, assessed me with an enquiring eye.

“We know you asked about prayers before and we just want to make sure you won’t pray.”

“Of course not” I replied, realising I had managed to hold that part of the 5 rules for all of about 7 minutes. I had just lied, was planning to pray and for the record was planning to kill any cockroaches if I found them... but I balanced this moral dilemma by thinking I would be really silent and sexless.

The daily itinerary was outlined and then at 8pm silence began... and began in earnest. Every day we were woken at 4. Meditated from 4.30 to 6.30 – breakfast til 8 – meditation from 8 til 11 then lunch to 12. Rest til 1 – then meditation til 5 – snacks til 6 then meditation til 9 with a break for a ‘video lesson’ from 7 to 8.

Next morning we were up at four for meditation and all my previous work with my friend helped me out and I got back into my normal rhythm, but soon after found the meditation sensations weren’t as clear as when I was back home. But I left that bother to dwindle into the pervading silence.

Now of course I didn’t have any time to speak to anyone but from countings there were 35 male meditators all in all; 15 being ‘old students’ (those who had completed courses before) and the rest new. The old students looked so at ease: perfectly still, ready, devoted and serious, while the newcomers were a mixed bunch of expectant and apprehensive lambs waiting to see what was to come.

There were also 6 ‘servers’ (old students who would cook and tidy after the students) and then the organiser guy, Douglas, and ‘The Teacher’ a short bespecled man who looked like the short red wearing guy who was in the ‘dungeons and dragons’ cartoons from when we were younger, the character’s name escapes me... in fact... remembering anything from before I went into the meditation centre is slightly difficult. That’s not a joke either, everything from before the centre feels like it happened a very very long time ago...

Anyway, in the first night’s video we were told about this technique being ‘scientific’ etc and I was looking forward to hearing theory and info etc. The first few days passed without much incident and to be honest the days rolled into one, we were instructed in the correct breathing (which was a big step back from what I’d been doing) but I went along with it. Silence, 10-12 hours meditation etc etc The food was good, the sitting sometimes uncomfortable but you got used it, though two people left in those first few days, obviously not to their liking... maybe tofu wasn’t their cup of (organic, coriander scented) tea.

Day four things got a little weirder, now we were told that it was important we kept our eyes closed for the entire meditations, didn’t change positions or move our hands and feet, and at the beginning and end of each session there would be gentle, short chanting and instructions for the session played out to us.

By day 5 I was getting a little more bored of the pace as I was still way back from I was when practicing on my own and I was growing a little irate at the videos... that were generally knocking belief in God, but more and more I was finding myself really drawn to the video... I would really look forward to them everyday... Odd. Further strangeness revealed itself in the fact that I was really liking the place and the stay, even though it wasn’t particularly beneficial... and I had no idea why I was liking it. Seriously... not one rational thought came to mind, and it wasn’t a ‘feeling’ or emotion that was making me feel something. It was this constant mental thought: ‘this place is great’... I have never had a thought that I couldn’t explain... a feeling of course... but never a thought... strange.

On the morning of the next day, the first thoughts of leaving dropped into my head, simply because the pace was moving about as quickly as the Eurostar with its power cuts and also because the previous two nights videos had begun talking about having ‘past lives’ and ‘karma’ in those lives being responsible for misery in this life etc. Which is fine to hold as a belief, but I was starting to wonder where the ‘scientificness’ mentioned in the first days had gone. I was also getting a little tired of creeping round to pray, waiting for my flat mate to leave so I could steal the needed 5 minutes and then being nervous as footsteps came past the unlocked door. Made me appreciate life in London more... Viva Britannia and its religious freedom.

So, that evening as the video revealed that we were all so great for having completed the 6^th day and told us the next thing we would be doing was something I had already done to death at home, I figured I may as well go. So I told the deputy guy, who told me he was shocked, that I’d done all the hardest days, only 3 days left etc etc and I explained that I had been practicing for a few months already and was finding this all too slow as I had learned at a far quicker and, in my eyes, a far more useful pace. He was shocked (again) to hear I knew the technique and as I mentioned the stages that were to come next, he was slightly subdued and said ‘your friend should not have told you any of that, you need to be in a safe place, here, to learn it.’ It had obviously irked him.

