The sun rises; stars fall

Belgium Holiday - December 2009

2010-03-14T00:43:00.001-08:00

Well, I’ve ticked off two items from my ‘things to do before I die’ list. I got Eurostar, the flight under the sea, and I have been to Atomium, the most enduring symbol of the ‘it’s a knockout years’.

If travel is a learning experience, what did I learn about Europe? I learned that they pipe music into underground car parks in Belgium. Belgians can’t believe that we know so little about comics in UK. They tend to consider themselves either Flemish or Wallonian within the broader Belgian political framework which mainly provides a context for that opposition. In another sense though, to be Belgian is to not be French, Dutch or German and the Belgian state is a guarantor of that. There is a lot canine waste in the streets. Driving through the woods from Louvain to Wavre, I was reminded of scenes from old films and war footage and was moved to remember the extraordinary loss of life here. For all its faults, a European parliament is surely a better alternative than a European war.

Alvaro and I started in Maaastricht and did not manage to prise the owner away from any his beliefs about breakfast i.e. that it he needs to know the day before if you are gonna eat it and it remains $7.50 no matter what you eat. It was a nice guest house though; clean and cosy. Maastricht was filled with shoppers from German and Belgian towns as well as some friendly locals. We met one guy watching the football, cheering Bayern Munich ostensibly due to the Dutch management and players. One of the local cafes benefited greatly from our proximity with my travel companion homing in on it a source of decent lunches and dinners.

There are a lot of department stores in Maastricht which seems a little old-fashioned compared to UK, where many of them have closed and been converted into cinema complexes etc. It also has a lot of clothes stores and is perhaps known as a home of chic in the area.

Plenty of cold millet flakes for all the main meals, as well as rain, a lack of banks, supermarkets and food prep facilities in the accommodation made the business of eating something of a trial. But how much would I have remembered the food I ate in Greater London if I had stayed at home?

I liked walking by the river in Maastricht, down to the art gallery that looks like a spaceship. There I disdained the contemporary art alone, in the absence of my brother who may have felt the same.

In the evening I went in search of the friends of Bill W. They were said to be located in a Burthuis on the other side of the tracks. I showed the address I had written to guy a smoking outside an art studio and he directed my around the corner to a community-style centre place with brass band standing outside, also smoking. From there I got directed back in the direction of the studio and found the said Burthuis. Bert wasn’t there but I met with the locals and did a Dutch language meeting of which I did not understand a word, except when the participants switched to English to swear. They were very friendly though and didn’t laugh when I pulled out my peppermint tea bag and it started leaking. I was worried that they might think it is grass.

Getting the train back across the border was an uncomplicated business, although I did find that Belgian trains were often delayed by considerable amounts.

Leuven is a small town outside Brussels about 15km. I stayed in a youth hostel there, for maybe the last time. The friendly guy at the desk booked me into room 205 where I met with an atmosphere of old cigarette smoke and old cigarette smoker. No good for the asthma there so I asked to be switched. The guy on the desk switched me to room 103 and there, camping below a fairly accomplished snorer on the first night proper, I did manage to get some sleep. I prayed for sleep and the guy stopped snoring immediately. This created a false sense of security and hubris in light of what would follow/

In the morning, still in 103, I had my reading light on, angering an older guy in the room who said something: ‘Stop light, my no lazy… I no sleepen… I geet mein card.’ Also teaching me some curses in Flemish and how to communicate rancour where there is no common language, he threw the main light switch off, by means of snatching back his key card from the its wall housing. I know for a fact that confrontation inhibits sleep dramatically so I doubted his chances of dropping off in these circumstances. My use of a torch to continue reading provoked more cursing, so I returned to the desk and was relocated to room 204.

In between the ongoing saga of room hopscotch, I did meet up with Alvaro to have a look around Brussels. Grand place is a really stunning square in the town centre, appearing much older than anything of a similar ilk in London. I visited the museum there and met some local charm: ‘no bag, no camera, no cell phone.’

We also visited the Cathedral which was a beautiful building. The theme that emerged for me during that visit was that although these old buildings stayed the same for such a long time, I was not the same. My experience of healing and restoration, by God’s grace, is that he does not seek to maintain the original fixtures, design and proportions. He is building something else, something for his spirit to live in.

On the same day we also walked to the EU parliament. I feel tired just thinking about it.

Back in the hostel then, now in room 204, I met with a one-man bronchial symphony. Move over Mr Snuffolupiccous from Sesame St., your time as the worst case of sinus congestion known to man is over. All was quiet between 11:00pm and 1:00am but by 1:30am he was in full swing. As I sat there wondering if I was allowed to wake him up, he may have had a dim sense of ire flowing towards him, as he did wake up. He said ‘hello’ then went back to sleep, unswervingly committed to his path of nightmare nasal resonance.

Without sleep I went to Bruges. This may have coloured the day grey a little but it was still nice to walk by the canals and think of the people I love, albeit that they weren’t there. All the other tourists were there, but I stole a march of them by going round it very quickly. I had a cup of tea in the oldest tea house in Bruges, then another cold meal in the cold square and it was time to get back to try and rest.

Alvaro and I spent the last day with the guys we knew in Belgium. We had lunch in a Turkish restaurant in town, dining on kebab, lamb chops, mixed and cold millet flakes, depending on your preference. We drove to the Atomium – a place I had wanted to see ever since I saw it on ‘It’s a knockout’. One of the guys remembered the program but our visit passed without any of the Belgians ‘falling over’ as they famously did during the show.

I must admit, I love the atomium. I am not sure if makes science interesting but it does illustrate how complex even the smallest things are. The Lord God made them well. The structure makes me feel nostalgic for a time when I had a great deal of confidence in human progress and achievement, connecting back how I must have felt when I first saw it on ‘It’s a knockout’ all those years ago.

Then we went to the Comic museum where the whole array of Belgian illustrative talent is on show, including some little blue fellas you might have thought were French; le smurf. The museum is also located a road with the moniker ‘smurf straat’. If you ever worried about these creatures growing in size and gaining more influence over human affairs, do not go to this museum; it will worry you. Otherwise it was good to see Tintin in his natural habitat.

After all that, it was lovely to know that we were just two hours away from London. After a stand up dinner of millet flakes, raw carrot and tuna, we were done. Didn’t even notice the crowds of people milling around me to discover how to prepare such an amazing dish to eat on the run - the art of decanning tuna in public and other such arts untthinkable for the poplulation at large.

Eight month munch ate me up for lunch

2010-03-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

Just a quick gap then between this one and the previous post: eight months.

I had assumed, as had been the case in the previous treatments, that the period of time between taking the medication and feeling kind of normal again might be round about five-six weeks. Well, eight months later I am starting to feel myself again. Good gracious, it's a long story.

I think the medication killed the parasites. I haven't retested but the upheaval and change of physical and mentals realities after the medication is pronounced that it almost seems unnecessary to retest; a superfluous £100 you might think. A few days into the treatment my whole world turned upside down: perception of light, colour and sound; relationship with technology; ability to surrender negative thinking; the amount of work my liver was doing; all of these either descreased or went in the correspoding direction you wouldn't want them to.

I know what was happening now, basking in the rays of hindsight, but at the time there was no basking: it was all hiding in the darkeness of an enveloping, malign-seeming event horizon; a place where your bad dreams have caught up with you. After a few months of that it becomes hard to believe things will ever be normal again.

On the physical side, the eradication of the parasites triggered a broader gut cleansing action which the body initiated and directed by itself with the use of some expensive nutritional supplements. On a daily basis the regime has been: multi-vitamin, vitamin C, digestive enzymes, fish oils, milk thistle, chromium, L-glutamine, probiotics; plus fibre some days; all at the cost of about £40 per month. This cleansing response appears to have been yeast die-off and the preparation of the gut wall for tissue rebuilidng. The amounts of toxins produced made me feel fatigued and confused and life only remained manageable through doing two detoxifying baths a day and a lot of skin brushing. I thought that would go on forever but in the end it lasted only six months. Life during this period was dependent on attending to the detoxication process and if I couldn't get enough radicals out due to circumstance, say due not being able to bathe, then the fatigue and brain fog overtook me within a day.

Just as soon as it started, it stopped. On the way back from Belgium I picked a bad case of the 'Nor' virus and promptly began vomiting and so on. Soon the whole family was doing it - you can't keep a good thing like to yourself. The virus got into my guts and began a long period of colitis and literally rolling around in agony. The pain was so bad and so prolonged I even agreed to go for an endoscopy and believe me this kind of process is not high on my wish list. During the darkness of the post viral fatigue and colitis, though, I realised that I had pretty much stopped detoxing. Strange, I thought. Later I realised at some point during the illness there had been a switch from the detox process to a tissue rebuilding phase. The beginning of the end possibly of the leaky gut phenomena (gastroporeosis).

This 'recent'-ish phase has been going on since the beginning of the year and is still causing a degree of destabilisation, although one thing it has brought up has been highly beneficial. These phases of illness and gut healing have forced me to look at my mental health. As layer after layer of gut diease came off me, instead of feeling better mentally, I was feeling worse and worse. The constant here was something like: each new layer of physical well-being = increasing sensitivity to stimulation e.g. making the use technology almost impossibly overwhelming, along with: new wave of healing = new world-record for volume of intrusive, disturbing rhoughts in head and self-obsession. Given that I had been expecting to feel better 'any day now' concluding that this equation was pretty much a constant was hard to do i.e. things are not getting better by themselves, they are getting worse. It was only when the instability and anxiety threatened to undermine my job and my sobriety that I realised I had to act.

I spoke to some guys who had some experience of medications other than SSRIs and narcotics and learned something. Previously my thinking had been limited to these two classes only. I heard about a medication that did something I had not been expecting: it works on the D2 dopamine receptor to reduce rather than increase levels of the neurotransmitter in the brain. This was a new way of looking at the problem for me, since I was more familiar with the concept of 'more' not 'less.' It turns out though that too much dopamine can lead to overstimulation, paranoia and a whole host of sypmtoms associated with the spectrum of mental health disorders from Schizophrenia through to Bi-Polar. Anyway, this medication has worked so far and life is coming back to together. Just for today it looks 'we' have staved off a worse crisis; the Lord knows, I hope so.

Changing the prevailing theory in my mind from 'the physical healing process alone will produce well-being in all areas' to 'I need a dopamine antagonist medication' was a long journey for me. I did not give up the previous position without a fight. What perhaps is more difficult to explain is why one process, the physical, triggered a crisis in the other, the mental. Here's my best shot: chronic disease in the gut is not a pleasant thing. Answers.com calls auto-intoxication: 'Self-poisoning caused by endogenous microorganisms, metabolic wastes, or other toxins produced within the body. Also called autotoxemia.' Another aspect to it is that sugar and the pathological yeast infection work together in the diseased gut to ferment and produce alcohol. 'Alcohol and its breakdown products such as acetaldehyde may be found in the blood, indicating the presence of yeast causing fermentation.' (http://www.complemed.co.uk/candida/candidasymptoms.htm)

There is some link between alcohol and the D2 receptor for dopamine. I don't undertand it fully but I am aware that Gene therapy that delivered dopamine D2 receptor genes into rats decreased their desire for alcohol.

Anyway, the point as I apply it to myself is that whilst Candida was running riot in my body it produced a lot of 'internal' alcohol. The better I got, the less of this substance was produced. Phyiscal well-being stimulates more and more neurotransmitter activity and less and less sedative as auto-intoxication diminishes. As these two processes work together to change everything about how I feel and think, a mental health imbalance is gradually revealed, although the physical health improves.