The wording left me wondering what kind of ‘safe place’ he was talking about but he said we’d need to speak to the ‘Teacher’ (the one who doesn’t answer any questions, except by repeating bits of the video and doesn’t actually teach anything, he just sits by the TV while the video is playing – wish I could get away with teaching like that) Douglas asked me to sleep on it and if I felt like that the next evening then fine. I agreed, wasn’t in any particular rush, since as I mentioned, I still had the THOUGHT I liked the place, but had no idea why.

During the next meditation, while I sat there thinking it was going to be one of last ones, I looked over the group who now all had the same serious, focus of the old students on the first day and nearly everyone was joining in with the bowing at the end of the sessions, and as I watched, the first time I’d opened my eyes in a session, I couldn’t help but think ‘they look like brain washed lemmings.’

So after the evening meditation I spoke to the teacher; outlined the same things and expected a similar response, but instead he got really annoyed, his eyes twitched with anger and said ‘you know nothing about Vipassana, what your friend has taught you is damaging you, he should not have done that and if you leave, you should not continue to practice with him.’

His anger shocked me as it was the first non whispering, no smiley communication I’d had in the week I’d been there and contrary to what I agreed with Douglas, he said I could go immediately. I got up and headed to pack my stuff. ‘Doug’ (we were bezzies now) was told to accompany me.

On the way to my room, with genuine surprise he said ‘I’m surprised he’s just let you go, normally we take leavers to the kitchen with the servers and reclimatise them for a while before sending them out.’

The word reclimatise stuck with me as I got in the car and started driving, and I could see exactly why as I came to my first red light, which my brain recognised and totally DID NOT respond to, I knew I needed to stop, but none of the automatic reactions that I would normally have, break, change gear etc came to me. I stopped about 10 meters past it. Had another car been on the road coming from the right, I’d of been screwed.

I pulled over at a petrol station and just read some item titles to try and re-engage my brain and thought: ‘I’m not here... my brain just isn’t here’ and that was when it first hit me that I over the past few days I had undergone a process that had all the hall marks of hypnotism: The sensory deprivation, changed daily patterns, tone of voice being used, elongation of words, chanting, prompts, alliteration, being in the dark etc etc.

Anyway I got home and freaked my wife out with this Zombie like version of myself and yesterday and today have tried to regain my focus, but it’s not really working, the memory thing is still very very hazy and I still feel quite numb, but I guess I walked out in the middle of the course so I’ve only really got myself to thank.

So as I wait for my brain to fully kick back in, and it wasn’t like this when I spent 10 days in a mosque, I’m kind of in two minds about whether this was rather dodgy than every day life, because you see everything can have an effect on you: the films you watch, music you listen to etc etc... so it’s not like the rest of our lives are devoid of this hypnotism or programming or whatever you want to call it, and obviously to produce intense results in 10 days you have to go to extreme measures, but there’s something not quite right about it... but I can’t put my finger on it. However having said this, If you judge by the results, people who come out after the ten days claim to be happier more peaceful and give you some variation of the phrase ‘I knew this was for me, this is exactly what I want to do with my life.’ Can’t be a bad thing (though some cursory browsing over some forums, mentions some who had left early developed acute mental anxieties)

Maybe my apprehensions are simply because I couldn’t let go of the Islamic elements to take the rest in, but with anything Islamic; I chose what I read, how much I read, how much I listened, what I did etc. This was regimented, forced (?), probably needed to be... and I guess some people may not be able to do it step by step any other way.

And just to clarify, the technique... I think is awesome. But the centre tickles my reservations, but I really this is because I couldn’t do as they asked and ‘whole heartedly embrace’ the technique.

Here’s a link if you’re interested in reading more or giving it a go.

Here’s a very pragmatic research paper on the issue on the subject.

If you give it a go, make it a whole hearted one, the way the centre teaches it takes out any elements of the pick and mix!

Anyway, hope your Christmas was a little more individualistic.

May all beings be happy (as the video constantly reminded us)

God bless guys.

Killing Christmas

2009-12-27T21:59:00.000Z

So it’s heading to the Christmas season and the older I get the less anywhere actually feels Christmassy, this isn’t a complaint and probably more to do with being 28 rather than 8… but for some reason I thought it’d get bigger and bolder, but now less people sing the carols, less houses get ‘dressed up’.. I used to love slipping by the neon covered abodes wondering what it said about the people inside… one of the rare times the outside gets to show a bit of brash personality. Ce la vie...

And why have I used ellipses so much here…

Time will tell

2009-12-14T22:02:00.000Z

So it is a few days to the meditation centre and thought I am not worried, the intrigue is starting to die down and I’m left wondering why am I choosing to go and spend a whole load of time at a place that will teach me a technique I already know.

Wondering if I’m just trying to put myself off because of all that silence, quiet time with me…

Eek.

Awful acting

2009-12-12T20:15:00.001Z

Acted in a video.

Bad idea.

All Arsenal

2009-12-06T18:22:00.000Z

So it's back to winning ways and I'm wondering how many times a team has ever fielded 6 midfielders instead of any out and out strikers . Not many, I'm sure, and I sneakily watched the game on line somewhere, not a bad stream, shame I only caught the last 20 minutes, in fact from what I watched I thought Arshavin was pretty lazy, unfit and must have had a 'mare, and then all the papers and blogs said he'd been outstanding.

I'll wait and see what Match of the Day offers.

Handed your arse at Home

2009-11-29T00:26:00.000Z

That was painful. How can something that was supposed to bring so much joy, be so utterly cruel. I thought the omens were well aligned: I got a free ticket to the game, was allowed to cancel prior engagements without reprisal and then one of the young girls I teach, told me it was her birthday and she was an Arsenal fan, so I thought 2-1 arsenal all over, but no....

And what hurt most is Essien and Mikkel didn't do a thing apart from niggley fowls. Drogba was awesome fair play, but the heart of their midfield didn't even break a sweat... still... 2 thirds of the season to go.. let's see what happens at the bridge.

Roll on Man city

Who'd-of-thought Hobbies

2009-11-21T08:35:00.003Z

It's always good to have a few side projects and hobbies from whatever you main job is, especially when they defy stereotypes. I met a cabbie the other day and as the general chit chat through the journey developed into more diverse subjects than the weather etc, I found he was an avid traveller who works for half the year then disappears for the second half, to do what he likes best: underwater photography! In another unexpected free time revelation, a guy I met, who for all intents and purposes has a scientific research job and looks well as though he might: tall, skinny, with an air of intellect about him... well, he cage fights in his spare time.

Odd. Mine are so plain in comparison... I teach and then read and write in my spare time, have to find something more original to do, and meditation doesn't count because, well, it's kind of (ahem) 'new age' and teachers are kinda 'that crowd' (double ahem)

Pointless Paper Work

2009-11-17T18:43:00.004Z

Do all promotions involve mass paper pushing exercises? is it a requisite someone dreamt up... thinking this would be one way to separate the wheat from the chaff (or chavs). I think so, masses of paper where you regurgitate and track all kinds of minute things you have done to a level that no one will ever again care about...

Sounds kinda like academia in the work place...

Less of that please!

Tarantino Tales

2009-11-15T00:44:00.003Z

Remember Samuel L. Jackson's beloved spine chine chilling lines in Pulp fiction. well the actual quite goes:

Ezekiel 25:17 (King James Version)

¹⁷And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

That's it! No 'blessed is he...' I am shocked... 12 years late... but socked all the same... or is that a little too much hyperbole? yes... I'm quite surprised I guess.