It's just a theory though.

In other words, I have always had the tendency to produce too much dopamine but I had never been well enough to do it before with diseased gut both limiting absorbtion of the nutrients necessary to produce the neurotransmitter and fermentation producing an additional sedative effect. If this sounds complicated I can assure it was even more confusing to live through it. As I write, I am staggered that the range information necessary to understand at least in part what has happened has been available to me.

Here's to the future.

Tales of the gut-muncher

2009-07-22T14:20:00.001-07:00

These are strange days in the belly of the gut muncher....

This is day one of post-medication gut expansion and it feels very weird. Seven days of metronidozal (400mg x 3 per day) and there seems to be something happening in the gastro-intestinal tract.

It is has been quite a long journey getting the point of readiness to try and kick out Blastocystis Hominis and its buddy Dientamoeba Fragilis; about 18 months so far. I won't do the whole story but here are the highlights just for the record: chronic fatigue and compromised immunity leading to time off work and very low prospects of recovery led to investigating candida as a cause, which it is partially, and subsequently led to being tested for the presence of parasites which were duely found. This was largely possible due to a very knowledge nutritionist who had recovered from Dientamoeba Fragilis herself.

At the Hospital for Tropical diseases recently I was told that these parasites were controversial and thought largely to be non-pathogenic. I thought 'that's fine as long as you can explain why I feel sick for three days when I eat a potato.' The sum total of the medical argument seems to be if you have these parasites and you are still well you are doing it right. And if you have them and you not well, please refer yourself to the first group and feel bad because you are obviously doing something wrong. I am not that clever but I sense there is something quite wrong with this position.

In spite of his reservations, he gave me some medication which I have now finished. It was less than some people had recommend on the web but more than I would have got by any other means. During day five of the treatment, my head felt like it was going to burst. Luckily not my head but something else did seem to pop and relax in the digestive tract and in my imagination it was the last of the protozoa saluting the white flag of their inevitable defeat and blinking out of existence, now ready to processed by the all-powerful liver. Whatever it was, it felt like progress; like the snap, and crackle and pop of hardcore antibiotics had done their worst and dislodged the infidel gut-squatters.

Now there is some kind of internal adjustment. You know that feeling when you are walking down the stairs and you think there is one more step which you prepare for mentally but have its anticipation jolted out of you by the appearance of the floor - ahead of schedule? It feels like that is happening in my gastro-intestinal tract on an often repeated basis. I am hoping it is a sign that the medication has worked but I have read some accounts of sufferers feeling better for a while after the drugs but then experiencing a recurrence of the symptoms a few weeks afterwards. As long as my guts keep stay out of step though I'll have some hope of a serious physical recovery. This could mean increased mental and physical energy, better clarity of thought and an ability to tolerate a wider range of foods that I haven't been able to eat for a while. And if it doesn't work, it could mean going back to the NHS, cap in hand, and asking for a longer and meaner course of meds.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much - it's like watching England leading one-nil in a World Cup quarter final, controlled by the fear that if I believe too much or too little, I'll through the victory into question.

It would be nice to think some of what one experiences on a daily basis in the realm of cognitive difficulties could be lifted by the removal of sometimes granular, sometimes vacuolar beasties. The thing is: they live on carbohydrates. You can see before and after lab pictures of their hugely increased girth at being fed rice starch. They are the 10-ton McDonalds bandit bingers of the protozoan kingdom of doom. Instead of this energy going to me, it goes to them and it makes you feel very strange indeed. Seeing them lying there bloated in the light of microscope, it didn't seem outlandish to suppose that their fattening might be the cause of some pretty odd sensations.

I tell you, if I ever get to the stage where I eat a baked potato and feel well, I'll have a photo taken of the moment and put it up here.

Truleigh, Moody, Windy

2009-07-15T07:14:00.000-07:00

Truleigh Hill - Camping in the grounds of the Youth Hostel

It is not far from London which is a good thing isn't it? Although, since it's not that far from London you don't feel like you are away from it all. You've got a view of the sea which is nice but when the weather rolls in it is right into you because you can say 'get those jack rabbits out of here -- they are in for a soaking.'

You camp in a field which is inbabited by sheep, rabbits, people and their dung. It is on a bit of a slope which gets steeper when you try to go to sleep. There was a real wind on last night. By the morning the peppermint teabags were everywhere. My camping chair blew across neighbourhood and whacked right into Neil's tent which apparently made quite a noise. That must have been during the twenty minutes in which I was asleep.

Camping in the grounds of a youth hostel was a first for me. except for maybe somewhere in Scotland in 1989. I quite liked being able to waltz into the building and feel morally superior to the other hostellers who had chosen this less adventurous form of shelter. The trick is to go in for just long enough to keep the high ground without anyone noticing that being inside might constitute a retreat from the elemental realities of the outside world.

Just down the hill is Shoreham-by-sea which is fairly pleasant though not about to win the undiscovered seaside town of the year award. The river ardur turns out into the ocean at the town and makes for a nice walk along the route (British pronunciation please) of a disused railway line. Sandy banks along the river's extrusion make for a decent place to sit down and rest after you've down the tough part of the walk - in our case after about half an hour. At points the sun, the sand, the river and the mud transcend the sum of their individual ecological functions and create a buzzing and dynamic theatre of life a little wilder, shiny and a bit more reflective than the wilds of Wallington. It is a dance of energy and natural beauty I have decided to call muddybank-riverwobble, in order that the thing be adequately described in language.

No two friends ever agree on everything and it is was interesting to note the stations of concord and uncord we passed through on the conversational amble along the disused railway lines of thought: Christiology, recovery, the origin of signs, the difference between signs and symbols, the presence of the principle of making amends in scripture, the benefits of trangia stoves, the extent of our foreign travel, sinaesthesia and TFL transport policy.

In the back of my mind whilst away was the thought that I had to come and to take a course of metronidozal and would have stayed longer if it had been for that. Two nights is long enough though to notice the clouds deep in red at the end of the day, thousands of jewels in the sea and a pack of rabbits whose favourite playing surface is grass.

From Stoke to Stokey

2009-05-25T14:34:00.001-07:00

Arsenal 4-1 Stoke Emitrates Stadium 24th May

It's fun to be part of a group of thousands of football fans when your team wins, the sun is shining, nobody is acting in a threatening way and you've all got the uniform. The stadium was fizzing with a kind of atmospheric champagne; a bubbly mood of celebration. The Stoke fans were even more jubilant than us and become incoragibly and progressively happier with every Arsenal goal.

My companion, Larry, was unfortunately focusing all of his attention on the Liverpool game many miles away. Every now and again he would tell me, on the basis of a feeling: 'I think there's been a goal at Anfield.' When I checked my phone, he was right every time. Had he given concentrating on the Arsenal game, the Stoke fans might have had even more to cheer about.

The stadium, as has often been said, is a great venue to watch a football match at. No more cramped seats or major fire risks. If anything, it is a little too well-organised with Emirates staff posied to pounce on you if you take a picture of the football during the game. It is quite a quandry considering whether the benefits of the new stadium outweigh the charm and history of Highbury. In spite wanting to say that they don't and that I would have the old place back, I am not sure that I would.

You get the feeling that Emirates doesn't quite yet have a soul of its own, though, and one wonders what a new stadium has do in order to qualify for one. This may also be true of Wembley mark II. Maybe the team needs to win a major trophy there to really enshrine it into the hearts of the fans. Or maybe it needs a bit of rubbish on the floor and a few chips in the paintwork. Or survive a war or two.

I don't want to do the usual pop-sociology rant about a sense of belonging and being part and subuming one's identity into the mass but I must say that I like the feeling of wearing the uniform and sitting with several thousand other people doing the same. The only downside about the overwhelming redness of the people is that it is more difficult to spot yourself on TV; unless you are Van Persie or Fabregras that is. Arsenal, a construction that persists for as long as we believe that it does, is something we all had in common. It is not the same as knowing the same Lord and saviour though and the only way I can think to combine the faith and the uniform would be to join the Sally Army.

I guess celebrating with that many people did put me in mind of the great cloud of witnesses and the life to come. Maybe there is something a bit transcendent about the experience of watching football. Not that it is a religious experience as such but it is certainly a major challenge the egocentric belief that I can meet all my own needs, I am enough by myself, and all the other ways I can think of being selfish. If nothing else a team is something that is shared

That is not to say that massive crowds are necessarily always that virtuous. Stoke had a song about Wenger that was pretty unpleasant although not as bad as the Man U ones. There was a bit of tolerance and understanding for all that though like when a couple of renegade stoke fans unvieled their flag at the end of the match from within the Arsenal territory and all this provoked was a degree of mirth. We may not be greatest singers in the world but at least we don't kill people. Actually Arsenal home fans are terrible singers. When the attendance for the year at the Emirates flashed up on the video screen at over 2 million, the Stoke away fans piped into a chorus of: 'Two million and you can even sing,' and they were right. Even the Mexican wave didn't get all the way round. One hopes Carlos Vela wasn't unduly disapponted.

Getting a bus down Blackstock Road after the match is not the most time-frienfly pastime with the centre of Finsbury Park all clogged up with people and cars. It was by foot then that I progressed down to Stoke Newington to stay with my brother. I almost beat the bus back to Lordship Road, it arriving with one stop of the route remaining. I got on of course, not to be outdone, only to be held up for quite a while by temporary traffic lights and a narrow section of road. This was not the most auspicious way to end the journey and was a little concerned that other passenger might identify me as a one-stop-wonder.

Muppet Football

2009-05-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

May 10th Fulham 3-1 Aston Villa

We just went to Craven Cottage to see Fulham get the better of Aston Villa. We were sitting near the away fans in block Z in the front row, about as near to the action as you can get. It was pretty amazing to see the speed the game is played at now. At points I felt the skill of the players on the pitch had surpassed even that of mine and my brother's at our peak. Well, I guess that's not right; I should only speak for myself. That's me by the way, over there, on the left. Or is it Beaker from the muppets? Judging by this photo [below] of me and my dad at the much you might not be able to tell the difference that easily.

It's all too easy to get that turned down mouth going if you are a mere puppet. As a human, with a range of facial expression potentially even greater than that of a muppet. You have to practise at eleminating all traces of a smile from your face whilst having your picture taken. Glad to see my Dad doing significantly better at the smiling thing, and this was before Fulham had won the game. Actually, even when the ref had blown there was something of a delay before he was able to accept the result; in footballing terms this may be a useful defence.

Sitting near the Aston Villa fans and feeling slightly targetted by their not so friendly verbal abuse, it was difficult not to gloat when Fulham went ahead decisively in the second half after a much pretty even contest in the first. Well, it wasn't that difficult as I didn't even try. It seems like there is a kind of energy robbery that takes places when the opposing team scores. The victors simply suck it out of you with their collective psychotic hoover. This energy then is torn back later on if your team scores. As well as on a group level, micro-excahnges take place between inidividuals in the opposing stands too, alternatively appropriating or reliquishing one's joy to another on the basis of eye contact in the aftermath of a score; when Villa equalised Iwas robbed by a middle-aged lady who was probably someone's mum.

It is funny: we thought we had seen probably the best Premier league match of the day but were a little disappointed later on when Match of the Day didn't place it higher up the roster of games. Of course, it was interesting though to see an event on telly that I had been at in person but I couldn't help but feel that the tube hadn't really done the thing justice. Luckily, we have other forms of technology to record the event such as digitals cameras.

On the way home I tried to blame my brother for taking the photo at a deliberately vulnerable moment in my life but in truth I think that beaker of a facial expression pretty much sums up the kind of week I had had. During the previous week, I couldn't help but run a few equations through the mind dividing the amount of time I do things I don't like doing by the amount of time I do things I enjoy and knowing I couldn't expect a result anywhere near '1'. But there was no doubt by the end of the day on Saturday that we felt we'd seen something spectacular. This was a feeling obviously shared by Fulham's number 4, Pantsil, who did a lone lap of honour all the way round the pitch at the end of the game which he thoroughly deserved by the way.

Pantsil lap of honour:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ormondroyd/3148379650/

Learning Camp

2009-05-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well I just went camping with some friends and we had a great time. These are friends that I have known for some time. Each one in his own way with a commitment to living a spiritual life. This made for some interesting learning experiences. As ever with spending time away with a group of people, it called for acceptance tolerance and understanding as we all tried to get along as well as we could. Since though, everyone had put their best foot into this shoe of acceptance, it made for something of a remarkable atmosphere of support and community. Where one person had a gap in their kit, another filled it. So by the end of three days we had no need to washing up liquid guy or sponge guy to chuck it down the hill as both items had been considerately stationed by the wash tap. This did away with need to catch the flying sponge but other than that it was favourable.

We talked at times on a quite personal level and to hear people I knew well be willing to be honest and open was quite heart warming on the cool evenings. What lies behind the 'you' I percieve you to be is sometimes quite different. I came away feeling that these people, and perhaps everyone, deserved more love and tolerance than I usually give people credit for. Not least of all myself, of course. I left assured that we were alike in the respect of our determination to live sunny side up, shining forward into personal challenges now better understood while perhaps no less grave in themselves.

This brief trip became the testing ground for many principles. For example, we proved that it is easier to pack your stuff for the return journey than it is on the outward journey. The cause for this though remains a bit mysterious. Here's another one: 'pursuing winning streaks doesn't necessarily work'. I got a classic CD for a pound in the Heart Foundation shop then tried to follow it up with a flurry of quick buys at the CD and record fair Great Malvern. Two, to be fair, were good, it was just the drum machine on the Bobby Womack gospel album that let the side down. I guess lastly I learned that it is better to live the strengths and weakness of my fellows than among the chilling vapour of isolation.

Me and my most local neighbour both marvelled at one point on the kindness of the older lady running the campsite who seemed to have a natural balance and good will that most Londoners would not demonstrate. When I told her I was not feeling too well, this was on Sunday feeling a touch of faituge, she opened up the bunk house and gave me a blanket.

Camping of course lives and dies by the weather and, although we had a renowned rain-attractor in the camp, we did pretty well during the day although it was cold during the night. One among our number has proven that in the absence of a hat, you can wear pants on your head for some heating benefits. I personally was freezing on two out of three nights. I discovered that, amazingly, if you put a foil survival blanket under your roll mat it reflects the heat so well it feels like an electric blanket, in spite of the fact this was not my idea. I might be 36 but I am still getting used to the fact that my assessements are not always right.

You know most of us went away last year together plus one more friend who was to far away at the time but 12 months can be a long time if you live one day at a time and these men are different. These are friends who are committed to their personal growth and change right down line. Men who will look you in the eye in the newness of their discovered confidence promising that it does get better and that best may yet be to come.

Reflections on the Trip

2009-04-16T07:33:00.000-07:00

I think I am in danger of getting back to normal. Getting on the phone to do a round of sorting things out; organising stuff out of the bag and delivering fridge magnets to my parents (nice ones). I am pretty pleased with the mug I bought, too, so all is not lost.

In spite of the normality of England and an inital wave of news media and information, the heart still glows with the memories of being out in the winds of the trip. I expect this to condense down into something of greatest hits package over time but presently I can still access some of the detail, so I'll try to mention a few things before they get compressed and filed away until I am old.

I remember driving with Helen back from the meeting in Tesaria; both sites of the pillars of Hercules visible to the left and down separated by a great swathe of water. I remember meeting people who seemed similar to other people I know or have known in my life including some very similar versions of 'the original': Chris was very much like Chirs; Benji a bit like Matt etc. I remember having met the Antonios and walked past an old Moorish city wall in Seville, then taking the bus and finding myself on a kind of high. I can feel the dissonance between expectation and reality challenging my tourism of the otherness of places like Morocco where their point of relating is largely out of desperation and our point of relating is out of curiosity. I can see the influence of power and politics allowing and preventing travel and grading citizens of nations into classes according to their nations relative power and prestige, as well defining borders that include or exclude (or both at the same in the case of Gibraltar) and so go on to influence the language, customs, belief, prosperity and values of the relative territories.

I could feel the ego straining against the reality of being a tourist whilst wishing to be doing something entirely unknown and original; finding people on remarkably similar itineraries to my own. I guess, though, if they were going to anywhere, they'd be in Andalucia. I can feel a sense of a liberal American confidence, with an international presence, growing strong now that the figurehead of the Iraq travesties, Bush, has been removed. I know that the adventurous heart would not, of its own accord, wish the Faustian pact to be over with; it does not relish the routines and rigours of London life.

I can feel that I am perhaps more defined by my hopes, beliefs and faith than by anything else. I can see these flags flying above the level of hardship and pointing to a fulfilment that one's present circumstances may seem to preclude. It is these keep the body moving forward through what ever it has to face; the roots in the heart that allow me to answer 'yes' to the question 'is it worth it?'

Day fourteen Going Home

2009-04-15T08:10:00.001-07:00

I just met some nice people today including a guy from the States and a girl from France. It has been a day of talking in the kitchen and in cafes as well as a brief visit to the museum del Trios in the rain. Benji talked some real sense about the madness of the Enron fiasco in the states but tempered his views with a statement of hope about the innovation and zeal to move ahead out of this economic crisis there is in the States.

It is sort of a feeling of being in limbo here at present. Just about to fly but certainly feel richer for having done the trip. Although I am an absolute travel novice compared to many of the pros here, I have seen and done a lot in two weeks. I feel mentally tired and ready to go home. I have some memories that will stay with me for the rest of my life and have experienced hospitality and goodwill from almost everyone. I have not seen the news or read a newspaper for two weeks and do not know anything about what´s going in the world. This seems to be an advantage to an extent in terms of not worrying unnecessarily about stuff. I have let go of some cold fear that built up in me over the winter and feel good about the spring and summer in the UK.

If I have learned anything it is that sometimes some of the winter creases only come out by a prolonged airing in some hospitable foreign place, or in Cornwall or Scotland.

Here are some other points... that stress is a reality. No one seemed to have much of good word to say about London. There are plenty of very positive well adjusted, slightly younger than me, young people in the world. Americans are travelling again, especially Californians. People are visiting the Balkans inclusing Kosovo and getting well treated. Spanish people have a lot of foreigners living in their country. The Med is a kind of cultural eco system all by itself. Many English people live happy lives here. It is possible to travel with a limited diet. The run up to going away is more stressful than going away.

The natural world is beautiful. Kites make people happy. Many Spanish people drink sensibly. Tapas is free in Granada. The most beautiful places in the world are the most sought after places in the world. The pound has lost a lot of value and it mainly affected us, not the rest of Europe. We live very privilidged lives compared to Morrocans. Some people have a lot of money. Many Spanish Catholics appear to relate to statues as spiritual dieites in and of themselves. There are a great deal of people travelling who speak good Spanish as a second or third language. There are layers of history here that can present you with a flavour of the past. Spain is much bigger than the UK. Evolutionary biology would reduce all this to something meaningless. God is bigger than we think he is.

Democracy is painful. Day 13 Al Alambra

2009-04-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

I got up at 6.15 to try and get tickets for the Al Alambra which I though was pretty impressive. I expected to see the streets filled with punters competing for the 1000 tickets released each morning (in addition to 75% sold through the internet) for sale on the day. I ate a hasty breakfast but couldn´t get the gas to work to cook my eggs. Leaving with a hole in my breakfast I took to the cold streets.

The first person I saw passed me on the steps leading up to entrance. He was going at a real pace, overtaking on the outside and easily, and I thought "Fine, let´s stay relaxed. There´ll be enough tickets. When I got to the queueing area the line itself was growing at a rate of knots. I placed myself two bends away from the ticket issuing area, estimating about 100 people and perhaps half an hour of waiting ahead once the desks opened.

The people behind me in the queue and I quickly became acquainted, each of us sharing our best guess as to whether we´d get tickets and, if so, how long we´d have to wait. I bet "yes" and "half an "hour". The spanish guy said "yes" and "much more than an hour". The Swedish lady with a black labrador called Cherie (as in ´Cherie Blaire´, she told me) left to go and feed the dog, and whilte we were saving her place, she didn´t come back. That left us pretty short of entertainment; the dog had been a bit of a focal point.

The Lebanese couple behind me and I got talking. They both lived in Essex and were Anglicised; he was a surgeon and she taught Arabic. Our mood went through various phases of hope and despiar as we sought entry to one of the most famous monuments in the world and a UNESCO world heritage site. Once we turned the last bend, our spirits rose. The lady over the tannoy informed us there were about 80 tickets left for the morning and somewhere over 200 for afternoon. By the time I got to the front, that was eight tickets for morning. It struck me later how crucial it was that I hadn´t been held up by cooking those eggs. They could have made all the difference. I was served at 10am and I got a ticket for the afternoon some three hours after joining the queue. Don´t worry, I got those eggs as soon as I got back.

I came back at 2pm for my visit, praying that were wouldn´t be anymore queueing. Actually though, the jostling for the entrance was about as nasty as it got, with peoples nerves getting a bit frayed. I had a French (I think) guy pushing me from behind when he judged I´d cut him off. Once we got inside there were people everywhere and I started to think, "this better be good." I went straight down to the palace for my 2.30pm entrance and had to line up for another 20 minutes or so. I very nearly made an internal decision not to enjoy it, to get them back of course. Just managing to realise this was a bit pointless, I held my nerve.

Once inside, the palace was truly beautiful though. Some very ornate carving that must have taken years. Some patioes laid out with great balance and a very light touch. Some carved wood in the ceiling and some interesting geometrics here, and a series of ornate swirly carved columns there, and several rooms of this quality.

Later, looking out at the view of Albacin and the white Sierra Nevada I was glad that I´d got through all the nonsense from earlier. I felt warm inside and the wheels of my heart turned to register the completion something I´d wanted to do for a long time. Next stop, Taj Mahal. I was told that the palace was only constructed at a very great cost, almost runing the country at the time. Concentrating all that beauty in one place was, of course, a highly undemocratic act, leveraging a great deal of resources for the appreciation of only a very few. We do it differently now, making such places open to the public for a fairly reasonable price. But, of course, everybody wants to go. This is a kind of opposite to the situation prevailing at the time of the Moorish Kings but perhaps it comes at the cost of dilluting the experience. It seems that the monument is a bit too lean to be carved up and given out to everyone.