Don't Dream

2009-11-07T00:23:00.000Z

That's not in the grand sense of the idea... I.e. don't have ambition and stuff.. not at all... by all means ave that by the bucket load.. in fact have so much of it you spend most of your time delusional. But in my case, I'm talking about the night movies... it's funny how some people think they means something and others think they are total tosh, before I took a gentle religious incline I too thought they were a waste of space, but that's only because I'd had about one every year for most of my maturing life. Now I get them regular as clock work and I don't even like cheese that much, so I can't blame it on yellow midnight snacking (that was by the way a cheese reference, I don't think 12 Am is a good time to start snacking on Simpsons.

I have no idea most of the time what they mean, if anything and though I understnad they are regarded as a science, there is an element of beauty about them that I would just prefer to remain mysterious.

Tracking Travolta

2009-11-05T00:30:00.000Z

What is John Travolta doing these days? ... I don't know why I find that guy interesting... but he is for some reason... not the chin... not the Scientology... just something about him that's calm and tetchy at the same time.

And for the record even I don't know what I mean... so forgive me.

Raving 'Bout Ryan (Air)

2009-11-02T22:45:00.002Z

I'm the first to be shocked by my words, but you have to say something is good when consistently turns out to be that way. I have flown with Ryan air many times now and recently, oh so recently, I have realized It is actually pretty bloody good - now before you call the white coated folk - first of all, we all know what we get what we pay for, so any fancy footed remarks can toddle of to the BA strike merchants.

4 pound won't even get me a look at a BA plane where as it got me two return flight with Ryan Air - granted, this was only due to the magical Visa electon card... but flying abroad for £4 - Return.. for two people, all in! Can't even dream about complaining. The other thing I like is you can turn up the airport with half an hour before your flight leave, as long as you make it through security quick enough (easier said than done as Stanstead) you can motor off onto the plane within minutes.

True the budget cuts they have mean the people who check you in are also the people who are your stewards, who are also probably the people who cook the inflight meals, who are also the people who work on the telephones... but hey... if that all goes towards making my £4 flight. So be it.

Lastly, the flights are actually on time, in fact, I have never been on a flight with them that has been delayed.. can't say that about all the big airlines I've flown with and I've flown with them a fair amount too.

Some say Ryan Air is the Mcdonalds of the sky.. and I guess that simply means they give you something that hits the spot but your don't rave about... or it means they both make you sick at times, but truth be told, so far so good: 3 pairs of flights under a tenner this year, as long as they don't make me pay for toilet trips... I think I'll stick with a good thing while it's going.

Wonder what their proposed business class flights will be like.

Do a Day Trip

2009-11-01T22:37:00.000Z

Not exactly relaxing, but you can pack a whole load in that's for sure. A tiring galavant back across to Northern Europe had quite interesting results, as I ended up spending the day in Norway, strange and beautiful place. More expensive than any where else, but also far friendlier than any where else I had been. Everyone I met and spoke to (and this number was quite high considering I had no idea where I was going as the rental places sat nav was knackered) were unbelievably friendly.. they attentively listened, gave detailed instructions and to top it all of.. responded with the most cordial and relevant of salutations.

There is a slight American twang to a lot of the accents, but apparently this is due to the copious amount of television they view. Shopping there was anything but a bargain, though you get the feeling you get what you pay for. Went to some pizza place for dinner, as the national dish is apparently hot dogs.

Made my way out to the Nobel peace prize centre, which was good, but not as good as watching Arsenal beat Spu*s. If only Eduardo had found his finishing boots, then it would have been an even better day!

Knowing Norway

2009-10-29T16:09:00.001Z

What a way to start a tale.. using the silent K to allow me the alliteration with the N. And make no mistake, that wasn’t haphazard coincidental hijinks… no sireee.. Norway proper deserves that kind of respect.
Now I was planning to go through the formalities of the flight etc… til I realised that I can’t knock Ryan air since it allowed me to get to Norway and back for less than it costs me to get work on a typical week day! If that is not bizarre, nothing is. Tube for 25 minute journey: £2.70. Plane to Oslo: £2.00.
But it kinda makes sense as that was the only cheap thing to be associated with that country – probably cos you need all your bloody money to do anything there.
Anyway, it is a beautiful place (and this time I rented a car a drove around) but the first thing you see when get off the plane is.. yes .. that’s right.. your breath.. It was minus 1 and I quickly ended up buying a hat to cover my oh so sensitive Afro.
Marching into an airport which was the size of the mobile classroom you had at school, I headed over to the car rental places to try my luck. Now I knew it was gonna be pricey… but when I checked on line the rental prices ranged from 600 to 2400 pound a day… so I figured THIS MUST be a website error, thankfully it was, the car cost a ton and was brand new, so I did my whole driving on the other side of the road thing and God was it worth it:
The beauty of the outskirts was so overwhelming I actually stopped the car to peer out at trees. The golden red ones that seemed as if their proximity alone could warm you, and they were stood next to rabid black ones that stole over patches of the forest with menace, but were balanced out by what can only be described as Albino pines that seemed to have reached out one day and interlocked with an Angel’s wing giving it a chilling, pure sensual white tone - from bark to branch tip.
I stopped by the rivers and inlets I passed to gaze into the water and the bottom of each, many meters down. They stared back at me with a clarity immensely devoid of descriptions. It was not water; it is best labelled as fluid glass.
At a harbour I chanced upon, I absorbed an air into my lungs that you would crave like days off back home, each breath was so uplifting. You didn’t bother breathing with your nose and mouth, you thought only with your chest and expanding it to cleanse the year round filth you breathe in commuter town London. And with every exhalation you grow like some kind of emboldened Norse warrior of immense strength. Of course.. in reality I was a frozen flabby Londoner staring into the water daydreaming about trees, not exactly fighting fit.
I drove on into town and followed sigs for the ‘sentrum’ and got some place which looked nice, but quite low scale, pulled up to a parked taxi and asked ‘hey man, what’s the best place to go to in Oslo’ and with the purest sincerity and light in his eyes he pointed at the building infront of him and said ‘this is it!’ I followed his arrowed fingers to see he was pointing at the Radisson hotel.
I figured, he was a foreigner, plain sarcastic or had cracked one too many beers today, so headed for the next car park sign intending to make a bee line for somewhere good on foot.
But the car park was deceptively named, see it wasn’t a place to park cars, it was a place to test your patience as you spun round left and right into the tightest corners your ever seen, I mean I’m a good driver, not the best alive, but I’ve survived a fair few tricky automotive obstacles and I normally wriggle a winning manoeuvre out of my four wheel steed… but in there I was trapped and short of ideas, reversing continually like some politician whose career has gone careening after an upteanth cheat!
The car park walls bore scars of mistake ridden moves and I had to sooth the car through each turn at 6 miles and hour and thank God for the power steering and the ABS was a blessing-and I pulled around guessing how the hell am gonna escape, without adorning my rental car in a dozen scrapes.
Anyway, once I got of that four pound an hour maze I found a spot by a church and parked for free, then dozily meandered down hill gently, stopped two locals asked of Oslo - the jist of it – what to see to get the best of it – and both young locals replied ‘nothing, it’s shit!’
I was proper disappointed, I mean, even when I’m in Hayes I say there are things to see.. and I point at all the cctv cameras (you know... for irony) and add ‘you know what’s always worth a look? Go check out the bobbing trolleys and syringes over in Yeading brook’
I would never call my place crap to a stranger – I'd guard like it was an endangered species on the brink of extinction and mention somewhere – anywhere… which could grab a traveller’s attention. Now I have to say ,though the advice they gave wasn’t advice to save, they were friendly like 5 star service in a dreamland. I walked a short way down a hill and headed for shops, where ironically the sale signs actually means the prices don’t drop!
Sorry – sorry
Everyone everywhere was healthy trim and of the utmost politeness - I headed into a museum and saw some stuff then rushed out to ask someone one what the local delicacy was : ‘hot dog and chips’ – then I bowled out to a sports bar which had the Arsenal Tottenham game and I headed in thinking.. ‘ah these.. polite, wonderful, caring, clean-towned people, will surely appreciate the class, verve and irresistibility of the Arsenal… they will all support the Gunners and I will be truly welcomed as I am from the mother land.’
But no… I walked into a sea of Tottenham shirts and people who rated David Bentley. I was shocked, but also relieved to have finally found some flaw with Norway.
After the mauling I went off to the pier and looked around, then headed to the Nobel peace prize centre. They were doing a big thing about Martin Luther King and Obama.. it was really cool and I got to read and watch some stuff on both (pretty good since I knew next to nothing before I went in) was honestly touched by some of the speeches and then pretty surprised that they mentioned MLK, had apparently been found in uncompromising positions with other women while married. Obviously I’m not commenting on the action itself (glass houses and so forth), but to relate it in a place that was supposed to be celebrating the fact they had given him a Nobel Peace prize proved a little confusing.
Went to some Pizza place called Dolly’s Pizza – then watched a demonstration in the town centre about Iran… (but not while eating the pizza – cos that would just be weird)
Drove to some small towns on the way back and chatted with locals about how small their towns were and then found out there are only 4 million odd people living in Norway… and if it wasn’t so cold, and got dark there at 2 thirty in the afternoon in the winter, I’d be asking you all to send this on to your mates with view to gathering an army and invading the place….
It was soo clean, so friendly, so orderly… in fact one local I was chatting to even said “you guys in England think you have order, but you only think you do.. Here is true order… you leave your car for a minute without a permit… fine! You go three Km over the speed limit… fine!’ ( I wondered why anyone would be proud of an efficient fine system) but that was true - not a single car was speeding over the speed limit in all the hours I drove there, not in town, not on the motorways…. Just complete speed obedience.
Anyway, I know I rarely ever say this but Oslo is now up there with Berlin as my favourite places in Europe… so Go… do a day trip or couch surf so you don’t have to donate a kidney to afford to stay somewhere (and take a pack lunch) but go… it is awesomely serene….
Much love and linguist treachery