How greatly these human economies differ from what we hear of God´s economy and Kingdom. "In my Father´s house there are many mansions", and if you would indulge me to add, "And you don´t have to queue up to get in. These little time slots are not alloted to you in order that you may briefly take in their beauty before you are cattle herded down the road. The poor are welcome and they are not difficult to clean." I love this life (sometimes) but it is interesting to hope for the reality of these things that may be made manifest in times to come, and of whose true dimensions and beauty we do perhaps glimpse from time to time among of our man-made achievements.

Day 11 and 12 On the Road to Granada

2009-04-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

I left Tarifa yesterday morning which was sad. I could have spent another week there, weather permitting. Actually, I could have spent another week everywhere in terms of how much each place has had to offer. But in terms of stamina, I don´t think I could do it. Today I have felt exhausted after a day travelling by bus, train and on foot to get to the Hostel in Granada.

In the morning I met a guy called Chris and his wife from LA. Now Chris both physically and gesturally resembled my friend Chris who lives in the UK but is from LA and whom I had spoken to only the previous night on the electric telephone. Strange world.

The first leg of the journey took us all to Algercias by bus where we got tickets for the later train. There was time to look around so I stowed my luggage and walked around Algercias. Not a lot to report I am afraid. I may have missed the interesting bits due to the lack of time and maps etc. You can see Gibraltar clearly from the port, though, which is nice, and over the sea to the north coast of Africa. You can see why the Brits wanted to hang onto that rock that forms part of the entrance to the Med with a strategic significance second to none. Well, except the Suez canal maybe.

The train journey started with a few modest hills but gradually built into a bit of an epic with deep gorges and fast streams and included powerful views visible in strips, like a slow cinema reel, through the open slats of a long bridge. This scenery manifest naturally in Ronda where my Americans friends got off.

Later on, the land planes out a bit into a kind of valley dotted with thousands of citrus bushes. It was not like a sunny version of Rannoch Moor, with alternative vegetation. At the end of this long stretch, instead of Glencoe, you have Granada just ramped up against the side of the Seirra Nevada. White peaks crowning the ancient seat of Moorish power still telling its story through architecture.

I had a bit of a scare when I realised I´d been given two addresses for the hostel but my useful contact in the UK sorted that one out for me, texting me the directions. But not before I´d been through about five stages of panic. I was running out of time to get to the meeting so I took a taxi to the hostel. I might have been overcharged by the cab driver getting to the hostel but only by about a Euro if anything.

I took a half hour walk to the meeting where met a couple of guys who were pretty settled in the area and both spoke excellent Spanish. We went out for Tapas afterwards which is, apparently, free in Granada. They brought up a place of three burger type things with chips and all for the price of the drinks. On the way back I cleverly got a bus going the right way but which, uncleverly, was on a detour due to the Semana Santa processions and which ended up taking me I don´t know where. That was another 40 minutes walk and I was wrecked when I got back.

Today, I have been pretty tired but have managed to get to the Cathedral and had a look around the Albacin, which is the old Moorish quarter with narrow streets. There are some nice view points at the top of the hill from which to look down on the Al Alambra and the mountains beyond, crowned white with a layer of April snow, and down onto the large plain in which the city is built.

I have the feeling that I am not quite doing this town justice due to fatigue but I have seen some quite unique sights. Tomorow the challenge is to get up early enough for tickets to the Al Alambra which are all sold out on the internet.

Day Ten - On the Road Around Andalucia

2009-04-11T12:08:00.000-07:00

I heard that Tarifa has the highest suicicide rate in Europe - because of the strong wind apparently. It is hard to believe that the wind cancels out all the sunshine and relaxation but I guess it´s different if you live here all the time. I found it quite charming to see all the sails of the kite surfers in the sky. As a child I didn´t have a great deal of success with kites, except in landing them.

This morning I met a guy from the fellowship who had taken the trouble to drive to meet me as we had missed each other on the previousWednesday. It turns out we had quite a lot in common, including both being musicians, although he a far more experienced and recorded one than I, both having had a similar religious background, both having lived for quite a long time in the depths of south London and both being English language teachers. This is something of a conincidence, no? We chatted for a couple of hours and raised a house of very reasonable ideas that you could live if you put them into practice. He, let´s call him Ruperto, seemed very much the kind of man who does put them into practice too. He is a bit older than me and, in so being, indicated some kind of direction in which I might seek to travel; all those similarities describing the potential for grace and maturity I might aim for as I travel on.

In the afternoon I flew some more mental kites and kept a few in the air for quite a long time - much longer than I would have been able to a few years ago. Time passed pleasantly on the beach, ducking the wind in the hollow of the dunes, and being washed in waves by a hestitating but warm sun. Here, some old frozen pieces of the English winter got noticed in their little hidey holes and were compelled to make for the door, they being no match for the light.

He, Ruperto, put me in touch with a lady who was driving to an English meeting someway passed Gibraltar. She, let´s call her Angelica, agreed to pick me up from Tarifa and took me through the stunning hills and coast of Andalucia, through some of the white towns and villages to the meeting. She told me that Gibraltar has something of a twin on the other side of the straight - another huge great rock on the Morrocan coast - and that these two together formed what was known as the pillars of Herculas. They are both located at what is effectively the gateway to the Meditteranean. Apparently, Tarifa gets its name from the port at which you had to dock to pay your ´tarif´to enter safely past the pillars into the Med proper. It is quite a sight to see them there and makes you realise how long there has been a civilisation around the Med. Angelica was a bit of an angel, it´s true, offering true hospitality and the hand of the fellowship to a perfect stranger; and we parted friends.

Just enough time then to sit and watch the birds fly as the sun goes down back in Tarifa before moving on Grenada tomorrow. I´ll be sorry to leave though. The wind is strong round here - strong enough and warm enough, and with grit from the Sahara, to blow the cobwebs of the English winter clean away. I´d like to pack the birds and take them with me. Hey, why don´t we have flat roofs in the UK?

Day Eight and Nine Gibraltar / Tarifa

2009-04-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

Well I have been to Gibraltar, something I´d always wanted to do. It is quite a trip from Tarifa and although it doesn´t look like a long way on Google Earth, when you add in a few totally unexplained pauses for fifteen minutes or so along the way, it takes quite a long time to get there by bus. One problem I did not have though was locating Gibraltar itself once I´d got off the bus at La Linea: if only everything was as easy to find as a 500m rock island towering above everything else in its proximity. From there you walk across the border effectively from Spain into the UK which is a trip. Within the space of twenty metres or so, all the road signs change and you get street names like ´Winston Churchill Avenue´. There are plenty of symbols of royalty around as well as red post and telephone boxes; the later now just for show though sadly.

It was another case of small distance geographically, big difference culturaly and, as something of a surprise, meteologically. It is just that the weather had been fantastic right up until the time I crossed the border when, suddenly, on the British side, it clouded over and got a bit blowy. Driving is more aggressive on the Gib side too and the attitude of the people is somehow more reserved.

One surpise which greeted me early on was there are a people there - the Gibraltans - who are basically ethnically Spanish and who speak Spanish but who are fairly robustly happy with their British nationality. They can at, a moment´s notice, stop sounding Andalucian and provide you with the English of a fluent native speaker from the London area. I spend quite a lot of time listening to people´s English and thought the first person I met must have spent quite a long time in the UK. Later though, as the amount of Gibraltans who did this to me piled up I realised that it just seems to be the dialect they have acquired in the territory. The other thing is, they seem to have slightly different features from the mainland Spanish: eyes a little closer together and smaller; intense.

Of course there are plenty of ex-pat Brits there too and no doubt they are considered within the range of the territory´s typical constituent population but in one sense they appear not to be the ethnic Gibraltans. These must be those who since 1704 have mainly chosen to maintain their language, customs and appearance alongside the British political and cultural presence. Something of this presence, though, has been absorbed by the native people who now seem something of a genitically modified people people posessing DNA from both sides.

The rock itself is quite interesting although some of it sort of fenced off by the M.O.D. It is tempting to imagine some sort of neo-Manhattan project being hatched somewhere in the middle of rock - a belated attempt to propel Britain back to its true status as the world power. There are plenty of birds flying around at the top indicating all the best views to the sightseers, pointing wing tips down to Algercias and La Linea on one side and back up the South-Eastern side of the Peninsula on the other. Old gun placements, pill-boxes and back garden style bomb-proof shelters abound. The monkeys don´t seem quite so involved, sadly, preferring their own counsul to interracting the humans.

Once I´d been to the gardens for a rest and a meal (tuna, red quinoa and salad) I headed up to hospital hill to meet the friends of Bill W, then it was back to the border for a last chance bus ride back to Tarifa. As much as I do like to plan these days, it was good fun not knowing whether there would be a bus or not. Lively; jaunty.

Back here in Tariffa things are pretty relaxed. It is good friday and I have been on the beach wondering what to do with my life. The sun struggled to appear earlier as the kite surfers got their sails into the wind. Gradually as the clouds disolved, the warm currents of the sun gave a little thermal boost to my thoughts and sense of well-being.

I get the impression, perhaps not entirely from own best thinking, that to serve - before I return to my home planet). The problem is, I don´t really want to do it, until I am doing that is. It´s a bit like doing homework in that respect. It is interesting to note here that, in terms of observing one´s nature, there is no end to the demands I will place on life to provide me a Faustian never-ending increase in the level of stimulation and reward I recieve. There is a part of me that wants it all for me and doesn´t want to share any of it with you. This is the part of the self that can get you isolated with a mind like hell, raging with a case a with case of perpetual war - if it is not treated. Apparently, it gets treated with service. On good Friday then, the thought struck me that if I think I am going to do any better than the concept and the practice of service I should remember that service is even fundamental to the nature of the One who died on this day. And if it was good enough for him, it´s good enough for me.

Day Seven - A Day in Tangier

2009-04-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

Well last night was pretty awesome, watching Arsenal get an away goal in the Bear House - a pub you suspect might have been better named ´The Beer House´ but there you go - with the brass bands of the Semana Santa festival playing outside. What a great goal from Adebayor to give Arsenal a well deserved advantage for the second leg.

I was so inspired I changed my plans for the day and went over to Morrocco. I´d had this crossing in my mind´s eye for some time so it would never match exactly and although I had a good time it might be worth mentioning a few of the differences between the apprehension and the reality. For one thing the boat was closed and didn´t really allow you to go on deck. Much of the first part of the crossing was spent standing in the queue to have your passport stamped. This took some time and when I got to the front of the queue the guy crossed out my surname, Drummond, from the top line of the imigration card and wrote ´Drummond´in its place. Perplexed but free I watch the coastline develop into the continent of Africa.

Getting out of the port was tricky with numerous check poimts and passport related activities. On the outsdide there was quite a lot of opportunistic tourist hunting going on. I was civil to the first guy who collared me and ended up having to be quite rude to the guy after that. I told him I didn´t want a guide. I learned the word for ´no´in Morrocan (la) and repeated it several times. He said he like the sound of ´no´ and that no didn´t mean no in Africa. He got some of my emotion in the end and left it at that.

Walking through the old town was sort of a hustle competition with plenty of people aiming to engage the intrepid tourist in all sorts of haggles and offers. I was offered drugs as well which I politlely refused. I bought a Morrocan football shirt which I hope is an orignal. I went up the hill and found an old English church, St Andrew´s, where a caretaker called Mustapha showed me around. He´s been there 45 years he told me. The church has the Lord´s prayer written in Arabic and an Islamic design to the altar which is quite striking. A nice way of acknowlidging the local life. It also features verses from the Koran on the back wall which don´t seem quite right to me but I guess that´s up to them.

I strolled around the old palace, the Kasbah, hoping for a place to wash my hands but instead was presented with an interesting and at times beautiful run down old castle. Plenty of swirly Arabic styles patterns on the floors and in the ceilings and a description of the many layers of history in the area around Tangier, including a Roman period. Hummed the old clash tune to myself as I walked round of course, wondering if this was the Kasbah they were planning to rock. The other song I had in my head all day was Jackson Browne´s song where he sings ´You say Morroco and that da da da dine, I haven´t seen Morrocco for a long long time,´and I quote.

This was good value: getting a bottle of mineral water from a very local looking cafe, with the guy having to run across the square to get it as he had run out. That cost about 60p but I wanted to give him extra for all the effort.

It was striking though how different the people were though. Considering the stretch of water is only a few miles wide the gulf in development and culture is immense. I wonder if there is anywhere in the world that presents such a divide for such a small geographical distance. I am not including the English-Welsh border or anywhere like that either. I strongly got the feeling that it was tough to make a living in Morrocco and in fact one person told me that as a fact. I felt grateful to be part of Europe and could understand clearly why people want to live here legally or otherwise.

Returning to Tarifa was great with a slight sense of sadness that things are so relatively familiar compared with camels on the beach and Kaftans, tall Minarets and fake DVD; pointed slippers and hookahs to blow (which I didn´t); the vastness of the continent beyond and the constant sense of gravity with being a rich foreigner; a target, an opportunity and a mystery.

The sand in my shoes don´t come from Europe.

Days five and six - Puerto de Santa Maria and Tarifa

2009-04-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

I just moved down the coast to Tarifa which was an interesting bus trip passing some quite stark hills. Finding the bust stop was the main issue of the day really. It was like the bus didn´t exist for a while. The shelters had long lists of services except the one I wanted and the locals had varied opinions on where the best place to wait was. In the end we narrowed it down and got it right - a kind of group wisdom prevailed where a sign may have sufficed. To be honest though that is the kind of thing I like about travelling, in hindsight, although at the time it is a pain in the neck.

Had a chilled out day yesterday going over to Cadiz just for the boat trip and letting the mind float away with the seabirds. Actually there are lots of birds but if only I could name them, which sadly I can´t. After the boat trip I went out to the dunes and had a relaxing afternoon drifting among the pines. These pines though are not like English ones - their needles are concentrating towards the top of the tree whose branches cluster together in more of a bunch than our angular Christmas tree models.

In the evening I went out to find a meeting that almost didn´t exist either. Well, its location wasn´t on the internet (this is not yet an a priori condition of actual material existence). The taxi driver looked a bit dazed but light bulbs lit and he drove me out to a church with no markings at all on the outside - it looked a bit like a World War II garden bunker, only bigger. Inside were four friends of Bill W including an old guy called Alvaro (ironically sharing the name of my good friend now stranded in England). This meeting was a chaotic affair largely consisting of their asking me questions in Spanish which through force of will and paraphrase I was able to comprehend parts from time to time. It w asn´t a scintilating demonstration of language ability but it was quite a display of good will on their part. After the meeting Alvaro took me for a coffee and told me how much he had suffered in his life. A quite sad moment from a nearly broken man.

Later I took a cup of tea out to see the Santa Semana float for Monday and this time the Nazarenos were dressed in black and looking quite menacing I must say. Some of the ladies crossed themselves when the float carrying Mary passed by. Again, I wasn´t sure if they felt the figure itself had some kind of power or significance other than as a material representation. If I had to guess I´d say it looked like they believed it to be more than a statue.

Well, I am in Tarifa now, in a house in the old town with a lovely roof terrace, a thin TV (what do you call them?) and lots of space and clean air. Other than myself the house is currently empty but other could arrive. But for the time being it my personal palace. I feel quite guilty about this but I slowly accepting thes situation. This is clearly a good problem to have. Hey, guess what? I can see Morrocco from the roof! That´s not something you can say everyday.

This is the base for the next few days from where to get to Morrocco for the day, visit Gibraltar and and generally explore the are

Day Four - Cadiz

2009-04-05T12:32:00.000-07:00

That´s a lot to take in in one day. I took a lovely trip across to Cadiz from El Puerto de Santa Maria in an old boat called El Vapor. I saw some sea birds that I will attempt to name at some later date but some of whom I may have once known the names of. Cadiz is an interesting place, reminding me of Valleta in Malta to a degree. It was interesting to walk around and take in the mix of old architecture. I am not sure what I was expecting, except that I was told to expect that public holidays would throw a spanner in the plans which they did today - the cathedral being closed due to the Semana Santa festival. I did get to see the art gallery though and the castle. I had a few flashes of imagnitive apprehension of the gravity a past now largely lost but somehow giving very brief glimpses of itself when you are not looking.

The Hostel here is really friendly which really improves the quality of the stay.

This Semana Santa thing though is really something else. Those guys with the pointy hats are really terrifying. We just came back from Plaza de Espangne where we saw a cart carrying an image of Christ being beaten on it. Apparently it weighs about 600kg and takes about twenty people to carry it. This was not the time for jokes about wanting to buy a hat, with devout older ladies taking the proceeding very seriously. I could not ascertain entirely well, but I gathered from what people were saying that the figures on the carts are thought to be more than simply reminder of the invisible omnipresent Christ but that they are possess a kind of entity status similar to that of a Hindu type of deity. I think this may vary from person to person, but I got the impression that prayers and promises were offered to the figures. If this is correct, Martin Luther would not, I should imagine, be entirely in favour......

The strange thing was the whole thing had the feeling a 1977 street party. The people seemed really together and at ease with one another which was great to be a part of. My guide was a friendly Spanish guy called Daniel, not known to have been to any Royal street parties but something of a veteran of the whole procession thing. The other thing it was similar to is the New Orleans brass band funeral. The band here had that kind of sway and were dressed in black too.

More later I expect... the Semana Santa goes in til next Sunday.

El Puerto De Santa Maria Day Three

2009-04-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

I have been travelling mainly today getting the train down from Seville to El Puerto De Santa Maria. This seems like a nice town that gets a lot of sun. I managed to negotiate down the price of the room a little bit which is good since my poor old friend remains in England waiting for his passport to leave someone´s in-tray at the home office.

I was a bit whacked out when I arrived so I haven´t seen much of the town yet. I have noted though a couple of excellent superarkets and the prices are much cheaper here. The atmosphere is the hostal is friendly and people seem pretty excited about the upcoming Semana Santa.

Walking back between the hostel where I´d left my camera to the place where I was staying (oops) I happened upon some kind of premliminary hat wearing on the part of the festival participants. I had seen the Semana Santa costumes on the web but I must say it is certainly quite startling to see it in real life. They are apparently not too different from ones worn by the Inquisition.

Not being a Catholic I find some the imagery and poise a bit strange. Contemporary Anglo-Evangelicalism (or something like that) is sort of like ´God loves me even if I am wearing my worst T shirt´so the idea of wearing particular clothing to express particular leanings of the soul is a bit alien to me. It may be going too far, though, as I am tempted to do to imagine that all it does is get in the way of a simple and connection with God. I guess I don´t know everything, as much as I would like to think I do.

It certainly is good to see the Grand Narrative of Easter out there and writ large. It remains even when others fade away. For my own part, I am struggling to see my own life in terms of a grand narrative - one which is and will be characterised by a persistent ability to overcome obstacles in all areas. For example, I have gone through some quite unpleasant periods of treatment for fatigue which have not resulted as I would have wished. I am still not able to move forward the narrative of more hours, more money, better standard of living etc., as mental fatigue persists even where physical benefits have arcued. I cannot present the face to the world that I would like to present. It appears to demand materially from me more than I am able to offer.

Come to think of it, though, the narrative of Easter is not on the face of it a huge success story. Well, it is in the end but not before a crisis that may have appeared quite final. I guess the words of Paul remain true today that for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. There is a pitfall here too, though, and that is the temptation to hide in religion and negate the many aspects of life there remain to be experienced and participated in. So my formula for the day, if I can put it like this is: don´t panic, something good/bad is happening.

Food Hike Day Two Seville

2009-04-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I must say it can be difficult managing more than one obsession, but I´ll try. As if there wasn´t enough to worry about regarding money, there´s also food to get ones mental teeth into. I suppose a day that inlcudes seeing one of the world´s most spectacular Cathedrals need not be dominated by food in principle. Add to that the opportunity to view some of the maps made by 16th Century Spanish explorerers in the Archive of the Indias and that amounts to surely at least a temporary distraction from the process of buying, preparing and eating food. I have to say I found the documents quite breathtaking, things like the first map of Mexico and pen and ink outlines of Florida and Cuba. Wow! I think I have my dad to blame, genetically, for an interest in archives. I haven´t even mentioned the spectacular Alcazar, the little brother to Granada´s Alahambra but certainly quite spectacular. Amazing- a civilisation that makes swirly bits on building in a style so different to ours it can take your breath away.

It is great to be here and I am starting to feel a bit of good old ´straight buzz´. It is just that I seem to be spending half the time in food related activities. This food plan I am is quite limited including further restrictions due to the presence of a couple of gut nasties that you don´t want to know about. That´s part of the reason why I walked across the city with no fewer than two backpacks stuffed with food. It might have been my imagination but I am sure my heavy laden appearance - imagine a backpack with three Ewoks hanging off my back and further bag with two Ewoks in the front - caused some mirth and casual comment from people in Cafes. (They didn´t know this was against my principles).

I got this food at a dawn raid on a local supermarket that did sell food but only at prices that stang. It did strike me though that this period of a weakened pound might be good not only for our exports but to feed the domestic market with home grown products. That´s my policy and I am sticking to it. It could be the beginning of an argyument for protectionism.

When I arrived at the hostal it had a sign on the bedside table about not eating and not drinking that with the best will in the world I will not be able to comply with - weighing and measuring dried quinoa in a bench down by the river the only viable alternative.

Later, I met some of the friends of Bill W in a home for retired nuns. One of whom was quite strident in directing me down the corridor to the location of the meeting. I found the room and met the guys. Everyone seemed to be called Antonio. Strangely, the secretary misheard my name also as Antonio and I was temporarily able to join the party - until I corrected him that is. I may have imagined it but I think he looked a bit disappointed. The leader, Antonio, gave me some literature in Spanish for practice which I have taken to heart in preparation for a potential inaugarul share in Spanish. Who knows? It might even make more sense than my Italian share (I hope so).

Seville is in the money

2009-04-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am just going to thack this onto the paper and edit it later. I landed OK in Seville, well, with a little help from the pilot. I found the airport a little lacking in facilities though. I had hoped for an ATM that had some money in it or a bureau de change. Neither seemed much in evidence but a line of travel weary but philosophical Spaniards not quite moaning about the inconvenience made it almost worthwhile. I managed to change some money at the Iberian airways desk and lost about 50p in the process due to a spontaneous 1 for 1 excahnge rate. This loss was offset rather well though by the lady manning the the information desk. When I asked her for change she gave me 2E30 which was the exact change for the bus and wouldn´t hear of me breaking my note. I told her she should be promoted. It got still more interesting money wise when I arrived at the hostel and they had charged me for two nights including the one I had cancelled. They refunded this including a seemingly random extra Euro that had ventured onto the bill from nowhere.

I think I am obsessesed with money. It is not that I love it, it´s just that it seems to get involved in all aspects of life. There you go, the only escape is service, voluntary work and true compassion.