Lamenting Lego

2009-10-28T11:22:00.004Z

Don't think too much about it, that's what I said... just go, everything will be fine. It'll make sense, be clear and be full of all the wonder and excitement that you thought it would have... but no: Legoland was closed.

I am gutted. Flew to Denmark - No Lego... Moron does not even begin to describe.

Money Matters

2009-10-18T18:21:00.000+01:00

I didn't realise that teachers could actually end up well paid. Yes there is a lot of work and yes you get abused more in a day than most other people do in their jobs (the graffiti around the school lays a very stark testimony to this, but I did not think that overall there would be the possibility to do as well as say a doctor. In fact, for the longest period I thought I would have to retrain to a different profession or find some kind of religiously compliant lottery to win, but turns out the future may be rosy after all.

Of course, I am not one of those teachers yet, nor am I directly in line to be one, but it's a case of biding time. Which I may be far better at than binding time - as my experiments with the space time continuum have a lot to be desired.

Move over Motty

2009-10-17T18:25:00.002+01:00

Went to watch the Arsenal today, with a blind person and gave a full match commentary to him. Regardless of what he said, I BLOODY LOVED IT! Now that would be an awesome job... commenting on your favourite team in a bid to help less abled people.

5 Live here I come.

Teacher Truth

2009-10-13T22:02:00.000+01:00

It’s a rarity but it’s so special when it happens. Someone says something in passing and it drops right on to me like some kind of word-napalm. It was simple, the scene was set: old teacher distilling a few home truths to the youngster, and considering he was over twice my age it actually was filling all the requirements of the afore mentioned cliché.