Money and other illusions

2009-04-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

Hello my lovely people.

I doubt I shall be able to say anything new about money since better people than me have been thinking about, reasoning with it and earn more of it than me for since yonks ago. However, it still does seem to need a mention with all the G20 business and the protests going in London. People are obviously very upset -- putting bricks through the windows of banks and stuff like that. It is hard to see from this vantage point how far these protests are based on ideology and how much on character defects like blame and envy.

I know there is a recession going on but I get the distinct impression that there are several million people complaining of the present difficult circumstance whose situation has not worsened at all. There is an influence on the national mood that is in addition to the net material changes in circumstances. It seems a bit like the nation catching a virus. This virus though only infects thinking and mood and makes you feel that things are worse than they really are. This doesn't refer to people who really have lost jobs and homes etc like some of my favourite colleagues at work who, for the record, have not complained at all to my knowledge.

It would be a bit hard to get worked up about the stupidity of global gambling on assets that don't quite really exist if it didn't really affect a lot of people somewhere. If it were not for that, it would seem like the biggest joke of all time. I am in danger of indulging in the latest national pastime -- kick a banker. I doubt they are particularly worse than anybody else. Lots of people gamble for a living. It would seem to be an advantage though at least to gamble on a real horse rather than a notional one.

Today I bought a cash passport and loaded it with some Euros. Although the home office still have my friend's passport, I'll travelling tomorrow and I needed a bit of back up. Or, more to the point, I felt like I did. They are like debit cards but without the bank account and with a £1.50 charge every time you withdraw money from the ATM. Not bad for a little peace of mind I suppose but certainly, in a small way, an example of an industry that employs quite a lot of peopel and makes quite a lot of money for just moving numbers around from one computer system to another.

I am not an economist but in my head it strikes me that this type of industry must be underpinned by a far greater proportion of economic activity that is genuinely based on a mutually favourable excahnge of things that have been developed out of material natural resources. I suppose I see things like agriculture and manufacturing as giving our economy gravity. In some way I see a move towards an economy dominated by service industries as being Lando's Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back -- a thing that doesn't look like it should be standing up by itself but somehow it does. I know the argument about the more developed economies supplying skilled services etc that newer econmies don't do it is just that -- aren't we pegged to the greater currency of what natural resources we have and how we make them into things we can exchange really?

I read in Nial Ferguson's book The Ascent of Money that if I lend you the bank £100 and they keep £10 on deposit and lend the other £90 out to the next borrower, effectively they have created some wealth; an additional £90. If the second lender then deposits that money in a different bank, who, in turn, lends £80 of that to another lender there are now held as deposits £270 from an original £100. The problem is that the additional £170 is only really a notional reality. It only exists in thin air. Thin air might look thin but it can really come back to haunt you like the hounds at head of this credit crunch. That's not bad for an illusion.

Our passports of yesterday

2009-03-30T01:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I am about to go off travelling into Spain which is good. Some years since the Spainish world cup (1982?) I still remember the little orange with the smily face which was sort of the mascott of the tournament. This little fella is still famous, as my Spainish students informed me last year, going by the name of Narahito apparently.

We have got a few last minute complications with the trip. My travel partner is waiting for his passport to be returned from the home office, we hope with all the requisite stamps and stuff. It looks to be going right down to the wire in terms of whether it arrives in time for us to depart at the same time.

Significant though this may be in the stress-before-leaving stakes it only registers somewhere mid-table in terms of the all time classics (of all time). I like the incident that befall myself and Lewis last time I went to Spain - we arrived at the airport on Wednesday only to discover that the flight was on the Thursday. Oops! It is funny how things can get stuck in the head and no matter what is shed by the cold light day of day onto the black of the paper before you, it remains unchallenged. If this can happen with flight dates it must go even further in terms of assumptions abouts peoples motivations, intentions and behaviour.

Another one was the time I was leaving a semester of work in Macedonia, with a family member I'll try to keep anonymous although he looks like me and is fairly near my age. We got the border between Macedonia and Greece only to find that the bank he changed his money at in Tetovo - some two hundred miles north of our present position - had failed to encouage an effective passport recovery routine with the customer in the final stages of the transaction. Nothing for it but one of us to North and the other to go South. I did feel pretty lousy about that one I must say.

Another one of geographical similarity and documentary proximty was during mine and my colleagues great escape from the chaos of Macedonia during the commencement of the bombing campaign in Kosovo and Serbia. Mary's passport had run out some months prior to the Macedonain stoning of the British Consulate and not been renewed. She had to the run the gauntlet of helicopters and chaos of the time to go back into Skopje and meet the foreign office guy in a location some-wise removed the consulate in order to hand over travel documents to get her into Greece.

When she returned to the town down south where we were staying we made paln to get across the border back into EU. Cabs arrived and we loaded our stuff into them. I was in one cab with Mary and Jo and Catherine and Aisling were in the cab in front. When we got to the border crossing with Greece the cab in front went through the official document check and so on and so on and was about to pull away when Mary recalled that her travel documents were in the boot of the car in front. We somehow managed to communicate this and interrupt the car's progression into Europe just long enough to get the boot open and retrieve the documents.

So today we await news of whether the comtemporary of these other auspicious documents is likely to arrive before Thursday. Something of a rigid planner these days (I had to do something with all that energy after I gave up smoking) I now have two rather different plans in the mind in terms of how the trip will pan out. I guess the trips I like the most though don't have every detail hammered out in advance so this could be a good thing.

I'll let you know..... I just gotta get there and bring back some memorabilia from the Spain 82 World Cup.

Weather Rant

2009-02-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

Yes it's true that everything comes a standstill in the UK during extreme weather. We hardly mobilize at all during the occurrence of snow and apparently other countries laugh at us. It has been calculated the if half the money we'd lost from the economy had been spent on standby services over the last few eighteen years, we'd be slightly better financially, as a nation, now, in the aftermath of the snow.

Yes it's true that's the kind of arcane calculation that dominated much of the broadcasting over the recent period. It is indicative of the fact that our national consciousness or media or both is dominated by thinking in terms of money. It is said that we are largely de-politicized in the UK but I haven't found this to be the case. I would be hard pushed to find someone who did not have an opinion on public policy. Especially when it comes to the actions or inactions of the local authority.

I must admit, as a council employee who didn't do anything during the bad weather I feel I could have been better employed. Although usually employed in the realm of teaching adults ESOL and literacy, if I had been asked to volunteer to get on a buggy (my imagination fails me... a what... a kind of snow plough troop carrier, open to the elements) to go out and clear pavements. I'd have done it; we'll maybe for a few hours. The thing is, nobody else did it. I am in my thirties. I like walking and I wear walking boots. I slid around and walked cautiously. I reckon it was even harder on the physically infirm, the disabled and the elderly.

One thing that was nice about the weather was that people started thawing out and becoming a little bit more human - even in Croydon. It was like, well, I can't charge down this road at the moment because there's ice on it. On a public level, we could do other than acknowledge our weakness, or perhaps powerlessness over the weather. Something of the insidious self-importance and self-will fell away from us.

It was great to see the roads getting usable again and I felt grateful to the trailblazers who had dug their cars out early and got out on the roads who help to wear down the snow to the level where they were truly drivable again.

Music and the hands of grace

2008-11-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

The right hand is loss and the left hand is grace
All bound up together like
Music and the journey of time

Only one of these hands
Has strength
The other grapples the darkness

But suffering don't snuff out the light;
These two
Sliding across circumstance
Towards a purpose
The fury of the clinch
Never outside the narrative
Of resurrection

We all have a story

2008-10-06T14:19:00.000-07:00

On Saturday 4th October we met record-breaking paralympian Tanni Grey Thompson at the Croydon's Clocktower - an event we had been looking forward to and working towards for some time.

Learners from CALAT had been involved in a project on the theme of overcoming adveristy. The literacy groups had each read her book, 'Aim High', with each learner then doing a piece of biographical writing outlining a hardship that they had overcome in their lives. Next, the learners had their work published in a booklet which was given to Tanni on the day.

Brit School - A Script of Sorts

The event started off with an excellent performance by a group from the BRIT school who performed a piece called: 'Life: A Script of Sorts'. Combining music dance and personal writing, they were able to communicate as individuals their collective will to live and celebrate the experience at the same time. It was nice to see such a young group able to express a very positive sense of what life means to them, all the more poignant given their 'Script of Sorts' was developed in the context of working with children in a local hospice.

The Young Poets

Next a group of young poets took the stage by storm, using a variety of poetic forms inclusing the limmerick, diamante and shape poetry to express themselves on themes of achievement among others. As the Psalmist said (Pslam 8:2): 'from the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, because of your adversaries, that you might silence the enemy and the avenger'. Not normally one to misappropriate the Bible, I did feel that it was remarkable to see such young children writing and then reading poetry in front of such large crowds. Maybe the enemy and the avenger are illiteracy, ignorance and poverty which would seem automatically to occupy any space left by a lack of learning. So maybe education is a powerful weapon against such things; this is an argument that the children made for themselves as they demonstrated how rewarding it was for them to work with poetry and rhyme at a young age.

CALAT Literacy Learners

Our Literacy learners really did well, reading some very personal writing to a large assembled group of mostly strangers. Their work covered themes such as alcoholism, equal opportunities, the shame of illiteracy and memories from childhood. They stood up proud and we were proud of them. It was not difficult to see the value of their education as they delivered their work clearly and confidently one by one. One learner even said that the service had made a huge difference to her life. (Keep it coming!) Many other learners, although not present, had contributed to the booklet making for a real smorgasbord of a publication, with just enough of each story to leave you wishing to read more.

Lanfranc School Learners

The stories written by the Lanfranc learners were also a remarkable pointer to the value of investing in and supporting those in need who chose our country as a place of refuge. I know what we do is ultimately reckoned in terms of numbers and percentage; the value to the Lanfranc learners, though, of the input from their helpers and teachers did seem clearly to transcend such as a calculation.

Tanni Grey Thompson

Tanni then spoke for about half an hour talking about her early life, her athletics career and her life since retiring from the track. She is a very bright individual with a strong desire to succeed and seems never to have worn her impairment a reason to aim for anything other than the absolutely maximum she could achieve in her life. She won 16 Paralympic medals in her career including 11 golds. She deferred reitrement after Athens 2004 and only winning two Golds feeling that she still had unfinished business on the track. This is a philosophy that she seems still to be following today working as a mentor and coach to young athletes among other roles.

Read more about Tanni on Wikipedia

We All Have a Story

As her talk finished it was evident that we had not heard the whole story. Similarly, the learners were only able to read exerpts from their longer pieces. Collectively, there seemed to be a story rising up out of everyone, if only we'd had enough time to hear it all. I got the feeling that the total amount of narrative present in the audience had a greater mass than I had imagined. I even wanted to stand up and tell my story. In an atmosphere of trust, as the stories come out into the light, it does not seem at all unreasonable that the shadows of fear and laziness might gradually evaporate leaving clear a way ahead we thought we might never walk down.

Council website
Croydon Cultural Olympiad

Birthday Party at 36

2008-09-21T13:25:00.001-07:00

No actual photos exist from the event but perhaps a few memories. You might remember a joke directed at you that you didn't like the sound of. You might remember salmon falling from your chop sticks onto your trousers. You might remember a room full of people you almost know. You might remember the willingness of your loved ones to take up positions of service. You might remember the story of my dad running over a cat. You might remember meeting for the first time or for the first time in a while. The world is not entirely relative; some things are shared.

I remember the perspective of the table stretched out in front of me. A table lined with candle-lit food warmers like a road heading both ways out of the present into the past and future. You might remember a feeling that no matter where we came from, we have something in common.

Fear was not on the menu and didn't even get through the door: we had tempura, sushi, salmon, and some proper desserts. You might not have noticed the absence of the girl who taught us how to make tempura or the absence of committed drinking. I think I noticed the grace of the One who fills our lives with the potential and the reality of love and companionship. I think the Man who turned water into wine at Cana still likes parties.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_at_Cana

Amos 9:14 4 'And I will bring back the exiles of My people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine from them; they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them.'

Orkney and Scotland 2008

2008-09-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Orkney and a few other places in Scotland. I like being on tour. It was an excellent trip mostly spent with the family - both nuclear and extended plus a few days backpacking to boot.

Edinburgh

I started in Edinburgh and spent some time with my Aunt and Uncle and my cousins. I saw a show at the Edinburgh festival which was a fairly mixed quality reviewed here in the Scotsman. It was great to see all the family here. Edinburgh is a lovely city but vastly overcrowded during festival time - my presence notwithstanding of course. Didn't really have enough time there but it was great to see everyone. Sadly, only one cousin shown here and she is not the guy with no hair.

Aberdeen

On then to Aberdeen. A city I had wanted to see for some time and the only major city in Scotland I had not visited. I quite liked but I didn't really get on well at the hostel where I spent some time in fourteen-bed male dorm. Yes, it was noisy and smelly. How many times would you get up in the night multiplied by fourteen? I liked the museum and art gallery in Aberdeen though and was pleased to have seen the sparkling granite.

Thurso

I then got the train up to Thurso which takes about seven hours from Aberdeen. The second part though, from Inverness, is a really nice trip along the coast. Sandra's backpackers in Thurso is a cool place. Sandra is a very nice lady and has made a nice space for travelers getting round Caithness or going off to Orkney as I was. You get a nice view of Hoy from the beach. The island sometimes appears in relief when the weather on Hoy is sunny and the weather in Thurso is cloudy. It gives an intriguing glimpse of what might lay in store over the water.

Orkney

The ferry over to Orkney is great; you get to see the Old man of Hoy at no extra cost and trailed by a lot of seabirds during the crossing.

We were staying in Kirkwall which was a good location for seeing the mainland. The accommodation was above a shop on Albert St.

Day One
We drove down the causeways through the Southern Isles. The highlights were seeing the Italian church, the block ships and Churchill barriers. The village of St. Margaret's hope is a good place to have lunch if you can stand the midges.

Day Two
We went up to Marwick head and saw the Kitchener memorial which stands in a great location full of wildlife. Here we saw Great Skuas gliding above the cliffs on thermals. Then, driving round the north of the Island, we passed through the village of Evie and visited the Broch of Gurness; a much preserved two-thousand year old village. Life eback then looked pretty cold with everyone also living at very close quarters.

Day Three

Iain arrived and we went out to see some of the main sites of historical interest on the island. We started at Skara Brae which is an outstanding old village next to a really nice beach; Skail Bay. No wonder they decided to build their village there. After that we went on to Maeshowe which is thought to be some kind of burial chamber although when it was discovered there was nothing inside expect Viking graffiti saying something like 'we stole all the treasure'. The mainland also has some stone circles to visit with slabs of quite considerable size.

Day Four

Iain and I went over to Hoy; the volcanic island south of the mainland. We got the ferry over for about seven quid. Loads of sea birds evident in the harbour. On the way back a man walked up silently behind me and exclaimed 'ganet' in a very dead pan tone. It seemed to be something on an initiating into the ornithology community.

On the island we walked up Ward Hill, the highest hill on Orkney. Some very good views from the top. Walking back down the ridge, I spotted a mountain hare with black ears. There were loads of Great Skuas around too. We got a bit too close to a nest at one stage and almost got dive bombed.

Day Five
In the morning Iain and I looked round the cathedral and saw a scripture on a plack that he had told me about the previous day, "Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you." Ephesians 5:14. Then we walked round the Earl's and the Bishop's palaces. In the afternoon we went to Scapa Bay and saw Oyster Catchers in quite large numbers then went on to the pier arts centre in Stromness which has a great collection upstairs and is housed in a very contemporary building.

Day Six
We went out to Birsay and checked out the ruins of another village. This one was rather modern though - only eight hundred years old. Then we walked round the mini-island there. In the cliffs we saw what we believe to be Guillemots nesting in the dramatic cliffs there. Also, there were some birds diving for fish that may have been 'divers' of one sort or another. It was pretty much a case of packing in the evening but we managed to get a nice Chinese meal in too.

Back to Inverness
We drove back to Inverness via Dunnet Head and John O'Groats. It was interesting to see the west coast and we stopped off for tea on the way. Inverness was quite busy compared to Kirkwall and it was a bit of a shock to the system checking into the Student Backpackers Hostel which was a metal-loving, hard-drinking joint whether you didgeridoo or you didgeridon't. It was nice to see the river and atmostphere on the weekends. The locals say that the town has changed a lot in the last ten years for the better. The castle there is used as a court now which creates a slightly uneasy mix of tourists and defendants hanging around the same space.

We had meal out a restaurant next to the river for Mum's birthday where they served a pretty decent steak I must say.

London

Nobody had done any major socio-cultural rennovations on South London since I had been away. Back in the news loop and getting fed lots of downbeat economics forecasts and trying to cut down on my sports news intake. Wondering if Orkney still exists or it disappears when you get back to London.

Dorset Road Trip 2008

2008-07-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

It is good to get away to the South Coast I am sure you'll agree. Just getting back into life back in London. There is a lot of police sirens, planes and people, in no particular order.

The photos in this clip are principally from East Dorset, just east of Dorchester around the Jurassic coast between Weymouth and Bridport.

The youth hostel was in a little village called Lyton Cheney. I think all it had there was a pub, a phone box and a nice little stream. The nearest shop was about four miles away.
The sunset in West Bay was a fantastic colour and it was good to be there.

Driller Gate

2008-07-10T12:07:00.001-07:00

Sitting in the waiting room of the dentist’s up the road and feeling a bit edgy

I had plenty of time to consider whether it was a mistake on my part giving up being a veggie

As these and other subjects passed through my mind I thought I heard the sound of drilling

But it wasn’t a drill; it was a littlun’ jamming a handheld fan into carpet which he seemed to find quite thrilling

With my appointment time far in the distance I was ushered into the surgery

My admission to the dentist that I hadn’t been for four years was no act of purgery

Realising I might be a bit anxious he give me a good vibe

Which I hung onto for the next ten minutes praying that I would survive

In fact with no sign of decay all I needed was antibiotics for a gum infection

Surprise, surprise: my vision of rampant, irretrievable decay was just a projection.

Later on Dad came round and we worked together to put an iron gate back on its hinges

It looks better swinging there than it did under an overgrowth of Lilac on the front garden’s fringes

I got the chances to use a drill myself to make holes in the wall and did not baulk

Marking a guide hole, getting the bit to bite and giving it some torque

I felt pretty good about myself and even better that the holes were in the brick

A more appropriate substance for drilling in than my one of my back teeth, however sick.

From out of the guts of the machine

2008-07-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

Here is related the true story of a man who rescued my printer from a wasted life of peripheral redundancy. It is written as an unlikely poem although almost every word of it is nearly true:

That’s me on the phone and getting into a bit of a stinker

Trying to get Comet or Epson to do a warranty repair on my printer

I finally ascertained an engineer who would have a look locally

I checked the address and mumbled about my bad luck with printers vocally

The centre on Purley Way didn’t look all that modern

It was the sort of industrial unit you might expect to find in Waddon

The receptionist was polite and called down the engineer

Apparently casual dress is not an inhibiting factor in that career

We talked about the main issue which was that the paper was not grabbing

He went back up stairs got a pair of big pair of tweezers, a stip of cupboard and proceeded to shove that it

He looked like a surgeon fishing around for a bullet

Imagine my surprise when he located an old pencil jammed in the guts of the machine and out he did pull it

A moment of twinkle; a birthing; a miracle

But it was hard for the receptionist not to be cynical

‘That’ll do it everytime’ she quipped as the pencil hit the desktop

I thought about saying ‘Oh wow, I was looking for that!’ and then I thought, ‘no stop’.

It is better to say nothing and act like engineers pull pencils from the guts of printers every day maybe they should

And, well, if they talk about me when I am gone all well and good.

Join the dots

2008-06-14T08:18:00.001-07:00

We had a nice bike ride today from Morden Hall Park back to Croydon following the Wandle Trail.

You can get most of the way without going on the roads which is nice and some parts of the river and just spectacular. It is still a powerful river at points which has supported a lot of industry and many mills in its day. It felt good to be on the land as it is, as opposed to what we have put on it.

We passed through a number of points that held memories for me including Wilderness Island near Mill Lane, Beddington Park where we met Tom and Stacy. The park itself borders my old school. That river we were cycling on was the very same river I fell into on a regular basis after the hurricane in 1987. We used to walk from one side of the river to the other across fallen logs with varying degrees of success. How well I remember the smell of pond water emanating from my socks (if that is not too pleasant a concept to reflect upon).

Following the river was interesting in that I knew various points along its length quite well, but did not previously know the whole picture. It was fascinating to cycle through ancient looking riverside woods to pop up next to a road a have got the bus down a thousand times. Gradually an overall sense of its course, above and beyond its sections I have known formed in my imagination.

One way or another that river has wound itself through many times and seasons of my life and riding along it today reminded me of a lot of that. The more I think about it, the more it blows me away. Everything we need for life is in the river and its beautiful: the river is a journey; the river is a story; the river is wealth; the river is the economy; the river is the painting; the river, it doesn't stop.

"[Jesus] ...the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13-14 RSV)

Mum and Dad's Fortieth Wedding Anniversary

2008-06-01T13:18:00.000-07:00

'Forty Years of Bliss'

It is an interesting irony that everyone seemed to able to share: that the day to day realities of a marriage are sometimes less than entirely blissful.

My mum and dad's friends had these T-shirts made up for their fortieth wedding anniversary. It was a joke that nobody failed to get. I don't think my generation is going to be able to laugh in the same way. To laugh at that means you are getting through the problems. To laugh means you do not think you will be beaten by the problems. To laugh means it has been worth it whatever the cost.

My people: I think a lot of them are going to give up. I don't think my generation is going into this thing with the same attitude. I don't want to be too hard on us; we have good qualities. We can be egalitarian, globally responsible, humane and considerate. But getting through forty years of marriage is not a calling as many of us are going to sign up for.

It was a lovely day with a real collection of family, family friends and absent friends. Adjacent to the day itself were memories shared of other, similar parties held in the garden at my parents' house. Like their twenty-fifth anniversary where some friends and I played some very rough rock covers in the back garden; the singers voice coming through a bass amp. As bad as it may have been as a performance it was much recalled today along with various synonyms for 'drunk' to describe the mental state of the musicians.

They often quote that African saying on World Service, 'it takes a village to raise a child', especially in debates about correcting the misdemeanors of wayward British youth. What struck me today was that, perhaps, it takes a lot of friends to make a marriage. There were about thirty-five people there and most of them I have known all my life. A great big crowd of moral support and affirmation; a crowd stood together like so many antarctic penguins keeping each other warm.