And in the middle of the chat about conversations and change and a general ‘what’s the point’ that to be fair, is a record the old guard enjoy playing, this particular stalwart said ‘people forget about the kids in all this, shiny Ofsted grade 1 lessons, are all well and good, but it’s not aimed at the kids.’ He had my full attention and then said ‘the kids should come first’. It was the first time in 3 years of teaching that someone had summed up the point of teaching so clearly.

Now I just have to act on that.

Polite Police

2009-10-10T18:30:00.002+01:00

Simple stories and simply told and I like them that way. No real tension or flowing paragraphs where each sentence if is as varied as a psychedelic dream. Give me a little bit of sentence variation and I'm laughing!

I wish I read a little more, I had a student tell me to read something he liked and I politely agreed, thinking he would forget about much other students did in similar situation, but no, there he was a little while bringing said book to me. what else could I do but read it? And I must say it was far more fun to read then my other piece of reading his weekend: a police stop and search charge.

Thankfully I was just stopped, the search would've been a little intimidating. Just your typical 'stop a car with blacked out windows' affair, I really should change my motor; but once again, thank God, Police were very sincere and polite. I do wish though that they hadn't been an armed response unit. Seeing their holstered guns was a little intimidating - but thankfully there was no reason to use them.

That's the third time in four months... wonder if there's a prize for 5.

Feeling fake

2009-10-07T23:07:00.003+01:00

It is interesting to be labelled as having a certain skill l or skill set. A series of qualities that denotes you as somewhat more knowledgeable than lay men or those with less expertise in your field. Having read a lot about coaching and mentoring of late, it made me start rating every boss, colleague and Underling (yes, I have worked for cartoon henchmen) that I have come across and made me try and put them into an order of importance/ use/ general grading and then wondering where I come in the scheme of said list...

Until that guilty faker feeling caught up with me.

Teaching psychology has made me regress to the days where you think you can have every mental ailment going, or think that you know someone that has at least... the one I feel most afflicted by at the moment is the 'i think everyone sees through me' syndrome; which is not of course the technical medical name, but basically I walk around a lot of the time feeling fraudulent. Why that is I don't know.

Or maybe fraudulent just feels a lot like tired...

Let's see if the wonder drug: sleep can cure it.

Fuming at the furniture

2009-10-05T23:09:00.004+01:00

Furniture is becoming insanely cheap but of course the down side of this is that it is totally cheap looking/feeling and will probably be cheap to use too! Where is the line between the functionality / fashion that you put up with and how much does this change with age. Of course, no one at any time likes their place to look like it was put together by a group of blind folk - but do you really care how things look around and about your abode - the answer is of course... YES!

In fact, I get phased by expensive looking furniture too... and this faux cathartic typing has revealed it is in fact all furniture I don't really like. Give me some wide open space and bare room most days. This isn't really even about creature comforts, I think it's more about the space, freedom and imagination allowed by a lack of 'things' in the room.

Maybe this is a traveling throwback, maybe this is a fling with minimalism, or maybe I'm anti-Ikea-ing in a slightly more sophisticated way.

Mellow Meds

2009-10-04T23:05:00.005+01:00

It's starting to feel like something I have always done, even though it's not. When I sit to meditate, it fits like a practice I have been doing for years and the links between this section of Bhuddism, (or at least the parts I'm choosing to pay attention to) tie in with some parts of other religious traditions so tightly that I'm really starting to think the pluralists are on to something (Not that I'm ready to go down that route).

Calm wouldn't really describe the sensations, it's not enough and 'euphoric' is too far gone the other way, all in all it's like a subtle yet sharp focus. Being in charge of your mind by doing nothing and keeping all your external movements trained on the movement of your breath and then awareness... listen to me, talking about it like it was something living. Is it?

Gotta dig those abstract nouns.

Teaching Trials

2009-10-02T21:14:00.003+01:00

A weak end to the week. There comes a point when you can't put in the 200 percent effort (Physics professors would be keen to argue this was impossible anyway) but I suppose it's natural to try and make the best impression in the early days of a new job. Very tiring and draining, not much to say about the upcoming weekend, kinda still reeling from a free style session today - pretending it was educational.
Also got the chance to play out the teacher ideal: that idea where there is kid that no one else an reach and you feel you might be the one to do it. This is compete and utter crap of course, the student is 9 times out of 10, just saying all the right things to get you to leave them be; leaving you with an inflated sense of 'mission'. All part and parcel of the job though.