So, it can be hard work like a marriage, just doing the next right thing one day at a time and trusting God for the results. It helps me to remember the God's son knows a thing or two about suffering and endurance:
Hebrews 12:2

We must focus on Jesus, the source and goal of our faith. He saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Then he received the highest position in Heaven, the one next to the throne of God.

For just a moment today, when the sun came out and we made our toasts to mum and dad, and we all shared a sense of love, admiration and respect knowing that it couldn't have been easy, no one was thinking about the hard times really even though we laughed at the T-shirt, I thought well maybe Heaven is a bit like this. Because when it's over, it's over. You don't think about having had to wait for the kettle to boil when you are drinking your cup of tea. The house of cards falls neatly back into the pack. Wounds heal. Friends meet. You recognise the face of someone you deeply love and have always known. You put the bag down. Ronnie Barker takes off his awful shoes and everything's all right forever.

Grawen Camping Trip 2008

2008-05-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

Why does it always rain on me?

Getting back out there into the wilds of British weather one more time. Camping always seems to be such a mix of horror and joy; the horror of the physical adjustment to the real elements and relative discomfort compared urban apartment lifestyle.

It was lovely go away with a bunch of guys who knew each other pretty well on the whole. We had a little community there for a few days which functioned pretty well. Trying to organise nine people to leave at the same time to go on a walk is a bit of challenge; usually the only person I have to organise is myself. I liked the practice I had in putting common welfare before my own. Interestingly, this community exists anyway in the fellowship of sobriety operating remotely by means of technology; if it weren'tr operating in the background it would not be able to spring to life fully-functioning within a few hours of all the participants arriving.

Then coming back to the city is a bit of a shock for a number of reasons. Among them are going back to to a state of 'apartment' as opposed to sharing space as well as feeling the roots connecting me to the natural world retracting up into me like a snails antlers.

When the sun shines, camping is the inevitable and logical holiday choice and always will be. After three days of rain, it is another character building test putting the relative physical comfort into perspective. I am all for character building and just glad that holidaying in the UK offers such persistent opportunities for such growth

It was nice to see friends coming out of themselves too. Personalties and characters seemed softer and truer somehow framed against a backdrop of green and grey. I feel hope strengthened espeically by the prospect of getting back out there again ASAP.

It is a beautiful world in spite of the pain.

Susan might have laughed

2008-04-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

I got my usual weekly delivery from TESCO today. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had not charged me for a batch of grapefruit, listing them as out of stock, although they had in fact delivered them. On second thoughts, I tried to give them back to the driver but he wasn't having any of it. TESCO was, he assured me a multi-million pound company which would not miss a few grapefruit.

I recalled that the last time I had an over-delivery of grapefruit, about 25 fruits, I got through half of them before I was conscience stricken into a sour case of inaction; the remaining fruit condemned to a no-mans land area under sink until they went off.

I know myself too well these days and I try not to do things that would give my conscience cause to have a go at me. So I hit upon a strategy of emailing the company to let them know about the error in the delivery, telling them that the fruit had in fact arrived: ten grapefruit, five red and five yellow, only one of which appeared on the bill. I continued that I was planning to eat the fruit but that I was happy to pay for them and encouraged them to charge me.

TESCO's got back to me pretty promptly:

TES4992667X
Re: Extra grapefruit delivery

Thank you for your email. I'm very sorry that we have delivered you items
that were not part of your order. I can advise that I am happy to let you
keep these items without charging you for them. Once again, please accept
my apologies for the inconvenience caused. Thank you for letting us know
about this.

Kind Regards etc.

Susan was on a similar food plan to me. We take our food around in Tupperware boxes not being able to guarantee that the destination will be able to serve what we require to stay healthy.

There were lots of foods she needed to steer clear of but I am pretty sure she was OK with grapefruit. We lost her this week and I just thought, if she knew about the grapefruit, she would have laughed: double-portions of good healthy food arriving free of charge courtesy of a multi-national. Keep it coming.

Honest like a rock

The winds of grief slow
To a broken whisper
It tastes like the truth
Honest like a rock
And thoroughly true
God’s love pursues us all

This rock cannot be broken
Flint on the falsehood
Let’s get to the truth
A dark curtain blazing with light
Love bears all
The responsibility of grief

With love from Andrew (Tupperware Crew Member)

Manchester United Vs Arsenal 2-1 13th April 2008

2008-04-14T06:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I am feeling gutted and don't suppose that's too surprising really. The team I support, Arsenal has just played football at another level have shown that their footballing intelligence is operating a higher level than any other team in the country.

We are, though, about finish the season again without winning anything and whilst that does matter, it is not true that nobody remembers you unless you win. The dutch team of the seventies will always be remembered for playing total football although they lost 2-1 to Germany in the UEFA European Football Championship of 1978.

That's a bit of a consolation but our weaknesses too are evident: the lack two or three experienced players; the need for a galvanising captain; Wenger's unwillingness to buy established, mature names in the football world.

Whatever his shortcomings, however, the fact of his ability and craft as a manager is beyond doubt. How sad, then, to hear the treatment given to him by some Manchester United fans in the stands. Football songs can be intelligent, funny, topical and incisive. They can also be slanderous, negative, nasty and mean. Their songs about Wenger are unrepeatable and horrific. Another favourite was a song about Eduardo's injury suggesting that he will walk like Heather Mills as a result of his injury.

I guess I am asking myself: well, what did you expect? And the answer, I suppose, is that I don't see why fans cannot afford a degree of respect for one another and that the domain of humour should not include abusive personal slander and laughing at the tragic misfortune of others.

The thing about the Eduardo injury is that it really hurt Arsenal fans, myself included. It wasn't just the seriousness of the injury in terms of his career, how gruesome it appeared and obvious pain and discomfort it must have caused him though. Seeing the fragility of a talent just coming to terms with the premiership cut down by misfortune, our hopes for this year seemed to die that day. Maybe our hopes were too fragile.

It is enough to make you have a few days off football and just focus on something less emotive, like geo-politics. Only joking. I am going to lay down my burdens, down by the riverside.

I ain't gonna study war no more....

Elvis revisited

2008-04-12T01:49:00.001-07:00

Like millions of others each year, I visited Graceland and whilst not exactly going in as an Elvis fan I certainly left as one. It's not that I actually listen to a lot of the music but that if anyone has to be King of rock'n'roll then it is him. Seeing the passion and belief of elvis reflected throughout the accounts of his close friends and family was quite an eye-opener - his daughter imploring him before the concert to include 'How Great Thou Art' in the set list - Lisa again describing that you could feel his energy precede him as he commenced down the central stiarcase at Graceland, his hair and outfits prepared to perfection in anticaption of greeting his guests.

As much as some of the accounts of Elvis suggested a character a little larger than life, my conviction was that he was a believer; certainly a believer in his ability, art, voice, and music; surely a believer in his family; with a deep personal belief in God and commitment to gospel music.

I don't know much about Elvis' personal experience of his faith but I know what he sounds like when he sings the gospel and, guess what? He sounds like he believes it. According to all the abounts of his life and work in Memphis and Nashvile he simply didn't do things that he didn't believe in. I may not like everything he recorded or even half of it, but he scrutinized each and every new song he was offered before decidinng to recording.

That he was troubled and addicted to prescription drugs doesn't lead me to question his belief in God. I can hear him reaching up in the high notes and you know he wasn't singing about himself. If he anything, the stars who cut their teeth on gospel music before getting hooked up with their own stardom may even make the best job of singing it: I see Elvis searching himself in his performance for the simple knowledge of God beyond a time and place where the world and the flesh have any say of his thoughts and behavior. King of rock n roll is one thing- king of the universe that's something else.

Don't take my word for it- youtube me Elvis right now!!!

Sisters and my brothers, stay on the boat

2008-04-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

What is going to happen next in my life? How quickly will my hair fall out? Are the people who are my friends today going to move to Switzerland never to be seen again? Will anyone in London say 'yes' to a social engagement being diarised (I know you love that word) less than two weeks in advance?

These are some of the questions my mind wanders to in idle moment, leading off with the most important about the hair. I know there are other concerns but not being a homeowner I am not that bothered by the drop in house prices. I don't fancy a global economic recession much though.

It is exciting to think that even my mistakes can be turned into something worthwhile in the hands of an infinitely wise and compassionate Creator. I learned this making a few real mingers and that He has been able to work out pretty well. It's not that I am planning any more exactly but today I feel a confidence that once the mess is in his hands, it can work out all right.

If I break my leg today, he might make me into a shoes salesmen tomorrow. If I lose my hat in the wind today, something else might blow into my life tomorrow. My soul, yes, pours out of those holes (M Kozelek - Red House Painters) but something good is gonna grow out of them tomorrow.

The people urging me to stay on the boat (Sensational Nightingales - Stay On The Boat CD) are making a powerful biblical story into a good gospel song but is that all? No, they are singing out of their experience that if you hang in there it will work itself out. Believing that in the middle of the chaos is a matter of faith but not blind faith. You wouldn't sing the song if it hadn't proved true for you and wouldn't try to communicate it if it wasn't something you thought others could rely on.

Is it so hard to believe that things will be OK in the end if I trust in God? After all, I didn't create myself, all I created was the mess. If I can get out of the way long enough the Choreogrpaher can get moving and starting putting it all back together. This believe is, in a sense, a call to live since both fear of making a mistake and a superstitious view of God's will are both counteracted by the sentiment of the principle. As a man said: Romans 8.28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

2008-04-09T15:08:00.001-07:00

Just came back from the USA where I felt right at home. A country in which 'the state' seemed largely in the background, in stark contrast to the constant interventions that take place over here in the UK. There had just been a storm in Atlanta which was being cleared up. I don't exactly know who was doing it but it didn't appear to involve a huge intervention by the state and an invasion of traffic cones. They were doing just fine too.

Over here the state seems to be absolutely everywhere. I am not much of a political thinker, but there has to be a way to provide decent social security without all the mind-boggling red tape and nonsense. I just know that I'd love to have the freedom felt by many Americans with cars and a bit of money while having some of the social security enjoyed in Europe. Quite useful if you are well; very useful if you are sick. Put your hand up if you are sick of control.

The UK gov. seems to want it both ways: free-markets which they control. E.g. In post-compulsory education, anyone can bid for contracts but if you actually get one, the only way your gonna keep it is by conforming absolutely to their aims, objectives and targets. Not all that free, really. It was quite funny hearing one or two gentlemen from the South describing the centre-left governments in Europe as communist as, to be honest, they must seem so to some republicans.

I know that America is called 'the land of the free.' I am also aware of the crimes that have been recently committed in the name of spreading democracy. The irony is, there is a lot of freedom over there - it's just that it is not easily exported. I loved the fact that the Americans I met were not buried under X layers of irony and self-evasion. Many just seemed to call it as they saw it. Why not? Why can't I say have a nice day and mean it. The cynicism in this country (especially in my head) just really gets in the way of living.

I think it is worse in London as well. We are all sort crammed into this little space with everyone competing for a little bit of space on the pavement (I really want to say sidewalk). People are rushed, stressed and aggressive. We get overloaded with work and weighed down by time-fascism. And what's the point? A better man than me said: 'the only thing counts is faith expressing itself in love.' (Gal 5.6) If you can come up with anything better that let me know.