Nice cliche though.

Taxing Taxes

2009-09-30T23:17:00.002+01:00

Not so bad. Yes, that is the conclusion I came to when i thought about. I admit the thinking wasn't exactly taxing, nor was it held for any specific duration, but what little I did do made me think that my taxes were actually going to very very good causes, cleaning the streets, helping the less fortunate, propping up the NHS etc etc... I know it seems like a large amount and I guess it's the lack of choice that really dictates people's feelings towards taxes, but to be fair, I think any organic, coherent society needs something like that in place.

Also realised that the blog is a strange place where I can further my discussions that I've been having in the day with people who I did not speak to about it in the first place. Hmmm...

Rhyme crimes?

2009-09-27T10:18:00.002+01:00

Just practiced something called 'free styling' - Odd. I knew i like poems, but I always felt that a poem was a stroll and a waltz, something people drop into and resonate with. Letting words linger sometimes to the extent where you are actually perving on them, but this morning for no real reason - though I Suspect 4 Lucozades has something to do with it - I decided to speed it all up - zoom! Didn't even write anything down. First time for everything.

Pretty fun - might try adding things as I go - maybe even throw it up on a pod cast. Hmmmm

Better late than never...

2009-09-26T23:42:00.004+01:00

Attended the shortest wedding I have ever been to in my life, not that the occasion itself was short, but the fact I turned up late - at the very end - obviously had a massive amount to do with it. I blame a delivery company who delivered ridiculously late, but no one really cares about that, least of all me; got to see a friend on his special day and that equates to some time well spent in my humble opinion. I would however have liked to have spoken to his wife, who I am yet to speak to formerly, or to be fair, even get introduced to.

They ran off to Jordan soon after meeting and only came back to wed... and now he's fled again. Maybe some TV licensing folk caught up with him. Got to watch my debonair brother grace the scene and it crossed my mind that every time I see him now I try to think of film roles he could play.

It's a weird little game... but I'm sure he could play the better brother role very well indeed, 'tis a role his has played for entire lives and deservedly so...

Weekend Weddings

2009-09-25T20:18:00.003+01:00

A long week ends and winds into weekend that I'm looking forward to . funny how hey say things come in threes and here... 1 week, 3 weddings, none of which are mine I hasten to add, but I have been dishing out advice for all three, and it as probably as much value to the recipients as the amount they paid for it. Zero.

Not to take my two years of matrimony as any kind of yard stick, but I think there is something to be said for the nature of conducting yourself in a relationship, more absorbent than dependent and more aware than angry. N0-brainers really, but I find that remembering either of the prior before I drop into the latter saves me a much maligned journey which I know would cost me dear.

Anyway, for all my tinkering with ideas I know deep down there is in fact only one piece of word relay they soaked in. I told them the story of a friend who was asked, soon after the big day, how has marriage changed your life:

He simply said: 'the cook changes'.

Generation X.5 right there.

Turn around in Teaching

2009-09-25T00:42:00.003+01:00

Tutoring is not for the feint hearted, you put yourself into the lion's jaws so to speak and the parents can hover like the most ravenous of hyenas waiting for you to make a single slip, where they can begin to internally question where that 20 or so pound an hour is going. Thankfully though I have never come across a house like that. Tutoring is far easier than teaching. You have one to one situation, added to the fact they are paying you to be there because they want to be there: no forcing, cajoling, engaging or any other buzz word you may care to think of.

I have never seen one thing make such a difference to learning. Keep your interactive whiteboards, your army of assistants, your consultant advisers and whatever else you can think of that will sidetrack from the teacher's role and get more teachers in, to bring down class sizes.

What a rant! Think I'll go work for a trade union.